Today’s Top Stories
1. Israeli policewoman Hadar Cohen was laid to rest after succumbing to wounds from yesterday’s terror attack at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. Israeli security forces made a wave of arrests in a West Bank village near Jenin where the three terrorists came from. Police believe the three intended to attack a group of civilians.
Too sad
Hadar Cohen HYD with her parents after she was sworn in at ceremony as a borderpolice woman, just a week ago pic.twitter.com/gOF08NjcKo— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) February 4, 2016
2. Gaza terror tunnel’s are the big news today. Another tunnel — the third in a week — collapsed in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood last night. And there are reports of a possible fourth collapse in southern Gaza, near Rafah. Asked if Israel was behind the cave-ins, IDF Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, played coy. More at the Times of Israel.
Meanwhile, YNet reports that a video making the rounds in Gaza shows IDF engineers looking for tunnels. A Hamas spokesman told the Times of Israel it doesn’t want war, and sent calming messages to Israel through Turkish, Qatari, and UN officials.
Palestinian Hamas terrorists build terror tunnels for kidnapping & killing Israelis.
Tunnels collapse on them.
Karmahttps://t.co/J6TcXtowQh— Michael Dickson (@michaeldickson) February 4, 2016
3. The Palestinian Authority arrested 5 pro-Iran operatives in Bethlehem. Iran’s trying to get a foothold in the West Bank through an organization called a-Sabrin. It already operates in Gaza.
The Israel Radio report cited the organization’s leader in Gaza, Hisham Salem, as confirming that the group operates in the West Bank, adding that it would soon receive financial and military aide.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
4. Is Murdering Israelis Just “Human Nature”? HR’s new Senior Editor takes UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to task for asserting that terrorism against Israelis is “human nature.”
5. CBS News Gives Israel a Black Eye: Two Israeli policewomen are stabbed, yet a CBS headline portrays the Palestinian terrorists as the victims.
6. Demand Accountability From CBS News: Please sign our letter to CBS News President David Rhodes demanding accountability for its coverage of Israel. Sign now.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Two 13-year-old Arab girls stabbed a security guard at the Ramle bus station this afternoon. The girls were taken into custody.
• Hours after yesterday’s Jerusalem terror attack, Mahmoud Abbas met with the families of 11 Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks. The families are seeking the release of the bodies from Israel. YNet writes:
The Palestinian president stressed in the meeting that the families have a right to bury their sons, whom he referred to as “shahids” (martyrs), and criticized what he called the exhausting conditions Israel sets in what he said was an effort to sabotage the release of the bodies for burial.
Israeli-Arab Knesset members also had “warm and productive” meetings with the families of terrorists this week.
• A Dutch reader alerted us to a nasty headline in Holland’s main newspaper, De Telegraaf. Translated in English, it says, Israeli police shoot Palestinians dead.
• Worth reading: The Financial Times (click via Google News) examines Israel’s efforts to develop an “underground Iron Dome.” The US is providing $120 million for R&D:
While details of the systems now being tested along the Gaza border are not public, analysts said they would likely gather information from sensors planted in the ground, then use algorithms to interpret the data. They said detecting tunnels while they were being built — when vibrations and sounds might be detected — was less difficult than finding tunnels that had already been built.
• Too bad AFP editors didn’t wonder if Israel destroyed “Mohammed’s” house because he was hiding weapons, a tunnel entrance, or a sniper’s nest in his home during the 2014 Gaza conflict. He’s only a Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine operative, and it is a rather obvious question . . .
• Tweet of the day, from Ofir Gendelman:
13000 kids(!) just completed Hamas training camps in Gaza where they trained to become terrorists & suicide bombers. pic.twitter.com/mnGvLbFQdy
— Ofir Gendelman (@ofirgendelman) February 4, 2016
• Two Israeli minors convicted of murdering Mohammed Abu Khdeir were sentenced to 21 years and life respectively. The perpetrators said they kidnapped and burnt Khdeir alive in 2014 as revenge for the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers. The leader of the attack, Yosef Ben-David, was convicted, but has not yet been sentenced because his lawyer entered a last-minute insanity plea.
• Say it ain’t so, European Union!
A European Union diplomat was caught attempting to smuggle bricks of pure gold, jewelry, hundreds of smartphones, and dozens of kilograms of steroids into Israel on Thursday at the Allenby Crossing.
• Hamas is taking a beating on social media after rolling out a tank it claimed it created. The Daily Telegraph rounded up the mockery.
Legion blogger: #Hamas rolls out new "tank" which appears to be made by Fred Flintstone. https://t.co/S7pzKVkcBI pic.twitter.com/tFUpXIhmG7
— The American Legion (@AmericanLegion) February 2, 2016
Around the World
• Thanks to Hezbollah pressure on a Lebanese TV station, an interview with two Hezbollah fighters held captive by the Nusra Front is “substantially abbreviated.” Lebanese viewers will only get to see seven minutes of exclusive footage by Lebanese journalist Carol Malouf today. Malouf — who is in talks with other TV stations to air the remaining footage — explained to NOW Lebanon why the interview scares Hezbollah:
“It hits the nerve of the host community, because it shows that there are a lot of fuck-ups in the field, there were mistakes,” she said of the interview segments that will not air on MTV.
Malouf added the interview reveals that “there is a lot of pressure to send people more than once to the field, even though they signed up to go only once for fifteen days per year […] it shows weakness, it shows they’re not taking care of their people enough.”
“The [Hezbollah captive] even says something like, ‘when we go to the field we get $4 a day.’ Which is peanuts. It’s very embarrassing, and it questions, ‘Why are we doing this, why are we sending our kids to do this?’”
• 10,000 French immigrants are expected to arrive in Israel in 2016.
• Worth watching: EuroNews discussed French anti-Semitism and more with Israel’s ambassador to Paris, Aliza Bin-Noun (video or transcript).
Commentary/Analysis
• As Amos Harel and Yoav Limor point out, three Palestinians carrying out an attack together can’t be called lone wolf terrorism. What does it mean for Israeli security services that this local terror cell wasn’t part of any known organization? Is Israel facing a new reality?
Given Palestinian youth’s penchant for imitation, we can expect to see a series of copycats who will undoubtedly try to follow in the groups’ nefarious footsteps.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Ben-Dror Yemini: Opposing the silencers
– Amb. David Sharma: Digital diplomacy: Making friends in the age of Facebook
– Jamie Palmer: ‘Pinkwashing’ and traitors to the human mind
– Burak Bekdil: Turks’ unrequited love for Palestinians
Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting, flickr/Shironeko Euro
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