Round up of news stories - Israel/Gaza/WestBank/Middle East

1. A violent holiday and day-after. This morning, an Israeli woman escaped a near-lynching after a Palestinian mob stoned her car near Tekoa. Rivi Lev Ohayon explained her escape to YNet while other eyewitnesses described what they saw to the Times of Israel.

Also this morning, a Palestinian stabbed and lightly wounded two Israelis in Jerusalem’s Old City. And in Kiryat Gat, a terrorist who stabbed a soldier and stole his gun was shot dead by police. The soldier was hospitalized with a light wound to the head.

The terrorist who killed Lavie and Benita, Mohammed Halabi, was a law student at Al Quds University. Multiple university sources confirmed to Tom Gross that Halabi was a regular participant at campus Nazi-style rallies which led Boston’s Brandeis University to suspend its partnership with the Palestinian college.


Newly disclosed documents show the cash-strapped PA has been paying thousands of shekels in stipends to imprisoned terrorists, with the most of the cash going to “members of Hamas who were behind some of the worst and bloodiest terror attacks in Israeli history and especially in the past decade.” The Jerusalem Post adds:

Documents further showed that members of the Palestinian Authority security forces that carried out terror attacks during the second intifada, and are still serving sentences in Israeli jails, are currently receiving these six-figure “salaries” as well.

Huge oil discovery in Golan Heights.

Estimates are that the amount of oil discovered will make Israel self sufficient for very many years to come.

4. Is the PLO Dictating AP Coverage? Wire service strangely leaves flashpoint holy site nameless.

5. Exclusive: First-Hand Account How The Guardian Twisted the Story: Even a series of corrections falls short of the truth.

6. U.S., Russian Air Strikes Put Israeli Actions Into Perspective: The rate of civilian casualties to combatants caused by Russia is almost double that of Israel’s military operation in Gaza last year.

It can’t be a good sign that Fatah-affiliated gunmen are raising their profile in the West Bank. In addition to falsely claiming responsibility for the Henkin murders, a bunch of gunmen from Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades appeared in downtown Ramallah, “opened fire into the air, chanting slogans in support of the PA president.”

It was the first time in seven years that gunmen belonging to the Aksa Martyrs Brigades had made such an appearance in Ramallah.

• Palestinians claimed settlers shot a six-year-old Palestinian boy. But it turned out Yussuf Tabib was playing with his father’s gun and shot himself in the stomach. YNet explains how the lie evolved:

According to the IDF, the family invented the story of an Israeli attacker to protect their older son and additionally to get a paycheck from the Palestinian Authority as victims of terror at the hands of Jewish settlers.

• Arabs rioted in Jaffa, throwing stones and blocking traffic with burning tires and garbage dumpsters. Six policemen were injured. Haaretz coverage.

• Haaretz: Billionaire Haim Saban quit his anti-BDS initiative with Sheldon Adelson.

 Politico reports that President Obama brushed off a plea from Senate minority leader Harry Reid to publicly commit to veto unilateral Palestinian statehood moves in the UN.

The repeated requests by Reid and Obama’s unwillingness to make a statement on the issue — confirmed by White House officials and Senate aides — highlights how wide the gulf between the Obama administration and Israeli government has become. It unfolded in the context of a personal relationship between Obama and Netanyahu that’s become highly toxic, poisoning U.S.-Israeli relations more widely.
 
The issue gained new significance Wednesday as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared that his government was no longer bound by any agreements with Israel, including the Oslo peace accords and other settlements related to a possible two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• The Toronto Star’s “heroic” Palestinian women are actually Muslim Brotherhood activists.

• Vassar College says ban on Israeli foods “a mistake.”

• India’s president, Pranab Mukherjee, is scheduled to visit Israel, the PA and Jordan later this month. It’s the first visit by an Indian head of state. The Hindu adds that plans for Prime Minister Narendra Modi are also in the works.

• Reuters takes a closer look at how the Tamar and Leviathan offshore gas fields went from a bonanza to an anti-trust headache.

• In case you missed it, see the transcript or video of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to the UN.
 
• An Iranian general blamed Israel for crane collapse and deadly stampede in Mecca. Among the 107 people killed was Dr. Ahmad Hatami, a top Iranian scientist.

• As moderate Syrian rebels wither, Islamic State gains ground on the Golan border.

• How an Iranian general plotted out the Syrian assault in Moscow

• France opened a probe into the Assad regime for crimes against humanity:

• MEMRI flagged Islamic State’s frantic response to the wave of refugees fleeing Syria.

The massive scale of the media output on this issue shows that ISIS sees the Syrian wave of migration to Europe as an acute challenge. ISIS leaders see this challenge is twofold: It undermines ISIS propaganda that promotes ISIS as a burgeoning state to which Muslims are flocking, and it constitutes an actual demographic problem.

• Arab coalition seized an Iranian weapons boat in the Arabian Sea.

• After joint Jewish-Muslim effort, the Council of Europe canceled an anti-circumcision measure.

• US finds Kuwait airline discriminates against Israelis.

• A criminal complaint was filed against a German mayor for anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate.

• I did a double-take too:
Ukrainian rebels call for Israeli media censorship

• An ugly Norwegian comic strip likened Israel to Nazis and North Korea. The Times of Israel explains the cartoon and the fallout.

Israel named ‘Palestine’ on map given to Paris schools. Muncipality told complaining parents it was a “production error.”

• An EU agency claims that European anti-Semitism is “grossly under-reported.”

European nations lack systematic methods of collecting data on anti-Semitism, contributing to the “gross under-reporting of the nature and characteristics of antisemitic incidents that occur,” the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) asserted on Wednesday.

• Jeremy Corbyn was heckled for refusing to say ‘Israel’ at Labour Friends of Israel meeting. The Daily Telegraph has video. One Israeli Labor Party official in attendance shared his discomfort with the Jerusalem Post.

• South Africa won’t push a controversial ‘anti-Semitic’ dual citizenship ban after all.

• Aaron David Miller wonder What if Israel had given up the Golan Heights?. Miller, who worked at the State Dept. for 24 years, channeled his inner Sharansky:

What we failed to realize was that of all of Israel’s peace efforts, with the possible exception of the Palestinian accords, any deal to return the Golan Heights occupied by the Israelis in 1967 was likely to be the most fraught precisely because Mr. Assad was so cruel in his policies and that his regime consisted of an Alawite minority governing a Sunni majority. Without real reform–something neither Hafez Assad nor his son and successor, Bashar, was ever really serious about–perhaps it would have been only a matter of time before Syria experienced real instability.
 
There is no way to know whether an Israeli-Syrian peace treaty would have changed the regime’s policies and created more openness and international investment, possibly preempting today’s devastation and tragedy. But let’s not kid ourselves: Authoritarian regimes, particularly family enterprises, rarely give up control easily, if at all.