Today’s Top Stories
1. Elections results are in and Turkey’s ruling AKP Party lost it’s parliamentary majority. As it remains the country’s largest party, the question is what kind of governing coalition President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu can cobble together. Opposition leaders say they’ll push for early elections if AKP is unable to form one.
And what does Erdogan’s bloodied nose mean for Israel? Citing a YNet report I couldn’t find online, i24 News wrote:
All of his potential partners – the nationalists, the Kurds and the Social Democrats – have criticized his hostile attitude toward Israel, believing that given the regional circumstances, Turkey should have joined forces with Israel to stand against their mutual enemy – Iran, according to the Israeli web site Ynet.
The experts interviewed by Ynet agree that Erdogan will have to balance his policy toward Israel and stop his rantings against the Jewish state in order to take into account his partners. This could be even more pronounced if the foreign minister is a member of one of his future coalition partner or partners and not of his Islamist-rooted AKP . . .
According to some analysts Erdogan may now be more concerned about his political survival than about fighting Israel – although this could have the opposite effect: as a result of his weakness, he could increase incitement against Israel in order to increase popular support for himself.
2. What do Iranian textbooks teach?
According to Professor Pardo, “Iran had created a war curriculum to prepare an entire generation for global war, based on Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s vision of collective martyrdom. … The battle between the new Islamic (Iranian) civilization and the evil Western civilization is seen as one between good and evil, and is being waged on a global scale. … The school textbooks prepare the Iranian people for a constant state of emergency, requiring Iranians to foment revolutions throughout the world.”
3. Orange CEO Stephane Richard will visit Israel to mend fences. The Prime Minister’s office turned the screws on the French telecom by instructing the Israeli embassy in Paris not to receive Richard, as “any remarks regarding the termination of his company’s activities in Israel should be made in Israel itself.”
The BDS Battle
• Israel HaYom: Qatari pressure on Orange led to Richard’s boycott talk.
• Ireland‘s impatient with the EU to move forward with settlement labeling laws.
• Palestinian activist Bassem Eid explains to the Voice of Israel how BDS assaults against Israel will end up dismantling the Palestinian Authority.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Haaretz: Fearing a radioactive terror attack, Israel tested some “dirty” bombs in the Negev to measure their effect and potential damage. The tests began in 2010.
Most of the detonations were carried out in the desert and one was performed at a closed facility. The research concluded that high-level radiation was measured at the center of the explosions, with a low level of dispersal of radiation by particles carried by the wind. Sources at the reactor said this doesn’t pose a substantial danger beyond the psychological effect.
• Hamas is “nervously” taking on the Salafists firing rockets at Israel.
• Residents near Gaza border say they hear underground tunnel-digging
• There’s a backlash in Switzerland over public funding given to Breaking the Silence’s “hate-filled exhibit targeting the Jewish state” in Zurich. The Jerusalem Post explains:
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation provided funding to Breaking the Silence for the period 2014-2016 in the amount of $65,000, the Zurich-based Blick newspaper reported.
The Foreign Ministry’s Human Security Division gave Breaking the Silence $53,275 for 2015. The ministry’s spokesman Stefan von Below said $15,963 was transferred to the Reform Church’s Kulturhaus Helferei, the location of the Breaking the Silence exhibit.
The exhibit is running for 10 days at the Kulturhaus Helferei.
• Palestinians advertise soccer game with photos of slain soldiers
Photographs of Lt. Hadar Goldin and Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, both of whose remains are believed to be in Hamas hands, were printed on ads for a game between Khadamat Rafah and Itehad Shujaiyya, the cities where they were killed. The writing alongside the soldiers’ pictures reads: “The two teams of kidnapping soldiers compete in the Gaza Cup final.”
• According to a RAND Corporation study picked up by AP. Israel stands to gain $120 billion a decade after making peace with the Palestinians. The Palestinians would gain $50 billion.
In contrast, the Israeli economy would lose some $250 billion in foregone economic opportunities in a return to violence, and the Palestinians would see their per-capita gross domestic product fall by as much as 46 percent, the report said.
The findings are in line with long-time arguments that peace is in the economic interest of both sides.
But thumbs up to the New York Times for more critical coverage of the assumptions behind RAND’s study:
“It’s a mistake to think this can be dealt with as a mathematical equation that you solve and then you proceed to implement it,” said Manuel Trachtenberg, a renowned Israeli economist who was recently elected to Parliament. He declined to participate in RAND’s research.
“Money is infinitely divisible, you can have solutions or offers that can be resolved in terms of more or less,” Mr. Trachtenberg noted. “When it comes to rights, that’s much tougher, because that’s zero sum, there is no compromise.”
• The BBC’s culture of political correctness and bias against Jews goes back a long way. Turns out the Beeb twisted itself into knots to keep reporter Richard Dimbleby from mentioning the word “Jew.” Dimbleby’s son told London’s Sunday Times:
Not only was Dimbleby’s April 1945 report initially rejected by his bosses, until he threatened to resign, but the agreed version was cut from 11 minutes to nearer 6, and edited so that the word Jews was removed.
“It was, I think, because the BBC needed more sources to support what had happened to the Jews, and worries that, if you mentioned one group of people and not others, it might seem biased or wrong,” Jonathan Dimbleby said in an interview with The Sunday Times in advance of his two-part documentary, The BBC at War, which begins next Sunday on BBC2. In fact most prisoners in Belsen were Jewish; others were there because they were gay, Roma, Polish or Czech.
Around the World
• Druze communities in Syria and Israel are watching nervously as the Syrian army withdrew heavy weaponry from the Suweida province, ahead of an expected ISIS offensive. The redeployment will apparently shore up the Assad regime’s defenses around Damascus, but abandoned Druze communities are now defenseless against ISIS. More at NOW Lebanon.
• In response to a recent New York Times report, the Spanish Embassy in Ankara told a Turkish paper, the Daily Sabah (and picked up by the JTA), that no Turkish Jews have applied for citizenship. Here’s the Times’s contentious snippet, to which I added a one-word qualifier:
Rafi is one of thousands of Sephardic Jews in Turkey who trace their ancestry to Spain and are now considering applying for Spanish citizenship in anticipation of a parliamentary bill expected to pass this month in Madrid that would grant nationality to the Jews who were expelled in 1492, during the Inquisition.
• Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon decries Scotland‘s rising anti-Semitism.
• The EU insists it won’t sign on any nuclear deal without a UN probe of Iran’s nuclear history. AP coverage.
Commentary/Analysis
• The Orange affair is undermining France’s peace initiative, according to the Jerusalem Post.
The Orange affair exploded at the worst possible moment, as far as Fabius was concerned. He is scheduled to arrive in Israel and visit the West Bank on June 21 or 22 carrying one message only – that of the French proposal for a UN resolution to define an 18-month framework for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. So far, Paris has discussed this proposal mainly with the Arab League and Washington. The French are set to present their draft to the UN Security Council right after June 30 – the deadline for negotiations with Iran; hence the urgency to officially discuss it with Jerusalem.
Obviously, the Orange affair was not constructive in preparing such a delicate diplomatic visit.
• Sever Plocker calls on the Israeli left to join the fight against BDS, especially on campuses.
It is only the Israeli political left that can loudly and unwaveringly criticize the wrongs of the occupation and the actual occupation – and all the more so the settlement enterprise – and at the same breath, reject with disgust the calls for a boycott and sanctions on Israel.
• Gaza Salafists firing rockets are trying to trigger an Israeli response that will weaken Hamas. But Israel’s letting Hamas deal with the Salafists. Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel weigh in on the Israel-Hamas-Salafi triangle.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– Amb. Freddy Eytan: Anti-Semitism is the motivation for BDS
– Dr. Limor Samimian-Darash: Fight boycotts, abandon delusions
– Manfred Gerstenfeld: Israel as a punching bag and government inertia
– Rev. Chuck Currie: United Church Of Christ should reject BDS
– Moshe Arens: The Orange affair highlights France’s two faces
Featured image: CC BY-SA flickr/Gage Skidmore with additions by HonestReporting; Erdogan via YouTube/euronews (in English);
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