Today’s Top Stories
1. An Israeli fighter jet shot down a Hamas drone over Gaza as it headed in the direction of Israeli air space.
2. The University of California-Berkeley reinstated controversial course on history of Palestine. The Los Angeles Times explains:
Then campus officials reversed gears Monday, reinstating the course after students, faculty, free-speech advocates and Palestinian rights groups issued letters and circulated petitions denouncing the suspension as a violation of academic freedom . . .
But a comparison of the curriculum plans showed only minor changes, most notably in the wording of the course description as questions to be explored rather than statements of what would be studied. Hadweh called the revisions he made in consultation with ethnic studies faculty members “cosmetic.”
“There were no substantive changes,” said Hadweh, 22, who is majoring in peace and conflict studies. “It was not the revisions that allowed the course to get approved, it was the pressure from people across the globe who were appalled that this public institution would so severely infringe upon the principles of academic freedom.”
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3. Hezbollah’s trying to fund raise among South Lebanon’s wealthy Shiite donors to support the children of its dead and wounded fighters in Syria. Now Lebanon explains the significance:
Al-Mustaqbal noted that the party has never made such a request before, even during its long periods of active combat operations against Israel.
The report comes amid reports Hezbollah is suffering from a financial crisis, with the US pressing stringent banking sanctions against the party which have forced Lebanese banks to take action.
Israel and the Palestinians
• An IDF soldier shot and killed a Palestinian who tried to stab him last night at a checkpoint near Hebron this morning. Last night, an Israeli soldier arrested a Palestinian who tried to stab him in Hebron.
• Alleged Palestinian stabber? What does CBS News editors think he was doing when he came upon soldiers with a knife?
• Worth reading: Reuters takes a closer look at press freedom in the West Bank and Gaza amid PA and Hamas crackdowns.
The result, journalists say, is an increasing amount of self-censorship. With reporters and bloggers being detained for weeks and in some cases suffering physical harm, others are thinking twice about how probing they want to be.
“The factor of self-censorship has turned into a security man sitting inside the minds of journalists, telling them what to write and what not to write,” said Fathy Sabbah, the Gaza correspondent for London-based Al-Hayyat newspaper.
• Some unusual and, uh, fawning coverage of the IDF:
Raid on home of Hamas operative leads to rescue of baby deer
• Tweet of the day from Herb Keinon. (We’ve seen this time and again.)
Obama, Netanyahu to meet Wed. Don't be surprised if some NGO releases report on planned settlement construction beforehand. Happens often.
— Herb Keinon (@HerbKeinon) September 19, 2016
Around the World
• The Saudi Army is accused of using incendiary white phosphorus weapons in Yemen. International law bans their use as a weapon because they can burn people to the bone, though they can be used to illuminate a battle field, mark targets or create smokescreens. I’m glad the Washington Post picked up on this story, though I’m disappointed it said “Israel used the weapon in populated areas of the Gaza Strip.”
• I see Reuters dusted off the word terror. I completely agree that people inspired by Islamic State to plot attacks on Jews, Shiite Muslims, and homosexuals at the Rio Olympics are not “freedom fighters.”
Commentary/Analysis
• As the US picks up the pieces after the recent New York and Minnesota terror attacks, Bret Stephens (Wall St. Journal, click via Google News) shares experiences from the Second Intifada and discusses what they mean for Americans.
The eclipse of al Qaeda by Islamic State means the terrorist threat is evolving from elaborately planned spectaculars such as 9/11 or the 2004 Madrid train bombings to hastily improvised and executed blood orgies of the sort we saw this year in Nice and Orlando. As attacks become more frequent and closer to everyday life, public tolerance for liberal pieties will wane. Not least among the casualties of the Palestinian intifada was the Israeli left.
Living in Israel in those crowded years taught me that free people aren’t so easily cowed by terror, and that jihadists are no match for a determined democracy. But it also taught me that democracies rarely muster their full reserves of determination until they’ve been bloodied one time too many.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Amos Harel: New terror wave begins, with relatively high casualty rate
– Eugene Kontorovich: A Palestinian state free of Jews?
– Shmuel Rosner: After Shimon Peres, Israel will no longer be young
– Olli Heinonen: Don’t rely on Iran’s good intentions
Featured image: CC BY Jon S; New York via YouTube/CNN;
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