Today’s Top Stories
1. The Gaza border calmed down and just as this roundup was being published, the IDF Homefront Command lifted restrictions on Israelis living near Gaza. The IDF said that more than 180 rockets or mortars had been fired over Tuesday and early Wednesday morning. Israel retaliated with air strikes on 55 terror targets, including military compounds, weapons warehouses, manufacturing workshops as well as a terror tunnel reaching into Israel by curving underneath the Egyptian border. Hamas and Islamic Jihad jointly claimed responsibility for the barrages.
“Over the course of 22 hours, from 7 a.m. Tuesday to 5:17 a.m. Wednesday, sirens were triggered at least 166 times in southern Israel, according to the IDF Home Front Command, by mortar fire, rockets or, in some cases, heavy machine gun fire.” Seven Israelis were injured, three of whom were soldiers, by shrapnel from missiles or rockets intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system.
2. IDF officials said many of the rockets and mortars the Palestinians fired were made in Iran.
Less than a month after Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps fired 32 rockets toward Israel’s northern Golan Heights, the Iranian-funded Islamic Jihad, along with Hamas, fired some 180 Iranian-made, 120-millimeter mortar shells from the Gaza strip. The barrage included the more precise 107-millimeter rocket, which has a range of about ten kilometers into the communities in southern Israel.
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3. One Gaza rocket hit the Strip’s own power lines, leaving tens of thousands of Palestinians without electricity. The Times of Israel reports that “Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz ordered [Israel Electric Company] to hold off repair work until the situation in the restive border region returned to calm, in order to ‘not endanger its workers.'”
4. HR Prompts CNN Tel Aviv Capital Correction: If CNN is uses “Riyadh” to represent Saudi Arabia, then Tel Aviv certainly isn’t the Israeli equivalent.
Israel and the Palestinians
• I saw conflicting reports on whether Israel and Hamas had agreed on a ceasefire. This Times of Israel snippet reflects what I think is the mostly explanation. It may depend on the nuanced difference (if any) between agreements and understandings.
A senior defense official said Wednesday that Israel was prepared to refrain from further attacks on Gaza if terror factions in the Strip also kept the peace, indicating that an informal ceasefire has taken hold after a restive day . . .
Israel denied that it had reached an agreement, but a senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated to reporters that an understanding had been reached under which Israel would not conduct additional strikes in Gaza so long as no more rockets or mortar shells were fired.
• At the request of the US, the UN Security Council was due to hold an emergency meeting today to discuss the rocket fire. And there was plenty of international condemnation of Hamas. The barrage of rockets has certainly erased Palestinian PR gains from the “March of Return.”
This 5-day-old @TheEconomist column portraying Hamas as pragmatic hasn't aged well https://t.co/ejCerY816g
— yaacov lozowick (@yaacovlozowick) May 30, 2018
• After failures in 2014 war, Iron Dome showed it can now down mortar fire too.
• The Czech Republic reopened its honorary consulate in Jerusalem. “Opened in the early 1990s, the Czech honorary consulate in Jerusalem was closed in 2016 due to the death of the honorary consul.”
Around the World
• Lebanon to begin offshore oil exploration, including one block that is disputed in part with Israel. According to a plan approved by Lebanon’s outgoing energy minister, drilling would begin next year, AP reports.
• The value of the Turkish lira has collapsed in recent weeks and now antisemitic elements in the Turkish media are blaming Jews. It seems that they’re taking too seriously a tweet by Dr. Edy Cohen of Bar Ilan University. The Times of London explains:
Turkey’s press is almost exclusively controlled by the state or pro-Erdogan businessmen after a crackdown on critical media. It seized upon a tweet by Edy Cohen that the crisis in the Turkish currency began shortly after the Israeli ambassador to Turkey was ordered to temporarily leave. Dr Cohen is a specialist in Nazi propaganda in the Arab world at Bar-Ilan University.
“Don’t you know that half of the world’s wealth belongs to only one Jewish family, which is Israel’s primary supporter?” Dr Cohen said, in a tweet directly addressing President Erdogan and including the hashtag “Support the Turkish lira”. It was intended to be ironic, but was quickly picked up by Turkish media. The Anadolu Agency and Arabic language TRT service, which are both controlled by Ankara, responded by saying that the academic had levelled the blame for the lira’s decline at a “Jewish lobby”. Dr Cohen retweeted TRT’s article but told The Times that he had been misrepresented.
Due to economic sanctions the U.S. has reimposed on Iran and the massive reduction of Tehran’s budget to Hezbollah, Al-Ittihad reported, compounded by the heavy financial toll exacted by involvement in the Syrian civil war, Nasrallah ordered an expansion of the organization’s drug-related activities – which resulted in extensive financial gains for Hezbollah and a personal windfall for Nasrallah himself.
• British police said they can’t ban Hezbollah flags from next month’s Quds Day parade in London. Why?
A letter sent to MP Louise Ellman, the vice-chair of the Labour Friends of Israel, said that police would allow the controversial flag to be raised once again at the June 10 parade because parliament had “consciously chosen” to proscribe only the military wing of Hezbollah – but the group’s flag is “shared across all elements of that organisation.”
• Democratic candidate for Congress who criticized Israel faces charges of antisemitism.
• Jewish center at Oxford hit with anti-Semitic incidents
• Distressingly disproportionate Dutch discrimination: the data’s damning.
There are only 40,000 Jews who live in The Netherlands out of a total population of 17 million, which means 0.2 % of the population, but Dutch Jews were the victims of more than 40 percent of the country’s criminal discrimination cases in 2017, reveals an overview published annually by the Public Prosecution Service.
Commentary
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Amos Harel: With eye on bigger threats, Israel quickly agrees to Hamas’ request for cease-fire
– Herb Keinon: From Iran to Gaza – connecting the dots
– Dr. Eran Lerman: Hamas’ junior partner, Iran’s hidden hand
– Yoav Limor: Hamas must choose between war or peace
– Zvi Bar’el: The reasons Islamic Jihad is violating Hamas’ rules
– Daniel Siryoti: Gaza: Egypt holds the key
– Sam Sokol: For reporters covering Gaza, charges of bias overshadow the stories they witness and tell
– Moshe Arens: Will Iran withdraw its forces from Syria?
Featured image: CC0 stevepb; Nasrallah via YouTube/RT Amsterdam CC BY-NC Hans Permana;
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