Today’s Top Stories
1. In a televised speech last night, Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of carrying out “field executions,” and trying to change the status quo on the Temple Mount. And, notably, Abbas didn’t condemn the violence or make any appeals for calm.
But the Palestinian leader got egg on his face for claiming that a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, Ahmed Manasra, was “executed” by Israelis. The reality is that A) Manasra stabbed an Israeli boy riding a bicycle in Pisgat Zeev, and B) Manasra is alive and well in Hadassah En Kerem Hospital. The hospital released photos of the boy, while Dr. Asher Salmon said Manasra’s in light-to-moderate condition and should be discharged in a few days.
Although the transcript on the PLO’s English web site is billed as a “full translation,” the Jerusalem Post points out the key line was quietly amended to say Manasra and other kids are “shot at in cold blood.”
2. State Department spokesman John Kirby was forced to retract a claim that the Temple Mount’s status quo was violated. Israeli officials were angered by his comments to reporters. More on the story at Haaretz.
3. Iran unveiled a massive underground missile base on state TV.
The tunnel, hundreds of metres long and about 10 metres high, was filled with missiles and hardware . . . .
Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace division, said numerous such tunnels existed across the country at a depth of 500 metres.
4. AP’s Sins of Omission: The Associated Press asks why Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are involved in terror but omits some important facts and context.
5. CNN: Israel “Concerned” Enough to Carry Out “Retaliatory Attacks”: It’s a cause for concern when you can’t find your house keys. Terrorists trying to kill people in the streets is, uh, terrifying.
6. Audio: Defending Our Lives — No Apologies: HR’s Yarden Frankl discusses Big Media’s coverage of the intifada violence, particularly downplaying Palestinian incitement and Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, while accusing Israel of excessive force on the Mottle Wolf Show.
Israel and the Intifada
• Tel Aviv’s main highway was shut down amid a manhunt for two Palestinians police said were planning a terror attack. Two suspects were apprehended, but interrogators found no evidence they were planning any attacks; the two were due to be released later in the day.
• Last night, a Palestinian stabbed a woman boarding a bus near the Jerusalem Central Bus Station. Ahmed Sha’aban, who recently served a three-year prison term for terror activity, was shot and killed by responding police.
• Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, was prevented from leaving Israel when officials at Ben Gurion Airport prevented him from boarding a flight to Turkey.
• My heart bleeds for the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen:
• Anxious Israelis are shunning public transportation.
• Street row in Nazareth exposes rift among Arab-Israelis on violence.
• Alaa Abu Jamal, the Palestinian who rammed his car into a Jerusalem bus stop and stabbed an Israeli to death, was “from Bezek” in the sense that he worked for the phone company. But for readers of the French paper, Liberation, Bezek was identified as an Arab town (!?) How did the paper determine that this mythical town is located west of Jerusalem?
Jamal is actually a resident of eastern Jerusalem. The paper corrected the map.
• Israeli government officials were speaking up in the media. In a Times of Israel blog post, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat affirmed that the city won’t succumb to terror.
Meanwhile, spokesman, Mark Regev, discussed the violence with CNN‘s Wolf Blitzer.
Around the World
• The Jerusalem Post picked up on the US State Department’s 2014 report on religious freedom. The main takeaway? Anti-Israel sentiments in Europe crossed the line of anti-Semitism.
Asked by a reporter how he determined the dividing line between anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments, Saperstein replied that while criticism of any nation is appropriate, the difference is “right on the cusp of that line when it holds one country to different standards than it would hold any other country.”
“Where it has often crossed the line is when groups try to argue that Israel is an inherently illegal state and doesn’t have a right to exist as a Jewish state here and takes actions to delegitimize those fundamental rights,” he said.
• UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn accepted a £5,000 donation from Ted Honderich, who once wrote in a letter to The Guardian that Palestinians have a “moral right” to terrorism.
• FYI, Danny Cohen resigned as the BBC’s director of television.
Commentary/Analysis
• Tweet of the day, from Eugene Kontorovich:
• Palestinian scholar Bassam Tawil points out that the Palestinians carrying out stabbing attacks were financially well-off and well-educated. And because of their permanent resident status, they could freely travel in Israel and enjoy the state’s health care and other social benefits.
What does all this mean? It shows that the Palestinian terrorists are not driven by poverty and deprivation, as many have long been arguing. Palestinian terrorists are driven by hatred for Jews because of what their leaders, media and mosques are telling them: that the Jews are the enemy and that they have no right to be in this part of the world.
It also shows that this conflict is not about Islamic holy sites or Jerusalem, but about murdering Jews whenever possible. Murdering two Jews inside the Old City of Jerusalem or a Jewish couple in front of their four children has nothing to do with the Aqsa Mosque or “occupation.” It is simply about the desire to murder as many Jews as one can. The terrorists did not draw any distinction between a Jew living in east Jerusalem, the West Bank, Tel Aviv or Afula [northern Israel]. For the terrorists and their sponsors, all Jews are “settlers” and Israel is one big settlement that needs to be eliminated.
Our conflict with Israel is not about “occupation” or Jerusalem or holy sites or borders. Nor is it about poverty and poor living conditions or walls and fences and checkpoints. This conflict is really about Israel’s very existence in this part of the world. The current wave of terrorism is just another phase in our dream to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. This is not an intifada. It is just another killing-spree aimed at terrorizing the Jews and forcing them to leave this part of the world. It already succeeded in the rest of the Middle East, and is now being done to the Christians as well.
Making a similar argument, the Wall St. Journal‘s Bret Stephens weighs in on the violence in a video worth watching.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Avi Issacharoff: A toothless speech from a defanged Abbas
– Aaron David Miller: 4 things that aren’t helping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
– Elliott Abrams: Kerry links terror to settlement expansion
– David Horovitz: What do you do when the people trying to kill you live around the block?
– Frida Ghitis: With Israel, the headlines tell a very different story
– Amos Harel: Israel still keeping most of its powder dry
– Colin Rubenstein: Retreat from peace talks yields a deadly harvest
– Tom Wilson: The nuclear accord has not made an ally of Iran. Quite the opposite
Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting, flickr/Shironeko Euro
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