Today’s Top Stories
1. Operation Northern Shield is expected to last several weeks because the land in the north is rockier, making efforts to locate and destroy the tunnels more complex. A limited number of engineering and air defense reservists were called up. On the diplomatic front, Israel called UN Security Council meeting.
Meanwhile, analysts told the Times of Israel that neutralizing the tunnel threat would be a necessary step before any action to go after Hezbollah’s missiles. And the Jerusalem Post the pulse of northern Israeli residents.
Last, but not least, the IDF released footage of Hezbollah goons having an unpleasant encounter with an army robot inside one of the tunnels — filmed before the army announced Op Northern Shield. I assume this took place on the Israeli side of the border. More on that at the Times of Israel.
2. Ynet examines what’s known about Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Unit. In a future war, that’s the unit expected to take the fight to Israeli soil — specifically to capture the Galilee.
The plan entails fighters from Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit infiltrating Israel from Lebanon, entrenching themselves in Israeli communities near the border while taking hostages and using Israeli citizens as human shields.
According to the plan, Tehran is expected to aid Hezbollah’s operation by sending money and weapons sent to the Shiite terror organization, as well as militias to fight alongside Hezbollah.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
3. Sydney University confirmed it served a termination notice to a professor who used an image of a Nazi swastika imposed over the flag of Israel in teaching material and on social media. The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald reports that Dr. Tim Anderson — currently suspended and banned from the campus — has been given one week to explain why he shouldn’t be fired.
Dr Anderson attracted criticism from federal education ministers for his numerous trips to Syria and North Korea, where he expressed solidarity with their dictatorial regimes and condemned Western imperialism and the United States.
He regularly posted on social media about the crimes of the “apartheid” Israeli state, and complained the mainstream media was complicit in distorting the narrative about Israel and Palestine.
Sydney University will move to fire a controversial lecturer Tim Anderson over images he used in his teaching https://t.co/nqbzmo1Whs
— The Australian (@australian) December 5, 2018
Israel and the Palestinians
• The UN General Assembly is expected to vote on Thursday on a US-sponsored resolution condemning Hamas for indiscriminate rocket fire and terror balloons. The Jerusalem Post looks at Israel’s diplomatic push.
UN General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, but can carry symbolic weight, which would explain why Hamas and Fatah are bedfellows trying to thwart the resolution. In a nutshell, Fatah considers the resolution harmful to the Palestinian cause and doesn’t want to look like it’s collaborating with the Trump administration.
• Israeli communities near the Gaza border appealed to the High Court of Justice to block Qatar’s expected transfer of $150 million to Hamas.
The petitions stated that funds must not be allowed to go through as long as Gaza is run by the terror group Hamas, since there is no way to guarantee that they will not be used for terror and rocket attacks against Israel.
• PA officials denounced White House envoy Jason Greenblatt as “arrogant colonist” over his recent op-ed
arguing that Palestinians deserved more from their leadership. It was published in Palestinian media (in English at Maan News.)
• The United Arab Emirates’ Jewish community is tentatively emerging from the shadows. A below-the-radar synagogue in a residential neighborhood of Dubai serves ex-pat businessmen and university students as the UAE’s only Jewish institution. Both the Times of Israel and Bloomberg News visited.
• A state comptroller committee rejected Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid to fund his legal defense through donations.
The committee concluded it “inappropriate” for tycoons to fund legal fees resulting from an investigation into alleged crimes concerning relations with other tycoons. Such funding, according to the committee, might harm the public’s trust in government.
Around the World
• A Hamas delegation visiting South Africa signed a memorandum of understanding with the ruling African National Congress party. Per The Algemeiner,
According to one pro-ANC news outlet, the memorandum “seeks to introduce practical steps in mobilizing the international community to pressure Israel to end its occupation of Palestine, including working towards the full boycott of all Israeli products.”
Hamas Official Mahmoud Al-Zahar Visits Mandela's Prison Cell and Says to Palestinians Prisoners: You Will Drive out the Occupation and Rule Your Country like Mandela Did pic.twitter.com/SsputD4n4u
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) December 4, 2018
• It turns out the South African academic conference that disinvited Israeli academics over BDS also snubbed a Palestinian academic “because he has shown a more moderate position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” That’s according to a South African Zionist Federation statement picked up by South Africa’s Daily News.
The SAZF statement didn’t identify him, but the Palestinian academic is Prof. Mohammed Dajani of Ramallah’s Birzeit University. BDS says Dajani is not an “authentic” representative of the Palestinians. You can see Dajani’s statement in English towards the bottom of this page.) Dajani was hounded out of Al-Quds U. after taking Palestinian students to Auschwitz in 2014.
The conference on — of all topics — “Recognition, Reparation, Reconciliation: The Light and Shadow of Historical Trauma” begins today at Cape Town’s Stellenbosch University.
• Down Under, the publicly-funded SBS broadcasting network is threatening legal action against BDS Australia. SBS, which airs the Eurovision song competition, is refusing to back down from calls to boycott next year’s contest being held in Tel Aviv.
SBS says the BDS movement is illegally using its name and logo on its web site, social media and other promotional material.
• A BBC satire show called “The Mash Report” is under fire for hosting a “left-wing journalist” with a history of tweeting antisemitic conspiracy theories. One especially notable Steve Topple tweet called on Jews to “recognize and destroy their growing Zionist cancer.” I guess I’m too Zionist to understand the English irony of that line. See Jewish Chronicle coverage.
Intriguing to see the Mash Report's @FinTaylorcomedy describe Steve "I'm not antisemitic I just said antisemitic things" Topple as a "devout left wing journalist" rather than a "delusional conspiracy theorist".
— Summit (@SherpaGinseng) December 1, 2018
Commentary
• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels weighing in on Operation Northern Shield and its implications . . .
– Ron Prosor: What about the diplomatic angle?
– Avi Issacharoff: Of course Hezbollah was tunneling under the border. Why wouldn’t it?
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Tunnels are only a precursor to the real threat
– Zvi Bar’el: Locked in a political fight in Lebanon, Hezbollah is in no hurry to battle Israel
– Lilach Shoval: Hezbollah dealt a painful blow
– David Horovitz: The Netanyahu paradox: Guarding Israel from enemies without, causing harm within
– Ben Dror Yemini: Northern Shield not meant to shield Netanyahu
– Anshel Pfeffer: Has the IDF become the latest prop in Netanyahu’s battle for survival?
– Marissa Newman: Anti-tunnel operation in north kicks up coalition’s political dirt
• Over on Twitter, Elizabeth Tsurkov makes me go hmmmmmm
A Syrian friend who lives in rebel-held Aleppo asked on Facebook his friends whom they would support in case of a war between Israel & Hezbollah. Thus far he got 44 comments, out of them 41 said Israel, 3 wished both sides would lose.
— Elizabeth Tsurkov (@Elizrael) December 4, 2018
• Worth reading: Larry Cohler-Esses weighs in on a flawed PBS video about Tehran’s Jewish community. (HonestReporting recently critiqued the PBS dispatch). Key snippet:
If someday an Iranian leadership less cautious than the present were to launch an actual full-blown attack on Israel with the assets it has in hand, the number of dead Israeli Jews could number in the tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands. The assertion that it was an anti-Zionist attack rather than an anti-Semitic one, as demonstrated by the existence of a small community of Jews in Iran, wouldn’t make much difference to anyone.
• Here are other commentaries I’m reading today . . .
– David Pollock: For a state, Palestinians would cede “right of return” — and more
– Jonathan Tobin: Campaign against US-Israel police programs is the BDS Version of blood libel
– Ron Kampeas: Benjamin Netanyahu hated George H.W. Bush’s peace plan. Now it’s his policy.
Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND Maria Biblik; UN CC BY-NC-ND United Nations Photo; Dubai CC BY-NC-ND mattharvey1;
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