Today’s Top Stories
1. British government ordered Oxford University to investigate anti-Semtism after the school’s Jewish Society released a list of examples of anti-Semitism coming from the Oxford University’s Labor Club. More on the story at The Independent.
We have received further reports of anti-semitism in @OxUniLabour and are appalled at such shocking prejudice. pic.twitter.com/frk9Gg8Bbf
— Oxford JSoc (@oxfordjsoc) February 16, 2016
2. Khaled Mashaal reportedly plans not to seek re-election as Hamas chief. According to Israel HaYom/AP, which picked up on Arab reports, Moussa Abu Marzouk and Ismail Haniyeh would be the most likely successors.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
3. It has been 37 years since Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David accords. Egyptian schools begin teaching peace with Israel.
The section on the treaty in the textbook speaks of the two countries having “ended the state of war” and of “each side respecting the sovereignty and independence of the other side,” according to the report.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Palestinians didn’t win any love from a delegation of visiting UK MPs when PA negotiator Nabil Shaath blamed the MPs “as Britons” for implicitly supporting the British Mandate.
That was “years and years before I was even born,” said one of the MPs wryly later.
• Worth reading: USA Today takes the pulse of Kibbutz Nir Am, a Gaza border community increasingly nervous about Hamas terror tunnels.
• IDF training to defend against cyber attacks on vital infrastructure.
Around the World
• According to Arab reports, picked up by YNet, Israel struck a Syrian army outpost near Damascus. Syria denied the reports while the IDF didn’t respond.
• ‘Highly dangerous’ radioactive material was stolen from a US-owned facility in Iraq; authorities fear Islamic State could use it to make a dirty bomb.
• Israeli officials denied a recent report in The Intercept that the US and UK hacked encrypted Israeli aircraft transmissions. But the Times of Israel notes that the denial doesn’t answer all the questions.
• Students barge in on Brooklyn College faculty meeting, demand ‘Zionists off campus.’
• Jewish group attacks York University over ‘anti-Semitic’ move to divest from weapons manufacturers.
• Ulpan classes for Arab migrants in Germany?
Commentary/Analysis
• Worth reading: Jonathan Neumann got op-ed space in the Daily Telegraph to unpack the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. I liked this particular snippet addressing pro-Palestinian critics of UK regulations prohibiting public institutions from engaging in such boycotts:
What, though, of the claim that the new guidance is an “attack on local democracy”? Anti-Semitism and harassment of Jews are not democratic, and neither is extremism – the sort of extremism exhibited by BDS supporters who parade pictures of themselves with Hamas terrorists.
These offensive motions harm community relations, and they are also an enormous waste of local councils’ time and money. Ordinary citizens want their councils to focus on providing the highest quality local services at the lowest cost, not to expend resources on defending divisive BDS resolutions in court. It beggars belief that some local councils can complain about austerity but still find large sums of money to wage legal battles in defence of motions they themselves admit have no practical effect. With this sort of prioritisation, no wonder they are in the red.
• Tweet of the day from Eugene Kontorovich:
UK banning local govt boycotts to fulfill its intl treaty obligations, but lots of int law folks not celebrating, because it includes Israel
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) February 17, 2016
• In a Wall St. Journal op-ed (click via Google News), Mark Yudoff and Ken Waltzer call on officials at Vassar College to speak out against venomous anti-Semitism on the campus.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Jeremy Newmark: Why does Labour find it so hard to weed out anti-Semitism?
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Leaders: Who are they fooling?
– Alan Baker: Never say never
– Jonathan Tobin: Why the Palestinians say ‘never’
– Arye Mekel: Israel, Greece and Cyprus: A geopolitical bloc is born
– Spengler: Today’s Middle East — hopeless but not Syri-ous
– Abdulrahman Al-Rashed: What as happened since Hariri’s assassination?
– Hussein Ibish: Why America turned off Al Jazeera
Peace accords CC BY-NC-SA Government Press Office; radioactive via FreeImages.com/cumhur kahveci;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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