A new book chronicles a mostly forgotten episode in Leonard Cohen’s long career

Posted on May 27, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

CITY JOURNAL
The Dark Night of Leonard Cohen
Katya Sedgwick
June 2, 2022

…In Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai, journalist Matti Friedman zeroes in on a mostly forgotten chapter of Cohen’s career: his performances for Israeli Defense Forces soldiers fighting in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Like Cohen’s songs, Friedman’s book is an offbeat work. It’s a word-of-mouth treasure likely to be read primarily by ardent Cohen fans and musically inclined Zionists, but it will likely gain in prominence, as it offers vital insight into Cohen’s trajectory as a songwriter and the scope of his work. War always fascinated Cohen. But while some men went to war, he went to rock and roll. In “Tower of Song,” he compared performing with fighting: “Now, I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back/They’re movin’ us tomorrow to the tower down the track.” READ MORE

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“A senior member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was killed in his car by two alleged Israeli assassins on a motorcycle”

Posted on May 20, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Assassination of IRGC official shows Israel has shifted gears
Anna Ahronheim
May 23, 2022

A senior member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Hassan Sayad Khodayari was killed in his car by five bullets fired by two alleged Israeli assassins on a motorcycle. Khodayari is not the first Iranian to have been killed in attacks blamed on the Jewish state. But his assassination marks a change in targets in Israel’s war-between-the-wars campaign…Most Iranians allegedly killed by Israel have been nuclear scientists, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who many referred to as the “father” of Iran’s nuclear-weapons project and who was assassinated in November 2020. Following the murder of Fakhrizadeh, the Biden administration reportedly told Israel to stop acting in ways that could derail the nuclear talks. READ MORE

ARUTZ SHEVA Israel told US it killed senior IRGC officer Intelligence official tells New York Times Israel informed American officials that it was behind the killing of IRGC’s Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei.

TIMES OF ISRAEL Top MK: US leak saying Israel admits hit on Iran colonel may harm trust, isn’t true Ram Ben-Barak denies Israel took responsibility for Sunday’s killing in Tehran of IRGC’s Khodaei; Israeli officials believe American counterparts talked to New York Times

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“Congressman Levin only turned down PAC money after ‘his hypocrisy was exposed,’ Stevens alleged”

Posted on May 20, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH INSIDER
Stevens and Levin trade barbs over AIPAC, PAC funding
Marc Rod
May 25, 2022

Reps. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Andy Levin (D-MI) exchanged attacks over campaign funding and support from AIPAC and corporate PAC groups in their second primary debate on Tuesday night. The two are set to square off in the Democratic primary in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, after a redrawing of the state’s congressional map that eliminated one of the state’s 14 seats in Congress…Attacking AIPAC and its super PAC’s involvement in Democratic primaries, Levin said earlier this month he was “proud to not be funding my campaign through an organization supporting insurrectionist Republicans.” READ MORE

FORWARD Jewish congressman calls attacks by AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups ‘ridiculous’ The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other pro-Israel groups are actively backing his non-Jewish rival, Rep. Haley Stevens, in the rare incumbent-vs.-incumbent primary to represent Michigan’s redrawn 11th Congressional District…Levin has also publicly defended his progressive colleagues, Reps. Rashida Tlaib from Michigan and Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, who have been accused of antisemitism and openly support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel.

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“During monthlong ‘Chariots of Fire’ exercise, air force will conduct maneuvers simulating attack on Iranian nuclear facilities; military ramps up list of wartime targets using AI”

Posted on May 20, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Israeli military to hold large-scale drill simulating widescale strike on Iran
Emanuel Fabian
May 17, 2022

For the first time, the Israeli Air Force will practice for a widescale strike in Iran later this month, during the military’s major Chariots of Fire exercise, The Times of Israel has learned. In light of growing uncertainty regarding a return by Iran to the 2015 nuclear deal, amid long-stalled negotiations with the United States, the Israel Defense Forces in the past year has ramped up its efforts to prepare a credible military threat against Tehran’s nuclear facilities. The large-scale air maneuvers, including a simulated attack on Iranian nuclear targets, will take place over the Mediterranean Sea during the fourth and final week of the monthlong exercise, starting May 29. READ MORE

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“In keeping with the language and themes that feature in the UN’s ritual denunciations of Israel, the resolution portrays the Jewish state as an incorrigible colonizer”

Posted on May 20, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
‘Ideology of Rage’ Comes to Congress
Ben Cohen
May 22, 2022

It is the sort of resolution one would expect to be tabled before the UN General Assembly or even Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, but not the US Congress. Last week, a group of left-wing Democratic legislators led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib and backed by her House colleagues Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Cori Bush (D-MO), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Betty McCollum (D-MN) and Marie Newman (D-IL), presented a resolution on the subject of the nakba — an Arabic word meaning “disaster” or “catastrophe” that Palestinians use as shorthand when talking about the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL An Open Letter to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Your Fellow Travelers Your resolution reiterates the historically inaccurate and delusional claim that Jews have no indigeneity to the territories that became current-day Israel, that all of historic Palestine is somehow “Palestinian land,” and that the millions of Palestinian refugees created by your people’s repeated rejection of offers of statehood—in 1937, 1947, 1967, 2000, and other occasions—is the sole reason that you continually look backward, wishing history had unfolded differently.

JTA Israeli ambassador says House Democrats’ call for US probe of journalist’s killing isn’t ‘fair’ In an unusual public broadside against dozens of Congress members, Israel’s ambassador to Washington said a letter calling for a U.S. investigation into the killing of a Palestinian American journalist was not a “fair” representation of the event. Michael Herzog was responding to a letter sent Thursday by 57 House Democrats to Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, and Christopher Wray, the FBI director. It called for an investigation into the death last week of Shireen Abu Akleh, a venerated Al Jazeera reporter killed during an Israeli army raid on the West Bank town of Jenin.

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Muslim pushes 90 year-old Jew from his 17th floor apartment but police say not antisemitism. Nothing to see here.

Posted on May 20, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

ARUTZ SHEVA
France: 90-year-old Jewish man pushed to his death in Lyon
Elad Benari
May 20, 2022

A dispute between neighbors in France ended with the death of a 90-year-old Jewish man, and police do not suspect an antisemitic motive, JTA reported Friday. Police arrested a 51-year-old neighbor of the deceased, René Hadjaj, sometime after Hadjaj’s death on Tuesday evening outside his home in Lyon in eastern France, the Tribune Juive Jewish newspaper reported on Friday…Reports about the incident, however, evoked anger and disbelief among multiple French Jews on social networks and beyond, who noted the similarities between this case and the murder of Jewish woman Sarah Halimi in 2017 [also thrown from her apartment window]. READ MORE

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“Malley also announced new sanctions will be imposed on an “international smuggling and money-laundering network” that he said provides hundreds of millions of dollars to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force”

Posted on May 20, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

THE HILL
Biden’s Iran envoy says return to nuclear deal ‘tenuous’
Laura Kelly
May 25, 2022

President Biden’s lead negotiator on nuclear talks with Iran on Wednesday gave a dim outlook for prospects of a return to the deal, telling a Senate panel it was “tenuous at best” despite nearly a year of talks to revive the agreement. U.S. Special Representative for Iran Rob Malley said in opening remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U.S. would continue to reject Iranian demands that go beyond the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He also said the U.S. is “fully prepared to live with and confront that reality” of moving forward without a return to the deal..READ MORE

JEWISH INSIDER Iran deal critics cheer Biden decision not to lift IRGC designation On the eve of Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, a new report indicates that President Joe Biden has decided against removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations list or offering any further concessions to Iran as part of ongoing negotiations. designation was met with praise from Democrats and Republicans

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“Iranians clearly seek to fill the void in Syria that Russia vacates…Israeli military operations can potentially force the Iranians out”

Posted on May 20, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

NEWSWEEK
Russia’s withdrawal from Syria is an opportunity for Israel
Jonathan Schanzer
Jacob Nagel
May 20, 2022

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz revealed details about the largest Israel Defense Force (IDF) drill in recent years last week. The drill included simulated airstrikes on Iran and a simulated multi-front war against Iran-backed proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. The message was unmistakable: The Israeli government is weighing its military options, and the military is readying for whatever the government decides. Iran should be worried Right now, however, all eyes are on Syria. The war in Ukraine has prompted Russia to redeploy some forces and hardware out of Syria, where it has been buttressing the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad. As the Russians depart, the Iranians want to fill the void. READ MORE

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As Ankara mends fences with pro-Western Arab governments and Israel, Hamas could become collateral damage and may be expelled from Turkey

Posted on May 20, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES
Turkey’s wooing of Israel may lead to Hamas ouster
Enia Krivine
May 25, 2022

Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, visited Israel this week, a sign that Israel and Turkey may be on a path to reconciliation, after a decade of antagonism. However, Jerusalem has made it clear to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the expulsion of Hamas leaders from Turkish soil is a prerequisite for closer ties. It remains unclear if Ankara has finally kicked out the Gaza-based terrorist organization. What is clear is that if Hamas loses its Turkish sanctuary, its options for a new one are limited. For the past ten years, Saleh al Arouri has been operating a Hamas headquarters in Istanbul. Arouri is a United States-designated and sanctioned terrorist with a $5 million (NIS 16.8 m.) bounty on his head. READ MORE

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“A culture self-destructs if its people choose not to defend it. Bad people get away with really bad stuff when everyone else chooses to look the other way”

Posted on May 20, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
The ‘broken windows’ strategy for combating Israel demonization
Melanie Phillips
May 19, 2022

The “broken windows” theory of policing, which was responsible for a stunning drop in crime in New York in the 1990s, was based on a simple proposition. This was that bad people are encouraged to commit serious crimes if lesser social nuisances such as litter, vandalism or fare evasion are ignored. This transmits the fatal signal that those in authority are giving a free pass to disorder. To stop serious offenses, there must be a consistent message that there will be zero tolerance for breaking any of the rules that keep a society civilized. The “broken windows” theory might well also be applied to politics. The classicist and commentator Victor Davis Hansen has published a bone-chilling analysis of America that suggests it is inexorably going down to destruction. READ MORE

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