News Nosh 8.17.17

APN's daily news review from Israel
Thursday, August 17, 2017

NOTE: Orly Halpern, editor of News Nosh, is on holiday from August 15th until August 24th, during which News Nosh will be produced as a truncated version and sent later in the day.
 

You Must Be Kidding: 
“... an Israeli citizen, someone who understands your identity, who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood, and the history and experience of the Jewish people, you should respect someone like me, who has analogous feelings about whites. You could say that I am a white Zionist – in the sense that I care about my people, I want us to have a secure homeland for us and ourselves. Just like you want a secure homeland in Israel.”

-- Richard Spencer, a white supremacist and alt-right leader, in an interview on Israel's Channel 2 News
 


Breaking News:
Two are dead in an attack in Barcelona, where a van jumped the sidewalk and crashed into pedestrians in the Las Rambas district. A manhunt is underway. Read more here.
 

Front Page:
Haaretz
Ynet News
Times of Israel
Israel Hayom
i24 News

News Summary:
The Israeli High Court temporarily froze the implementation of the new "Regulation Law," which would allow the government to retroactively legalize illegal outposts in the West Bank. Peace Now, along with Yesh Din, ACRI, and others, petitioned the law's legality earlier this year. The government has two months to respond to the interim order. 

The Israeli Government Press Office announced yesterday that they were revoking the credentials of Israeli Al-Jazeera correspondent, Elias Karram, for covering incitement against Israel during the Temple Mount crisis. This comes after weeks of threatening Al-Jazeera for "unfair and inaccurate" coverage of Israel. The Foreign Ministry had warned senior national security officials two weeks ago that sanctioning the network would significantly damage Israel's public relations abroad.
 
Quick Hits:
  • The Times of Israel features an interview with Efraim Zuroff, famed Nazi hunter and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, in which he argues that Netanyahu was right not to directly condemn the rally in Charlottesville because it could have offended the US. Read more here
  • In the same vein, Knesset Member Ayoob Kara argued that relations with Trump are more important than condemning neo-Nazis. "We need to condemn antisemitism and any trace of Nazism, and I will do what I can as a minister to stop its spread. But Trump is the best US leader Israel has ever had. His relations with the prime minister of Israel are wonderful, and after enduring the terrible years of Obama, Trump is the unquestioned leader of the free world, and we must not accept anyone harming him." Read more here
  • The Israeli High Court ruled that a woman can serve as director general of state rabbinic courts. Read more here.
  • In an op-ed in Haaretz, Stav Shaffir asserts that "Netanyahu's Charlottesville response proves he's lost any semblance of a moral compass." Read more here
  • Haaretz blogger John Brown presents a tongue-in-cheek flow-chart on why many on the Israeli right don't condemn neo-Nazis. See it here.