Today’s Top Stories
1. The UN Security Council agreed to beef up the mandate of international peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon. According to the New York Times, the US threatened not to renew the mandate for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) unless it was significantly altered to address Hezbollah’s arms build up. More at the Times of Israel.
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2. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror group, will be allowed to run as a political party in German parliamentary elections (!?).
The PFLP carried out a number of airline hijackings in the 1970s as well as a number of shootings and suicide bombings during the Second Intifada — including the 2001 assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi. Its most recent terror of note was in 2014 when it claimed responsibility for an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue in which two gunmen killed four rabbis and a responding police officer. A fifth worshipper died in a coma months later.
For observers of terrorism in Germany, it is unclear why the ministry is reluctant to outlaw the Palestinian organization, which is widely recognized as a terrorist group.
3. Saudi Arabia is sponsoring 500 families of Palestinian “martyrs” to make their pilgrimage to Mecca. The Media Line reports the Saudis have been doing this for nine years.
Israel and the Palestinians
• A US federal court threw out a $1 billion Palestinian lawsuit against dozens of American supporters of Israel:
The lawsuit, filed by a group of Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans, including Bassem al-Tamimi from the village of Nabi Salah, claimed that organizations that supported Israel and donors to Israeli organizations were committing war crimes and crimes against humanity and even working to expel all non-Jewish residents of east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
• Israeli police arrested a Palestinian singer for glorifying terrorism. The Jerusalem Post explains:
The singer, Mohammed al-Barghouti, from the West Bank village of Beit Rima, ran a recording studio where he produced the song that glorified the murders of Chaya, Elad and Yosef Salamon. As part of the operation that lead to his arrest, the studio was raided and equipment used to run it was confiscated. In addition, the singer’s collaborators on the song, as well as the producer of the accompanying music video, were also arrested.
• Jordan is refusing to accept Israeli Ambassador Einat Shlain’s return to Amman over her appearance in a photograph with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ziv Moyal, the security guard who shot and killed two people Jordanians in what Israeli officials insist was self-defense. Ynet explains why the standoff leaves relations “in a state of freeze.”
Sources estimated that in light of Jordan’s outright refusal, Israel will have no choice but to appoint a new ambassador, if it intends to restore normal relations with Jordan.
In the meantime, the Israel Police’s investigation of Moyal’s actions has not yet ended, although all the signs show that Moyal’s claim of self defense holds up.
Netanyahu meets embassy guard pulled from Jordan furor: PM tells protection officer, the victim of a… https://t.co/ERa67GGKMk TimesofIsrael pic.twitter.com/MlPw6fiuvV
— Jewish Community (@JComm_BlogFeeds) July 25, 2017
• Russia reportedly stationed S-400 batteries near an Iranian arms factory in Syria.
Around the World
• Houston Jewish community ‘could take years’ to recover from Harvey. And props to the Houston Jewish Herald-Voice for keeping the paper going (web and print) in such unimaginable circumstances. The JTA explains how publisher Vicki Samuels Levy and her family pulled it off.
Latest reports I saw put the death toll at 38. For a sense of Harvey’s destructiveness, see the Houston Chronicle and USA Today.
• Africa’s top university risks endangering its US partnerships over a proposed boycott of Israel.
The governing bodies of the University of Cape Town (UCT) — which is regularly ranked as Africa’s number one university as well as among the world’s top 200 universities — will be debating the adoption of an academic boycott resolution on September 15 . . .
Bernstein said that UCT would also find it impossible to defend itself from retaliatory moves that a boycott would likely produce. “Once you endorse an academic boycott yourself, you don’t have any standing when it comes to opposing people who then engage in a boycott of your institution,” he remarked.
• Chants about killing Jews shouted at BDS rally in the Netherlands.
• Polish tourism chief fired after saying he removed Auschwitz from journalists’ itineraries.
• Police are searching for a man who allegedly threatened to shoot up a Miami area synagogue.
• Swastikas, anti-Semitic graffiti painted on Connecticut public school.
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Benjamin Weinthal, Asaf Romirowsky: Follow the money: The Israel-boycott movement and its accomplices
– Jonathan Tobin: Obama’s Mideast legacy: Iran’s puppets all around Israel with war on the way
– Jeffrey Lewis: Trump’s next self-inflicted crisis is a nuclear Iran
– Diliman Abdulkader: My experience in Israel: It is not what you see on TV
Featured image: CC BY jseliger2; Mecca CC BY-SA Al Jazeera English; Auschwitz CC BY-NC-ND Clark & Kim Kays;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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