Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Erdogan to mullahs: NATO radar installations in Turkey could be dismantled.
Arab Spring Winter
• Syrian army deserters who fled to Iraq talked to McClatchy News about their units killing unarmed civilian protesters.
The testimonies of the former soldiers, however, are the first accounts from individuals who were serving in military units that allegedly carried out the atrocities . . . .
Yet a day later there was another demonstration of 400 to 500 men, women and children, and as the crowd chanted “Allahu Akhbar” — God is great — his commander ordered the unit to “Shut them up.” First they fired small arms over the crowd. “But they didn’t stop,” Kawa recalled. The commander was angry. “He said, ‘Shell in their midst,’ with a rocket-propelled grenade. I saw with my binoculars that people were killed,” Kawa said.
• Worth reading: The Stalled Revolution: Ten days with Syria’s besieged protesters.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Israel jails more reporters per capita than any other country, except for Eritrea, claims a Columbia Journalism Review blogger. Problem is, the stat is skewed when you realize per capita what. By the way, the PA arrested another Palestinian journo over a Facebook post. According to the JPost:
Agents belonging to the PA’s Preventive Security Service in Ramallah arrested Tarek Khamis, who works for the Palestinian Zaman Press news agency, for criticizing the PA’s current clampdown on Palestinian journalists in the West Bank . . .
The spiraling PA press freedom also made AP’s radar. It also made Jodi Rudoren’s. The incoming NY Times Jerusalem bureau chief posted this ill-advised tweet:
• The Daily Telegraph‘s Damian Thompson notes that a letter written by Dr. Franklin Lamb and a passage from Fisk’s book “Pity the Nation” contain verbatim descriptions of the gruesome 1982 Phalangist massacre at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps.
I asked Fisk how he could account for the mysterious similarity between the two passages. He said he had never read those words by Janet Lee Stevens, and added: “If this woman wrote words similar to mine how can I have seen her work?”
Lamb has yet to reply to Thompson.
• Feel-Good Article of the Day: Kiryat Shemona’s football team took the Israel Premier League Championship. After reading CNN, I’m saying Bring on Barcelona . . .
“It’s an incredible achievement,” says James Montague, author of “When Friday Comes: Football in the War Zone,” a book about football and politics in the Middle East.
“It’s a tiny place right on the frontier of one of the Middle East’s most enduring conflicts, not to mention the very edge of European football,” he added.
Reuters also picks up on the story.
(Image of Wilf via Facebook/Einat Wilf, Thomas via YouTube/SuccessIntheCityTV)
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
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