US Court Throws Out $655 Million Terror Judgment Against PA, PLO

Today’s Top Stories

1. A US appeals court threw out a $655 million judgment against the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization for their connection to terror attacks that killed a number of US citizens. A group of American victims of Palestinian terror sued under the US Anti-Terrorism Act.

But no emotion was enough before the appeals court, which said that neither the attacks nor the PA or PLO had sufficient ties to the US, including their lobbying activities, for American courts to have jurisdiction.

It also found no evidence the attacks specifically targeted American citizens. Rather, it called them “random and fortuitous.”

More on the ruling at the New York Times and the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News).

2. German parliamentarian Volker Beck launched an inquiry into whether German aid to the Palestinians has been misappropriated for terrorism. More at the Jerusalem Post.

3. Good grief . . .

The United States and its negotiating partners agreed “in secret” to allow Iran to evade some restrictions in last year’s landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions, according to a report reviewed by Reuters.

4. Now that the Czech Ministry of Education has caved to Palestinian complaints and isteaching students that Israel’s capital is Tel Aviv, I’m re-upping this video in which Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai reminds everyone that Jerusalem is Israel’s one and only capital.

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Israel and the Palestinians

Richard Lakin

• An Israeli man is seeking the ouster of Palestinians from scout movement after an eastern Jerusalem branch named a training course after one his father’s killers. AP writes:

Micah Lakin Avni said the Palestinian scout branch is violating the world movement’s core ideals.

“The scouts has really been for more than a century an international, nonpartisan organization dedicated to teaching kids to be good citizens of their neighborhood, of their world,” Avni said. “Tragically, they are teaching their kids to hate and be violent.”

A Palestinian scout troop in east Jerusalem held a training course last week that was dedicated to Baha Alyan — one of two Palestinian attackers who shot and stabbed passengers on a Jerusalem bus last October.

Richard Lakin, a 76-year-old dual US-Israeli, along with Israelis Haim Haviv and Alon Govberg, were killed in last year’s attack on a bus in Jerusalem’s Armon HaNatziv neighborhood. By the way, Alyan was buried last night after the family agreed to a late-night, low-key funeral. The second terrorist, Bilal Abu Ghanem, was sentenced to three life terms plus 60 years.

See Avni’s letter to the World Organization of the Scout Movement.

• Knesset may punish MKs who call to boycott Israel.

• Israel will begin transferring 30 million cubic meters of water to the PA next month under the terms of a broader Israeli-Jordanian agreement to build a Red Sea-Dead Sea canal.

The ambitious plan also includes a desalination plant in Jordan’s port city of Aqaba providing drinking water to southern Israel. The Times of Israel explains that a saline byproduct of the desalination process will be used to replenish the shrinking Dead Sea.

• Font of hatred: How Hamas relies on two UK websites

• IDF soldiers escorting a group of Israelis to Joseph’s tomb in Nablus were attacked by Palestinians throwing rocks and firebombs last night. One soldier hit by gunfire from the nearby Balata refugee camp is in stable condition. YNet coverage.

• Haaretz: An Israeli Arab family that joined up with Islamic State in Syria is now in Turkish custody and trying to return to Israel.

Around the World

• A Hungarian court shut down 20 Holocaust-denying web sites. Hungary Today explains the common denominator among the sites:

The websites sell the Hungarian edition of a Swedish author’s book that overtly denies genocides committed by the Nazi regime, Tibor Ibolya said. The sites also make some of that content available to read online . . .

Under a 2010 Hungarian law, Holocaust denial in public is a crime punishable by up to three years imprisonment.

• Claiming BDS harassment and unsafe campus climate, former student association president leaves UCLA.

• A sign of the times?

Commentary/Analysis

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Isi Liebler: The accelerating erosion of the post-Zionist Hebrew media
– Khaled Abu Toameh: The “other” Palestinians
– Ariel Bolstein: The Russia-Israel romance
– Herb Keinon: How will Colombia’s detente with rebels affect Jerusalem-Bogota ties?
– Menahem Milson: Conversations with the Palestinians of 1967: Has anything changed?
– Judith Bergman: Norway, stick to polar bears

Image of gavel CC BY-SA wp paarz via Weiss & Paarz; water CC BY-SA likeablerodent;

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