Today’s Top Stories
1. Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama were due to meet in the White House today. Haaretz discussed the summit with Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, who says the White House will press the PM on settlements.
NPR and the Washington Post also preview what’s on the agenda (military aid, countering Iranian support for Syria and Hezbollah, and mending fences), while the New York Times looks at the history of the frosty Bibi-Bam relationship.
2. An Israeli Border Policeman succumbed to injuries from a Hebron car ramming attack last week. Binyamin Yakobovich, 19 years-old, was due to be buried in Kiryat Ata, near Haifa. Yakobovich was the 12th Israeli fatality in the last two months of stabbings, shootings, and car-rammings.
3. To strengthen business and trade ties with Jordan, Israel announced plans to build a new bridge over the Jordan River to connect with industrial zones on both sides of the border. The bridge will be built near Tirat Zvi, which is south of Beit Shean. More at the Times of Israel.
4. Facebooking With Jodi Rudoren: The New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief responds to a post about “scorecard journalism.”
5. The JNS takes a closer look at media coverage of the latest terror attacks, with comments from our very own Simon Plosker.
Israel and the Intifada
• A Palestinian woman who was shot and killed while trying to stab a guard near the Alfei Menashe settlement. A suicide martyrdom note was found on her purse.
• If you want more examples of Palestinian incitement, check out Palestinian Media Watch‘s roundup of songs promoting violence on social media.
• Mahmoud Abbas denied media reports that he was hospitalized in Cairo.
Several reports in Israeli and Egyptian media reported that Abbas was taken to a local hospital after falling ill. Some surmised that Abbas feigned the illness to avoid a meeting with former Fatah official Mohammad Dahlan being brokered by Egypt.
Abbas looked pretty good meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
• UK academics participate in Haifa U. conference, rejecting calls for academic boycott of Israel. More at the Jerusalem Post.
• Israel struck a Hamas installation in Gaza after a rocket was fired into southern Israel.
Around the World
• Terror in Jordan as two Americans and a South African were killed at police training center. The gunman, a Jordanian police officer, was killed.
• Here’s a fascinating example of how what you believe to be the “narrative” informs the way you report on it. Why exactly did six photographers shoot vastly different portraits of the same subject? Backstory on this experiment and video at Imaging Resource (hat tip to Eitan Kupietzky).
Commentary/Analysis
• My antennae are twitching over MK Michael Oren’s op-ed in CNN. The former Israeli ambassador to Washington urges the White House to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan.
While hosting Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Obama could acknowledge the fact that the Golan can no longer be exchanged for peace with Syria because Syria no longer exists. He could recognize Israel’s immense contributions to the region’s security and the dangers that increasingly jeopardize it. By backing Israel’s historic claims, the United States could send a potent message to the entire Middle East — that the Golan Heights will never again be a battlefield.
• Worth reading: For the hardcore pro-Palestinian, it’s a drama with two characters – the helpless Palestinian, totally without agency and therefore without fault, and the equally mythic “Zionist Jew,” evil beyond redemption. Alex Ryvchin unpacks “the theater of the Palestinian solidarity movement.”
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Aaron David Miller: Barack and Bibi: Unhappy partners meet again
– Jeffrey Goldberg: Obama: ‘If not now, Bibi, then when?’
– Chemi Shalev: Good Obama meeting, unless Netanyahu goes off script
– Abraham Ben-Zvi: Which Obama will prevail?
– Yossi Kuperwasser: Do the Palestinians really want two states?
– Yonah Bob: The ICC decision on ‘Mavi Marmara’ may actually be good for Israel
– Robert Fulford: The Facebook intifada
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Henrik Wieduwilt with modifications by HonestReporting
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
Before you comment on this article, please remind yourself of our Comments Policy. Any comments deemed to be in breach of the policy will be removed at the editor’s discretion.
