Today’s Top Stories
1. Iranian Foreign Minister to Ann Curry of NBC News: The Netanyahu regime “should be annihilated”
Curry: The supreme leader seven months ago tweeted: “This barbaric wolf-like and infanticidal regime of Israel which spares no crime, has no cure but to be annihilated.”
Zarif: “Because this is a regime – we’re talking about Mr. Netanyahu . . . . It should be annihilated. That this regime is a threat . . . . He has a record full of infanticide.”
2. UCLA looks like a case study in anti-Semitic biases rearing their ugly head in the ivory tower. The Atlantic and New York Times pick up on what should have been a routine student appointment in mid-February became something much more simply because sophomore Rachel Beyda was Jewish.
But in the weeks since, that uncomfortable debate has upended this campus of 29,600 students that has long been central to the identity of Los Angeles. It has set off an anguished discussion of how Jews are treated, particularly in comparison with other groups that are more typically viewed as victims of discrimination, such as African-Americans and gays and lesbians.
Indeed, the NYT article generated so many reader comments at the article and on Facebook that paper devoted a separate article to the conversation.
3. Despite the PLO’s recommendation, Mahmoud Abbas will not cut security ties with Israel. (Israel reports business as usual.)
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes discussed the Iran talks and Bibi’s speech with Jeffrey Goldberg.
• Netanyahu’s speech gained tacit Saudi support.
• BBC reporter Jeremy Bowen is under attack for belittling the Holocaust as Netanyahu’s “card to play.” Bowen denies his tweet was anti-Semitic.
• Israel, Iran locked in escalating cyber war
• Worth reading: a New York Times analysis looks at the questions Tehran has answered and ducked about nuclear weaponization suspicions.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Haaretz: The EU called on the PA to step up on Gaza reconstruction. The diplomats even praised Israel.
During the meeting, which took place at the Foreign Ministry office in Jerusalem, the European representatives surprisingly praised Israel’s actions over the past few months to promote reconstruction in Gaza and ease the humanitarian crisis in the Strip.
• Sorry AFP and Washington Post, but when someone deliberately runs over pedestrians, then jumps out of a car holding a meat cleaver, that person isn’t in the news for merely being a “driver.”
Six Border Policewomen and a cyclist were injured and the terrorist was hospitalized after being shot. More at Israel HaYom.
• Robert Malley a former Camp David II negotiator, was tapped by the White House to head the Mideast desk of the National Security Council. The appointment raises some eyebrows in Jerusalem. He once served as one of President Obama’s foreign policy advisers, but was fired in 2008 for meeting Hamas officials without authorization.
• Gaza’s only electricity plant shut down on Thursday because of those nasty Israelis a tax dispute between the PA and Hamas.
• According to Israeli media reports, Benyamin Netanyahu agreed to “drastic concessions” with the PA during his previous term as prime minister, including agreeing to base talks on the ’67 borders, land swaps, dividing Jerusalem, and a limited right of return. Besides a rejection from Netanyahu’s office, US envoy Dennis Ross denied the report too. But Avi Issacharoff believes this came from White House
• Jim Clancy left CNN after a bizarre post-Charlie Hebdo Twitter rant about Israeli “hasbara.” If you had any lingering doubts about Clancy’s views, check out what he had to say about media bias during a presentation in Beirut. The Daily Star was on hand:
“In my case I’d rather be Twitter-fried for telling the truth than held out for lying, saying I was somewhere I wasn’t or claiming I saw people murdered who weren’t,” Clancy told The Daily Star.
• Los Angeles Times: Pro-Palestinian groups are unhappy with the USA Network, which premiered Dig, a 10-part miniseries.
Because “Dig” was produced with the assistance of a grant from the Israeli government and the pilot includes scenes filmed in East Jerusalem, the group claims that USA is complicit “in whitewashing Israel’s military occupation and illegal colonization of East Jerusalem.”
USA declined to comment.
• A Jewish mother and her daughter made aliyah from Syria. The Jerusalem Post adds:
According to the Jewish Agency, there are about 20 Jews living in the Syrian capital of Damascus who, thus far, don’t want to leave.
Around the World
• Is being Jewish a political liability in America’s heartland?
• Daily Mail reporter Jonathan Kalmus donned a skullcap and walked the streets of Britain to see for himself the degree of anti-Semitism Jews face. He faced 10 anti-Semitic taunts in one hour.
• Over at the BBC Magazine, author and broadcaster Michael Goldfarb shares his experiences and thoughts on 50 years of anti-Semitism.
• CNN‘s Nic Robertson gauges the mood of Copenhagen’s Jewish community. Do they feel secure? Do they want to leave? And when will the city’s Radio Shalom resume broadcasting?
• Say it ain’t so!
Vatican’s on high alert for ISIS attack on Pope Francis
Media Matters
• James King describes at Gawker his year of “ripping off the web with the Daily Mail Online.”
Commentary/Analysis
• A few people I know are irritated with Nicholas Kristof’s latest New York Times column — a dispatch from Gaza. (An Irish Times dispatch from Gaza’s Shejaia district was far more nuanced.)
But I’m judging from Kristof’s man on the street comments, Israel has re-established a good degree of deterrence. I view these rubble stories through the lens of Victor Davis Hanson’s observations on the IDF stealing a page from Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. Feel free to disagree . . .
• Armin Rosen points out:
It’s much easier for a country to reactivate existing nuclear infrastructure than it is for its rivals to build an international consensus toward doing something about it. The deal Rhodes defended against Netanyahu’s objections may leave Iran with the option of ramping up its program once the agreement expires — and the US with few options for stopping Tehran if it ever needed to.
• IDF Brig. Gen (res.) Israel Ziv accuses the US and West of shutting their eyes to the “Iranization” of the Syrian Golan, a strategic threat which Israel cannot ignore.
The US is in fact supporting the transfer of control over Damascus to the Iranians for a shaky nuclear agreement, for a bargain price: Two (Damascus plus Yemen) for the price of one.
• For more commentary on the Iranian atomic issue, see
– Dennis Ross: Obama needs to answer Netanyahu
– Spengler: World bows to Iranian hegemony
– Philipp Mißfelder: Why Bibi is right
– Charles Krauthammer: Netanyahu’s Churchillian warning
– Martin Kramer: Netanyahu and Churchill: Analogy and error
– Emily Landau: The gaping holes in Obama’s Iran deal
– John Podhoretz: American people don’t like terms of Iranian deal
– Amir Taheri: Iran’s suspect deal in the making
Odd tweet, but David Rothkopf ‘s take is interesting.
– Peter Baker Bibi’s shift on centrifuges
– James Jeffrey: Dealing with a bad deal
– David Blair: How nuclear deal would transform Mideast power balance
– Fareed Zakaria: Netanyahu enters never-never land
– Eugene Robinson: Netanyahu goes beyond bluster on Iran
– Roger Cohen: Netanyahu’s Iran thing
– Yaroslav Trofimov: U.S. Arab allies fear nuclear deal (via Google News)
– The Australian (staff-ed): Netanyahu’s focus too narrow (via Google News)
– David Grossman: Netanyahu is right on Iran (original interview at La Repubblica)
• Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub, took to The Guardian‘s op-ed section to explain why blaming Israel for Gaza’s slow pace of reconstruction is “willful ignorance.” The ambassador explains how donors not following through on pledges, and disagreements between Hamas and Fatah are the real obstacles.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Irwin Cotler (We are witnessing a new, sophisticated, virulent, and even lethal anti-Semitism), John Bell (Is the Israel-Palestine conflict relevant anymore?), Jonathan Tobin (Bibi was ready for peace, Abbas wasn’t), Burak Bekdil (Hamas in Turkey: humanitarian activity”), Amos Oz (For its own survival, Israel must abandon the one-state option), Abdulhamit Bilici (Who is pro-Israel?) and Tony Badran (Exporting the Iranian revolution).
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA Ed Yourdon via flickr with additions by HonestReporting
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
