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. Operation Brother’s Keeper continues efforts to find kidnapped teens.
30 more Hamas men arrested by IDF early Thursday; approximately 100 locations searched; confrontations between IDF forces and Palestinian stone throwers in Jenin and Nablus.
The latest developments on Day 7 of the operation here.
The IDF has produced a video on the Horrific History of Hamas Kidnappings:
More here on how Hamas leaders glorify kidnapping of Israelis.
2. Gaza rocket hits home in southern Israel.
A rocket struck a home in a kibbutz in the Sha’ar HaNegev region outside Gaza on Wednesday. The projectile caused some damage, but no injuries were reported. A second projectile also launched out of Gaza landed in an open area in the same region.
In response, an “IAF aircraft targeted a terror activity site, a terror infrastructure site and a concealed rocket launcher in the northern Gaza Strip and two terror activity sites in the central Gaza Strip,” the IDF said in a statement.
3. Israel to vice-chair UN committee on Palestinian refugees.
Israel overcame a coordinated effort by Arab states on Wednesday to thwart its appointment as vice chair of a UN committee dealing with issues such as Palestinian refugees and human rights, and will serve in that capacity at the 69th session of the UN General Assembly.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Abysmal headline of the day goes to The Times of London for implying that Israel’s operations to rescue its three kidnapped teens are actually retaliatory acts:
• Former Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment Thursday and fined half a million shekels ($145,000) for accepting bribes in the Holyland affair.
• David Rosenberg explains why the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is a colossal flop in Haaretz:
It looks like good times again for the boycott, sanctions, divestment movement. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is again voting on whether to impose sanctions, Sinead O’Connor may or may not be cancelling a performance in Israel and Bill Gates sold his shares in G4S, a European security company that provides equipment to Israeli prisons.
Even a loss for BDS like the vote of the Modern Language Association, an important U.S. academic group, can be seen as a victory of sorts. A resolution asking the State Department to pressure Israel to freely allow overseas Palestinian academics into the West Bank failed to muster the minimum percentage of votes needed to pass, but the movement did succeed in getting the issue on the agenda and a majority of votes were cast in favor.
As usual, however, with BDS appearances are deceiving. As The Financial Times wrote in a June 14 article “Orchestrated boycott of Israeli companies falter, ” the last wave of supposed BDS achievements last winter turned out to be a lot about nothing. Here is why this one will end up being the same.
Read the full article here.
• Met Opera cancels simulcast of Death of Klinghoffer following concern over potential anti-Semitism.
For more, see Yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
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