Today’s Top Stories
1. There’s Jordanian-Palestinian friction over the plan to install 24/7 surveillance cameras on the Temple Mount and live stream the footage on the Internet. After PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki called the proposal, “a new trap by the Israelis,” Jordanian politicians and pundits slammed the PA.
Meanwhile, NPR‘s Emily Harris sheds more light on how the plan changes the situation and why the Palestinians are unhappy:
Well, there’s cameras already everywhere throughout the Old City. What Israeli officials are saying is there’s no sharing of video information, and they may not right now be able to see into certain areas of the compound – like inside the mosques and so forth. There’s been a less enthusiastic response to this idea from Palestinian officials. There have been a couple Palestinian officials out there over the weekend saying that they worry that this would be a way for Israelis to track people – Palestinians – and then lead to their arrests.
2. In policy shift, the US invited Iran to the next round of Syria talks. Iran accepted the overture this afternoon.
3. Is Holland planning to build a center for Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Buitenveldert, the Amsterdam suburb where half of Dutch Jewry live?
According to Esther Voet, a former director of the community’s main watchdog on anti-Semitism, the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, 70 percent of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the Netherlands were committed by immigrants.
4. Demand the Media Cover PA Glorification of Terror: Once again, Palestinians name a street after a terrorist murderer. Once again, no press coverage. Enough’s enough. Sign our petition.
5. Journalism Bleeding in the Streets: “Dueling Narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” is an attempt to provide journalistic “balance” on a story where none exists.
Israel and the Intifada
• Shortly before this roundup was published, there were breaking reports of a stabbing attack in a Gush Etzyon supermarket and another in Hebron. Last night, two Palestinians who stabbed a soldier in Gush Etzyon were shot and killed. The soldier was moderately wounded.
• Addressing the UN Human Rights Council, Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of carrying out extrajudicial killings, terrorizing Palestinians, etc. and requested international protection.
• The chief rabbi of the Western Wall is urging people to return to the holy site following an “extremely dramatic drop” in visits in the past month. Besides the fact that it’s safe to visit, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich told YNet:
‘Let’s not reward terror,’ he says.
• We can agree to disagree on whether demolishing the homes of Palestinian terrorists is an effective deterrent. But The Economist calls the demolitions “further punishment.” If you shoot a Palestinian trying to stab you to death, that’s an act of self-defense, not punishment.
WITH the walls stripped bare and the furniture dismantled, members of the Abu Jamal family gathered last week for perhaps the final Friday lunch in a home that will soon be blown up. Alaa Abu Jamal, a married father of three, drove his car into a Jerusalem bus stop on October 13th, and then hacked a bystander to death with a meat cleaver. He was shot by a security guard and arrested. Israeli authorities decided to destroy his family’s home in Jebel al-Mukaber, a grim district in East Jerusalem, as a further punishment. The courts have imposed a one-week stay, but the demolition could still occur early in November.
• Bungled headline of the day, courtesy the Irish Times. You have to read the article to find out the Palestinians had stabbed an Israeli soldier.
• Palestinian terror attacks, by the numbers:
Of the 1,703 attacks in 2015, a staggering 778 attacks have been launched against Israelis since Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) last month – which killed 11 civilians and injured about 100 civilians and soldiers.
• A UN Security Council resolution to get peace talks back on track would call on the PA to halt its efforts to prosecute Israel in the International Criminal Court, while calling on Israel to freeze settlement activity and home demolitions. Haaretz obtained a copy of the draft spearheaded by New Zealand.
• Richard Lakin was laid to rest after succumbing to injuries from a terror attack on a Jerusalem bus two weeks ago. An Israeli-American stressed the importance of coexistence, his death was a local story in the Boston Globe and Hartford Courant.
• Anti-Israel academic boycotters STILL don’t like being boycotted.
• Harry Potter author JK Rowling feels compelled to reassert her left-wing credentials as she defends signing a letter denouncing cultural boycotts of Israel.
Around the World
• Rabbi’s first interview since Marseilles synagogue stabbing attack: Assailant wasn’t ‘crazy,’ bystanders did nothing
• Hezbollah supporters, commanders questioning militia’s role in Syria, according to analysts; the organization’s death toll said to be 1,263, mostly from Hezbollah’s elite forces.
Commentary/Analysis
• Loved Elliott Abrams‘s spot-on response to self-professed Zionists Professors Steven Levitsky and Glen Weyl, who want to boycott Israel “out of love.”
The final words in the professors’ commentary speak again of love: While some people boycott Israel out of hatred, they will do it out of “love for Israel and the desire to save it.” In taking this position, they reject the views of the vast majority of “progressive” Israelis they claim to support and align themselves with every enemy of the Jewish state.
They are of course free to do this, but they should be more candid with us — and with themselves. They are trying to destroy Israel to save it, from Cambridge and Chicago, while Israelis face dangers every day. One such danger is terrorism. Another, we can see, is foolish professors whose intellectual pretensions lead them to ignore history and infantilize Palestinians.
• Two wonks writing look at the complex history of the Temple Mount and draw a surprising conclusion about the conflict. Geoffrey Clarfield and Salim Mansur write in the National Post:
Though this history has been deliberately obscured by advocates of political Islam or Islamism in recent years, it is all the more necessary today to hold Palestinians accountable for shredding their own Muslim tradition that holds the promise of religious coexistence and mutual respect among Christians, Jews and Muslims . . .
The solution to the contrived “problem” of Jews praying on the Temple Mount is simple. It is to recall Umar’s precedent, and insist Palestinians abide by it.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Haviv Rettig Gur: Losing Palestine
– Jonathan Schanzer: Why Hamas has not unleashed violence from Gaza
– Tom Friedman: Telling Mideast negotiators, ‘Have a nice life’
– Ron Lauder: Israel’s chance to forge a two-state peace amid terrorism
– Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner: An academic boycott of Israel will backfire
Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Ben Rea with additions by HonestReporting; Western Wall CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Stefano Corso; broken heart CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Romel;
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