Today’s Top Stories
1. Hamas executed three Palestinians this morning who had been convicted of murder in separate cases. The Daily Telegraph notes that they were not carried out in public, as Hamas had claimed they would when first announcing the executions.
Reuters, AP, and the BBC, among others, picked up on this.
2. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he’s prepared to hold peace talks based on the 2002 Saudi peace initiative. The Jerusalem Post explains:
The controversial Arab Peace Initiative – long rejected by Jerusalem and also known as the Saudi Initiative – calls for normalizing relations between Arab countries and Israel, in exchange for a complete withdrawal by Israel to pre-1967 lines and a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.
The Jerusalem Post has learned that Likud MK Tzachi Hanegbi, who was sworn in as minister-without-portfolio in the Prime Minister’s Office and will deal with foreign affairs and defense issues, will be involved in new regional diplomatic initiatives Netanyahu intends to advance in coming weeks. He is the Likud’s most dovish minister.
The Paris peace conference convenes on Friday. Is Bibi’s statement too little, too late?
Bibi opens souk on Arab Peace Initiative: Undercuts French conference; and puts Israel into peace process game https://t.co/ZPghvFroMv
— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) May 30, 2016
3. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards is building a missile base in Iraqi Kurdistan. Sleep better.
4. HR’s Gary Kenzer Speaking in Toronto and Washington: Find out where our North American director is speaking, and learn how you can bring him to your area.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
5. HonestReporting’s Spring 2016 mission is underway. At yesterday’s welcome dinner, participants met the renown photographer, David Rubinger. Today, the group visited i24 News, the Institute for National Security Studies, and Israel’s security barrier for a special tour and briefing. You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter.
Israel and the Palestinians
• A 17-year-old Palestinian stabbed an Israeli soldier with a screwdriver in Tel Aviv yesterday evening.
• Avigdor Liberman was sworn in as defense minister last night after a heated Knesset session. More at Haaretz and the Times of Israel.
• Jordan’s King Abdullah dissolved parliament and appointed Hani al-Mulki as new Prime Minister. Jordanian media has dubbed Mulki, “the head of normalization with Israel,” for his role in various negotiations with the Jewish state. More at the Jerusalem Post.
• Palestinian brainwashing of kids went to an ugly new level, YNet reports:
During the play children enacted placing a bomb under an IDF tank and blowing it up, shooting mortar fire at an IDF outpost, and the simulation of a raid on an outpost with the killing of an Israeli soldier – also played by one of the schoolchildren. One of the kids was even wearing a real Go Pro camera to film the “raid.”
Performances and displays of a military purpose take place mainly at end-of-the-school year events in some schools in the Gaza Strip and this has been documented in the past. However, such a show, accompanied by advanced pyrotechnics and with cruel actions like killing carried out by children in elementary school, has not been not documented until now.
• Israel intercepted communication equipment and other naughty items en route to Gaza terror groups. I’m not sure I can call it smuggling though; the “disassembled drones, rifle scopes, radio receivers, cellphone signal boosters and video transmitters,” were being shipped by the Israeli postal service.
•Worth reading: The expulsion that backfired: When Iraq kicked out its Jews
• An eight-month restoration project at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre got under way.
• Israeli Bedouins are more circumspect about enlisting in the IDF. The issue isn’t radical Islam or Palestinian nationalism making inroads in the Bedouin community — rather , the Washington Post reports it’s about “poverty and marginalization.”
• CNN‘s impressed with Ben Gurion Airport security.
Around the World
• A poll found that one-third of Americans and 40 percent of Britons believe boycotting Israel is justified. The Jerusalem Post writes:
In addition, the research found that more than a third of the American public (38%) disassociates the movement to boycott Israel from anti-Semitism, while the majority of the American public (62%) view the boycott on Israel as intending to harm Israel as “the national homeland of Jewish people.”
The British public, on the other hand, is divided: 49% agree with the claim that the boycott of Israel is a form of modern anti-Semitism and 51% disagree.
• Common sense prevails at Edinburgh University.
The board of trustees of Edinburgh University Student’s Association (EUSA) has refused to enforce the BDS policy passed by the student council earlier this year.
• In Montreal’s McGill University, 150 professors signed an open letter denouncing BDS. Background at the Jerusalem Post.
• Italian academics decided to poke BDS in the eye by visiting their Israeli counterparts for a week of joint conferences and other cooperative events in topics such as robotics, plastic surgery, and more.
“It’s an unprecedented effort to respond concretely on a very delicate issue,” Francesco Talo, the Italian ambassador to Israel, told Haaretz. “We believe that research and universities should be free and open to dialogue and exchange.”
• Paypal terminated anti-Israel BDS-France account, and it could create a snowball effect with other BDS groups in Europe, according to the Jerusalem Post.
• In Argentina, an investigation into Iranian ties to the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish community headquarters took a dramatic turn when a judge reviewing treason charges against former foreign minister Hector Timerman admitted as evidence a leaked recording of him admitting Iran was responsible for the attack.
• An Israeli-owned restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, that was targeted by a machete-wielding terrorist in February is closing its doors. Hany Baransi told the Times of Israel he didn’t receive any financial compensation from the federal, state or local governments, and he’s considering returning to Haifa.
Israel is the safest place in the world for me as a Christian Arab,” he continued.
NBC News reported that before carrying out the attack, Mohammed Barry — who had come to the attention of the FBI for posting radical comments — had stopped by the Nazareth Restaurant & Deli to inquire if the owner was Israeli.
• French Jews flee Paris suburbs over rising anti-Semitism.
Commentary/Analysis
• I largely avoid commenting on op-eds about domestic Israeli politics and politicians. But memo to to Rachel Shabi: If you were intellectually honest about your op-ed in The Independent, you would have acknowledged that Benjamin Netanyahu sought to bring Isaac Herzog and the Labor Party into the governing coalition. That might spoil the mood you’re trying to create, but #justsaying.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Jeff Robbins: Paris ‘peace’ talks the usual charade
– Raphael Ahren: Israel braces itself for Paris peace confab… by doing nothing
– Tariq Alhomayed: Jihad with the Iranian rial
– Ruthie Blum: Anti-Semitism is not the Israeli government’s fault
– Alex Van Ness: End the illegal EU settlements
– Douglas Murray: UK Labour Party inquiry: Deny, divert, cover up
– Myra Carr: UK’s Co-operative Group – Boycotting Israeli produce
Featured image: CC BY-NC Smadar Shilo-Marcus via flickr with modifications by HonestReporting; Timerman CC BY-NC-ND Santiago Trusso;
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