Today’s Top Stories
1. The Jerusalem Post and i24 News note that Prime Minister Netanyahu has made quite a few goodwill gestures to the Palestinians of late, most notably allowing the deployment of armed and uniformed Palestinian policemen in certain areas near eastern Jerusalem for the first time since the Oslo accords were signed more than 20 years ago.
Are Israeli-Palestinian ties thawing? Is Bibi simply bolstering Abbas against Hamas? Did the US apply pressure? Your guess is as good as mine . . .
2. The White House blinks as Congress is conceded a role in the unfolding Iranian nuclear deal. Take your pick of Reuters or New York Times coverage.
Israeli officials say they’re pleased with the compromise; Amir Taheri lays out how the politics played in Persia.
3. It’s just symbolic, right? A Houthi spiritual leader who frequently liaised between Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria was buried in Beirut by Hezbollah. According to NOW Lebanon:
“Sheikh Mohammad Abdulmalak Shami was buried in the Rawda Martyrs [Cemetery] in Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh near the tomb of [assassinated] Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughiyeh,” Lebanese daily An-Nahar reported Tuesday.
“The burial was held amid a Hezbollah media blackout.”
The report added that Shami had been injured in the March 20 bomb blast that killed dozens Houthi worshippers in a Sanaa mosque after which he was transported for treatment in Tehran, where he passed away.
NOW Lebanon adds that on Friday, Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is expected to address the Yemen situation and perhaps endorse Hezbollah involvement there.
4. BBC’s Bowen: Palestinian Christians Threatened by “What the Israeli Government Might be Doing”: The Beeb’s Mideast editor plants a seed of prejudice to leave the uninformed listener associating Israel with the persecution of Christians.
5. HR Radio: Do News Stories Have Borders? Yarden Frankl challenges a New York Times marketing slogan and questions media coverage of the Yarmouk refugee camp crisis. Click below to hear the interview on Voice of Israel.
In the News
• The IDF’s building a 7 mile (11 km) dirt berm along the Lebanese border to impede possible Hezbollah attacks, according to Israeli media reports.
• Members of the Stanford board of trustees to BDS activists: We’re not divesting from companies operating in Israel. Period.
• Study: Anti-Semitic violence around the world rose nearly 40 percent in 2014.
• I wonder if busy Hamas tunnelers had anything to do with this.
Commentary/Analysis
• Over at the University of Alaska Anchorage, Maria Lilly nicely takes down the Israel apartheid libel:
Associating a free and democratic state with an institution which wronged and abused thousands because of racism ultimately results in the negation of what apartheid is and how it looks. It is the dissolution of justice in valid cases of racism and a discredit to every person who has ever faced racism. It is the equivalent of spitting in the face of Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr., giants who looked racism in the face challenged it and suffered for the cause of justice.
By contrast the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the groups governing the Palestinian territories, persecute, discriminate against, confiscate without just cause the property of and even kill Christians, homosexuals, and anyone who disagrees with regime policy. They murder those brave enough to defend their right to free speech and independent thought.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Ariel Ben Solomon (Russia-Iran missile deal challenges US influence in Mideast) and Thanassis Cambanis (Iran’s winning the war for Mideast dominance).
Featured image: CC BY-SA flickr/tedeytan
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