Today’s Top Stories
1. A disgruntled ex-jihadi gave Sky News a stolen memory stick containing the names, addresses and phone numbers of 22,000 Islamic State recruits from 51 countries. All had filled out a 23-question form before being inducted into the IS ranks.
But the key breakthrough from the documents is the revealing of the identities of a number of previously unknown jihadis in the UK, across northern Europe, much of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in the United States and Canada.
Their whereabouts are crucial to breaking the organisation and preventing further terror attacks . . .
Sky News has informed the authorities about the haul.
But the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Daniel Flitton urges caution with questions about the leak’s authenticity.
2. Iran insists its missile test this week did not violate the nuclear deal. A Iranian spokesman said the missiles “were merely for legitimate defense,” though two were decked with the words, “Israel must be destroyed” and have a range of 2,000 km.
Israel denounced the test, saying the missiles could be fitted with nuclear warheads, thus violating last year’s nuclear accord. US officials called the test “provocative,” but not a violation.
3. Withdrawing his predecessor’s ultimatum to Israel, France’s new Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said Paris will not automatically recognize a Palestinian state if Paris’ peace initiative fails.
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Rebuffing Joe Biden, Mahmoud Abbas offered the Vice President condolences on the death of US citizen Taylor Force, but didn’t condemn the attack. Later on, Abbas condemned “all forms of terror,” though he praised a woman who tried to run over IDF soldiers last week as a “martyr.”
“We see in her a martyr who watered the pure earth of Palestine with her blood,” he wrote in a letter to the parents of Amani Husni Sabatin, 34, from the Palestinian village of Husan, near Bethlehem, who was killed by IDF troops as she ran over a soldier in the Gush Etzion area on Friday.
• How refreshing — a Palestinian terrorist de-politicized his martyrdom with his last will. According to the Jerusalem Post, Mohammad Jamal Kaluti, who was killed along with another Palestinian after opening fire at a bus in Jerusalem, wrote:
In his last will, Kaluti demanded the Palestinian factions: “Do not claim responsibility for my martyrdom-seeking operation. I do not belong to any faction and my martyrdom is a sacrifice for Allah.”
• Hamas is learning the art of bureaucratic tyranny at the expense of the international media corps. The Foreign Press Association in Israel slammed Hamas for excessively raising registration fees for armored cars used by reporters visiting Gaza.
In the past, authorities in Gaza applied the same fee for armored cars as for other vehicles with the same size and type of engine, namely NIS 2,100 ($538) a year for a diesel vehicle.
Hamas officials are now impounding foreign news organizations’ armored cars and demanding NIS 4,000 a year.
I’m not a lawyer, but since Hamas is a designated terror organization in several countries, including the US and UK, is it legal for reporters to pay these fees to Hamas? #JustWondering
• Amid bout of attacks, Netanyahu plans to fill gaps in the security barrier. The Jerusalem Post reports:
Work on the barrier first began in 2002 in response to the second intifada. Sixty percent of the barrier’s 790- km. route has been completed.
The project has been mostly frozen since 2007.
• The US revoked the visa of Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi for failing to disclose prior convictions.
• In a rare moment of candor, Al Jazeera journalist Jamal Rian admitted on video that his work is agenda-driven. Rian was referring to a 2008 interview with Mordechai Kedar, who destroyed the Palestinian reporter’s questions about Israeli construction in Jerusalem (watch the full interview).
Here’s the key snippet from Rian’s explanation.
Mistakenly, people ask us: Why do you host the Israelis? On the contrary, I am one of the people who encourage this. I think that when we have an Israeli guest on our news program, I see him as prey for me, because when he presents his narrative, I can refute it. Al Jazeera is based on “the opinion and the other opinion.” And in the absence of the other side, you become univocal and unconvincing. Naturally, when it comes to the Palestinian issue, I feel that I provide a stage to defend the Palestinian cause.
See Kedar’s take on Rian’s deceit.
• Another Hamas tunnel collapsed, this one caused by Egypt flooding its border with Gaza. Six Hamasniks are trapped and seventh is missing. Reports speak of “mega-tunnels” that are “big enough for weapons-laden trucks to pass through,” and up to three km long. Good background at the Times of Israel.
Around the World
• Uruguayan Jew stabbed to death:
After conducting a search of the suspect’s house, police found material linking him to radical Islamic activities, as well computer games through which he “practiced killing Jews.” The suspect told investigators, “I hate Jews, my religion told me to do it.”
• Sparkasse, a German bank apologized after a teller in its Berlin branch refused to open an account for Yakir Avraham simply because he is an Israeli citizen.
• The UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism problems continue. The Jewish Chronicle reports that the party’s inquiry into anti-Semitism at Oxford revealed similar claims of anti-Semitism at the London School of Economics. More on that story at the Daily Mail.
The Chronicle also reports that Labour also threw out of the party Gerry Downing, “a Trotskyite whose website carries a series of anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.”
• The board of the student union at the prestigious University College London student board passed an Israel boycott motion. But it’s non-binding, so we shouldn’t worry about it, right?
• MEMRI flagged an Iraqi columnist claims Iraq needs a Hitler to stop the Jews who are planning a takeover of Iraq.
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Ron Ben-Yishai: An intifada of the mind
– Boaz Bismuth: Welcome to our reality, Mr. Vice President
– Avi Benlolo: The new face of BDS
– Jonathan Spyer: How Israel navigated the hurricane of the Syrian civil war
– Clifford May: The search for elusive Iranian moderates
– Elliott Abrams: Dangerous illusions about Iran
– Wall St. Journal: Iran’s moderates go ballistic (staff-ed via Google News)
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA xeeliz with additions by HonestReporting; money CC BY-NC Glenda Alvarez;
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