“How pressure campaigns by criminal suspects can collapse the journalistic ideal of boldly-defiant truth-telling”

Posted on December 24, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

MIDDLE EAST FORUM
‪Reflections on How Islamist Lawfare Has Succeeded
by Todd Bensman
December 21, 2018

The 10-year anniversary of the “Holy Land Foundation Five” trial in a Dallas federal courtroom has quietly arrived.  In November of 2008 federal prosecutors convicted five leaders of a Muslim charity in a case often described as the largest terrorist fundraising operation in U.S. history….As a staff writer for The Dallas Morning News, covering the FBI at the time, I became what might well be one of the first U.S. targets of Islamist “lawfare…” In early 2000, Steve [McGonigle, now deceased] and I were named as defendants in a libel lawsuit along with two other reporters. The other three of us happened to be Jewish, although this obvious coincidence was never discussed out loud in mixed company at the paper. READ MORE

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“It’s hard to think of a time when an American president has so publicly stripped his most senior advisers of their credibility”

Posted on December 24, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

THE ATLANTIC
‪Trump Delivers a Victory to Iran‬
by Mark Dubowitz and Reuel Marc Gerecht
December 24, 2018

…Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, concurrently with his intention to drastically reduce the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan and the likely soon-to-be-announced further drawdown of U.S. personnel in Iraq, has made mincemeat of the administration’s efforts to contain Iran. If you add up who wins locally by this decision (the clerical regime in Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,  Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite radicals, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) and who loses (Jordan, Israel, the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds and Sunni Arabs, everyone in Lebanon resisting Hezbollah, the vast majority of the Iraqi Shia, the Gulf States), it becomes clear that the interests of the United States have been routed. READ MORE

ARUTZ SHEVA Did Israel request US withdrawal from Syria? Jake Turx, the senior White House correspondent for Ami, claimed Tuesday night that sources had confirmed to him that Israel had encouraged the US to withdraw from Syria ahead of a “winter offensive” against the Hezbollah terror organization. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who tendered his resignation following President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria, reportedly opposed Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah.

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“Now J Street is on a second phase of its campaign – to undermine the Birthright program because it serves the “right-wing annexationist agenda””

Posted on December 23, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Is J Street still pro-Israel?
by David M. Weinberg
December 23, 2018

When it was founded 11 years ago, J Street claimed to be a pro-Israel and pro-peace organization…Since then, alas, J Street has become something else altogether: an organization that spends almost all its time and money besmirching Israel, smearing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other leading American Jewish organizations, boosting U.S.-Iran relations and backing political candidates for whom promoting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is a badge of honor. READ MORE

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“A staggering series of events took Mosab Hassan Yousef from the home of the terror group’s co-founder, to a decade as a Shin Bet agent, to speaking on behalf of Magen David Adom”

Posted on December 23, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
‘Just trying to save lives’: 5 surreal days in Florida with the ‘Son of Hamas’
by David Horovitz
December 17, 2018

…Actually, his transformation was far more than crazy, way beyond improbable. “Collaborating with Israel is worse than raping your mother,” Mosab says in the film [The Green Prince]. But becoming the Shin Bet’s most vital source in the war against the suicide bombers, when your father is helming their West Bank hierarchy, is simply unimaginable. Which is why he got away with it. And why, he would later tell me, when he telephoned his father from the United States to tell him that it was so, and that the whole story was about to become public, it came as a complete shock to Sheikh Hassan Yousef.  READ MORE

U.N. stunned, Palestinian delegates in shock, as UN Watch brings surprise guest speaker—Palestinian Mosab Hassan Yousef—to expose PLO lies. Watch heads turn.

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The honor crime of choosing Judaism over Islam

Posted on December 23, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

ELDER OF ZIYON
Arabs upset at latest “normalization” as a a Jew raised as a Palestinian marries a Jewish woman
December 23, 2018

Israel’s Channel 20 has the story of Daniel Dabash, who grew up in the Arab village of Sur Baher as Nidal Dabash. His mother was Jewish but died in 2002; he grew up knowing she was Jewish but not that he would be considered Jewish as well. His stepmother hated him and he discovered that he was halachically Jewish, so he asked for more information and help on Facebook and got it. Now he just got married to a Jewish woman. And the story is driving Arab social media crazy. READ MORE

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Atlantic “Jewish peace camp” writer observes Bibi was right: “The Middle East is not democratizing. And this means any peace Israel makes will be made with strongmen, and must be guaranteed by them, in a region the West no longer controls”

Posted on December 22, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

THE ATLANTIC
Bibi Was Right: The arc of history has bent toward authoritarianism
by Ben Judah
December 18, 2018

…Taking my lead from the late David Landau, the former editor in chief of the newspaper Haaretz, I believed that unless Israel made painful, unilateral sacrifices, all would be lost. I even felt that it was the duty of the Jewish diaspora to wake Israel up to this inevitable tomorrow. Like Peter Beinart, I advocated boycotts of settler leaders and their produce. But Bibi took the opposite bet: that ethnic and cultural change would lead to an anti-liberal backlash making [Hungary’s Viktor] Orbán, not Obama, the model for European leaders…Only watching from Jerusalem, keeping a tab on his visits and his visitors, can you see just how successful Bibi has been. READ MORE

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“According to the terms of the understanding, Russia will continue to give Israel the freedom to strike Hezbollah and Iranian targets and weaponry that threaten the “balance of power” in Syria”

Posted on December 22, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia join forces against Iran
by Daniel Siryoti, Yoni Hersch, Ariel Kahana, Eldad Beck, Erez Linn and Israel Hayom Staff
December 21, 2018

The Russian forces currently in Syria will take action to restrain Hezbollah and Iranian activity there, according to understandings reached by Israel, the United States, Jordan and Saudi Arabia with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a Jordanian official confirmed to Israel Hayom. The understandings are the product of behind-the-scenes diplomatic talks that were underway prior to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision this week to withdraw American forces from Syria.…According to the Jordanian official, it was these understandings between Trump and Putin that paved the way for the U.S. decision to pull its forces from Syria. READ MORE

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“On its face, Trump’s announcement that he is pulling US forces out of Syria seems like an unfriendly act toward Israel. But it isn’t”

Posted on December 21, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Trump’s decision to pull forces out of Syria has upsides
by Caroline Glick
December 21, 2018

…By leaving Syria, the US is abandoning Obama’s pro-Iranian policy once and for all. Further indication that this is part of a far-reaching strategic shift rather than a dangerous move by an impulsive president came with a Hadashot News report Wednesday night that senior US officials told Israel this week that Washington will align its policy towards Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) with Israel’s position if Hezbollah receives a larger role in the next Lebanese government than it enjoyed in the previous one…The advantage Israel gains from US abandonment of the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese government and the LAF far outweighs the blow it takes from the withdrawal of US forces from Syria. READ MORE

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“Any Israeli woman of child-bearing age who is struggling to conceive, Arab or Jew, is eligible for nearly full state funding of in-vitro fertilization treatment”

Posted on December 21, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Israel booms with babies as developed world’s birthrates plummet. Here’s why.
by Dina Kraft
December 14, 2018

…The importance of having children is a focus in Israel as it is in most parts of the world, but what makes the attitude distinctive in the country’s Jewish sector is a unique combination of societal messages and policies. Foremost is a lingering post-Holocaust imperative to replace the 6 million who were murdered, but the list also includes fears of Arab demographic dominance and of the next impending war, and economic incentives from the government that include bankrolling fertility treatments, even in-vitro fertilization. READ MORE

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“That one never reads media coverage of Palestinian polls suggests that its findings are reliably inconvenient”

Posted on December 21, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

FREE BEACON
If You Like the Peace Process, Please Don’t Read Polls of Palestinians
by Noah Pollak
December 20, 2018

There is one thing that Palestine obsessives never seem obsessed with: the opinions of Palestinians. There’s no mystery here—asking what Palestinians believe exposes a fundamental problem with the liberal approach to the peace process, which is based on the belief that Palestinians are willing to live peacefully beside Israel. If such a mentality prevailed, it would be easily revealed through polling. The Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducts a quarterly poll of Palestinians that is largely focused on internal political questions but also surveys views toward Israel and peace…The latest poll is out. What does it say? READ MORE

MEMRI Antisemitic Friday sermon on PA TV: Allah turned Jews into apes and pigs; Vile traits run in their genes; Humanity cannot coexist with them. Yep, looks like the Palestinians are all set to make peace with the Jews

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