News Nosh 12.6.18

APN's daily news review from Israel
Thursday, December 6, 2018

Hanukkah Sameach!

*Please note that News Nosh will be truncated and limited to the English Israeli media until December 13 when Orly Halpern returns from holiday. There will also be no News Nosh this Sunday.
 


FYI:

Now is a great time to download APN's Facts on the Ground, a new, completely revamped and upgraded version of the groundbreaking settlements map app. It is available for free on iPhone and Android.

Go HERE for more and links to download the app on Apple or Android

Go HERE to get to the Apple link directly

Go HERE to get to the Android link directly

 

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

News Summary:

The IDF reports that it found another Hamas cross-border tunnel near the village of Ramyeh in Southern Lebanon. It asked the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to aid in destroying the tunnel from the Lebanese side.

Today, the UN General Assembly will vote on a US-backed resolution condemning Hamas for its rocket attacks against Israel and calling for an end to their violent activities. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon has said this resolution is "a win-win." "If we win, it will be a historic achievement. And if we don’t win, at least we succeeded in putting Hamas’s activities on the global agenda." The resolution does not mention the Israeli occupation or the siege on Gaza, and in a show of unity the Palestinian Authority has joined Hamas' efforts in thwarting it. Palestinian Authority leaders say that the resolution would "'target the whole Palestinian people' by focusing the blame for the failure of the peace process solely on Palestinian/Hamas actions, and thus undermine the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle."

The European Union adopted a declaration that calls on EU members to take concrete steps to protect the Jewish communities of Europe and fight anti-Semitism. It also recommends EU member states to use the definition of anti-Semitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) "as a guidance tool." The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism considers some criticism of Israel to be anti-Semitic, such as: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor, or by applying double standards to Israel not demanded of any other nation." Prime Minister Netanyahu had pushed the EU to fully adopt this definition, but some EU countries believed it could prevent criticism of Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories. 
 
Quick Hits:
  • Peace Now slams a legal opinion by the Ministry of Justice that gives a green light to the expropriation of private Palestinian land in order to legalize the Haresha outpost in the central West Bank. Peace Now said: "This move is a mockery of justice. Since the Regulation Law is tied up in court, the Ministry of Justice is yet again using every crooked justification it can concoct to expropriate private Palestinian land in order to dissect the West Bank with settlements until they have achieved their one-state apartheid agenda." (Times of Israel)
  • "Back to Gaza" - read the first of Haim Watzman's short stories written for the Times of Israel series, "Necessary Stories."
  • "Education Minister Naftali Bennett slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday evening amid reports Netanyahu asked Shaul Elovitch, who owns the Walla! News website, to publish a story that Bennett's wife, Gilat, worked as a chef at non-kosher restaurants." (Ynet News)
  • Yesterday in Jerusalem, 150 Evangelical Christians and Jews met for an interfaith conference to take on the "insidious, viral “hoax” taking hold in the Christian world — that the two historical Jewish temples had never been located on the iconic, holy, politically explosive compound." The Times of Israel report said the goal of the conference was to elicit international Christian support for Jewish control of the Temple Mount.
  • The Israel Policy Forum's Executive Director wrote an op-ed in Haaretz about the cost of annexation: "In circulating annexation plans they gloss over (or worse, deliberately hide) the likely ramifications of their proposals, which threaten to erode Israelis’ safety, undermine the state’s economy, and undo its democracy while also imperiling relationships with important U.S. allies in the Arab world." (Times of Israel)