Today’s Top Stories
1. Iran claims that it has shot down an Israeli drone near the Natanz nuclear enrichment site. The Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed Monday that it was working to extract intelligence and data from the drone’s remains. According to an Iranian military official, the drone was a Hermes model with a combat radius of 800 kilometers. In response to the alleged Israeli drone incursion, Iran has vowed to accelerate rearming West Bank Palestinians:
“We will accelerate the arming of the West Bank and we reserve the right to give any response,” said General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of aerial forces of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, in a statement on their official website sepahnews.com.
Israel, in keeping with all stories related to intelligence, has refrained from commenting. Iran has produced video footage that it claims to show the downed drone.
2. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, has used an op-ed in the New York Times to call on Qatar to stop funding terrorism:
In recent years, the sheikhs of Doha, Qatar’s capital, have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza. Every one of Hamas’s tunnels and rockets might as well have had a sign that read “Made possible through a kind donation from the emir of Qatar. …
Qatar’s continued sponsorship of Hamas all but guarantees that, whatever happens in this round of hostilities, the terrorist group will rearm and renew hostilities with Israel. The only way forward is to isolate Hamas’s last major backer. Given Qatar’s considerable affluence and influence, this is an uncomfortable prospect for many Western nations, yet they must recognize that Qatar is not a part of the solution but a significant part of the problem. To bring about a sustained calm, the message to Qatar should be clear: Stop financing Hamas.
3. Time magazine has retracted its IDF organ harvesting allegation following HonestReporting’s exposé. The narration has been removed from the video, which now includes the following text at the end: “Correction: The original version of this video cited a contested allegation in a 2009 Swedish newspaper report as fact. The allegation has been removed from the video.” More coverage in The Times of Israel.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Is an open-ended ceasefire proposed by Egypt about to be adopted by both Israel and Hamas?
• Hamas finance chief Muhammad al-Ghoul was killed in an Israeli targeted assassination. The New York Times report included reference to Hamas media intimidation despite the paper’s own bureau chief previously calling this “nonsense.”
• Lieutenant Adam Landau, from the 188th Armored Brigade, fought in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge. Watch him describe what he saw and felt while he was battling Hamas in this IDF video: “A Soldier’s Account from Gaza: Hamas Used Human Shields.”
• A Palestinian poll overwhelming majority of Gaza residents support a long-term truce with Israel and oppose the disarmament of Palestinian terror groups despite the obvious incompatibility between the two.
• An anti-Israel history professor has come under fire for a statement that accuses the pro-Israel academic community of being “directly responsible for the murder of over 1,400 Palestinian children, women and elderly civilians.”
• The condition of an Israeli seriously injured in a stoning attack has worsened. Despite what the Western media may have you believe, stoning attacks can be extremely dangerous and potentially lethal.
• Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary outlines his big plans to create an Israeli version of his budget airline despite regional tensions.
Commentary/Analysis
• Leo McKinstry, in the Daily Express, clearly states why Israel has an absolute right to defend its people:
In the twisted narrative of the anti-Israeli brigade, the Hamas rulers of Gaza are battling for their oppressed people against the brutal, racist military regime run by Binyamin Netanyahu.
But this is a complete moral inversion of reality. In truth, Israel is a bulwark of democracy forced by the lethal forces of anti-Semitic Islamism to fight for survival.
Far from representing liberation and progress, as many progressives absurdly claim, Hamas is a brutal organisation that aims to impose totalitarian Islamic rule.
Along with other jihadist out-fits like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Boko Haram in Nigeria, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, it forms part of a monstrous theocratic death cult that wants to destroy our civilisation.
Genocidal aggression towards the non-believer is a key element of this cult.
Visceral loathing for the Jewish state is the central impetus behind Hamas, reflected in its relentless barrage of indiscriminate rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel.
What is extraordinary is that western progressives, who love to prattle about their devotion to human rights, social justice and tolerance, should have ended up giving their support to extreme bigotry.
They eagerly march in their thousands against Israel, accusing the Jewish state of genocide, yet remain silent in the face of the lethal oppression practised on an epic scale by Islamists.
• Michael Jansen examines in the Irish Times, how Hamas is able to continue even after the loss of its top commanders.
• In the aftermath of the execution by Hamas of alleged “collaborators,” the Wall St Journal lays out what happens to Palestinian moderates concluding “The Palestinians will never have peace as long as they keep murdering anyone who wants it.”
• Somewhere on another planet, François Crépeau actually believes that the UN isn’t biased against Israel and that self-confessed Israel critic William Schabas is the right man for a UN inquiry into the Gaza conflict. Bizarre commentary in the Toronto Star.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• The al-Nusra Front, a Syrian rebel group with ties to al Qaeda, has released American journalist Peter Theo Curtis after nearly two years in captivity. Curtis was handed over to UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights and is now safely in Israel.
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
Image: CC BY-NC flickr/ISOtob
