• U.S. May Leave UN Human Rights Council, Amb. Nikki Haley Warns
  Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said the U.S. is considering its membership in the UN Human Rights Council, citing among other things its bias against Israel.
      In a speech Tuesday to the council in Geneva, Haley cited Israel as one of several factors leading the United States to reconsider its membership. Another is the membership of human rights abusers like Venezuela, Cuba, China, Burundi and Saudi Arabia.
      "It's hard to accept that this council has never considered a resolution on Venezuela and yet it adopted five biased resolutions in March against a single country - Israel," Haley said. "It is essential that this council address its chronic anti-Israel bias if it is to have any credibility." (JTA)
• French Attacker Shouted "This Is for Syria" before Being Shot
  A man armed with a hammer shouted "this is for Syria" before attacking police officers on Tuesday outside France's Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, the interior minister said.
      The assailant wounded one officer before he was shot and wounded by other officers. The Paris prosecutor's office swiftly began a counter-terrorism investigation. (Reuters)

• Gunmen Kill Seven, Injure Many in Iran Parliament
  A shooting incident was reported this morning inside Iran's Parliament. Four armed men attacked security officers guarding the front gate of Iranian Parliament this morning. The armed men shot and injured some of the security guards. A suicide bomber blew himself up on the fourth floor. The Ministry of Intelligence has confirmed two attacks at the Parliament and Imam Khomeini Shrine as terrorist attacks. (Mehr News Agency - Iran)
      See also Parliament and Khomeini Mausoleum in Iran Are Attacked - Sewell Chan
  The assault on the Khomeini mausoleum was reported minutes after the attack on Parliament emerged. At least three or four attackers opened fire on pilgrims at the mausoleum, in southern Tehran, and one of them detonated a suicide vest at a bank outside the mausoleum, a spokesman for the mausoleum. (New York Times)
• ISIS Claims Responsibility for Attacks in Iran
  Islamic State terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the armed attacks committed on the Iranian parliament and the Imam Khomeini mausoleum on Wednesday, Iran's Fars news agency reported. (Azeri-Press Agency )
• Iran Revolutionary Guards "Protecting Qatar's Sheikh Tamim Inside his Palace"
  Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are allegedly protecting the Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani inside his palace, Egyptian sources said on Wednesday. The sources added that the Revolutionary Guards arrived in Qatar under the cover of training. (Al Arabiya)

• How the Six Day War Safeguarded Israel as the Middle East's Democratic Anchor - Michael B. Oren
  At dawn on June 5, 1967, hundreds of Egyptian jets penetrated Israeli airspace. Israeli pilots scrambled, but too late; their planes were destroyed on the ground. Elsewhere, in Jerusalem, Jordanian troops surrounded the western half of the city, cutting off its Jewish population. Six days later, the war was over. Much of the Jewish state lay in ruins and untold numbers of its population - uniformed and civilian - were dead. The international community, meanwhile, remained passive.
      Fortunately, it was Israel's air force that destroyed Egypt's and Israeli troops that captured the Sinai Peninsula. Jordan and Syria did attack Israel but were quickly driven back. Today, An Israel strengthened strategically and economically by the war serves as a democratic, pro-American anchor in a still-chaotic Middle East.
      The war's positive results did not, however, include a resolution of Israel's dispute with the Palestinians. Their leaders continue to deny the legitimacy and permanence of the Jewish state - the very cause of the Six-Day War. Yet they, too, can benefit from the opportunities for Palestinian self-determination created in 1967. By acknowledging the reasons for the war and its outcome, they can relinquish alternative realities and reach a genuine peace. (Newsweek)
      See also What If Israel Had Lost the Six-Day War? - Jeff Jacoby (Boston Globe)
• How Israeli Intelligence Failures Led to a "Devil's Advocate" Role - William Kaplan
  The October 1973 Yom Kippur War showed the risks to Israel of underestimating dangers to national security. It is the classic intelligence failure in Israeli history and it happened because the military establishment was captivated and captured by what they called The Concept of Arab Intentions - a preset world view that did not contemplate the possibility of an all-out assault.
      A key idea that came out of the post-war inquiry was "The Tenth Man" - a devil's advocate. If there are 10 people in a room and 9 agree, the role of the tenth is to disagree and point out flaws in whatever decision the group has reached. The Tenth Man's job is to challenge conventional and received wisdom. The Tenth Man has high status within the IDF Intelligence Corps: it is free to obtain any intelligence data it needs and to criticize existing views. Its reports cannot be ignored; they must be considered.
      The article is excerpted from Why Dissent Matters by William Kaplan. (Toronto Star)
• Saudi Columnist: Iran Is The Real Enemy, Not Israel - Musaid Al-Asimi
  This is not a call to demonstrate friendship toward Israel - on the contrary, there is tension in [our] attitude toward the country because it occupies Arab land - but as a Saudi citizen what can I do about Israel, when the Palestinians in authority have declared peace with it. Furthermore, several Arab countries that share a border with Israel have signed permanent peace agreements with it, such as Egypt and Jordan.
      Who, then, is the enemy? Who is it that I should watch out for and beware of? Logic says that whoever threatens you and manipulates others to hurt you, is your enemy; whoever helps those who were duped by weapons and money so that you end up being abused, is your enemy; whoever invents conflict at the time of the pilgrimage to Mecca, foments fear and problems, and makes trouble so as to make you appear incapable of managing this religious ceremony [is your enemy]; and whoever instigates panic and cultivates ethnic divisions in your country and in neighboring countries whose issues are important to you, is your enemy.
      The enemy is out in the open. Even more so [the enemy] speaks of this openly and points [to himself] as if to emphasize that you are referring to him. Is there a greater enemy to us and to our countries than Iran, and does Israel threaten, influence, or worry [us], or disseminate resentment and hatred like Iran does? Therefore, let us focus on our true enemy. We must do all that we can to defeat this enemy [i.e. Iran] and the most important thing is that we don't stand idly by in light of those who are duplicitous [i.e. Qatar], for the friend of my enemy is [also] my enemy, even if he is an Arab from the Gulf. (Al-Riyadh - Saudi Arabia - Translated by MEMRI)

Arabs Always Rejected the Idea of a Home for Jews, and They Still Do - Peter Wertheim (The Australian)

• This year is peppered with landmark anniversaries of key events in the history of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. A lesser known but no less important date is July 7, the 80th anniversary of the publication of the report of the Palestine Royal Commission, established by Britain under the chairmanship of Lord William Peel.
• It was this report in 1937, not the UN report on which the General Assembly based its famous resolution a decade later, that contained the first official recommendation in favor of partition based on the principle of two states for two peoples.
• The Commission found "while neither race can justly rule all Palestine, we see no reason why each race should not rule part of it ... If (partition) offers neither party all it wants, it offers each what it wants most, namely freedom and security."
• The Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, shocked the commissioners with his extremism when he suggested that most of the existing Jewish population of Palestine should be forced to leave the country or be exterminated. When asked whether he thought the 400,000 Jews already living in Palestine could be assimilated into the country, he gave a one-word answer: "No."
• The Peel Commission recommended partitioning the land into separate Arab and Jewish states, and creating an international zone from Jaffa on the coast up to and including Jerusalem. The plan was never implemented. The Arab leaders met in Damascus and resolved that partition would be rejected outright.
• This rejectionist attitude sadly persists and remains at the core of the conflict. 400 surveys carried out by five Palestinian research centers in regular polls in the West Bank and Gaza has shown that during the past 20 years 70 percent of Palestinians have continued to seek an immediate end of the State of Israel. No peace initiative can succeed until this attitude changes fundamentally.
  
  Peter Wertheim is executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.