Today’s Top Stories
1. Is there a connection between Mahmoud Abbas’ incitement and Sunday’s murder of Ari Fuld? Bassam Tawil and Mark Halawa call out the PA chief for accusing Israel of (once again) plotting to move on the Temple Mount. Tawil, a Palestinian scholar, goes so far as to argue that Abbas has “fresh American blood on his hands.”
In a speech before the PLO Executive Committee in Ramallah on September 15, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas repeated the old libel that Israel was planning to establish special Jewish prayer zones inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Abbas claimed that Israel was seeking to copy the example of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where Jews and Muslims pray in different sections.
Abbas did not say what his lie was based on. He also did [not] provide any evidence of Israel’s ostensible plot against the Al-Aqsa Mosque . . .
Hours after reports were published of Abbas’s allegation, a 17-year-old Palestinian from the town of Yatta in the southern West Bank fatally stabbed Ari Fuld, a 45-year-old Israeli-American citizen and father of four, in a shopping center in Gush Etzion, south of Bethlehem.
According to Palestinian terrorist groups, the terrorist, Khalil Jabarin, decided to murder a Jew in response to Israeli “crimes” against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in particular and Islamic holy sites in general.
In other words, the terrorist was influenced by Abbas’s incitement, and this is why he decided to set out on his deadly mission. There is no doubt that the terrorist saw the reports quoting Abbas’s claim that Israel was planning to allow Jews to pray inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Attention‼️
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas repeated an old libel, on Saturday, saying:
“Israel plans to establish Jewish prayer inside the Aqsa mosque, in the same fashion done in Hebron”
– All pro-Hamas twitter accounts are calling for violence citing Abbas’ remarks. pic.twitter.com/oZK2bupkRE
— Mark Halawa – مارك حلاوه (@HalawaMark) September 16, 2018
2. Israel and Turkey have been holding backchannel talks to restore ties that were all but severed in May during violent Gaza clashes, according to Israeli media reports.
According to a report Monday in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, if the latest talks bear fruit, both governments expect to return their respective ambassadors after the Jewish holiday season, or roughly in early October, some five months after the spat — the latest in a series of diplomatic crisis spanning years.
3. After closing the Palestinian mission office in Washington, the US revoked the visa of Palestinian envoy Husam Zomlot and his family, and reportedly froze all PLO bank accounts in the US.
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Thousands of Israelis gathered in Gush Etziyon to lay Ari Fuld to rest in a late night funeral. Fuld, a 45-year-old Israeli-American, was murdered by a Palestinian stabber yesterday. See Times of Israel and Ynet coverage of the funeral.
All terror attacks are tragic, but some hit closer to home than others. Ari Fuld, who was murdered this morning, was a pillar in the Anglo (English-speaking) community in Israel. Just about everyone I know is in shock. https://t.co/vB0DtLXnID
— Michele Chabin (@MicheleChabin1) September 16, 2018
• The IDF raided the Hebron-area home of Khalil Jabarin, who murdered Fuld. As for reports that Jabarin’s parents alerted police, the Times of Israel reports that before the attack, the PA may not have treated the matter more seriously because the mother and father gave conflicting warnings to Palestinian and Israeli security personnel.
When asked if the PA security forces informed their Israeli counterparts that Jabarin had gone missing, the official said that the father had only informed them that his son had disappeared and not that he was planning to carry out an attack.
“All we knew was that the boy had run away. So we did not inform the Israeli side,” the Palestinian official said. “We did not know he was planning to carry out a stabbing.”
Jabarin’s mother, however, went to the nearby Meitar checkpoint in the southern West Bank and told soldiers, at approximately the same time the stabbing took place, that her son planned to commit an attack, according to the Israeli army.
She did not provide specific details about where or when she believed Jabarin would carry out an attack, the army said.
• Sadly, Fuld’s murder wasn’t news in the UK . . .
How much coverage in the online UK press of the horrific terrorist murder of Ari Fuld? None in @BBCNews @Independent @guardian @Telegraph @thetimes. Apparently the slaughter of an Israeli "settler" doesn't count for UK editors.
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 17, 2018
• Clashes broke out after an IDF bus accidentally entered the Qalandiya refugee camp on Sunday evening. The bus was quickly surrounded by Palestinians who pelted it with stones. Three soldiers and a border guard were injured. The military is investigating why the bus entered the camp, which is located north of Jerusalem.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will miss a number of UN meetings over Sukkot scheduling clash. The PM is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly on Thursday.
• Trump administration officials are reportedly angry at US Jews for not cheering the Jerusalem embassy move.
• Israel marked the 30th anniversary of its first orbital launch by releasing threatening spy satellite photos of Bashar Assad’s Damascus palace and other sites in Syria.
Window Into Israel
• The high-speed Jerusalem-Tel Aviv rail link is a week away from its planned opening, but Globes reports it still hasn’t received the required safety approval:
[Independent Safety Assessor] is an international standard that is essential for commercial operation of a passenger train service. Approval could still come at the last minute in the coming week. If it is not given in time, however, it is not clear what will happen and whether it will be decided to again postpone the opening of the line.
• Inquiring minds want to know: Which top Israeli official was a foreign agent in the Paul Manafort case?
Around the World
• A Spanish court annulled a municipality’s resolution “banning any association or economic agreement with Israeli companies and organizations.” ACOM, an organization fighting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Spain, took legal action after the municipal council of Ayamonte, in southwestern Spain, passed the resolution in May.
The Huelva Court Number 1 wrote in its decision that the content of Ayamonte’s resolution “violates Article 14 of the Spanish Constitution,” since it incites and discriminates against Spanish citizens for reasons of birth, race, sex, religion, opinion or other conditions or circumstance, personal or social, ACOM said.
Related reading: BDS: The Bane in Spain.
Commentary
• Tweet of the day goes to Lahav Harkov in reaction to this Los Angeles Times staff-ed.
Hi, @latimes editorial board. These are nowhere near the same thing, and no one is seriously trying to deny anyone's right to do the latter. You can do better than this. You are empowering the bigots who do the former. pic.twitter.com/xAAGhChGOw
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) September 16, 2018
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– Aussie Dave: Murder of a hero of Israel: Ari Fuld z”l
– Avi Issacharoff: In world turned upside down, Israel angry at Abbas for taking hard line on Hamas
– Noah Klieger: What need does Abbas have for a state?
– Yoav Limor: Between Gaza and Iran
– Yaacov Amidror: The logic of Israel’s actions to contain Iran in Syria and Lebanon
– Tony Badran: Hezbollah ritually humiliates the UN
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Yom Kippur War: The forgotten victory
– Abraham Rabinovich: What were Israeli Arabs doing during the Yom Kippur War? They were helping their country
Featured image: CC0 Pxhere ; satellite image via Twitter/Ministry of Defense;
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