Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel and Hamas reportedly discussing a 5-year truce. YNet writes:
The truce proposal is said to stipulate that Israel allow the construction of a floating sea port off the Gaza coast, to be subject to Israeli or international supervision.
In return, Hamas would agree to cease fire for five years, with the possibility of extending it.
2. Israel warns Nusra Front: Don’t mess with Druze. Jerusalem Post coverage.
3. Israeli papers were buzzing over ex-Ambassador Michael Oren’s accusations that the Obama administration deliberately damaged US-Israel ties. Oren, now a Knesset member whose memoirs are due to be released soon, disclosed his charges in a a Wall St. Journal op-ed (click via Google News).
4. Israeli Foreign Ministry Video: Doth the Media Protest Too Much? Why is a video poking fun at the foreign press causing so much offense?
5. CNN Bias, Definitively Explained: Unfortunately, CNN’s still source-free.
6. Thinking of joining an HonestReporting mission to Israel? See what the Jewish Press had to say about our most recent one.
7. NPR Host Labels Jewish Senator “Dual Citizen”: Yarden Frankl discusses Diane Rehm’s flubbed interview, a bizarre New York Times headline, and the upcoming UN Human Rights Council report on the Gaza war. Click below to hear interview on Voice of Israel.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is facing its “worst-ever cash crunch.”
It’s hardly surprising. The UNRWA cares exclusively for Palestinian refugees with a staff of over 30,000 personnel, while the UN High Commissioner for Refugees cares for all other refugees in the world with a staff of 9,300. The UNRWA also serves a bloated number of people because, unlike the High Commissioner, UNRWA’s unprecedented definition of refugees includes descendants of the original Palestinian refugees.
Meanwhile, Palestinian refugees protested against budget cuts outside the agency’s Beirut headquarters.
• Israeli lawmakers want to boost security at the Mt. of Olives cemetery. Arab lawmakers want Waqf involvement. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• The UN selected Norwegian diplomat Mogens Lykketoft as president of the General Assembly. He has a sour history with Israel.
• Orange CEO Stephane Richard’s taking legal action after receiving death threats.
• Good news: Asghar Bukhari, a founder and spokesman for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK, found his missing shoe. In a rambling followup video, he says the shoe was stolen by an amazing Mossad fox that picked a lock on his front door, stole the shoe, kindly locked the door on its way out, eventually leaving the shoe in a neighbor’s garden.
Mideast Matters
• Addressing the Druze implications for Israel, James Dorsey raises a notable piece of info I wasn’t aware of.
Mitigating in favour of intervention is not just the Israeli government’s need to cater to a key domestic community but also a desire to counter a Syrian government proposal to arm the Druze in exchange for a pledge that those weapons would not be used against government forces. Syrian Druze acceptance of the government’s offer would, in Israeli and Saudi eyes, effectively expand Iranian influence.
• The Daily Telegraph visited Majdal Shams to take the pulse of the Israeli Druze community.
• Israel Helped Obama Skirt ‘Red Line’ on Syria
• An Egyptian court sentenced ex-president Mohammed Morsi to life in prison for spying for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. The BBC explains why some headlines say it was a 25-year sentence.
In Egypt, a life sentence is 25 years in jail.
Around the World
• Holland indefinitely postponed the release of a government survey submitting a higher preponderance of anti-Semitism among Muslim youths than among Christian youths. Is it too politically incorrect for Amsterdam?
De Telegraaf nonetheless reviewed a copy of the synopsis, which said that 12 percent of Muslim respondents expressed a “not positive” view of Dutch Jews compared to 2 percent among Christian respondents.
Asked by De Telegraaf why the report has not been released, a ministry spokesman said the ministry needs “clarification, for example, on how to explain some results.” The ministry declined to elaborate, De Telegraaf reported.
• Maybe it’s just me: Is the auto da fe making a comeback, or is this just an oddly worded Jerusalem Post headline?
Commentary/Analysis
• Everybody’s issuing reports on the Gaza war, or about to, so it’s understandable if your head’s spinning a little. But how much do they matter? Jonathan Tobin summed up my own head space pretty good:
The battle over the reports provides a microcosm of the entire conflict precisely because the facts are irrelevant to the debate. It doesn’t matter how much care the IDF takes to avoid hurting noncombatants. If, like the HRC and other Israel-haters, you don’t think the Jewish state has a right to exist or to defend itself, everything it does is illegitimate. By the same token, it doesn’t matter how culpable Hamas is, their crimes are always going to be rationalized or even justified by those determined to smear Israel.
• It’s bad enough that Sudan’s president dodged arrest in South Africa to attend an African Union summit in Johannesburg. But what to make of Palestinian support for Omar Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for Darfur genocide? Eugene Kontorovich weighs in:
The Palestinian Authority is not alone in this – the entire Arab League backs Bashir against the ICC. But what makes the PA’s position on Bashir even more outrageous is that they have actually purported to join the ICC, and seek to invoke its jurisdiction against Israeli officials. The only other Arab League members to join the ICC are Comoros, Djibouti, and Jordan, which has distanced itself from the Bashir policy, unlike the PA.
Thus even as the Palestinians got the ICC to bend its rules about statehood to join, they were advocating the defiance of the Court’s writ in the single most important and grave kind of case, genocide cases initiated by the Security Council. In short, the Palestinians seek to exempt genocidaires from the Court’s jurisdiction while pushing for it to prosecute Israelis for allowing Jews to live in Jerusalem. The PA is involved in the trivialization and corruption of the Court from both ends.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Thomas Elias: Define anti-Semitism or enable it
– Michael Curtis: UNRWA in Gaza is counterproductive
– Dror Eydar: BDS: It’s not about “the occupation”
– New York Post: Israel’s preemptive strike at a United Nations smear (staff-ed)
– Julien Bauer: Western anti-Semitism is very well alive
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Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Dave with additions by HonestReporting; Bashir via YouTube/NTV Kenya;
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