• Members of the international press corps were among the many recipients of threatening SMS messages from Hamas. The Foreign Press Association wasn’t pleased.
This is unacceptable. Journalists are not part of the Middle East conflict. They are observers who should be treated as such.
• NGO counts 38% of rockets exploding in Gaza.
• Hmmmm. Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken took a shot at one of his columnists. Last week, Ari Shavit supported Israel’s demand to be recognized as a Jewish state. Schocken’s entitled to his views, but I’m not used to seeing publishers voice such publicly visible opposition to their own writers.
• David Hazony poses the question of the day:
If Abbas rules out the “end of conflict,” what is the point of negotiations?
• For more commentary/analysis, see Ambassador Alan Baker (Saeb Erekat spins a new historical narrative), Avi Issacharoff (why Abbas wants Marwan Barghouti freed), Lyn Julius (the “dhimmi” roots of non-recognition), Jennifer Rubin (Obama setting up Israel to take the fall), Nazir Mgally (wanted: an Arab patriot willing to be president of Israel), Hagai Segal (Kerry should admit Yaalon’s right), and an excessively optimistic Boston Globe staff-ed.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Worth watching: CNN‘s Nic Robertson visited Israel’s security fence along the Egyptian border, discussing the Sinai jihadi threat on the other side.
• Budapest has some splaining to do: Hungary’s ambassador to Lebanon visited Hezbollah’s theme park in southern Lebanon and even “expressed his admiration at Hezbollah’s great achievement for Lebanon, at liberating the land and the people.”
He could’ve spared himself some embarrassment by seeing what, say, Michael Totten or Vice found at this “Disneyland of death.”
• Diplomatic immunity to the highest bidder? The Sydney Morning Herald lays out how a Hezbollah fugitive nearly became the Marshall Islands’ delegate to UNESCO.
• How to thwart terror at 29,000 feet by the only pilot who ever did. Uri Bar Lev recalls for the Times of Israel recalls how he resisted Palestinians who tried to hijack his El Al flight.
• McClatchy News correspondent looks at the success of Israel’s desalination program.
With four plants currently in operation, all built since 2005, and a fifth slated to go into service this year, Israel is meeting much of its water needs by purifying seawater from the Mediterranean. Some 80 percent of domestic water use in Israeli cities comes from desalinated water, according to Israeli officials.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Sever Plocker (internet in the service of tyrants).
(Image of China via Pixabay/geralt)
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
[sc:bottomsignup].
