APN's daily news review from Israel
Monday, January 8, 2018
Quote of the day:
"The way to hinder BDS activists was not to keep them out of Israel but to 'allow them in so that they can see this
country for what is really is.'”
-- MK Tzipi Livni in response to the publication of the BDS blacklist
Breaking News:
US Vice President Mike Pence is set for a 48-hour visit to Israel beginning on January 22. He will then travel to Cairo and Amman, but no visit to Ramallah has been announced.
Front Page:
Haaretz
- Visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister protests to Netanyahu over aid worker's expulsion
- Analysis: With Shabbat bill, Netanyahu's Likud isn't shooting itself in the foot. It's shooting itself in the head.
- BDS Blacklist: Israel publishes full list of 20 groups who will be denied entry
- "Fire and Fury": Trump's Israel policies crafted by ultra-right Bannon-Adelson-Netanyahu axis
Israel Hayom
- 2 Bedouin-Israeli women arrested for alleged ISIS ties
- Netanyahu joins US critique of Palestinian aid agency
- Israel names 20 groups to be denied entry over boycott calls
- Terror victims: Deduct terrorists' salaries from PA tax funds
Times of Israel
- Jordan foiled Islamic state plot to "sow chaos" in kingdom, state media says
- Opposition slams blacklist barring members of boycott groups
- Iran warns world to prepare for US nuke deal withdrawal
- 2 Bedouin women, 19, charged with joining IS, plotting New Year's terror attack
Ynet News
- IDF soldier crashes after Haredim stone his vehicle
- Gaza residents in disbelief at potential power resumption
- Netanyahu: without majority, supermarkets [aka Shabbat] bill vote will be postponed
- Assad believed preventing Iran entrenchment
i24 News
- Iran president goes all-in on reform push after unrest
- US Jewish groups urge Netanyahu to reverse asylum seeker deportation plan
- Jordan arrests 17 suspected of plotting attacks
- US Quaker group on Israel's "BDS blacklist" responds undeterred
News Summary:
On Sunday, Israel published the full list - which has been dubbed the BDS Blacklist - of predominantly European and American organizations whose members will be barred from entering the country. The list guides the implementation of Israel's new Entry Law, which technically bars entry to any person if they, "or the organization for the sake of which he acts," have publically called for a boycott of "Israel, one of its institutions, or an area under its control" (i.e. Israeli settlements).
Israeli opposition leaders came out against the blacklist taking issue with the policy's logic. Labor party leader Avi Gabbay said the policy "has no logic at all... They are causing damage abroad. So if they are here, they can't do the same damage abroad." Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid said: "BDS activists are detestable but this is an idiotic idea. So our policy to fight boycotts is by implementing another boycott?” American Jews, both on and off the blacklist, are attacking the policy for being overtly undemocratic, and some pose that it strengthens and emboldens the BDS movement.
Prime Minister Netanyahu's coalition is struggling to establish a majority in passing a bill that would give the Interior Minister the power to bypass municipal bylaws and shut down businesses on Shabbat. Interior Minister Aryeh Deri - who chairs the ultra-Orthodox party, Shas - threatened to quit the coalition if it didn't pass, and Defense Minister Lieberman (Israel Beytenu party, also in the coalition) vowed to oppose the bill or abstain from the vote.
Quick Hits:
- The Netanyahu family's lawyer demanded that the Israel Television News Company not release an audio recording of Yair Netanyahu drunkenly talking at a strip club about Bibi's involvement in Israeli gas deals. The news company maintains that it is not illegal to air the tape.
- Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said that Prime Minister Netanyahu is leading a "multifaceted" effort against Iran's encroachment into Syria and carrying out "diplomatic, intelligence and security operations” to prevent it from “becoming an Iranian military base.”
- Three Israeli singers will perform a trilingual (Hebrew, Arabic, and English) song at a UN ceremony to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. Listen here.
- US foreign policy pundit David Rothkopf writes in an op-ed for Haaretz that "Israel is becoming an illiberal thugocracy, and I'm running out of ways to defend it." Rothkopf writes as an American Jew responding to the publication of Israel's BDS blacklist and many other recent moves to undermine democracy.
- Prime Minister Netanyahu and Education Minister Naftali Bennet are butting heads over a bill that would legitimize a college in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.
This bill would apply widely to academic institutions throughout the settlements.