Daybreak: Abbas Invokes His Own Prisoner Swap
Plus Kleztky’s killer goes insane route, and more in the news
October 25, 2011
President Abbas celebrates freed prisoners over the weekend.(Mufeed Abu Hasnah/PPO via Getty Images)
• President Abbas claims the last Israeli prime minister promised to free certain Fatah prisoners if Gilad Shalit were also freed, and now he wants Israel to do it. The prisoners include Marwan Barghouti, the extremely popular Fatah strongman and Abbas rival. [Haaretz/Forward]
• The accused killer of the 8-year-old Brooklyn Hasidic boy Leiby Kletzky will reportedly plead insanity and allege that his confession was coerced. [JPost]
• Nowhere is the war over textbooks more intense or poignant than in the Arab-language schools of East Jerusalem. [LAT]
• Suspected Israeli spy Ilan Grapel’s father fervently denies that his son is anything other than a law student. [Haaretz]
• Jerzy Bielecki, a Polish Righteous Gentile who saved a Jewish woman he loved from Auschwitz, died at 90. [NYT]
• In a competitive bid to open a new engineering school in New York City, Cornell has joined forces with Israel’s Technion. [Ynet]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.
