Today’s Top Stories
1. The political turmoil from Avigdor Liberman’s resignation continues: The Bayit HaYehudi party threatened to quit the coalition if its leader, Naftali Bennett, was not offered the defense portfolio. Cabinet ministers Moshe Kahlon and Aryeh Deri urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call early elections. And leaders of the Orthodox parties were tight-lipped but skeptical about what the turmoil would mean for the issue of army conscription for yeshiva students.
With the likelihood of early elections, the White House can’t roll out its peace plan. (UPDATE: Shortly after this roundup was published, Haaretz quoted White House officials that the peace plan will still be released within 2-4 months). And last, but not least, Hamas celebrated Liberman’s resignation as ‘victory for Gaza.’
2. Not-so-great moments in coexistence: The Associated Press reports the PA suspended a Palestinian police chief and referred him to an “investigative committee” after photos surfaced on social media showing him helping Israeli soldiers change a flat tire in the Hebron area.
3. Minnesota’s newly-elected Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar says she backs BDS after having told a Jewish audience during her campaign that it “stops the dialogue” and is “counteractive.”
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Palestinians laid Mahmoud Abu Asabeh to rest in Hebron yesterday. He was the only person killed during Hamas’ rocket barrage earlier this week. The Times of Israel notes that no senior Fatah or PA officials attended the funeral. Asabeh, a 48-year-old contractor, was killed when a rocket struck the Ashkelon apartment building where he worked.
• Three policemen were lightly injured when they were stabbed by a Palestinian who snuck into a Jerusalem police station by scaling a fence on Wednesday night. A fourth officer was lightly hurt during the scuffle to subdue the attacker.
• While foreign dignitaries visiting the Western Wall have become more common in the last two years, the Czech Republic’s foreign minister managed to raise eyebrows in Israel and ire in the PA. That’s because Tomas Petricek visit “marked the first time a European foreign minister was joined at the wall by an Israeli diplomat.”
The EU, like much of the international community, does not recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, including the Old City, and so officials of member states usually refrain from going there in the company of Israeli officials. European dignitaries who want to visit the site usually do so in a private capacity.
Petricek later told Palestinian media that a planned Czech cultural center in Jerusalem won’t have any diplomatic status, and that Prague does not intend to move its embassy out of Tel Aviv.
Around the World
• Stealing a page from former American football star Colin Kaepernick, two students at a Cape Town Jewish school were disciplined after they “‘took a knee’ in solidarity with Palestinians while Hatikva was sung during an award ceremony.” Kaepernick polarized the National Football League in 2016 by kneeling during the pre-game national anthem in protest against police brutality.
• Over at the University of Tennessee, antisemitic hate messages, swastikas and other Nazi symbols were painted on an iconic campus boulder known as The Rock. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that this is the second time in two weeks The Rock was defaced like this.
• A French Jewish mayor’s home was covered with antisemitic graffiti. Police in Brumath, near Strasbourg, “have no suspects in the incident, which occurred on the 80th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms,” per the JTA.
• A drunk Irish lawyer had a horrible meltdown when neither her alleged status as an international human rights lawyer for the Palestinians nor her threats of a boycott against Air India impressed the flight crew to serve her extra wine, poor thing. According to the Daily Mail, Simone O’Broin was arrested by British police upon landing at Heathrow Airport. Indian journalist Tarun Shukla‘s video of part of the foul-mouthed rant went viral, reinforcing Israeli suspicions that a lot of pro-Palestinian activists are just bigoted bullies.
They said she allegedly stole a second bottle from the service area in direct defiance of airline staff, and shouted at the cabin crew for up to five hours.
https://twitter.com/shukla_tarun/status/1062356754636423168
• Shutterstock, one of the largest companies selling photos and illustrations online, deleted antisemitic images from its site.
Commentary
• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels on Israel’s political tumult and the Gaza situation.
– Jonathan Tobin: Hamas rockets and the idea of two states
– Pinhas Inbari: A “joint operations room” in Gaza – the new factor in Gaza’s balance of power
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Israel-Hamas ceasefire pushes Abbas towards irrelevancy
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Netanyahu’s strategic gamble in Gaza
– Nahum Barnea: Netanyahu let Hamas win
– Yoav Limor: Slogans don’t win wars
– Weekly Standard (staff-ed) A ceasefire in Gaza
– Washington Post (staff-ed): After an explosion of violence, Netanyahu chooses peace in Gaza
– Lahav Harkov: Can Netanyahu’s teetering government survive?
– David Horovitz: Israelis aren’t happy with Netanyahu, but still look mainly to him to solve Gaza
– Raoul Wootliff: Liberman’s exit puts election ball in Netanyahu’s court, but not on his terms
– Amos Harel: Avigdor Lieberman: The Israeli Defense Minister who never was
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Ira Rifkin: Beat the journalism clock: Track rising anti-Semitism via Jewish and Israeli news media
– Ariel Sobel: The Women’s March is victim blaming. Again.
– Jonathan Kaplan: How anti-Semitic stereotypes from a century ago still echo today
Featured image: CC BY Matthew G; Netanyahu via YouTube/Elizabeth Rimini; Kaepernick via YouTube/ABC News;
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