EU Issues Anti-Settlement Measures

Rest O’ the Roundup

• The Wall Street Journal (access through Google News) compares the “red lines” of President Obama and PM Netanyahu:

As everyone—most especially Bashar Assad—now knows, Mr. Obama has no red lines regarding Syria or chemical weapons. Even his belated policy change to deliver small arms to the opposition is bogged down in bureaucratic inertia and congressional resistance. Readers may or may not think the U.S. should involve itself in Syria, but serious powers cannot issue empty threats and not expect consequences.

In his CBS interview, Mr. Netanyahu was also asked when he would be prepared to take military action to stop Iran’s nuclear programs. “Well, I can tell you I won’t wait until it’s too late,” he replied. The Prime Minister has been saying this for nearly two years, perhaps waiting for the U.S. to act instead, but he is learning in Syria that Israel will have to enforce its own red lines.

• In the same newspaper (access through Google News), Daniel Nisman argues that “Since the Six Day War, successive Israeli leaders have signed off on daring operations that have entered the annals of history” and that Iran should take heed: In 1967, a pre-emptive strike on Egypt seemed impossible too.

• The Huffington Post profiles the IDF’s Unit 8200 that specializes in cyber-warfare.

• Ultra-Orthodox IDF soldiers come under fire from extremists within their own community.

• Israel begins deporting Eritrean migrants.

• Israeli women’s lacrosse team ready to forfeit World Cup rather than play on Shabbat.

• Prominent Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf becomes the most prominent Iranian figure to visit Israel since the 1979 Islamic revolution, causing consternation in his homeland. Makhmalbaf is interviewed in The Guardian.

• “She is one of those very rare people in television who you never hear a bad word about,” says one BBC colleague of Mishal Husain who has been promoted to a top job on BBC Radio 4’s Today program. Husain is best remembered by us for one of the most shocking media moments of Operation Pillar of Defense when she ambushed Jerusalem Post reporter Gil Hoffman live on air.

Is this the sort of “journalism” that listeners of Radio 4 have to look forward to?

• A Saudi who was freed from Guantanamo Bay only to become second-in-command of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been killed in a drone strike.

For more, see Tuesday’s Israel Daily News Stream.