Palestinians to Reportedly Cut Ties With Quartet

Today’s Top Stories

1. According to Arab media reports picked up by the Times of Israel, the Palestinian Authority has decided to sever ties with the Quartet, which consists of the United Nations, European Union, United States Russia.

The Quartet on Friday released a long-awaited report on the peace process, which, for the first time in a major international forum, cited Palestinian incitement against Israel as a major obstacle to ending the conflict.

 

The report accused Hamas and Fatah of encouraging terror attacks against Israelis. It also criticized Israel’s settlement building, and its demolition of Palestinian homes and confiscation of land, saying those policies were “steadily eroding the viability of the two-state solution.”

 

PLO secretary general Saeb Erekat, who is also the lead Palestinian negotiator, expressed disappointment that the report criticized both sides rather than only Israel.

2. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s African visit continues. Newsweek nicely rounds up the five main issues on Bibi’s agenda. Among the most note-worthy news coming out of Africa, a senior Somalian official confirmed to the Times of Israel that Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud secretly visited Netanyahu in Israel two weeks ago. Somalia has no diplomatic relations with Israel. Also, Tanzania will open an embassy in Israel for the first time.

After a ceremony marking the anniversary of the Entebbe rescue, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni hosted Netanyahu and the heads of state of Zambia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania for a summit focusing on counter-terrorism and economic cooperation. Best coverage of that at the Lusaka Times.

Netanyahu arrived in Kenya this morning. For a better sense of how Kenya regards the visit see this Daily Nation staff-ed. Tweet of the day goes to Goodman Conrad:

? Epic traffic jam in Nairobi because of the Israeli prime minister… He better be bringing the original Ten Commandments

— CHAPAT (@conradgoodmanK) July 5, 2016

3.In a moment of candor, a Palestinian mayor admitted to Maan News that the West Bank water crisis has been exacerbated by the PA’s neglect of infrastructure. But it’s still Israel’s fault, right?

Beit Fajjar Mayor Akram Taqatqa said that his town’s water network had not had any maintenance work done in at least 15 years and was in very poor condition, further worsening the water crisis in the Bethlehem district town, as Israel’s national water company Mekorot suspended or limited water supplies to several parts of the West Bank since mid-June.

4. HonestReporting Launches HR Brazil: Our new Portuguese-language initiative will give Brazilian news consumers the opportunity to fight media bias and speak up for Israel. HR Brazil will be spearheaded by Tamara Stern, formerly of Rio de Janeiro and recent immigrant to Israel, who will monitor and critique Brazilian news services, translate selected HonestReporting content, and build a social media community.

HonestReporting Brazil will be hosted via the main HonestReporting website at https://honestreporting.com/brazil

Follow HR Brazil on Facebook and Twitter, and click to subscribe to the mailing list. For more information, contact hrbrasil@honestreporting.com and please help us spread the word.

5. SUCCESS: HR Prompts National Post to Amend Shocking Headline: Canadian paper corrects twisted headline following days of complaints from HR readers.

6. Shuttleworth Distorts Facts to Suit Bias in RNZ Interview: The conscious use of judgement-laden terms and omission of context muddies the distinction between Palestinian terrorists and their Israeli victims.

7. Epiphany at The Independent? Shock as Palestinians Described as Terrorists: Does a UK daily’s rare example of calling terror by its name represent meaningful change?

8. HonestReporting Hosts the Hasby Awards: Some of the world’s top Israel activists visited HR’s Jerusalem headquarters to recognize the people tirelessly speaking up for Israel.

Israel and the Palestinians

• Israel nabbed two Palestinians smuggling money from Gaza to Hamas operatives in the West Bank. The Jerusalem Post reports the pair also shed light on the Hamas tunnel network below the Strip.

• The main takeaway from YNet‘s look at Palestinian incitement on social media:

ls through which Palestinians receive the news. The results were astonishing: More than 80 percent of Palestinians receive their news from Facebook and Twitter. Palestinian terrorist groups were among the first to identify this trend, and they therefore began devoting significant resources into online efforts.

 

Hamas leads in its exploitation of this trend.

• The Associated Press takes a closer look at Israeli-Egyptian relations.

• Khaled Abu Toameh notes Hamas is experimenting with  experimenting with democracy . . .

Hamas is holding a 'secret' vote to elect new leaders.

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) July 5, 2016

• Globes: Israel to let Turkey transfer funds to Gaza banks, but only for activities approved by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

• An  Israeli-Arab mother of five with a PhD in Islamic studies was sentenced to prison for trying to join Islamic State. YNet coverage.

• An El Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv had some unusual excitement today. A bomb threat, which turned out to be a false alarm, led to Switzerland scrambling fighter jets to escort the plane through Swiss air space. Flight 002 landed in Ben Gurion Airport safely and on time. More at the Jerusalem Post.

Swiss F-18 seen from El Al plane it escorted over bomb scare that proved false. France & Bulgaria also sent escorts. pic.twitter.com/oTPT4FdHif

— Dan Williams (@DanWilliams) July 5, 2016

Around the World

• Tributes to Elie Wiesel continued. Former refusenik Natan Sharansky described how Wiesel’s keen insight impacted the movement to free Soviet Jewry. And European Jewish leader Moshe Kantor shares the lessons he learned from Wiesel.

• In London, UK Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn finally regrets calling Hamas and Hezbollah “friends” and condemned Ken Livingstone’s comments about Hitler and Zionism. Take your pick of coverage in The Spectator, Daily Mail, or Daily Telegraph.

Meanwhile, one of the party’s rising stars is in hot water for comparing Israel to the Nazis. Sheesh.

• According to The Independent, families of Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis want to leave UK for Germany after Brexit.

Some of the Jewish people who are considering seeking German nationality are doing so because of economic uncertainty and also because of worries at the outbreak of extremism which has accompanied Brexit . . .

 

Around two or three Britons sought German nationality every year in the past, “dozens”  have come forward in the last week from a cross-section of UK society; the German embassy is collating the numbers and details of applicants.

• The Syrian government is forcibly conscripting civilians from the village of Deir Ezzor into a militia established by Hezbollah, according to Arab reports.

Commentary/Analysis

• Worth reading: Bret Stephens (Wall St. Journal via Google News) weighs in on why the world treats Israeli victims of terror differently from other victims of recent Islamic terror.

What happened to Hallel has happened to countless settlers: five members of the Fogel family, butchered in their beds in 2011; the three teenage boys who were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 2014; the rabbi who was shot and killed on Friday on a West Bank road while driving with his wife and two children. Yet their deaths are supposed to be different from those of other terrorism victims, since they were all “occupiers” whose political crimes rendered them complicit in their own tragedy. That’s how much of global public opinion has long treated terrorism when the target is Israel. It has a rationale. It’s understandable, if not justifiable. It’s Israel’s problem, Israel’s fault, and has no bearing on the rest of us . . .

 

It’s depressing to think that the only way the world might understand the truth about terrorism is to have some experience of it. Still, it’s worth stressing that terrorism is not the continuation of politics but the negation of it, and that the murder of a 13-year-old “settler” has no more a rationale than what ISIS did in Orlando, Istanbul and Dhaka. Terrorism can be defeated, but only once that lesson is learned.

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Boaz Bismuth: Israel and Africa: A renewed love affair
– Micah Lakin Avni: Love and jihad in kindergarten
– Herb Keinon: Where Israeli and African interests intersect
– Avi Issacharoff: The beginning of the end of the Abbas era
– Semih Idiz: Turkey’s Islamists unhappy with Israel detente
– Amb. Freddy Eytan: The post-Brexit future of European-Israeli relations

Featured image: Public domain image from The British Library with modifications by HonestReporting; Corbyn via YouTube/BBC News;

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