Today’s Top Stories
1. YNet: Palestinian youths, some as young as nine, rioted in eastern Jerusalem after Israel demolished the home of Abdel-Rahman Shaloudi, who plowed his car into a Jerusalem light rail station.
The youths burnt tires, blocking the entrance to Shuafat, and threw stones at the police checkpoint. A number of children aged 9 and 10 even wore masks and shouted “we will keep fighting to the end.”
“The intifada has started,” a 17-year-old told Ynet. “We won’t remain quiet about what happens in East Jerusalem and inside Al-Aqsa. We will continue to struggle and support terror against Israel, that is the only solution we have to save ourselves.”
Elaborating on his frustration, the youth also expressed anger towards the Arab world and Palestinians: “Unfortunately I don’t feel supported, not by the Palestinian government and not by the Arab world. We are disappointed and have nothing to do but protest, block roads and tell the world.”
Where do kids learn to talk this way? They’re exploited and incited.
2. Thousands of Israelis attended the funeral of Druze police officer Zaidan Saif; he succumbed to wounds in yesterday’s shootout with the Har Nof terrorists. Saif, of Kfar Yanouach, was the father of a four-month old baby.
3. Over at Tablet, Moshe Elad lays bare how Hamas leaders get rich through business corruption, taxes on smuggled goods, skimming foreign aid and Islamic charity,
4. Why We are Not in a Cycle of Violence: Besides being factually wrong, the media’s insistence that what’s happening is a cycle of violence — rather than a barrage of Palestinian terror — carries a moral failure.
5. CBS Anchorwoman: Synagogue Attack Took Place At a “Contested Religious Site”: There’s nothing “contested” about the synagogue or Har Nof neighborhood.
6. Vote for This Year’s Dishonest Reporting Award: It’s that time of the year. Nominate this year’s worst news service or journalist and make your voice heard.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The four rabbis killed were American and British immigrants, which made for humanizing, local angles in the Boston Globe, Kansas City Star, Detroit Free Press, and Liverpool Echo. Another victim, Toronto native Howie Rothman lies in a coma. More on that at the National Post.
See similar pieces in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall St. Journal (click via Google News), and AP.
• Mahmoud Abbas condemned the synagogue attack only because of international pressure. Hardly surprising; Khaled Abu Toameh points out that Abbas’s incendiary rhetoric is boomeranging on him:
Now many Palestinians who were radicalized by Abbas are denouncing him for his condemnation of the Har Nof attack. Some say they are willing to forgive Abbas for the move because of the immense pressure he has been facing from the Americans . . .
Through his rhetoric, Abbas has radicalized his people to a point where he is now being roundly condemned himself for speaking out against a terrorist attack on a synagogue.
Israeli journalist Gal Berger sums it up:
• I’m glad New York Times bureau chief Jodi Rudoren’s dispatch noted the Palestinian incitement and celebrations.
• Yaakov Lappin: Terrorists likely acted alone, as Palestinian media incites with misinformation:
The dialog within Palestinian media surrounding the death of a Palestinian bus driver from east Jerusalem, who, according to an autopsy, committed suicide, is the latest example of this incitement.
Following the autopsy, medical officers – including a Palestinian pathologist who was present for the procedure – all agreed that the man had hanged himself.
But then, various elements in the Palestinian media spread the falsehood that the Palestinian had been murdered.
Yes, the Palestinian pathologist concurred with the preliminary findings of suicide all along. More on that at the Times of Israel.
• The Media Line talked to the experts about combating “lone wolf state-sponsored” terror.
• Worth reading: The Daily Telegraph talked an IDF drone commander about the life and death decisions he made during the Gaza war.
• Incidents of Italian anti-Semitism tripled during Op Protective Edge.
• New Palestinian video encourages vehicular attacks
• Lebanese lawmaker: Syria blocked Beirut from peace talks with Israel. That’s what Marwan Hamade told the UN’s Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is investigating the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. From the Jerusalem Post:
Speaking alternately in English and Arabic, Hamade explained that, as part of trying to take over Lebanese foreign policy and governance, Syria “forbade” Lebanon to negotiate with Israel “before Syria was done” negotiating with Israel.
He added that “although Lebanon had hot topics” to talk to Israel about, including the issue of Palestinian refugees, Syria blocked all dialogue.
Commentary/Analysis
• A New York Times staff-ed condemned the synagogue attack, and slammed Abbas for only denouncing it because of John Kerry’s arm-twisting.
• Yossi Klein Halevi describes the ongoing Palestinian violence as “the terrorism of neighbors.” He explains why in the Wall St. Journal (via Google News).
Now a new phase of this open-ended war against the Israeli home front has begun, concentrated in Jerusalem as it has been in the past. But this latest wave feels different. In recent weeks, terrorists in Jerusalem have twice driven their cars into crowds of Jewish pedestrians and on another occasion stabbed a Jewish passerby with a screwdriver. The synagogue attackers, who were killed by police, wielded axes in the murders. This is not the impersonal terrorism of suicide bombers and rocket launchers. This is an intimate war. The terrorism of neighbors.
• I liked cartoonist Jeff Darcy’s take in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
• Beatriz Beccera, a member of the European Parliament, wonders, Is Palestine a State We Can Recognize?
The Fatah government hasn’t called elections since 2006. It has shown that it is incapable of controlling its own armed factions, and it has allowed for daily violations of basic human rights and civil liberties. Fatah encourages violence against Israel and hails terrorists through schools and the media. Moreover, it promotes ethnic cleansing, proclaiming that it won’t allow any Jewish citizens to remain in a Palestinian state (even if only 20 percent of the Israeli population is Palestinian).
Hamas’ government came to power through a bloody coup d’état that included hundreds of Fatah members massacred on the border. It is a terrorist group, according to the European Union denomination. Hamas shares a close ideology with the jihadism of the Islamic State which as part of its objectives seeks to kill all Jewish people. Hamas’ bloody history against civilian targets is well known, just like its unfettered use of civilian life in order to achieve its goals.
Can we, therefore, talk about a “Palestinian state” that is capable of being recognized? Or is it rather an artifice destined to become a new failed state in a region where there are already too many?
• Ishaan Tharoor, a Washington Post blogger, thinks Bibi’s use of the term, “blood libel,” is explosive.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Joe Fitzgerald (Blood boils and heart aches), Khaled Abu Toameh (Israeli Arabs need better leaders), Elliott Abrams (Reacting to terror: words matter), Benny Avni (Abbas foolishly unleashed Islamic fervor). Elhanan Miller (The Jerusalem intifada is different), Dan Margalit (Jerusalem needs military presence), and Allison Kaplan Sommer (How do you fight lone wolf terrorists?)
See also staff-eds in the Wall St. Journal (via Google News), New York Daily News, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, and Times of London.
Also weighing in are Ron Ben-Yishai, Carol Morello, Michael Tomasky, Catherine Philip, Sam Kiley and David Blair.
Image: CC BY flickr/Pedro Ribeiro Simões
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