Today’s Top Stories
1. Not good: Hezbollah paraded American military equipment in a Syria.
Significantly, the parade also featured American-manufactured M113 armored personnel carriers (APCs), of the type provided by the United States to the Lebanese army (LAF), prompting concerns among security analysts that Hezbollah may potentially have procured them from the LAF, which continues to receive American military aid.
Hezbollah parade in Qusayr features multiple US-made M113 APCs with mounted ZPU-2 (left), most likely source: Lebanese Armed Forces (right). pic.twitter.com/FwOtlfGppw
— Tobias Schneider (@tobiaschneider) November 13, 2016
2. UN peacekeeping forces returned to the Syrian side of the Golan Heights for the first time in two years.
The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) was forced to evacuate its positions when fighting between the Syrian army and Islamists became too hot in 2014. The Al-Qaida-allied Nusra Front captured 45 Fijian monitors while the IDF rescued the Irish contingent from a similar fate.
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3. Israel’s Antiquities Authority is launching a three-year search for more Dead Sea scrolls. Archaeologists are already surveying hundreds of caves in the Judean Desert. The Associated Press got the scoop ahead of the official announcement. And yes, expect Palestinian objections.
In a move that is bound to stir controversy, the researchers may also excavate Dead Sea-area caves in the West Bank, Ganor said. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast War, and the Palestinians want the territory to establish an independent state . . . .
According to Ganor, archaeologists also hope to find other antiquities dating back to as early as 5,000 years ago, as well as from the 1st-century Jewish-Roman war and the 2nd-century Bar Kochba revolt, when Jewish fighters battling the Roman army sought refuge in the desert.
Israel and the Palestinians
• President Reuven Rivlin’s state visit to India continued. He met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, wrote an op-ed in the Economic Times.
For a sense of what the Indian media’s saying, columnists Swaran Singh and Jayanth Jacob weighed in.
• Worth reading: French journalist Yves Mamou unpacks AFP’s “war” on Israel.
• Despite the wave of Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks, Israeli police calculated that terror in Jerusalem actually declined 40 percent in 2016 from the previous year.
• You can do that?
Abbas cuts salaries to dozens backing rival Dahlan
According to those close to the Palestinian president, he intends to continue to work against his rival and will ultimately block the salaries of almost 500 Dahlan allies.
• Worth reading: The Washington Post takes a closer look at the advancing Knesset legislation which would retroactively legalize unauthorized settlement outposts and the legal and political minefield the bill is creating.
• It faces more legislative hurdles, but Knesset lawmakers advanced a bill barring Boycott Divestment and Sanctions activists from entering Israel.
The proposed legislation would allow Israeli authorities to bar individuals or representatives of NGO’s calling for a boycott on Israel from entering the country, and would apply to all non-Israeli citizens or permanent residents.
• As ISIS stirs up the Sinai, Israel’s keeping the Route 10 border road empty. The IDF doesn’t have the resources to keep the 113-mile-long road safe from Sinai jihadists. More at the Washington Post.
• If calls to prayer by Israeli Arab muezzin are audible in Australia, the problem’s much worse than we thought. Either that, or some EuroNews copy editor is about to get a nastygram about this bizarre slip-up.
• Jewish students at Texas U. cancel lecture by author Caroline Glick for fear of ‘alienating’ anti-Zionists on campus.
Commentary/Analysis
• National Public Radio caught up with Efraim Halevy to pick the ex-Mossad chief’s brains about what Donald Trump’s election means for Israel.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Bethany Mandel: Only because of Trump did the media suddenly care about anti-Semitism
– David Collier: The science of hating Zionists, why most anti-Zionism is antisemitic
– Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser: West must insist Palestinians change their narrative
– Mordechai Ben-Dat: The West must stop enabling Palestinian lies and hate
– Robert Satloff: Everyone loves Israel — until they don’t
Image: CC BY flickr/Sjoerd Lammers; Qumran CC BY-ND Derek Winterburn;
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