MIT celebrates Israel’s 70th…”Of the six academic speakers who were invited to participate, not one depicted the creation of Israel as anything other than a moral calamity”

Posted on April 29, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

COMMENTARY
Haidt’s Theory Vindicated at MIT
by Jonah Cohen
April 27, 2018

…Last Monday, several social scientists from prestigious universities gathered in a state-of-the-art theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts for MIT’s conference on Israel’s 70th anniversary. While enjoying trays of free cookies and drinks, the mostly upper middle-class audience got to hear speaker after speaker complain about the Jewish state…None of the social scientists raised any uncomfortable truths that might challenge that storyline—truths such as Palestinian Arab collaboration with the Nazis; Islamist aspects of the 1948 war to destroy Israel; historic persecution of Jews in Muslim-majority lands, culminating in the almost total ethnic cleansing of indigenous Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa. READ MORE

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“Iranians aren’t willing to go hungry like North Koreans”

Posted on April 28, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

BLOOMBERG
Squeeze Iran And It Will Cave Like North Korea, Top Israeli Says
by Ethan Bronner
April 28, 2018

If North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons, credit belongs to President Donald Trump for his aggressive rhetoric and increased sanctions — and a similar policy would defang Iran, a senior Israeli minister said. Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said Iran is even more vulnerable to such pressure than North Korea because it doesn’t yet have nuclear weapons, while its people are less cowed by their leaders and wouldn’t passively accept tighter economic sanctions. “If it happens in North Korea, it’s proof that this way works and will work with Iran,” Katz said in an interview in New York. READ MORE

TOWER Newly Confirmed Secretary of State Pompeo to Visit “Key Allies,” Including Israel, Next Week

YNET Benjamin Anthony: Israelis should trust Pompeo over the Jewish voices opposing him  For too long, secretaries of state have demonstrated ambivalence toward the State of Israel in times of greatest need…He is the one to trust, not the Jewish voices who oppose him.

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“Thousands attend funerals of youths killed in a sudden surge in a Judean desert riverbed”

Posted on April 27, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
‘How do we go on?’ Families, friends bury 7 of the 10 students killed in flood
by Staff
April 27, 2018

Seven of the 10 students killed in flash floods during a hike in the Dead Sea area were being laid to rest on Friday afternoon, with their bereft parents, siblings and friends eulogizing them in turn as noble would-be leaders, firm “lovers of life,” and their “little girls.” Seven of the funerals — those of Ella Or, Maayan Barhoum, Yael Sadan, Romi Cohen, Agam Levy, Shani Shamir and Tzur Alfi — took place just after noon, drawing thousands of mourners. READ MORE

JNS The 10 teenage victims of flash-flood hiking tragedy

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American IDF’er completed his service in 2011 and remains in reserves, returning to Israel several times a year for training

Posted on April 27, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK POST
The American who went to war for Israel, lost an arm and went back
by Larry Getlen
April 22, 2018

…A soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), he was with his unit and awaiting orders for a mission into unpredictable Gaza to retrieve the body of a captain who had been killed by a grenade launcher. Holding his cellphone, Ezagui had been trying to decide whether to call his mother to tell her about the mission. He’d lied to her previously, saying he was stationed far from the front…At that moment, a 120 mm mortar flew into the tent, landing inches from Ezagui and exploding on impact. The mortar all but separated his left arm from his body. READ MORE

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The “whisper campaign” against quarterback Josh Rosen was “absolutely classic anti-Semitism”

Posted on April 27, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORKER
Josh Rosen and the NFL Draft’s Jewish-Quarterback Question
by Zach Helfand
April 26, 2018

…Since Sid Luckman, who threw his last pass in 1950, there hasn’t been a star Jewish quarterback in the N.F.L. There have been hardly any Jewish quarterbacks in the N.F.L. at all. Historically, the position has mostly been reserved for a very specific sort of person: white, Christian, preferably blue-collar. If he can passably appear in a commercial for Wrangler jeans, all the better…[Josh] Rosen recently told the reporter Michael Silver that he hears taunts on the field, including “I’m gonna break your fucking nose, you Jew.” READ MORE

WASHINGTON POST Josh Rosen stays quotable: ‘There were nine mistakes ahead of me’…As it turned out, Rosen was the fourth quarterback selected in Thursday’s first round

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US Holocaust Memorial Museum “remains what it would prefer not to be: pertinent to understanding not only the past but the present”

Posted on April 26, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

NATIONAL REVIEW
The Vilest and Noblest Manifestations of Humanity
by George Will
April 26, 2018

As the museum of human nature, aka the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, marks its 25th anniversary, it continues to receive artifacts, such as a letter handwritten on a yellow scrap of paper. It was donated to the museum by Frank Grunwald, 85, who lives in Indianapolis. He was the younger of two Czechoslovakian boys who sit smiling on their mother’s lap in a photograph the museum has. It was taken before this Jewish family was swept into the Nazi murder machinery. Frank, then eleven and known as Misa, is alive because unlike his brother John, then 16, Frank did not limp. READ MORE

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‘It is not the college’s practice to follow the personal social media accounts of its faculty or staff members’

Posted on April 26, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
Prestigious Liberal Arts College Refuses to Condemn Professor’s Anti-Semitic Tweets
by Liel Leibovitz
April 23, 2018

Jews behave like Nazis, Zionism is genocide, and the Bible commands the Chosen People to wipe out every living thing. When the Hillel at Knox College, a prestigious and private liberal arts school in Illinois, discovered the above opinions promoted vigorously on Twitter by Kwame Zulu Shabazz, a visiting professor, they asked the administration to investigate. What followed was a lesson in just how unwelcoming American academia is to its Jewish students and faculty members these days. David and Jennifer Bunde,  co-advisers to the Jewish student group at Knox, told Inside Higher Ed that equating the Jewish right for self-determination with mass murder was really no big deal. READ MORE

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For those of you who look to Middle East savant John Oliver for your Iran coverage

Posted on April 26, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

THE TOWER
Dismantling the Myths of John Oliver’s Pro-Iran Deal Speech
by Julie Lenarz
April 25, 2018

The deadline for President Donald Trump to re-certify the Iran nuclear deal is looming on May 12th. On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver detailed the “long-term and potentially irreversible” damage of allowing that agreement to fall apart. The Israel Project identified Oliver’s main arguments in favor of the JCPOA and explained the shortcomings in his analysis. Myth 1 Minute 5:55 Oliver suggests that “Iran’s President Rouhani is relatively moderate.” Wrong: Rouhani is not a moderate. He’s just a less extreme extremist. READ MORE

NEW YORK POST Trump shouldn’t give in to Macron’s Iran deal request

JNS A tale of two speeches “In his speech to Congress, Macron criticized Trump’s policies as much, if not more than, Netanyahu attacked Obama’s. But while Netanyahu’s address was widely seen as an affront to the U.S. government, the media cheered Macron“

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Natalie Portman’s “initial reason for concern was the clashes in Gaza”

Posted on April 25, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

FREE BEACON
Natalie Portman’s Evolving Excuse for Refusing Israeli Genesis Prize
by Brent Scher
April 24, 2018

…The Genesis Foundation “went out of its way to accommodate Portman’s concerns about Netanyahu,” according to JewishInsider, which says the foundation told Portman she wouldn’t have to sit with him, wouldn’t be presented the award by him, and was free to say anything she wanted during the event. Portman insisted Netanyahu be uninvited from the event, which was “a bridge too far” for the foundation, according to the report. Portman’s representatives reportedly pushed Genesis to say a “scheduling conflict” forced it to cancel the event rather than blame Portman. READ MORE

FORWARD Natalie Portman Has Snubbed Israel. Why Aren’t Pro-Israel Groups Snubbing Her?

SHMULEY BOTEACH No holds barred: Natalie Portman comforts Israel’s enemies…“her cowardly decision to abandon Israel as it fights a war with terrorists trying to overrun its border is shocking, hypocritical and provides aid and comfort to Israel’s enemies, however unwittingly”

CAROLINE GLICK BLOG Natalie Portman’s calculated betrayal of Israel

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“In dramatic turnaround, state tells High Court ‘no possibility’ to expel migrants at this time after officials fail to reach deal with Uganda”

Posted on April 24, 2018 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
How Netanyahu turned victory into all-around defeat in African migrant crisis
by David Horovitz
April 25, 2018

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu solved Israel’s African asylum-seeker crisis. Twice over. And yet it is now utterly unresolved — with negative consequences for the migrants themselves, for the veteran residents of south Tel Aviv where most of the Africans live, for Israel’s moral choices and its reputation, for the well-being of the Supreme Court, and even for the standing of Netanyahu himself, who has managed to snatch defeat in every aspect of the crisis from the jaws of his own victory. READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL Israel scraps deportations of all African asylum seekers, extends visas

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