Obama portrays Israel as the aggressive occupier that seeks conflict and not peace. By omission and/or comission, lying about Israel is lying about Jews. That is antisemitism.

Posted on November 26, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Obama’s revisionist ‘Promised Land’
by Dov Lipman
November 26, 2020

I have never criticized former U.S. President Barack Obama publicly—neither during my time in the Knesset nor anywhere else—despite my having disagreed with many of his policies. I am of the strong opinion that Israelis should not engage in or interfere with American politics, and I regularly offer a blanket thank you to all American presidents, including Obama, for their economic and military support for Israel. However, his memoir, A Promised Land, is filled with historical inaccuracies that I feel the need to address. His telling of Israel’s story (at the beginning of Chapter 25) not only exhibits a flawed understanding of the region—which clearly impacted his policies as president—but misleads readers in a way that will forever shape their negative perspective of the Jewish state. READ MORE

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“Opposition to Palestinian intransigence and radicalism will remain a centrist issue in Congress, even if the incoming administration is eager to re-establish ties with the Palestinians”

Posted on November 22, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Can Biden renew foreign aid to Palestinians while still adhering to Taylor Force Act?
by Israel Kasnett
November 24, 2020

The incoming Biden administration has made clear it intends to renew funding to the Palestinian Authority and reopen the PLO mission in Washington, D.C. In November, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said in an interview, “We will take immediate steps to restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem and work to reopen the PLO mission in Washington.” But how will that comport with the Taylor Force Act and the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA), which prohibit funding to entities that fund terrorism? READ MORE

ETTINGER REPORT Antony Blinken’s Track Record Blinken [Joe Biden’s pick for Secretary of State] assumes that a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and East Jerusalem would serve justice and would spare Israel a demographic calamity. He ignores the well-documented demographic reality, which exposes the myth of the Arab demographic timebomb. He approaches the Palestinian issue from the human rights angle, notwithstanding the Palestinian track record as a role model for anti-Jewish hate-education and incitement, 100-year-old anti-Jewish terrorism and intra-Arab terrorism and treachery.

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“The Israeli government categorizes many of the Russian immigrants as “Israelis of no religion” because they do not satisfy the demands of an overbearing rabbinic establishment”

Posted on November 22, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

MOSAIC MAGAZINE
The Crisis of Israeli Religious Identity
by David Brofsky
November 16, 2020

…In the former Soviet Union, religion was not simply discouraged, but actively repressed. Although some brave refuseniks learned Hebrew and returned to religious observance while still in Russia, most of the Russians who arrived in Israel were completely secular. They were not acquainted with the nuances of religious observance and identity in the Jewish State. Israel, the Russians would find, is an increasingly traditional society, and over time, strictly secular Israelis have become a significant, yet small (and shrinking) minority. The Russian immigrants’ secularism triggered some to respond with antagonism, and at times, even hostility. READ MORE

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“Israeli media didn’t disclose what was discussed at reported Israel-Saudi Arabia meeting, but cross-currents involving Iran and the transition from a Trump administration to a Biden White House could be at play”

Posted on November 22, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
PA: We hope Saudi Arabia won’t join normalization with Israel
by Khaled Abu Toameh
November 23, 2020

Palestinian officials in Ramallah said on Monday they were not surprised to hear of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s secret visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but expressed hope that Riyadh would not establish relations with Israel. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, meanwhile, strongly condemned the visit, dubbing it a dangerous precedent. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh…warned that “attempts to portray normalization between Israel and the Arab countries as a substitute for peace with the Palestinians is an escape from the truth.” READ MORE

JNS More than meets the eye in secretive meeting between America, Israel and Saudi Arabia The private jet that took off from Israel on Sunday and banked south towards Saudi Arabia may have had some important passengers on board, but no one is talking about it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad director Yossi Cohen reportedly met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman while U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was visiting the kingdom. Netanyahu was reluctant to admit his presence at the meeting, saying, “I never talked about these kinds of things, and I will not start now. I’m committed to strengthening Israel.”

ALL ARAB NEWS Groundbreaking new poll finds nearly 8-in-10 Americans want Saudi Arabia to be the next country to make peace with Israel 72 percent of Biden voters say a Saudi-Israeli peace deal should be a top priority for next US president – but would Biden do it?

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“The Zionist enemy launched an air raid from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights towards southern Damascus”

Posted on November 22, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

AL JAZEERA
Syrian media: Israel attacks southern Damascus
November 25, 2020

Syria’s military says Israeli warplanes have bombed locations south of the capital Damascus in the second such attack in a week. A Syrian state media report, quoting an unnamed military official, said the fighter jets attacked shortly before midnight on Tuesday…At least eight fighters operating in pro-Iran militias were killed, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding the attacks targeted an arms depot and a position held by Iranian forces and their Lebanese ally Hezbollah. READ MORE

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#JewishVoiceForPeace panel “an attempt to redefine antisemitism so as to exonerate antisemites in the progressive movement”

Posted on November 22, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
Outrage Erupts at Antisemitism Panel Featuring Noted Antisemites
by Staff
November 22, 2020

Outrage erupted on Twitter over the weekend after the far-left anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace announced it will be co-sponsoring a panel on antisemitism featuring panelists who oppose the existence of Israel… Appearing on the panel will be Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who supports a “one-state solution” in which Israel is replaced by an Arab state; Peter Beinart, the only Jewish panelist, who has openly rejected the existence of Israel in its current form; Marc Lamont Hill, who has publicly recited the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”; and Barbara Ransby, an academic who supports the antisemitic BDS movement. READ MORE

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Former PM Olmert warns welcoming spy will anger Biden

Posted on November 22, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Olmert: Don’t let Pollard make aliyah
by Gil Hoffman
November 22, 2020

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert criticized former agent Jonathan Pollard on Sunday, saying he should not be welcomed in Israel. Interviewed by Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Yaakov Katz at the Maariv newspaper’s business conference on Sunday, Olmert cautioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against holding a festive ceremony for Pollard when he moves to Israel soon. “With all due respect, I would prefer that he not move to Israel,” Olmert said. “We don’t owe him anything. He was a spy who worked for a lot of money. He was not a Ziontist volunteer who came and sacrificed his life. READ MORE

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Netanyahu hails UAE visa exemption agreement as boost for reciprocal tourism

Posted on November 22, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Israel ratifies visa exemption agreement with UAE, its first with Arab state
by Raphael Ahren
November 22, 2020

Israel’s cabinet ratified a mutual visa exemption agreement with the United Arab Emirates on Sunday — the Jewish state’s first ever such agreement with an Arab country.The ministers voted unanimously to approve the treaty, which was signed in Tel Aviv last month. The UAE government reportedly ratified the agreement on November 1, which means that it will enter into force in 30 days. “This is the first Arab country with which we have signed such an agreement and this is a step that will facilitate reciprocal tourism,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before the vote at the weekly cabinet meeting. READ MORE

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“On how Princeton’s crusade against systemic racism has backfired”

Posted on November 22, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

NEW CRITERION
Keywords: hoist, petard
by Roger Kimball
November 2020

Perhaps we ought to have included “chickens” and “roost” among the keywords as well. For many years now, woke administrators, professors, and other activists at all the toniest colleges have been like the parade of flagellants in The Seventh Seal: skirling in public about their sins, above all their institutional or (as we have lately been taught to say) their “systemic” racism. Their cries are accompanied by the demand for alms—$50 million at Yale to support “diversity,” $100 million at Brown for kindred exercises in political penance, and so on. On September 2, Christopher L. Eisgruber, the president of Princeton University, made a major contribution to this emetic genre. In an open letter to the university “community,” he beat his breast about America’s overdue “profound national reckoning with racism.” READ MORE

WALL STREET JOURNAL Shelby Steele: The Inauthenticity Behind Black Lives Matter Insisting on the prevalence of ‘systemic racism’ is a way of defending a victim-focused racial identity...Can we be black without being victims? … For many blacks today—especially the young—there is a feeling of inauthenticity, that one is only thinly black because one isn’t racially persecuted. “Systemic racism” is a term that tries to recover authenticity for a less and less convincing black identity. This racism is really more compensatory than systemic. It was invented to make up for the increasing absence of the real thing.

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“On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Pollard had completed his parole and was free to go”

Posted on November 19, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK POST
Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard is free after completing parole
by Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
November 20, 2020

Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, a former US Navy analyst who sold government secrets to Israel, has completed parole and is now free to return to the Jewish state, according to reports. Pollard, 66, was jailed for passing thousands of confidential documents to an Israeli official in exchange for lucrative payoffs until his arrest in 1985 — a scandal that caused a rift between the U.S. and Israel that spanned decades. He spent 30 years in prison until his release in 2015 under strict parole guidelines that required constant monitoring and forbade him from relocating to Israel, where he was granted citizenship while behind bars and where his wife lives. READ MORE

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