“Bizarrely, while Israel has approved the new Gaza hospital project, Palestinian Authority officials are trying to foil it”

Posted on August 2, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
Palestinians: What Is Wrong With Building a Hospital?
by Bassam Tawil
August 2, 2019

It hardly counts as news that Palestinian Authority leaders are obsessed with US President Donald J. Trump and his administration. Yet, these leaders have actually reached a new depth of obsession: they are now seeking to prevent the establishment of a new hospital for their people in the Gaza Strip. The new field hospital, consisting of 16 departments, is slated to be built near the Erez border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel. The hospital was approved by Israel as part of ceasefire understandings reached during the past few weeks with the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip under the auspices of the United Nations, Qatar and Egypt. READ MORE

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“How the congresswoman from Maine, who’s never shown any interest in the Middle East, turned against Israel”

Posted on August 2, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
Forget the Squad, Politicians Like Chellie Pingree Represent the Real Threat to Israel
by K.C. Johnson
July 31, 2019

…Most coverage of the [anti-BDS] vote focused on Rashida Tlaib, who used the debate to analogize BDS to unsuccessful pre-World War II boycott efforts against Nazi Germany, and her fellow freshman Democrat, Ilhan Omar. But where the squad members attracted the headlines, a more notable opponent of the bill was far lower profile—Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, the only New England legislator to oppose the resolution and a sign, perhaps, of things to come. It’s likely Pingree, rather than figures such as Omar and Tlaib, who represent the greatest looming threat to Israel in the coming years. READ MORE

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“Trump administration officials, and now apparently Lindsay Graham, are actively working to put together plans for a new Iran Deal”

Posted on August 2, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

DAILY BEAST
Team Trump Turns to Lindsey Graham to Cut an Iran Deal
by Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng
August 1, 2019

President Donald Trump wants a new deal with Iran to replace the nuclear agreement he pulled out of, and he’s turning to one of his most hawkish confidants to help do it. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is working in close coordination with senior Trump administration officials who focus on Middle East policy to find an alternative to the Obama administration’s Iran deal, four people with knowledge of the efforts tell The Daily Beast. READ MORE

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J Street-supported congresswoman conjectures why Republicans focus on antisemitism

Posted on August 1, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

FREE BEACON
Slotkin (D): GOP Only Opposes Anti-Semitism for Money
by Nic Rowan
July 31, 2019

Freshman representative Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich) said at a Jewish Democratic summer conference that Republicans only oppose anti-Semitism because they want money from Jewish donors. “There has been a lot of discussion for the past 9 months or so, 8 months, about, anti-Semitism,” she told an audience in Michigan on Sunday. “We have, what I believe is a full-on attempt by the Republican Party to grab a different community [Democrat Jews] and bring them into the fold…READ MORE

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Rep Cummings (D-MD) “established fellowship that seeks to bridge gaps between African-Americans and Jews in his Baltimore district”

Posted on August 1, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JTA
Elijah Cummings started a program that brings African-American teens to Israel
by Josefin Dolsten
August 1, 2019

Eight years ago Aaliyah Cuthrell knew little about the Jewish community, beyond what she had seen on a visit to her local Jewish community center to use the pool. Things look different now for the 24-year-old. As a high school junior, she joined a prestigious two-year program for African-American teens in Baltimore. The program, founded by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., seeks to strengthen ties between the African-American and Jewish communities in his Baltimore district. As part of her fellowship in 2011-2013, Cuthrell met with Jewish teens, attended seminars on topics such as anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and spent close to a month living in a youth village in Israel’s north. READ MORE

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Democrats have “handed Trump an easy win and yoked themselves to a genuine bigot” (and antisemite)

Posted on August 1, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK TIMES
Why Are Democrats Defending Al Sharpton?
by Professor Glenn C. Loury
July 31, 2019

But 48 hours later, I feel differently. That’s thanks to the leading Democratic candidates for president, who have rushed to Mr. Sharpton’s defense, extolling his supposed virtues as a civil-rights paragon while denouncing Mr. Trump’s attack as racist. In doing so, they have, yet again, taken Mr. Trump’s bait, handing him another easy victory while yoking themselves to a genuine bigot…The problem for Democrats is that Al Sharpton actually is, as Mr. Trump put it on Twitter, “a con man.” READ MORE

WASHINGTON POST Al Sharpton is not a lifelong fighter for justice Democrats have rushed to his side this week. But he’s never reckoned with his past anti-Semitic rhetoric

HEARD AT THE WATER COOLER Calling Al Sharpton a “Reverend” is like calling Jeffrey Dahmer a chef.

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Arrow-3 success in Alaska “held up by both Israel and the United States as a sign of the strength of their alliance”

Posted on July 30, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

REUTERS
Israel says Arrow-3 missile shield passes U.S. trials, warns Iran
by Dan Williams
July 28, 2019

Israel’s U.S.-backed Arrow-3 ballistic missile shield has passed a series of live interception tests over Alaska, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, casting the achievement as a warning to Iran. Jointly manufactured by U.S. firm Boeing Co, Arrow-3 is billed as capable of shooting down incoming missiles in space, an altitude that would destroy any non-conventional warheads safely. It passed its first full interception test over the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 and was deployed in Israel in 2017.  READ MORE

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Ukraine’s president actor-turned-politician: “Mr Zelensky is Jewish – the only Jewish head of state in the world today (outside Israel, of course) and his election comes at a time of rising antisemitism almost everywhere”

Posted on July 30, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

WASHINGTON TIMES
Life imitates art in Ukraine
by Clifford May
July 31, 2019

…Just over a year ago, Volodymyr Zelensky was a comic actor. His popularity soared thanks to a TV show called “Servant of the People” in which he played a history teacher who lives with his parents and rides his bike to work. One day, his rant against Ukrainian politics and politicians, surreptitiously recorded, goes viral on social media. The result: He’s elected president of the Ukraine with 67 percent of the vote. In real life, Mr. Zelensky went on to organize a political party which he named, naturally, “Servant of the People.” The result: Earlier this year, he was elected president of the Ukraine with 73 percent of the vote. READ MORE

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Will Brexit crisis sink Boris Johnson and “bring to power Labour’s far-left, venomously anti-Israel leader Jeremy Corbyn”

Posted on July 30, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Is Boris Johnson good for the Jews?
by Melanie Phillips
July 27, 2019

…A rather more accurate assessment, although hardly less unsettling, may be that although he does have genuinely warm feelings towards Jews and the State of Israel, he is also (despite his Brexiteer credentials) a liberal universalist. That means he believes that everyone is a rational actor, which means he thinks everyone is susceptible to appeals to temporal self-interest, that murderous fanaticism is caused by material circumstances, and that therefore deals can and should be done with the devil. As a result of these illusions, despite his warm feelings he may not always act in the best interests of Israel or the Jewish people. READ MORE

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“It’s not European. And it doesn’t divide into right and left, religious and secular. Matti Friedman, author of a new book about Mizrahi spies, on why Israel baffles and infuriates”

Posted on July 29, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Nobody hijacked Israel. It’s just not what its pioneers thought they’d created
by David Horovitz
July 29, 2019

…I came from the West, with the European stories of Israel — the kibbutz, the Holocaust… The longer you’re here, the more you realize those stories don’t fully represent Israel. Half the country came from the Muslim world, and that informs everything about Israel — cuisine, behavior, music, religion, politics. Many Israelis think the basis of the country is the European Jewish world — Herzl and Ben-Gurion — and that the Jews of the Middle East then came and joined that story. I think it’s the opposite: Israel is part of the continuum of Judaism in the Muslim world, together with the remnants of European Jewry. READ MORE

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