Today’s Top Stories

1. Jerusalem’s City Hall approved a massive development plan for Palestinians in the eastern part of the city. Mayor Nir Barkat told the Jerusalem Post the plan will hopefully rein in illegal construction and boost the standard of living.

The plan will feature 2,200 housing units and 130 hectares for the development of infrastructure, including parks, roads, schools, cultural institutions and businesses.

Related reading: By the Numbers: Illegal Construction in Jerusalem

2. According to the Palestinian Authority, rebuilding Gaza will cost $7.8 billion.

3. Whoda thought? Universities profit from ignoring academic boycotts of Israel.

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4. Fighting BDS With Buycotts: Boycott-buster Sara Saber-Freedman discusses the Israel “buycott” with HonestReporting.

5. 5 Reasons For and Against the Sotloff Media Blackout: Should the media suppress coverage when reporters are kidnapped? Journalists are rethinking their views.

Israel and the Palestinians

• A new report found that the Palestinian economy shrunk, and these findings quoted by AFP are based on stats from before the recent Gaza crisis.

• Splendid: Hamas is making a comeback in the West Bank, according to The Economist.

• The Prime Minister’s Office ordered the dismantling of an unauthorized pedestrian footbridge leading up to the Temple Mount’s Mughrabi Gate.

• Associated Press reporter Daniel Estrin found that Israelis living in Merom Golan preferred the devil they knew to the Al-Nusra Front jihadis just across the border.

The Syrian government is “not our cup of tea,” said Gabi Kuniel, an Israeli who tends vineyards recently damaged by mortar shells when the violence spilled over to the Israeli-held side of the border in the Golan. But “we prefer that the Syrian army controls this region and not a group of radical al-Qaida Muslim people,” he said Wednesday, sitting behind a concrete structure near his fields to stay out of the line of fire.

• None of the 27 Palestinians executed by Hamas for allegedly collaborating were Israeli assets, according to intelligence officials. Times of Israel coverage.

• Surprise, surprise: Anti-Semitic incidents in the UK reached a record level in July, 2014.

• Israel indicted the man who masterminded the kidnapping of three Israeli teens. YNet has more details on what investigators learned about the abduction and murders.

• YNet: IDF attacks Syrian army position after stray projectile hits Golan

Media Angles

• YNet/Reuters describes the effort to scrub all traces Steven Sotloff’s Jewish and Israeli connections from the internet:

The worldwide network of friends included over 150 members, speaking 20 different languages, who scanned every post Steven has made on Facebook or Twitter and removed any mentions of his Israeli or Jewish connections . . . “We had two missions: To locate all of his friends worldwide – and he had many – and make sure they don’t talk to journalists. In addition, we had to convince journalists who were writing about him to cooperate with us and remove any connection between him and Israel or Judaism, so his ISIS kidnappers don’t find out his background,” one of the friends said. According to one of Sotloff’s acquaintances, the media realized the danger in reporting on this information and had obliged their request.

• Worth reading Joanna Chen (The Jewish journalists who interview jihadis) and Boaz Bismuth (A lone journalist in a hostile place).

Commentary/Analysis

• Emmanuel Navon pokes legal holes in the PA’s strategy of unilateral statehood through the UN.

• Douglas Murray asks the million dollar question:

• For more commentary, see Yiftah Curiel (Hamas is the single biggest obstacle to peace), and David Pannick (Why the Human Rights Council of the UN is ‘eyeless in Gaza’).

Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA HonestReporting, flickr/Zuhair A. Al-Traifi, Sotloff CC BY-NC-SA HonestReporting, flickr/Christian Guthier

For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.

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