Today’s Top Stories
1. Palestinian prisoners ended their hunger strike. This came after the International Red Cross agreed to resume facilitating an extra family visit each month which had been called off for budgetary reasons. Although Israel itself made no concessions, the Palestinians claimed a victory. The hunger strike, which reached 40 days, ended just before the start of the Islamic month of Ramadan. The Times of Israel explains:
The prisons service said the prisoners would now get an extra family visit per month, one of the prisoner demands that is administered solely by the Red Cross.
The Red Cross had reduced the visits from two to one per month about a year ago because they said they lacked the funds to pay for them and most times no relatives were showing up. The Palestinian Authority has agreed to pay for the new visits.
Israel said none of the other Palestinian demands had been met.
All that explains why the Times of London gets special recognition for this bungled headline:
2. Norway demanded the PA return money it provided for a women’s center after learning it was named after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. She’s a Palestinian poster girl for terror, for her participation in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, in which 38 Israeli civilians — including 13 children — were killed.
“The glorification of terrorist attacks is completely unacceptable, and I deplore this decision in the strongest possible terms. Norway will not allow itself to be associated with institutions that take the names of terrorists in this way. We will not accept the use of Norwegian aid funding for such purposes,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende said in a statement.
Brende said that Norway had been unaware of the decision to name the center after Mughrabi. He demanded that the country’s name be removed from the center and that the funds it gave for construction be returned.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
3. Late Thursday afternoon, Hamas executed three Palestinian “collaborators” it accused of assassinating one of the terror group’s commanders. The execution was partially streamed live on Facebook, which caught The Guardian‘s attention.
The broadcast on the page of Gaza Now, a local news outlet, raises further questions over Facebook’s ability to moderate violent content at a time when its moderation procedures are under scrutiny following leaks of files on how the company deals with controversial and offensive material . . .
In the footage, only distant people, moving vehicles and what appears to be a gallows covered in black cloth are visible. The video appeared to show the same screened gallows structure seen in still photographs taken during its construction.
A recording of the live broadcast, which lasted about 30 minutes, was later taken down.
4. Washington Post Slams Israel, Ignores Ethics: The Washington Post throws professional balance out the window.
5. Today, HonestReporting’s mission to Israel spent the day in southern Israel. The itinerary included a VIP tour of an Air Force base and an exclusive look at a new cyber-park showcasing Israeli high-tech and entrepreneurship.
Visit our mission web site to find out more about next year’s special mission honoring Israel’s 70th birthday.
#HRMission admires @IAFsite F-16i fighter jet that still protects Israel's skies today. pic.twitter.com/cHYpNQ4B7D
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 28, 2017
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs took the most in-depth look at PA salaries for terrorists. Thorough and well-researched, the JCPA examines the legal issues, the ideological context, the attitudes of international donors, and what can be done.
The PA pays directly and, as of 2014, partly through the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), about 1.1 billion shekels (around $300 million) every year as salaries to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails, continuing after they are released, and to the families of dead terrorists and other Palestinians who died fighting against Zionism.
These “incentives to terror” salaries appear clearly in the PA budget. They amount to seven percent of the Palestinian budget and more than 20 percent of the annual foreign aid to the PA.
• Why is the UN’s World Health Organization hiding a positive report on Israel while adopting a Syrian-backed censure of the Jewish state? According to UN Watch, here’s what the country that drops barrel bombs on its own civilians pulled off:
The resolution, which will cost $10 million to implement, renews the annual naming and shaming of Israel by renewing a special agenda item on the country at next year’s session, as well as mandating a report by WHO’s director-general, measures of scrutiny applied to no other country.
• Are the Gulf states coming out of the closet regarding thawing ties with Israel? At the swearing in of Ecuador’s new president, Druze cabinet minister Ayoub Kara (formerly minister without portfolio, now communications minister) tweeted photos of himself “with representatives from the Palestinian Authority along with delegates from Oman, Qatar and Yemen and other Arab nations as well as the prime minister of the Sahrawi Republic of southern Morocco, Abdelkader Taleb Omar.”
Tweets one, two, three, four and five and are all in Hebrew.
Around the World
• Copy editors at the Daily Telegraph were asleep at the wheel this weekend. A slideshow of the world’s 20 oldest cities rightly included Damascus, but wrongly illustrated it with a photo of Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. The Telegraph’s list also included Jerusalem and Jericho.
• Tablet takes a closer look at how one of the most acclaimed philanthropic institutions, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, provided both money and legitimacy to groups pushing for boycotts of Israel.
• The Nevada state legislature passed an anti-BDS law.
• Since hunger strikes are in the news:
French photojournalist detained in Turkey ends hunger strike
• This PayPal account under investigation sure checked a lot boxes in terms of hostility towards Israel and the Jewish people. According to the Jerusalem Post:
The US-based online payment company PayPal launched an investigation last week into its account with the German neo-Nazi organization Der Dritte Weg (The Third Way), a pro-Hezbollah and pro-Assad regime entity that also supports the convicted Holocaust denier Horst Mahler.
Commentary/Analysis
• Hey Fadwa Barghouti, care to be more specific about why your husband, Marwan, is in prison? In case you forgot, he was convicted of murder.
We’re talking about an attack on a Tel Aviv seafood restaurant which killed Salim Barakat, Yosef Haybi and Eli Dahan, a drive by shooting at a Givat Zeev gas station which killed Yoela Chen, and another drive by shooting in Maale Adumim which killed a Greek Orthodox monk Fr. Georgios Tsibouktzakis.
As time went on, it became clear that the authority’s budget and its priorities were primarily geared toward ensuring that Palestinians remained one of the most surveilled and controlled people on earth. In effect, the Palestinian Authority served as a subcontractor for the occupying Israeli military . . .
The raison d’être of the Palestinian Authority today is not to liberate Palestine; it is to keep Palestinians silent and quash dissent while Israel steals land, demolishes Palestinian homes, and builds and expands settlements. Instead of becoming a sovereign state, the Palestinian Authority has become a proto-police state, a virtual dictatorship, endorsed and funded by the international community.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Avi Issacharoff: Ending strike after 40 days, Barghouti is now Abbas’s undisputed heir
– Dr. Reuven Berko: No honor among prisoners
– Amos Harel: After averting hunger strike, Gaza crisis looms large
– Rabbi Jonathan Miller: 50 years after the Six Day War, we shouldn’t lament Israel’s power to protect itself
– Yonah Jeremy Bob: What is the West Bank’s legal status?
– Ruthie Blum: Manchester, Abbas and evil losers
– Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Trump, terror — and Jerusalem
– Charles Krauthammer: Why Middle East peace starts in Saudi Arabia
– David Suissa: UCLA professor: What’s wrong with Jews being a minority in Israel?
– Selin Nasi: Building Israeli-Turkish peace and partnership through joint investments
– Christopher Booker: If you think a ‘moderate’ has won in Iran, think again
Featured image: CC BY-SA Michael Coghlan; Buttu via YouTube/CGTN America;
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