Thursday Links Part 1

From Ian:

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Former German Defense Minister: Germany Must Have Israel's Back

Berlin should also start thinking about how to support Israel in the wake of potential air strikes on Iran. It is better to develop a plan now than to engage in hectic ad-hoc decision making once the crisis has erupted. Germany's first priority should be to offer Israel civil and military assistance to defend against potential counterattacks. This could be by offering medical equipment or reconnaissance specialists for weapons of mass destruction, or by shoring up the Bundeswehr's naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean. The deployment of Patriot antimissile batteries, though logistically challenging, should also be considered.
Even if Israel's actual needs are limited, offering quick, tangible support is a powerful show of solidarity and demonstrates that Israel is not facing this crisis alone.

Palestinians fire rocket, mortars into Israel

Gazan terrorists shot a rocket and three mortar shells at Israel early Thursday morning, marking a third straight day of projectile fire after several months of calm.
Initial reports indicated that the rocket landed in an open area in the Eshkol region, as did one of the mortar rounds. Two of the shells fired failed to cross the fence into Israel and landed in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. There were no reports of injuries or damage.

Reports: Egypt Slams Hamas Over Rocket Attacks on Israel

Egypt has demanded explanations from Hamas as to how it is allowing terror groups to fire rockets into southern Israel, months after the truce that ended Operation Pillar of Defense last November.

BBC resumes ‘last-first’ reporting from Gaza area – and then changes tack

As we see, the BBC was back to its old habit of ‘last-first’ reporting, with the headlines on the Middle East home page and the article itself highlighting the last in a sequence of events and creating an impression of Israel as the initiator of violence and violator of the ceasefire. Only in the third paragraph of this seven paragraph article were readers given some sort of clue that there might have been prior incidents (not reported by the BBC at the time, incidentally) which prompted the event described in the headline.

Honest Reporting: CNN: Just a Steady Drip of Irksome Projectiles

Nothing that a little Valium can’t fix, right?
“The steady drip of projectiles has irked the Jewish state, which Tuesday conducted its first airstrikes into the Palestinian territory since the cease-fire that ended eight days of raging hostilities in November.

French court postpones verdict in al-Dura libel trial

The verdict in the libel case against French media analyst and critic Philippe Karsenty, sued by France 2 for accusing the network’s Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Enderlin of fabricating parts of a segment showing the reported death of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura from IDF fire in Gaza in September 2000, has been postponed to May 22.

MEMRI: Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments: The Muslims Will Kill the Jews on Judgment Day




Former Egyptian MB Member: The MB Is a Fascist Group that Wants to Take Over Egypt VIDEO

Egypt Denies Hamas Man Wanted Over Border Attack

An Egyptian intelligence officer on Wednesday denied media reports that a top Hamas military commander was wanted by Cairo in connection with the killing in August of 16 border guards.

Breaking the ‘Jew taboo’

The film took three years to make. Ramses has rightly been acclaimed for bravely tackling a ‘taboo’ subject: the Jews. So poisoned are Egyptians with anti-Jewish hatred that the word Jew is an insult and a provocation. Jews are malevolent, a curse, a cancer, the ‘enemies of Islam’. When informed that Leila Murad, one of Egypt’s most popular film stars in its 1930s heyday, was Jewish, one man in the film instantly loses his enthusiasm for her.