#Iran “The three brothers’ convictions primarily were based on confessions extracted under torture during interrogations”

VOICE OF AMERICA
Trump Urges Iran Not to Execute Wrestler for 2018 Murder Confession Apparently Made Under Torture
by Michael Lipin, Ramin Haghjoo
September 3, 2020

U.S. President Donald Trump has urged Iran not to execute a wrestler sentenced to death for murder in connection with an anti-government protest in 2018, after Iran’s top court upheld the wrestler’s sentence despite him retracting a confession that he said was made under torture…[Navid] Afkari is a 27-year-old Iranian freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestler from the south-central city of Shiraz who has won medals in domestic and international competitions. A criminal court in Fars province, of which Shiraz is the capital, had handed Afkari the death penalty for murder in the killing of a local security guard of a government water facility…READ MORE

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Charlie Hebdo: “Western democracies have paid dearly for the right to freedom of expression and, if not protected and exercised, it can disappear overnight”

GATESTONE
“We Will Never Give Up”: Charlie Hebdo Republishes Mohammed Cartoons
by Giulio Meotti
September 2, 2020

Yesterday, one day before the opening of the trial for 14 defendants accused of involvement in a string of terrorist attacks in France, which included the murders of their fellow journalists and cartoonists on January 7, 2015 at their Paris office, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished the “Mohammed Cartoons” under the title “Tout ça pour ça” (“All of that for this”). “We will never give up”, they said. The defendants in the trial, some in absentia, “face a variety of charges related to helping perpetrators carry out attacks that killed 17 people over three days in January 2015.” In addition to the 12 victims in and around the office of Charlie Hebdo, a police officer was murdered in the street and four people were murdered in a kosher supermarket. READ MORE

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“As its Marxist pedigree makes clear, #BlackLivesMatter is committed to overthrowing our entire system”

CITY JOURNAL
To Destroy America
by Mike Gonzalez
September 1, 2020

…Indeed, the leaders of the Black Lives Matter organizations fueling this summer’s disturbances were trained by self-described Marxist revolutionaries who have long used the plight of black Americans as justification for overthrowing America’s constitutional order. They frankly admit that such “organizing” is the key to their goal of world revolution. Our political leaders owe it to themselves and to their fellow Americans to understand this blueprint before rhetorically embracing, let alone implementing, the radical changes that the protesters and rioters are demanding. READ MORE

PJMEDIA Antifa/BLM Rioters Now Screaming ‘Death to America’ Journalist Andy Ngo reported that last Wednesday night, “around 700 black bloc militants and their supporters rampaged through Oakland, Cal. They chanted ‘death to America’ while starting fires and smashing cars and buildings.”

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“The only explanation for this travesty is that many Jews believe that the way to maintain their standing as liberals is to back #BLM”

JNS
What are Jews who embrace the Black Lives Matter movement endorsing?
by Jonathan Tobin
August 31, 2020

To read the statement signed by more than 600 Jewish groups last week, in which they identified their denominations, synagogues and organizations with the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s clear that they believe they are on the right side of history. The letter, which was published as a full-page ad in The New York Times on Aug. 28, is forthright in its claim that “the Black Lives Matter movement is the current day Civil Rights movement in this country, and it is our best chance at equity and justice. By supporting this movement, we can build a country that fulfills the promise of freedom, unity, and safety for all of us, no exceptions.” READ MORE

BLM’s website says this on their “What we believe” page:We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.” So why aren’t fathers mentioned here ? Does “disrupting the nuclear family” seem like a Jewish value ? Knowing BLM support boycotts of Israel why do Jews support BLM with such enthusiasm ?

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Saudi Arabia decision “not specific to Israel, but rather part of a larger arrangement to open its skies to everyone, even those countries such as Israel with whom it does not have relations”

JERUSALEM POST
Saudi Arabia to open its airspace to Israel in nod to Middle East peace
by Tovah Lazaroff, Omri Nahmias
September 2, 2020

Saudi Arabia announced it would allow Israeli flights to the United Arab Emirates to cross its airspace, in the latest sign that the Middle East is slowly moving in the direction of normalized ties with Israel. “These are the benefits of a peace that is genuine,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, as he linked the Saudi decision to the burgeoning Israeli normalization deal with the Emirates. Saudi Arabia has clearly stated that would peace with Israel would only be possible once there was a final status agreement with the Palestinians for two states. READ MORE

AL JAZEERA First-ever flight: Plane with US, Israeli officials lands in UAE High-level delegations from Israel and the US have arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), via the first-ever commercial flight between the Middle Eastern nations, to put final touches on a controversial pact establishing open relations. Top aides to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were on board the direct flight from Tel Aviv to the UAE capital Abu Dhabi on Israel’s flag carrier El Al on Monday.

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#BrookeGoldstein asks “Why have American Jews “focused our efforts on pro-Israel advocacy, instead of launching a great civil rights movement?”

NEWSWEEK
The Time Is Now for a Jewish Civil Rights Movement
by Brooke Goldstein
August 31, 2020

Instead, the Jewish Left is organizing for LGBTQ rights, Black lives, women’s rights and against President Trump. They write op-eds demanding we march behind BLM, a movement plagued with Jew-hatred, afraid they will “cede the space” if they don’t “show up” but failing to demand the same loyalty when a Jewish cause arises. The just cause of Jewish rights has been abandoned by the Left and replaced with a reform agenda that includes gender-neutral Mattel dolls, protesting ICE and asexual pronouns. Traditional liberal values that Jews have championed for decades, like free speech, self-sovereignty and criticism of religion have been replaced with safe spaces, open borders and criticism of Islamophobia. READ MORE

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#CovertCash What US universities don’t want you to know about their foreign funding

Clarion Project’s latest film, Covert Cash: What American universities don’t want you to know about their foreign funding, seeks to expose those hidden billions and investigate the demands and trickle-down effects it has on America’s future leaders. Why would American universities accept money from corrupt regimes who actively work against American interests? Why would they accept money from regimes whose human rights records clash with every American value we hold sacred? Covert Cash seeks to blow this subject wide open and drive awareness of the corruption and lack of transparency in US universities, which allow foreign governments to gain influence and a nefarious foothold in the United States. View the film here:

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$155 million suit against Hamas terrorist organization aims to end payments it receives from the PA

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Families of murdered Israeli teens file ‘unprecedented’ lawsuit against Hamas
by Yair Altman
August 30, 2020

The families of three Israeli teenage boys who were abducted and murdered by Hamas terrorists in Judea and Samaria in June 2014, an act that would spark Operation Protective Edge later that summer, filed a lawsuit against the terrorist group on Sunday morning seeking damages worth NIS 520 million ($155 million). According to the families of Naftali Frenkel, Gil-ad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrach, who are represented by attorneys Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Avi Segal, and Avi Gaz from the Shurat Hadin Israeli Law Center, the purpose of the lawsuit is to stop the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of Judea and Samaria, from transferring money to Gaza-based Hamas. READ MORE

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ZOA: “This is another example of the far-left’s “cancel culture” aimed at “undermining ZOA’s strong defense of Israel and the Jewish people”

JNS
Several left-wing Jewish groups seek to oust ZOA from Boston JCRC over opposition to Black Lives Matter movement
by Sean Savage
August 31, 2020

Several left-wing Jewish groups have filed a petition to initiate the removal of the Zionist Organization of America from the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston in the latest battle being waged between ZOA and liberal members of American Jewish community. The petition—filed by 21 JCRC Council members, including 11 representatives from the Workmen’s Circle, J Street, Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, Jewish Labor Committee, Keshet, New Israel Fund and Women of Reform Judaism—claims that rhetoric used by ZOA national president Mort Klein “crosses into xenophobic and racist territory,” and is “not compatible with and is in conflict with the mission of JCRC.” READ MORE

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“Some brave liberals will soon be waging war on the very institutions they so recently controlled”

QUILLETTE
The Challenge of Marxism
by Yoram Hazony
August 16, 2020

For a generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, most Americans and Europeans regarded Marxism as an enemy that had been defeated once and for all. But they were wrong. A mere 30 years later, Marxism is back, and making an astonishingly successful bid to seize control of the most important American media companies, universities and schools, major corporations and philanthropic organizations, and even the courts, the government bureaucracy, and some churches. As American cities succumb to rioting, arson, and looting, it appears as though the liberal custodians of many of these institutions—from the New York Times to Princeton University—have despaired of regaining control of them, and are instead adopting a policy of accommodation. READ MORE

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