Today’s Top Stories
1. The Associated Press reports that the Trump administration put the Palestinians on notice that the PLO’s Washington offices may be shut down if there isn’t sufficient progress in Mideast peace talks. A State Dept. official also told Haaretz that the move didn’t mean the US was severing all ties with the Palestinians.
Angry PA officials called the move “extortion” and threatened to suspend all communication with the US.
The PLO has offices in various countries around the world, but only the missions located in countries that formally recognize Palestine have the legal status of an “embassy.” The Trump administration is currently crafting a Mideast peace plan. Elise Labott of CNN explains how this development unfolded.
2. Jerusalem court rules PA equally liable with terrorists to pay NIS 62 million ($17.6 million) for the 2001 murder of three Israelis. Sharon Ben-Shalom, her husband Yaniv, and her brother, Doron Sviri were killed when Palestinians opened fire on their car on Route 443, between Jerusalem and Modiin.
3. Germany’s Justice Ministry called for Kuwait Airways’ landing rights to be revoked after a Frankfurt court ruled Kuwait Airways is allowed to ban Israelis.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
Israel and the Palestinians
• For the first time in a decade, the Gaza-Egypt border opened under PA control.
• Two injured, one seriously, in West Bank car ramming attack near Efrat on Friday morning.
• An Israeli tank fired warning shots at Syrian army forces “constructing a fortified position in the demilitarized zone that runs along the border.” No injuries were reported in the Saturday incident, which took place near the Syrian Druze village of Hader.
Last month, Israel pledged to protect the village after a suicide bomber killed nine Druze, triggering skirmishes between Islamist rebels and government forces; a number of Israeli Druze anxious for the safety of their families unsuccessfully tried to rush across the border.
• Journalist Jonathan Spyer described to the Times of Israel the risks and rewards of writing from Syria and Iraq while hiding the fact that he’s a national of Israel (and Britain).
Spyer used somewhat of a false identity to get onto the trip, and agreed that it was “gross incompetence” on the part of the Syrian authorities that his real identity was not uncovered at any point.
The closest moment came when his fellow Brit, one of a number of Assad-supporting internationals invited to Damascus by the regime, leaned in and said, “There are rumors of Zionist infiltrators on this trip.”
“Oh f***, is this guy toying with me,” Spyer said he thought at the time, and considered making a quick dash for nearby Kurdish-held territory.
Cave explained he truly decided on his position regarding Israel after being contacted by English musician BDS supporter, Brian Eno. “Eventually I got a letter three years ago from Brian Eno, who asked me to sign a list of people called ‘Artists againt,’ no, ‘Artists for Palestine.’ And he sent me that list, and I just didn’t—on a very intuitive level—did not want to sign that list. There was something that stunk about that list. And so I wrote back and said, ‘I don’t like lists, I don’t want to sign your list,'” he said.
“And then it occurred to me that I’m not signing the list, but I’m also not playing Israel, and that to me felt cowardly. So after a lot of thought, a lot of consideration of the whole thing, I rang up my people and said, ‘We’re doing a European tour—add Israel,’ because it suddenly became very important to me to make a stand against those people who are trying to shut down musicians, to bully musicians, to censor musicians and to silence musicians,” Cave explained.
Around the World
• German banks closed accounts for a political party with ties to Palestinian terrorists. The Marxist-Leninist Party (MLP) had campaigned with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in last September’s elections but failed to get the minimum five percent of the vote necessary to secure a seat in the Bundestag. The European Union designated the PFLP as terror organization. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• U. of Maryland student government scraps BDS bill before vote. I liked Reuven Bank’s satirical response to the whole controversy:
Breaking: Israeli-Palestinian conflict unexpectedly solved during SGA debate
• Swastika found at U. of Michigan hours after divestment vote against Israel.
• French courts punishing promoters of anti-Semitic hate speech.
• The UK Labour Party removed activist Nasreen Khan from a candidate list for making an anti-Semitic remark about Adolf Hitler on Facebook. The party separately reinstating philosopher Moshe Machover, who once wrote that Nazism and Zionism had a “basic agreement.” Details at the JTA, BBC and Jewish Chronicle,
Commentary/Analysis
• Today’s the 40th anniversary of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Israel. Jeff Abramowitz recalls Israeli optimism tinged with and wariness, along with the ad hoc preparations carried out on short notice:
The army had another problem – or at least its orchestra did. No one had the score for the Egyptian national anthem. The snag was finally solved when someone taped it off the radio. Rehearsals began using the tape until the US managed to fly a copy of the score in from Cyprus.
The streets of Jerusalem were to be decorated with Egyptian flags, but there weren’t any. Flags were snatched from the sewing machines as fast as they could be made.
#OTD 1977 Israeli PM Menachem Begin welcomed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to #Israel: a milestone in the journey towards the 1st Arab-Israel peace treaty. ???? pic.twitter.com/wQg58fdnvs
— Mark Regev (@MarkRegev) November 19, 2017
• Plenty of commentary on the shifting sands of Mideast peace . . .
– Hussein Ibish: How a Saudi-Israeli alliance could benefit the Palestinians
– Elliott Abrams: The Saudis and Israel
– Yaroslav Trofimov: Israel sees rising threat from Iran after ISIS (click via Twitter)
– Ron Ben-Yishai: The real Iranian threat on Israel’s northern borders
– Daniel Shapiro: America’s AWOL on coordinating anti-Iran allies, so Saudis are taking over
– Lior Akerman: Can Israel maintain an alliance with moderate Sunni Arab states?
– Carl Bildt: How Donald Trump is making things worse in the Middle East
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Meir Deutsch: Myths and facts: Palestinian Bedouin encampments in the Jordan Valley
– Prof. Jeffrey Herf: A BDS resolution is defeated at the University of Maryland
– Robert Fulford: I watched anti-Semitism wither. Now I’m seeing it come back to life
– Bret Stephens: Steve Bannon is bad for the Jews
– Julie Burchill: Is Prince Charles so fond of Islam because he distrusts Jews?
– New York Daily News staff-ed: Ground the anti-Semites: Kuwait Airways won’t let Israelis fly; Germany must stand up to the prejudice
Featured image: CC BY Kamyar Adl; Palestinian flag CC BY-NC Jack Steffen; US flag CC BY-SA Tim Wang; Cave via YouTube/sebastianF129;
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.
