The alleged distress of “pro-Palestinian” individuals and pressure groups has nothing to do with a genuine concern for the Palestinians — and everything to do with a racist hatred of Jews

Posted on August 4, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
A Cry for Help from Palestinians
Bassam Tawil
August 4, 2023

On July 30, thousands of Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip took to the streets to protest harsh living conditions and a shortage of power and gas. The protests, held under the banner “We want to live!”, reflected growing discontent among the Palestinians against the Iranian-backed Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip through a violent and bloody coup in the summer of 2007. At the same time as the Palestinians were demonstrating in the Gaza Strip, armed clashes erupted in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, where at least 11 people were killed, including a senior Palestinian security official, and several others were injured. READ MORE

FDD Violence Among Palestinians in Lebanon Spurs Travel Advisories The United Arab Emirates (UAE) joined a growing list of countries on August 6 warning its citizens against traveling to Lebanon in the wake of clashes between Palestinian militant groups in Ayn al-Hilweh, the largest pocket of Palestinians claiming refugee status in the country…The alerts highlight the instability of Lebanon and its Palestinian population, as the country continues to struggle with a lack of a functioning government, a collapsed economy, and control by the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.

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Obamas former white girlfriend: “It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism”

Posted on August 4, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAGAZINE
The Obama Factor: A Q&A with historian David Garrow
David Samuels
August 2, 2023

There is a fascinating passage in Rising Star, David Garrow’s comprehensive biography of Barack Obama’s early years, in which the historian examines Obama’s account in Dreams from My Father of his breakup with his longtime Chicago girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism. As readers, we know that the stakes of this decision would become more than simply personal: The Black American man that Obama wills into being in this scene would go on to marry a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago named Michelle Robinson and, after a meteoric rise, win election as the first Black president of the United States. READ MORE

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Pittsburgh synagogue shooter ordered to die by execution, more than 4½ years after he killed 11 in Squirrel Hill

Posted on August 3, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
‘The joy you took away will be reclaimed’: Relatives of the 11 synagogue shooting victims confront gunman as he’s sentenced to death
Megan Guza
August 3, 2023

One by one, they filed to the front of the fifth-floor courtroom — a place where most have spent each day for more than two months. They spoke of times before Oct. 27, 2018, when a gunman tore through the Squirrel Hill synagogue where congregations Tree of Life, Dor Hadash and New Light worshipped. They spoke of the times after that. The finding out, the pain, the grief, the trial of Robert Bowers, and his sentence of death returned a day prior by the jury. They spoke of their lost loved ones: Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil and David Rosenthal, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Dan Stein, Melvin Wax, and Irving Younger. READ MORE

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The downfall of the White House’s favorite Iran whisperer is a mystery wrapped inside a cover-up

Posted on August 3, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
What Happened to Robert Malley?
Lee Smith
July 23, 2023

In late June, reports started circulating that White House heavy Robert Malley had been suspended from his job in the Joe Biden administration. That was surprising. Before he was pushed out, Malley had been seen as the visionary architect of the Democratic Party’s Middle East policy. He’d been Barack Obama’s conduit to Iran before Biden named him to do the same thing for his White House. For someone in his position to lose that job amid renewed talks with Iran was notable, but the most intriguing detail, hidden by the Biden team for months, was the reason why he was sidelined: He had reportedly mishandled classified documents. READ MORE

THE NATIONAL NEWS Biden administration ‘refused’ to give Congress information on Iran envoy Malley House foreign affairs committee tells The National the Biden administration gave no meaningful answers in a closed-door briefing as to why envoy was placed on leave

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Before the 1967 Six Day War, the valley was a no man’s land and used mostly as a garbage dump

Posted on August 3, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

VIN NEWS
Longest Suspension Bridge In Israel, Over Valley Of Hinom To Mt. Zion, Inaugurated Sunday
Yehuda Dov
July 30, 2023

The longest suspension bridge in Israel will be inaugurated on Sunday, connecting Jerusalem’s Mount Zion to the Valley of Hinnom, after nine months of construction and a cost of 20 million shekel. The 202-meter (663 feet) long bridge is expected to be one of the main tourist attractions in the capital and will be open for pedestrians from 6 am to 10 pm daily. From the bridge, visitors will be able to see the natural valley that surrounds the Old City from the south. Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said the municipality has invested millions in the development of tourist attractions and invited Israelis and visitors from abroad to visit the bridge. READ MORE

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Biden is trying to make it appear that a normalization deal will happen if the Jewish state pays for it in concessions to the Palestinians. Netanyahu should see it as a trap, not a favor.

Posted on August 3, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Is a US-Saudi-Israel deal really in the works?
Jonathan Tobin
August 2, 2023

According to New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, President Joe Biden is trying to do Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a big favor. That would involve the administration finally moving to follow up on former President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords triumph and brokering a deal normalizing relations between Jerusalem and Riyadh. Lending some weight to Friedman’s speculation is the fact that Biden has himself signaled his interest in some sort of pact with the Saudis that would involve Israel. This would give Biden a rare foreign-policy triumph in the midst of his re-election campaign. At the same time, since achieving that upgrade from under-the-table ties to the exchange of ambassadors is a major Israeli objective, it would also be a victory for Netanyahu, who is currently under siege from both Biden and domestic opponents who are falsely labeling his push for judicial reform as an assault on democracy. READ MORE

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“The Israeli government must give up on any further judicial reforms”

Posted on July 28, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
‘Dai,’ enough, stop it, let it go
Benjamin Kerstein
July 30, 2023

The word dai, best known from the dayenu of the Passover service, has a simple and assertive meaning in modern Hebrew: Enough, stop it, let it go. Israel has reached the point of both dai and dayenu. With the passage of the first stage of the government’s judicial reforms, the signs have become unmistakable. All the major newspapers printed a black page on their covers, paid for by the reforms’ opponents. The streets filled with angry crowds of pro- and anti-reform demonstrators. A general strike is threatened. Israel’s international credit rating will be lowered. High-tech companies are beginning the process of relocation. The economy threatens to crater. Reservists are refusing to serve and the IDF warns that its readiness could soon be in danger. One can support or oppose the law just passed and indeed the rest of the proposed reforms. We have reached the point, however, that this has become irrelevant. Whether either side likes it or not, we must face the reality that Israeli society is being torn to pieces. READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL PM aide: We’ll pass Judicial Selection Committee shakeup, shelve rest of overhaul A top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that the coalition plans to pass legislation remaking the Judicial Selection Committee in the fall parliamentary session and then will shelve the remainder of its controversial judicial overhaul package.

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Amazon Labor Union protest against Amazon doing business with Israel puts it out of step with the nation’s largest labor unions, which oppose the BDS movement

Posted on July 28, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
Amazon Labor Union Alongside Anti-Zionist Activist Linda Sarsour Accuses Israel of ‘Apartheid’
Andrew Bernard
July 28, 2023

The Amazon Labor Union, which represents more than 8,000 employees at the tech behemoth, took part in a protest on Wednesday accusing Israel of apartheid and genocide in response to an Amazon contract with the Israeli government. Videos and photos provided to The Algemeiner show executives from AWS and Salesforce being disrupted at least five times during their keynote address at the Amazon Web Services summit in New York. Dozens of protesters outside the event held signs with slogans including “Zionism is Genocide,” “Israeli Apartheid and Genocide Funded by the US,” and “Amazon Profit$ Off Israel’s Military Occupation.” The organizers claim that Wednesday’s anti-Israel protest was the first time that Amazon tech workers and warehouse workers have protested together. READ MORE

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Israel must show that it treats Palestinians who hold a US passport the same as it treats all US citizens

Posted on July 28, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Over 2000 Palestinian Americans enter country so far under visa waiver trial
Reuters and ILH Staff
August 2, 2023

More than 2,000 Palestinian Americans have traveled into or through Israel since it eased conditions for them at border crossings as part of a bid to achieve a visa waiver deal with the United States, an Israeli official said on Wednesday. Ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to qualify its citizens for visa-free admission to the United States, Israel has reciprocally loosened access through its main airport and at the occupied West Bank’s boundary for Palestinian Americans…To obtain the visa waiver deal, Israel, which imposes tight controls on movements by Palestinians and does not usually allow them to travel through Ben-Gurion International Airport, must show that it treats Palestinians who hold a US passport the same as it treats all US citizens. READ MORE

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The common policy of the last three administrations tacitly assumes that the costs to the United States, to the Middle East, and to the world of a nuclear-armed Iran, while certainly unwelcome, would be manageable

Posted on July 28, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

THE JERUSALEM STRATEGIC TRIBUNE
The United States, Iran, and the Lessons of the Last War
Michael Mandelbaum
July 2023

…The present policy rests on the conviction that confronting Iran with the threat of war would likely lead to war, and that such a war would follow the pattern of Afghanistan and Iraq, proving as costly to wage and as unsatisfactory in its outcome as those conflicts were. Neither proposition is necessarily correct. Successfully deterring the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran is feasible, given the vast military superiority the United States enjoys over the Islamic Republic, provided that the Iranian authorities are convinced that the United States would in fact unleash its armed forces to stop them from getting the bomb. Various measures that the American government has thus far chosen not to take would enhance the credibility of such a threat: a more emphatic declared policy to that effect, military exercises that simulate an attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities, and actual but limited military reprisals for Iranian provocations…READ MORE

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