Speaking Jay Bushinsky, Yitzhak Noy and Simon McGregor-Wood June 29, 2009
Audio Clip:
This week's "Middle East Perspective" opens on the question of whether Israel is right
in demanding that the Palestinian Authority recognize it as a "Jewish state." This is a major bone of contention blocking the resumption of bi-lateral negotiations favored by the U.S. The panelists also discuss the American demand that there be no new construction in the West Bank's existing Jewish settlements. The panelists are Simon McGregor-Wood, ABC's Israel Bureau Chief and outgoing chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Israel, Yitzhak Noy of Israel Radio and Jay Bushinsky of CBS Radio who serves as moderator.
President Flawless, it seems, has a flaw. The White House has been opaque about whether President Obama has quit smoking, as he promised his wife, Michelle, when she agreed to a presidential race. During the campaign, reporters occasionally saw him mooching a cigarette off an aide, but now that he's president, he's only seen when he wants and how he wants.
Maybe Fox News' ambushers are skulking in the shrubbery in case Mr. Obama steps out of the Oval Office for a quick smoke, but if so, they've come up empty. Nobody from the press or public has seen him with a cigarette in his hand.
Germany: Turk Kills Daughter for Not Following the Islamic Way
June 29, 2009
Turkish Döner kebab saler Mehmet O (45) from the south German town of Schweinfurt stabbed his fifteen year old daughter Büsra to death with a kitchen knife because she refused to follow the "Islamic way", German police told German newspaper newspaper Bild.
The attack occurred Wednesday morning. Mehmet stabbed his daughter several times while she slept. About 3:30 AM Büsra's grandparents called emergency services.
Why I, As A British Muslim Woman, Want The Burkha Banned From Our Streets
By Saira Khan
June 24,2009
Shopping in Harrods last week, I came across a group of women wearing black burkhas, browsing the latest designs in the fashion department.
The irony of the situation was almost laughable. Here was a group of affluent women window shopping for designs that they would never once be able to wear in public.
Yet it's a sight that's becoming more and more commonplace. In hardline Muslim communities right across Britain, the burkha and hijab - the Muslim headscarf - are becoming the norm.
In the predominantly Muslim enclaves of Derby near my childhood home, you now see women hidden behind the full-length robe, their faces completely shielded from view. In London, I see an increasing number of young girls, aged four and five, being made to wear the hijab to school.
When I grew up, got to meet and even strike up a friendship with my childhood idol Dosh (the late Kariel Gardosh), I asked him which, to his mind, was his most enduring political caricature. For that, he replied, we need to return to December 1956, approximately a month after the Sinai Campaign and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Dosh noticed that while the international community was seething about Israel's feisty self-defense, it wasn't overly perturbed about the human rights and self-determination brazenly crushed beneath heavy military armor right in Central Europe.
The hypocrisy, Dosh recalled, was hardly surprising but nevertheless galling, particularly the shamelessness of it. So he compressed it all into one frame. In the background a house labeled Hungary is going up in flames. In the foreground UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold, in firefighter gear, wields a hose labeled UN. But he's not dousing the blaze. He's drenching little Israel - Dosh's iconic sandal-clad Srulik - who stands soaked, angry and perplexed as he's subjected to more wet punishment.
BAGHDAD | Ten days before Tuesday's deadline for U.S. withdrawal from Iraqi cities, the war came full circle with the transfer to Iraqi control of two small but heavily symbolic bases in northeast Baghdad.
Joint Security Forces Apache in Adhamiyah and Joint Security Forces Sadr City were signed over -- the first without fanfare, the second in more ceremonial fashion.
The "demilitarized Palestinian state side-by-side with the Jewish state" that Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about in his long-awaited speech at Bar -Ilan University last week is not right around the corner. His speech may have brought a feeling of satisfaction to all those who have been preaching the merits of the two-state solution, but they should not hold their breath in anticipation of its implementation.
There is really nothing like being able to say "I told you so." And so there is joy on the left. Rightists who refused to accept the claim that a solution - or better yet, the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - is two states for two peoples west of the Jordan river, are surrendering one after the other.
Speaking Jay Bushinsky, Yitzhak Noy and Moshe Arens
June 22, 2009
Audio Clip:
Iran is the main topic of this week's "Middle East Perscpective." The two panelists are Moshe Arens, Israel's former minister of defense, and Yitzhak Noy, of Israel Radio. The main aspect discussed with Jay Bushinsky, CBS Radio's correspondent in Israel, who served as moderator was the impact of the current mass confrontation between supporters of the two main candidates in Iran's presidential election, Ahmad Ahmadinejad, the incumbent president, and Mir Hossein Mussavi, a former prime minister. Among the issues raised is whether it is wise for Israeli leaders to take sides in public especially in view of the fact that neither of the contenders is friendly toward Israel and the likelihood that neither of them is likely to curtail Iran's nuclear development program.
CNN Massacre Day June 24, 2009 in Tehran Baharestan
GRAPHIC VIDEO - Basij shots to death a young woman named Neda on June 20th
Iranian Protest June 22, 2009 - Video from Student on street level - Police fire shots on the crowd
Netanyahu: Change in Iran Could Bring Peaceful Israel Ties
By Reuters
June 22, 2009
Peaceful relations between Israel and Iran would be possible if new leadership took power in Tehran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with a German newspaper.
"There is no conflict between the Iranian people and the people of Israel and under a different regime the friendly relations that prevailed in the past could be restored," Netanyahu told German daily Bild.
Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.
And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued "dialogue" with their clerical masters.
Tehran was the scene of hit-and-run battles between crowds of demonstrators and pro-regime vigilantes armed with knives and chains while a wave of arrests continued throughout the country.
Twenty-four hours after the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi called on the opposition movement to accept the results of the disputed presidential election and end its protest marches there were no signs of a political breakthrough.
There are no words to express our heartache and shock over yesterday’s tragic events, which took the life of Officer Stephen Johns, who died heroically in the line of duty. Officer Johns was a loyal and devoted member of our Museum family, serving on our security staff for six years. Our hearts and prayers go out to his entire family. We closed the Museum today in honor of Officer Johns and our flags are flying at half staff in his memory.
We are grateful for the overwhelming support and expressions of condolence we have received from our Museum community, President Obama, and concerned citizens and organizations across the country and around the world.
The decision issued late Friday by a judge in San Francisco allowing a civil lawsuit to go forward against a former Bush administration official, John C. Yoo, might seem like little more than the removal of a procedural roadblock.
But lawyers for the man suing Mr. Yoo, Jose Padilla, say it provides substantive interpretation of constitutional issues for all detainees and could have a broad impact.
"And the Spirit of God hovered upon the face of the waters"
Genesis 1:2
When President Obama returned from his first European trip, I observed that while over there he had been "acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating" between America and the world. Now that Obama has returned from his "Muslim world" pilgrimage, even the left agrees. "Obama's standing above the country, above -- above the world. He's sort of God," Newsweek's Evan Thomas said to a concurring Chris Matthews, reflecting on Obama's lofty perception of himself as the great transcender.
She grew up in the college town, traveled the globe as a journalist and returned home seeking comfort in the familiar to raise her newborn son. But when former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani tried to pray in the main hall of Morgantown, West Virginia's new mosque, she was forcefully told she couldn't.
Women had a separate prayer section. They also had their own entrance. Then she started hearing disturbing messages being preached during prayer services.
"The West is on a dark path."
"To love the Prophet is to hate those who hate him."
Shopping in Harrods last week, I came across a group of women wearing black burkhas, browsing the latest designs in the fashion department.
When I grew up, got to meet and even strike up a friendship with my childhood idol Dosh (the late Kariel Gardosh), I asked him which, to his mind, was his most enduring political caricature. For that, he replied, we need to return to December 1956, approximately a month after the Sinai Campaign and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Dosh noticed that while the international community was seething about Israel's feisty self-defense, it wasn't overly perturbed about the human rights and self-determination brazenly crushed beneath heavy military armor right in Central Europe.
There are no words to express our heartache and shock over yesterday’s tragic events, which took the life of Officer Stephen Johns, who died heroically in the line of duty. Officer Johns was a loyal and devoted member of our Museum family, serving on our security staff for six years. Our hearts and prayers go out to his entire family. We closed the Museum today in honor of Officer Johns and our flags are flying at half staff in his memory.
The decision issued late Friday by a judge in San Francisco allowing a civil lawsuit to go forward against a former Bush administration official, John C. Yoo, might seem like little more than the removal of a procedural roadblock.
She grew up in the college town, traveled the globe as a journalist and returned home seeking comfort in the familiar to raise her newborn son. But when former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani tried to pray in the main hall of Morgantown, West Virginia's new mosque, she was forcefully told she couldn't.