Today’s Top Stories
1. Hamas isn’t only using Turkey as a political base. The terror group now doing military training on Turkish soil too. YNet reports:
The students undergo initial screening in Jordan and Turkey; and since Jordan does not allow Hamas activists to undergo military training on its soil, the recruits are sent to the headquarters in Istanbul, where they receive security clearances and are sent for military training just outside the city – under the watchful eye of Turkish intelligence officials.
The recruits, hundreds every year, are trained in the use of light weapons, bomb-making and covert operations, and are then sent for additional training in Syria. From there, they go the West Bank to engage in terror activities and establish clandestine terror cells.
Can’t Turkey get kicked out of NATO for this?
2. The Saudis are willing to allow Israel to overfly the kingdom to strike Iran. But, according to Israeli media reports, there’s a catch.
Cooperation with Saudi Arabia would not come free, however. According to the report, the Saudi officials said they would need to see progress between Israelis and Palestinians before having enough legitimacy to allow Israel to use their air space.
3. An Amnesty International report called on the world to put the brakes on war crimes and mass atrocities by halting arms shipments to bad guys such as Israel. The Jerusalem Post writes:
The report gave the impression that Israel’s actions were akin to the other atrocities that occurred in the Middle East, by listing it with countries such as Syria and Iraq.
Amnesty mentioned briefly that Hamas had committed war crimes for indiscriminately firing rockets at Israel. But in its five page section on Israel and the territories it rarely referenced the actions of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. It focused almost exclusively on Israeli actions particularly during the conflict with Hamas in the summer of 2014.
And the New York Times gave Amnesty’s top dog, Salil Shetty, op-ed space to reiterate the message, and urge the permanent members of the UN Security Council to give up their veto power in cases of war crimes and atrocities.
Weapons have been allowed to flood into countries where they are used for grave abuses by states and armed groups with huge arms shipments delivered to Iraq, Israel, Russia, South Sudan and Syria last year alone.
4. Irish Times Journalist “Not Interacting With Zionists Anymore” How will the Irish Times respond to a reporter’s inappropriate tweet?
5. Responding to Rudoren: New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren says media watchdog groups such as HonestReporting don’t base their criticisms on objective standards of journalism, but rather by an agenda. We disagree.
6. HR Radio: Dam Lies and Agendas: Press reports blame Israel for flooding Gaza by opening non-existent dams. And a response to New York Times bureau chief Jodi Rudoren, who claims that groups like HonestReporting criticize her because of a political “agenda.” Click below to hear Yarden Frankl’s interview with the Voice of Israel.
Israel and the Palestinians
• An official PA boycott of products from five major Israeli companies went into effect today. But Ramallah vendors were unmoved.
“People aren’t convinced by the boycott,” he explained. “Most see it as a foolish game, a ploy to placate the public; not as a genuine patriotic move. If the PA sincerely wanted to boycott, it would have blocked the trucks from entering [the Palestinian territories] at the crossings.”
• The Arab boycott of tourism in Israel took another hit, as Turkey added Jerusalem to an official itinerary of Mideast pilgrimage sites. Hurriyet explains:
The Diyanet said they had included the al-Aqsa Mosque into the Umrah trip due to the huge demand they received from citizens
While the applications for the new program started on Feb. 24, the first group to visit al-Aqsa under the Umrah trip will fly from Istanbul. The citizens will stay three days in Jerusalem, four days in Medina and seven days in Mecca.
Officials from Diyanet said Israeli officials responded positively about the al-Aqsa visit, saying that as long as the Turkish citizens who want to visit al-Aqsa within the concept of Umrah receive a visa from Israel, they would be able to go.
I think this stems from a wider Arab debate about the wisdom of boycotting Jerusalem.
• For today’s most prejudiced lede sentence, get a load of what Gregg Carlstrom wrote in the Times of London.
Israel set a ten-year record for construction in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank last year, with the pace quickening under Binyamin Netanyahu, a report has disclosed.
Adjectives like disputed or controversial are reasonable, but as Eugene Kontorovich, Mitchell Bard, Eugene Rostow, Jeffrey Helmreich, and Moshe Dann (among others) all make clear, it’s a stretch to say settlements are illegal.
• Heh: William Jacobson traces the story of an academic boycotter who doesn’t like being boycotted.
Mideast Matters
• The White House denied that the US is pursuing a 10-year nuclear freeze with Iran. White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked about reports in the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News) and Associated Press.
• Iran opposition unveils “secret” nuclear site in Tehran’s northeastern suburbs.
• The Jerusalem Post picked up on Arab reports that Libyan Gen. Khalifa Haftar plans to meet Israeli officials in Amman.
Haftar is described — for better or for worse — as the Libyan version of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and is also reportedly receiving weapons from Egypt for his battle against ISIS.
• Reuters: Egypt is aggressively bolstering Libya’s government:
Egypt is forcing Libyan airliners flying between Turkey and Jordan and the capital Tripoli to stop in eastern Libya to allow the country’s internationally recognized government to screen out potential Islamist fighters, officials said.
• Iran staged a naval drill in the Strait of Hormuz. According to AP, it featured swarming speedboats and deadly missiles attacking a mock US aircraft carrier.
• Fresh reports of Bashar Assad’s army using chemical weapons against Syrian civilians. According to the Times of London, all the attacks mention barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, noxious chemicals, and “symptoms consistent with the effects of a choking agent.”
Around the World
• Columbia U. leads list of America’s top 10 colleges “with worst anti-Semitic activity.”
According to the Center, Columbia University is listed first because it is home to the “most well-known antisemitic professors in the nation such as Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad, who has been accused of harassing Jewish students on multiple occasions. In addition, it is home to a highly active SJP chapter that has recently brought BDS founder Omar Barghouti and disgraced antisemitic professor Steven Salaita to campus.” . . .
Cornell University came in second place followed by George Mason University, Loyola University Chicago, Portland State University, San Diego State University and San Francisco State University. Rounding off the list was Temple University, University of California Los Angeles and Vassar College.
Commentary/Analysis
• Interesting discussion about the Palestinian terror trial at the New York Times Room for Debate section. Jonathan Schanzer, Matthew Levitt, and others offer their takes. See also Wall St. Journal editor Jessica Kasmer-Jacobs’s take.
• Anne Herzberg wonders: Why have non-governmental organizations and humanitarian organizations gone radio silent on the PLO terror verdict?
• If you want to insist that Benyamin Netanyahu’s “crying wolf” over Iran — as Richard Dalton does — I don’t think the leaked Mossad South Africa State Security Agency cables prove anything. Yossi Melman and Mitch Ginsburg explain why the leaks ballyhooed leaks didn’t come close to meeting expectations.
• For more commentary/analysis, see David Ignatius (A compelling argument on Iran), Michael Weiss (The cost of US-Iran rapprochement), Eyal Zisser (A US-Iran convergence), Benny Avni (Obama’s Iran deal has few fans), Yifat Erlich (Americans have understood: PA=terror), Petra Marquardt Bigman (Israeli Apartheid Week: anti-Semitism 101), Khaled Abu Toameh (Empowering women, Palestinian-style). See also staff-eds in the New York Daily News (Comeuppance for bad guys),
Featured image: CC BY-SA S. Carter via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; Shetty CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Amnistia Internacional Espana; Temple Mount CC BY-NC-ND flickr/J. Griffin Stewart; Haftar via YouTube/baz
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