“Inconveniently, Michael Doran has proven to be right on very big questions on which nearly everyone else in Washington turned out to be wrong”

Posted on November 1, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
If Michael Doran were on Wall Street, he’d be a billionaire
by Liel Leibovitz
October 30, 2019

…While Americans fondly speak of “the Kurds,” Doran insisted, there was in fact no such unified entity: The Kurds in Iraq are different from the Kurds in Syria, who are aligned with the PKK, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that Doran described as “a Stalinist cult.” President Obama, he continued, aligned America with this sworn enemy of the Turks, who were a necessary if admittedly imperfect cornerstone of the NATO alliance. READ MORE

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“Netanyahu told cabinet members in a closed-door meeting that US President Donald Trump would not act against Iran until US general elections”

Posted on November 1, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Netanyahu told ministers Trump can’t be counted on to act against Iran — report
by Staff
1 November 2019

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of ministers recently that they should not expect the US to take serious action against Iran for at least the next year, according to a report Thursday. Netanyahu on Thursday hinted publicly for the first time at unease with Washington’s hesitancy to take action, echoing statements in recent weeks from officials speaking off the record about Iran’s growing boldness...Netanyahu told the ministers that in the interim Israel would have to deal with Iran on its own. READ MORE

REUTERS U.S. to renew waivers allowing non-proliferation work with Iran The United States plans to allow Russian, Chinese and European companies to continue work at Iranian nuclear facilities to make it harder for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, two sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. The Trump administration, which last year pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions on Iran, will let the work go forward by issuing waivers to sanctions that bar non-U.S. firms from dealing with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said the sources on condition of anonymity.

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Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe was gifted the musical menorah by Arthur Miller’s parents, following her marriage to the playwright and conversion to Judaism

Posted on November 1, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH NEWS
Marilyn Monroe’s menorah expected to fetch £100K at auction
by Francine Wolfisz
October 31, 2019

Marilyn Monroe’s personal menorah, which features a wind-up mechanism playing Israel’s national anthem, is expected to fetch up to $150,000 (£115,000) when it goes under the hammer in New York, next week. The Hollywood icon was gifted the musical menorah by the parents of Arthur Miller, after she decided to embrace Judaism following her marriage to the famous playwright in 1956. Monroe who had just turned 30, never had a real family of her own and was eager to join the family of her new husband by becoming Jewish. READ MORE

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The Islam Nation of Palestine won’t be what they’re telling us

Posted on November 1, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

QUILLETTE
Palestine Misunderstood
by Petra Marquardt-Bigman
October 31, 2019

…A Pew survey from 2013 of almost 40,000 Muslims in 39 countries found that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were often among the Muslim populations with the most extreme views about the role of Islam in society: 89 percent of Palestinians said they wanted sharia law; 66 percent endorsed the death penalty for Muslims who convert to another religion; 76 percent supported mutilation as a punishment for theft, and a shocking 84 percent said they wanted adulterers stoned to death. READ MORE

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U of I “righteous gentile” student leader Jack Langen stands with Israel

Posted on October 31, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
University of Illinois Student Leader Hailed for ‘Courageous’ Stand With Jewish Community in Fight Against Anti-Israel Resolution
by Caleb Galaraga
October 31, 2019

As tensions soared Wednesday night during a student government meeting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where a controversial resolution denying any link between antisemitism and anti-Zionism was set to pass by a landslide, student-body vice president Jack Langen went against the tide. By the time he spoke, hundreds of Jewish students had already walked out of the meeting in protest of not being consulted on the content of the resolution. READ MORE

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Thanks to Jordan Peterson, “Clean Your Room” became a meme

Posted on October 31, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

NATIONAL REVIEW
An Introduction to Jordan Peterson
by Kyle Smith
October 30, 2019

Built around interviews with Peterson, his family, his friends, and his detractors (there is some overlap among these groups), the documentary The Rise of Jordan Peterson is a fair and even-tempered overview of how Peterson became perhaps the most popular professor in North America and the accidental leader of a movement, strongly identified with young men, built around taking responsibility for oneself and carving order out of chaos. But first Peterson became a scourge of those who wish to control other people’s words and maybe their thoughts, the “Professor Against Political Correctness” as he billed himself in his YouTube videos.  READ MORE


In this memorable interview–with over 18 million views–Jordan Peterson successfully challenges Cathy Newman on a number of matters including the “gender pay gap”

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“Israeli Foreign and Defense ministries unite in long-simmering dispute with Treasury over bid to retroactively cut envoys’ expense stipends; no consular services for Israelis abroad”

Posted on October 30, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Israeli embassies around the world shut as diplomats, military attachés strike
by Staff
October 30, 2019

All Israeli embassies and consulates around the world shut down early Wednesday as diplomats and military attachés went on strike in a long-simmering dispute with the Finance Ministry over expense stipends paid to envoys. The move, coordinated by the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the Histadrut Labor Federation, came after the Treasury reportedly backtracked on previous understandings and said it would force the envoys to pay back thousands of dollars that they had been reimbursed for expenses. The closure came into effect at 1 a.m on Wednesday morning Israel time. READ MORE

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American Jews aren’t threatened by their synagogues turning into fortresses, they’re threatened by armed anti-Semites walking in through open doors

Posted on October 29, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
It’s Time to Lock Your Synagogue’s Doors
by Jacob Siegel
October 29, 2019

…Rather than looking for metaphors to express or quell their anxieties, American Jews might stop fetishizing open doors and acknowledge the less dramatic and more practical realities that pertain to public gatherings: Locked and guarded doors make you more secure. Entry points that are clearly secured and protected create the appearance of a “hard target,” which alone can deter attackers who just want to kill defenseless people and would rather run and not have to fight for the chance. In the event an attacker does try to force entry, a secured door buys time to send out alerts and initiate an emergency evacuation plan. READ MORE

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“There is no case we can find anywhere in the democratic world where positive coverage has ever been considered a potential bribe”

Posted on October 29, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH PRESS
Netanyahu Won’t Be The Only Victim
by Caroline B. Glick
October 27, 2019

The ongoing criminal probes against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are reaching their climax. By the end of the month, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit will reportedly decide whether or not to end Netanyahu’s political career by indicting him on corruption charges. If Israel’s attorney general does indict Netanyahu, however, he will have done far more than overthrow a political leader. He will have embraced a legal doctrine that rejects the very essence of democracy. This truth has been largely ignored till now. It was only sounded in a significant way during the final half-hour of Netanyahu’s four-day, 15-hour-a-day hearing two weeks ago. READ MORE

JNS Alex Traiman: Attorney for Netanyahu: What if the prime minister never received a bribe? Professor Avi Bell, a member of the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan and the University of San Diego School of Law, and one of the lawyers who submitted the brief challenging the tentative charges against Netanyahu, told JNS that “prosecuting a bribery charge in these cases is a mistake. Pursuing these charges is unprecedented in the democratic world, dangerous to the fabric of Israeli democracy and ill-advised.” 

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ADL: “Yet another example of SJP’s antisemitic practice of marginalizing Jews and reducing their identity to their connection to Israel”

Posted on October 29, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH JOURNAL
ADL Condemns Benedictine SJP Member for Urging Holocaust Survivor to Denounce Israel
by Aaron Bandler

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt condemned a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Benedictine University for asking a Holocaust survivor to denounce the Israeli government’s “ethnic cleansing.” The member Ayah Ali asked Grinnell College Religious Studies Professor Dr. Harold Kasimow during his Oct. 24 speech on campus, “Do you support or do you condemn the establishment of the Zionist Israeli state, and whether it’s okay to exile and completely — the complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, the way that the Jewish people were exiled and ethnically cleansed?” READ MORE

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