Today’s Top Stories
1. Jordanians are clamoring for Jibril Rajoub’s head amid claims the Palestinian soccer chief voted for Sepp Blatter instead of Jordanian Prince Ali Bin al-Hussein for the position of FIFA president. Many Jordanians are calling for Rajoub to be banned from the country and his Jordanian citizenship revoked. Rajoub says he voted for Prince Ali. That’s the background behind Mahmoud Abbas’s damage-control visit to Amman yesterday.
Blatter resigned four days after being re-elected. FIFA will choose a new president sometime in the next 6-9 months. Prince Ali is expected to toss his hat in the ring.
2. President Obama’s interview on Israeli Channel 2 aired last night. The president insisted to reporter Ilana Dayan that sanctions and military action were only “temporary” solutions for Iranian nukes. Obama was also quite critical of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu on the peace process.
Watch the video or read the transcript, and take your pick of Times of Israel or YNet coverage.
3. Britain’s National Union of Students voted to align itself with the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, and also boycott Israeli companies. See Jewish Chronicle coverage.
4. Filmmaker: Islamic State is Closer to Israel than People Realize: Israeli film maker Itai Anghel documented ISIS and lived to tell about it.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli academics fear they’re being subjected to an unofficial “latent” boycott by their peers. Here’s what they told Haaretz:
These signs include turning down invitations to attend conferences held in Israel, ignoring requests to write recommendation letters for Israeli scholars seeking promotions, and rejecting submissions from Israeli scholars in peer-reviewed journals. Hostility toward Israel is not typically cited as the reason, but Israeli university leaders say the growing incidence of such cases has them worried.
• Britain and France aren’t participating in this year’s Israel defense expo in Tel Aviv. The Jerusalem Post doesn’t attribute this to any formal boycott, just a “climate.”
In the days and weeks leading up to this year’s exhibition, a number of companies were denied permission to participate in the Tel Aviv show by the governments of France, Britain, the Scandinavian countries, and other western European nations. One Spanish defense firm will present its wares in a booth but under a different name so as not to risk economic ties with nations that have boycotted Israel.
“There are companies that have no desire to attach their names to the expo and to be seen selling offensive weapons to Israel,” a defense official told The Jerusalem Post’s Hebrew-language sister publication Ma’ariv Hashavua.
• It’s been one year (on the Hebrew calendar) since Israeli teenagers Eyal Yifrah, Naftali Fraenkel, and Gil-ad Shaer were kidnapped and brutally murdered by Palestinians. One million people around the world are marking the anniversary with a Day of Unity. See also the Jerusalem Post and YNet, who talked to the parents.
• BBC Radio 4 presenter Sarah Montague’s interview with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon breached impartiality rules as not challenging enough, according to a provisional BBC ruling. Meanwhile, we’re still trying to hold Tim Willcox accountable.
• Haaretz: The PA is launching a new TV station for Israeli Arabs. The station, F48 (short for Falastin 1948), will be controlled by the PA and is due to broadcast for the first time on June 18, to coincide with the start of Ramadan.
• Nice CNN interview with The head of the civil department at Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) about Gaza reconstruction. Col. Grisha Yakubovich is Israel’s point man on food, construction material, and humanitarian aid going into the strip.
• Dutch travel warning cautions travelers about “sometimes violent” stone-throwing Jewish “colonists.”
Commentary/Analysis
• India’s media gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi a thumbs up for announcing plans to visit Israel (date to be determined).
Reactions include a Business Standard staff-ed, and Hindustan Times assistant editor Viju Cherian, who explains the mistake of “hyphenating Israel-Palestine relations.” Last, but not least, Professor Harsh V. Pant weighed in:
If Arab nations, such as Jordan, have been able to keep their traditional ties with Palestine intact while building a new relationship with Israel, there is no reason for India not to take a similar route, which might give it more room for diplomatic manoeuvring.
• I’m also reading:
– David Horovitz: No, Mr. President, you don’t fully understand our fears
– Dan Margalit: Obama’s unanswered questions
– Ron Kampeas: Where the Obama-Netanyahu relationship went wrong
– Mati Wagner: Does Obama not see that Jew hatred distorts Iran’s view of reality?
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Mark Bray with additions by HonestReporting; Taj Mahal CC BY flickr/Abe Bingham;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
