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Today’s Top Stories
1. The Knesset elected Reuven “Rubi” Rivlin as Israel’s next president. He’ll succeed Shimon Peres, whose term ends in July. See Jerusalem Post coverage of the vote, and YNet‘s backgrounder on Rivlin’s political history. Meanwhile, the NY Times looks at what’s next for the 90-year-old Peres.
2. Hamas calls on West Bank members to kill soldiers and settlers.
Badran’s comments came a week after the swearing in of a Palestinian unity government in Ramallah, endorsed by the US and the EU.
3. Reconciliation, Palestinian style: PA forces broke up a Hamas rally in West Bank, beating up protesters in the process. AP coverage. Reuters looks at other disunity issues.
4. “Militant” Jews Dance and Pray: If “militant” Jews dance and pray, what do Palestinian “militants” have to do to be called terrorists by the AFP?
5. Media Double Whammy for BDS: Critical commentaries in New York and London blast BDS.
Israel and the Palestinians
• According to Israeli security officials, Hamas plans to exploit West Bank’s charities.
• Shimon Peres discussed the peace process in a Wall St. Journal Q+A.
• Haaretz: As Israel cuts defense budget, US senators question aid.
• Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is due to leave Israel for a 10-day visit to Africa. According to AFP, the main goal of the trip is to procure observer membership in the African Union. Lieberman will be accompanied by a delegation of businessmen as he stops in Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya and Ethiopia.
• BDS? Some Australian academics get it:
Mr McCulloch is understood to have told the closed-door meeting that launching a debate about the BDS campaign would prove divisive at a time when the union needed unity to fight immediate issues like federal budget cuts.
He suggested supporters of BDS were really pushing a radical “one state” outcome in the Middle East.
• BDS? NY Times columnist Roger Cohen gets it:
The stated aim of the B.D.S. movement is in fact to end the occupation, recognize the rights of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, and fight for the right of return of all Palestinian refugees. The first objective is essential to Israel’s future. The second is laudable. The third, combined with the second, equals the end of Israel as a Jewish state. This is the hidden agenda of B.D.S., its unacceptable subterfuge, and the reason I do not trust it.
B.D.S. can too easily be commandeered by anti-Semites posing as anti-Zionists who channel the quest for peace in a direction that ultimately dooms Israel as a national home for Jews.
• BDS? Jake Wallis Simons and the PA get it:
But it appears that the Palestinian leadership views BDS activists as little more than embarrassing troublemakers, and wishes to suppress them.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Khaled Abu Toameh (will the West fund Hamas?) and Philip Mendes (The Jews and the Left: The Death of a Political Alliance).
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Nice CNN look at what’s behind the success of Israeli hi-tech start ups.
• Can you imagine the headlines if this happened in Israel?
Six-year-old boy hit in eye by tear gas canister while ‘looking out of window’
• Israel won’t be playing on the pitch, but there’s plenty of blue and white behind the scenes at Brazil’s World Cup — especially with security and upgrading wireless infrastructure. Jerusalem Post coverage.
(Image of Rivlin via YouTube/AFP)
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
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