Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
Terror targets Israeli envoys in India and Georgia. Commentaries slam world paralysis on Syria. And a closer look at that the explosive email Rupert Murdoch’s sweating over.
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Embassies Under Attack
• Coverage of the attack in New Delhi and failed bombing in Tbilisi was the same across the board, describing what happened, the blame and denials. AP suffices.
Shortly before publishing this Cheat Sheet, the Bangkok Post reported another failed bombing with emphasis on fail. Connected to yesterday’s attacks? Too soon to say.
An Iranian man was severely injured when he threw a bomb at police that hit a tree and bounced back towards him and exploded in Bangkok on Tuesday afternoon, reports said.
• Iranian foreign ministry spokesman: Israel attacked it’s own embassies “to tarnish Iran’s friendly ties with the host countries.”
• Although Alan Dershowitz (WSJ via Google News) was referring to attacks on US soil when he wrote this, this argument would also apply to India and Georgia:
Under international law, an attack on an embassy is an attack both on the embassy’s country and on the country in which the embassy is located. And under the charter of the United Nations, an attack against a nation’s citizens on its territory is an act of armed aggression that justifies retaliatory military action.
• Jackson Diehl: Iran must be desperate if it is responsible for the attacks: India’s one of the few countries still buying Iran’s oil and opposing Western sanctions.
• Time: Can India really walk the Israel-Iran tightrope?
India now finds itself caught in the geopolitical mire between Israel and Iran, two countries that both share friendly relations with New Delhi. The coming few weeks will be a test for Indian diplomacy as well as its security establishment. It’s unclear whether Hizballah is gaining a foothold in the country, which has suffered no terrorist attack since a blast at Delhi’s High Court last September.
• NYPD director of intelligence analysis: you have to assume Iran or Hezbollah will target the Big Apple.
• Jennifer Rubin: If indeed Iran’s responsible, what does this attack mean?
The idea that we have “isolated” and weakened Iran’s desire for terrorism with sanctions is one of the many myths the Obama administration is perpetrating in an effort to stave off Israeli military action and quell domestic critics of his Iran policy. If this is Iran now, imagine Iran with the bomb
Arab Spring Winter
• A Syrian army defector says Assad’s regime’s already using chemical weapons “under the supervision of Iranian and Russian experts” in Homs. YNet adds:
The defecting officer added that the Syrian army’s Fourth Division and Republican Guard are expected to use chemical weapons elsewhere.
• Navi Pillay, the UN’s top dog on human rights, slammed Syria, demands intervention and referral to the International Criminal Court. And the blood still flows. More at Bloomberg News.
• While injured Syrian soldiers blame the Mossad or MI6, an opposition cleric calls on Israel to treat wounded Syrians. Check out Memri‘s find:
• Michael Young explains why subjugating Homs is critical for Assad and an Alawite “mini-state” that appears to be in the works.
• Tim Marshall wonders why the Saudis are suddenly championing human rights.
• Anne Bayefsky asks why the UN’s refusing to call an emergency special session on the Syrian atrocities?
• Peter Hartcher ties together why Syria and Iran are “bedfellows with their backs to the wall.”
• Dr. Aidan Hehir on why he wants to see the Security Council scrap the Big Five’s veto power:
Lost in the recent chorus of outrage is the fact that the use of the veto is not the preserve of the Russians and the Chinese; the idea that Russia and China are uniquely recalcitrant or cynical overlooks the willingness of the three Nato states to actively support known human rights abusers, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to name but three.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• In an impressively well thought out piece, the Financial Times (via Google News) crawls into Bibi’s headspace on Iran.
• An Israeli planning commission green lights controversial plans to develop the Kings Garden park in Silwan. AFP coverage.
• If you’re following the UK news hacking scandal, you’ll like this NY Times piece focusing on the email chain explosively calling into question what the Murdochs knew and when they knew it.
The messages were deleted from News International’s database — but a hard copy turned up:
In mid-November, News International says, investigators searching the seized materials found a storage crate that, judging from a sticker on top, had come from the office of Colin Myler, the paper’s last editor. It contained a hard copy of an e-mail sent from Mr. Myler to James Murdoch on June 7, 2008 — in reality a chain of e-mails that included correspondence with Tom Crone, then an in-house lawyer.
“Unfortunately, it is as bad as we feared,” Mr. Myler wrote, speaking of an impending lawsuit that threatened to reveal that voice-mail hacking at the paper was endemic.
(image of Murdoch via Flickr/david_shankbone)
For more, see yesterday’s Media Cheat Sheet.
