Today’s Top Stories
*** BREAKING NEWS: *** Shortly after this roundup was published, a Palestinian stabbed a Jewish man in central Jerusalem. YNet reports that the 27-year-old victim was taken to Shaare Tzedek Hospital with moderate wounds. The assailant — identified only as an 18-year-old male from Ramallah — was apprehended by Mayor Nir Barkat and his body guard, who chanced upon the attack.
1. AP reports that Palestinian officials are sweating over the New York terror trial brought against the PA by victims of Palestinian terror during the second intifada. Why?
Although the cases are not directly linked, a ruling against the Palestinian Authority in New York federal court threatens to undermine Palestinian efforts to rally international support for a brewing battle at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. With American plaintiffs seeking billions of dollars in damages, it could also deliver a tough financial blow to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank.
Lawyers for both sides made their closing arguments.
2. The US fears that the PA will collapse without more cash. And Avi Issacharoff warns that “politics” and “rage” are coming to a head over Israel’s decision to freeze PA tax transfers. Which brings us to the tweet of the day, courtesy Gregg Carlstrom. The tweeted Maan News link is in Arabic, but you can read what Saeb Erekat had to say in English at Xinhua.
3. Libyan militias have captured chemical weapons from Col. Gaddafi’s stockpiles. Libyan sources told Asharq al-Awsat:
The military official warned that the caches, which contain deadly chemicals such as mustard gas and the nerve agent Sarin, may fall into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The quantity of chemical weapons taken is not known.
4. BBC Rejects Tim Willcox Complaints: The BBC responds with a whitewash to HonestReporting’s complaint concerning Tim Willcox’s appalling reporting from the Paris terror attacks.
5. The Irish Independent Gets Careless With the Facts: Ireland’s largest daily erroneously states that Gaza is “surrounded by Israel” and the West Bank is “surrounded by a huge wall.”
6. The Daily Beast Lets its BDS Support Show: Taylor Swift, queen of the Zionists? The Daily Beast plays a part in a cynical BDS publicity tactic.
Israel and the Palestinians
• If anyone’s interested, Col. Richard Kemp, the former top UK commander in Afghanistan, submitted to UN investigators his views on Operation Protective Edge.
• Why is Rawabi, the first planned Palestinian city, waterless? Depends on why you ask.
• Christian Science Monitor: The Israeli cabinet approved plans to establish a “cyberdefense authority”
The authority will require the government to set higher standards of cyberdefense for its own ministries, encourage private companies to do the same, and establish a national Cyber Event Readiness Team (CERT), a sort of 911 center for responding to cyberattacks on the civilian sector.
Many countries such as the US already have national centers or programs designed to bridge the gap between the government and privacy sector to help improve cybersecurity. But Israeli cybersecurity experts says because of the broad powers of the new authority, Israel is taking a pioneering step and in effect leap-frogging other top cyber powers in the world.
Mideast Matters
• According to the latest document leaked by the NSA’s Edward Snowden, Israeli intelligence cooperated with US and UK counterparts to electronically snoop on Iranian leaders. Haaretz explains the leaked cable du jour.
• Arab nations are deeply disturbed by the emerging Iranian nuclear deal, reports the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News).
“At this stage, we prefer a collapse of the diplomatic process to a bad deal,” said an Arab official who has discussed Iran with the Obama administration and Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.
• Israel demands UN condemn Iran’s Holocaust-themed cartoon contest.
• Iran flexes muscle in Indian Ocean
• Egypt’s largest state-owned paper accused Hamas of plotting a Cairo coup. It’s a very titillating allegation, but you have to take Egyptian media claims with a heavy dose of skepticism. This weekend, two Egyptian papers published cartoons blaming Israel and the US for ISIS.
Around the World
• More than 1,000 Muslims showed up at the Oslo Synagogue to form a protective “ring of peace” and show solidarity with the Jewish community.
• Will Nisman row hurt Israel-Argentina relations?
• It’s hard to imagine the Daily Telegraph finding a more twisted viewpoint on European anti-Semitism: The actress, serial Israel-hater and BDS supporter, Miriam Margolyes:
“People understandably and correctly associate Israel with Jews and Jews are killing people. Innocent people,” the 73 year-old star of Harry Potter and Dickens’ Women says. “And the Jewish community thinks it’s OK because they say that the Palestinians want to destroy Israel. And some of them do, that’s quite true, so they feel it’s alright to treat them in the way that they’re being treated. But I don’t think it is. I just can’t bear to see it.”
Commentary/Analysis
• Must read: David Ignatius discusses with Yuval Steinitz why Israel and the US are at odds over the Iranian nuclear talks. Ignatius gives Steinitz a fair and frank hearing.
People who think that a nuclear deal with Iran is desirable, as I do, need to be able to answer Steinitz’s critique.
• At what point would Israel push back against Iran-Hezbollah activity in the Syrian Golan? And how much would Israeli activity in Syria ruffle already strained Jerusalem-Washington ties? Tony Badran points out:
While the White House now sees Iran as a de facto partner against ISIS, Israel continues to see Iran as an existential threat. In order to deter Iran, Israel may well decide to go after Assad. That will also mean going against Washington, which stands on the opposite side in Syria.
• Israel’s per capita GNP made a huge leap in the past decade, jumping from $15,600 in 2003 to $40,620 by the end of December, 2014. This puts the Israeli economy and quality of life on par with France, Germany, and the UK. Guy Bechor explains the significance.
• Jan Fleischhauer nails it:
Israel is the first democracy to have extensive experience with Islamist terrorism. Before recent attacks on our own soil, Europeans loved nothing better than scorning the Jewish state’s efforts to address terror. In the future, we may need to turn to the Israelis for advice.
• UNRWA director Chris Gunness plugs for Gaza in The Guardian. The word “Hamas” appears absolutely nowhere in this piece. I wonder why . . .
Gaza is not a natural disaster. It is man-made, the result of deliberate political choices . . .
People in Gaza need urgent change: they need all parties to the conflict to abide by their obligations under international law; the removal by Israel of all obstacles to the enjoyment of human rights; and the immediate lifting of the blockade, allowing imports and exports, a necessary step to enabling economic recovery.
The rockets fired from Gaza must cease.
• An awful lot of commentary/analysis, on Europe, the Jews, and Israel. See Rod Liddle (It’s not Netanyahu’s fault that European Jews are afraid), Seth Frantzman (Using Netanyahu to distract from anti-Semitism), Ben-Dror Yemini (The intellectual terrorism of Roger Waters and BDS), Bernard Avishai (Why Netanyahu can’t lure a mass migration of European Jews to Israel), The Economist (European anti-Semitism: fear of a new darkness), Stephen Pollard (“You never know when they’ll turn on the Jews”), Marc Goldberg (I don’t care that Muslims are standing in front of a synagogue), Lawrence Solomon (Jewish (capital) flight from Europe), and Rick Salutin (Anti-Semitism won’t stand still).
• For more commentary/analysis on Iran, see Yaakov Amidror (An American about face, into the arms of Iran), Gary Gambill (Seven problems with John Kerry’s Iranian nuclear clock), Victor Davis Hanson (Our dangerous historical moment), and a New York Post staff-ed (Iran’s Israel intentions).
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA xeeliz via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; Swift CC BY-SA flickr/Eva Rinaldi with additions by HonestReporting and mass media retro icons designed by Freepik; binary CC0 Pixabay/geralt; Margolyes via YouTube/DutchHPfan1992; Gunness CC BY-SA flickr/John Gillespie
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
