Today’s Top Stories
1. Breaking News: Shortly before this roundup was published, a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into a group of Israelis near the West Bank community of Shiloh, injuring three. The Palestinian was shot and is in critical condition. Jerusalem Post coverage.
2. The US already has intelligence that the Iranians are already sanitizing its Parchin nuclear facility, which is suspected of being a military site. Eli Lake and Josh Rogin of Bloomberg News report:
A senior intelligence official, when asked about the satellite imagery, told us the IAEA was also familiar with what he called “sanitization efforts” since the deal was reached in Vienna, but that the U.S. government and its allies had confidence that the IAEA had the technical means to detect past nuclear work anyway . . .
Several senior lawmakers, including Democrats, are concerned that Iran will be able to collect its own soil samples at Parchin with only limited supervision, a practice several lawmakers have compared to giving suspected drug users the benefit of the doubt to submit specimens unsupervised. Iran’s sanitization of the site further complicates that verification.
3. YNet and an AFP video picked up on Gazans celebrating the graduation of 25,000 participants of Hamas summer camps.
4. Israel Accused of Genocide in Outrageous Cartoon: Does a prominent French cartoonist’s portrayal of Israelis demonize Jews as well?
Israel and the Palestinians
• 39 Palestinians released in the Gilad Shalit exchange are to be re-jailed after committee found they committed further crimes warranting their return to prison to complete their sentences.
• Israel sent a message to Mahmoud Abbas reassuring the PA leader that Jerusalem isn’t negotiating a long-term cease fire with Hamas. Ramallah officials fret that Israeli-Hamas contacts would undermine popular support of the PA. But according to the Times of Israel, the PA’s not the only player Israel’s keeping in mind:
Although Israel is aware that an agreement would harm the Palestinian Authority and boost Hamas, its refusal to discuss a truce has mostly to do with Egypt’s opposition. Cairo is wary of bolstering Hamas because the Gaza group is a close ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opponent of the Egyptian regime.
• Hamas detained Gazan journalist; Mushira al-Hajj had previously criticized the Hamas-run Health Ministry and rebuffed demands that she apologize.
• Four Gazans were killed and another 29 were injured in an explosion in Rafah. According to Haaretz, the blast is believed to have been caused by unexploded Israeli ordnance left over from Operation Protective Edge.
The unexploded bomb was in the ruins of a house that used to belong to Sheikh Attia Abu-Nakira, senior member of Hamas’ military wing. He apparently wasn’t hurt in Thursday’s blast. Israeli forces struck his house last July, during the war with Gaza.
• First victim of intifada visits latest terror victims
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• President Obama gave delivered a speech (video or transcript) on the Iran deal. The President singled out Israel as the only country objecting to the accord, and insisted that the only alternative to this deal is “some sort of war.” See below for commentary and analysis.
• UN inspectors trying to learn more about Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program are already being denied access to scientists and military officials they need to interview. Under the terms of the accords, the International Atomic Energy Agency is supposed to complete a report, as a precursor to the lifting of sanctions. Details at the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News).
• Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif insists that the IDF’s interception of the Karine-A arms ship was an Israeli false flag operation. In 2002, the Israeli navy seized 50 tons of weapons being smuggled to Palestinian terror groups.
• Israeli rights group sues to block release of Iranian funds; The Shurat HaDin Law Center says releasing frozen money would deprive two dozen American victims of terror of losing leverage to collect a $1 billion judgement.
• Iran’s shopping spree begins . . .
Around the World
• Survey: Nearly 1 in 4 Romanians want their country free of Jews.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents indicated they had heard of the Holocaust — a 12 percent increase over a similar poll conducted in 2007 — but only a third of those respondents who knew about the Holocaust believe it happened in their country. Only 19 percent of respondents who were aware of the Holocaust and said it occurred in Romania said Antonescu’s government was responsible. Some 54 percent of survey respondents called Antonescu as “a patriot.”
• The trial of ex-Argentine president Carlos Menem began today. He and other officials are accused of covering up information about the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish community headquarters, and allowing suspects to get away. More at the Buenos Aires Herald.
Commentary/Analysis
• Absolutely no shortage of commentary assessing President Obama’s speech. Here are 5 reasons the Iran deal doesn’t follow in John Kennedy’s footsteps.
For one, JFK never forked over $100 billion in sanctions relief to the Soviets as an inducement to make an arms-control deal.
• Does this New York Times staff-ed discount Netanyahu’s concerns, in part because Bibi supported the war in Iraq? And in the face of Jackson Diehl‘s take, does that even matter?
The speech was so trenchant because Mr. Obama ably connected the opposition to the Iran agreement to recent history. “If the rhetoric in these ads and the accompanying commentary sounds familiar, it should, for many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal,” he said.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama opposed the Iraq war. Invading Iraq was a catastrophic mistake that destabilized the country and, more than anything, has enabled Iran to expand its influence in Iraq and in the region. Mr. Netanyahu, of course, was a strong supporter of the Iraq war and in September 2002 made that case in congressional testimony as a private citizen.
• Former national security adviser Yaakov Amidror assessed what the accord means for Israel. See the full report, or the Jerusalem Post‘s synopsis.
• Here’s what else I’m reading on the Iran deal today . . .
– Boaz Bismuth: Khamenei is not Khrushchev
– James Taranto: Kerry’s perverse warning (via Google News)
– Raphael Ahren: Obama to Israel: You stand alone
– Graham Allison: Iran deal keeps our military options open
– Alan Dershowitz: Obama gets personal about the Iran deal
• What caught Benny Avni‘s attention about the president’s speech?
– Jose Maria Aznar: Confrontation with Iran is inevitable (via Google News)
– George Mitchell: Agreement will cut off Iran’s path to nuclear bomb
– Jonathan Tobin: Obama’s heavy handed and misleading Iran deal advocacy isn’t working
– Kevin Liptak: Will Obama’s attacks on critics hurt his cause?
– Bassam Tawil: Nuclearizing Iran, sabotaging Arabs
• See also staff editorials in Bloomberg News, the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News), Boston Globe, and USA Today, Last but not least, the Irish Times lumped Israel together with low-brow company:
The fear today is less the likelihood of an exchange between the two giants, and more the proliferation of such weapons to “rogue” states like North Korea, the danger of them falling into terrorist hands, and the deeply destabilising effect on regional politics of the possession of weapons by states like Israel and Pakistan.
• Sandy Tolan got op-ed space in the Los Angeles Times to blame the deadly Duma firebombing on Israel’s “colonization” of the West Bank and “a Jim Crow-like system of occupation.”
The dominion settlers claim over the West Bank only becomes darker and more violent as their numbers sharply increase and Israel’s occupation grows more entrenched.
The extremists aren’t as mainstream as Tolan claims. See this related tweet by Jeffrey Goldberg:
• Avi Issacharoff worries about the end of the two-state solution.
Featured image: CC BY flickr/David Dodge with additions by HonestReporting
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