Today’s Top Stories
1. Palestinians clashed with Israeli police on the Temple Mount for three days. Shortly before Rosh HaShanah, the new year’s day on the Jewish calendar, police received intelligence that Palestinians were preparing piles of stones and barricades in the Al-Aqsa Mosque to cause violence over the holiday. CNN writes:
Israeli officers said that “rioters” hurled rocks and fireworks at them in an attempt to keep them at bay, but the confrontation spilled from inside out onto the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem, where it went on for hours.
Israeli police denied entering the mosque itself. Palestinians lighting fireworks inside the mosque caused damage to rugs and furniture. Relative calm was restored this afternoon.
Meanwhile, a 64-year-old Israeli, Alexander Levlovitz, was killed in a stone-throwing attack Sunday night in Jerusalem.
Levlovitz died of his injuries in the early hours of Monday morning after he lost control of his car when it came under attack by assailants hurling stones; he drove into a ditch and hit a pole, initially sustaining serious wounds. Police were investigating whether Levlovitz suffered cardiac arrest when his car crashed.
See related HonestReporting critiques:
– Media Muck Ups Over the Temple Mount
– LA Times Deceives Over Temple Mount Troubles
– NY Times Headline Fail Over “West Bank” Attack in Jerusalem
2. As the UNRWA faces financial difficulties, Jordan worries it will be forced to resettle millions of Palestinian refugees.
According to UNRWA figures, more than two million registered Palestinian refugees live in Jordan. Most of the refugees, but not all, have full (Jordanian) citizenship, the figures show. The refugees live in 10 UNRWA-recognized camps in Jordan.
3. A former Palestinian hunger-striker who agreed to end his two-month long fast after the High Court of Justice suspended his administrative detention was re-arrested on Wednesday. Police re-arrested Mohammed Allaan as he was leaving the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, where he was recuperating from a 65-day hunger strike. The key word in this Times of Israel report is suspended, as opposed to released.
The High Court of Justice in August suspended Allaan’s administrative detention after tests showed that he had sustained brain damage as a result of his two-month fast. There were conflicting reports as to whether the damage was reversible.
The temporary suspension of his status as prisoner was enough to allow Allaan to end his hunger strike, family members said at the time.
Allaan’s family told reporters he resumed his hunger strike.
Israel and the Palestinians
• This gives new meaning to power struggle. Thanks to Hamas-Fatah feuding, Gaza’s without electricity, and Palestinians have been protesting for three days. Hamas says the demonstrations are against Mahmoud Abbas, while Fatah says they’re against Hamas. The truth, according to al-Araby:
Although the protests are seemingly being used by both Hamas and Fatah for their own political ends, many Gazans expressed their disillusion with both.
By the way, Israel’s evaluating the possibility of transferring natural gas to Gaza as part of a Qatari proposal. And Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin was sharply critical of Hamas’s handling of the strip’s energy shortage.
• AP reports the Palestinians plan a ceremony to raise their flag at the UN’s New York headquarters on September 30, when Mahmoud Abbas addresses the body. Aaron David Miller explains what the Palestinian flag at the UN does — and doesn’t — symbolize.
• Is it me, or is this the same method Abbas used to get out of holding presidential elections in 2009? Don’t cancel anything — just find new reasons to delay until everybody forgets.
Abbas’s plan to convene PLO’s parliament-in-exile delayed at least 3 months
• According to an NGO report picked up by the Times of Israel, in Israel, more Jewish holy sites desecrated than Christian, Muslim ones combined. But the perpetrators aren’t necessarily Arabs:
“I was surprised to discover the number of esoteric attacks against Jewish sites across the country, which people hardly hear of,” Tzidkiyahu said. “Many synagogues are broken into for reasons which are assumed to be criminal, and there’s lots of violence against Conservative and Reform [synagogues], which we presume are carried out by Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox elements. In some cases synagogues are vandalized for nationalistic reasons, especially in border areas.”
• Rocket fired from Gaza falls inside Gaza
• Turkey’s flirtation with terrorists is falling apart.
• Soldiers foiled a Palestinian stabbing attack near Nablus.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• The New York Times’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan says the paper was right to correct an insensitive graphic about Jewish US senators and senators with heavily Jewish constituencies and whether they support the Iran deal. Sullivan faulted editors for not including an explanatory note after revisions were made. The graphic accompanied this article.
• When the mullahs stop their “death to Israel” trash talk, stop exporting terror, stop treating women and minorities as second class citizens, stop executing gays, I’ll be more open to mushy Rosh HaShanah tweets about “shared Abrahamic roots” from people like Hassan Rouhani. This tweet makes my skin crawl.
• Tehran claims it found new uranium reserves.
• Iran freed five senior Al-Qaida operatives. It’s believed they will travel to Syria and plan new attacks against the West. According to Sky News, the five were released in exchange for an Iranian diplomat abducted in Yemen.
Intelligence sources said that while the Shi’a theocracy of Iran and the Sunni extremist group al Qaeda were theoretical enemies, there has been an “understanding” that the two would avoid attacks on one another and focus on battling the “shared threat” of the West.
Coincidentally, a Wall St. Journal staff-ed (click via Google News) calls on the US to release Al-Qadia documents seized during the US raid on Osama Bin Laden’s Abbottabad hideout.
Around the World
• Prime Minister Netanyahu will visit Moscow next week to discuss Russia’s growing military presence in Syria.
• A student who photographed Jeremy Corbyn standing by a Hezbollah flag insisted to The Independent that he won’t let Corbyn’s critics take it out of context. And exactly was the context?
Samuel Hardy, 21, was freelancing at the Al-Quds Day rally in London in 2012 when he spotted the Islington North MP in the crowds.
His photo shows Mr Corbyn appearing relaxed and smiling, as a man walks past behind him carrying Hezbollah’s distinctive yellow and green flag.
The background you need to know is that Al-Quds Day was initiated by Iran and is held on the last Friday of Ramadan to whip up the masses against Israel. The poster behind Corbyn quotes the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, which makes the context accurate enough, even without the chance splash of yellow from the Hezbollah flag.
You can see more photos of the 2012 London rally, including one of Corbyn addressing the crowd.
• Poll: 70% of European Jews conceal their religion
• Egypt massacred 1,000 people in 1 day, now seeks seat on UN Security Council
• Imagine the outrage if Israel did this:
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Avi Issacharoff: On the Temple Mount, a morass a month in the making
– Danny Rubinstein: The last chairman of the Palestinian Authority?
– David Brinn: Biting the BDS bullet
– Ben-Dror Yemini: Oslo quitters
– Dan Margalit: UK Jews have reason for concern
– Norman Bailey: Europe’s refugee crisis a warning to Israel
• In light of the wave of refugees flooding Europe, the world must absolutely not regard Bashar Assad as “part of the solution” to the Syrian civil war. Yakub Halabi bluntly explains why:
The flux of refugees from Syria is systematically planned by this regime.
Assad’s main goal is to dwindle the population size of religious communities in Syria that oppose the regime and may constitute a menace to its survival and disperse them in Europe or elsewhere.
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Jon S; lightbulb CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Christopher E. Hamrick;
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