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. YNet picked up on a startling revelation about the “moderate” Hassan Rohani:
. . . his elder son took his own life in 1992 in protest of his father’s close connection with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“I hate your government, your lies, your corruption, your religion, your double acts and your hypocrisy,” wrote the future president’s son in his suicide note, published in London by exiled Iranian political commentator Ali Reza Nouri.
Official Iranian press attributed the young man’s suicide to unrequited love.
2. Times of Israel: An unidentified Mideast state is reportedly supplying Syrian rebels with sophisticated anti-tank missiles. How’s this for irony? The Konkurs missiles were Soviet made.
3. What was Mohammed Morsi thinking? The new governor of Luxor appointed by the president is a member of Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya. That’s the Islamic terror group responsible for the Luxor massacre. The 1997 attack killed 58 foreign tourists, and four Egyptians inside the Temple of Hatshepsut as well as the local tourism industry. According to The Independent and Daily Mail, locals are going bonkers.
Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya also tried to assassinate Hosni Mubarak and was implicated in the assassination of Anwar Sadat.
4. Moderate is a Relative Term in the Mideast: Hassan Rohani’s presidential debut is getting the same wishful media spin as Bashar Assad 13 years ago.
5. Comments and the Roar of the Crowd: A sampling of the latest from my inbox. What’s on the minds of HR readers?
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Hamas leadership’s Cairo confab continues. According to Haaretz, they’re trying to iron out internal differences over Syria. But the Times of Israel reports that the real excitement was on the street outside, where some of the protesters sought to
storm the Intercontinental Hotel and capture the Hamas delegation “to trade them for [Egyptian] officers abducted in Sinai.”
• The BDS movement’s is trying to get another band to cancel an Israeli gig. Like Alicia Keys, the Pet Shop Boys put the self-righteous critics in their place with this statement on their website (via Elder of Ziyon).
I don’t agree with this comparison of Israel to apartheid-era South Africa. It’s a caricature. Israel has (in my opinion) some crude and cruel policies based on defence; it also has universal suffrage and equality of rights for all its citizens both Jewish and Arab. In apartheid-era South Africa, artists could only play to segregated audiences; in Israel anyone who buys a ticket can attend a concert. Neil x
• Pinkwashing charge aims to blacken Israel
- What less-than-moderate skeletons are in Hassan Rohani’s closet?
- Iranian criminal court summons Ahmadinejad.
- Assad threatens to export terror to Europe.
