Today’s Top Stories
1. Former Israeli president Shimon Peres is fighting for his life after suffering a stroke last night. Doctors at Tel Aviv’s Tel Hashomer Hospital placed the 93-year-old Peres in a medical-induced coma.
The last of Israel’s founding fathers, Peres has served in nearly every significant position of Israeli politics, including including president, multiple stints as prime minister, numerous cabinet ministries, as well as long-time Labor Party chairman. He also served as an MK from 1959-2007. Peres is best known for being the architect of the 1993 Oslo accords, for which he shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.
While the Palestinians are split on Peres, Israeli Arab MK Basel Ghattas raised a stink calling Peres a war criminal covered in blood.
More at the Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and YNet.
2. Ofek-11, an Israeli spy satellite launched just yesterday, is suffering multiple malfunctions, and it’ll take several days to determine what use, if any, it may still serve. It’s Israel’s second setback satellite setback this month — an Amos 6 satellite was destroyed when the rocket it was sitting on exploded during a pre-launch test in Cape Canaveral, sparking anxiety in the Israeli aerospace industry.
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3. An anti-Israel BDS event on Capitol Hill was cancelled after a Democratic lawmaker withdrew her sponsorship. An aide to Texas congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who was listed as the event’s sponsor, told The Weekly Standard that the room had been booked by a former staffer without the knowledge of anyone in her office.
4. The Independent: Another Capital Error: The Obama administration and Tel Aviv are not clashing over policy.
5. HR Prompts BBC Photo Caption Change: Photo has little relevance to the story, but the caption no longer misleads.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Jerusalem Post reports “severe” budget cuts prompted an emergency meeting of Ministry of Foreign Affairs workers “to initiate protest actions in the coming days.”
The Post adds that no moves will be taken to upend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the US next week for the opening of the UN General Assembly. Netanyahu currently holds the Foreign Affairs portfolio.
In 2014, a strike by MFA employees forced Netanyahu to cancel a trip to Colombia, Mexico and Panama.
• Hamas rejected deal for soldiers’ bodies, captive Israelis, according to chief Israeli negotiator Lior Lotan. Israel had offered to free 18 Palestinians and transfer 19 bodies from the 2014 Gaza war in exchange for the bodies of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul.
A separate swap rejected by Hamas would’ve freed dozens of Palestinians who illegally crossed into Israel in exchange for Avraham Abera Mengistu and Bedouin Hisham al-Sayed, both of whom are mentally ill. More at the Times of Israel.
• A year without the first victim of Israel’s wave of terror
• The Jerusalem Post and European Jewish Press picked up on the anti-Semitic Twitter rant of Leila Hatoum, one of Newsweek Middle East’s editors. Quite a few readers trying to engage Hatoum on Twitter were blocked remarkably quickly. One man’s troll is another man’s freedom fighter, or something like that, right?
And if you haven’t already done so, sign our petition to Newsweek.
https://twitter.com/JeffreyGoldberg/status/775999157458829312
Commentary/Analysis
• In the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News), Professor Eugene Kontorovich and Penny Grunseid wonder why the UN only labels Israel as an “occupying power,” while other, clearer instances of occupation, don’t draw the same rhetoric.
Our research shows that the U.N. uses an entirely different rhetoric and set of legal concepts when dealing with Israel compared with situations of occupation or settlements world-wide. For example, Israel is referred to as the “Occupying Power” 530 times in General Assembly resolutions. Yet in seven major instances of past or present prolonged military occupation—Indonesia in East Timor, Turkey in northern Cyprus, Russia in areas of Georgia, Morocco in Western Sahara, Vietnam in Cambodia, Armenia in areas of Azerbaijan, and Russia in Ukraine’s Crimea—the number is zero. The U.N. has not called any of these countries an “Occupying Power.” Not even once.
It gets worse. Since 1967, General Assembly resolutions have referred to Israeli-held territories as “occupied” 2,342 times, while the territories mentioned above are referred to as “occupied” a mere 16 times combined. The term appears in 90% of resolutions dealing with Israel, and only in 14% of the much smaller number of resolutions dealing with the all the other situations, a difference that vastly surpasses the threshold of statistical significance. Similarly, Security Council resolutions refer to the disputed territories in the Israeli-Arab conflict as “occupied” 31 times, but only a total of five times in reference to all seven other conflicts combined . . .
Our findings don’t merely quantify the U.N.’s double standard. The evidence shows that the organization’s claim to represent the interest of international justice is hollow, because the U.N. has no interest in battling injustice unless Israel is the country accused.
(Disclosure: Penny Grunseid has been volunteering for HonestReporting over the summer.)
• Aaron David Miller weighs in on the US-Israel defense agreement due to be signed today.
US-Israeli MOU won't usher in better relations. Likely lay predicate for a virtual US initiative on peace process certain to annoy Bibi
— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) September 13, 2016
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi: My love for Shimon Peres
– Sen. Dan Coats: End US aid to Palestinian terrorists
– Jonathan Tobin: Where ethnic cleansing is permissible
– Moran Stern: How Syria is changing Israel’s position in the Mid-East
– Yoav Limor: Assad is sending a signal to Israel
– Herb Keinon: Obama sends message to enemies that US still has Israel’s back
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA xeeliz with additions by HonestReporting; Peres via YouTube/Peres; US Capitol CC BY-NC-ND Stephen Melkisethian;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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