Today’s Top Stories
1. The New York Post, the state of New York has already begun a blacklist of companies it won’t do business with over their support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
Meanwhile, Ontario became the first Canadian province to pass anti-BDS legislation resolution. Last but not least, an anti-BDS bill was introduced in the Nevada senate.
2. You also have to wonder how carefully Israel vets the contractors it does business with if Iran, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates are making money off of Israeli defense contracts. You also have to wonder those countries know about Israeli naval capabilities as a result. These two developments raise an awful lot of questions . . .
– Iran holds shares in company selling submarines to Israel
– Lebanese, UAE-owned company contracted to build warships for Israeli Navy
3. Two Iranians were charged with planning to attack the Israeli Embassy in Kenya.
State Prosecutor Duncan Ondimu said in court on Thursday that Sayed Nasrollah Ebrahim and Abdolhosein Gholi Safaee were arrested Tuesday in an Iranian diplomatic car while taking the pictures of the Israeli mission using a mobile phone, including when they were intercepted.
They were detained in the capital, Nairobi after they had come from visiting Kamiti Prison where they saw two other Iranians who have been jailed for 15 years on terrorism charges.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
4. New York Times Fails to Disclose Author’s Ties to Breaking the Silence: Why didn’t a lengthy, critical feature from the Shuafat refugee camp mention that Rachel Kushner’s visit was organized by a radical left-wing organization?
Israel and the Palestinians
• After a 5-year dry spell, the EU and Israel are upgrading ties.
• Israel recently shut down dozens of Palestinian charcoal factory responsible for heavy pollution. In well-balanced dispatch, the Associated Press examines the intertwining issues of public health, the environment, jobs and, of course, politics.
• President Barack Obama renewed a waiver, refusing to move US Embassy to Jerusalem.
• The Knesset tightened up its dress code. Israelis greeted the news with a yawn, and I don’t understand why The Independent thinks this is even a story for British readers. The UK Parliament has a similar dress code. Big yawn.
• Rescue workers found four dead Palestinians in a smuggling tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt border. Cairo hasn’t responded to Palestinian claims that the Egyptian military flooded the tunnel in recent days. It wasn’t clear if any of the dead were members of Hamas or other terror groups.
• Updating Israeli-Turkish reconciliation, Hurriyet reports that a state prosecutor asked a court in Istanbul to dismiss legal proceedings against Israeli politicians and IDF figures associated with the 2010 Mavi Marmara intercept.
The report also said that Turkey’s new ambassador to Israel, Kemal Okem, is due to take up his post on December 12. Israel’s ambassador to Ankara, Eitan Na’eh, has already done so.
Around the World
• According to a Brookings Institute survey picked up by the Times of Israel, “most Democrats consider Israel to be a burden to the United States.”
• Members of Britain’s Union Of Jewish Students are pressing for the organization to sever ties with the National Union of Students over the ‘anti-Semitic’ behaviour of Malia Bouattia.
The motion tabled by “angry and frustrated” students, set to be debated at the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) annual conference next week, catalogues the 28-year-old’s alleged insults, which Jewish students say have left them “appalled”.
Bouattia is accused of using anti-Semitic language, refusing to allow Jews the right to identify anti-Semitism and failing to listen to the concerns of Jewish students.
• President-elect Donald Trump tapped Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis for Secretary of Defense. The JTA examines what the pick means for Israel.
• UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd pledged £13.4million to guard every Jewish school, college, and nursery and synagogue in the UK. The Daily Telegraph explains:
The Home Secretary said she was forced to act after receiving 924 reports of anti-Semitic incidents, including 86 violent assaults, last year.
• Animal rights activists deface London kosher slaughterhouse with anti-Semitic graffiti.
• The British international security service, G4S, sold off its Israeli operations to a private Israeli equity firm. G4S officials told the Daily Telegraph that the sale was driven purely by financial considerations, denying BDS pressure had any influence.
The £88m acquisition by the Tel Aviv-based FIMI Opportunity Funds is expected to be finalized in three months.
• On a lighter note, here‘s some satire that had me smiling.
– ‘Real News’ Agencies Slam ‘Fake News’ Sites for Spreading Inaccuracy
Commentary/Analysis
• Jeff Jacoby makes me go hmmmmm.
The US can't favor sovereignty for democratic #Taiwan … but statehood for the #Palestinian terror-mafia is just grand. Stupidity on stilts.
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) December 4, 2016
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Tamar Lyons: Anti-Semitism: The socially acceptable hatred
– Elliott Abrams: The UN, the Golan, and theater of the absurd
– Ben Lynfield: Fatah vote formalizes rift in Palestinian movement
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: The word according to Abbas
– Sohrab Ahmari (click via Google News): The lesson of the arson jihad
– Jonathan Spyer: Hezbollah vs. ISIS. vs. Israel
– Jonathan Tobin: Land For peace: Past and future
– Amb. Zvi Mazel: Long-awaited Israel-Egypt thaw still not forthcoming
– Tariq Alhomaed: Russia the new regional policeman?
Image: CC BY flickr/Mo Riza; missile ships CC BY-NC Israel Defense Forces; US embassy CC BY-NC David Jones; Bouattia via YouTube/Channel 4 News;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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