Today’s Top Stories
1. In a first, UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says Israel “has a right to exist.” (Caveat: He said Israel has a right to exist under the “1948 agreement.”)
It is not entirely clear which “agreement of the original borders of 1948” Corbyn was referring to. The UN partition plan of 1947 recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, but the borders in the plan were very different from those that Israel controlled by the time war ended in March 1949. Israel accepted the Partition Plan while the Arab states votes against the proposal.
More on what was said at the leadership hustings (or town hall meeting, if you prefer) at the Jewish News, Jewish Chronicle, and International Business Times.
2. Palestinian terror continues. This afternoon, Border Police near Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs shot two Palestinians with knives seeking to stab Israelis. This morning, a Palestinian stabbed and wounded two Israeli policemen by Herod’s Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City. And on Sunday evening, a Palestinian minor was arrested with a knife and firebombs near an Israeli Border Police base near Jericho.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
3. Netanyahu and Obama to meet in New York on Wednesday for what will presumably be their last face-to-face jaw-jaw of Obama’s presidency, according to Israeli media reports.
4. Palestinian “Fellow Executed”?! Hatem Abdel-Hafiz al-Shaloudi was no “fellow” and the soldiers he tried to stab didn’t “execute” him.
5. How to Write Like an Action Hero: Want to get your letters to the editor published? Here are ten tips for making your voice heard.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Good news and bad news from the International Criminal Court in the Hague. According to the Jerusalem Post, the court is unlikely to pursue war crimes charges against Israel related to the 2014 Gaza war. But settlements? They’re a different story.
• Fathi Hammad, the man behind Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV, told the Washington Post he’s proud to be on the State Department’s designated terror list. I’m glad he’s finally designated, but as the Post wonders, why now?
Why the State Department decided to name Hammad as a global terrorist now is unclear. It is well known that Hammad founded the TV station, but it went on the air soon after Hamas, an Islamist militant group, took control of the coastal enclave in 2007.
Commentary/Analysis
• Without commenting on the US military aid package, David Hazony makes me go hmmmmm.
Funny: same people who insisted Bibi was "destroying" US-Israel relationship in #IranDeal are now saying he wasnt hardline enough on aid pkg
— David Hazony (@davidhazony) September 18, 2016
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Alex Fishman: Weekend attacks just the tip of the iceberg
– Reuven Berko: Terrorism never went away
– Avi Issacharoff: The arcane pathway to Hamas’s top post, and who might win it
– Ran Dagoni: Gulf states gain from new US-Israel aid package
– Jonathan Tobin: Did Netanyahu get a bad deal?
– Zalman Shoval: Hollow criticism of a good deal
– Amos Yadlin: US aid package: A strategic missed opportunity
– Fred Maroun: Lebanon’s hatred of Israel a symbol of dysfunction
– Moshe Arens: A Palestinian state doesn’t have to be ‘ethnically cleansed’ of Jews
– Don Murray: The big ruckus over a small Czech publisher’s map of Israel
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA nahlinse; map via Wikimedia Commons; Corbyn CC BY David Holt;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
Before you comment on this article, please remind yourself of our Comments Policy. Any comments deemed to be in breach of the policy will be removed at the editor’s discretion.
