By Arlene Kushner
“What Comes First?”
There are several items of news requiring attention that can, in one respect or another, knock you off balance.
But let us start with this indisputable winner, because it will take the time required to read the rest of my post before you get your breath back.
Most of you probably know that a UK soldier, not in uniform, was killed yesterday on the street in broad daylight by two Islamic terrorists — both of whom are believed to be native British, and at least one reportedly a convert to Islam — who then proceeded to behead him with a meat cleaver, while calling “Allahu akbar.” Eye witnesses described the victim as having been hacked “like a piece of meat.” The terrorists were shot by police, taken to a hospital, and then arrested. (Read more…)
By ARI BRIGGS
Recently, the EU formally recommended that its 27 member states “prevent” Israeli activity in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and east Jerusalem by means of discriminatory labeling of Israeli products from these areas – in effect, an economic boycott of Jewish communities in those regions. This recommendation is clearly immoral, on at least six grounds, and recently I had the privilege of setting these out before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Dutch Parliament. Part of the following comments are based on a speech Caroline Glick gave at an Intelligence Squared debate in January.
First, it attempts to predetermine borders prior to negotiations. Repeated such attempts demonstrate that this approach actually discourages the Palestinians from negotiating final-status issues with Israel. The presence of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria has nothing to do with prospects for peace. We have peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, and six agreements with the PLO (of which they were in material breach from day one).
(Read more…)
Peri Committee plan calls for criminal prosecution of ultra-Orthodox who don’t register for draft, extends length of Hesder track
By GAVRIEL FISKE, GOI May 23, 2013, 4:39 pm 1
The Peri Committee on Thursday submitted for Knesset review the government’s plan for universal conscription, which, if passed, promises to significantly change the army’s relationship with Israel’s ultra-Orthodox citizens.
The bill would require ultra-Orthodox 18-year-old men and women to register for service, but if they are engaged in full-time Torah study allow them to defer it until age 21, at which time they will be forced to choose whether to enlist in the IDF or register for national or civil service.
Those who defer their service will have to be registered at yeshivot whose student bodies are subject to regular government auditing. Yeshivas that receive state funding and register their students for service deferment will also be required to introduce vocational training into their curriculum.
(Read more…)
Mark Langfan, INN
“About 800 B.C. the village communities of the Homeric Age, which had been founded mainly upon clan organization, began to give way to larger political units. As the need for defense increased, an acropolis or citadel was built on a high location, and a city grew up around it as the seat of government for a whole community. Thus emerged the city-state, the most famous unit of political society developed by the Greeks.”
(Internet history of the democratic Greek city-state.)
It was reported on 20 May 2013 in al Jazeera that:
“Tribal leaders in Iraq are warning of war unless the country splits into a federation amid a deadly new wave of apparently sectarian violence. Monday’s attacks across Iraqi cities left at least 77 people dead and more than 248 others injured, officials say, pushing the death toll over the past week to well above 200. On the same day, the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat reported that Sunni protest leaders had called for ‘armed confrontation or the declaration of an [autonomous] region.’”
(Read more…)
Denis MacEoin sent this letter to Southampton University Professor, Malcolm Levitt who has weighed in on Stephen Hawking’s boycott of Israel.
Subject: Israel’s explicit policies
11th May 2013
Prof. Malcolm Levitt
Dept. of Chemistry
Southampton University
Dear Professor Levitt,
I am not a chemist nor, indeed, a scientist of any kind. My academic background exists in a very different field, but one, I hope, that is of particular relevance to the subject of this e-mail. I am a former lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies and a former editor of The Middle East Quarterly, an international journal. My PhD was in an adjunct area of Persian Studies. I have a particular interest in the Middle East (where I have lived, first in Iran, later in Morocco) and my several visits to Israel have created in me a particular interest in matters relating to that country, both religious and political.
(Read more…)
By MARTIN SHERMAN, JPOST
For a secure Israel to regain legitimacy, the idea of a Palestinian state must be discredited as a possible means of resolving conflict.
How is it that after all the wrenching concessions it has made, Israel is far more reviled today than during the rigid “rejectionism” of Yitzhak Shamir? I believe we have to talk to each other and to listen to each other. I think bilateral engagement… is the only way. But confidence, trust, is not existing. – Jibril Rajoub, Fatah Central Committee, at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, April 23.
We the Palestinians are the enemies of Israel. There is no going back to negotiations. Listen. We as yet don’t have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning. – Jibril Rajoub, on the Lebanese-based TV station Al Mayadeen, April 30
(Read more…)
Knesset gives initial approval to bill that would forbid slander of IDF soldiers.
By Maayana Miskin, INN
The Knesset has approved a law prohibiting slander of IDF soldiers in an initial vote. The bill was put forth by MKs Yoni Chetboun (Bayit Yehudi), Yariv Levin (Likud Beytenu), and Nachman Shai (Labor).
It has been dubbed the “Jenin, Jenin bill” after the libelous documentary “Jenin, Jenin.” While the documentary was found to have contained lies, including accusations of murder, the soldiers accused were unable to file suit because no one individual soldier had been accused.
MKs are hoping to deter future libel by allowing soldiers to sue over false accusations even if they, individually, were not named.
(Read more…)
WASHINGTON – The link between Tamerlan Tsarnaev, suspected of committing the terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon in April, to a cruel homicide of three Jewish men in September 2011, tightens. Ibrahim Todashev, a friend of Tsarnaev who was shot and killed in Orlando, Florida on Wednesday after attacking an FBI agent, admitted in his investigation he was involved in the murder of Brendan Mess, Raphael Teken and Erik Weisseman, together with Tsarnaev.
Tsarnaev brothers (Photo: AP) (Read more…)
By Elad Benari, INN
The United States Senate unanimously backed on Wednesday a pro-Israel resolution calling for U.S. assistance for Israel, should it be forced to attack Iran in self-defense.
Senate Resolution 65, introduced by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemns Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capability.
The resolution supports Israel’s right to self-defense and reaffirms the close security cooperation between the United States and Israel.
(Read more…)
by Mordechai Kedar
What is common to Daniel Perl, Nick Berg, a British soldier on London street, the Jews of Hebron in 1929 and the Fogel family in Itamar? They all were butchered. They were not simply stabbed to death, but were killed by an act designed to decapitate them or to cause fatal bleeding by severing their carotid artery. Another common denominator: all were slaughtered by Moslems. An endless list of Moslem girls and women can be added to them, those who were similarly slaughtered by their brothers, fathers or other relatives for “violating the family honor”. A question that arises automatically is where does this Moslem tendency to this kind of slaughter come from?
The answer is simple: Slaughter is a routine, widespread practice among many Moslem families. Many children see how their fathers slaughter sheep when celebrating an important event, and the whole family is present at the sacrificial slaughter during Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, when the slaughter is part of the holiday ritual.
(Read more…)
World News, Reuters
STOCKHOLM – Hundreds of youths set fire to cars and attacked police and rescue services in suburbs of Stockholm Tuesday night in Sweden’s worst disorder in years.
A police station in the Jakobsberg area in the northwest of the city was attacked, two schools were damaged and an arts and crafts center was set ablaze, despite a call for calm from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.
It was the third night of unrest, mainly in suburbs where many immigrants live.
(Read more…)
By Ben Caspit, al Monitor
One can easily understand the Palestinian and the Arab responses to the findings of the official Commission of Inquiry established by the Israeli government to investigate the circumstances surrounding Muhammad al-Durrah’s death. Still, these findings are starting to assume a prominent position in the Palestinian narrative, and swiping the flag that once fluttered at the top of that flagpole. That isn’t easy to do. My problem isn’t with the Arab response, but with the Israeli response, and by that I don’t mean the Israeli Arabs, who have long considered themselves to be Palestinians, intrinsically linked to the Palestinian experience. My problem is with the Israeli response among Israeli Jews, Zionists, who lie within the Israeli mainstream and are well acquainted with the culture of fantasies and lies that surround us. My problem is with those who are intimately aware of the hypocritical business of delegitimization, which has thrived at our expense for an entire era. (Read more…)
By JENNIFER EPSTEIN, POLITICO
Vice President Joe Biden spoke at length Tuesday night about the influence of Judaism on the United States, dating back to the country’s founding and to the present day as Jews helped shape views on gay rights.
“The truth is that Jewish heritage, Jewish culture, Jewish values are such an essential part of who we are that it’s fair to say that Jewish heritage is American heritage,” he said. “The Jewish people have contributed greatly to America. No group has had such an outsized influence per capita as all of you standing before you, and all of those who went before me and all of those who went before you.”
Biden spoke for nearly 20 minutes at the American Institute of Architects building in Washington, at times improvising after asking that the teleprompter machine that had been set up in the event space be taken down. (He joked about President Obama’s reliance on the machine, but later gave Obama credit, noting he “sends his best” but is “otherwise occupied with a few problems.”)
(Read more…)
Published: Friday, December 23, 2005
By Ted Belman
“Palestine” will never come into existence. One would think the opposite is true, what with the Roadmap endorsing it and all members of the Quartet supporting it, even to the point of giving a pass to Arab violence, the end of which is supposed to be a pre-condition to the establishment of such a state.The US is backing the plan because it wants to curry favour with the European Union, which is demanding a resolution of the “occupation” and the refugee problem. This is the price the US must pay to get European support in the war against terrorism and for the war in Iraq. Paradoxically, the Europeans care not a whit for the Palestinians. The EU lavishes billions on the Palestinian Authority without requiring that the money be spent to improve the lives of ordinary Palestinian Arabs, content to allow the money to be used to support terrorists and to line the pockets of kleptocrats at the head of the PA. In effect, the Europeans support Palestinian terror and not the peace process.
The main reason Palestine won’t come into existence is that the Arab Palestinians don’t want it, nor does Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia or Egypt, notwithstanding protestations to the contrary. (Read more…)
By Dani Dayan, Haaretz..
A few words uttered in English by an Arab prime minister excited – perhaps even electrified – the few who still believe the conflict in the Middle East can be resolved with the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.
Speaking on behalf of the Arab League, the prime minister of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, said in Washington last month that Israel should return to the June 4, 1967 borders with the option of “comparable and mutual agreed minor swaps of the land.” Two of the three leaders who believe in the two-state solution, United States Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, were thrilled. Not just a step forward, Kerry said, but a big step forward. Not just positive news, said Livni, following his lead, but very positive. Only their third friend, the leader of the cult of failure that never learns from its mistakes, President Shimon Peres, remained uncharacteristically silent.
(Read more…)
By Margot Lurie, Jewish Ideas Daily [first published October 18, 2010]
Fifty-five years ago, a star was born: plucky, lucky Marjorie Morningstar, the “American Everygirl who happens to be Jewish.” At least, that’s how Time described her. Today, depending on whom you ask, Herman Wouk’s 1955 novel, Marjorie Morningstar, is either the story of the romantic awakening of a blue-eyed Jewish beauty or a cautionary tale about what happens when you stray too far from your origins.
Born Marjorie Morgenstern in 1916 (a year after the birth of her creator), our heroine appears to us first as an undergraduate at Hunter College in New York, dreaming of becoming an actress and striving to rid herself of every mitzvah and mannerism that comprised her identity. She Anglicizes her Semitic surname, dabbles in sex, and engages in the years-long pursuit of a dilettantish stage director—all without success. In the end, never having seen her stage name on a marquee, she settles for settling down with a steady husband, children, and a return to religious observance.
(Read more…)
by ANDREW E. HARROD, FSM
A recent decision by the United Nation’s (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) foreshadows an ominous future for free societies should Muslim entities like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) achieve their goal of having “Islamophobia” defined internationally as a form of prejudice.
Former German central bank board member Thilo Sarrazin has got himself in trouble with the UN, as the Turkish Union in Berlin-Brandenburg(Türkischer Bund in Berlin-Brandenburg or TBB) stated with satisfaction in an April 18, 2013, German-language press release. The spokesman of this German-Turkish interest group, Hilmi Kaya Turan, praised a February 26, 2013, “historic decision” by the CERD condemning Germany for not having prosecuted Sarrazin’s criticism of Arab and Turkish immigrants.
(Read more…)
The EU demands Israel give in to the demands of the PA and Turkey so that EU’s interests will be served. They have no respect for our interests or sovereignty. Ted Belman
Lithuanian FM: Heed settlement goods label issue
By HERB KEINON, STEVE LINDE, JPOST
If products grown or manufactured in settlements are not properly labeled as such, it could spark moves in some European countries to boycott all Israeli goods, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
“You should take it [the settlement labeling issue] seriously,” said Linkevicius, whose country will take over the rotating presidency of the European Union in July.
“I know the mood in some countries is that if you don’t change the market practice, you could lead to a boycott of all [Israeli] goods. You should take this into account,” he said.
Linkevicius, who arrived Sunday for a four-day visit, said the EU fully backed US Secretary of State John Kerry’s current efforts to get Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table.
Kerry, who is scheduled to arrive for a two-day visit on Thursday, has not asked anything in particular from the EU in moving his initiative forward, the foreign minister said.
(Read more…)
By Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah
Jerusalem Issue Briefs Vol. 13, No. 13 21 May 2013
-After the jubilation that accompanied Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s
“victory” over the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in August
2012, the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi himself began signaling their
intention to turn Egypt into an Islamic state, arousing the fears of
liberals and religious minorities.
-The opposition turned hostile to the regime and began castigating it,
exploiting the newly acquired freedom of the press. Never in Egypt’s modern
history had the press enjoyed such liberties, and Morsi became the target of
satire and mockery. In addition, a new activist group emerged calling itself
the Black Bloc. Its members, who dress in black with black masks, have
declared open war against the Brotherhood.
(Read more…)
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