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Today’s Top Stories
1.Times of Israel reporter Avi Issacharoff found himself in grave danger last week when a Palestinian gang set upon him in the West Bank town of Beitunia.
I was there to report on the Nakba Day protests with a cameraman colleague from Walla News. He was some distance from me when he was approached by several Palestinian journalists who told him to “Get out.”
I walked toward them, and told them that if they had a problem, they should be talking to me. One of the Palestinian journalists, a young woman, then called over to a group of masked men, who swiftly surrounded me and began attacking me.
Only the fact that those two PA security personnel happened to be there saved me. They extricated me and my colleague, and got us to safety. I dread to think what would have happened if they hadn’t been there.
The next day, Issacharoff provided more detail on the attack, including the role of Palestinian journalists in creating a hostile environment in the West Bank for Israeli journalists.
2. Bibi: Palestinian anti-Semitism a product of PA incitement.
Ranking anti-Semitic sentiments by region, the ADL determined that the most anti-Semitic regions were found to be the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Palestinian anti-Semitism is “pervasive throughout society,” the ADL found, with 93% of respondents affirming anti-Jewish stereotypes.
Speaking at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that the statistics were “the result of non-stop anti-Semitic incitement by the Palestinian Authority, which distorts the image of Israel and the Jewish people.”
3. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan caught using anti-Israel slur against Turkish protestors at deadly mine site.
Israel and the Palestinians
• British journalist and author Jake Wallis Simons rejects pressure from BDS to boycott the Jerusalem Writers Festival.
“There is no justification for the boycott,” he told Haaretz in a telephone interview. “From a moral, ethical, political point of view I’m against it. Those behind the boycott movement just fundamentally believe there shouldn’t be a Jewish state. BDS isn’t about the settlements, or Israeli policy – just the idea that the Jews shouldn’t have a state at all.”
See also A Slap to the BDS Bullies. And join the Fighting BDS Facebook page and take a stand against the delegitimization of Israel.
• Washington Free Beacon reported that US envoy Martin Indyk was overheard telling staffers that Israel was solely responsible for the breakdown of peace talks because of settlements. State Department officials strongly disputed the report.
• Washington Post columnist David Ignatius warns of a creep towards a one-state reality:
The question is what comes next, after the failure of this intense U.S. effort. The Palestinians are threatening to charge Israel under the Geneva Conventions that protect civilians in occupied territories. The Israelis may retaliate by cutting off money to Abbas’s government and announcing new settlements. If this happens, Abbas says he will dissolve the Palestinian Authority — and insist that Israel take on the $3 billion cost and endless headaches of governing 2.5 million Palestinians. U.S. officials don’t think he’s bluffing.
If these catastrophic developments ensue, Israel will find itself living with a one-state solution after all. Optimists think this might provide reality therapy, showing that Israel can survive as a healthy Jewish state only if a Palestinian state exists, too. But after this last exercise in frustration and bitterness, there aren’t many optimists left.
• Did John Kerry’s “apartheid” gaff push the term firmly into the mainstream? LA Times is running two dueling op/eds, one for and one against the designation of Israel as an apartheid state. Israel’s defense is left in the capable hands of Michael Oren, Israel’s former Ambassador to the US.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Newsweek issued another report on Israeli spying on the US, this time referring to classified documents from the NSA leaked by Edward Snowden.
The latest NSA document, revealed by journalist Glenn Greenwald in concert with the publication of his memoir, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the U.S. Surveillance State, sums up the complicated security relationship between Israel and Washington in a single paragraph.
“The Israelis are extraordinarily good [Signals Intelligence] partners for us,” the NSA observed, referencing joint electronic spying programs against foreign targets, “but on the other [hand], they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems.” It added that a CIA-led National Intelligence Estimate on cyberthreats in 2013 “ranked Israel the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S.,” behind only China and Russia.
• Pope’s upcoming visit fraught with diplomatic tangles.
For more, see Thursday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
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