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Media Summary

Israeli media braces for release of highly-awaited report on Operation Protective Edge

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The Telegraph reports that Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial has written to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos asking that the company stop selling material which denies the Holocaust. The article says Amazon has previously refused, citing freedom of information.

The Telegraph includes a brief interview with Efraim Zuroff, the Israel-based lead investigator for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, often described as the last ‘Nazi hunter’. Since the 1960s, Zuroff has dedicated his work to tracing, and bringing to justice, Nazi war criminals. Due to the passage of time, Zuroff said “there are a couple more years left” of being able to continue his work. He highlights a German woman in her nineties who served as an Auschwitz official, as a possible future case.

The Guardian reports that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip took to the streets to celebrate the victory of Arab-Idol finalist Yacoub Shaheen from Bethlehem. Palestinian cafes and restaurants were apparently packed to watch the final of the reality talent contest, which was held in Lebanon, but broadcast to large audiences across the Arab world. The i notes that one of the three finalists was Ameer Dandan from northern Israel.

In the Israeli media, both Yediot Ahronot and Maariv debate tomorrow’s publication of the long-awaited State Comptroller’s report into the security cabinet’s handling of the Gaza tunnel threat prior to Operation Protective Edge in 2014. The report is expected to be sharply critical of senior Israeli leaders. Yediot Ahronot focuses on former Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s version of events and Maariv says that there is “all-out war in the political establishment” ahead of tomorrow’s report.

Writing in Maariv, commentator Yossi Melman says that although the report is likely to take aim at Ya’alon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, the public should remember that Operation Protective Edge “above all, in the test of the result… has brought us… Israel’s longest period of quiet on the Gaza front since 1968”.

Israel Radio news reports that a rocket was fired overnight from the Gaza Strip into the Shar Hanegev region of southern Israel, without causing any injuries or damage.

The NRG news site cites an Iranian news agency report that Saudi intelligence chief, Khaled al-Hamidan, secretly visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority last week. The report says the visit should be placed in the context of rhetoric from the White House and Israel’s Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, both encouraging closer relations between Israel and Sunni Arab states.

Israel Radio news says that Prime Minister Netanyahu will return to Israel today after his visits to Singapore and Australia. Netanyahu reportedly rejected a proposal from Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to station international forces in the Gaza Strip, citing Israel’s past negative experience of international peacekeeping forces.