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Today’s Top Stories

1. A brutal murder in Bethlehem’s open-air market has shocked Palestinians into confronting wife-beating. AP‘s dispatch raises uncomfortable questions for one British paper which only yesterday blamed Israel for the domestic violence. See Israel Made Me Beat My Wife, Part 2.

2. Ahmadinejad’s being Ahmadinejad, and even his biggest apologists will have a hard time explaining away his latest calls for Israel’s destruction. His latest speech was posted on ‘Najad’s own web site so you can’t say he was mistranslated. As for the quoting him out of context, the Jerusalem Post fills that in effectively enough:

Speaking to ambassadors from Islamic countries ahead of ‘Qods Day’ (‘Jerusalem Day’), an annual Iranian anti-Zionist event established in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini and which falls this year on August 17, Ahmadinejad said that a “horrible Zionist current” had been managing world affairs for “about 400 years.”

. . .

He added: “Anyone who loves freedom and justice must strive for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the way for world justice and freedom.”

3. Uncle Sam’s boosting its support for the Syrian opposition. Reuters reports that President Obama signed a secret order authorizing American support for the Syrian rebels. And McClatchy News says aWashington lobby group called the Syria Support Group obtained a rare license to collect money for arms.

Sayers said the Syrian Support Group had vetted nine military councils of the Free Syrian Army, the loosely organized rebel force, and already was accepting donations to send to Syria “within weeks.” The support group also is consulting legal advisers to make sure members and donors wouldn’t run into trouble should the money end up in the hands of militant Islamists, who’ve become a more visible part of the Syrian revolt in recent weeks.

Israel and the Palestinians

• Credit the BBC with a good piece on Israeli security at Ben Gurion Airport looking at travelers’ email accounts. To put the matter in perspective, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel says it has only three documented instances. And security expert Philip Baum also shares his thoughts:

The Israeli profiling system is not based on racial profiling. It is actually based on identifying the norms of behavior of passengers, whether they’re traveling for business or for pleasure or for whatever other purpose. And if she didn’t meet that baseline expectation — and add to that the type of of places she wants to go to — then it could have raised some red flags.

• Palestinian membership in UNESCO paying off. There’s more than the Church of the Nativity’s World Heritage status, writes Maan News:

Palestine has attended four conferences recently as a member, including a discussion concerning maritime law and the standardization of geographical names of countries, Mansour told Ma’an.

• Reuters: Hamas slams Fatah official’s visit to Auschwitz.

• With Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr coming to Israel, Isi Leibler feels the love of Israeli-Aussie relations.

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