Today’s Top Stories
1. A pair of Israeli Arabs were indicted for planning a bombing at an Eilat hotel. The Jerusalem Post reports that the plot was foiled by alert hotel staff.
One of the suspects wished to avenge the death of his childhood friend, Fadi Elon, who was killed while carrying out a stabbing attack in Jerusalem on October 4.
2. Several hundred Islamic State jihadis are massed along the Israeli-Syrian border, but they’re preoccupied for now with fighting both the Syrian army and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra. The IDF’s keeping an eye on the group, which calls itself the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade. YNet explains:
However, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi’s threatening message to Israel last Saturday has given new meaning to the presence of two separate branches of the terrorist group on Israel’s borders . . .
The group is relatively small, comprising 600 militants who represent IS in the Syrian Golan. The group controls a 15-kilometer stretch of land on the border with Israel, from the triangular point where the Syrian, Israeli and Jordanian borders meet and northwards.
3. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee wants an explanation from the NSA on why it spied on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and why it monitored Israeli officials’ communications with Congress. See AP and Foreign Policy. The latter explains:
The NSA is prohibited from directly targeting lawmakers for intelligence and surveillance purposes. If a valid foreign intelligence target comes into contact with lawmakers, the agency is required to mask or minimize the identity of the individual in its reports to the executive branch. Lawmakers, sensitive over becoming ensnared in Obama’s spy games with Netanyahu, now want to know more about the espionage claims in the story.
4. Daily Telegraph: Jerusalem’s Old City ‘Under Threat’: How about a slideshow reflecting reality?
5. HonestReporting’s Top Content of 2015: A look-back at what had HR readers buzzing this year.
Israel and the Intifada
• An IDF soldier was lightly wounded when a Palestinian rammed his car into a group of soldiers patrolling a highway south of Nablus.
• Palestinian party poopers . . .
Hamas bans New Year’s Eve celebrations in Gaza
• I think the Palestinian Authority could learn a few lessons from Jordan on handling anti-Israel incitement. I hope Ramallah reads YNet.
A shopkeeper in the city of Irbid in northern Jordan who painted an Israeli flag at his shop’s entrance – so that clients entering would step on it – ran afoul of the Jordanian authorities, who removed the flag and arrested him for insulting a nation considered a “friend”.
Speaking of flags:
• I liked NPR‘s look at the Israeli-Brazilian standoff over Dani Dayan’s appointment as ambassador to the South American country. Nice balance in fairly presenting both the Israeli and Brazilian points of view.
[Dayan is] saying if Brazil refuses his appointment, it’s like labeling people, not just products, from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
• Israel seizes armor plating being smuggled into Gaza.
• Deputy Cabinet Minister Ayoob Kara talked to Reuters about his efforts to rescue Israeli Arabs who joined Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq. The Druze lawmaker says he isn’t interceding anymore:
“I used to work hard to dissuade people from joining ISIS, but now I say that there’s no point,” he told Reuters in an interview, using an acronym for the insurgents.
“If, by this point, when the dangers are abundantly clear to everyone, they still want to go, then they are beyond saving and it’s a one-way ticket for them. It’s literally a dead end.”
• Hezbollah’s trying hard to suppress the story, but Beirut’s buzzing over this question:
Samir Kuntar: ‘Resistance hero’ or sex monster?
Image of Eilat CC BY Israeltourism; Kara CC BY-SA Remi Jouan
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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