Today’s Top Stories
1. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates severed ties with Qatar over the Gulf state’s continued support for terror groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State and Al Qaida.
Transport ties were cut, Qatar was expelled from the Saudi-led coalition of forces fighting in Yemen, while Qatari nationals were given two weeks to leave the Gulf states. And soccer fans take note:
Kristian Ulrichsen, a Gulf expert at the U.S-based Baker Institute, said if Qatar’s land borders and air space were closed for any length of time “it would wreak havoc on the timeline and delivery” of the World Cup.
Meanwhile, Seth Frantzman lists 5 reasons Israel should care about the Qatar crisis.
Israelis feeling vindicated that Arab states appear to align with Israeli positions over those of Qatar https://t.co/skjsZPidWP
— Rory Jones (@RoryWSJ) June 5, 2017
2. Here are a few takeaways from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Liberia, where he met with leaders of 10 West African nations at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) summit, where he also delivered the keynote speech.
– Israel to open two trading hubs in West and East Africa
– Israel and Senegal mended fences after last year’s UN resolution spat
– Nigeria, other ECOWAS countries to benefit from Israel’s $1 billion solar project
– Energiya Global of Israel to invest $20M in Liberia’s energy sector
And what’s Israel after? Netanyahu summed it up in his keynote address:
“Israel should once again be an observer state of the African Union … I fervently believe that it’s in your interest too, in the interest of Africa. And I hope all of you will support that goal,” Netanyahu told West African leaders at the 51st ECOWAS Summit of Heads of State in Liberia’s capital Monrovia on Sunday.
“I ask for your support in rejecting anti-Israel bias at the United Nations, and in bodies such as the General Assembly, UNESCO and the Human Rights Council,” he appealed.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
3. This is as good a start as we can hope for — for now. I wonder if Fatah-aligned terrorists will get the same treatment. According to the Associated Press:
Abdelrahman Shadid, who runs a Hamas-linked prisoner advocacy group in Gaza, said dozens of ex-prisoners from Hamas had not received their salaries as scheduled.
“The prisoners went to the banks today and found no salaries in their accounts,” he said. “We are waiting to hear from the bank officially tomorrow to see if this is a salary stop.”
Shadid said those affected had been released in 2011 when Hamas traded an Israeli soldier for more than 1,000 prisoners held by Israel. Among those who didn’t receive their stipends was only one from Fatah, and the rest were from Hamas, said Shadid.
4. It Only Sounds Absurd When It’s Not About Israel: Imagine the outrage if headlines about the Manchester terror attack followed the pattern of headlines about Palestinian terror
Israel and the Palestinians
• Palestinian sources confirmed to Haaretz that a number of top Hamas officials left Qatar, “splitting up and moving to a number of countries, including Lebanon, Malaysia and Turkey.”
• Five Palestinian members of a Hamas-linked terror group were arrested in eastern Jerusalem on suspicion of planning attacks at the Temple Mount on visitors and security personnel.
• The UNRWA, which provides for Palestinian refugees, apologized for using a photo of a Syrian girl to raise money. The fauxtography was first spotted by UN Watch.
Left: UNRWA photo, Jan. 27. 2015, of girl in Syria
Right: Same UNRWA photo, May 29, 2017, but now she's "Aya from Gaza" oppressed by Israel pic.twitter.com/RwMJwwXvpM— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 2, 2017
• It’s not clear how many Palestinian refugees are in Greece, but Haaretz finds the Europeans don’t treat them as well as the Syrians. Some fled from Syrian refugee camps, others from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Germany’s the preferred destination because, among other reasons, its thought that there are more possibilities of steady work. But here’s the rub:
“The Germans are willing to grant this kind of residency to Syrian refugees because they have a homeland they’ll return to when the war in Syria is over. We Palestinians don’t have a homeland and the Germans are afraid we’ll stay in Germany forever.”
• The Times of Israel reports good news and bad news from Gaza. The good news? Hamas isn’t interested in war with Israel and is clamping down hard on jihadists planning rocket and terror attacks, while Israel hasn’t reduced electricity to the Strip.The bad news is that Hamas terror commander Muhammad Deif has built up an army of 27,000 people and invested a lot of money in Gaza’s tunnel infrastructure.
• Gaza dating site matches widows to men seeking 2nd (or 3rd) wife
• As the Syrian civil war raises tensions for Israelis living in the Golan, The New Statesman visits the heights to measure the mood.
• With the US poised to withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council over the role of human rights abusers and the council’s disproportionate scrutiny of Israel, NGOs are trying to convince the Trump administration to remain engaged. Their logic in a letter seen by Reuters:
Eight groups, including Freedom House and the Jacob Blaustein Institute, wrote to Haley in May saying a withdrawal would be counterproductive since it could lead to the Council “unfairly targeting Israel to an even greater degree.”
Commentary/Analysis
• In an eye-opening Wall St. Journal op-ed (click via Twitter), Asher Orkaby explains how 1967 Israeli fears of an Egyptian chemical attack played a part in the decision to launch a pre-emptive strike on the Egyptian Air Force — which was dropping chemical weapons in Yemen. Today, Israel has to take into account Syrian chemical weapons.
There is a clear parallel to the current conflict in Syria. What made the 1960s crisis in Yemen so dangerous was that the international community did not respond to Egypt’s use of chemical weapons. The Yemeni civil war was waved off as merely an intra-Arab conflict. Without visible international assurances that chemical warfare would not be tolerated, Israel in 1967 felt compelled to eliminate the threat before it arrived.
In the barrage of Tomahawk missiles President Trump launched against Syria in April, the U.S. provided some response to the latest chemical attack. Failure to follow up this show of force with collective international action—making clear to Israel that further chemical warfare is off the table—may push the Middle East toward another destructive regional war.
• Plenty of reading material looking back on the Six Day War to sink your teeth into.
– Michael Oren: Israel’s 1967 victory is something to celebrate
– Stephen Pollard: The Six-Day War turned Middle-East politics upside down – and it still dominates today
– Zalman Shoval: Our war of defense
– Aviva Klompas: 50 years on, settlements are not the problem
– Fred Maroun: As an Arab, I am embarrassed by the Six-Day War
– Bernard Avishai: How the Six-Day War changed Israel’s mind
– Gershom Gorenberg: How occupation has damaged Israel’s democracy
– Hirsh Goodman: I fought for a better Israel than this
– Ben-Dror Yemini: The truth about the occupation
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Herb Keinon: Israel will need to fulfill expectations it is sowing in Africa
– Alex Fishman: Gaza sewage penetrates Israel
– Amb. Ron Prosor: There’s still time to avert war in Lebanon (click via Twitter)
– Matthew Kalman: The Israeli schoolkids who talk their way into enemy countries
– Ron Jontof-Hutter: BDS, back to front
– Manfred Gerstenfeld: The structural uneasiness of French Jews
– Emily Bell: Facebook’s moderation is of public interest and should be public knowledge
– Dr. Edy Cohen: The Farhoud remembered
– Daniel Pipes: The paradoxical peril of easy US-Israel relations (click via Twitter)
Featured image: CC0 Pexels; Netanyahu via Facebook/The Prime Minister of Israel;
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