University student-led campaigns to boycott Israel are not an uncommon sight, but a new student movement at Tufts University is taking a form rarely seen before in similar campus boycott efforts

Posted on March 18, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

FORWARD
At Tufts, a student campaign urges peers not to join pro-Israel groups — even liberal ones
Penny Schwartz
March 17, 2022

…Tufts’ Students for Justice in Palestine chapter this week called for a strategic boycott against Israel, asking students to sign the group’s pledge not to buy Israeli snacks sold on campus (such as Sabra hummus). But in what some observers say is a new and troubling tactic, the group also asks students to refuse to join campus groups or programs “that normalize or benefit” Israel, including the student groups Tufts Friends of Israel, TAMID and Tufts J Street, a campus branch of the liberal Middle East policy group that advocates for a two-state solution. READ MORE

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U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides isn’t just out of touch with the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He sees his job not as fostering good relations, but telling Israelis what they can and cannot do

Posted on March 18, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
An envoy from a failed past points towards a problematic future
Jonathan S. Tobin
March 18, 2022

…Israelis and American friends of Israel were aware that [Ambassador Thomas] Nides and his boss, President Joe Biden, have a different point of view about the Jewish state, as well as the conflict with the Palestinians, than that of former President Donald Trump and his envoy to Israel, David Friedman. But what his conversation laid bare wasn’t just hostility to the views of the overwhelming majority of Israelis, including many in the current government. Nor was it about what Trump tried to do in order to shake the Palestinians out of their intransigence and to help facilitate normal relations between the Jewish state and much of the Arab world. Like others in the administration these days, he is determined to stick with the foreign-policy establishment’s failed Middle East policies of the past to try to force Israel to do things that voters of that democratic nation have repeatedly rejected. READ MORE

JERUSALEM POST Lahav Harkov: US offering $1 million to report on Israeli human rights violations The grant raised concerns for the potential of abuse by organizations to act against Israel via BDS and international law tribunals.

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“Iranian media continue to release more detail about its alleged nabbing of Mossad agents who tried to recruit a member of Iran’s IR-6 centrifuge team at its Fordow nuclear facility”

Posted on March 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Iran blames Israel for destroying hundreds of Iranian drones
Yonah Jeremy Bob
March 16, 2022

The latest exchange between Israel and Iran may be a result of Israel having destroyed hundreds of Iranian drones last month, according to a mix of Israeli and Lebanese reports. Neither country had even mentioned the reported attack on a critical base in Western Iran until earlier this week, when it was first reported by the Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen, which is linked to both Hezbollah and Iran. Tehran blames Israel, but Jerusalem has not taken responsibility. Haaretz confirmed the report on Tuesday with extra detail, as did other Israeli media. According to Al Mayadeen, the destroyed Iranian drones was the reason for Saturday night’s Iranian missile attack on Erbil on an alleged Mossad training base. READ MORE

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49 US Republican senators say they will not back new #Iran nuclear deal. This Isn’t #Obama’s Iran Deal. It’s Much, Much Worse.

Posted on March 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

NATIONAL REVIEW
Republicans Make It Clear They’ll Scrap Biden’s Weak Iran Deal
Carine Hajjar
March 14, 2022

Today, 49 Republican senators came out against the Biden administration’s impending nuclear deal with Iran. Republicans stressed two points: Any deal pursued by the Biden administration must hold Iran accountable for its destabilizing behavior and must receive congressional approval. The statement says that the Biden administration has “given away the store” by lifting sanctions that “were not even placed on Iran for its nuclear activities” but for its “ongoing support for terrorism and its gross uses of human rights.” The current potential deal, which is branded as a return to Obama’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is actually far weaker; its most notable concessions include allowing Iran to maintain its nuclear gains since 2018 and lifting terrorism sanctions. READ MORE

TABLET MAG Gabriel Norohna: This Isn’t Obama’s Iran Deal. It’s Much, Much Worse. The last thing the world needs is another nuclear-armed dictatorship flush with cash and attacking its neighbors. But that’s what President Biden and his Iran envoy Robert Malley are creating in the deal they are about to close in Vienna, according to career State Department sources.

GATESTONE Khaled Abu Toameh: A Final Warning from Arabs to Biden In a message directed at the Biden administration and the other Western powers involved in the Vienna negotiations, the Arab countries said that Iran and its terrorist militias are continuing to create chaos and instability, especially in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon..It is not only Iran that threatens their security, but also its terrorist proxies, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

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“Unlike official Russia, Ukraine is an example of mourning and redemption done right”

Posted on March 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
Ukraine and the Jews
Bernard-Henri Levy
March 13, 2022

Among the most disgraceful words Vladimir Putin has uttered since he began this war are his calls to “denazify” Ukraine. Because this story is far from finished, and because we can always count on the Kremlin’s media outlets and networks to promote any piece of fake news, I want to clear some things up here. Yes, Ukraine has pogroms in its past, just as Poland and Russia do. Yes, some extreme nationalists in Ukraine allied themselves with Hitler against Stalin in 1941. And I am too familiar with the works of Father Patrick Desbois, the French priest and founder of Yahad-In Unum, an organization that locates the sites of mass graves of Jews in Ukraine and surrounding countries, to underestimate the scale, from Kyiv to Lviv and beyond, of the pinnacle of abomination that was the Holocaust by bullets. READ MORE

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“Israel has done what it can to help its Arab citizens and other Arabs to whom it owes nothing to find safety in the conflict”

Posted on March 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Israel’s rescue of Arabs from Ukraine undermines oppression narrative
David May
March 12, 2022

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given us an unexpected snapshot of the dueling realities and propaganda surrounding Israel. The truth: Israel has done what it can to help its Arab citizens and other Arabs to whom it owes nothing to find safety in the conflict. And yet for a substantial slice of the Left, Israel is South Africa reborn, a racist state segregating Arabs out for inhuman treatment. What actually happens on the ground – see Ukraine – doesn’t seem to dent this alternate reality…Israeli-Arab parents have enjoyed tearful embraces with their children safely back in Israel. Popular Arab-Israeli media personality Eman Kassem Slimani praised Israel for rescuing hundreds of its Arab citizens from Ukraine, including many Bedouin. READ MORE

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“If there was any doubt about Amnesty’s credibility as a legitimate voice of authority, it is now abundantly clear that they are firmly entrenched in the cadre of extremist anti-Israel provocateurs”

Posted on March 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JTA
Amnesty International official is ‘opposed’ to Israel as a Jewish state
Ron Kampeas
March 11, 2022

An Amnesty International official said that the organization is opposed to Israel continuing to exist as a Jewish state. “We are opposed to the idea — and this, I think, is an existential part of the debate — that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people,” Paul O’Brien, the human rights monitor’s U.S. director, said in a luncheon this week with the Women’s National Democratic Club in Washington D.C. Jewish Insider first reported the remarks. O’Brien said late Friday on Twitter that his remarks had been removed from context, although he did not contest the quotes themselves. READ MORE

JEWISH INSIDER A day after all 25 Jewish House Democrats issued a statement condemning Amnesty International USA Director Paul O’Brien’s comments on American Jews and Israel, 11 of those members wrote another letter to the organization’s international chief on Tuesday expressing concern that O’Brien’s full comments were “even more troubling” than the remarks initially reported by Jewish Insider.

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#BDSFail Sierra Club walks back cancellation of Israel trips

Posted on March 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Sierra Club reinstates Israel trips after canceling amid anti-Zionist group pressure
Luke Tress
March 15, 2022

The US environmental nonprofit Sierra Club is reinstating trips to Israel after canceling scheduled visits in response to pressure from anti-Israel groups. Ross Macfarlane, the Sierra Club’s vice president, phoned Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to inform him of the decision, the center says. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish advocacy group based in California, was one of the leading voices in a campaign against the Sierra Club decision. Macfarlane apologized for the sudden cancellations of trips to Israel, said the visits will continue in the future and denounced the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, the Weisenthal Center says. READ MORE

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How ADL went woke, embraced #criticalracetheory, lost the plot

Posted on March 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

COMMENTARY
The Revolution Inside the ADL
Seth Mandel
April 2022

…[Rabbi] Wright singled out the ADL’s redefinition of “racism” as indicative of how far it has strayed from its mission. Under Greenblatt, he said, “the literature, some of the positions, are not in the core belief system of the Jewish people.” Instead, it is furthering an ideology “that is simply angering more Jews and not protecting us.” He noted the “deeply troubling” hiring of Tema Smith, recalled some of her greatest hits, and said overall that the new ADL is “siding with a certain political ideology, one which I believe and many Jews believe is harming their mission.” Wright’s choice of words is important, because this is not about [Jonathan] Greenblatt’s favoritism toward his fellow Democrats—though he certainly displays that bias as well—but rather adherence to an ideology, a new way of thinking.  READ MORE

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“To compare a case of squatters refusing to pay rent on land that isn’t legally theirs to Ukrainians facing a Russian military onslaught on their own soil, is both dumb and disgusting”

Posted on March 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
Media Outlets Use Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine to Attack Israel
Sean Durns
March 10, 2022

Ukraine is a 38-hour drive from Israel. The two countries are in different regions of the world. The newspapers who cover them do so from different foreign bureaus, and the US State Department, among other diplomatic entities, has appropriately filed them under different areas of responsibility. Yet, several newspapers — The Washington Post foremost among them — have tried to tie Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Israel. There’s a word for such a single-minded obsessiveness with the Jewish state: antisemitism. In fact, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t anything like Israel’s security situation. Indeed, there is no legitimate comparison whatsoever. READ MORE

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