“Retreating and abandoning allies may not be the optimum strategy”

Posted on October 16, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

WASHINGTON TIMES
How not to end endless wars
by Clifford D. May
October 16, 2019

Whatever might be said about Donald Trump, I always figured him for a savvy New Yorker who knew a good deal when he saw one. A prime example was in Syria where the commander in chief, despite understandable misgivings about foreign entanglements, had deployed a small contingent of highly skilled troops to accomplish a mission vital to America’s national security. In military jargon, President Trump was employing “economy of force.”…“We need an end to endless war,” Rand Paul has said repeatedly. Senator, I feel your pain, but the reason we have an “endless war” is because we have enemies who are patient and determined, and encouraged by the knowledge that Americans like you are neither. READ MORE

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Brig. General Kuperwasser: “The depth of the U.S. commitment to Israel is very different from its commitment to the Syrian Kurds”

Posted on October 15, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
‘Entry of radical Islamist forces into northern Syria is disturbing,’ ex-Israeli intelligence official says
by Yaakov Lappin
October 15, 2019

Israel has been closely monitoring Turkey’s brutal offensive against the Kurds in northeast Syria in recent days. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the Turkish invasion on Oct. 10, stating that Israel “warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies,” and that “Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.” However, Israel’s concerns with regard to the Turkish operation extend beyond Ankara’s conflict with the Kurds. Israel Defense Forces Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate’s research division…stressed that Turkey had launched its offensive with “problematic, radical forces, who are exploiting the U.S.’s wish to leave this area.” READ MORE

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Gal Gadot to portray Irena Sendler, Warsaw Ghetto hero

Posted on October 13, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH PRESS
Israeli Actress Gal Gadot Joins Husband in Producing ‘Irena Sendler,’ Will Star in Title Role
by Hana Levi Julian
October 13, 2019

Entertainment industry website Deadline reported exclusively this weekend that Israeli actress Gal Gadot is teaming with her producing partner and husband Jaron Versano to form a new production company called, “Pilot Wave.” The company’s first project will be “the fact-based historical thriller Irena Sendler,” with Gadot starring in the title role for Warner Bros…Their film, Irena Sendler, will tell the real-life historical tale of the courageous woman who cared for and worked to save 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. READ MORE

Posted in Jewish | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

“Right-wing anti-Semites see any accusation of anti-Semitism as a Jewish conspiracy to take away the rights of whites, while left-wing anti-Semites sees the same accusation as an attempt to silence Palestinians”

Posted on October 13, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

FORWARD
I Was Protested At Bard College For Being A Jew
by Batya Ungar-Sargon
October 12, 2019

…When the conference began Thursday morning, I was warned that protesters from the Bard chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine planned to interrupt my panel with Wisse and Mor. I was surprised they were not targeting the one on Zionism, but the one on anti-Semitism, the only panel of about 20 over the course of the two-day program where three Jews would be discussing the topic. “But we’re not even talking about Israel,” I said to the conference organizers. “How does that make sense?”…READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish | Tagged , , | Comments Off on “Right-wing anti-Semites see any accusation of anti-Semitism as a Jewish conspiracy to take away the rights of whites, while left-wing anti-Semites sees the same accusation as an attempt to silence Palestinians”

“‘How dare you say you’re Jewish. You aren’t Jewish’”

Posted on October 13, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Rabbinate DNA tests seek Jewishness in the blood, become a bone of contention
by Marissa Newman
October 7, 2019

…For many who arrived in Israel in the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union — some from communities decimated by the Holocaust — obtaining such authentication can be an impossibility. But without the stamp of approval from the rabbinate, they cannot legally marry, divorce, or be buried in a Jewish cemetery in Israel.…READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish | Comments Off on “‘How dare you say you’re Jewish. You aren’t Jewish’”

Let our candidates lead by example “before they lecture the country on carbon emissions, gun ownership, and ‘white privilege’”

Posted on October 13, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

NATIONAL REVIEW
Our Privileged Scolds
by Victor Davis Handon
September 24, 2019

…So upset are our woke progressive candidates that they insist that the rich, the privileged, the white, and the native-born must now pay ever more penance. Amid such acrimony is an inconvenient truth, though one that remains utterly unspoken: Most of those on stage who are so livid at the exploitative “system” have become wealthy and quite privileged through it — especially since they have spent so much of their adult lives gaming supposedly poorly compensated political service. READ MORE

Posted in Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

Caroline Glick and Nonie Darwish defend Trump’s troop withdrawal from Northern Syria but many–left and right–disagree

Posted on October 11, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Trump did not betray the Kurds
by Caroline Glick
October 11, 2019

The near consensus view of President Donald Trump’s decision to remove US special forces from the Syrian border with Turkey is that Trump is enabling a Turkish invasion and double crossing the Syrian Kurds who have fought with the Americans for five years against ISIS. Trump’s move, the thinking goes, harms US credibility and undermines US power in the region and throughout the world. There are several problems with this narrative. The first is that it assumes that until this week, the US had power and influence in Syria when in fact, by design, the US went to great lengths to limit its ability to influence events in Syria. READ MORE

NEW ENGLISH REVIEW Nonie Darwish:To Withdraw Or Not To Withdraw The existence of America in Syria or any other Muslim nation cannot continue forever and sooner or later we must leave. But the longer we stay the more dependent these factions will be on American for their protection. The British were there for over seventy years and until today the World is still blaming them for leaving a messed up Mideast map with minorities who cannot survive with one another. The truth is that Middle East religious and ethnic factions have never learned to live peacefully with one another and it is time for them to start learning how to.

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Caroline Glick and Nonie Darwish defend Trump’s troop withdrawal from Northern Syria but many–left and right–disagree

“How to explain the apparent indifference of mainstream Jewish groups and politicians to the spike in hate crimes committed against Jews?”

Posted on October 11, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

POWERLINE BLOG
Attacks on Orthodox Jews spike; mainstream Jewish groups seem indifferent
Paul Mirengoff
October 10, 2019

…Caroline Glick believes the explanation lies in the kind of Jews who are being attacked and the kind of people doing the attacking: The Jewish victims in New York are not Reform Jews. They are ultra-Orthodox Jews. And they don’t live in Manhattan. They live in Brooklyn. Ultra-Orthodox Jews are not progressives and not part of the Democratic coalition. As for their assailants: Most of the perpetrators are African Americans, and as such, like the Reform Jews, they are members in good standing of the progressive camp in American politics. READ MORE

Posted in Jewish, Politics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

CNN’s take: Israel fought 1948 and 1967 wars to “expand territory”

Posted on October 11, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

CAMERA BLOG
CNN Rewrites History of 1948, 1967 Wars
by Tamar Sternthal
October 7, 2019

Sam Kiley, a senior international correspondent based in CNN Abu Dhabi’s bureau, has rewritten the history of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and the 1967 Six-Day War. In his Oct. 3 analysis (“Any war between the US and Iran would be a catastrophe. And no one could win it“), Kiley absurdly asserts that those fateful wars were “to expand territory”: Close to 200,000 descendants of Palestinians who fled their country in successive Israeli wars to expand territory in 1948 and 1967, now live in Lebanon. A similar number are in Jordan. READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

If the ISIS captives were repatriated to Turkey, it would, for some, be more like a homecoming”

Posted on October 11, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
ISIS’s Turkish Homecoming
by Con Coughlin
October 12, 2019

One of the more ludicrous suggestions to have been made during Turkey’s military offensive against the Syrian Kurds is that, in return for Washington’s approval, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would take responsibility for the estimated 90,000 ISIS fighters and their dependents, currently languishing in Kurdish-controlled detention centres. It is one of the worst kept secrets in Western intelligence circles that, for long periods during the brutal Syrian conflict, Mr Erdogan’s regime supported a number of groups that enjoyed close affiliation with ISIS, as well as other Islamist terror groups such as Al-Qaeda READ MORE

WASHINGTON EXAMINER Kurds found out about Trump withdrawal of US troops in northern Syria from Twitter The United States’ Kurdish allies learned of President Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops from northern Syria on Twitter. According to Newsweek, Syrian Kurds were blindsided by the president’s decision, which he announced in a statement on Sunday night. The U.S. allies, who helped American forces combat ISIS in the area, found out about the move online. “No one in the U.S. government told us” ahead of the announcement, a Kurdish intelligence official told the outlet. “When we heard the news of American withdrawals, well, it was over Twitter, we had no idea, we were like, ‘What is this shit?'”

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment