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Today’s Top Stories
1. Have Israel and Syria agreed on a 40 km demilitarized zone? An Arab media report picked up by the Jerusalem Post says this came about after Israel vowed to destroy any Iranian positions within 40 km of the border:
The source, who remains unnamed, said that during Syrian President Bashar Assad’s surprise visit to Russia last week, Assad gave Russian Premier Vladimir Putin a message for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Damascus will agree to a demilitarized zone of up to 40 kilometers from the border in the Golan Heights as part of a comprehensive agreement between the two countries, but only if Israel does not work to remove Assad’s regime from power.
The report also claims that Putin then called Netanyahu to relay the message, and that the Israeli prime minister said he would be willing to accept the deal, but that Israel’s goal of eradicating Iran and Hezbollah from the country would remain.
2. Sinai jihadists attacked a mosque in Al Rawdah, killing more than 300 people and injuring 128 more on Friday. Survivors described 25-30 black-clad terrorists, some of whom carried Islamic State flags, taking up positions by the mosques doors and windows, opening fire and lobbing grenades inside. Among the dead were 27 children:
So composed were the militants that they methodically checked their victims for any sign of life after the initial round of blazing gunfire. Those still moving or breathing received a bullet to the head or the chest, the witnesses said. When the ambulances arrived they shot at them, repelling them as they got back into their vehicles and fled.
In the fallout from the massacre, Egypt delayed the planned opening of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza.
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3. The Trump administration is backing down from its threat to close down the PLO’s offices in Washington, “instead saying it would merely impose limitations on the office that it expected would be lifted after 90 days.” Associated Press coverage.
4. On the i24 News program The Spin Room, HonestReporting’s Daniel Pomerantz — along with ZOA president Mort Klein and journalist Marc Schulman — discussed the rift between American Jews and Israel, anti-Semitism in the US, and more.
Israel and the Palestinians
• “Weeks ahead of the expected completion of a U.N. database of companies that operate in Israel’s West Bank settlements, Israel and the Trump Administration are working feverishly to prevent its publication,” the Associated Press reports. But Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who is tasked with compiling the blacklist, shows no signs of backing down.
The companies have not been publicly identified, but one official said they include Israeli banks, supermarkets, restaurant chains, bus lines and security firms, as well as international giants that provide equipment or services used to build or maintain settlements. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the media . . .
The resolution, [Prof. Eugene Kontorovich] warned, would cause “reputational harm” to companies and put “a cloud over business in Israel.” Although nonbinding, he said it could be used as a basis for future legal action. “The goal of this is to cause problems for Israel,” he said.
• CNN and BBC take a closer look at the budding Israeli-Saudi diplomatic courtship.
• Lebanese actor/comedian arrested for “collaborating with the Israeli enemy.” Ziad Itani is said to have “confessed” to meeting with Israelis in Turkey and planning to “monitor” two Lebanese political personalities.
Around the World
• Iran threatened to increase the range of its ballistic missiles to reach Europe, dismissing French calls for talks on Tehran’s missile program. Reuters picked up on Iranian media reports:
“If we have kept the range of our missiles to 2,000 kilometers, it’s not due to lack of technology. … We are following a strategic doctrine,” Brigadier General Hossein Salami said, according to Fars.
“So far we have felt that Europe is not a threat, so we did not increase the range of our missiles. But if Europe wants to turn into a threat, we will increase the range of our missiles,” he added.
• The German judge who ruled that Kuwaiti Airways could legally discriminate against Israelis on the basis of nationality justified his decision by comparing Israel to two countries designated by the US as state sponsors of terror — Iran and North Korea. The Jerusalem Post obtained a copy of Judge Wolfram Sauer’s ruling:
Sauer wrote in his legal defense of the Kuwaiti boycott law of Israel that “such rules, in different expressions, are not foreign to Germany’s legal system,” linking his decision to sanctions regulations against the Islamic Republic of Iran and North Korea.
• Jews were the group most targeted by hate speech in Turkish media over the past year, according to a study. And much of it stemmed from deviously interchanging the words Jew and Israel. Hurriyet explains:
According to the report, the highest number of hate speech items was found in articles and columns regarding Israel.
Tension over the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem prompted a number of media outlets to demonize Jews as a collective group, with the term “Jews” often being used in place of “Israeli state,” “Israel” or “Israeli Defense Forces,” the report stated.
It added that Jews were also presented as a “secret power” and “threats against Turkey” in many conspiracy theories reflected in the Turkish media.
Many reports and columns referred to Jewishness as an insult, with Jewish identity “attributed to many institutions and individuals in a negative context,” the report stated.
• Embarrassed residents and Jewish activists in an Ontario township are pushing to change the name of Swastika Trail (!?)
• Anti-Semitic graffiti was found on storefronts and garage doors in Marseilles and in a park in Washington D.C..
• Israeli Labour leader Isaac Herzog to Daily Telegraph: UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to the Mideast “would drive a wedge between Britain and Israel,” also “threatening not only UK-Israel relations, but Britain’s ability to play an effective diplomatic role, and its wider regional influence.”
• Europe-funded group boasts to donors about obtaining arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni.
Commentary
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Haisam Hassanein: An Egyptian goes to Israel (click via Twitter)
– Amos Harel: Sinai attack: Astonishing Egyptian failure has Israel worried
– Dr. Mordechai Kedar: US betrayal of Kurds a warning sign for Israel
– Elliott Abrams: The Saudis and Israel– again
– Efraim Karsh: Belief in Palestinian openness to two-state solution amounts to insanity
– Bassam Tawil: Palestinians vs. Trump: The battle begins
– Avi Issacharoff: As unity process goes nowhere fast, Hamas leader’s tactic will be to blame PA
– Nonie Darwish: The expanding umbrella of anti-Semitism
– Avi Benlolo: Campuses allowed anti-Semitism to fester. Now they’re paying the price
– Sue Shapiro: Old-school hate at The New School: The university is wrong to put Linda Sarsour on a panel
Featured image: CC BY Lucy Fisher; mosque via YouTube/Associated Press; missile via Wikimedia Commons; Hussein via UN Photo/Jean Marc-Ferre; typing via PublicDomainFiles;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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