Today’s Top Stories
1. The Taylor Force Act, which would sharply reduce US aid to the PA if it continues paying stipends to Palestinian terrorists and their families, made it through a key legislative hurdle when the House Foreign Affairs committee passed the bill without any opposition. The bill is named after Taylor Force, an American student and military veteran who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian in 2016. Reuters notes:
Force’s attacker was killed by Israeli police, but his killer’s family receives such a monthly payment.
The bill still needs to be approved by the full House of Representatives and Senate before it can go to the White House for President Trump’s signature.
The same committee also passed a bill to sanction the financial backers of Hamas, sending the measure to the full House.
2. Call it a selfie for peace. Over at the Miss Universe pageant, Miss Israel and Miss Iraq posed together on socia, gushing about their new friendship. Idan’s already catching flak back in Iraq, but the beauty queen isn’t backing down.
“I want to stress that the purpose of the picture was only to express hope and desire for peace between the two countries,” wrote Miss Iraq Sarah Idan (in Arabic) in her latest Instagram post.
She added that the photo of the two Miss Universe contestants, which she did not remove from her Instagram account, “does not signal support for the government of Israel and does not mean I agree or accept its policies in the Arab homeland.”
3. IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot gave an unprecedented interview with the Saudi media.
In the interview to the Saudi newspaper Elaph, Eisenkot described Iran as the “biggest threat to the region.” He said Israel and Saudi Arabia are in full agreement about Iran’s intentions, noting that Israel and Saudi Arabia have never fought each other.
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4. The IDF ‘Agent’ Who ‘Clashed’ With Protesters: There’s an appropriate word for ex-members of the IDF — soldiers.
5. An Israeli Singer From ‘Palestine?’: If an Israeli Arab singer was born and raised in the Israeli city of Nazareth, why does the Irish Times say that she is from “Palestine?”
6. You don’t want to miss the latest edition of i24 News’ The Spin Room. HonestReporting’s Daniel Pomerantz joined Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy and The Forward’s editor-at-large, J.J. Goldberg, for a spirited discussion about Israel and diaspora Jewry, US peace efforts, and the media in the Trump era.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Rebuffing Palestinians still seeking sanctions on Israeli soccer, FIFA says it’s ‘not a playground’ for politics.
• Israel’s attorney general gave a legal opinion that in certain circumstances, the state can expropriate private Palestinian land in order to build an access road for settlers. Details of the A-G’s opinion and its significance at Ynet, the Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post. The latter explains:
The High Court of Justice and the state, including Mandelblit, have until recently held that private Palestinian property cannot be seized for the public good of settlers.
That interpretation has stood behind every High Court of Justice decision regarding the demolition of illegal settler homes on private Palestinian property or the construction of roads . . .
The Knesset challenged that assumption in February when it passed the Settlements Regulation Law, which retroactively legalizes illegal settler homes on private Palestinian property in exchange for monetary compensation.
• Iran and Iraq rejected Israel’s offer of humanitarian assistance after a Sunday earthquake killed at least 530 people and injured thousands more. More at the Times of Israel.
• Some 150 chess players from around the world are expected to boycott an international chess tournament next month in protest of host Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and Riyadh’s requirement that competing women wear head scarves. The Saudis don’t allow the entry of Israelis, players from Iran and Qatar aren’t likely to attend either.
• Palestinians say the opening Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt is postponed and that talks are underway to set a new date.
• When play the game of drones with Hamas and Israel’s state comptroller, you win or you die. There is no middle ground . . .
– State comptroller: Israel not prepared to deal with drone danger
– Hamas: Israeli Mossad behind assassination of drone engineer
Around the World
• A Spanish court suspended a city council’s three-year-old boycott of Israeli products. You’d think La Roda de Andalucia had more important things to do than waste municipal man-hours on this:
The La Roda City Council announced its participation in BDS in August 2014, and has since been enforcing it by inspecting machine-readable barcodes from every item purchased in public tenders, and returning any product found to be Israeli-made.
• Columbia U. professor under fire for anti-Semitic Facebook posts.
• Ontario prosecutors charged the editor and publisher of a fringe Toronto-based web site with “two counts of willful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group, namely Jews and women,” reports the Toronto Star.
• The new editor of UK’s Gay Times was suspended for anti-Semitic, sexist, racist tweets exposed by Buzzfeed.
• Paris school room named for Jewish boys slain in 2012 Toulouse massacre.
Commentary/Analysis
• Interesting conversation on ties between Israel and US Jewry. It’s over at Mosaic, where Hillel Halkin responds to Daniel Gordis who was responding to Elliott Abrams.
• After returning from a visit to Israel, the UK Labour party’s shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, shared her impressions in a Jewish Chronicle op-ed. See also Thornberry’s recent Q+A with the Times of Israel.
• Dear Sutherland Springs, you deserve an apology from the news media.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Yaron Friedman: Iranian military force taking shape right under Israel’s nose
– Charles Bybelezer: Syria, Iran and the limits of Israeli diplomacy
– Zvi Bar’el: Saudi Arabia: Israel’s dream state
– Spengler: Trump’s unsung success in the Middle East
– Efraim Inbar: A Marshall Plan for Gaza is a bad idea
– Alex Fishman: Is Gaza’s tunnel era coming to an end?
– Ruthie Blum: Europe’s collusion in Palestinian illegal land grab
– Ben-Dror Yemini: The hypocrisy of canceling Hotovely’s Princeton talk
– Adam Dison: South Africa’s student Left defends Hitler and Hezbollah, but attacks Jews like me
– James Kirchick: The new Jew hatred
Featured image: CC0 Pxhere ; chess CC BY-NC-ND Tim S; Columbia CC BY Mike Steele; reading CC0 Public Domain Clip Art;
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