Today’s Top Stories
1. An Israeli military court sentenced IDF soldier Elor Azaria to 18 months in jail for killing an incapacitated Palestinian attacker in Hebron.
Azaria was convicted of manslaughter for shooting Abdel Fatah al-Sharif after Sharif and another Palestinian tried to stab Israeli soldiers last March. Azaria was caught on film shooting Sharif as he lay prone on the ground. The other Palestinian, Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi was killed immediately by the soldiers.
Prosecutors had sought a three to five year sentence.
See also Headline Fails: “Wounded Palestinian,” “Suspect” or “Attacker?”
2. I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere else, but Al-Monitor reports that the European Union will stop financing the salaries of Palestinian Authority employees in Gaza — civil servants paid to stay at home while Hamas administers the Strip with its own people.
A Palestinian finance official in Ramallah, who declined to be named, told Al-Monitor, “There are up to 175,000 civil servants to which the PA pays $170 million per month, including 55,000 civil servants in Gaza receiving $41 million per month. The PA had demanded that its civil servants in Gaza not punch the clock in the summer of 2007, after Hamas took over Gaza. Since then, they have been paid although they do not work. We still don’t know so far how this new 30 million euro deficit will be covered, despite the austerity measures, suspension of bonuses and government expenditure reduction.”
Last year, the Jerusalem Post reported that the separate Hamas-run civil service of around 43,000 people was funded by Qatar, and that Hamas demanded its employees incorporated into the PA payroll in reconciliation talks with Fatah.
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3. Hoax bomb threats were called in to at least 10 JCCs around the US in fourth round of harassment in the last five weeks. Judging from the JTA, this could become a new normal for North American Jewish institutions.
A total of 48 JCCs in 26 states and one Canadian province received nearly 60 bomb threats during January. On Jan 31, some 17 JCCs across the United States were targeted with bomb threats. On Jan. 18, some 30 Jewish institutions in at least 17 states received bomb threats. On Jan. 9, such threats were called into 16 JCCs across the Northwest and South, forcing the evacuation of hundreds. All the threats were false.
A hoax bomb threat also targeted the Israeli consulate in Miami last week.
Israel and the Palestinians
• US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley lit up social media with her denunciation of the United Nations’ obsession with Israel. See the video and transcript via UN Watch along with Ynet‘s backstory.
• After visiting Singapore, what the Jerusalem Post is calling Israel’s “Asia pivot” continues next month when Netanyahu visits China and then later in the summer hosts Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
• Ahead of Netanyahu’s arrival in Australia, Greg Sheridan of The Australian visited the Golan Heights to get a better sense of the security issues to be raised when Bibi meets with his counterparts Down Under.
• What’s on the PM’s agenda Down Under? According to SBS News, Netanyahu will be signing agreements on technology and air services, and “expanding co-operation in cyber-security, innovation and science, energy and resources and the environment.”
• The chaos of the Arab Spring and the war against Islamic State has endangered hundreds of Jewish historical sites throughout the Mideast and North Africa. Newsweek profiles a New York-based organization whose volunteers sometimes risk their lives to document them.
Guberman was relying on Solmaz, an atheist from a Muslim family, to document Jewish heritage sites—from synagogues and cemeteries to ruins of schools, houses and community centers Jews once used in the Middle East and North Africa. For years, his staff and a rotating cast of about a dozen interns and volunteers have been racing to create digital records of Jewish sites. The project’s name is Diarna, which means “our home” in Judeo-Arabic. As wars in the region destroy these sites, Guberman’s team is running out of time.
Around the World
• Iranian chess-playing siblings were dropped from the national team and banned from the country’s tournaments over Israel and modesty, Radio Free Europe reports.
The Iranian National Chess Team dismissed 18-year-old Dorsa Derakhshani for appearing at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival 2017, which ran from January 23 to February 2, without the Islamic head scarf that became compulsory in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Her 15-year-old brother, Borna Derakhshani, was banned for playing against an Israeli opponent at the same event.
• St. Louis police are investigating the desecration of a 100-year-old Jewish cemetery. According to local reports, more than 100 gravestones were overturned or damaged by unknown vandals.
• Irish Times: A Trinity College Dublin event featuring Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Ze’ev Boker was cancelled after some 40 protesters from Students for Justice in Palestine managed to block the door to the venue.
• Bristol University is investigating claims of anti-Semitism after a lecturer said that Jews should stop ‘privileging’ the Holocaust.
Media Matters
• Irrespective of where you stand on Israel and Trump’s relationship with the Jewish state, the president has clear issues with truth and the media. I draw your attention to two compelling and well-articulated arguments to consider.
When people began denying the Holocaust in the late-’80s and early-’90s many people said to me, “Well, look, I certainly believe the Holocaust, but Irving is a reputable person. Maybe there’s something to be said about gas chambers, maybe there’s certain questions about this, that, or the other.” It ends up with people doubting established facts. I’m not saying there is orthodoxy in every system—very few people agreed with Galileo—but things have to be checked, you need to validate your sources. The upshot though is that when you claim, say, the voting system is rigged, without any evidence, without any proof, you’re suggesting to people that the democratic system is corrupted and that their votes don’t count, and that is very dangerous.
You come out with a preconceived notion that it’s all rigged. Once you believe everything is rigged, then the truth doesn’t matter.
• Delivering the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture (transcript or video) at UCLA, Wall St. Journal columnist Bret Stephens unpacks Trump’s problems with facts and why people accept the president’s behavior.
Stephens argues, among other things, that we have normalized Trump’s flippancy with the truth and allowed it to excite and entertain us. Further, we have lulled ourselves by adopting new metrics of judging the president and rationalizing his statements. Read the whole thing.
Commentary/Analysis
• Fascinating Minneapolis Star-Tribune op-ed by Palestinian Walid Issa. He opposes anti-BDS legislation being considered by Minnesota lawmakers, but he also opposes BDS.
It is extremely troubling that some activists measure my Palestinian pride by my level of support for their BDS movement. My love of Palestine cannot be measured by how much they want me to hate Israel.
Because I grew up in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, when BDS advocates speak of hardships and human-rights violations, none of this is a surprise to me. I’ve lived it.
What, however, is really a surprise to me is that too many of these same activists are ignorant at best and dismissive at worst of the fact that many Palestinians manage to be creative, energetic and hopeful. We do Palestinians a terrible disservice if we look at them only as perpetual victims. We help no one when we blindly inflict pain on Israelis no matter what the collateral damage is to Palestinians.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Ruthie Blum: Nikki Haley’s first hurrah
– New York Sun (staff-ed): Haley’s comet
– Avi Issacharoff: Sorry Mr. Trump, 2-states is off the table
– Ben-Dror Yemini: The horrific one-state vision
– Bassam Tawil: The offer that turns the Gaza Strip into Singapore
– David Harris: Dear Irish Foreign Minister Charles Flanagan
– Anthony Bergin: A chance for Australia to forge stronger ties with Israel
– The Australian (staff-ed): Palestinian state by negotiation
Featured image: CC0 alberthbq; hourglass CC BY-NC-ND Bill Brooks; Sydney CC BY-NC-ND BRJ INC.; chess CC BY-SA Enrico Strocchi; Lipstadt via YouTube/Emory University;
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