Today’s Top Stories
1. MSNBC host Chris Hayes raised a Twitter stink over the weekend, ultimately removing one of the stupidest tweets I’ve ever seen. The fuss began when Fusion‘s Collier Meyerson tweeted her displeasure with the behavior of a Hasidic man she was sitting next to on an airplane. Hayes, who hosts the political talk show, All In With Chris Hayes dived all in, suggesting this was a good time for a conversation about — of all things — BDS.
While some people on Twitter called it anti-Semitic (IsraellyCool debated that charge), tweet of the day goes to Wendy Rosenfield for this retort:
Wait, what? An orthodox Jew from somewhere in the world is annoying on a plane, so boycott Israel? Are you for real?
— Wendy Rosenfield (@WendyRosenfield) September 1, 2016
2. Can Israel become a maritime power? The Times of Israel picked up on a fascinating report by a commission of Israeli and American admirals and policymakers suggesting that Israel take responsibility for policing the Eastern Mediterranean as the US reduces its naval presence.
The report acknowledges, too, the overpowering influence of domestic politics in a democracy, but argues that Israel must forge an institutional culture that turns its attention outward. A maritime power is by definition an extroverted one, a state that takes a keen interest, shared across the broad swath of its financial, military and legal institutions, in goings-on beyond its shores. And that means inculcating in the public mind and among officials and politicians a new set of commitments. Maritime powers conduct their domestic politics with the same urgency and tendentiousness as their landlubber neighbors, but without losing sight of the responsibilities they have undertaken in the global commons . . .
America, the report warns in its most strident passages, is leaving behind a dangerous vacuum.
“The desire to disengage from the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean is an especially strong element of the general American isolationist impulse. After decades of leading the democratic world in the Cold War and more than a decade of multiple wars since 9/11, many Americans…would prefer to have nothing to do with foreign wars, with lands that breed jihadists or stagnate in corruption, or have populations that reject modernity or hate the United States,” the report notes in its conclusion.
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3. Standing up to BDS pressure, Syracuse University’s administration nixed a professor’s decision to disinvite Israeli film maker Shimon Dotan from a conference on film and religion, the Daily Orange reports. In breaking the news of Dotan’s initial exclusion last week, The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf wrote:
The matter of concern here is the reason that the film was excluded: to avoid the perceived risk of ideologically motivated retaliation by campus activists, as well as the risk of losing credibility with “a number of film and Women/Gender studies colleagues.”
A need to be perceived as politically correct proved decisive. I tend to avoid the term “political correctness” in my coverage of college campuses, but this incident fits the Merriam-Webster definition almost exactly: “conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities should be eliminated.”
4. LA Times and the 50 Year Gaza Occupation: Despite the Gaza disengagement, a book review by a former Middle East correspondent erroneously refers to the Strip being occupied for nearly 50 years.
5. HonestReporting’s “Red Lines: The Eight Categories of Media Bias” is a video series based on our latest E-book (available on Amazon for a small fee). In the sixth video of the series, Haviv Rettig Gur of the Times of Israel, and Michelle Chabin of USA Today and other papers discussed with HonestReporting how reporters can use true facts to arrive at false conclusions.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Palestinians ‘speed up’ bid for UNSC resolution against Israeli settlements.
• The New York Times takes note of recent intra-Palestinian violence and the pre-election fault lines it exposes. Although NYT bureau chief Peter Baker didn’t use the term “Arab Spring” Aaron David Miller did. But intrafada might be more apt. Just saying . . .
• Can’t help but smile at NPR‘s look at a Hamas election video widely ridiculed in Gaza. Reporter Nick Schifrin’s concluding line says it all.
As for Ayman, the video’s director, I asked him whether he’d be willing to be hired by Hamas’ rivals to make another video. He said he couldn’t make another one because, he said, there are no more nice parts of Gaza left to film. Nick Schifrin, NPR News, Gaza City.
Around the World
• German teachers’ union urges total boycott of Israel:
It appears to be the first call to boycott Israel or Jews from a German organized labor group since the Holocaust. Critics accuse the union of stoking modern Jew-hatred.
• Writing in Haaretz, South American journalist Damian Pachter takes a closer look at how Venezuela’s Jewish community is faring under the country’s economic crisis.
#Venezuela n Pres. #Maduro is chased through streets by protesters banging pots + pans and shouting 'we are hungry' https://t.co/LKtaaLWWST
— Aethonaia (@Aethonaia) September 4, 2016
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Leora Eisenberg: That awkward moment when the MSNBC anchor tweets something anti-Semitic
– Jonathan Tobin: What Israeli settlements don’t do
– Elliott Abrams: Why peace is not at hand
– Mordechai Kedar: Czech treachery over Jerusalem: the real meaning
– Melanie Phillips: Accomplices in hate
– Louis Rene Beres: Who is responsible under international law for the new Gaza wars?
– Fred Maroun: Zionism belongs to Jews
– Jeff Jacoby: I support Israel, which is why I don’t support US aid to Israel
– Yoram Schweitzer: The weakening of ISIS in Sinai
Image of navy CC BY-NC Israel Defense Forces;
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