The Virtue of Nationalism: Hazony’s latest book argues that “the nation-state is the best form of political organization humanity has yet discovered”

Posted on August 24, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH JOURNAL
Obsolete or Indispensable?
by Evelyn Gordon
August 15, 2018

…[Judaism] is the only great civilization in history that never sought global application of its laws, customs, and religious practices; rather, the Bible explicitly envisioned a limited Jewish state surrounded by other, non-Jewish states. It’s worth emphasizing just how exceptional this is. The other two great monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam, both sought global domination. At its height, the Muslim empire stretched from Spain to India; Christianity had the Byzantine Empire in the East and the Holy Roman Empire in the West. Almost every major non-monotheistic civilization was also imperial…READ MORE

WALL STREET JOURNAL Yoram Hazony: Why Does Facebook Think I’m ‘Political’? The robots won’t let me advertise my book [“The Virtue of Nationalism”] on nationalism.

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Anti-Semitism versus Antisemitism: “Regularly spelled with a hyphen in American English but without in academia, some experts claim the punctuation mark slashes the word’s potency”

Posted on August 24, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
What’s in a hyphen? Why writing anti-Semitism with a dash distorts its meaning
by Matt Lebovic
August 23, 2018

In April of 2015, Microsoft received an unusual memo. Crafted on behalf of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a group of scholars issued a “Memo on Spelling of Antisemitism,” urging a change to the mammoth hi-tech company’s auto-correct spelling policy. Until then, a hyphen had been perfunctorily added between “anti” and “Semitism” in the word commonly used for hatred and prejudice against Jews. Far from being an innocuous debate over semantics, the IHRA claimed that a hyphened “anti-Semitism” gave credence to discredited Nazi racial theories, wherein humanity was divided into superior and inferior subcategories. READ MORE

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“Extensive damage has been inflicted upon protective thickets of trees planted around eleven communities in the Western Negev”

Posted on August 24, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL/JEWISH NATIONAL FUND
Life-Saving Trees Burnt by Incendiary Kites
August 19, 2018

Hundreds of acres of security plantings carried out in this part of Israel since the 1950s have now gone up in smoke due to incessant incendiary kite and balloon attacks from Gaza. KKL-JNF teams are working around the clock to mitigate the damage to these security trees by caring for them on a daily basis…KKL-JNF Western Negev Recreation Area Coordinator Itzik Lugasi, who is in charge of the security plantings, explains: “These security plantings make an enormous difference. The trees conceal local communities and roads and make it hard for the terrorists to hit them directly. READ MORE

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#UNC #Chapel Hill textbook: #Jews who perished in the #Holocaust didn’t “tap into the strength that comes from recognizing their intrinsic worth”

Posted on August 23, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

DAILY WIRE
Victim-Blaming At University of North Carolina
by Paul Miller
August 22, 2018

Is a seven-year-old child to blame for having cancer? What life choices can a first-grader make that would result in a malignant tumor on his right arm? Maybe his parents fed him the wrong foods or raised him in an environment that causes cancer, even though his siblings never got sick and the sarcoma had never been seen in children before. According to the book 21st Century Wellness, cancer is “a disease of choice.” This paragon of profundity is required reading for the “Lifetime Fitness” course at UNC-Chapel Hill and is part of the curriculum at Arizona State, Ohio State and Brigham Young. READ MORE

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Trump: Palestinians will “get something very good because it’s their turn next”

Posted on August 22, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Trump: Israel to pay ‘higher price’ for Jerusalem embassy move
by Staff
August 22, 2018

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Israel will have to pay “a higher price” in peace talks with the Palestinians as a result of official U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last year. Speaking at a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, Trump said it was now the Palestinians’ “turn” to “get something very good” in potential peace talks with Israel. Trump touted his decision to recognize Israel’s claim over Jerusalem and move the U.S. Embassy there, which sparked international condemnation and drew the ire of the Palestinians. READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL Abbas aide: As price for embassy move, Trump must make E. Jerusalem our capita

JNS Would Palestinian rejection of Trump peace plan give Israel more leverage? U.S President Donald Trump’s plan includes items the Palestinians would never agree to, says Ronen Yitzhak, head of the Middle East Studies department at Israel’s Western Galilee College

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“U.S. charges 2 men with serving as agents of Iran, monitoring Americans and a Chicago Jewish center”

Posted on August 22, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

WASHINGTON POST
U.S. court detains Calif. man charged with serving as agent of Iran, surveilling Americans
by Spencer S. Hsu
August 20, 2018

U.S. prosecutors announced charges Monday against two men arrested Aug. 9 and accused of acting as agents of the government of Iran, covertly monitoring a Jewish center in Chicago and American members of an Iranian opposition group in exile in behalf of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Criminal complaints against Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar, 38, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, and Majid Ghorbani, 59, an Iranian citizen and resident of California, were unsealed after an indictment was returned Monday in the District of Columbia, according to the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. attorney’s office of the District. READ MORE

WGN9 2 men charged with being Iranian spies, monitoring Chicago Jewish centers   According to an indictment, the pair covertly monitored Israeli and Jewish facilities in the U.S. including the Rohr Chabad House, and the Hillel Center at the University of Chicago. The men are also accused of gathering information on members of an Iranian opposition group, and conducting surveillance on Americans in California, New York, Washington, DC and in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

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#BDSFail PepsiCo acquires rival Israel-based SodaStream for $144/share

Posted on August 20, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

BLOOMBERG
PepsiCo Enters Homemade Market With $3.2 Billion SodaStream Deal
by Thomas Mulier
August 20, 2018

PepsiCo Inc. agreed to buy fizzy-drinks dispenser SodaStream International Ltd. for $3.2 billion, sending the company synonymous with sugary sodas into the homes of more health-conscious consumers. PepsiCo will pay $144 a share in cash for the Israeli company, the companies said in a statement Monday. That’s 11 percent higher than Friday’s closing price and would be the Purchase, New York-based company’s largest acquisition in eight years…SodaStream shares have jumped 49 percent this month after the company boosted its forecast for revenue growth this year to 23 percent and reported first-half figures that beat estimates. READ MORE

GLOBES Sodastream to invest NIS 90m in expanding Negev factory

TIMES OF ISRAEL SodaStream chief hails $3.2 billion sale to PepsiCo as victory over BDS

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Anglo-Jewish community “fears that Britain may soon elect a racist and an anti-Semite as its prime minister”

Posted on August 20, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Corbyn, who sought Israel’s demise, is an anti-Semite. Labour must kick him out
by David Horovitz
August 20, 2018

…Yet for years, he [Corbyn] was active in an organization that, just like Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, proclaimed the goal of ending Israel. As Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian columnist who mentioned Corbyn’s role in the Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine in an article last Wednesday, noted succinctly, Corbyn’s position on Israel/Palestine “was not that of a healing conciliator of two warring peoples, but rather ‘to eradicate Zionism.’” Corbyn didn’t want to heal. He didn’t advocate a two-state solution. He wasn’t opposing specific Israeli policies. He wanted Israel not to exist.  READ MORE

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“Israelis are red-state Jews. American Jews are blue-state — politically liberal in their outlook”

Posted on August 19, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK TIMES
How America’s Jews Learned to Be Liberal
by Steven R. Weisman
August 18, 2018

…The liberalism of most American Jews has long confounded American Jewish neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz, who asserts that it is illogical for American Jews to embrace the welfare state, and the taxes to pay for it, given their comfortable economic status. Jews, he has argued, mistakenly think that social justice is rooted in the Torah and other Jewish teachings, such as “tikkun olam,” a Hebrew phrase meaning “repairing the world.”  If tikkun olam is central to Judaism, Mr. Podhoretz asked, why do Orthodox American Jews, whose numbers are growing, reliably vote conservative now? That wasn’t always true. READ MORE

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Once more, United Nations behaves true to form on Israel

Posted on August 19, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
UN chief proposes armed force to ‘protect’ Palestinians from Israel
by Yoni Hersch, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
August 19, 2018

In a new report circulated Friday, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said that options to protect Palestinian civilians under the so-called Israeli occupation range from establishing an armed military or police force to deploying civilian observers or beefing up the U.N. presence on the ground. Guterres stressed that every option would require the cooperation of Israelis and Palestinians, “a sustained cessation of hostilities and additional resources.” But the prospect of getting Israel’s consent, especially for a U.N. or non-U.N. armed force, remains highly unlikely. READ MORE

NEW YORK SUN Editorial: Kofi Annan What can be said of the Annan years is that they will have marked the end of the illusion that world government is a logical charter of freedom. 

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