The Spark Behind Iran's Unrest: Millions of Defrauded Investors - Farnaz Fassihi and Asa Fitch (Wall Street Journal)
    The call to protest came through a group channel on the smartphone app Telegram. Most of the group's thousand members had lost their savings when a financial firm promising huge returns went bankrupt amid bad investments and corruption.
    Millions of Iranians have been hit by losses at loosely regulated credit institutions. The business of financial firms boomed under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the mid-2000s.
    Iranians, whose purchasing power was diminishing from inflation and the devaluation of the currency, flocked to them. The firms appeared to have the backing of the country's central bank.
    Iranian analysts and economists say the firms were doomed to fail. They were owned and managed not by financial experts but by people with close links to religious institutions, the judiciary and the Revolutionary Guards.

Iran Is Nearly Bankrupt - David P. Goldman (PJ Media)
    The most probable scenario for Iran under any likely regime is a sickening spiral into poverty and depopulation.
    Iran has the fastest-aging population of any country in the world.
    It has the highest rate of venereal disease infection and the highest rate of infertility of any country in the world.
    It has a youth unemployment rate of 35% and it has run out of water.
    The government is nearly bankrupt. It has allowed several major banks to fail, wiping out the savings of millions of depositors. The cost of cleaning up the bank mess is estimated at half of GDP.
    Iran's pension funds are bankrupt. The civil service pension fund has only 100 employees paying in for every 120 employees receiving a pension.
    Iran has two of the best engineering universities in the world, except virtually all the top graduates leave the country.

Turkey Building Walls on Iranian, Syrian Borders - Orhan Coskun and Tuvan Gumrukcu (Reuters)
    Turkey has completed more than half of a 144 km.-wall on its border with Iran and will finish it next spring, the firm building the barrier said.
    Turkey is also building a 911 km.-wall on the border with Syria that is 98% complete.

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Opposition Leader Lapid: Israel Will Prevent a Permanent Iranian Presence in Syria - Raphael Ahren and Avi Davidi (Times of Israel)
    MK Yair Lapid, head of the opposition Yesh Atid party, told the Times of Israel Persian, "Israel cannot tolerate an Iranian military presence only a few kilometers from our border. And of course we cannot tolerate the idea of an [Iranian] airbase or a naval base in Syria."
    "All the players involved must know that we feel free to do whatever is in our power to prevent a permanent Iranian presence in Syria. And that is not a threat, it is a fact of life."
    "As long as there are Iranian forces on the ground in Syria, there will be no stability."

A New Palestinian-India Rift - Caroline B. Glick (Jerusalem Post)
    Last month at the UN, India reverted to its previous posture of blind support for the PLO and joined the chorus in attacking America for recognizing that Jerusalem is Israel's capital.
    A few days later, the PLO envoy to Pakistan, Walid Abu Ali, shared a stage in Rawalpindi with Lashkar e-Taibi leader Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the mastermind of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai which killed more than 160 people.
    Saeed is also wanted for his involvement in terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2006 which killed more than 200 people, and for a shooting at the Indian Parliament in which another 14 were killed in 2001.
    Indian social media exploded in rage against the Palestinians and the PLO, saying, "This is how they pay us back for abandoning the U.S. and Israel to support them at the UN." 

Shame: 10 Ways Israel Is Treated Differently - David Harris (Huffington Post)
    Israel is treated according to a totally different standard than other countries in the international system.
    Of course, Israel deserves attention and scrutiny as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment - nothing more, nothing less.
    Israel is the only state whose capital city, Jerusalem, is not recognized by almost all other countries.
    Israel is the only UN member state whose very right to exist is under constant challenge.
    Israel is the only UN member state that's been targeted for annihilation by another UN member state - Iran.
    Israel is the only country that has won all its major wars for survival and self-defense, yet is confronted by defeated adversaries who have insisted on dictating the terms of peace.
    Israel is annually targeted by more UN resolutions than the other 192 UN member states combined.
    The writer is the CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

Fighting for Israel on Social Media - Tracy Frydberg (Times of Israel)
    On July 28, 2014, Daniel Rubenstein was scrolling through Twitter at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv when he saw a tweet from NBC News reporter Ayman Mohyeldin:
    "Israeli airstrike has hit the outpatient clinic at Shifa Hospital. Local Palestinian media is reporting several children among dead #gaza." Minutes later Mohyeldin tweeted again, this time accusing Israel of striking Al Shati refugee camp.
    Rubenstein, originally from Texas, was an IDF reservist during the 2014 Gaza war, leading the Spokesperson Unit's English social media team.
    He switched into crisis mode, moving quickly to get the facts before responding.
    An hour after Mohyeldin's first tweet, Rubinstein sent information via text message to reporters after receiving confirmation that the airstrikes were actually from Hamas rockets.
    Mohyeldin subsequently tweeted, "IDF: Palestinians killed in Gaza at Shati and strike at Shifa hospital were result of Hamas rockets that landed in Gaza."
    This anecdote is included in the new book, War in 140 Characters: How Social Media is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century, by journalist David Patrikarakos.