Today’s Top Stories
1. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency says it needs more money to inspect Iran sites.
2. Lebanon’s garbage crisis continues. The Jerusalem Post reports fears that Hezbollah is trying to hijack the You Stink protest movement. And AFP’s Sara Hussein reports how dismal the situation is:
3. A Hamas military court in Gaza sentenced a 28-year-old Palestinian to death for allegedly collaborating with Israel. AFP notes this background:
According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 157 people have been sentenced to death in the occupied territories since the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994.
Thirty-two have been executed, including 30 in the Gaza Strip . . .
In Gaza, beyond death sentences handed out by courts, Hamas has also carried out summary executions for collaborating with Israel, sometimes in public places.
4. Matisyahu Faces Down BDS: The reggae star isn’t Israeli. So why did the BDS movement target him?
Israel and the Palestinians
• Israel busted a Palestinian terror cell planning to attack Jewish worshipers at Joseph’s Tomb with explosives and guns. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• Polish reporter Wojciech Cegielski describes in a Haaretz op-ed how Hamas used journalists as human shields during Operation Protective Edge. It’s worth reading, but I wonder why he waited so long to write this.
The second story happened in the middle of the day. I was sitting with other journalists in a cafe outside one of the hotels near the beach. During wartime, these hotels are occupied by foreign press and some NGOs. Every hotel is full and in its cafes many journalists spend their time discussing, writing, editing stories or just recharging the phones. Suddenly I saw a man firing a rocket from between the hotels. It was obvious that we journalists became a target. If the IDF would strike back, we all would be dead. What would Hamas do? It would not be surprising to hear about the “cruel Zionist regime killing innocent and free press.”
• US judge: Palestinians to pay $10M to secure terror verdict
• Following up on yesterday’s life-among-Gaza-rubble, the New York Times looks at how Israeli villages near the border are bouncing back.
• Gaza parents are refusing to send their kids to school in sympathy with striking UNRWA teachers. Teachers want the agency to address overcrowded classrooms of 50 students. Maan News adds:
The UN agency was only able to announce on Wednesday that the year would go ahead as scheduled, after a last minute scramble for funding secured just short of $80 million in contributions against its deficit.
• Responding to the BDS black eye over blacklisting Matisyahu from a Spanish music festival, a South African parliamentarian harsh words for the boycotters and the malicious “Israel apartheid” slur.
Here’s what Kenneth Meshoe, President of the African Christian Democratic Party, told Israeli TV:
“Those who know what real apartheid is, as I know, know that there is nothing in Israel that looks like apartheid,” Meshoe said, adding that those who voice support for Israel are usually faced with threats and “intimidation.” . . .
“The BDS movement is a real pain… to us in South Africa who love the truth, (the) BDS movement is not a democratic movement; they are a movement of intimidation, a movement that performs hatred,” the parliamentarian said. “People who don’t believe in hatred should not allow the BDS movement to stop them from doing the right thing.”
• A number of Gaza hospitals face an imminent shutdown over a lack of fuel. That’s what Hamas-run health ministry officials told Maan News.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Author says he leaked Ehud Barak’s Iran tapes “in a dispute over the rights to the English version of his biography.” The Times of Israel elaborates:
Kfir and Dor released the interviews to promote their book on Barak, “Wars of My Life,” after they found out that the former prime minister had concurrently signed with an American publisher to produce an entirely different book for sale overseas.
• Europe doesn’t share US concerns on the Iran deal. The New York Times looks at why.
Around the World
• Brazilian aliyah is on record pace this year as the South American country’s high cost of living and crime rates spark immigration.
But as Michel Abadi, the executive director of Beit Brasil noted, it is a very different demographic of Brazilians relocating to Israel in recent years.
“In the 1960s and 1970s, the aliyah was very idealistically motivated,” he says. “Most of those who came back then were graduates of Zionist youth movements. In the past 10 years or so, we’re seeing many more interfaith couples and individuals who may have one Jewish grandparent and are therefore eligible for aliyah – in other words, people who don’t have as close a connection to Judaism or Israel as they did in the past.”
Commentary/Analysis
• Stephen Daisley weighs in on how the political left ignores anti-Semitism. This is about more than Jeremy Corbyn.
The problem goes deeper than asymmetry. For too many on the Left, Jewish suffering does not touch them the way Muslim suffering or gay suffering or black suffering touches them. Scrutiny of Corbyn’s associations elicits cries of “smear” or just a collective shrug of the shoulders. It was always going to. We lack a language to talk about anti-Semitism because too many on the Left don’t consider it a serious problem and couldn’t recognise it as readily as racism, misogyny or homophobia anyway.
• As Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem seek increasingly Israeli citizenship, here’s Elliott Abrams‘ takeaway:
So what do we learn from this? First, that American and Western–and Israeli– refusal to demand that the Palestinian Authority respect civil and political rights, and build democratic structures, is well recognized by Jerusalem Arabs. They want the creation of a Palestinian state, but they are well aware of its likely nature and prefer to live in a Western-style democracy. Second, that the typical Arab and European denunciations of Israel as a racist society where Arabs are treated so badly is plain false. Those who live under Israeli law–with all its imperfections and failures–know better.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Ben-Dror Yemini: A double-edged boycott
– Ed West: The short road from anti-Westernism to anti-Semitism
– Norman Bailey: How should Israel form an alliance with Saudi Arabia?
– Smadar Perry: Abbas flexes his muscles with Iran
– John Vinocur: French buyer’s remorse on the Iran deal (via Google News)
– Ephraim Asculai: The unbelievable side agreements with Iran
– Richard Cohen: From Nazi Germany to Iran, lessons on twisted leadership
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Adam Baker and flickr/David, Bergin, Emmett, and Elliott with additions by HonestReporting; Meshoe CC BY-ND flickr/GovernmentZA; Rio de Janeiro CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Chantal Wagner Kornin;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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