Today’s Top Stories
1. A man with a knife was shot apparently trying to enter the Israeli embassy in Ankara. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said no embassy staff were hurt during the incident. Turkish bomb squad personnel were also investigating a suspicious package found near the embassy.
CNN Turk named the attacker as Osman Nuri Casliskan, 38, and said that as he rushed the embassy, he yelled, “We’ll stop bloodshed in Middle East.” The report described him as “mentally unstable.”
More on the story at Hurriyet.
2. Mahmoud Abbas lauded the Jordanian ‘martyr’ who tried to stab Israeli soldiers earlier this week. Inciting his own people is bad enough. Now he’s whipping up the neighbors too?
Amro’s family, which lives in the city of Karak, Jordan, received an official letter from Abbas, which describes Amro as “A martyr who has quenched the land of Palestine with his pure blood.”
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3. As Netanyahu arrives in New York, UN General Assembly speeches ignore Palestinian violence.
Among the notables addressing the peace process were Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (who was sharply criticized by Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon) plus US, French, Egyptian and Turkish presidents Barack Obama, Francois Hollande, Abdel Fatah al Sisi, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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5. HonestReporting’s Daniel Pomerantz appeared on the i24 News show, FaceOff, where he debated with Israeli Arab journalist Ali Waked what motivates Palestinian lone wolf terror attacks. How much is attributed to incitement and how much to a loss of hope. The two also discussed the UN’s role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
FaceOff – 09/20/2016 by i24news-en
Israel and the Palestinians
• A 13-year-old Palestinian girl trying to kill herself rushed guards at a checkpoint near Alfei Menashe in the northern West Bank. Security forces shot her in the leg after ignoring orders to stop. The girl was lightly wounded and is now hospitalized in Kfar Sava. According to Israeli media reports, the girl told police, “I came to die.” No weapons were found on the girl.
• Reuters takes a closer look at the new US military aid package’s impact on the Israeli defense industry. The deal phases out the amount spent locally, threatening a lot of jobs, but it’s not necessarily gloom and doom.
None of the companies asked by Reuters to discuss the aid package were willing to speak on the record, mentioning concerns about future business. But several executives, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that as a result of the deal they were already considering contingency plans.
One option would be for larger firms to open subsidiaries in the United States, like Elbit has done, to compensate for the loss of business. They might also acquire smaller U.S. firms.
As one executive put it: “This should be translated into an opportunity for the Israeli industry, which should penetrate new markets and improve their competitive ability.”
• If you haven’t seen it yet, the London Broadcasting Channel hosted the Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors for a debate, in which Mark Regev and Manuel Hassassian sparred over issues like the peace process, incitement, and more.
• In a meeting with American Jewish leaders, Egyptian President Sisi praised Israel for its cooperation with Egypt in the fight against Islamic terror groups in the Sinai.
Around the World
• With a nod to Israel, the US is eyeing rapprochement with Sudan.
Since January, Israel has been pushing the international community, and specifically the US, to offer support to Sudan after the African country, which has faced severe criticism for its human rights record, severed its ties to Iran.
• I’m not going to comment on whether or not ethnic profiling is right for the US, but since Israeli practices are being muddled in the US presidential campaign, the JTA gets my thumbs up for clearing the air. I don’t like seeing Israeli policies misrepresented.
Donald Trump wants to profile likely terrorists the way Israel does it. The problem is, Israel and the United States already profile in similar ways – and neither in the way Trump prefers.
• Iran threatens to turn Tel Aviv and Haifa “into dust.”
• A leaked review of BBC News salaries finds that the journalists there get paid “up to forty per cent more than their competitors in the commercial sector,” the Daily Telegraph reports.
Commentary/Analysis
• Julie Nathan‘s rightly worried about anti-Semitism going mainstream with media culpability. She focuses her attention on reader comments posted on mainstream news sites.
Antisemitic expression has reached into the mainstream media from the hate-filled fringes, and is becoming normalised as acceptable discourse about Jews. As Professor Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Minister of Justice, stated: “The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers – it began with words.”
While vilification and violence against Jews increase around the world, mainstream media sites are playing with fire as they provide shelter and succour to racists by becoming a conduit and microphone for their hate speech. When the mainstream media allows this to happen, it contributes to a toxic social atmosphere in which it becomes acceptable to demonise a people, to undermine their human rights to liberty and security, and eventually to commit brutal crimes against them.
Plenty of commentary about the UN powwow:
– Michael Wilner: Israel waits for Obama’s UN shoe to drop
– David Horovitz: Netanyahu’s (mildly triumphant) last goodbye to Obama
– Herb Keinon: Ghosts of Netanyahu-Obama meetings past
– Chemi Shalev: Obama’s anti-Israeli farewell speech at the UN
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Amb. Lars Faaborg-Andersen: Why Israelis should not give up on peace
– Jonathan Schanzer: World must focus on Palestinian unity to achieve peace
– Sever Plocker: A powder keg waiting to explode
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: “The mafia of destruction”
– Sarah Stern: Sorely needed: Some reality therapy
– Norman Bailey: Saudi Arabia pivoting towards Israel?
– Daniel Finkelstein: Labour’s chaos over anti-Semitism is shameful
– Dennis Ross: Iran cannot be a partner in struggle against ISIS
Featured image: CC BY-SA S. Carter with additions by HonestReporting; Turkish flag CC BY-SA KLMircea; money CC BY Images Money;
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