Today’s Top Stories
1. Unable to seal the deal, diplomats in Vienna extended the deadline on the Iranian nuclear talks to Monday. A source told AFP that “98 percent of the text is done.” According to Ehud Yaari, the agreement is essentially finished with the US reportedly blinking. Snap inspections are out, managed inspections are in.
. . in other words, there will be no surprise visits, only those that are pre-arranged and approved by the Iranian regime.
2. “Al-Quds Day,” Iran’s annual death-to-Israel festival went on with all the incitement, hostility, and flag burnings you’d expect to see when tens of thousands of people march in the streets of Tehran with government permission.
The Iranians launched a game app featuring Iranian missiles destroying Israeli targets, and chanting demonstrators tied the Saudis to the traditional Great Satan conspiracies. Some 700 Islamists marched in Berlin too. And Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah made clear that the road to Palestine leads through the Yarmouk refugee camp Syria.
3. Israel released hunger-striking prisoner Khader Adnan. Several news services, including AP, Reuters, CNN, and BBC, noted Adnan’s role in the Islamic Jihad terror group, Unfortunately, AFP readers will remain ignorant.
Just to remove any doubt about the kind of person we’re talking about, watch Adnan in his own words at the funeral of an Islamic Jihad commander in 2007.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Following up on the two Israelis who disappeared in Gaza: According to Israeli media reports, Jerusalem fears Avraham Mengistu is no longer alive. And Hamas claims Tony Blair is now mediating. The identity of the young Israeli Bedouin man missing hasn’t been released to the public, but the family told reporters he is mentally ill, and has crossed borders several times. The Jerusalem Post quoted one relative:
“. . . he crossed the border once to Jordan, once to Egypt and once to Gaza – in February 2010 – and in all three cases he was returned to the family. The fourth time he must have entered Gaza again and didn’t return.”
• It turns out Mengistu and the unidentified Bedouin man aren’t the only people crossing the border. Reuters discloses that 130 Palestinians were caught in the past year jumping the border fence.
An Israeli military officer in the Gaza Division said most border-jumpers are unarmed teens looking for work or to escape family hardship. For some, jail may be more appealing than life in Gaza, with three meals a day and a chance to study.
• Mahmoud Abbas recalls envoy to Chile for anti-Semitic remark.
• Top Israeli peace negotiator Silvan Shalom said The Arab peace initiative of 2002 is unacceptable because it has been through too many revisions. Among the most significant points the proposal now calls for:
1. Returning the Golan Heights to Syria.
2. Full Palestinian “right” of return.
3. The 1967 borders serving as the basis for talks.
• Thousands of Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians posted “Death to Jews” on their Facebook profiles. Algemeiner picked up on a report by Israel’s 0404 News.
• Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times‘s public editor addressed acknowledged reader complaints about the paper’s inappropriate headline/photo combo we addressed last week.
A photo of Palestinian women mourning that accompanied an article about a teenager killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank. Some readers believed it elicited sympathy for someone who didn’t deserve it. Penina Greenspan wrote: “Your coverage of the death of Muhammad Hani al-Kasba was misleading in its portrayal of the nature of the incident. A number of photographs circulated by his friends on the Internet depict him as he truly was, and you should use them to convey his character and intentions accurately. He was not some kid throwing stones. He was a militant and a terrorist seeking to kill.”
• First senior officer to be investigated over Protective Edge conduct. Or is Lt. Col. Nerya Yeshurun a victim of what soldiers call the legal Iron Dome?
• New arrests for Tabgha church arson.
• From the Times of London:
A former chairman of the best-known mosque in Leeds owned a company linked to the distribution of a children’s DVD that glorified suicide bomb attacks on Israelis.
This is one of the films featured on the DVD:
• The Wall St. Journal notes a rising trend in religious tourism in Israel.
• A Dublin-based travel agency ran afoul of the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI) for brochure whose map of the holy land failed to include the Palestinian borders (“it could cause offense”). Take your pick of the Irish Independent or the ASAI.
Around the World
• More than 200 Americans sought to join up with Islamic State, according to FBI figures.
Compared to other Western nations, however, the figure of 200 people attempting to join ISIS abroad is relatively low.
Earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before Congress that as many as 20,000 foreign fighters had joined ISIS’s ranks, about 3,400 of them from Western nations.
• 14 Islamists sentenced for targeting kosher shops in France
• In France, fear and defiance mix 6 months after kosher market attack
• Tweet of the day goes to William Booth:
Commentary/Analysis
• Mordechai Kedar: It’s time for the world to relate to ISIS as a state.
Denial is of no use, however, and laundering a name will not change reality, because what looks like a state, sounds like a state and functions like a state – is a state, even if we dislike it intensely. Denying Islamic State’s existence is like much of the Arab world’s denial of Israel’s existence for over 67 years and their use of the insulting name “The Zionist Entity” for the Jewish State.
• Dore Gold got op-ed space in the Daily Telegraph:
Trusting Iran to stop terrorism is like inviting an arsonist to join the fire brigade
• Does the the State Department response to Congress’s Israel boycott law amount to an extraordinary line-item veto for trade legislation? Eugene Kontorovich wonders . . .
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend:
– David Horovitz: Israel cannot countenance another Shalit deal
– Bassam Tawil: Time for Paleatinians to take stock of their affairs
– Guy Bechor: Israel must use UN as an offensive tool
– Avi Issacharoff: Hamas and Islamic State’s unlikely alliance
– Jonathan Tobin: UNESCO crosses the line into anti-Semitism
– Amanda Borschel-Dan: BDS: the politically correct way to delegitimize Israel
– Jonathan Rosenblum: Campus thought patrol
– Ephraim Sneh: Nuclear deal or not, Israel faces a dangerous future
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Nick Page with additions by HonestReporting
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