|
|
|
By Barry Rubin
Barry Rubin Report
February 3, 2012
The trouble with the Palestinian Authority (PA) is that while in the Western mass media it is virtually always portrayed as moderate the PA simply doesn’t act that way. Its contrary behavior involves not keeping its commitments, daily incitement to kill Israelis and destroy Israel in its institutions, and refusal to negotiate seriously.
Above all, it means refusing to make peace in the context of a two-state solution. Among other things, it rejects the idea off a peace treaty ending the conflict–a pretty remarkable stance–or resettling its people within the state of Palestine but insisting many should go to Israel to live–a pretty remarkable stance for what's supposed to be a nationalist movement.
But then there are the symbolic things that persuade Israelis not to trust the PA with their future fate, even if Israel must deal with the PA and even save it from being overthrown by Hamas.
|
|
By Jay Bushinsky
The Jewish Chronicle
February 3, 2012
The English poet, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, surely did not have the Arab World in mind when he penned the concluding
line of his Ode to the West, "If winter comes, can spring be far
behind."
Those words could apply to the
abortive efforts to bring democracy to Central Europe in 1848, and to liberalize
the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1968, but not to the upheavals that
began raging in the Arab World in 2011.
Carried away by misguided
expectations harbored by naive or misinformed foreign correspondents that the
North African rim and part of the Fertile Crescent had opted for genuine
democracy, they invented the term, "Arab Spring," for this imaginary
development.
|
|
By Jay Bushinsky
The Jerusalem Post
February 3, 2012
In Israel, the political terms Left and Right are not like their nominal counterparts in the rest of the democratic world.
Instead of dealing mainly with economic and social issues, as is the case abroad, the Israeli Leftists and Rightists focus primarily on this country's territorial problems. Left-wingers here advocate substantial if not total withdrawal from the West Bank and Right-wingers insist on the retention of this Biblical area in its entirety.
Outside of Israel, Leftists are those who support trade unions, advocate fair and adequate pay for salaried employees and generous welfare benefits for the needy. Rightists there advocate minimal regulation of private business, lower taxes on corporate profits and less monitoring of private interests.
|
|
By Sarah Honig
February 2, 2012
 Genocidal sentiments inspired ghoulish political cartoons rampant in Arab journals on the Six Day War’s eve – this one is from Syria and is captioned “The barricades of Tel Aviv.
Appearing in Ramallah on the Palestinian Authority’s Shaheed (martyr) Day, Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi proclaimed that “nobody is more admirable than the shaheed… the ultimate source of pride... the symbol of the homeland… who blazes the trail for us and paves the path to liberty with his blood.”
To preempt Israeli backlash, Tibi feigned innocence. The word shaheed, he averred, means a person “killed by the occupation.”
Yet in everyday Arabic, suicide-bombers and perpetrators of any bloodcurdling atrocity in Allah’s name are popularly dubbed shaheeds. The Palestinian Authority’s media, schools and mosques – all under professed moderate Mahmoud Abbas’s control – glorify shaheeds as models of emulation for all, from pint-sized preschoolers onward.
|
|
By Reuters and JPost.com Staff
February 2, 2012
 Dozens of youth throw stones, sticks, shoes at UN chief's convoy as it crosses into Gaza; none hurt.
Dozens of Palestinians threw shoes, sticks and stones at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's convoy as it crossed into the Gaza Strip on Thursday, protesting against what they saw as a slight against Palestinians jailed in Israel.
No one was injured during the hostile welcome and the vehicles, which entered the Hamas-ruled territory from southern Israel through the Erez crossing, pushed through the crowd and sped away.
|
|
By Barak Ravid
Haaretz
January 31,2012
During a broadcasted meeting of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, CIA Director, panel Chairperson indicate they met Tamir Pardo in Washington this week; U.S. official: Iran willing to attack U.S. targets if threatened.
Mossad chief Tamir Pardo held secret talks with top U.S. officials in recent days, cursory comments made during a public Senate hearing indicated on Tuesday.
The clandestine Washington visit was exposed during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which was participated by CIA Director David Petraeus, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate panel.
During the meeting, Feinstein asked Clapper whether or not Israel intended to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, with the top U.S. intelligence official answering that he would rather discuss the issue behind closed doors.
|
|
Kidnapped Her and Cut Off Her Hair for Kissing a White Man
By Suzannah Hills
January 31, 2012
 Family 'honour': Kayum Mohammed-Abdul, 24, is accused of kidnapping and assaulting his sister Shamima
A Muslim teenager was kidnapped and beaten by her own siblings after they caught her kissing a white man, a court heard today.
Shamima Akhtar, 18, was allegedly bundled into a car and taken home before being beaten by her two older sisters, Nadiya, 25, and Nazira, 29, and brother Kayum Mohammed-Abdul, 24.
 Winchester Crown Court heard they called Shamima 'a whore and a prostitute and then cut her waist-length hair up to her neck after they saw her kissing a white man, Gary Pain, in the car park of a restaurant in Basingstoke, Hampshire, on April 1 last year.
|
|
By Asaf Romirowsky and John R. Cohn
The Jerusalem Post
January 30, 2012|
 A self-proclaimed National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Conference is set to take place at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy league institution in the heart of Philadelphia, during the weekend of February 4. Last held in 2009, according to the organizers, the BDS movement intends to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by demonizing Israel while propagating the Palestinian victimhood status in order to gain global sympathy.
They believe that if universities, companies and even countries boycott, divest from and sanction Israel it will pressure the government to change its so-called “hard nosed” policies toward the Palestinians and in addition give up land Israel supposedly “stole” from the Palestinians in 1948 and 1967.
A closer look at the BDS movement and its methodology shows not legitimate criticism but actually a racist and anti-Semitic program. In a world where refugees have been created and resettled by the tens of millions, including over 900,000 Jews that fled Arab states, BDS targets only Israel. Its stated goals vary but all include the “right” for descendants of Palestinian “refugees” to “return” to a country they have never seen, thus bringing about the end of Jewish Israel.
|
|
By Reuters
January 30, 2012
Egyptian military delegation expected in Washington for regular talks expected to focus in large part on the impasse over NGOs.
 WASHINGTON - Several American citizens have taken refuge in the US Embassy in Cairo amid a sharpening dispute between Washington and Egypt's military-led authorities over US-funded pro-democracy groups in the country, the State Department said on Monday.
"We can confirm that a handful of US citizens have opted to stay in the embassy compound in Cairo while waiting for permission to depart Egypt," State Department spokeswoman Kate Starr said.
|
|
By David Roberts
January 30, 2012
The University of Pennsylvania will be breaking all precedents about legitimizing and mainstreaming anti-Israel activism on prominent college campuses this week -- and crossing a new red line -- by hosting a conference, called PennBDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), which openly states that its intention is to train people and organize communities to try to dismantle Israel economically -- and, if conference participant Omar Barghouti's book, "BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions," is any indication, otherwise, as well. The conference is scheduled to take place Feb. 3-5.
A Google search of "PennBDS Conference" yields over 1000 entries, including a apologistic article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency [JTA] saying that Penn is trying to "distance" itself from the conference, and that Penn's President, Amy Gutmann says she, "does not support the conference...or support its aims."
Then why are they enabling it?
According to another piece, "PennBDS: About the Conference," which appears to be the official notice for the conference, it is taking place "for a momentum-building opportunity for those already engaged with the fight for Palestinian freedom and equality."
|
|
|
By Dore Gold
Israel Hayom
January 27, 2012
The 45 kilometer-wide Strait of Hormuz is the most important waterway for the movement of oil to Western markets and the Far East: Roughly 17 million barrels per day are moved through the Strait of Hormuz, or 20 percent of the oil traded worldwide. Yet on Dec. 28, 2011, the commander of the Iranian Navy, Admiral Habibolah Sayyari, declared that closing the Strait of Hormuz would be easier “than drinking a glass of water.” Iran wanted to intimidate the West, showing that it had options to respond to new sanctions against the Iranian oil industry that were being considered by the EU, and that had been signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama. Just the rumor that Iran was considering such a move could shoot up the price of oil, which in fact rose by 4% within days of Sayyari's threat. Given the weakness of the European economies at present, Tehran was hoping that it had real leverage that it could employ against the West.
Where did Iran get this confidence? The last time Iran had a full-scale clash with the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, it was badly beaten. Iran adopted a policy of mining shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf in the mid-1980s during the Iran-Iraq War. An American frigate, the USS Samuel Roberts, was struck by an Iranian mine and nearly blown in two. It almost sank. The Reagan administration ordered a retaliatory raid destroying Iranian oil platforms that were being used by the Revolutionary Guard and four Iranian ships, including a frigate. Writing this month in the Wall Street Journal, Bradley Russell, formerly of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations recalled the Iranian attack on the USS Roberts and its implications for the present crisis: “The Iranians must realize that the balance of forces does not lie in their favor.” The article was optimistically entitled “Iran Won't Close the Strait of Hormuz.”
The Iranians look back on their naval clash with the U.S. very differently, taking pride in their ability to cause considerable damage to an American warship. Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the naval arm of the Revolutionary Guard speaks on the incident with the USS Roberts and takes away different lessons than many Americans. For example, speaking in 2007, he noted, “Even small operations can produce huge effects in the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.” By “small operations,” he is referring to the role of small speedboats armed with sea-to-sea missiles and torpedoes, mini-submarines, as well as sea mines in blocking the Strait of Hormuz. For Fadavi, a “huge effect” is undoubtedly the capability of Iran to sink large American warships, even if Iran has considerable losses in its fleet of small boats, as a result.
|
|
|
By Jay Bushinsky
The Jerusalem Post
January 27, 2012
The
primary purpose of journalism is to gather facts hitherto unknown to the
general public and report them accurately and succinctly. There is no
place in this sometimes dangerous if not psychologically painful profession for
wishful thinking.
Unfortunately, however, correspondents and columnists sometimes violate its unwritten,
but theoretically binding rules. That is how the misnomer, "Arab
spring," was coined. Its authors or proponents, many of whom covered
last year's dramatic developments in North Africa and the Fertile Crescent that
began with
a fruit and vegetable vendor's suicide in Tunis and culminated in the Syrian
rebellion attributed these events and the intervening ones in Libya and Egypt
to a pent-up yen for democracy and individual freedom.
Their
myopia apparently stemmed from an apparently-irrepressible fascination with the
Arab world. It spawned the baseless and irrational notion that the
component countries were entering a new era in which their political systems
would mirror those that exist in the free world.
|
|
|
By Soeren Kern
January 27, 2012
Irish actor Liam Neeson says he is thinking about becoming a Muslim after undergoing a spiritual awakening in Turkey.
Neeson, who was born into a Roman Catholic family in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, told the London-based newspaper The Sun that he was impressed by the religious atmosphere in Istanbul while filming a movie in the city.
He said: "The [Islamic] call to prayer happens five times a day, and for the first week, it drives you crazy, and then it just gets into your spirit, and it's the most beautiful, beautiful thing. There are 4,000 mosques in the city. Some are just stunning, and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim."
|
|
|
By Dexter Van Zile
The Algemeiner
January 26, 2012
It’s time for journalists, human rights activists and church leaders in the U.S. to confront the prospect of Christianity’s destruction in the region of its birth.
That’s the message that came out of a one-day conference that took place in Framingham, Massachusetts on Jan. 21, 2012. The conference, titled The Persecuted church: Christian Believers in Peril in the Middle East was sponsored by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), which is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2012.
Andrea Levin, CAMERA’s executive director said the goal of the conference was to draw attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East.
|
|
|
By Khaled Abu Toameh
The Jerusalem Post
January 25, 2012
Israel has declared war on Hamas representatives in the West Bank, Palestinians said Tuesday, pointing out that five legislators belonging to the Islamist movement have been arrested in the past few days.
Early Tuesday, IDF soldiers arrested Abdel Jabbar Fukaha, a Hamas legislator, in Ramallah and confiscated documents, a laptop and mobile phones from his home.
Fukaha’s wife said that soldiers raided their home around 2 a.m. and arrested her husband after conducting a thorough search.
|
|
| | << Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
| | Results 1 - 24 of 384 |
|
