• U.S. Lawmakers Demand New Iran Sanctions over Iranian-American's Arrest - Jay Solomon
  U.S. lawmakers, angered by the recent arrest of Iranian-American Siamak Namazi, a prominent oil executive, demanded Friday that the White House take a tougher line against Tehran and impose fresh sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. "The arrest of Siamak Namazi is the latest show of contempt for America," said Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "This American executive - who has worked to promote closer U.S.-Iran relations - deserves to be home with his family. So do the other four Americans either detained or missing in Iran."  (Wall Street Journal)
      See also Revolutionary Guards Push Back Against Economic Engagement with Outside World - Gerald F. Seib
  Implicit in the nuclear deal with Iran was the hope that economic engagement with the outside world would begin to moderate Iranian behavior. The answer emerging from Iran's security apparatus is that Iranian hard-liners are not only uninterested in deeper economic engagement with the outside world, they may have set out to stop it.
      Iranian security forces arrested recently an Iranian-American businessman, Siamak Namazi. Iran also has arrested Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese information-technology specialist who lives in Washington. At the same time, Iranian businessmen with ties to foreign firms are being harassed by Iran's state-security apparatus. (Wall Street Journal)
      See also An American Hostage in Iran - Again - Robin Wright (New Yorker)
• Dutch Prime Minister Urges PA President Abbas to Stop Violent Attacks Against Israelis - Yossi Lempkowicz
  Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and members of the Dutch parliament urged PA President Mahmoud Abbas to call on his population to stop violence against Israelis, during Abbas' visit to The Netherlands this week. Members of the Dutch parliament said that Abbas condemned violence "behind closed doors," but MPs Hans ten Broeke, who leads the VVD (Liberal) group, stressed that Abbas also needs to make such a statement in Arabic to his own people. Parliamentarians from the Opposition ChristenUnie party noted that Abbas glorifies "violence when he names streets and squares of the West Bank after terrorists."  (European Jewish Press)

• New Palestinian Stabbing Attacks in Central Israel
  A Palestinian terrorist from Hebron stabbed an Israeli man on a street corner in Rishon LeZion on Monday, seriously wounding him. The terrorist continued to a commercial area on an adjacent street, where he stabbed another person. He then attacked and severely wounded an 80-year-old woman. Passersby captured and held the terrorist until police arrived.
      A few hours later, a 71-year-old man was stabbed and seriously wounded in Netanya by a Palestinian resident of Tulkarm, before police shot and wounded the terrorist. (Ynet News)
• Abbas Speaks of "Occupation" Since Israel's Creation in 1948, Not Just Since '67 War - Itamar Marcus
  PA Chairman Abbas, speaking on Oct. 28 to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, denounced what he called the Israeli "occupation" of "67 years" - that is, since Israel's creation in 1948. "For how long will this protracted Israeli occupation of our land last? After 67 years (i.e., Israel's creation), how long?" He refers to "holy sites which have been desecrated every other second again and again for seven decades now." The PA routinely teaches its children that all of Israel is an "occupation" that will end some day.
      Last week the PA Security Forces presented on their Facebook page a description of Israeli cities Ashkelon, Haifa and Acre as "occupied." Similarly, a post this week on the official Fatah Facebook page showed a map of "Palestine" that includes all of Israel. (Palestinian Media Watch)
• Israel Joins International Task Force to Combat Terror Financing - Yonah Jeremy Bob
  The Justice Ministry on Monday announced that Israel has been selected to join an elite global task force for combating the financing of terrorism and money-laundering. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an inter-governmental body established in 1989, mainly led by the G-7. FATF president Je-Yoon Shin explained that Israel was selected to join the group "in light of the great contribution that it has to make to the organization."  (Jerusalem Post)

• Does Anyone Care that Israelis Are Being Stabbed to Death in the Streets? - Yiftah Curiel
  Over 100 Israelis were injured in over 50 terror attacks in October; 11 were murdered and 14 were in serious condition. Israelis, from children to the elderly, were being murdered in broad daylight in towns across the country. Yet the media did not seem to get it right even under these circumstances. Initial headlines, before being corrected, reflected the media's unwillingness to forgo their automatic mode of reporting on the region, in which Palestinians must play the role of victims, and Israelis the aggressors.
      When a television presenter asks Jerusalem's mayor if carrying a gun to protect oneself from a stabbing wasn't "excessive," does he wish for Israelis to passively accept the terrorist's knife in their chest, and not defend themselves? What we have witnessed these past weeks has looked like solidarity with murderous Palestinian knife-wielders, mixed with callousness towards innocent Israelis' lives. The writer is spokesperson for the Israel Embassy in London. (International Business Times)
• Palestinian Incitement to Violence and Terror: Nothing New, But Still Dangerous - Alan Baker
  The one central and overriding component of today's wave of violence and terror is the incitement of an aroused Arab public. Incitement and manipulation of a particular community - worshippers at mosques, the younger generation in kindergartens, schools, and colleges, and the general adult community through the electronic media - have become one of the major tactical weapons in the arsenal of Arab societies in general and the Palestinian leadership in particular.
      A culture of mistrust and hate, fanned by constant religious and public incitement, inevitably leads to violence and undermines the concept of peaceful relations. A leadership that openly and officially sanctions and encourages such incitement cannot come with clean hands to the international community and complain about lack of progress in the peace process. The writer, a former legal adviser and deputy director-general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, participated in the negotiation and drafting of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians. (Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
      See also Palestinian Incitement in Social Media (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
• Does Iran's Anti-Semitism Run Too Deep for Deterrence? - George F. Will
  Is the Iranian regime's anti-Semitism rooted, as Hitler's was, in a theory of history that demands genocide? If so, when Iran becomes a nuclear power, can it be deterred from its announced determination to destroy Israel?
      Assume, reasonably, that Iran's pursuit of a potentially genocidal weapon will not be seriously impeded by parchment barriers such as the recent nuclear agreement. And assume, prudently, that the Iranian regime means what it says about Jews and their "Zionist entity." As in Hitler's case, an anti-Semitic regime can be impervious to the logic of deterrence. Much, including Israel's calculation of what military measures are necessary for its safety, depends on the nature of Iran's anti-Semitism. (Washington Post)

The Facebook Intifada - Micah Lakin Avni (New York Times)

• Three weeks ago, my father, Richard Lakin, was riding on a public bus in Jerusalem when terrorists from east Jerusalem shot him in the head and stabbed him multiple times. Two weeks after the attack, he succumbed to his wounds.
• What inspired the two young Palestinian men to savagely attack my father and a busload of passengers? One was a regular on Facebook, where he had posted a "will for any martyr." Very likely, they made use of one of the thousands of posts, manuals and instructional videos circulating in Palestinian society like the image of the human body with advice on where to stab for maximal damage.
• My father raised me to cherish and protect free speech, but the very liberty that free speech was designed to protect is at stake when it is used to spread venom and incite violence. Rampant online incitement is a danger that must be reckoned with immediately, before more innocent people end up as victims.
• Facebook, Twitter and the others must realize that the question of incitement on social media is, first and foremost, a moral one. Ordinary young men and women are inspired by hateful and bloody messages they see online to take matters and blades into their own hands.
• One immediate solution is to remove blatant incitement without waiting for formal complaints - it's one thing to express a political opinion, even one that supports violent measures, and another to publish a how-to chart designed to train and recruit future terrorists.
• To that end, an Israeli nonprofit took legal action against Facebook, demanding that the company do more to monitor and remove unacceptable content. My family joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs. Any truly successful effort to curb the culture of hate on social media must come from the companies themselves. Companies can and must work harder to create an online culture that does not tolerate violence and hate.
  
      See also Thousands of Israelis Join Lawsuit Against Facebook over Pages Inciting Violence - Malia Zimmerman
  Some 20,000 Israelis, organized by the Israel-based non-profit Shurat HaDin-The Israel Law Center, joined a civil lawsuit filed on Oct. 26 in the Supreme Court for the State of New York, seeking an injunction against Facebook for allowing jihadists to openly recruit and train terrorists and plan terror attacks on its pages.
      The law center wants to force Facebook not only to remove the terrorists' pages, but also to better monitor and block users who post videos glorifying and encouraging terrorist attacks, and publish messages with instructions on how to carry out an attack. "Facebook has been transformed into an anti-Semitic incubator for murder," said Israeli attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin. A spokesman for Facebook said, "We urge people to use our reporting tools if they find content that they believe violates our standards."  (Fox News)