Israel and the Palestinians
• When will the Western media grasp the self-inflicted Palestinian energy crisis?
• AFP: The PLO said it “recognizes the right” of individuals and organizations to boycott Israel, but said it’s own policy is to only boycott settlements.
• Only in Israel: Ahmed Qureia caught speeding after leading police on high speed chase; almost causes diplomatic incident. According to YNet, Lightning McQureia was doing 140 kph (about 90 mph) near Maale Adumim.
• Your daily dose of moral equivalence, courtesy AFP headline writers:
• Following up on a recent Reuters piece on Palestinian honor killings, The Media Line examines the story of one woman, Thamar Zeidan.
For some of the relatives, the death was a cause for celebration. Thamer’s aunt held a feast celebrating that the family’s honor was now clean.
But for the immediate family, it was and remains a tragedy.
• Turkey’s doubling its financial support for UNESCO. The move makes up for Israeli and US budget cuts after Palestine was admitted to the world body. But UN Watch adds:
However, this is not all due to altruism for UNESCO’s mission. Turkey is home to many important cultural sites from many different cultures. Strengthening their position at UNESCO is an asset for Turkish diplomacy. Turkey was recently elected to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee for the next four years and four Turkish programs had been accepted into UNESCO’s memorial programs. This hasn’t got unnoticed and has angered its neighbor and traditional rival Armenia.
• On the 25th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, an Israeli security official implicates Palestinians — specifically Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
• The American Studies Association’s boycott of Israel continues to fuel debate. Most notably, Michael Oren argued in Politico that Congress should take action against academic boycotts. See also Wesleyan U. president Michael Roth, Boston U. president Robert Brown, Martin Kramer, Christopher Caldwell (Financial Times via Google News), a biting Chicago Sun-Times staff-ed, and Ari Shavit on CNN.
The Willamette and Northwestern universities have already come out against the boycott.
• For more commentary/analysis, see David Brooks (Israel and the peace process) and Avi Jorisch (Palestinian refugees).
Rest O’ the Roundup
• The Nelson Mandela Foundation says there’s no evidence to back recent reports that the Mossad trained Mandela.
• Thanks to the Syrian civil war, Al-Qaida is expanding its influence in the Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. McClatchy News reports:
[Hezbollah] officials and security personnel have been quietly making the case that al Qaida-linked groups are using the long-standing tradition that Lebanese soldiers and police officers can’t enter the Palestinian refugee camps to make arrests in order to build a haven to conduct operations against Hezbollah in revenge for its open participation in fighting for the Syrian regime.
• For more commentary, see Ephraim Sneh (Iranian nuclear diplomacy) and Avi Issacharoff (Jordanian stability).
(Image of Manger Square via YouTube/GNC Global News Channel)
For more, see Thursday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
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