Today’s Top Stories
1. A Palestinian man attacked an IDF soldier in the West Bank with an ax, before troops shot and killed him. Earlier, two 12-year-old Palestinian boys were arrested in Jerusalem’s Old City after police discovered three knives concealed in one of their coats.
2. Mohamed Abrini, who has admitted he was the “man in the hat” captured on CCTV before the Brussels airport bombings, said the original targets in the deadly attacks included the check-in area for flights to Tel Aviv. Departure areas for flights to the US and Russia were also to have been targeted.
3. An Iranian pilot who defected to Turkey last year is threatening to seek asylum in Israel and work openly to undermine the regime in Iran if it does not cease what he says are its intimidation tactics against the wife and son he left behind. Exclusive in The Times of Israel.
4. New York Times: Making a Half-Full Glass Into a Half-Empty One: The NY Times’s Diaa Hadid infers that there is something nefarious about Israeli security measures designed to limit their impact on the wider Palestinian population.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Steve Linde is stepping down after five years in the role. He will be replaced by Yaakov Katz. A friend of HonestReporting, Steve features in our recent video on Misleading Terminology, part of our 8 Categories of Media Bias. We wish Steve the very best for the future.
• A motion “This House Believes That Palestinian Violence Against Israeli Civilians Is Justified” causes controversy at the US Debating Championship at Moorhouse College in Atlanta.
• NPR looks at security cooperation between Israel and Palestinian security forces.
• The brother of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is hospitalized in critical condition at Assuta Medical Center in Tel Aviv. So much for Palestinian boycotts.
• Israel is examining the possibility of hiring Jordanian workers to work at Dead Sea hotels due to a shortage of Israelis.
Around the World
• Ukraine appoints a Jewish prime minister.
Commentary/Analysis
• Liel Leibovitz argues that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism:
Is anti-Zionism any different from anti-Semitism? The question is probably the most accurate seismograph we’ve got to measure where one stands on the ever-tremorous political grounds we all walk when we talk about Israel. Not that there’s necessarily any right or wrong answer; civil, well-meaning people can make arguments on both ends. Yes, because Jews and Jewish life cannot be reduced to the national aspirations of the Jewish state. No, because anyone denying Jews, alone of all the world’s nations, their right of self-determination is by definition a hater. It’s not an altogether useless debate to have, but it’s not the debate we’re having.
• Aaron David Miller asks whether Israel will reach its 100th birthday. He answers in the affirmative:
Is Israel doomed? Will bad demography, bad neighbors, and bad Israeli behavior turn the once hopeful and idealistic notion of a thriving Jewish democratic state into a veritable Middle Eastern Sparta — isolated in the international community and struggling to survive in a hostile region even as it occupies a restless and growing Palestinian majority?
Having worked the Israel issue for half a dozen secretaries of state, I certainly wouldn’t want to minimize the challenges Israelis face at home and abroad.
Still — and I concede up front that the view from Washington, DC isn’t the same as the one from Jerusalem — I’m more convinced than ever that Israel is here to stay. I may not be around to mark Israel’s 100th birthday. But Israelis will. And here’s why.
• David Adelman takes on BDS:
BDS is a hate campaign. Its proponents don’t believe that Israel has the right to exist in the first place, whether or not Netanyahu is prime minister. Out of nearly 200 states in the world, they select Israel as the only candidate for elimination.
For the boycotters, Israel’s “occupation” didn’t begin in 1967, when the Jewish state defended itself victoriously from the Six Day War against the combined armies of the Arab world. They say very clearly that the “occupation” began in 1948, when Israel was created following a U.N. resolution the previous year. In fact, the boycott beganbefore Israel came into existence originally launched by the Arab League in 1945.
Israel could, therefore, unilaterally withdraw from the entire West Bank tomorrow and the boycotters would still find a reason to continue their malicious campaign.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Alan Baker says that it is perhaps high time that the Palestinian leadership put its house in order, and decides whether it wants peace with Israel or constant unending tension and violence.
Featured image: CC BY Pedro Ribeiro Simoes via flickr with additions by HonestReporting
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