Erdogan Lashes Out At Israel

Today’s Top Stories

1. In an acerbic speech, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Muslims to visit the Temple Mount en masse in solidarity with the Palestinians against “racist Israel.”

Erdogan also railed against Knesset legislation restricting Muslim calls to prayer at late hours and the possible relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Separately, in a meeting with visiting PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, Erdogan warned against the “judaization of Jerusalem,” according to Israeli media reports.

More at the Times of Israel and Hurriyet.

“As a Muslim community, we need to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque often, each day that Jerusalem is under occupation is an insult to us.”

While Israeli officials rebuked Turkey’s ambassador, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat took to Twitter.

#Jerusalem is more free today than it was for 400 years under Turkish rule.
I invite Erdogan to see the freedom in our city for himself.

— Mayor Nir Barkat (@NirBarkat) May 9, 2017

2. As the Palestinians say that President Mahmoud Abbas is ready to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under US auspices, Haaretz reports that Abbas wants peace talks to pick up where they left off in 2008. Specifically, Ramallah wants to revive documents and maps of land swaps proposed by Ehud Olmert before he was forced out of office over corruption charges. In short, the Palestinians are trying to turn back the clock and pocket concessions they never accepted:

The differences between the sides on borders narrowed a great deal in the 2008 negotiations, an official from Abbas’ bureau told Haaretz . . .

 

The Palestinians showed Trump the details of the negotiations with Olmert. “At the time, we presented land swaps of 1.9 percent [of the West Bank] and Olmert offered 6.3 percent, and this is where things ended because Olmert left politics, and we told [Trump] and his staff that the differences are not so great and that is a good starting point for any negotiations on borders, which is a critical issue and which will have implications for all the core issues and the permanent agreement,” said the official.

3. Israel frets that an Islamic troika will take over UNESCO as leading candidates for three key posts come from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

4. Which Media Won’t Let Its Readers Judge Marwan Barghouti’s Sneaky Snacks?: The Guardian has no problem embedding videos from various sources portraying Israel in a negative light.

5. Sunday Star Times Publishes Vile Cartoon: Neither funny, nor clever, Sharon Murdoch’s work draws on lowest common denominator stereotypes and anti-Semitic tropes.

Israel and the Palestinians

• The US Embassy in Saudi Arabia posted a video editing out Israel from Trump’s trip; the State Department called it an “inadvertent mistake.”

The video, in which Trump’s speech last week announcing the trip was edited to cut mention of Israel, has since been removed from the embassy’s social media. Another video with the complete speech was uploaded to the embassy’s YouTube account on Monday.

Spot the difference between both versions.

• FIFA’s dispute with Israel over settlement teams comes to a head next week at the soccer organization’s international congress next week. The Jerusalem Post examines the possible outcomes, the most extreme being the Israeli Football Association literally getting kicked out of international soccer. And Legal Insurrection put together some good, link-rich background.

At issue is a two-year-long campaign by the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) and a host of anti-Israel ‘human rights’ groups to have FIFA suspend IFA membership on account of its inclusion of six football teams that play in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank, what the PFA and its supporters call “stolen land.”

 

If FIFA reaches that decision next week, it would effectively leave Israel unable to play in international soccer tournaments.

• Can Israel save its own elections from hacking?

• Very nice to see The Lancet dedicate a special edition to Health in Israel. It’s even more noteworthy given all the bad blood between between the Jewish state and the UK-based medical journal, such as a 2014 open letter to the people of Gaza accusing the IDF of massacring Palestinians, among other things. More background at Ynet.

• Jewish students at Dartmouth U. are in an uproar over the appointment of BDS supporter Professor Bruce Duthu as dean of faculty. His support for academic boycotts against Israel makes him a poor choice for a position that ought to be defending academic freedom. More background and links at the Washington Free Beacon and Legal Insurrection.

• Dublin City Council to fly Palestinian flag above City Hall for a month as “gesture of solidarity.”

Commentary/Analysis

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Itamar Eichner: Erdogan’s outburst: Energy, politics and Hamas
– Seth Frantzman: Turkey’s Erdogan stakes his claim to Jerusalem
– Ben-Dror Yemini: It’s Israel’s duty to expose Barghouti as a crook
– Gerald Seib: Opportunity knocks for Trump in the Mideast; Answering will be hard (click via Twitter)
– Eli Lake: Trump looks for opportunities in the Middle East crisis
– Lawrence Solomon: The White House never really fully supported Israel — till Trump arrived
– Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi: Hamas’ new political document: Its implications and objectives
– Bassem Eid: Palestinians need real support, not self-serving BDS
– Bassam Tawil: Abbas’ culture of peace
– Stephen Smith: Dartmouth’s fraudulent choice of Bruce Duthu

Featured image: CC0 Markus Spiske;