Saudi state television described those executed as having “followed the footsteps of Satan” in carrying out their crimes

Posted on March 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saudi Arabia puts 81 to death in its largest mass execution
Jon Gambrell
March 12, 2022

Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 81 people convicted of crimes ranging from killings to belonging to militant groups, the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom in its modern history…The kingdom also said some of those executed were members of al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and also backers of Yemen’s Houthi rebels. A Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Iran-backed Houthis since 2015 in neighboring Yemen in an effort to restore the internationally recognized government to power….“The kingdom will continue to take a strict and unwavering stance against terrorism and extremist ideologies that threaten the stability of the entire world,” the report added. It did not say how the prisoners were executed, though death-row inmates typically are beheaded in Saudi Arabia. READ MORE

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Bret Stephens: Biden administration “continues to operate under a series of potentially catastrophic illusions”

Posted on March 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK TIMES
This Is How World War III Begins
Bret Stephens
March 15, 2022

The usual date given for the start of World War II is Sept. 1, 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. But that was just one in a series of events that at the time could have seemed disconnected. Among them: Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. The remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936 and the Spanish Civil War, which started the same year. Anschluss with Austria and the Sudeten crisis of 1938. The Soviet invasion of Poland weeks after the German one and Germany’s western invasions the following year. Operation Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor in 1941. READ MORE

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President Zelensky’s chief of staff writes for The Times of Israel: Just as the Jews fell victim to Nazis, Ukrainians are falling victim to Russia’s efforts to commit acts of genocide

Posted on March 4, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Today, Ukraine is Israel: We implore Jews across the world to come to our aid
by Andriy Yermak
March 4, 2022

Putin says he’s coming to “de-nazify” Ukraine. Ukraine, with the third-largest Jewish population in Europe and the fifth-largest in the world. Ukraine, with a Jewish President and formerly a Jewish Prime Minister. Ukraine – the only country that was once part of the Soviet Union that can make these claims. The history of the Jewish people in Ukraine is not new. It goes back to the time of Kyivan Rus’ at the turn of the 10th century. These early Jews gave rise to Hasidic Judaism, which today is practiced across Europe and in Israel and the United States. Uman, a city in Cherkasy Oblast in central Ukraine, is a pilgrimage site for Breslov Hasidic Jews that regularly attracts throngs of tourists. Despite the vibrancy of the Jewish community in Ukraine, history has not always been peaceful for Ukraine’s Jews. Jews have long been targeted in Ukraine, as elsewhere in Europe, culminating in the mass atrocities of the Holocaust. READ MORE

ALGEMEINER Ukraine’s President Zelensky to Address Israeli Knesset Via Zoom Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will address the Knesset via videoconference, it was announced on Thursday. The embattled president, who has emerged as a global symbol of resistance following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, had previously asked to address a full session of the Knesset via a large video screen on the Knesset plenum. 

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Biden’s Iran negotiator Malley “has agreed to sanctions relief that will provide Iran with an immediate cash infusion of $90 billion, as well as an additional $50-55 billion annually in oil and gas profits”

Posted on March 4, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

CAROLINE GLICK BLOG
Biden Shatters Israel’s Delusions
March 7, 2022

…But then, last Wednesday, Gabriel Noronha, a former Iran specialist at the State Department, published details of the concessions [Biden administration negotiator] Malley has already agreed to on his Twitter feed. Noronha wrote that he received the details of the U.S. concessions from his former colleagues at the State Department and National Security Council, as well as from the European Union delegations to the talks. Noronha wrote that his associates, all “career” officers rather than political appointees, “are so concerned with the concessions being made by Rob Malley in Vienna that they’ve allowed me to publish some details of the coming deal in the hopes that Congress will act to stop the capitulation.” READ MORE

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“Like many other countries, Turkey is looking at improved ties with Israel as a way to better its relationship with the US”

Posted on March 4, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Erdogan not honoring Herzog out of love for Israel
by Lahav Harkov
March 9, 2022

President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Turkey at the invitation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a timely one. Next week Jews across the world will read Megilat Esther, the biblical Book of Esther, for the holiday of Purim; seeing a full honor guard and 21-gun salute for an Israeli leader in Turkey, along with Erdogan standing at attention for “Hatikvah,” brought to mind the sentence from the Megillah about Ahasuerus honoring Mordechai: “This is what is done for the man whom the king desires to honor.”…The Talmud explains that Ahasuerus’s version of an honor guard was “not out of a love of Mordechai, but out of the hatred of Haman.” READ MORE

FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES Turkey Walks a Tightrope on Ukraine It closed the Turkish Straits to most Russian ships—but also most NATO ships.

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“Obama’s fecklessness in Syria and the Iran deal forced Jerusalem to choose survival over its principles”

Posted on March 4, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

WALL STREET JOURNAL
Israel, Russia and the U.S. Moral Abdication
by Natan Sharansky
March 6, 2022

…Making matters worse, an imminent nuclear deal with Iran will give yet more money to the regime without any linkage to its behavior. As a result, Israel will become even more dependent on Russia. Israel would not have been forced to choose between its principles and survival had it not been for the lack of moral clarity in Europe and the U.S. The same free world that now stands in solidarity against one dictator is on the verge of signing—with that very dictator—an agreement that would give hundreds of billions of dollars to another corrupt, oppressive regime that has vowed to destroy Israel. It isn’t too late to change this state of affairs. READ MORE

TABLET MAG Ten Questions for Natan Sharansky Q: How do you feel about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a state where you grew up in a Jewish family under the former USSR, and which is led today by a proudly Jewish president?  A: I have to say that it is very difficult for Jews to believe, but the Jewish question has nothing to do with this conflict. The fact that Zelensky is a devoted Jew is an absolutely outstanding fact of Ukrainian history, as well as the fact that even Putin, with all the awful things he is doing, is unique in Russian history for his positive attitude toward Jews and Israel. There are no anti-Jewish pogroms at this stage, neither in Ukraine nor in Russia, and it’s not the case that Jews are at the center of this.

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Influx into Israel seen swelling into biggest since Soviet Union’s breakup

Posted on March 4, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

BLOOMBERG
Russian Jews Look to Israel to Escape Putin’s Wartime Isolation
by Daniel Avis
March 9, 2022

Mark Dagin last traveled from Russia to Israel more than 15 years ago for a two-week vacation with his father…Dagin’s among thousands of Russians with Jewish heritage considering relocating to Israel in the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, an influx that could swell into the largest since the breakup of the Soviet Union. At least 1,400 have had their visa applications approved since the war began, triggering sanctions that have turned their country into an international pariah virtually overnight. And Israel is initially ready to absorb as many as 100,000 Jews and their extended families from both Russia and Ukraine, according to Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked. READ MORE

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“Putin and those who hate Israel are convinced that these states–Israel and Ukraine–have no right to exist and wish to eliminate them”

Posted on March 4, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH JOURNAL
Russification of Ukraine and Arabization of Judea/Palestine: Two Sides of the Same Coin
by Micha Danzig
March 7, 2022

…What is surprising, however, is how few people understand the strong connection between the Russification ideology and history, which animates Putin and Russia’s latest effort to conquer and colonize Ukraine, and the Arabization ideology and history, which has animated, for over a century, the continuous violent rejection of Jewish nationhood and sovereignty in the Middle East. In Putin’s February 21 speech in which he announce Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, he said: “I would like to emphasize again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space. READ MORE

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“Not wishing to anger either Russian President Vladimir Putin or the Biden administration, the P.A. and Hamas have so far refrained from taking official positions on Ukraine”

Posted on March 4, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
The Palestinian stance on the Ukraine war
by Yoni Ben Menachem
March 6, 2022

…At the same time, the Palestinians are well aware that Ukrainian President Zelensky is a Jew. In their view, he is also a Zionist who backed the American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s united capital, as well as Israel’s “Guardian of the Walls Operation” in Gaza in May 2021. There are also Palestinians in the territories who welcome the Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine in the hope that it will lead to a new world order in which U.S. power and hegemony will decline. They want to see the United States, Israel’s strong ally, weakened. According to their logic, that would inevitably lead to Israel’s weakening as well. READ MORE

ELDER OF ZIYON Jordanian/Palestinian columnist, former member of Parliament, openly rooting for Russia to win. Because Ukraine is “Zionist.” He wrote in Jordanian site Ad Dustour, copied elsewhere, that a Russian victory in Ukraine will be a defeat for Israel and the United States. We sympathize with the people of Ukraine for two reasons: first, because its president, Vladimir Zelensky, is a Jew-Zionist who has implicated his people in a battle serving the interests of the United States and against the interests of his neighbor Russia, and secondly, because the people of Ukraine will pay the price for these destructive adventures.

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“Rashida Tlaib wants to smear Israel. And she is willing to stoop as low as necessary to do so—even lying about her own grandmother”

Posted on March 4, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
What the NYT Tlaib feature represents
by Gilead Ini
March 6, 2022

The latest New York Times hagiography of an anti-Israel activist has dropped. The weekend’s fawning feature is about Rep. Rashida Tlaib—or more specifically, about the righteousness of Tlaib’s anti-Israel dogmas. It follows just a few months after the paper printed another flattering story about an anti-Israel (and anti-Jewish) activist, Gaza poetry professor Refaat Alareer. The premise of the earlier piece was, commendably, retracted with an editors’ note acknowledging failures in reporting. (Alareer was feted as a bridge-builder, though he is a hatemonger.)…Tlaib seeks an end to Israel. Ali more or less admits it. Tlaib is unhappy about Israel’s life-saving anti-rocket system, the Iron Dome. READ MORE

ARUTZ SHEVA Rashida Tlaib plays the “Grandma Card,” again In a major New York Times feature this week, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) once again falsely promoted the claim that her grandmother, Mrs. Muftia Tlaib, is persecuted by Israel—when, in reality, Grandma lives under the rule of the Palestinian Authority, not Israel.

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