Today’s Top Stories
1. A suicide bomber in killed four people in central Istanbul including three Israeli tourists. Hurriyet identified the three as Simha Siman Demri, Yonathan Suher, and Avraham Goldman. In all, 39 people were injured, including 11 Israelis. The Times of Israel and YNet have more on who the killed and injured Israelis are.
Following DNA tests, the bomber was identified as Mehmet Ozturk, a Turkish national who was believed to have ties to Islamic State. Israeli officials are trying to determine if the terrorist specifically targeted the Israelis; Hurriyet also reports that Dore Gold, general director of Israeli foreign ministry, cut short a visit to the US to fly to Istanbul.
Irem Aktas, a public relations official of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), was fired after tweeting her hope that the Israeli victims would die. The tweet, and her whole Twitter account, has disappeared.
2. The Times of Israel reports on a power struggle within Hamas between Khaled Mashaal and “ruthless ex-prisoner Yahya Sinwar, the people’s champion who is directing operations from Gaza.”
Sinwar spent 22 years in Israel’s prisons until he was released in the 2011 Shalit prisoner-exchange deal. A man who avoids the limelight, he is considered a radical hardliner who inspires the loyalty of the leadership of Hamas’s military wing.
The clash between Mashaal and Sinwar is at the heart of a growing rift between Hamas’s “Gazans” and the “ones abroad.” The resolution of issues such as Hamas’s reconciliation with Fatah, its relations with Egypt and its own broad strategy hinges on the result.
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3. Time magazine finally corrected an article from October about a deadly Palestinian terror attack. Unfortunately, it took some “naming and shaming” by Israel’s Government Press Office to make it happen. YNet explains why the GPO called Time out:
The article, published on October 15, 2015, by TIME correspondent Rebecca Collard, stated: “On Tuesday, Allyan (sic), a graphic designer from the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood Jabel Mukaber, was killed by Israeli security forces after allegedly trying to carry out an attack in Jerusalem.”
There is no mention of the fact that the Palestinian, Baha Aliyan, had murdered three people . . .
4. New York Times Almost Gets It Right: Spotlighting Palestinian civil society is important, but Diaa Hadid’s Ramallah dispatch fell short with some important information missing.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli security forces on Friday foiled two stabbing attacks in the West Bank. A Border Policeman was injured in a Hebron stabbing attack on Saturday.
• Fire hits home of witness to arson that killed Palestinian family. Ibrahim Dawabshah, who is unhurt in last night’s incident, was first at the scene of alleged Jewish terror attack last year that killed three Palestinians in the West Bank village of Duma.
• Palestinian media incites against the US too. MEMRI picked up on Rajab Abu Suraya, a columnist for the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, praised the March 8 terror attack in which a US tourist, Taylor Force, was killed, not far from where Vice President Joe Biden was visiting in Jaffa:
He wrote that the attacks were important because they took place not in the occupied territories but rather inside Israel proper; thus, they brought the fight to Israel’s home front, and conveyed the message that “the Palestinian people will not die and will not rest until it removes the Israeli occupation with its bare hands.”
Abu Suraya also criticized VP Biden for condemning the attacks, saying that he had condemned the victims rather than Israel, the occupier and the executor. He added that the U.S. has never supported the oppressed in the world and always acts in the service of Israel.
• Moscow seeks a Russia-Israel free-trade agreement.
• Israel cancelled an arrangement for elderly Gazans to visit the Temple Mount on Fridays; most of the Palestinians failed to return to the Strip after the pilgrimage.
• Three Palestinians were injured and another five are missing after a Gaza tunnel collapsed in Khan Yunis on Saturday. According to the Jerusalem Post, the collapse, if confirmed, would be the 10th in the last two months.
• Gaza’s sewage crisis a ticking time bomb for both Israel and Egypt, reports the Jerusalem Post. The Strip’s sewage treatment facility doesn’t have enough electricity to run, meaning “some 90 million liters of raw sewage are flowing into the Mediterranean Sea on a daily basis.”
Another way the sewage problem in Gaza literally spills over to Israel is when sewage flows northward to Israel’s coast, polluting the water and causing desalination plants to shut down.
Around the World
• Iran won’t face UN Security Council censure for its recent ballistic missile test, reports Reuters:
Council diplomats said the case for sanctions was weak, hinging on interpretation of ambiguous language in a resolution adopted by the 15-member body last July, part of an historic deal to curb Iran’s nuclear work.
• Syria’s complex. You know Al-Qa’ida and Al-Nusra. But what about Ahrar Al-Sham?
• ‘Apartheid Week’ really does threaten Israel and must not be ignored, according to experts who talked to the Times of Israel.
• Jewish students at Brown University are going through an appalling time:
– Trans-gender activist cancels speech at Brown Hillel amid ‘pinkwashing’ campaign
– Anti-Semitic, homophobic vandalism found at Brown U.
• Vice News examines the flight of European Jews to Israel.
• Uruguay’s Jews are still stunned by the murder of community leader David Fremd, but also very moved by the support and solidarity of fellow Uruguayans.
• Parliamentarians from 13 Latin American and Caribbean countries signed a petition denouncing boycotts of Israel.
• Weekend hack attack shut down several Swedish newspaper websites, AFP reports:
“To threaten access to news coverage is a threat to democracy,” she said.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which either partially or totally shut down the sites of Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen, Aftonbladet, Dagens Industri, Sydsvenskan and Helsingborgs Dagblad on Saturday evening from about 8:00 p.m. until about 11:00 p.m.
Commentary/Analysis
• Addressing the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, denounced international leaders for advising Israel to do things they would never suggest to their own governments.
• On the fifth anniversary of the Syrian civil war, stateless refugee Aboud Dandachi says thank you to Jews, Israelis, and others:
One true friend is worth a thousand relatives. As a Syrian, these past years have taken an enormous personal toll on me. I no longer recognize the person I was back in those optimistic days in early 2011. I no longer expect support or assistance from our “relatives,” those Arab countries who were the first to close their doors to Syrians. I and millions like me were driven from our homes by fellow Syrians and Arabs fighting under the banners of Hezbollah and Iran.
Over the years I have spoken by phone to Syrians in Israeli hospitals and marveled at the world-class cancer treatment and limb-replacement operations given to Syrians unstintingly and a great cost to the Israeli medical system. I have been amazed as one Jewish organization after another in the West has spoken up in defense of Syrian refugees, while countries in the Gulf make excuse after excuse as to why they can’t take in even a few thousand Syrians. Wars and their consequences tend to bring out the worst in individuals and societies, but the Syrian conflict has also been an occasion where extraordinary people have demonstrated acts of astonishing kindness and compassion to refugees who have nothing to give back in return save their gratitude.
• Worth reading:
What I Learned as an Egyptian Studying With the ‘Enemy’ in Tel Aviv
• A remarkable piece of soul-searching by the left-wing British columnist, Nick Cohen on why he’s becoming a Jew (and you should too). A lot more commentaries about the Labour Party’s problems with anti-Semitism:
– Alex Chalmers: Antisemitic anti-Zionism and the scandal of Oxford University Labour Club
– Douglas Murray: Hmm, where could all this hatred be coming from?
– Jonathan Freedland: Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem
– Rob Liddle: Corbyn’s Labour, where all forms of bigotry are reviled — except one
– Stephen Pollard: Why is Labour so carefree about anti-Semitism?
– Tim Stanley: The Zionist movement is needed today as much as ever
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend . . .
– Sarah Tuttle-Singer: TIME Magazine won’t tell you the whole truth, so I will
– Adam Bennett: Pinkwashing is a poor reason to reject the Mock event
– Jonathan Tobin: Fighting Jew-hatred isn’t optional
– Robert Fulford: Israel, the only country standing in the way of the Mideast descending into total chaos
– Ronni Shaked: How ‘lone wolf’ terror unifies Palestinians
– Ron Ben-Yishai: The failed effort to halt Palestinian incitement
– Melanie Phillips: The EU’s illegal settlements
– Nima Gholam Ali Pour: Sweden’s Palestinian lobbyists
– Michael Rubin: Iran has never started a war?
– Graeme Lamb: Madness to expect Iran’s warmongers to be peaceful
– Olli Heinonen: The IAEA’s latest report falls short
Featured image: CC BY-SA Filipe Soares Dilly; British flag CC BY-NC-ND millr;
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