Today’s Top Stories
1. The PA government resigned and Mahmoud Abbas tasked Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah with forming a new cabinet. Abbas objects to the Hamas-Israel rapprochement, which the Times of Israel elaborates on.
Others, like Reuters bureau chief, Luke Baker, note they’ve seen this dance before.
2. Israel’s Justice Ministry is reportedly getting ready to take legal action against BDS activists around the world:
The tactic came after a review by the international department of the Justice Ministry found that although boycott activists have appealed to many courts in Western countries for sanctions against Israel, they have never succeed in a obtaining a ruling in their favor, the Hebrew-language NRG news site reported on Wednesday.
Ministry officials believe that legal circumstances present the option of suing activists with civil and criminal law suits for damaging Israeli trade, for discrimination and racism, based on the laws in various countries, the report said.
3. John Kerry: The US won’t press Iran on giving a full account of its nuclear activities to date. “Absolute knowledge” is today’s buzzword because the Secretary of State claims the US already has it. See Reuters coverage. More on the issue at Foreign Policy.
4. BBC to Livni: “Would You Describe Your Parents as Terrorists?” In an interview full of leading questions, the Beeb tries baiting Tzipi Livni into calling her parents terrorists and Israel an apartheid state.
Israel and the Palestinians
• French diplomats continue pushing for a UN resolution creating a timeline for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. The Jerusalem Post updates the latest developments.
• Israel eased travel restrictions so Palestinians can visit the Temple Mount during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins on Thursday.
And how did Mahmoud Abbas respond to this goodwill gesture? Normalization’s a dirty word in Ramallah.
• IDF sees growing support for ISIS in Gaza. Details at Haaretz.
Mideast Matters
• Syrian rebels launched a fresh offensive against government-held positions in the Quneitra province, near the Israeli border. Flying shells sparked warning sirens in northern Israel.
• AFP: In northern Syria, rebels surrounded the Druze village of Hader.
• This is a really dumb article. As far as the Christian Science Monitor‘s concerned, jihadists massacring villagers is an image problem?
• Saudi journalist: I want to be Saudi ambassador to Israel.
• French immigration to Israel surges in summer 2015.
Commentary/Analysis
• Douglas Murray weighs in on artists leading the cultural boycott against Israel:
These people, step by step, want to make every expression of Israeli and Jewish cultural life subject to their idea of how a nation under constant threat of terrorist bombardment should behave. They denounce Israel as a militaristic society and then attempt to outlaw every non-militaristic cultural and artistic expression from that society.
It is the bigotry of our time.
• Tweet of the Day from Gidon Shaviv
• Unbelievable how the press corps is so holier than thou over the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s video poking fun at Gaza war reporters. The New York Times and Vox weighed in, among others. Big Media doth protest too much.
• While Israeli energy executives, government bureaucrats, and anti-trust investigators try to untangle the small print of offshore gas reserves and who profits, the Cypriot media is getting impatient . . .
• A few days after the New York Times published an op-ed criticizing Israel’s abortion policies, Yair Rosenberg clears the air.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– Ben-Dror Yemini: Evil spirit of BDS growing stronger in US
– New York Daily News (staff-ed): Obama vs. Israel
– Ofir Haivry: Moment of truth drawing near for Syria’s Druze – and for Israel
– Ben Judah: Why Israel welcomes chaos on its borders
– Dan Margalit: Israel’s Druze dilemma
– Avi Issacharoff: Druze have more to fear from Nusra than ISIS
– Michael Totten: Al Qaida’s bogus apology
– Wall St. Journal (staff-ed): Obama’s snap-back fantasy (click Google News)
Featured image: CC BY-SA flickr/Tom Woodward with additions by HonestReporting
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