Hamas leadership “wants to signal to Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority that it is willing to go all the way in its quest to end Gaza’s isolation”

Posted on August 9, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Hamas is taking the region to the brink of war
by Yaakov Lappin
August 9, 2018

The security escalation in southern Israel and the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours shows that Hamas is prepared to take the region to the brink of war, and that it believes it can force new rules of conduct on Israel, while only paying a minimal price for its aggression. Its actions have placed the region in danger of a major new conflict. Hamas’s leadership is dangling the option of a long-term truce before Israel with one hand, and firing barrages of rockets at southern Israel with the other, terrorizing hundreds of thousands of Israelis, and risking the security of the Gazan civilians it rules over. READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL Over 150 rockets launched into Israel, woman seriously injured

JNS Barrage of Gaza rockets continue, with Beersheva hit for first time since 2014 Mayor Ruvik Danilovich said that Israel must act more forcefully against these rocket attacks after his city of more than 205,000 people was targeted.

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Shmuley to Cory: Your waning for support for Israel (and her security) “has American Jewry saddened, perplexed, and alarmed’

Posted on August 9, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

BREITBART
What Happened to You, Cory Booker?
by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
August 6, 2018

…Then came the photo this past Friday. Cory’s excuse for appearing in it is that he was posing for pictures and was passed a sign to hold. He only glanced at it and thought it was just referring to Mexico and had nothing to do with Israel. Many have rejected the explanation, saying that no experienced politician poses with a sign that he does not read. I disagree. I take Cory at his word. But why was he posing with leaders of the BDS movement whose raison d’etre is the destruction of Israel? READ MORE

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“When my friend #PerAhlmark passed away in June, at the age of 79, the free world lost an eminent writer, poet and pro-democracy activist”

Posted on August 9, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Sweden’s Prophet
by Hillel Neuer
August 6, 2018

For the late Per Ahlmark, history revealed three empirical rules that proved why liberal democracy was vital for all of humanity. First, “no democracy has ever gone to war against another democracy.” Second, democracies rarely commit genocide or mass murder against others or their own. Third, “famine has never occurred in a democracy.” Why not? “The crucial factor is freedom,” wrote Per. “Where there is an active opposition and a free press, governments cannot neglect tens of thousands of people starving to death.”…READ MORE

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“Few voices, in other words, are tackling the actual cause of Chicago’s violence: the breakdown of the black family structure and a demoralized police department”

Posted on August 9, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

AMERICAN THINKER
A Tale of Three Cities
by Brian C. Joondeph
August 10, 2018

…Chicago has become more dangerous than many cities in the war-torn Middle East.  This past weekend was another example of the killing fields of Chicago: “[a]t least 72 shot, 13 killed in Chicago over violent summer weekend, police department says.”  What’s the mayor of Chicago doing in response?  Maintaining and bolstering Chicago’s status as a “sanctuary city” and virtue-signaling to fellow progressives, prioritizing illegal aliens over Chicago residents…Chicago’s last Republican mayor finished his term in 1931, almost a century ago, followed by a string of Democrat mayors up to the present time. READ MORE

CITY JOURNAL Heather MacDonald: Shooting Up Chicago: Thugs terrorize their neighbors in the Windy City Garry McCarthy, who headed the CPD when Laquan McDonald was infamously shot in 2014, blasted [Mayor] Emanuel for ignoring the violence in favor of downtown development….But McCarthy engaged in some fake news, suggesting that the public should not buy the fact that the murder rate is actually down, in light of this weekend’s violence. McCarthy ran Compstat (the revolutionary police-accountability system) for the New York Police Department; he of all people should know that both facts can be true: murder and shootings can be down from the 2016 and 2017 rates and still be unacceptably high. READ MORE

NATIONAL REVIEW Is the Crime Boom Over? Even After Chicago? Data from other cities suggest that the murder uptick that started in 2015 is tapering off

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Trump’s Iran sanctions: “Rather than just hitting the nation’s economy, U.S. penalties should target those responsible for repression”

Posted on August 8, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

BLOOMBERG
Trump’s Sanctions Miss a Chance to Help Iran’s Protesters
by Eli Lake
August 7, 2018

In light of the recent demonstrations in Iranian cities, one might think the Donald Trump administration would want to link Monday’s re-implementation of sanctions to the struggles of Iran’s freedom movement…And yet the new punishments announced by the Treasury are blunt weapons that punish the entire Iranian economy, as opposed to more narrow measures that punish the regime…The U.S. should consider some more targeted alternatives. One that almost all Iranian democracy advocates support is re-imposing penalties on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. The IRIB is the umbrella organization that controls the regime’s domestic and foreign propaganda.  READ MORE

GATESTONE EU Unable to Neutralize US Sanctions against Iran The European Union has announced a new regulation aimed at shielding European companies from the impact of US sanctions on Iran. The measure, which has been greeted with skepticism by the European business media, is unlikely to succeed: it expects European companies to risk their business interests in the US market for interests in the much smaller Iranian market.

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AMCHA Study: “Suppressing speech and ostracizing and excluding Jewish and pro-Israel students from campus life were the most common features of Israel-related anti-Semitic incidents”

Posted on August 8, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

SAN DIEGO JEWISH WORLD
Anti- Israel protests create hostile campuses for Jews
August 8, 2018

In its annual report on anti-Semitic activity on U.S. campuses, released today, AMCHA Initiative found that Israel-related anti-Semitic incidents were considerably more likely to contribute to a hostile environment for Jewish students than incidents involving classic anti-Semitism. And a close analysis of incidents from 2015 to the first half of 2018 revealed that Israel-related incidents are becoming significantly more flagrant, with an emergent shift from boycotting Israel to boycotting actual students and student groups….To better understand to what extent anti-Semitic incidents affect the campus climate for Jewish students, the researchers closely examined incidents of anti-Jewish (classic) and anti-Zionist (Israel-related) harassment, vandalism and assault on U.S. campuses in 2017 for evidence of intent to harm. READ MORE

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New Nation State Law’s “principal damage has been to stir up negative public discourse — in Israel and abroad”

Posted on August 7, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Why this former Israeli military intelligence chief stands with the Druze
by Amos Yadlin
August 7, 2018

Israel’s new “nation-state” law, which is widely viewed here as clumsy, unnecessary and unwise, must be amended. That’s why I was proud to join tens of thousands of Israelis on Saturday night in a peaceful, unifying protest led by the Druze community. I came to this city’s Rabin Square to stand with the Druze, with whom I fought to protect the State of Israel. But I also came to celebrate Israeli democracy; the public’s commitment to equality and democratic values; our independent media; and our country’s bedrock guarantees for free speech and the right to protest. READ MORE

JERUSALEM POST Isi Leibler:Hysteria over nation-state law The second error was the failure to informally consult minorities, especially the Druze whom Israeli Jews genuinely love and admire.  Many Druze have been deceived; the new law in no way discriminates against them. Because of the affection for them prevailing throughout the nation, some are cynically exploiting the situation and making demands.

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If at any point Palestinians expressed a desire to live side-by-side with the Jewish state, they would have been included in talks

Posted on August 7, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
Washington Post Op-Ed Completely Distorts the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
by Ken Jacobson
August 5, 2018

No matter how often one reads about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and thinks that one had heard it all, someone comes along and shocks us with their ignorance, all in the guise of objective analysis. So it is with an article published in The Washington Post on July 26 by a Norwegian professor, Jorgen Jensehaugen, titled “The Fatal Flaw in Trump’s Plan for Middle East Peace. Jensehaugen’s thesis is that the Trump plan, like those of previous administrations, will fail because of a fatal flaw: “Not involving Palestinians in the discussion.” He then traces the long history of calamities between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and attributes them to this flaw. READ MORE

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Chomsky “may be intelligent when it comes to linguistics, but his statements regarding Israel, Russia, and the Holocaust are simply counter-factual”

Posted on August 5, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
Chomsky Calls Russian Interference a Joke – Blames Guess Who?
by Alan M. Dershowitz
August 3, 2018

Noam Chomsky has gone off the deep end once again. This time he claims that in “most of the world” the issue of Russian interference in U.S. elections is “almost a joke.” The real villain, according to him, is, of course, Israel — as it almost always is with Chomsky. According to the world’s “top public intellectual,” Israeli intervention in U.S. elections, “vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done. His proof of this absurd and false charge is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech in front of Congress “with overwhelming applause.” READ MORE

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“Phyllis Chesler’s new book calls out conformity and totalitarian herd thinking”

Posted on August 5, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

FRONT PAGE MAG
A Politically Incorrect Feminist
by Eileen F. Toplansky
August 3, 2018

…Utterly straightforward, Chesler admits that she often “chose men who were incapable of making a commitment.” Falling in love with an Afghanistan Muslim, Chesler married him and was subsequently held captive for five months in 1961 in Kabul. It was here that she witnessed “gender apartheid, polygamy, women in burqas who were forced to sit in the back of the bus, arranged first cousin marriages, child brides and honor killings.” This experience crystallized “how things were for women” especially non-Western, tribal women – a “contempt that few Americans are willing to comprehend.” READ MORE

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