Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel released its own report on Operation Protective Edge, which, as the Jerusalem Post notes, is “intended to preempt the UN Human Right’s Council commission report on the Gaza operation that is expected to be released this week.” The government’s full report is online.
The UN report was originally scheduled to be presented to the UNHRC in March. This was delayed by the resignation of the inquiry chairman, Judge William Schabas, who had a record of anti-Israel statements. His fingerprints will be all over the final UNHRC report. (Judge Mary McGowan Davis replaced Schabas as the commission’s head.)
2. Another ex-al-Jazeera America journalist sued the station over its anti-Israel and anti-women bias. Shannon High-Bassalik was fired after heading AJAM’s documentary unit for three years. According to AP:
“As ratings failed to live up to the expectations of management, Al Jazeera openly decided to abandon all pretense of neutrality in favor of putting the Arabic viewpoint front and center, openly demanding that programs be aired that criticized countries such as America, Israel and Egypt,” High-Bassalik’s lawsuit stated.
She said she was told that if abandonment of journalistic integrity led people to regard them as terrorists, “that was an acceptable risk for the company to take.”
AJAM was already rocked by former-employee Matt Luke‘s $15 million lawsuit, saying higher-ups were anti-Semitic, sexist, and anti-American. That led to the resignations of CEO Ehab Al Shihabi, Marcy McGinnis, and two other executives.
3. Israeli Druze demonstrated for government action to protect their Syrian brethren from a “Druze Holocaust.” Government officials ruled out IDF intervention but appealed to the US to increase its aid to the Syrian Druze.
Israel is prepared to offer humanitarian aid to the residents of Khadr, near the Israeli border. However, after consultations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and other senior security officials, intervention to assist the Druze in the Jabal al-Druze region, deep in Syrian territory, was ruled out as it would be perceived as direct intervention in the Syrian civil war and could entangle Israel in the fighting there..
Israel and the Palestinians
• Expect tensions between Israel and the US to rise a little over the upcoming release of Ambassador Michael Oren’s memoir. Oren, a former historian, now a Knesset member, wrote an insider’s account of the fraying Jerusalem-Washington ties. Oren discussed the book with New York Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt.
The book’s due out next week, just a few days before (coincidentally or not) the June 3o deadline for the Iranian nuclear talks, so this may not be comfortable reading for some American Jews.
• Careful, Associated Press, or you’re going to be accused of “pinkwashing.” Big Media picked up on gay rights in Israel after more than 100,000 people turned up for Tel Aviv’s gay pride parade.
Israel has emerged as one of the world’s most gay-friendly travel destinations in recent years, in sharp contrast to the rest of the Middle East where gay culture is not tolerated and gays are persecuted and even killed.
Across the rest of the Mideast, gay and lesbian relationships are mostly taboo. The pervasiveness of religion in everyday life, along with strict cultural norms, plays a major factor in that. Same-sex relations are punishable by death in Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.
See also Washington Post coverage.
• With the UN Human Rights Council’s report on the Gaza war due this week, UN Watch obtained the key preliminary findings of high-level military experts. It praised IDF restraint, and accused Hamas of committing war crimes.
• The IDF closed its probe of an airstrike that killed four Palestinian children playing soccer on a Gaza beach during Operation Protective Edge. The incident was ruled a case of mistaken identity as the air force failed to identify them as children who were in an area “utilized exclusively by militants.” Reuters overage.
• Reuters: A Madrid court suspended its investigation into the Mavi Marmara affair, but “the probe could potentially be re-opened if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ever visits Spain.” The investigation is based on Spain’s laws of universal jurisdiction, which displeased lawmakers are trying to rein in.
• Asghar Bukhari, a founder and spokesman for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK, had an epic meltdown on social media, starting when he claimed on Facebook that the Mossad stole his shoe.(!?) After taking ridicule online (see the Twitter hashtag, #MossadStoleMyShoe), Bukhari posted an impassioned 15-minute rant on YouTube, then continued his meltdown on Twitter with tweets like this. The story was picked up by a number of British and Israeli papers and made for some funny tweets.
The BDS Battle
• What’s known as “corporate social responsibility” is good for business, but what happens when it collides with politics, especially BDS? As the Jerusalem Post points out:
In Europe, some companies and investors have taken the view that BDS is an act of social responsibility.
• Haaretz: Norwegian insurance giant excludes two multinational building material companies from its investment portfolio because of their operations in the West Bank.
The decision is relatively unusual for divesting from companies operating in the West Bank because it constitutes a tertiary boycott – not on acquiring a product made in the West Bank or from an Israeli company producing it but rather a multinational company involved in a financial relationship with an Israeli company operating over the Green Line.
• During an international gathering of religious leaders, Israel’s chief Sephardi rabbi called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to help fight against boycotts. YNet coverage.
• Thumbs up to the Christian Science Monitor‘s Christa Case Bryant for a look at BDS that notes the movement’s opposition to anything smacking of normalized ties with Israel — business, athletic, or cultural programs, or even dialogue. Leslie Ordeman, a press attache at the US consulate in Jerusalem told the Monitor:
“However, the anti-normalization movement feels almost Orwellian,” he says. “It effectively cuts off any type of interaction between average Palestinians and average Israelis, which makes it very easy for each side to dehumanize the other…. There is no room to engage with anyone who might actually need to be convinced.”
• Breaking the Silence comes under fire amid boycott threat, tsk.
• Israel and Canada expect to iron out the details of a free-trade agreement this summer. The National Post reports it will expand on an already-existing free-trade pact signed in 1997.
Around the World
• As expected, Spain‘s parliament passed a “law of return” for the descendants of Jews expelled during the Inquisition.
• Old tweets have a way of catching up with government officials, especially when they’re tasteles and anti-Semitic. The Spanish Report is calling for two Madrid city council members to be dismissed over offensive tweets posted years before they were elected. It appears that Guillermo Zapata shut down his Twitter account; Pablo Soto hasn’t tweeted anything since August.
• Anti-Semitic incidents reach an all-time high in Canada.
• Hungarian ex-mayor fired over anti-Semitic tirade
Commentary/Analysis
• Khaled Abu Toameh ties BDS to Hamas.
Hamas views these BDS activities as an extension of the campaign to destroy Israel that the Islamist movement has been waging since its founding in 1988. While Hamas has been unable to send its representatives to speak to students and professors at the university campuses, BDS supporters seem to be doing the job on its behalf.
The U.S. universities that allow BDS activists to disseminate their hate against Israel are unaware that these people are serving as Hamas’s ambassadors.
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend:
– David Bernstein: Why did Diane Rehm fall for an anti-Semitic hoax?
– Adrian Hilton: The evil of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel
– Nadav Shragai: Is the UN legitimizing a Hamas affiliate?
– Norman Bailey: Potential Israeli dilemmas: one Saudi, one Chinese
– Michael Totten: The Saudis team up with Israel
– Soeren Kern: Germany: Muslims Exempt from School Trips to Holocaust Sites?
– New York Times (staff-ed): Accounting for the Benefits of Mideast Peace
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA flickr/Zuhair A. Al-Traifi with additions by HonestReporting; Oren via Facebook/Israel in the USA; Canada via Pixabay/Kurious;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
