“Including Jerusalem as a future Palestinian capital in the American peace plan could put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bind, especially if he’s to call early elections”

YNET
Israel worried US peace plan will include Jerusalem as Palestinian capital
by Itamar Eichner
October 21, 2018

Israel is worried the American peace plan would include a declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of two states—Israel and Palestine—in an effort to convince Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table…The official said that if the Republicans lose power in the upcoming midterm elections, Trump might increase his efforts to reach a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so he could run for his second term with a big foreign policy achievement under his belt. READ MORE

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

“How did an elite, repressive minority policing speech and culture through #PoliticalCorrectness come to browbeat the American democratic majority?”

TABLET MAG
The Emperor’s Woke Clothes
by Wesley Yang
October 18, 2018

The overwhelming majority of Americans oppose political correctness. A recent survey of 8,000 Americans reveals that people of all ages, races, and educational levels oppose it by lopsided margins. None of the demographic categories presumed to be aligned with it, or to fall within its protective embrace, actually support it. Three out of 4 black people, 2 out of 3 people with postgraduate degrees, and 78 percent of people under the age of 24 all regard political correctness as a problem. While 79 percent of white people oppose political correctness, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87 percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to be resistant to it. READ MORE

MORE IN COMMON Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape This report is about polarization in America today: what is driving us apart, and what can bring us back together.

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

“If elected #Illinois governor in November, #JBPritzker will wear his sash and carry silver trays of sliced apples to Boss Madigan and wait to be told when to propose his whopping tax increase”

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Come back to Rauner? Or let ‘Toilets’ Pritzker wear a sash while Boss Madigan rules Illinois?
by John Kass
October 19, 2018

The November elections in Illinois aren’t about some Democratic revenge fantasy, punishing President Donald Trump for putting Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. And the November elections in Illinois aren’t really about some Republican revenge fantasy to punish Gov. Bruce Rauner for betraying his conservative base by signing that bill on taxpayer-funded abortion. The November elections in Illinois — only weeks away now — are about two things: 1)Your taxes. 2) And the power of House Speaker Michael Madigan, the Southwest Side state Democratic boss, the longest ruling House speaker in American history, who has become incredibly wealthy in his tax reduction legal practice while also presiding over the fiscal collapse of Illinois. READ MORE SUBSCRIPTION CONTENT

Posted in Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

“The main strategic takeaway from Gaza and from Judea and Samaria is that there is no solution, military or otherwise to the Palestinians’ never-ending war against the Jewish state”

JERUSALEM POST
Mowing the Lawn in Gaza
by Caroline B. Glick
October 18, 2018

… Moreover, if Hamas [Gaza] were toppled tomorrow, it wouldn’t be replaced by a peaceful regime. It has no moderate opponents. As The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh has reported, the second most powerful force in Gaza is the Islamic Jihad terror group. Hamas is controlled by Qatar, Turkey and Iran. Since it was established in 1988 by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Islamic Jihad has been a wholly owned proxy of Tehran. Pick your poison. READ MORE

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

Sbarro, Jerusalem, 2001: An open letter to Robert A. Sauerberg, president and CEO of Condé Nast

GHEULA CANARUTTO NEMNI BLOG
Why Condé Nast and Vogue do not respect Jews
October 9, 2018

On October 4, 2018, Vogue Arabia published a letter by Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager who is becoming an icon, despite the culture she represents.

My name is Raya Schijveschuurder. Today I would be 31 years old. I would be probably married and I would have my own children. They would be the same age of my little brothers who were 2 and 4 years old when they were killed together with my parents and me, inside a pizza store in Jerusalem, seventeen years agoWe were a happy family until 2 pm of August 9th 2001. We were eight children, four girls and four boys, the perfect balance. My parents were still young, 43 and 41 years old. READ MORE

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

Israeli war planners are profoundly aware of Israel’s lack of strategic depth. “This bitter reality has meant that Israel’s military doctrine has of necessity come to emphasize offensive tactics: carrying the war to the enemy and away from Israel’s population centers as quickly as possible”

TABLET MAG
Killing the Lavi: Tracing the unintended consequences of the fateful 1987 cancellation of Israel’s largest single weapons development program
by John W. Golan
October 4, 2018

Thirty-one years ago, on Aug. 30, 1987, an Israeli cabinet voted to terminate Israel’s Lavi fighter program, ending the largest single weapons development effort in the history of the Jewish state. It was a narrow, party-line vote in a divided “national unity” Cabinet. As the story behind this airplane has receded into history and its memory has faded among the succeeding generations, its broader meaning and significance to Israel’s national security has likewise been largely lost. The consequences of decisions not fully understood at the time that they were made will so often be visited upon the generations that follow. READ MORE

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

#Jonathan Greenblatt #ADL’s “new executive director is betraying the organization’s purpose”

COMMENTARY
The Shame of the Anti-Defamation League
by Seth Mandel
October 2018

…Like every organization, the ADL had its blind spots, but it never had an obstructed view of its own raison d’être—until the summer of 2015. That was when Jonathan Greenblatt succeeded longtime ADL director Abe Foxman. Greenblatt is a man of the left in the purest sense, and one who holds partisan politics paramount. In the years leading up to his hire, the American left’s relationship with world Jewry had begun a steady decline. This decline was exploited and exacerbated by President Barack Obama—for whose administration Greenblatt worked before taking over the ADL. It is unclear whether the ADL’s reputation can survive Greenblatt’s stewardship. READ MORE

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

“There’s no justification for his murder. But don’t whitewash what he believed – his commitment to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, his hope that Israel would ‘die by force’, and the anti-Semitic Islamists with whom he spent his final days”

JNS
The story behind the story of Jamal Khashoggi
by Melanie Phillips
October 18, 2018

But even so, why would MBS have Khashoggi killed in this complicated, macabre and politically exposed way? Why did it need 15 men to do so? Why kill him at all if, as was also reported, Khashoggi’s criticisms of MBS had been relatively mild? My own sources have now provided me with answers to these questions in an even more startling account. They say Khashoggi was indeed still very much an Islamist connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. Much more significant, he was intimately connected to the Saudi regime, which is bitterly opposed to the Brotherhood. He was, therefore, the ultimate insider who had gone rogue. READ MORE

HAARETZ Petra Marquardt-Bigman: Jamal Khashoggi Was a Victim of Saudi Terror. He Was Also a Keen Supporter of Palestinian Terrorism And while the Times doesn’t cover this aspect, if you are an Israeli, you can only wonder if Khashoggi’s hopes for the Middle East would not have turned you into a refugee – or worse. The Times notes that Khashoggi joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a young man, and that he “remained conversant in its conservative, Islamist and often anti-Western rhetoric, which he could deploy or hide depending on whom he was seeking to befriend.”

JNS Sarah Stern: The Enemy of Your Enemy is Not Necessarily Your Friend The tragic disappearance and likely death of Jamal Khashoggi after he recently entered the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul has lifted a rock under which the egregious human-rights practices of the Saudi kingdom have been swarming for decades. It always struck me as ironic that before the word “Saudi Arabia” has been uttered, we often heard the reflexive prefix: “our moderate Arab ally.”

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

#Palestinians on US mission change: “The US administration has fully endorsed the Israeli narrative, including on Jerusalem, Refugees and Settlements”

TIMES OF ISRAEL
In blow to Palestinians, US places Jerusalem consulate under embassy
by Alexander Fulbright
October 18, 2018

The State Department announced Thursday that it would bring its main diplomatic mission to the Palestinians under the auspices of the US Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, marking an implicit downgrading of the facility’s status and a fresh blow to its already strained ties with the Palestinians. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the move was meant to “achieve significant efficiencies and increase our effectiveness” following the opening of the embassy in May. He insisted the merger of the two missions did not signal a change in US policy on the status of Jerusalem, the West Bank, or Gaza Strip. READ MORE

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

“The recent outbursts on our streets have their root in the idea that only one opinion is the correct one and all others must be shut down”

NEW YORK POST
Rage when you disagree: How ‘safe spaces’ led to today’s political mobs
by Karol Markowicz
October 14, 2018

…After the 2016 election, we heard lots of admissions that many of us reside in political bubbles where we never hear outside opinions. For a while, it seemed like the consensus was that this was a negative thing. But now people increasingly retreat to these bubbles, proudly, and never learn how to handle political disagreement. The result is the rage we’re seeing now. The more we shut off hearing the other side’s point of view, the more likely we are to see these mobs spring up….When the other side is seeking to “destroy what you stand for,” or “undermine our democracy,” violence doesn’t seem so far-fetched. READ MORE

FREE BEACON Not Our Kind: The problem of book reviewing through tribal identification Whatever your identity, background, or political ideology,” Haidt and Lukianoff [The Coddling of the American Mind] suggest in what is, in essence, a self-help book and parenting guide, “you will be happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals” if you (1) stop “eliminating or avoiding everything that ‘feels unsafe,'” (2) stop “always trusting your initial feelings,” and (3) stop “assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us-versus-them morality.

Posted in Politics | Leave a comment