Twenty years, $2 trillion, and the most powerful army in the world were no match for the one thing the Taliban has—and that current American leadership has lost

Posted on August 13, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
Assabiya Wins Every Time
by Lee Smith
August 18, 2021

Democrats and Republicans are right to blame each other for the fall of Kabul. It’s a loss for America’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment as a whole. For nearly two decades Washington sent thousands of Americans to their deaths and spent trillions of taxpayer dollars to wage a strategically pointless war. And because both sides of the political divide should be held accountable, military as well as civilian officials, too, it is unlikely that anyone ever will be. Since everyone is to blame, holding anyone accountable implicates everyone. READ MORE

THE HILL Taliban commander rules out democracy in Afghanistan: ‘It is Sharia law and that is it’ A Taliban commander said Thursday that Afghanistan will not become a democracy and will be strictly run under Sharia law.

KUSI NEWS Lara Logan analyzes collapse of Afghanistan, calls Biden’s exit ‘laughable’ Logan explained, “we don’t call it diplomacy when you’re dealing with a terrorist organization”…”We’re not talking about the fact that on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we’re putting the people responsible for that attack in power in Afghanistan. We’re about to legitimize them, as the US government, and we’re going to give them aid, which comes from US taxpayers.”

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Fifty years ago this week, “President Richard Nixon unilaterally terminated the Bretton Woods system by declaring that the United States would no longer exchange dollars for gold”

Posted on August 13, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

AMERICAN PURPOSE
Fifty Years Ago: A Landmark Day in Economic History
by Michael Mandelbaum
August 13, 2021

Some dates live in the American collective memory: July 4, 1776, when representatives of the thirteen British colonies in North America declared their independence from the mother country; December 7, 1941—“a day that will live in infamy,” as Franklin Roosevelt called it—when Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii; and September 11, 2001, when the United States suffered the worst terrorist attacks in its history. August 15, 1971—fifty years ago this coming Sunday—does not have the same status, yet what took place on that day was, in its own way, as consequential for the United States and the world as were the events on those other, epochal dates. READ MORE

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“UNRWA has been under fire for incitement in teaching material at its schools and in employee social media posts”

Posted on August 6, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
UNRWA to probe 10 staff members for anti-Israel hate speech
by Tovah Lazaroff
August 6, 2021

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) pledged to investigate 10 of its staff members for anti-Israel hate speech following a report by the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch that highlighted such activity. “The Agency takes each allegation seriously. It has immediately launched a thorough investigation,” UNRWA stated. Earlier this week, UN Watch reported that 22 UNRWA school employees had authored social media posts that glorified terrorism including against Israel, denied Israel’s right to exist, advocated violence over peace, put Hitler in a positive light and blamed Jews for the COVID-19 pandemic. The UN Watch report gave 97 examples of such media posts dating back to 2015…READ MORE

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Artem Dolgopyat won Israel a Gold Medal, and in the process rekindled a long-simmering Israeli debate about what it means to be a Jew

Posted on August 6, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

DANIEL GORDIS SUBSTACK
Might a gold medal not be his only legacy?
August 9, 2021

Lev Paschov certainly never imagined that he would be buried twice. An Israeli soldier who had immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union through the Law of Return (which allows anyone who had at least one Jewish grandparent to immigrate to Israel), Paschov was killed while on active duty in southern Lebanon in 1993. Because Paschov’s mother was not Jewish, he was, according to halakhah (Jewish religious law), not Jewish. The Israeli army’s rabbi therefore insisted that Paschov be buried outside the official military cemetery, which was consecrated exclusively for Jewish burial. READ MORE

JERUSALEM POST Will a gold medal introduce civil marriage in Israel? Israel is the only country that defines itself as a democracy yet does not enable civil marriages but only religious marriages, and in the case of Jews only Orthodox marriages.

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“Far from being the president that transformed Iran’s fortunes for the better, Mr Rouhani will forever be remembered as one of the most disastrous leaders in the country’s history”

Posted on August 6, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
Hassan Rouhani’s Iranian Presidency Has Been an Abject Failure
by Con Coughlin
August 5, 2021

When Iranian President Hassan Rouhani leaves office today, Thursday, he will do so in the knowledge that his eight-year term has been little more than an abject failure, both at home and abroad. Back in 2013, when the 72-year-old Mr Rouhani became Iran’s seventh post-revolutionary president, his central campaign pledge was to improve the country’s economic well-being. In addition he promised to adopt a more liberal approach to domestic policy while seeking to forge a more constructive engagement with the outside world. Eight years later, with the Iranian economy on its knees and the country facing further international isolation, Mr Rouhani finds himself leaving office with his reputation in tatters and the ruling Islamic regime facing a desperate battle for survival. READ MORE

ALGEMEINER New Iranian President’s Cabinet Pick Wanted by Interpol for AMIA Jewish Center Bombing Iran’s incoming interior minister is the subject of one of five outstanding “red notices” issued by Interpol, the international law enforcement agency, connected with the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires in which 85 people died and hundreds more wounded.

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“Two decades after a terrorist massacre in Jerusalem, the incident remains a necessary, if ghastly, reminder of the essential nature of a conflict that couldn’t be solved by Israeli concessions”

Posted on August 6, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
The bombing of Sbarro’s and why Oslo failed
by Jonathan S. Tobin
August 10, 2021

…A little more than a month before 9/11, Israel suffered a terrorist attack that, while smaller in scale than the assault on New York and Washington, was also traumatic. And, in contrast, to the American reaction to the efforts of Al-Qaeda, what happened on Aug. 9, 2001 is still crucial to understanding not only Israeli attitudes toward the notion of a peace process with the Palestinians, but the Jewish state’s need for defensive measures to ensure that the events of that day won’t be repeated. One year into the Palestinian war of terrorist attrition that became known as the Second Intifada, Palestinian operatives strapped a device including explosives, nails, and nuts and bolts to a suicide bomber. READ MORE

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“Mittal also serves as chairwoman of the Ben & Jerry’s independent corporate board and was a driving force behind the ice cream company’s decision to boycott Israel”

Posted on August 6, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

FREE BEACON
Ben and Jerry’s Gave $170,000 in Grants to Board Trustee’s Anti-Israel Foundation
by Alana Goodman
August 4, 2021

The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation steered over $170,000 in grants to an anti-Israel nonprofit group run by one of its board directors, a potential violation of self-dealing laws, according to an ethics watchdog organization. Anuradha Mittal is a trustee at the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, which has awarded $170,500 in grants to the Oakland Institute, an advocacy group that Mittal founded and where she serves as the paid executive director. The Oakland Institute has published articles defending Hezbollah and supporting U.S. funding to Hamas, the Washington Free Beacon reported in July. READ MORE

NEW YORK TIMES Bret Stephens: The Cheap & Easy Sanctimony of Ben & Jerry  What we really have is a feckless political gesture, a corporate fiasco, a de facto boycott of the Jewish state, an enraged Israeli government, and a handful of customers who won’t get their Chunky Monkey cravings satisfied.

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Michael Oren: “The Arab revolts of the 1920s and ’30s demonstrated that Arab opposition to the Jewish presence in Palestine began well before the founding of Israel and was directed at all Jews, even the non-Zionist ultra-Orthodox”

Posted on August 6, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem
by Michael Oren
August 4, 2021

Israeli television’s latest hit, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, is melodramatic, plodding, predictable, and, by American standards at least, culturally inappropriate. It is also ahistorical and politically biased. Most disconcertingly, though, at a time when Israel is increasingly believed to have been born of militarism, racism, and colonialism, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem is silent about these charges. At its worst, it corroborates them. READ MORE

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“Jews cannot end antisemitism by improving themselves, either by involvement in “social justice” activities to help other oppressed groups (many of whose members don’t like Jews much anyway), or by becoming “new Jews” who drive tractors and milk cows rather than lending money”

Posted on August 6, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

ELDER OF ZIYON
Antisemitism and the Jewish State
by Vic Rosenthal
August 11, 2021

…Most initiatives to “fight antisemitism” rely on some form of educational enterprise. These are doomed to fail, especially “Holocaust education,” which is intended to make people behave better toward Jews by making them feel sorry for them. Psychologically, this has the opposite effect, causing subjects to distance themselves from Jews. Antisemites respond that the Holocaust is either a Jewish lie, or if it did happen, it was because Jewish behavior precipitated it, and they are encouraged by Hitler’s partial success and want to finish the job. READ MORE

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Florida-bound Jews: “Good jobs, cheap housing and a unique school choice program have many families heading south”

Posted on August 6, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

WALL STREET JOURNAL
Why Orthodox Jews Are Leaving Brooklyn for Florida
by Allan Jacob
August 6, 2021

What would mo­ti­vate a Ha­sidic rabbi and his fol­low­ers to leave a Brook­lyn en­clave where they’ve lived for gen­er­a­tions and es­tab­lish a quickly grow­ing com­mu­nity in Wimauma, Fla., a semi-rural area near Tampa Bay? The same rea­sons that have led to an un­prece­dented wave of Or­tho­dox Jew­ish fam­i­lies mov­ing to South Flor­ida: ed­u­ca­tion choice, low taxes and good gov­er­nance. Most Or­tho­dox fam­i­lies send their chil­dren to pri­vate Jew­ish schools be­cause pub­lic school is sim­ply not an op­tion—re­li­gious in­struc­tion is as im­por­tant to them as aca­d­e­mics. But the tu­ition bur­den can be im­mense. READ MORE

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