Today’s Top Stories
1. Three Palestinians armed with knives, guns and explosives were shot and killed at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate after they attacked some policewomen. Two officers were injured. All three terrorists were shot and killed; sappers defused two undetonated pipe bombs. More at the Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post.
Jerusalem Police spokesman Assi Aharoni said that a far more deadly attack was thwarted through the fast response by security forces, who shot and killed the attackers moments after they opened fire.
2. Hamas says two of its members were killed in another Gaza tunnel collapse yesterday. This came one week after another tunnel collapse killed seven of its operatives.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
3. India arrested a suspect planning on attacking Israeli targets.
4. Video: One Woman Stood Up to NPR . . . And Won! Moral of the story: You can make a difference.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Ahead of Palestinian reconciliation talks due to take place in Doha, Hamas called for new Palestinian legislative and presidential elections. The call came on the 10th anniversary of Hamas’s victory in legislative elections. Hamas violently seized control of Gaza in 2007. Attempts to hold new elections since then repeatedly collapsed amid Hamas-Fatah squabbling. More at AFP.
• Israel demolished 24 illegally built Palestinian buildings, including 10 that were funded by the European Union.
• MKs complained that foreign journalists were “orchestrating events” to make Israel look bad. The accusations flew during a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee discussion on violent incidents between security forces and the press. Journalists’ groups accused the IDF of being increasingly violent against reporters. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• Protesting what they called the paper’s “pro-Israel bias,” Palestinian activists created a parody New York Times and distributed it around the Big Apple. USA Today reports the NYT brass was not amused.
• A by the numbers look at the human cost of Palestinian terror attacks between Sept. 13 and Feb. 1.
(A Palestinian stone-throwing barrage on Sept. 13 which killed 64-year old Alexander Levlovitz in Jerusalem is regarded as the beginning of the wave of stabbing, car-ramming, shooting, and stone-throwing attacks.)
30: Israelis killed
301: Overall Israelis injured
91: People injured in stone-throwing attacks
83: People injured in stabbing attacks
22: People injured in car-ramming attacks
15: People injured in shooting attacks
167: Palestinians killed carrying out attacks or in clashes
3,500: Palestinians arrested
Mideast Matters
• Postscript on the Jason Rezaian affair: The Washington Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, said the paper currently has no plans to send a new correspondent back to Iran.
“We’ve had no discussions with the Iranian government about having another correspondent there, and we would need some good assurances from the government that a correspondent there would not be arrested, as Jason was.”
Now that Iran’s legit, the foreign press corps is no doubt pondering how to expand its presence there. I’m all for greater media scrutiny of Iran, but but it only works if journalists can work freely. If correspondents sell themselves out for the sake of access, they’ll just cover up the true face of mullahs. It wouldn’t be unprecedented; after Saddam Hussein’s regime fell in 2003, CNN executive Eason Jordan penned a mea culpa, The News We Kept To Ourselves. Could the news industry go through that door in Iran?
• CNN: A Saudi court commuted a Palestinian poet’s death sentence for insulting the Koran, mocking Mohammed, and “spreading atheism.” Ashraf Fayadh was instead sentenced to eight years in prison and 800 lashes. The lashes will be spread out over 16 sessions . . .
Around the World
• France’s Jews are fleeing Paris for London. Newsweek looks at the surge:
Many French Jews head for Israel: nearly 8,000 in 2015, up from 1,900 four years earlier. But others seek safety within Europe, and London has become an increasingly popular destination. Although the British government does not record the religion of people who move to the U.K., Jewish community leaders in London say an increase in newcomers from France has driven demand for French services in London’s synagogues and Jewish schools. French children now make up 40 to 50 percent of the incoming students at London’s Jewish schools, according to Marc Meyer, the French chairman of the Hendon United Synagogue and director of the Conference of European Rabbis.
• A Presbyterian group promotes two state solution in pamphlet, partly to counter BDS pressure on the church. According to the JTA:
“Two States for Two Peoples,” released this week, comes “as activists from the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement are working toward persuading the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. to drop its support for the two-state solution when the denomination holds its biennial meeting in Portland, Oregon, in June,” Presbyterians for Middle East Peace said in announcing the book.
• Brooklyn’s Park Slope Coop made it harder to boycott Israel — or anyone else. Any boycott would now require a 75% super-majority of members.
• Police seek leads after 60 tombstones were toppled in the Jewish cemetery of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Commentary/Analysis
• Aside from all the talk about Hamas rebuilding tunnels and what Israel can or can’t do about it, Mitchel Hochberg raises an important point. Donors are growing weary of reconstructing Gaza. It’s not just because the Syrian civil war and Europe’s migrant crisis are urgent competing priorities:
Donors continue to fund Gaza’s reconstruction for humanitarian political reasons. Still, the promise of renewed conflict between Israel and Hamas leads donors to shy away from funding the large-scale projects and new housing developments needed to improve and not simply manage living conditions in Gaza. Donor wariness alone does not explain this behavior — the lack of Palestinian reconciliation, competing priorities, and regional politics all matter as well — but without hope of tangible progress, donors will remain hesitant to invest in a failing a project.
• The New York Times gave Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, a right of reply (in the letters section) to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s recent commentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• As the Australian Labor Party raises a stink about political visits to Israel (delegations don’t spend equal time in the Palestinian territories), a staff-ed in The Australian (click via Google News) isn’t buying the argument:
The pro-Palestinian MPs within the party know very well that key sites within the occupied territories are no-go areas on security grounds; the equal time rule cannot work in practice.
Why attempt to penalise Israel because it has the wit and means to tell its side of the story? It is quite open in its advocacy and the elites who undertake these trips are used to making up their own minds. The tragedy is that Palestinian leaders have squandered many opportunities to achieve a peaceful settlement of their dispute with the Israelis.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Alex Fishman: Israel and Hamas both in race against time
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas: The “merchants of war” who seek to destroy Israel
– Jonathan Tobin: Will Israel strike the terror tunnels before they are used?
– Lenny Ben-David: Incitement by the Palestinians’ post-attack PR industry
– Amb. Alan Baker: France’s ultimatum to Israel – Legally flawed and politically imprudent
– Steven Stalinsky: A mosque as an extremist megaphone (via Google News)
– Bassam Tawil: Who can believe Mahmoud Abbas?
– Norman Bailey: Israel’s pillars of diplomatic and economic relations are crumbling
– Silvio Canto Jr.: Will Argentina ever get to the bottom of the Jewish Center bombing?
– Sir Eric Pickles: A thriving Jewish community is an integral part of British identity
– Aaron David Miller: America’s awkward Iran dance
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA Scott*; money CC BY Pictures of Money;
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