Today’s Top Stories
1. Ultra-conservative Salafists are becoming increasingly assertive in the Israeli Arab community, AFP reports.
“The question of national identity is not their priority,” he said. “They seek only to control society’s thinking.”
They also want to rein in Muslims who have joined the Israeli establishment, such as the southern branch of the country’s Islamic Movement, whose representatives serve in parliament.
2. My antennae are twitching:
ADL task force to study anti-Semitism directed at journalists
3. Dealing a massive blow to the BDS movement, a Spanish court ruled that the City Council of Langreo cannot boycott the state of Israel, saying such a boycott is discriminatory, anti-Semitic, and violated human rights. Jerusalem Post coverage.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
4. HonestReporting’s Spring 2016 continued today. Participants visited MediaCentral, where Dr. Mordechai Kedar discussed the struggle for Jerusalem, HonestReporting’s Simon Plosker talked about “behind the scenes” at HR, and MediaCentral director Jonyy Perl shared his views on serving the foreign press. The day continued with a tour of the Western Wall tunnels.
5. The Herald Scotland and the Gross Abuse of Language: Debunking the “murder” of two Palestinians by “Israeli Occupation Forces.”
6. HonestReporting’s “Red Lines: The Eight Categories of Media Bias” is a video series based on our latest E-book (available on Amazon for a small fee). In the third video of the series, The Jerusalem Post’s Steve Linde and Gil Hoffman, The Algemeiner’s Ruthie Blum, and Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs discuss opinions disguised as news.
Israel and the Palestinians
• A Palestinian trying to stab soldiers was shot and killed this afternoon near the northern West Bank settlement of Einav.
• Thanks to declining Palestinian attacks and the relative effectiveness of PA security forces, the number of IDF arrests in the West Bank is dipping, according to the Times of Israel.
Despite the hinted threats by the Palestinians to end security coordination, so far the cooperation remains in place and the joint activities between the two sides have only been increasing.
• After crunching a lot of statistics, Bloomberg News concludes that the BDS movement is failing to have any impact on the Israeli economy.
Foreign investments in Israeli assets hit a record high last year of $285.12 billion, a near-tripling from 2005 when the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement was started by a group of Palestinians . . .
Money managers, economists and government officials say Israeli assets are an attractive alternative to weak performers elsewhere. The country’s economy is slowing but growing faster than those of the U.S. and Europe and its interest rate is higher. Plus, many reject the notions driving the boycott — that investing in Israeli innovation and natural gas violates Palestinian rights, and that Israel’s misdeeds are so exceptional that they justify singling it out for censure.
• Gaza reconstruction, by the numbers, according to the Jerusalem Post. More on the Strip’s humanitarian situation at The Media Line.
$3.5 billion: Money pledged by international donors after the Gaza war.
40%: Pledged money actually received.
11,000: Gaza homes destroyed.
160,000: Gaza Homes damaged.
5,615: Number of homes that could be rebuilt by received funds.
$37 million: Rental subsidies needed for people whose homes are still uninhabitable
$58 million: Money needed to rebuild electricity infrastructure
57%: Pledges received for rebuilding electricity infrastructure
2 billion: Tons of rubble after war
91%: Rubble cleared since war’s end.
• Human rights groups are calling for a moratorium on capital punishment in Gaza. Hamas executed three Palestinians convicted of murder this week; another 10 are on death row. The Independent rounded up denunciations from the human rights community.
• The IDF is increasing its activity searching for Gaza tunnels, according to Israeli media reports.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Vladmir Putin in Moscow next week.
Around the World
• In case you were wondering who won Iran’s Holocaust cartoon competition.
https://twitter.com/dpatrikarakos/status/738094748343373824?lang=en
• Newly-released letters show UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn pushed for a ban on “Israel’s criminal politicians” from visiting Britain and trade sanctions against the Jewish state.
• McGill University’s student-run judicial board shot down BDS, calling it “unconstitutiona,” nixing any further votes on boycotts, divestments or sanctions against Israel. Read the ruling (via IsraellyCool).
• More than 1,000 academics around the world have signed this anti-BDS petition. Background at Legal Insurrection.
• Portland State University students are expected to support a BDS resolution calling on the institution to sever ties with companies that “have been found to profit from human rights violations against Palestinian civilians by the Israeli government.”
• Terrific reporting by Mic exposing how neo-Nazis use symbols like punctuation marks to target Jews online.
To the public, the symbol is not easily searchable on most sites and social networks; search engines strip punctuation from results. This means that trolls committed to uncovering, labeling and harassing Jewish users can do so in relative obscurity: No one can search those threats to find who’s sending them.
Who knew white supremacists would find a use for punctuation? (((Echoes))) Exposed: https://t.co/e0V9M70UQ6
— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) June 2, 2016
• It turns out the State Department deliberately cut out embarrassing questions about the Iranian nuclear talks from a 2013 press briefing video. The Washington Post explains why this coming out now:
The missing portion of the video came to light in early May when James Rosen of Fox News was preparing a report on White House communications advisor Ben Rhodes, who had boasted to a New York Times Magazine reporter of having created an “echo chamber” to market the Iran nuclear deal and undermine criticisms from opponents. The magazine story said the White House portrayed it as a result of a moderate being elected president of Iran in 2013, when in fact secret talks had been underway since 2011.
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Aaron David Miller: French peace summit: 5 reasons not to expect much
– Raphael Ahren: Netanyahu tries to turn the Arab peace initiative on its head
– Steven Cook: On the road in Israel
– David Harris: Why history matters: The 1967 Six-Day War
– Seth Frantzman: Crossing the invisible line in Jerusalem
– David Hirsh: Why BDS is anti-Semitic
– Washington Post: Netanyahu’s sudden shift rightward (staff-ed)
– Pamela Druckman: ‘Let’s all become Jews’
– Frida Ghitis: ‘Moderate’ Iran? Don’t kid yourself
– Mudar Zahran: What’s happening in Jordan?
Featured image: CC BY-NC Ron Lute with additions by HonestReporting; money CC BY Tax Credits;
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