Today’s Top Stories
1. Lot of buzz from David Samuels’ stunning profile of Ben Rhodes, the White House’s deputy national security adviser, in the New York Times Magazine. He admits the Obama administration lied to sell the Iran deal to the public, and is shockingly blunt describing how he played the media. These snippets jumped out at me:
Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
In this environment, Rhodes has become adept at ventriloquizing many people at once . . .
The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama’s closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his presidency.
Towards the end, Samuels talks to former secretary of defense Leon Panetta, who doesn’t think Obama is serious about stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
Paul Farhi and David Rutz did a nice summing up the main issues while Carlos Lozada critiqued Samuels’ journalism. See below for more commentary.
2. The US will reportedly take a tougher stance on Israeli settlements by endorsing a report by the Quartet (the US, EU, UN, and Russia) that will chastise “settlements, demolitions and property seizures.” According to AP:
One diplomat said the report would be “balanced” because it would criticize the Palestinians for incitement and violence against Israeli citizens. Near-daily attacks in recent months by Palestinians, mostly stabbings, have killed 28 Israelis and two Americans. Some 193 Palestinians have been killed. Israel says most of these were attackers and the rest died in clashes with Israeli forces.
But the diplomat added that those involved in writing the report understand the focus on Israel will be its most contentious aspect.
The Quartet report may be toothless, but Haaretz explains why Jerusalem’s taking it seriously:
The report’s conclusions could be used as a basis for a continuation of the French initiative or as a basis for formulating U.S. President Barack Obama’s legacy on the subject of the Palestinians and Israel toward the end of the year. Moreover, the report could also serve as a basis for renewing the peace process after a new president moves into the White House.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
3. Sheikh Raed Salah, the firebrand leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, began a nine-month prison term for incitement.
Salah was sentenced last year for incitement to violence and racism over an inflammatory sermon he delivered in 2007 in Jerusalem. He has previously served terms for similar offenses.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Security forces thwarted a possible stabbing attack at a checkpoint near Jericho on Saturday. On Friday, police in Hebron foiled a Palestinian stabbing attack.
• Israeli aircraft hit two Hamas targets in Gaza Saturday night after a projectile fired from the Strip landed in Israeli territory. More on border tensions at the Washington Post.
• Kuwait’s Minister of Information visited Ramallah and the Temple Mount. In the keeping things upbeat, certain historical bygones were overlooked.
Weird! Kuwait kicked out more "Palestinians" practically overnight after Gulf War 1 than left Israel 1947-1949. https://t.co/Yd1ReiYWG1
— AJG Raalte ?️ (@AJGRaalte) May 7, 2016
• Three Palestinian kids were tragically killed in a Gaza house fire started by a candle, and the public discourse centers on the Strip’s electricity shortage. The “internal finger-pointing” described by AP isn’t something I frequently see in Western papers.
Gaza’s Islamic Hamas rulers are accusing the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority of imposing taxes on fuel for Gaza’s lone power plant, worsening the crisis and raising the daily blackout to 18 hours. The authority rejects Hamas’ accusations and says the militant group has prevented it from working in Gaza.
• The UN declined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to lecture UN personnel in Israel on Jewish history. This was in response to a UNESCO resolution that ignored all Jewish ties to the Temple Mount. While AP and Reuters got the story right, AFP gives the impression of a pettier pique. If only that was the resolution’s biggest problem:
Netanyahu said Friday he would host the lecture in response to a recent resolution of the UN’s cultural body condemning Israeli “aggressions” against Muslims at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, while failing to mention the site’s Jewish name Temple Mount.
• Israeli Ambassador to the UK Mark Regev recently addressed the Oxford Union about Mideast peace efforts and more. Oxford posted the video this weekend.
• Ahead of Israel’s Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers, here’s a by-the-numbers look at Israel’s fallen soldiers and terror victims. Some of the Defense Ministry’s figures date back to 1860, when Jews first began settling outside the walls of Jerusalem.
– 23,447: casualties of war and terror since 1860
– 68: casualties since the last Remembrance Day
– 59: disabled veterans who died of their conditions during the past year
– 9,442: bereaved parents
– 4,917: widows
– 1,948: orphans
Around the World
• Turns out the Iranian Ministry of Culture indeed supports the Holocaust cartoon contest which Foreign Minister Mahammed Javad Zarif claimed last month had nothing to do with the government.
• Former London mayor Ken Livingstone doubled down on his Holocaust and Israel idiocy. According to Livingstone, Israel’s creation was a”great catastrophe” that could lead to nuclear war, the Palestinian conflict is the cause of Islamic State terror, reiterated his belief that Hitler only wanted to deport Jews to Palestine, and plugged his support for boycotting Israeli products.
Here’s MEMRI‘s transcript of Livingstone’s interview with Al-Ghad Al-Arabi TV.
• Britain’s Labour suspends more members
• A high school in Columbus, Ohio, suspended a student chapter of Amnesty International over complaints that the organization is anti-Semitic.
Commentary/Analysis
• See reactions to the Ben Rhodes profile by Eli Lake, James Taranto (click via Google News), Mediaite, Boaz Bismuth, Thomas Ricks (whose bluntness sparked its own buzz), and Michael Doran (the Iran deal was part of Obama’s agenda well before his first contact with Tehran). Which brings us to Jay Rosen‘s tweet of the day.
The notion that disseminating the White House's view takes storytelling genius or social media wizardry is… odd. https://t.co/4qSLLYhJHT
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) May 7, 2016
• UK anti-Semitism’s still in the news.
– Harry’s Place: Anti-Zionism versus anti-Semitism: It’s not that hard
– Hadley Freedman: It’s time the Left faced up to anti-Semitism
– Gershom Gorenberg: Yes, sometimes it is anti-Semitism
– Amb. David Quarrey: Britain must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism
– Prof. Rivka Bond: On becoming un-assimilated
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend. . .
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Hamas blustering towards an escalation?
– Jonathan Tobin: In whose name does Hamas dig?
– Avi Issacharoff: Israel and Hamas are one misdirected shell away from war
– Moshe Arens: Forget Sykes-Picot: Israel won’t abandon the Golan to terrorists
– Nadav Shragai: Protecting the status of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem
– Micah Halpern: Even Palestinian leaders want Jewish doctors
– Fred Maroun: The Arabs’ real grievance against the Jews
– Matti Friedman: The peculiar language of soldiers
– Herb Keinon: No tears in Jerusalem over Davutoglu’s departure
– Selin Nasi: The Muslim Brotherhood bears the cost of reset in Mideast
• Hold your nose: Fisk’s being Fisk again.
Featured image: CC BY-NC Jens Schott Knudsen with additions by HonestReporting; Rhodes via YouTube/TheFoundryBlog; London CC BY-ND Camilo Rueda López;
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