Four rockets from Lebanon fired into Israel
(JNS.org) The relatively quiet Israeli-Lebanese border became a renewed source of tension on Thursday as four rockets from Lebanon were fired into Israel. One was intercepted the Iron Dome missile defense system, and two landed in the western Galilee region, causing property damage but no injuries, Israel Hayom reported.
The Ziad Jarrah Battalion, the Lebanese branch of the Sunni global jihad group Abdullah Azzam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter, and also said it possesses missiles and rockets with the range to reach Haifa.
“The Jewish enemy and Iran’s yes-men, Hezbollah, have conspired to preserve the criminal regime of Bashar al-Assad,” said Sheikh Sirajuddin Zurayqat, one of the group’s leaders. “Now Hezbollah’s mission to defend the Jews has been made that much harder.”
The Israel-Lebanon border has been relatively calm since the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. In response to the rockets, the Israeli Air Force on Friday struck a Lebanese “terror site located between Beirut and Sidon,” according to the Israel Defense Forces.
“The State of Israel holds the Lebanese government responsible for anything that happens on its soil, and we will respond to any fire or provocation directed at us. We view yesterday’s [rocket] fire into Israel with grave severity and we will not allow anyone to disrupt the lives of our citizens,” Israeli Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon said.
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Jordan and Israel will trade water in new venture
(JNS.org) Jordanian Prime Minister Abdalla Ensour and his cabinet approved a new plan to trade water with Israel. In a new Red Sea desalination project expected to cost $1 billion, Jordan will sell part of the resulting water to Israel in exchange for water from the Tiberias reservoir. Middle East countries are known to face chronic water shortages.
“We will sell Israel water at a rate of JD1 per cubic metre and buy from them at a rate of JD0.3 per cubic metre. This process will save us the effort and cost of conveying water from the south to the northern governorates,” Ensour said, the Jordan Times reported.
According to Jordanian Minister of Water and Irrigation Hazem Nasser, the agreement is legal based on Article 2 of the peace treaty signed with Israel in 1994, and is of “strategic national interest” to Jordan.
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Bar Refaeli to Pink Floyd BDS activist Roger Waters: ‘Take my picture off of the video art’
(JNS.org) Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli tweeted a request to Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters to remove her photo from art work in his concerts if he is truly planning to boycott her home country.
“Roger Waters, you better take my picture off of the video art at your shows. If you’re boycotting – go all the way,” she posted on Twitter in Hebrew.
Refaeli, who had previously expressed gratitude about being featured in Waters’s concert art, changed her mind following the Pink Floyd member’s recent letter that called on fellow musicians to boycott Israel.
Waters, an active member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, in a July concert released an inflated pig into the air with markings that included a Star of David.
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Hundreds of Egyptian Christians rally in Washington to protest U.S. policy and media
(JNS.org) A group of hundreds of Egyptian Christians from around the U.S. held a series of rallies in Washington, DC, on Thursday to protest U.S. policy in Egypt and Western media coverage.
The rallies were organized by an online campaign. One of the group’s organizers, Amro A. Gadd, wrote that the rallies are “intended also to expose the clear bias for the Obama administration and the American media in support of MB (Muslim Brotherhood) and its terrorism ideology,” according to a post on his Facebook page.
The rally began at the White House before marching to the office of the Washington Post, CNN and Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an American Muslim group which the protesters accuse of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
“We are against the Muslim Brotherhood,” protester Ramez Mossed told the Washington Free Beacon. “He [Obama] supports the Muslim Brotherhood. He has a big hand in Egypt and the mess in Egypt. We’re trying to tell him, ‘Don’t support the terrorists. Please be fair.’”
Meanwhile, a petition started by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a Washington, DC-based public interest Christian law firm, calls on Obama to condition American aid to Egypt on the protection of Christians.
“It’s time to take sides—for religious freedom and against the Muslim Brotherhood. Comply with human rights requirements. American aid must be conditioned on the protection of Christians, and it must be used to oppose our jihadist enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood,” the petition reads.
As of Aug. 22, the petition had garnered roughly 41,000 signatures.
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Al-Jazeera America’s first interview features anti-Israel author Stephen Walt
(JNS.org) The newly launched television news network Al-Jazeera America, which has stated that it aims to present more objective coverage than its Middle Eastern counterpart, featured noted anti-Israel author Stephen Walt as its first guest.
Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University, gained notoriety for co-authoring the controversial book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, which uses long-held anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Jewish manipulation to allege that pro-Israel Americans manipulate U.S. policy to serve Israel’s selfish interests.
In his interview on Al-Jazeera America posted on YouTube by theWashington Free Beacon, Walt was critical of Egypt’s past and current rulers—Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military—calling them all “stupid.” He concluded his interview by noting that the U.S. provides military aid to Egypt mainly to protect Israel.
Al-Jazeera America is a new venture by the Qatar-based television network Al-Jazeera. In January, Al-Jazeera announced it had purchased former Vice President Al Gore’s struggling Current TV to serve as a distribution network for its foray into the American media.
But some have been openly critical of the new network’s ties to the government of Qatar.
“To Americans, Al-Jazeera purports to be the equivalent of CNN or Fox or MSNBC—an independent purveyor of news. Yes, Americans know that most media leans left and a little bit of it leans right, but the networks themselves are generally free of government manipulation. Al-Jazeera, however, is a wholly owned arm of the Government of Qatar,” Shoshana Bryen, a Middle East analyst for the Jewish Policy Center, wrote for theGatestone Institute.
While Qatar is officially a U.S. ally, its ruling royal family has forged close ties with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Last month, nearly two-dozen Al-Jazeera staffers quit over what they called pro-Muslim Brotherhood bias in its coverage of events in Egypt.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org