Today’s Top Stories
1. A Palestinian man is charged in what has come to be known in the UK as the “Good Friday murder.” UK student Hannah Bladon, 20, died after being stabbed multiple times in the back with a seven-inch knife as she was travelling on a light rail train near the Old City in Jerusalem, on Good Friday, April 14. Jamil Tamimi, 57, a Palestinian from east Jerusalem, was arrested at the scene and has been officially charged in Israeli court with Bladon’s murder.
2. A Jordanian citizen who had entered Israel several days earlier was shot and killed while stabbing an Israeli police officer. Police spokeswoman Luba Simri explains:
The terrorist rushed toward [the police officer], whipped out a knife that he had in his possession, stormed him and began stabbing him. The police officer responded with determination and in a professional manner, managed to activate his weapon and neutralized him,”
The government of Jordan called the death of the terrorist a “heinous crime,” and released the following statement:
The Israeli government, which is the occupying force, bears responsibility for the shooting of a Jordanian citizen in occupied East Jerusalem which led to his martyrdom
The Daily Beast did a respectable job of covering the story as a whole, but the headline writer engaged in a journalistic habit that I find both troubling and recently all too common: the headline reads, “Israeli Police Shoot Jordanian Dead After Stabbing Attack.” [Emphasis added] Note the word after, implying that perhaps police officer shot the terrorist after his attack was already over, maybe even unnecessarily. The Daily Beast should have used the word during: to clarify that the terrorist was shot while he was stabbing an Israeli police officer. When the headline is phrased correctly the facts speak for themselves: making it clear that the Israeli police officer was acting in direct and immediate self-defense, and had almost certainly saved his own life and possibly additional lives as well.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
3. Palestinians voted in local elections on Saturday, choosing mayors and local councils in communities across the West Bank. This is a rare chance for Palestinians to cast ballots after more than a decade without presidential or legislative elections. Nonetheless, the elections have served to highlight the Fatah-Hamas split, with Hamas boycotting the elections and not permitting voting in Gaza. With no legislative or presidential elections in sight, the municipal ballot is seen as a popularity test for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, which controls the Palestinian Authority (PA) government. Though the PA is technically the only official government of the Palestinian people, it controls only the West Bank, while the Hamas terror organization controls the Gaza Strip.
4. On the i24 News program “The Daily Dose,” HonestReporting’s Daniel Pomerantz discusses the role of “fake news” in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, with journalist Mike Wagenheim and host Yael Lavie. Our portion of the segment was shot right here in our own HonestReporting offices.
My final segment on fake news for Daily Dose on @i24NEWS_EN. pic.twitter.com/Tp6t6sIuVs
— Mike Wagenheim (@Mike_Wagenheim) April 6, 2017
Israel and the Palestinians
• Hezbollah blames Israel for ‘propaganda attack‘ during Nasrallah’s speech.
The news agency claimed that citizens received “tens of thousands of calls and messages” to their phone numbers, some of which “appear to come from phones belonging to Hezbollah’s media relations,” at a time when the head of Hezbollah was giving a eulogy to Mustafa Badreddine, Hezbollah’s former head of the military wing, marking the occasion of the first anniversary of his death. Hezbollah claims he was killed by “criminal gangs.”
People answering their phones heard messages saying that Nasrallah himself ordered last year’s murder of Badreddine, a high-level Hezbollah commander. Hezbollah claims Israel assassinated Badreddine, while Israel says the killing was inside job.
• Washington Post columnist David Ignatius bends an ear to cabinet minister Israel Katz and his idea for an Israeli-Jordanian rail link that would also benefit the Palestinians. From Jordan, trains could link up to Saudi Arabia, Iraq or even Syria.
This isn’t a peace plan; Katz is a hard-liner who opposes the creation of a Palestinian state. But it might offer some economic benefits for the Palestinians, under Katz’s proposal for a spur line that would run south to Jenin in the West Bank.
The “land bridge” would mean a striking reduction in travel distances: The overland rail connection between Haifa and Dammam in Saudi Arabia would be 1,763 kilometers, compared with 6,169 kilometers by sea; a trip to Irbid would be 120 kilometers, vs. 1,446 by sea, via Aqaba. The Baghdad link would be 2,145 kilometers vs. 7,782 by sea, via Basra.
“We want the U.S. to back this initiative,” Katz told me in an interview this week as he displayed his maps of the proposed rail network for the first time to a U.S. journalist. “It can be a game-changer,” he argued, noting that the Arabs could receive cargo without potential threats to commerce from Iran and its proxies at the Strait of Hormuz at the eastern edge of the Gulf and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea.
• Hamas arrests alleged killer of military commander, Mazen Faqha who was killed last March in Gaza. Hamas blamed Israel, while Israel denied involvement. Either way it was an embarrassing breach of Hamas’s military security and a sign that they might not be quite as all-powerful as they portray. Taking the position that Israel had worked with a local resident Hamas released the statement:
We announce that the killer and criminal that carried out the orders of the officers of the Zionist security services is in the hands of the [Hamas] security services.
• Is the concept of “Jordan is Palestine” gaining traction among Palestinians as an alternative to an Israel focused two-state solution? Christian Science Monitor’s Taylor Luck thinks so. Yet from the article it is hard to tell whether the concept is truly serious, or just a niche idea.
Around the World
• FIFA (the international association for football – or “soccer” for Americans) has delayed a vote being pushed by the Palestinian government over whether to remove Israel from international competition due to Israeli teams located in the West Bank. FIFA has reiterated their former position: that they are not a body for resolution of political conflicts, nor an agency for determining borders.
• The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah is scheduled to speak at an Islamic Relief Canada event aimed at promoting Muslim solidarity, which is to take place in Toronto on May 20. While Islamic Relief is considered to be one of Canada’s leading Muslim non-governmental organizations, its head organization—Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW)—was banned by Israel and the United Arab Emirates in 2014 for its alleged financing of terrorist organizations. Other speakers include Nouman Ali Khan, a prominent Muslim American cleric who projects a moderate image, but who expresses extreme and punishing views about homosexuals and women. The Middle East Forum, an American think-tank originally founded by Daniel Pipes, is publicly calling on Trevor Noah to “support tolerance” by canceling his appearance.
Commentary/Analysis
• In the pages of The New York Times, former Haaretz journalist and editor Shmuel Rosner takes a look at the publication’s metamorphosis: from a respected center-left voice in Israeli society to a sensationalist publication with very little Israeli readership and even less credibility. Rosner points out that these days Haaretz takes an angry and apocalyptic tone in its criticism of Israel, furiously pointing out that unless Israel changes its ways it will face failure as a nation. Rosner concludes with this thoughtful insight:
[Haaretz] tends not to notice that Israel today is a country more powerful militarily, economically and culturally than it was when the newspaper and its circle of loyal readers began explaining how almost every choice that the country is making is wrong. And maybe that’s the source of Haaretz’s frustration: It is not that Israel does not listen. It is that Israel does not listen and still succeeds.
• Those who follow news about Israel may already know that the nation of Qatar is Hamas’s major financial and logistical sponsor. It appears that Qatar is also behind Hamas’s latest PR move: the “new charter,” which is neither new nor a charter. As if that weren’t enough, Qatar also sponsors the Taliban and the Al Qaeda linked group, Al Nusra Front. Ironically, Qatar is technically a US ally: the United States keeps a base in Qatar which is apparently essential to US military presence in the region, yet the base is essentially right down the street from local Hamas and Taliban headquarters. It is a strange dilemma. For more insight on Hamas’s “new charter,” we produced this video:
• As President Trump prepares to visit Israel, promising in his usual dramatic style, “the biggest deal on earth” for securing Israeli-Palestinian peace, Newsweek columnist Marc Schulman takes a look at what this really means through the lens of Israel’s complex political landscape.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Oded Eran and Adi Kantor: A New President in France
– Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot: The Weapons Wizards: How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower
– Bruce Rosen: Medicare doesn’t have to be expensive. Just look at Israel
Featured image: CC BY-NC GSCSNJ;
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