ADL: All extremist anti-Semitic attacks in 2018 were by white supremacists, The Times of Israel
Identifiably right-wing individuals were responsible for 1,328 of the non-anti-Semitic extremist incidents – nearly 44 percent. Identifiably left-wing individuals were responsible for none of 2018’s incidents, and Islamist individuals were responsible for four, according to the organization’s data.
Palestinians Won’t Like Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’, Bloomberg
Zev Chafets writes, “The PLO leadership will be presented with a document of surrender, on what amounts to a take-it-or-leave it basis. The Palestinian leadership has very little leverage. A refusal to engage, as Shtayyah threatens, will be an invitation to the U.S. and Israel to unilaterally establish a new order in the West Bank.”
Top Senators Warn: Trump’s Peace Plan Could Destabilize Jordan, Haaretz
Two senior U.S. senators who recently returned from a trip to the Middle East warned Tuesday that the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan could destabilize Jordan, a key U.S. ally and one of only two Arab countries that has an official peace treaty with Israel. Senators Mitt Romney (Republican of Utah) and Chris Murphy (Democrat of Connecticut), who head the subcommittee on the Middle East, paid a joint visit to the region last week.
Saudi Arabia offered Abbas $10 billion to accept Trump’s peace plan, The Jerusalem Post
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas $10 billion if he accepts US President Donald Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East, also known as the “deal of the century,” the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on Tuesday. A senior Palestinian official in Ramallah refused to comment on the report.
Annual anti-Semitism Report Finds Spike in Number of Jews Murdered Worldwide, Haaretz
More Jews were murdered in anti-Semiitc attacks around the world in 2018 than in any other year over the past several decades, according to a report published Wednesday by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center. The report, compiled together with the European Jewish Congress, also found a rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents defined by the Kantor Center as violent and severe – 387 in 2018 – a 13 percent rise compared to the previous year.
NYT editorial board says publishing cartoon shows ‘numbness to creep’ of anti-Semitism, JTA
The New York Times editorial board said in an editorial published Tuesday that the newspaper’s publishing of “an appalling political cartoon” is “evidence of a profound danger — not only of anti-Semitism but of numbness to its creep.” The newspaper also acknowledged its own contributions to the rise of anti-Semitism, saying that: “In the 1930s and the 1940s, The Times was largely silent as anti-Semitism rose up and bathed the world in blood. That failure still haunts this newspaper.”
EU Proposal for Israeli-Palestinian Tax Crisis: PA to Pay Prisoners Regardless of Felonies, Haaretz
EU officials have proposed that Palestinian prisoners receive stipends based on their financial state and not the crimes they committed, in an attempt to forge a compromise that would save the Palestinian Authority from financial collapse.
Reduction of Gaza fishing zone an ‘illegal collective punishment’, Al Jazeera
Miriam Marmur from Gisha, an Israeli rights organisation, told Al Jazeera Israel’s latest move constitutes “illegal collective punishment”. According to her, Israel’s restrictions on Gaza have been enforced as part of an official policy of “economic warfare” on the strip, and have “little” to do with security.
West Bank city to name a street after late Jewish member of Fatah, The Times of Israel
In a move initiated by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, al-Bireh Municipality in the central West Bank announced that it has decided to name a street after Ilan Halevi, a late Jewish member of Fatah. Halevi, who was born in Nazi-occupied Lyon, France but moved to Israel in his twenties, died in 2013 at 69. He was a member of leftist and anti-Zionist groups in Israel before he joined Fatah following the 1967 Six-Day War.
Bible is Jewish deed to Land of Israel, settlement envoy tells UNSC, The Jerusalem Post
In an unusual speech, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon defended the Jewish right to the Land of Israel, including the West Bank settlements when he addressed the United Nations Security Council on Monday afternoon. “Even the Romans themselves admitted the land was ours,” Danon said.
In an era of rising anti-Semitism, should Jewish Americans tack left or right?, Washington Post
Andrew Paul writes, “At this moment of finger-pointing, we would do well to remember an incident that occurred 70 years ago this summer: the Peekskill riots. At the time of the riots in 1949, anti-Semitic violence was fomented by anti-radical, nationalist sentiments, just like today. And just as in the aftermath of the Peekskill riots, people in power now have a choice: to try to pit minority and progressive groups against one another in the name of nationalism, or to try to forge an internationalist solidarity that lifts up marginalized people across the world.”
The New York Times Fuels More anti-Semitism Than Trump and Republicans? That’s Bullshit, Haaretz
David Schraub writes, “It has been striking and sobering to see how many in the American Jewish community, over the past few days, have invested more time and energy in talking about an anti-Semitic cartoon in the New York Times than an actual act of terrorism which murdered a Jew in a San Diego synagogue […] The AJC’s David Harris, for example, has five times as many posts on his twitter feed about the cartoon compared to the shooting. Elad Nehorai’s sad prediction, that we would be spending less time talking about the San Diego shooting than we will about Ilhan Omar, is already coming true.”
Only One Thing Can Stop White Supremacy: Solidarity Between Muslims And Jews, The Forward
Keith Ellison and Carin Mrotz write, “These murderous attacks on Jews are not isolated acts of anti-Semitic violence: They are connected to murderous attacks on Muslims. The Poway shooter cited the murderer of 50 Muslims in New Zealand last month as his inspiration. He also claimed responsibility for a mosque fire in nearby Escondido shortly after the Christchurch shooting. This is no coincidence. While antisemitism and Islamophobia pervade all political spaces and ideologies, these terror attacks, these murders, come from exactly one of them: the white-nationalist far right.”
Israel tries rescuing PA from collapse, after instigating crisis to begin with, Al-Monitor
Shlomi Eldar writes, “The Palestinian Authority (PA) is on the verge of collapse. Israeli security officials believe that barring drastic rescue measures, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will step down regardless of whether he quits of his own free will or is forced out by mass protests over the failure of funding-strapped institutions to carry out their tasks. Israel’s security agencies are convinced the collapse is only a matter of time as a result of Israel’s own doing and that of its friend, the United States.”
America Is Now a Perfect Bipartisan Incubator for Pathological anti-Semitism, Haaretz
Shalom Lipner writes, “A toxic political environment has decimated all remnants of civility in public discourse. Sensitivity to language and imagery has been a prime casualty. Both camps communicate with their respective followers, oblivious – or indifferent – seemingly to the nuances of messaging.”