Israel and the Palestinians
• Hanan Ashrawi reiterates her claim that the Jews who fled Arab countries were not refugees. She writes at the Huffington Post:
At the very core of Zionist ideology is the idea that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people. If this is the case, and Jews living in Israel are citizens of their singular national homeland, then the state cannot consider them refugees — they cannot be returnees to Israel and refugees from another homeland at the same time.
In response, Point of No Return said Ashrawi’s followup “reads like a rehash of Lara Friedman‘s piece in the Daily Beast rebutted here.”
• Hamas is cracking down on the Salafists, with a wave of arrests “house to house and street to street.” According to Asharq al-Awsat, it’s a response to the Rafah crossing attack that left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead.
• Elliott Abrams: A successful PLO statehood bid will raise Palestinian expectations without improving Palestinian lives.
• British MP Denis MacShane slams South African boycott of Israel akin to the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops. More at Algemeiner.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• A US congressman participating in a recent meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and US ambassador Dan Shapiro confirmed that things devolved into a shouting match.
Rep. Mike Rogers (Rep. – Mich.), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee told WBUR’s Frank Beckmann that Israel’s frustrated over Washington’s lack of clear red lines. I couldn’t find a transcript or a podcast at WBUR, but Jeffrey Goldberg writes:
When Beckmann asked Rogers to describe the tenor of the meeting, he said: “Very tense. Some very sharp… exchanges and it was very, very clear the Israelis had lost their patience with the (Obama) Administration.” He went on, “There was no doubt. You could not walk out of that meeting and think that they had not lost their patience with this Administration.” . . . .
[W]hat was very apparent to me was a lot of frustration with the lack of clarity and the uncertainty about what their position is on the Iranian nuclear program. And that’s what I think I saw across the Middle East. The uncertainty about where the United States’ position is on those questions has created lots of problems and anxiety that I think doesn’t serve the world well and doesn’t serve peace well.”
By the way, Ambassador Michael Oren confirmed Rogers’ account.
• Ahmadinejad to address UN on Yom Kippur
• Worth reading:
- Bridging the US-Israel Gap on Iran (Washington Post staff-ed)
- What We Know About Iran’s Nukes (Wall Street Journal via Google News)
- Lessons for Israel From Captured Iraqi Documents (Dore Gold)
Arab Spring Winter
• Reuters: Egyptian officials say their Sinai crackdown is being coordinated with Israel.
• Washington Post columnist David Ignatius says there’s an “eerie” parallel between Syria and Afghanistan of the 80’s:
What does this historical comparison suggest? On the positive side, the Afghan mujahedeen won their war and eventually ousted the Russian-backed government. (Yes, that’s another eerie parallel.) On the negative, this CIA-backed victory opened the way for decades of chaos and jihadist extremism that are still menacing Afghanistan, its neighbors and even the United States.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Some refreshing common sense from Europe: The foreign ministers of Holland and Britain are pushing the EU to treat Hezbollah as terror organization:
Rosenthal said that it was the worrying reports of Hezbollah’s involvement in the ongoing violence in Syria that was one of the reasons that prompted him to support blacklisting the Lebanese organization.
• Haaretz updates the latest on Israel’s newspaper wars and the sale of the Maariv newspaper:
Shlomo Ben-Zvi’s acquisition of Maariv is expected to rearrange the Israeli journalism industry and may even affect the country’s political scene.
But making an ideological shift at a veteran newspaper like Maariv is no easy task. Many of its reporters and editors are unlikely to toe the line. Some may simply choose to leave.
(Image of parliament via Flickr/Dougtone, money via Flickr/shyb, Rogers via YouTube/RepMikeRogers)
For more, see the previous Israel Daily News Stream.
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