Today’s Top Stories
1. Copenhagen’s Jewish community radio station went off the air for security reasons. Radio host Abraham Kopenhagen turned down an offer of police protection for Radio Shalom.
“We must do as instructed, but we will not have police standing outside the door,” he said. “We would rather close down until it is quiet again. I do not know how long that will take.”
2. This is truly bizarre. According to Turkish opposition figures, the ruling AK Party “spent $65.4 million up until 2013 on efforts to portray itself as a pro-Israeli administration while pretending to its voter base that it is one of Israel’s staunchest critics.”
He said that the AK Party government is exploiting the sensitivities of Turkish people to the Palestine-Israel conflict in order to solidify its support among its conservative voter base.
“On the one hand they portray themselves to the Turkish people as being in a constant fight with the Israel while on the other hand they worked hard to make the Jewish lobby in the US believe that the AK Party is a pro-Israeli administration and paid millions of dollars to that end. This is completely hypocritical,” said Erdogdu.
3. For the first time, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged the open secret that Hezbollah’s fighting ISIS in Iraq. The Washington Post writes:
He described Hezbollah’s presence as small and “in its earliest stages.”
He also said new volunteers are welcome.
4. Hey BDSers! Let’s Get Serious! Elijah Granet, the winner of HonestReporting’s Blankfeld Award, congratulates student BDS activists for openly demonstrating the idiocy of anti-Israel divestment campaigns on campus.
5. NBC News: Can You Shoot Your Gun for Us? Victims of Palestinian terror describe how Brian Williams dishonestly manipulated an interview, leaving a grieving Israeli family sucker-punched.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Two senior Fatah officials survived assassination attempts, reports the Jerusalem Post.
• Terrorist or activist? You be the judge. Rasmieh Odeh was convicted of placing a bomb inside a Jerusalem supermarket that killed two people and injured nine others and for planting another bomb outside the British consulate, which only damaged the building. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine took credit for the 1969 attacks.
Odeh would go on to spend the next 10 years in an Israeli prison before being released in a 1980 prisoner swap. She is now about to be deported from the US for lying to immigration officials about her involvement in the attack and has apparently run out of legal appeals.
This Associated Press headline calls Odeh an activist. Of course, activism isn’t what killed Edward Joffe and his best friend Leon Kanner . . .
• Shimon Peres sat down with the Los Angeles Times for a Q+A touching on Israeli-US relations, Iran, the Palestinians, and ISIS.
Around the World
• Details about the Copenhagen terrorist, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, are coming to light. He’s a Danish national of Palestinian descent. He was imprisoned for stabbing a man and police are looking into the possibility that he was radicalized behind bars.
And in a Facebook post, not long before the attacks, Hussein pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. More at CNN, The Guardian, and Reuters.
• Egypt wants UN-backed coalition against Libya
• Egypt and France signed a deal to purchase advanced war planes. AP notes:
The deal for 24 of Dassault Aviation’s multi-role Rafale aircraft as well as a frigate and munitions, underlines how many are willing to overlook Egypt’s poor human rights record when it comes to weapons sales as Cairo emerges as a key player in the fight against the Islamic State group.
• Police in Madison, Wisconsin, are investigating an outbreak of anti-Semitic vandalism. According to WKOW, around 30 homes and cars were defaced with hate messages and symbols.
• If you’re wondering why the PA wants a role in the FBI’s investigation of the shooting of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the JTA explains:
The three murder victims — sisters Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, and Yusor Mohammad, 21, and Yusor’s husband, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23 — were of Palestinian descent.
Commentary/Analysis
• I think the term, “a perfect storm” is over-used, but as David Ignatius points out, it’s an apt description for the confluence of a lot of key dates in March. Mark your calendars — you’ve been warned . . .
The Iran issue will come to a head next month. Netanyahu’s speech to Congress is scheduled for March 3. Israeli elections, in which Netanyahu is running against a coalition of more moderate Israeli politicians, will take place March 17. The deadline for reaching a framework deal in the Iran negotiations is March 24. It’s a month that could shape the future of the Middle East, not to mention the U.S.-Israeli relationship, for years to come.
• Over at Spiked, Brendan O’Neill rips British artists who shun Israeli “blood money” but accept Britain’s.
It would not be surprising to discover that the vast majority of creatives on this Israel-shunning list had, at some point, received money from the public purse in Britain, because that’s what creatives do these days.
So, that question again: why is it bad to have anything to do with institutions linked to the Israeli government because of that whole Gaza thing but fine and dandy to take money from institutions linked to the British government despite the Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya thing? Are Israel’s wars somehow worse than Britain’s? Is being killed by a solider from the Jewish State somehow worse than being killed by a soldier of the British state? Is Israel more evil than Britain? Is Israel’s money bloodier than British money?
Come on. Give us answers.
You criticise those who say that any protest or boycott against Israel is anti-Semitic, and I agree with you that there’s sometimes a kneejerk tendency to interpret every political protest against Israel’s actions as anti-Jewish in sentiment. But that might be because there’s such a glaring double standard in how Israel is judged and treated by radical Westerners, including you, in comparison to how the British government is judged and treated, or the French government, or the American government, none of which you are actively boycotting.
So, help to offset this search for the ‘real reason’ for boycotts of Israel by giving us a straight answer to one of the great moral conundrums of our time: why are artists so allergic to working with a government whose army killed 2,000 people in Gaza last year yet will demand the right to spend the cash of a government whose army killed 150,000 people in Iraq?
• For more commentary/analysis, see Ralph Ellis (Anti-Semitism in Europe: Will it cause Jews to leave?),Keith Kahn-Harris (If British Jews are attacked, respect our dignity — and keep your agenda to yourself), Dr. Dov Levitan (Denmark will grieve, then forget), Wes Pruden (As anti-Semitism makes a comeback, Obama remains ignorant),and Zvi Barel (In joining war on ISIS, Egypt is now a target).
Featured image: CC BY-SA The Next Web Photos via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; Erdogan via YouTube/Uzun Metraj; money CC BY flickr/Images Money
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
