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Day 37 – Ceasefire Ended or Extended?

by TheTower.org Staff |

Today was the thirty-seventh day of Operation Protective Edge.

Earlier today, The Tower reported on the violation of the ceasefire by Hamas, when at least one rocket was fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip two hours before the 72-hour ceasefire was set to expire. Then, shortly afterward, it was reported that there was an agreement on a five-day ceasefire extension. The five-day extension has been attributed to Palestinian officials but not Israeli officials. Even with the announcement of the latest extension, there were new reports of red alerts in southern Israel.

One year after it launched, Al Jazeera America has failed to build a significant audience and is facing a new round of layoffs and budget cuts. The network’s ties to Qatar may have hurt its credibility as an independent news source.

A group of U.S. senators, led by Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry calling for an investigation into the ties between Hamas and the United Nations Work and Relief Agency (UNRWA). In explaining the reasons for the letter, Kirk wrote at his website, “The State Department must make clear to the U.N. that it needs to take all necessary steps to prevent Hamas from using taxpayer-funded property to launch terror attacks against our allies.”

The media watchdog BBC Watch charged the BBC with making “stealth changes” to an article written by the network’s chief statistician, Anthony Rueben, arguing that gender ratios of those killed in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge indicate that Israel’s response had not been “disproportionate.” The effect of those changes, not reported by the BBC but detected by an online utility called News Sniffer, blunted the effect of Reuben’s critique.

William Schabas, appointed by the United Nations Human Right Council to investigate possible war crimes committed by Israel, tried to defend his record towards Israel in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 yesterday. Instead of extricating himself from his credibility problems, he dug himself into a deeper hole.

Contrary to the hopes of President Barack Obama, who has stated that he sees a nuclear deal being a first step towards broader engagement with Iran, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected the idea of any further engagement with the United States beyond the ongoing nuclear talks. Khamenei said that Iran will seek diplomatic ties with any country except “the Zionist regime and America.”

[Photo: NewsPlanet / YouTube ]

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