Today’s Top Stories
1. The Sydney Morning Herald takes a look at a Palestinian refugee camp from which a lot of Palestinian youth leave to join Al-Qaida affiliates in Syria. Why have 52 young adults from UNRWA-administered refugee camps like Ain al-Hilweh died fighting with the Islamists?
The overcrowded camp 40 kilometres south of Beirut is a prime recruiting ground for militant groups. Barred by Lebanese law from working in a wide variety of fields, unemployment rates for Palestinians run as high as 70 to 80 per cent. Such is the concern about the potential for the Syrian conflict to further spill over into Lebanon that the camp’s main Palestinian factions have formed a dedicated security force . . .
It is vital that Palestinians do not get drawn into the Syrian conflict, Makdah says, regardless of the challenges and restrictions they face as long-term refugees. “We have 60 per cent of European countries supporting Palestine – this is unprecedented – and we must continue to fight for Palestine and for our land, which is disappearing under Israeli occupation. The Syrian fight is not our fight.”
2. Government officials in Jerusalem and Washington deny Israeli media reports that the US scaling back the information it shares with Israel about the Iranian nuclear talks. Haaretz further reported:
The administration apparently believes that Israel and the U.S. now have a conflict of interests regarding the Iranian issue, the source said. While U.S. President Barack Obama wants to make every effort to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran, Netanyahu is doing everything he can to block one.
One of the main reasons for the decision to limit the information the U.S. shares with Israel on the nuclear talks is a fear of leaks.
3. Mita Bentow talked to YNet about the terror at Copenhagen’s Great Synagogue while she was celebrating her daughter’s bat mitzvah. And the city’s shaken Jews said they weren’t surprised by the attack they knew was coming.
The terrorist, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, was a Danish national with a history of gang violence and apparently was released from prison. Reports speculate that he was influenced by ISIS or the Charlie Hebdo attack. Danish police arrested two suspected accomplices.
4. Copenhagen Terror: They Just Don’t Get It: While Jews are targeted in Europe, for some media, the story’s anything but that.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Is the White House using Martin Indyk as a proxy to interfere in Israeli elections? Just wondering about his latest comments . . .
But if there is not an Israeli initiative or support for a two state solution, Indyk warned, there will be “international actions” pursued not by the Palestinians, but rather by the international community “in terms of a security council resolution” to “lay out and preserve the principles of a two-state solution in the future.”
By saying this resolution may come from all five members of the UN Security Council, he hinted that the US would be involved.
• The Egyptian military discovered a 2.5 km (1.5 mile) long smuggling tunnel leading into Gaza. It’s the longest smuggling tunnel found, so far. Cairo says the tunnel was operated by Hamas:
Detonators and communications devices were among the devices found in the tunnel, which will be destroyed, officials say, speaking on condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to brief reporters.
• Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot was formally installed as the new IDF chief of staff.
Mideast Matters
• Officials in Jerusalem and Beirut aren’t commenting on reports that a drone from Lebanon entered Israeli airspace, flew over the Galilee for 20 minutes, and returned back. It probably belongs to Hezbollah — nobody else in Lebanon is known to have unmanned aerial vehicles, and Hezbollah’s getting valuable experience using UAVs against Syrian jihadists.
• Persian Gulf states warned the UN they may intervene in Yemen if the world fails to respond to the Iranian-backed Houthi takeover of Yemen. AP coverage.
• Yemen‘s last Jews eye exodus after Houthi takeover.
• Egypt launched airstrikes on ISIS positions in Libya (yes, in Libya) after the Islamists beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians and posted the footage online.
• The BBC visited Haifa’s Rambam Hospital, where a wounded Syrian farmer’s face was reconstructed with a titanium jaw created by a 3D printer.
Around the World
• Sweden‘s Jews are in fear after the Copenhagen terror.
• Metro is one of Britain’s most widely-read newspapers simply because it’s free. Here’s the over-the-top front page UK commuters saw on their way to work today.
The sensationalized front page touches on a conversation that’s sensitive in both Denmark and France these days. On a related note, Dan Margalit argues that its the Prime Minister’s “right and duty” to speak out.
• Vandals desecrated hundreds of graves in northeastern France. You know the situation’s tenuous when this is the government’s reaction:
French PM Manuel Valls urges Jews to stay after tombs defaced
Meanwhile, former French foreign minister Roland Dumas is under fire for saying the prime minister is “under Jewish influence.” Dumas was referring to Valls’s Jewish wife, Anne Gravoin.
• To get a better sense of French anti-Semitism, Israeli journalist Zvika Klein donned a skullcap for 10 Hours of Walking Around Paris as a Jew. Klein explains the video’s backstory.
• Prosecutors have formally charged Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner with covering up Iran’s role in the 1994 AMIA bombing. What happens next?
If a judge decides there is enough evidence to proceed with the case, the investigation could lead to a trial. Should there be a request for the president to be arrested — which at this time seems very unlikely — the request will have to go through Congress so that her immunity can be lifted. In addition, such a request would have limited prospects as the ruling Victory Front (FpV) has control in both houses of Congress at least until presidential and legislative elections slated for October of this year. The president will lose that immunity when she leaves office in December 2015, provided she does not run for another position.
Commentary/Analysis
• Terrific staff-ed in the Times of London on Copenhagen terror and European anti-Semitism:
These barbarous murders exemplify a sickness and a stubborn social pathology whose virulence is easy to overlook. Faced with such barbarism, there is a serious risk that European governments will underreact. They must not; not this time.
It is not enough to condemn them as savagery, bigotry and barbarism, though they are all of those things. Antisemitism, it has been often remarked, is a light sleeper. Western democracies have a moral obligation and a pragmatic interest in declaring their solidarity and not only sympathy with Danish Jews. Western leaders should have no hesitation in declaring: Vi er jøder (We are Jews) . . .
The egregious campaigns for a cultural boycott of Israel are stoking ugly, atavistic movements in Europe. These need to be confronted by civilised opinion. Israeli governments are fallible but the Jewish state is a force for democracy in a region that is short of it. Europe’s Jews need to know that Israel is not their only refuge and defence.
• Howard Jacobson, the award-winning UK author, weighs in on British anti-Semitism and we can’t stay silent about it. Published in the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News).
• Roger Cohen poses today’s best question:
But what, pray, was the “provocation” of Dan Uzan, the Jewish security guard outside the Copenhagen synagogue?
• Einat Wilf’s worth reading: Why the UN Security Council can’t solve the Arab-Israel conflict by itself.
• Plenty of commentary on Copenhagen and its fallout. See David Harris (After Copenhagen, what next for Europe?), Elliott Abrams (Why can’t the White House see terrorism and anti-Semitism?), Boaz Bismuth (Another non-random attack), and staff-eds in the Wall St. Journal staff ed (Europe’s new terrorist normal; click via Google News) and New York Daily News (Denmark and its Jews).
• For more commentary/analysis, see Jonathan Spyer (The Iran axis strikes back in the Golan), Avi Issacharoff (As Hezbollah fights on Golan, borders are redrawn), and Sean Naylor (Washington’s uneasy partnership with Tehran now extends to Yemen).
Featured image: CC BY Hendrik Wieduwilt via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; Lebanese camps via UNRWA; Copenhagen CC BY-NC-SA flickr/Jim Nix
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