Today’s Top Stories
1. A computer virus associated with Israel targeted three European hotels while they were hosting Iranian nuclear talks. According to the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News):
Researchers at the company acknowledge that many questions remain unanswered about how the virus was used and what information may have been stolen. Among the possibilities, the researchers say, the intruders might have been able to eavesdrop on conversations and steal electronic files by commandeering the hotel systems that connect to computers, phones, elevators and alarms, allowing them to turn them on and off at will to collect information.
2. Keeping nuclear sanctions (e.g. restrictions on nuclear research, materials and weaponization) in place while scaling back non-nuclear sanctions (e.g. restrictions on trade, investment, petrochemicals, etc.) is awfully complicated. Associated Press reports that the White House may have to lower some nuclear sanctions as well because of the way they overlap.
Administration officials vehemently reject that any backtracking is taking place, but they are lumping sanctions together differently from the way members of Congress and critics of the negotiations separate them.
Under the sanctions developed over decades, hundreds of companies and individuals have been penalized not only for their role in the country’s nuclear program but also for ballistic missile research, terrorism, human rights violations and money laundering.
Meanwhile, the UN wonders why countries have reported some blatant Iranian violations of sanctions.
3. Haaretz: A senior Hamas terror leader based in Turkey was told by Turkish intelligence to cool down his terror planning. Salah Arouri, who masterminded the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers last year, recruits operatives, transfers money, and “gives general instructions” to the group’s people in the West Bank. Hamas also has terror training camps in Turkey.
Haaretz adds that Turkey’s move to rein in Hamas comes from concern that “Washington will accuse it of abetting terror.”
Israel and the Palestinians
• A 20 year-old Palestinian with an IED was killed by Israeli security forces in Jenin last night. It’s not clear what the objective of the IDF’s raid was. YNet coverage.
• Big Media picked up on the latest survey results from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. The main take-away: 63 percent of Gazans are dissatisfied with Hamas’s achievements from last year’s war, and 50 percent want to leave the strip for other countries.
• G4S, a British-based security company,was cleared of accusations of human rights breaches against Palestinians. BDS activists targeted the company because of its contracts with Israel. The Times of London explains:
G4S, known for its security failings at the Olympic Games in London in 2012 and for the mis-tagging of British prisoners, said that the OECD’s UK National Contact Point had found no “general failure” in respecting Palestinians’ human rights. It added that the ruling into its involvement in Israeli detention centres and border controls would allow it to pitch to other governments in future.
More on the story at the Financial Times (click via Google News).
• Orange operates in other disputed areas, but condemns only Jews
For example, a simple survey of the company website reveals that it operates, among other places, in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia which is formally part of Azerbaijan; and in Tuva and Kutuzov Island, two areas of dispute between Russia and China since the 1980s.
Several European companies that are at least partially state-funded operate in Western Sahara and disputed areas of Cyprus as well.
• Jerusalem Post: Israelis and Palestinians launching an initiative to support the two-state solution had to move their inaugural meeting after getting threats from Palestinian BDS goons. Normalization isn’t part of the BDS vocabulary as Lionel Messi, Palestinian entrepreneurs, Haaretz columnist Amira Hass learned the hard way.
• Hadash, one of the Israeli-Arab political parties making up the Joint Arab List, announced that will support boycotting settlement products. This comes on the heels of Prime Minister Netanyahu urging the left-wing Meretz party to drop a Knesset bill seeking to label settlement products.
• The Israeli cosmetics company, Ahava, is considering relocating its factory from Kibbutz Mitzpe Shalem in the West Bank to within Israel proper. Judging from the company’s statement quoted by Globes, imminent EU labeling laws on settlement products may be forcing Ahava’s hand.
Even if the move happens, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a BDS victory: Kibbutz Mitzpe Shalem controls Ahava.
Around the World
• Gen. Martin Dempsey visited Israel. And I don’t think President Obama will be happy with what the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had to say.
US military chief: Iran will increase funds to proxies after nuclear deal
• Lawmakers in Spain are widely expected to approve a bill granting automatic citizenship to the descendants of exiled Spanish Jews.
• Luxembourg apologized for Jewish suffering during World War II.
The public apology comes after a government-commissioned report found that “the Luxembourg administration collaborated politically with the German administration in anti-Semitic persecution . . .
Commentary/Analysis
• Worth reading: Jim Molan, a retired major-general in the Australia, comments on the upcoming release of the UN Human Rights Council report on Operation Protective Edge. He writes in The Australian (click via Google News):
Given our examination of the cause of Operation Protective Edge, it would be indefensible to argue that Israel wanted it, initiated it or sustained it, or that Israel acted in anything other than defence of its citizens. On this basis alone, Israel’s war was just. It will be interesting to see if the imminent UNHRC report and the ICC inquiry can deliver fairness. Many do not understand it is not illegal to kill civilians in war as long as that is not the purpose of your actions, hence the appalling term “collateral damage”. Unlike our fight in Iraq or Afghanistan, Israel fights repeatedly in the same neighbourhood, and so its understanding and its intelligence is far superior to anything that I have enjoyed in similar targeting decisions that I have made.
While acknowledging the tragedy of death in war and given the immense capability of the IDF, it stands to Israel’s everlasting credit that far more did not die. But from the very top of the command chain down to the infantry and pilots, the personal moral position that individuals took was mirrored in the targeting processes, decisions on the ground and in the real care taken.
• For today’s lead screed, see the Herald Scotland‘s David Pratt on Israel and the Palestinians. Be sure to hold your nose.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Yonah Bob: How big a blow to Israel was the Supreme Court’s passport decision?
– Eugene Kontorovich: Court ruling not about recognition by Congress or President
– Alex Young: Hezbollah offsets setbacks with rhetoric
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Nicolas Alejandro with additions by HonestReporting
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
