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. Washington Post covers the growing movement to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount.
The article, however, gives the impression that the Jews fighting for equal rights are the ones being unreasonable, not the Wakf authorities denying Jews the right to pray in their holiest place.
A small but growing movement by Jewish activists demanding the right to pray at the site of their destroyed temple, in the heart of this disputed capital’s Old City, is creating a potentially explosive clash with the Muslim world, which considers the spot holy and bans Jews from public worship there.
2. Finance Minister Yair Lapid gets his message across on CNBC, saying that Israel has earned the right for its concerns about Iran to be heard. Where Netanyahu’s comments are met with general disdain in the press, especially on Iran, Lapid draws nods of understanding from his interlocutors.
3. Op-ed in the New York Times looks at the problem of water and sewage in Gaza, placing most of the blame on the Hamas government in charge.
Since the Israeli and Egyptian blockade, Gaza has not had sufficient fuel to sustain its electricity supply and keep its 290 water and sewage facilities running. The Hamas government refuses to buy alternative fuels, because taxes on these would go to the rival Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority. As a result, pumping stations ceased operation in November, and many streets in southern Gaza City are now inundated with human excrement.
4. Anti-Semitism Definition Under Threat – The EU removes its definition of anti-Semitism.
5. Australian Advocates on HR Mission – We just completed our 19th Mission to Israel. Find out what the participants got up to and more on how you can join the next Mission.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• The Globe and Mail gave former Canadian Ambassador to Israel, Michael Bell, space to speculate that last week’s attack on Danny Seideman, an Israeli activist for the Palestinians, was carried out by Jewish settlers, not Arabs, as reported. The article is behind a pay wall, but Elder of Ziyon does an outstanding job rebutting the ridiculous and malicious charge.
Seidemann freely admits it was Arabs who threw the rock that injured him.
But Bell, a former ambassador to Israel apparently is so obtuse, so suffused in his righteous anger to blame “settlers” for everything wrong in the Middle East, that he seemingly only glanced at the news about his “friend” Seidemann and filled in the blanks in his incredibly biased professorial brain.
There is a double bias here shown by the professor. Not only is he willing to exaggerate events to blame Jews, he is willing to ignore Arab violence that happens every day in Jerusalem.
• Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters that her team had uncovered “massive evidence” of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria by officials “at the highest level of government.”
Pillay later clarified that she was not pointing fingers at Bashar Assad. “I have not said that a head of state is a suspect. I was quoting the fact-finding mission, which said that based on their facts, responsibility points at the highest level.”
• The Guardian reported on a Freedom of Information request on Netanyahu’s expenses to uncover more extravagant personal spending of public funds, including expensive scented candles for his various homes. The allegations follow revelations of large ice cream bills and the installation of a double bed on a government plane.
• Israel opens a Cyber Gym where IT professionals are trained in fighting off hack attacks. Meanwhile, Cyber Monday spending jumped 7-fold in Israel, as more Israelis took advantage of special deals on tech products.
• Canadian businessman in the West Bank gets a taste of Palestinian justice for insulting Mahmoud Abbas.
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
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