Everything you need to know about today’s coverage of Israel and the Mideast. Join the Israel Daily News Stream on Facebook.
Today’s Top Stories
1. Video footage of two Palestinians killed during a Thursday clash has the PLO screaming bloody murder. But the IDF claims the video was “edited in a tendentious manner” and fails to reflect the violence in the wider area. See Jerusalem Post coverage. Elder of Ziyon rounded up other images from the incident possibly suggesting that one of the shootings was staged. Draw your own conclusions.
2. The Rachel Corrie family’s legal fight to blame the IDF comes to down to a last ditch appeal in Israel’s Supreme Court on Wednesday. A lower court ruled that the army was neither criminal or negligent when the 23-year-old American member of the International Solidarity was run over by an IDF bulldozer demolishing a house along the Gaza-Egypt border in 2003. The Guardian and The Independent picked up on the story.
3. Legacy of Hamas-Fatah killings complicates unity. Good point, but I was more intrigued by this snippet:
After the reconciliation, it remains unclear what will become of the 40,000 employees of the Hamas government – and the 70,000 former PA workers in Gaza who for seven years have collected paychecks but sat idle. It is hard to imagine international donors continuing to pay two people for each job.
4. What BDS Means by Psychological Pressure on Israel: The BDS endgame is to make the world so hostile, Israelis will do anything to make the hate stop.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Some things are just so bizarre, even italics don’t do justice. According to the Daily Mail, while working on a documentary about racist and anti-Semitic soccer fans in Poland and Ukraine, BBC reporter Chris Rogers was caught on film giving a Nazi salute and goose stepping while holding a finger under his nose Basil Fawlty style. He already apologized. Just don’t mention the war.
The BBC Panorama documentary Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate, was filmed two years ago ahead of the tournament in Poland and Ukraine – but details of the gaffe have only just come to light.
Mr Rogers – a former Newsround children’s television presenter – admitted that he displayed a ‘lack of judgment’. . .
There was an internal probe into Mr Rogers’ behaviour, and he was temporarily frozen out of the show by a ‘livid editor’. A spokesman said that Mr Rogers was freelance and had not been used for the Panorama programme in two years after the incident.
• Are Palestinian terrorists targeting a new rail line in plain sight of Gaza? Israel HaYom reports that the IDF found a video suggesting Hamas wants to fire a missile directly at a passenger train running between Ashkelon and Sederot.
• Post script on the near lynching of Israeli journalist Avi Issacharoff: He was informed by the Palestinian Popular Committees that he was attacked because people thought he was from the Shin Bet, not because he was a reporter. Perhaps, but skepticism’s warranted.
• Israel’s UN ambassador, Ron Prosor, leveled sharp criticism of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for perpetuating the misery of Palestinian refugees. The Jerusalem Post was on hand:
Even the Palestinian government doesn’t take responsibility for its people, he said, because UNRWA’s services are already taking care of them.
“Almost 2 million Palestinian refugees live in the controlled territories. One would think that the Palestinian Authority would take the slightest responsibility for its people’s fate. Instead, they are content to use this population as political pawns rather than creating a better future for them.”
• Ex-International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, doesn’t believe The Hague will ever play an active role in the Mideast conflict, even if the Palestinians try dragging Israel to The Hague. i24 explains:
The ICC’s job is to investigate and prosecute only in cases in which the local legal system is not performing, said Luis Moreno-Ocampo in a lecture at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, stressing that in Israel, that is simply not the case.
“In a dictatorship they can make you disappear and kill you,” said Moreno-Ocampo. “But here, even if the situation is awful, you cannot disappear; you have the rule of law.”
He said that for the ICC to rule on Israel’s activities, “the Palestinians [plaintiffs] have to prove that the [Israeli court’s] decision was to shield the defendants. They would have to prove that it wasn’t a fair proceeding.” The official noted that Israel’s justice system and especially its High Court of Justice, was internationally acclaimed, making it a hard case to make.
• Worth reading: How does it feel to be “Israeli spawn” in Turkey?
• For more commentary/analysis, see Lyn Julius (Of Nakba, fools and fingers), Elliott Abrams (Narendra Modi and Menachem Begin), and the Times of London (staff-ed reflecting on Shimon Peres’ career).
(Image of Moreno-Ocampo via YouTube/One On One Series)
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
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