Today’s Top Stories
1. To the relief of Britain’s Jewish students, Malia Bouattia lost her bid for re-election as president of the National Union of Students. Bouattia was an anti-Zionist with a history of using anti-Semitic language and not taking Jewish students’ concerns seriously.
Shakira Martin, who won 56 percent of the vote, will take over the NUS this summer. More at Varsity, Times Higher Education and Jewish Chronicle.
2. After Britain refused to apologize for the Balfour declaration, the Palestinian Authority threatens legal action.
Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian Authority ambassador to the UK, said on Tuesday that unless Britain apologized, canceled planned celebrations and recognized a Palestinian state, the Palestinians would go ahead with plans for a lawsuit against the British government for issuing the Balfour Declaration.
But why stop with Balfour? The PA should also sue Britain and France (for the the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement), Britain and the Husseini family (for the 1922 Cairo Conference, which created an independent Transjordan), and the UN (for the 1948 Partition Plan). The Palestinians can even sue themselves for signing the 1993 Oslo accords . . .
The UK government’s announcement was made on a petition page where Palestinian activists seeking an apology are collecting signatures.
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3. A cyber-attack aimed at over 120 Israeli targets was thwarted.
The attacks, which ran between April 19th to April 23rd, came in the form of malicious emails originating from both the servers of an academic institution as well as a private commercial company and targeted various companies in the economy sector, government ministries, public institutions and private individuals in academia and research.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Soldiers shot a Palestinian trying to stab them in the Huwara area south of Nablus today.
• Bungled headline of the day, courtesy the Associated Press. You have to read the article to find out Rasmea Odeh’s “activism” includes “a decades-old record of bombings in Israel.”
Under the terms of her plea agreement, Odeh, a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, will be stripped of her US citizenship and deported, avoiding prison for lying to US immigration officials about her terror background. She spent 10 years in an Israeli prison for her role in a 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing that killed two people.
• Red Cross official to Ynet: Israel’s not an apartheid state.
“The Red Cress was very familiar with the regime in South Africa during Apartheid, and we respond to anyone who makes the argument that Israel is an apartheid state: No, there is no apartheid here. There isn’t a regime here that is based on the superiority of one race over another; there is no disenfranchisement of basic human rights based on so-called racial inferiority. What does exist here is a bloody national conflict, the most prominent and tragic feature being that it is decades long, and there is occupation. Not apartheid.”
• Here’s a hunger striking Palestinian prisoner you haven’t heard about:
Last month, Abdullah Daraghmeh, who was held in PA’s Jericho prison, died after going on hunger strike. pic.twitter.com/nCH5zuJcwe
— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) April 25, 2017
• The Jerusalem municipality is due to dust off and approve an old plan to add 10,000 apartments in eastern Jerusalem, according to Israeli media reports.
• The White House and Jerusalem are considering a Trump visit around the end of May.
Around the World
• French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said she would outlaw all ritual slaughter of animals, including Jewish shechita and Muslim halal that doesn’t include first stunning the animal.
• Pro-Israel group seeks legal action against Barcelona city council’s BDS declaration
Commentary/Analysis
• For a sense of how the German-Israeli diplomatic tiff is playing in Germany, see Deutsche Welle columnist Dagmar Engel.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Amos Harel: Abbas-Hamas power struggle ahead of Trump meeting pushes Gazans to the brink
– Prof. Abraham Miller: American Studies Association will have to defend its anti-Semitism in open court
– Dr. Ronnie Fraser: UCU can’t reject anti-Semitism definition and claim to be anti-racist
– Gil Troy: Act like lions to impose peace, not lambs
– Giulio Meotti: A Palestinian state or an Islamist tyranny?
– Bassam Tawil: Hamas: The new charter that isn’t
– Richard Horowitz: You must remember this: Sultan Mohammed V protected the Jews of Casablanca
– Abdulrahman al-Rashed: We oppose the spheres of influence
Featured image: CC BY-ND chinatown news; Bouattia via YouTube/National Union of Students UK; hacking CC0 Pixabay; Barcelona CC BY-SA Andrew Moore;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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