Today’s Top Stories
1. At least two rockets fired from Syria landed in the Golan Heights, prompting the IDF to return fire. No injuries or damages reported. According to the IDF, the rockets didn’t appear to be errant. The IDF hasn’t indicated who it holds responsible.
2. Reuters: The UN suspended Gaza house repairs saying donors are following through on their commitments.
He said UNRWA received only $135 million (89.56 million pounds) of the $720 million pledged by donors to its cash assistance programme for 96,000 refugee families whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the 50-day conflict between the Hamas Islamist movement and Israel.
It’s easy be snarky about Arabs repeatedly failing to follow through on pledges; I’d like to see Reuters acknowledge something else: If benefactors expect another Gaza war in the near future — a new cycle of destruction, demands, and donations — they won’t be rushing to bail Hamas out.
3. Big Media and the world honored International Holocaust Memorial Day. Angela Merkel was talking about Germany, but this quote of the day really applies to all of Europe:
“It is a disgrace that people in Germany are harassed, threatened or attacked if they somehow identify as Jews or if they take the side of the State of Israel.”
And on a media note, the Daily Telegraph looks back on a 1942 article about the murder of 700,000 Jews by the Nazis. A Jewish member of the Polish government in exile and his network of informants took enormous risks to get word out of the atrocities, and then what happened?
The Telegraph chose to report the “greatest massacre in the world’s history” on page five of a six-page newspaper.
See below for a roundup of the more notable commentary.
4. The Guardian’s Warped Lessons from the Holocaust: On International Holocaust Memorial Day, a staff-ed infers that Israeli leaders improperly exploit the Holocaust.
5. BBC’s Holocaust Tweet Shocker: Why does the BBC think its appropriate to question whether the Holocaust should be laid to rest?
6. Paris Attacks Terror? Not According to the BBC: For reasonable people, the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and kosher supermarket in Paris were clear cases of terrorism.
7. HR Radio: We Don’t Whip Journalists: The New York Times Jerusalem Bureau seems obsessed with painting the Jewish state and its defenders in a negative light, while neglecting to report on the many ‘Israel haters’ disguised as NGO-sponsored ‘do-gooders.’ Click below to hear HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl interview with the Voice of Israel.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Hamas test-fired rockets into the Mediterranean.
• The Christian Science Monitor takes a closer look at Hamas-Qatar ties and the regional realignments that prompted the Gulf state to kick out Khaled Mashaal.
• NPR talked to the Swedish journalist who walked around Malmo in a skullcap to expose anti-Semitism. There was one especially important point Robert Siegel raised with Petter Ljunggren:
SIEGEL: Now, this is not the old problem of anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi skinheads. This is anti-Israel sentiment that is turned into outright anti-Semitism. Do I have that right? And how common would you say that is?
LJUNGGREN: It’s – you are right. And it’s common enough to be a big problem.
• Never again, right?
Around the World
• Iranian official: Yemen’s Houthis are “similar” to Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
• Israel is prepared to mediate between Russia and Ukraine. That’s how the Russian media‘s quoting Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is visiting Moscow.
Commentary/Analysis
• What has Iran done for Gaza, anyway? Khaled Abu Toameh weighs in on Hamas-Iran rapprochement.
Iran is not interested in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip or providing shelter to thousands of Palestinian families who lost their homes during the last war. The only thing Iran is interested in there is turning Hamas into another Iranian-backed army that would be used to attack Israel. This is all happening at a time when the Obama Administration is busy preparing for another round of talks with Iran over its nuclear program. It is obvious by now that Tehran is using these negotiations to divert attention from its efforts to deepen its involvement in the Middle East, with the hope of taking over the oil fields and eliminating Israel.
• Jeffrey Goldberg‘s worth reading.
• Israel’s former ambassador to Greece, Arye Mekel, comments on the new ruling party in Athens.
While Syriza is not a monolithic bloc, some of its members have been involved in organizing anti-Israel protests, including during last summer’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. At least one senior MP – Theodoris Dritsas, a possible candidate for defense minister – joined one of the anti-blockade flotillas to the Gaza Strip.
It won’t happen right away, but Greece’s current close relationship with Israel, including on defense, could certainly be compromised.
• CNN discussed Israel’s airstrike on Hezbollah in Syria with David Horovitz and Sharid Nashashibi.
• Big Media marked International Holocaust Memorial Day. Notable commentary included current and former Chief Rabbis Ephraim Mirvis (What have we learned?) and Jonathan Sacks (Why we need a Holocaust Memorial Day). Last but not least, a staff-ed in the Times of London rightly noted:
It is an ugly slur, and widespread not only in the Islamic world, that the commemoration of the Holocaust is an implicitly Zionist obsession.
• Holocaust articles by Douglas Murray and Robert Satloff made me go hmmmmm.
- Eichmann hoped “Arab friends” would continue battle against the Jews
- Acknowledge the righteous Muslims
• The BBC has just done more to eradicate ‘terrorism’ than all our wars since 9/11.
• For more commentary/analysis, see a Detroit News staff-ed (Keep US dollars away from terrorists), and Mohammed Wattad (Only Muslims can change the world’s view of Islam).
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA Joel Meadows via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; Auschwitz CC BY-NC-SA flickr/Hauptillusionator;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
