“Like in the Middle East, U.S. political operatives and intelligence officials are increasingly using the cloak of journalism as a tool for their aims”

Posted on November 1, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
How Should We Read the American Press? In Arabic
by Lee Smith
October 31, 2018

In his last column for The Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi explained how the lack of a free press has impoverished the Arabs. “A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche,” he wrote, “and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change.” Khashoggi might have also been describing the current state of the U.S. media. Over the last several years, the press here has repeatedly joined with government officials, including intelligence officers, to wage operations influencing the American public to obtain political goals, just like Middle East media. READ MORE

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This week’s third rail, apportioning blame for Pittsburgh

Posted on November 1, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
American Jewry’s false prophets
by Caroline Glick
November 1, 2018

Just hours after the largest massacre of Jews in America in US history, the Atlantic Monthly posted a piece by Franklin Foer. In his “Prayer for Squirrel Hill, and for American Jewry,” Foer wrote, “Any strategy for enhancing the security of American Jewry should involve shunning [President Donald] Trump’s Jewish enablers. Their money should be refused, their presence in synagogues not welcome. They have placed our community in danger.” That is, in the shadow of the blood drenched synagogue, Foer declared war on his fellow Jews. READ MORE

NEW YORK TIMES Bret Stephens: Yes, the President Bears Blame for the Terror From the Right.For years, conservatives have rightly pointed out that Islamist terrorists don’t spring from an ideological or cultural vacuum. It usually takes a village, real, virtual or proverbial, to make an Islamist terrorist — one composed of hate-spewing imams, TV programs saturated with anti-Semitic and anti-Western conspiracy theories,  neighborhood vigilantes enforcing fundamentalist religious strictures, and political leaders excusing, reflecting or disseminating many of the same beliefs and attitudes  …What are the villages from which Sayoc and Bowers hailed?

NATIONAL REVIEW Jonathan Tobin: Politicizing Mass Murder at a Synagogue Misses the Point As scholar Ruth Wisse has noted, anti-Semitism was the most successful ideology of the 20th century, being a virus that morphed from fascism to Nazism to Communism and then Islamism. This trend has continued in the 21st century, with the persistence of traditional right-wing Jew hatred along with a rising tide of anti-Semitism that has swept across Europe and then to American college campuses, where it operates largely under the false flag of anti-Zionism and support for boycotts of Israel.

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“It’s worth noting that many commentators, such as Franklin Foer in The Atlantic, simply ignore past antisemitic violence, and act as if the Pittsburgh murders were some unique event in recent American Jewish history”

Posted on October 31, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
How much security will make us feel safe?
by Jonathan S. Tobin
October 30, 2018

…Stephen Colbert’s mocked Trump, saying, “Yes, it’s so simple. In fact, why didn’t the Jewish people have an armed guard for the last 5,000 years?” That line got the expected laughs from an audience that always applauds attacks on the president, but you don’t have to have to be a historian to understand that a lot of lives would have been saved over the centuries had vulnerable communities been able to defend themselves from anti-Semites intent on shedding Jewish blood. But while this issue, like just about everything else these days, seems to be all about Trump, it actually revolves around a dilemma that Jewish groups have been struggling with for decades. READ MORE

REASON
Has There Been a Surge of Anti-Semitism Under and Because of Trump?
by David Bernstein
October 28, 2018

…First, Pittsburgh was hardly the first time an anti-Semitic gunman murdered people in a Jewish institution in the U.S. Between the Clinton and Bush II years, there was a shooting at a Jewish Community Center in L.A., a shooting at an El Al counter at LAX, a shooting at the Jewish Federation in Seattle, a shooting at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, and a shooting at the Holocaust Museum. Lower levels of vandalism and violence have been even more common. It’s true that the death toll in Pittsburgh was especially high, but that’s just happenstance; any of the other shoooters would have been happy to kill as many or more. READ MORE

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“Tehran strategic networks attacked, Hadashot TV says, hours after Israel revealed it tipped off Denmark about Iran murder plot, and days after Rouhani’s phone was found bugged”

Posted on October 31, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
TV report: Israel silent as Iran hit by computer virus more violent than Stuxnet
by Staff
October 31, 2018

Iranian infrastructure and strategic networks have come under attack in the last few days by a computer virus similar to Stuxnet but “more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated,” and Israeli officials are refusing to discuss what role, if any, they may have had in the operation, an Israeli TV report said Wednesday. The report came hours after Israel said its Mossad intelligence agency had thwarted an Iranian murder plot in Denmark, and two days after Iran acknowledged that President Hassan Rouhani’s mobile phone had been bugged. READ MORE

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Said Sunday to an Abu Dhabi audience: “Ladies and Gentlemen, please rise for the national anthem of Israel”

Posted on October 29, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

JTA
Israel’s national anthem played in Abu Dhabi for first time at judo tournament
October 28, 2018

Israel’s national anthem was played for the first time in Abu Dhabi at a judo tournament. Israeli lightweight Judoka Sagi Muki on Sunday won a gold medal at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam and heard “Hatikvah” played during the medal ceremony. Minister of Culture and Sport Miri Regev, who accompanied the team to Abu Dhabi, visibly wept while the anthem was played, Ynet reported. Regev attended despite the fact that Israel does not have diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates….In 2017, five Israeli judokas won medals in Abu Dhabi, including a gold, but tournament organizers refused to play Israel’s national anthem. READ MORE

ASSOCIATED PRESS Secret no more: Israel’s outreach to Gulf Arab states

Click to watch at 1:26, then crank it up

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“I felt the time had come for someone on the Israeli side to try to explain our story to our neighbours, to tell a story about who we are”

Posted on October 29, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

FATHOM
This is a conflict over narratives. Israel needs to tell ours to Palestinians.
by Yossi Klein Halevi
October 2018

…The book also came out of the realisation that the other side doesn’t know our story. The Palestinian media and school system overwhelmingly convey the message that Israelis and the Jewish people are not only thieves but also liars. They say we’ve invented our story, or that we have no story. That’s the message Palestinians receive on a daily basis. A young man in Hebron, the city with the longest Jewish history of any city anywhere, once told me that there were no Jews in the city until after 1967. But he was simply repeating what he’d been told his whole life. READ MORE

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“The drama of an aging and tired Europe is not a partisan or electoral issue; it is a civilizational one”

Posted on October 28, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
Europe’s Crisis of Survival
by Giulio Meotti
October 26, 2018

“The possibility that Europe will become a museum or a cultural amusement park for the nouveau riche of globalization is not completely out of the question.” This thought of Europe as a vast cultural theme park was presented by the late historian Walter Laqueur, who, for his far-sighted prognosis about Europe’s crisis, has been called “the indispensable pessimist.” Laqueur was one of the first to understand that the current deadlock in which the continent finds itself goes far beyond economics. The point is that the days of European strength are over. Because of low birth rates, Europe is dramatically shrinking. READ MORE

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Rabbi David Wolpe: “Calls to excommunicate pro-Trump Jews are not simply wrong. They’re poison”

Posted on October 28, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
The Misguided Rabbis of Twitter
by Rabbi David Wolpe
October 29, 2018

My synagogue is on the west side of Los Angeles. On a rough guess, about half of my congregants support Donald Trump. Many of those who do, but certainly not all, are from the Persian community. We have had frank discussions. They know I deplore many of the things he says and I oppose much of what he does. They know that I have criticized, publicly and privately, the inflammatory rhetoric of his presentations and warned them of its effects. READ MORE

ALGEMEINER
Politicizing the Massacre of Eleven Pittsburgh Jews Must Stop
by Shmuley Boteach
October 29, 2018

…In fact, if Robert Bowers had been a Palestinian and his eleven victims Jews living in Israel, he and his family would have been collecting their terror-pension for the rest of their lives. And until the passing of the Taylor Force Act, would have thanked us for the cash. Ultimately, though, what makes the accusations of antisemitism against Trump especially unfair is the fact that beyond just having Jewish friends and associates, he is the first president of the United States to have Jewish children and grandchildren. READ MORE

FORWARD
Stop politicizing The Pittsburgh Massacre Sincerely, Your Israeli Brother
by Yishai Fleisher
October 29, 2018

…From Israel, America looks like one big reality TV show, one featuring a society caught up in some kind of mad inner psychological battle…Americans seem both ungrateful for what they have and at the same time addicted to needless fights. It seems like everything coming out of America these days is about the Left or the Right, about MSNBC or Fox News. And it’s always, always, about finding someone to blame: Trump killed those Jews; guns killed those Jews; incivility killed those Jews. READ MORE

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#LindaSarsour “an unapologetic, pro-BDS, one-state solution” activist takes money from company with Israel operations

Posted on October 28, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

THE INVESTIGATIVE PROJECT
BDS-Supporter Linda Sarsour Accepts Ben & Jerry’s Donation – A Brand with Ties to Israel
October 31, 2018

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream announced a new flavor on Tuesday, Pecan Resist, “with the intention to resist the current [Trump] administration’s regressive agenda, celebrating the activists who are continuing to resist oppression.” In addition, the ice cream brand plans to donate $25,000 to four organizations devoted to social justice issues including the Women’s March. Women’s March national co-chair and Islamist activist Linda Sarsour was pictured alongside figures from other activist organizations and Ben & Jerry’s top officials. Some on social media were quick to be entertained by the news that Sarsour, a strident Israel hater and anti-Semite, is accepting money from a company that has a long-standing presence in Israel. READ MORE

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“What the left hates about Donald Trump is precisely what it hates about America. The implications are important, and painful”

Posted on October 28, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

WALLS STREET JOURNAL
The Real Reason They Hate Trump
by David Gelernter
October 21, 2018

Every big U.S. election is interesting, but the coming midterms are fascinating for a reason most commentators forget to mention: The Democrats have no issues. The economy is booming and America’s international position is strong. In foreign affairs, the U.S. has remembered in the nick of time what Machiavelli advised princes five centuries ago: Don’t seek to be loved, seek to be feared. The contrast with the Obama years must be painful for any honest leftist. For future generations, the Kavanaugh fight will stand as a marker of the Democratic Party’s intellectual bankruptcy, the flashing red light on the dashboard that says “Empty.” The left is beaten. READ MORE

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