Today’s Top Stories
1. Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces in Syria are increasingly refusing to obey orders as casualties mount. Notably, according to Asharq al-Awsat, many of the “traitors” are commanding officers.
2. Seeking to allay Palestinian concerns, Jordan’s King Abdullah says there are no plans to put surveillance cameras inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque or Dome of the Rock. AP coverage.
Abdullah said the cameras would be brought from Jordan and that the plan was to build a control room in the compound under control of the Waqf that would provide a feed to Jordan. It was not clear what Israel’s role in the surveillance would be.
By the way, the PLO demands the Temple Mount’s status quo be restored to 1999. I’m not clear what specifically happened that year.
3. In the halls of the UN, the PA claims Israel’s harvesting organs from dead Palestinians. Israel’s ambassador to the UN denounced the allegation as an anti-Semitic blood-libel.
4: Lawyer Suing Facebook: Social Media Has Social Responsibility: Palestinian incitement is spread most effectively through social media and it’s time the companies took steps to stop it.
Israel and the Intifada
• An Israeli Border Police officer is fighting for his life after what police suspect was a deliberate car-ramming attack near Hebron yesterday. The Palestinian driver was shot and killed.
• Worth watching: Saeb Erekat was evasive and unusually desperate on BBC HARDtalk. Erekat couldn’t bring himself to condemn Palestinian stabbing attacks, couldn’t defend what the PA has delivered to the Palestinians, and offered no vision to compete with Islamic State for the hearts and minds of Palestinians.
For those of you abroad who can’t watch the BBC (lucky you!) here is the BBC Hardtalk interview with Saeb Erekat (see below for detail)
Posted by Sussex Friends Of Israel on Wednesday, November 4, 2015
• An Israeli-Arab woman was arrested and charged with spying for a Gaza terror group and agreeing to carry out a terror attack. She was most recently instructed to gather intelligence on various sites in and around Haifa. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• The new German ambassador to Israel told Israeli media he opposes boycotts of the Jewish state, but defended soon-to-be-released EU guidelines on labeling settlement products.
According to Von Goetze, the EU’s initiative to mark products originating in the settlements is merely a technical step.
• Israel released former hunger striker Islamic Jihad operative, Mohammed Allaan.
• Jordanian sheikh clarifies: It’s ‘mandatory’ to kill Jews
• Palestinian supporters shouted down an Israeli academic visiting the U. of Minnesota and an Israeli Bedouin diplomat visiting the U. of Windsor.
• State Sen. Michael Gianaris to propose bill preventing New York from working with businesses that support boycott of Israel
• Ouch. Ran Baratz, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s new media advisor, is in hot water for past comments he made about Presidents Ruby Rivlin and Barack Obama, and Secretary of State John Kerry.
• Gazans claim that seawater being pumped into smuggling tunnels is causing flooding in the streets of Rafah, contaminating water supplies, weakening building foundations, and creating an environmental mess. But nobody’s going to care because Egypt, not Israel, is doing the dirty work — which Reuters adds is getting results.
Tunnel-builders said Egypt has pumped in water several times since September, and that over the course of a few weeks had done more damage to the network, which once accounted for an estimated 30 percent of Gaza’s imports, than Israeli bombing had caused over the past two decades.
Now, the diggers said, fewer than 20 tunnels remain for commercial goods, with easy-to-smuggle cigarettes the main contraband. No one can, or will, say how many weapons tunnels remain – a secret that is guarded by Hamas and other armed groups, which last fought a war with Israel in 2014.
• Just a little satire:
Mideast Matters
• One of the selling points of the nuclear accord was that it would moderate the mullahs, right? The Wall. St. Journal (click via Google News) reports a surge in Iranian hack attacks against the email and social media accounts of various US government officials. The attacks coincide with the arrest of Siamak Namazi, an American-Iranian citizen.
• Iran officially marks 36 years of loathing for US.
• Hunted by Islamic State, Syrian citizen journalists appeal for help.
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Abbas inciting with one hand, restraining with the other
– Jonathan D. Halevi: How a blood libel against Israel is born
– Ronni Shaked: Returning terrorists’ bodies only intensifies terror
– Reuven Berko: Dead terrorists and paganism
– Megan Dunn: Anti-Semitism and abuse is not acceptable – not online, not ever
– New York Post (staff-ed): Truth-telling cameras — Palestinians’ new foe
– Adam Taylor: Why ‘Death to America’ won’t go away
Image: CC BY-NC-SA flickr/Phil Gyford; camera CC BY-NC flickr/Thomas Hawk;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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