Today’s Top Stories
1. Iran-Hamas rapprochement is reportedly on ice right now. The most notable hold-up:
Leaked information was then published in Tehran on Iran’s conditions for the restoration of ties with Hamas, including Meshaal’s resignation and for Hamas not to impose any conditions regarding the way Meshaal will be received in Tehran.
Because these Iranian reports were published by an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated website managed by Mohsen Rezaiand, a former commander of the corps and adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei, they are taken to express Tehran’s official policy.
2. The Copenhagen Synagogue was packed with mourners paying their last respects as security guard Dan Uzan was laid to rest. See Daily Telegraph coverage. Rabbi Yitzi Loewenthal eulogized his friend in a moving Times of Israel post.
3. The Daily Telegraph reports that ISIS plans to use Libya as “gateway” to attack Europe. This would explain why Reuters reports European diplomats are softening on Bashar Assad and very open to renewing ties with Damascus.
The jihadists hope to flood the north African state with militiamen from Syria and Iraq, who will then sail across the Mediterranean posing as migrants on people trafficking vessels, according to plans seen by Quilliam, the British anti-extremist group.
The fighters would then run amok in southern European cities and also try to attack maritime shipping.
For some reason, Hamas warned Italy not to join a brewing military coalition to attack ISIS in Libya. What to make of that?
(On the other hand, Palestinian Christians demanded stronger international action.)
Israel and the Palestinians
• Italy to vote on recognizing Palestinian statehood — possibly as soon as today, the Times of Israel reports.
• The UN’s “alarmed” by Hamas rearming.
• The Independent followed up on Mohammed Sabaaneh, the Palestinian artist suspended for drawing a cartoon of Mohammed in response to Charlie Hebdo. PA censorship’s a big problem, exacerbated by Mahmoud Abbas’s presence in a Paris rally for free speech.
Mr Sabaaneh has had many cartoons blocked by his editors, including ones about the Palestinian Authority, the PLO and an unflattering depiction of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. He says that when he criticises Mr Abbas, he can only do so indirectly, without drawing him, and he fears his paper will now become more restrictive.
• Imagine the headlines if Israel did this:
Hamas bans novelist from leaving Gaza
• Leila Khaled, the Palestinian airplane hijacker who now touring South Africa to promote BDS, told an audience in Soweto that ISIS was a “Zionist American organization.” Rebecca Hodes was on hand.
• Pro-Palestinian supporters in the UK who managed to shut down an Israeli-owned arms factory in Kent.
• Oh no, International Business Times! (Don’t worry, they subsequently corrected the record).
Gaza was heavily bombed by Israel during the month long war with Hamas in July last year, with nearly 100,000 homes destroyed and more than 200,000 people, most of them Palestinian civilians, killed, according to UN figures.
• Shout-out to all our readers who are snowed in (or are about to be). Here’s a video to pass the time: A few weeks ago, former AP correspondent Matti Friedman discussed media bias at a BICOM dinner. That talk was just posted on YouTube.
Mideast Matters
• The US admitted it is withholding info from Israel about the Iranian nuclear talks. State Dept. spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters Israel has “selective shared” info and leaked “cherry-picked” details in a misleading way.
• Intelligence: ISIS could hit foreign embassies in Turkey.
• The New York Times visited Yemen’s last Jews. Local hostility was quickly apparent to reporter Rod Nordland. So was the Jewish community’s utter lack of support.
The two countries that have long facilitated Jewish emigration from Yemen — the United States and Britain — both closed their embassies last week, as did most other Western countries. And the Yemeni strongman who for three decades was the Jews’ protector, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, is not only out of power, but also, more recently, out of favor with the Houthis.
• While in Iran, reporter Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio made a point of visiting the Jewish community. I don’t think his post makes it clear enough that Iran is a police state, which is the reason the Jews of Isfahan keep their heads down and their mouths shut. You’d think the conflict with Israel is just a political problem.
• Tweet of the day from Gidon Shaviv.
Around the World
• Are Israel and the US “meddling” in Argentine affairs? That’s what President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner hinted, without elaborating. It’s hard for me to understand this charge, since Foreign Minister Hector Timerman asked John Kerry to raise the AMIA bombing in his talks with Iran.
Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of people took to downtown Buenos Aires silently marching to demand an independent judiciary and honoring prosecutor Alberto Nisman.
• Anti-Semitic, pro-ISIS graffiti plagues Washington D.C.
Commentary/Analysis
• For more commentary/analysis, see Tom Friedman (Turkey’s anti-Semitic rhetoric), a New Statesman staff-ed (Europe and the new anti-Semitism), and Christopher Chivvis (Libya: Somalia on the Mediterranean).
Image: CC BY flickr/cannik
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