Today’s Top Stories
1. A high-level Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander boasted of indoctrinating Syrian youth:
“The IRGC has begun to establish new religious groups in Syria called ‘Kashab’ among young Alawites, Sunnis, Christians and Ismailis,” Al-Arabiya on Tuesday cited Hussein Hamdani as saying.
These groups aim to carry out what Hamdani called “ideological education” for the “recruitment of teenagers in Syria to fight in militias under [the command] of the IRGC.”
2. Saudi Arabia signed a nuclear cooperation deal with South Korea, which has US officials concerned about a possible arms race. But as the Wall St. Journal notes, (click via Google News) the writing was on the wall.
Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a member of the royal family, has publicly warned in recent months that Riyadh will seek to match the nuclear capabilities Iran is allowed to maintain as part of any final agreement reached with world powers. This could include the ability to enrich uranium and to harvest the weapons-grade plutonium discharged in a nuclear reactor’s spent fuel.
3. PA officials have determined that at least 59 Palestinians were aboard a migrant boat that capsized near Sicily. According to Maan News:
Around 180 migrants were believed to be aboard the boat when it left Libya.
Nine of the estimated 59 Palestinians were from Gaza, while the other 50 were Palestinians from refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria.
If you want a better sense of why they’re fleeing, Maan also reports that the first humanitarian aid convoy in three months reached the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, where 18,000 Palestinians remain.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Haaretz: Hamas rejected a 5-year truce in exchange for a lifting of the Gaza blockade, said Musa Abu Marzook.
• The Palestinian decision to end security cooperation is unlikely to be implemented. The Media Line reports that the question was kicked over to a different PLO body.
• While protesting Palestinians burnt Israeli ice cream (and we’re not talking about baked Alaska), a visiting Syrian expressed a completely different view.
• Things that make me go hmmmmm: Despite years of Turkish bluster and lawfare over the Mavi Marmara incident, no Interpol red notices have been requested for Israeli officers, and the judges involved in previous rulings have seen their careers shunted aside. Is the ruling AK Party reluctant to go all the way? Are bureaucrats waging some kind of resistance? Today’s Zaman lays out the what, but not the why:
Although 10 months have passed since the court requested that the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Justice seek an Interpol Red Notice, government officials have not taken single step to do so. This reveals a clear contradiction between the AK Party government’s discourse on the Mavi Marmara issue and its policies. The judges who ruled for the arrest of the Israeli commanders were also re-assigned to other judicial posts in different provinces, and the chief judge in the case was demoted.
Around the World
• The White House announced that existing sanctions on Iran are being extended for another year.
• Fredrick Pleitgen of CNN (video or transcript) visited the Jewish community of Isfahan. The Jewish community says they have no problems with the government and are unfazed by Iranian-Israeli tensions. I do think Pleitgen should have acknowledged the possibility that people he talked to might not feel they can talk freely.
• Jews in the Baltic states fear “creeping anti-Semitism.”
Across the countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, Jewish leaders say their communities are feeling increasingly uncomfortable as anti-Semitism once again appears to be on the rise. An Estonian museum exhibition mocking the Holocaust, a stage musical celebrating the life of a notorious Latvian Nazi mass murderer and the repatriation of the remains of a Lithuanian leader long linked to Nazis have all contributed to a climate of hate that has Jews on edge.
• EU foreign policy chief supports task force on anti-Semitism
• Anti-Semitic stickers were placed around a heavily Jewish neighborhood of Amsterdam.
• A translator who defected out of ISIS explained to Sky News the mind-games that are played on prisoners so that they stay calm during their filmed executions.
Commentary/Analysis
• From the poison pen of Columbus Dispatch cartoonist Nate Beeler:
• For more commentary/analysis, see Avi Issacharoff (Angry Egypt feels the squeeze from jihadis, US, and Hamas) Jonathan Tobin (Obama gives Sisi the Bibi treatment), and Yakub Halabi (Nuclear free Mideast the only solution to the Iranian threat).
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA Patrick White via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; atom CC BY-SA Deviant Art/deejaywill
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
