Another Tack: Out of the box, Obama If our soon-to-arrive visitor, US President Barack Obama, truly fancies himself the harbinger of new tidings to this region – as he has tirelessly promoted himself in the past – then it’s high time for him to take the truly bold tack and think out of the box. Had […]
BREAKING: Obama White House Describes West Bank as Part of Israel In describing President Obama’s itinerary during his trip to Israel and Jordan next week, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes conceded that the Jewish connection to the West Bank is as strong as it is to Israel, and indeed, spoke of the two interchangeably: […]
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=306330
Ever since I was born I could hear the waves of hatred and prejudice pouring upon Jews for unexplained reasons, but apparently associated with the Arab-Israeli conflict, which Somalia was not a part of.
During Siad Barre (Somali dictator from 1969 to 1991), there was an Arabization program in Somalia that entailed the hatred of Jews as part of a standardized process of Arabization of our formerly non-Arab country.
When crisis erupted in Somalia and the lights went out in the 1990s, it became obvious that Somalia had been abandoned; no country acted to alleviate the Somalis’ enormous suffering.
Somalia has received various kinds of aid over the years, from various sources, but in the post-Cold War era, as Somalia’s strategic importance to the great world powers has waned, the country has effectively been left to rot. Its healthcare infrastructure, for example, is damaged to a degree which seems irreparable. Somalis seeking urgent medical care thus must often cross the border into Ethiopia, or seek treatment further abroad.
I am not a doctor by profession, but have served for many years as an interpreter for Somalis seeking medical care in Ethiopia. It was in this capacity that Special Adviser to the President of Somalia Dr. Omar Dihoud and I met with Mohammed Mohamud and Farah on March 4 at the Nati Hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, prior to their 9 p.m. departure for Tel Aviv.
It was a remarkable occasion for all of us.
The two young men were overjoyed, but also a little shocked; they hadn’t expected anything other than rejection from the Israelis they had been taught all their lives to consider “immortal enemies.”
“When we were told Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa had granted us the visas, it blew our minds!” said “We’re grateful to the Hadassah organization that offered us to treat us. We’ve life threatening injuries and yet no money” to go to Germany for similar treatment, added, explaining that “[the treatment] costs a minimum of $100,000 for each of us.”
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ AND MARRIAGE FOR ALL… Aside from all the usual speeches, CPAC predictably became Ground Zero in the Meghan McCainization of the Conservative movement. Aside from the Amnesty pitches, we are now being subjected to another round of dishonest arguments on gay marriage. Republicans made a fundamental tactical error by accepting civil unions as an […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ A CONSERVATISM OF PRINCIPLES Robert Spencer has written an article, “Why I am not a conservative” after his CPAC mistreatment. I appreciate his feelings, but I think it’s a mistake to define conservatism in terms of personalities. Conservatism cannot be defined by Romney or Norquist, or for that matter by any politician. Floridians have […]
http://newtown.patch.com/articles/newtown-officials-put-money-for-armed-school-security-in-budget?ncid=newsltuspatc00000001
Officials at a Monday Board of Finance meeting voted to add $420,000 to the town’s contingency fund — an amount chosen to allow Newtown to staff armed police at all seven public schools, including elementary schools, if it chooses.
It’s not final — on Thursday, per charter, the budget will move to the Legislative Council, who have the power to cut the budget. But since that body can’t add money, the Board of Finance decided to act now.
“Our primary goal is to get a number, and that number has to be more than enough for when the council gets the budget,” said Finance Chair John Kortze. “It would allow for some version of an armed police officer in each of the schools — and make sure we don’t have the issue of time.”
First Selectman Pat Llodra’s initial proposal called for $400,000. The board decided to add extra to allow “the conversation to continue” once the budget reaches the Legislative Council.
“We can take it back, but if we don’t add it now and more information comes out, that can’t happen,” said Kortze.
The addition would cover the hiring of 4.3 new officers — the .3 serving to provide a full blanket of security at Reed Intermediate School, whose current School Resource Officer also serves as the town’s Youth Officer. In addition, Llodra said when the Board of Selectmen made their request, they didn’t know Monroe would apply for a grant to provide an officer at Sandy Hook Elementary School, based at Monroe’s Chalk Hill School since the Dec. 14 shooting.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=306497
A crucial intellectual battle has begun, to strip the Jews of their political independence and national sovereignty.
The very idea of a Jewish state is undemocratic, a violation of the self-determination rights of its non-Jewish citizens, and therefore morally problematic.
– Joseph Levine, “On Questioning the Jewish State,” The New York Times, March 9.
The nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things… constitute this soul or spiritual principle.One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received.
– Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?” 1882
Well there you have it. The mainstreaming of the once-unthinkable is now upon us… courtesy of the “paper of record.”
In an over 2,000-word opinion piece, published last Saturday in the Times, Joseph Levine, a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, disputes the rights of Jews to national self-determination, the exercise of political sovereignty and a nation-state of their own – even within the Green Line.
This is the first of a two-part response to this perniciously poisonous piece – in which I will show why for Israel to be democratic it is imperative that it be Jewish.
Asinine analysis
Over the years, we have learned that when it comes to the topic of Israel and the Mideast conflict we should expect the asinine rather than the astute to be the paper’s standard fare.
It seems nothing is too outrageous, outlandish or out of touch with reality for the Times to refrain from subjecting its readers to it. Being manifestly misinformed, blatantly biased, deliberately distortive – even deceptive – has never been an obstacle to publication in the “Gray Lady’s” opinion section, so long as the sentiments conveyed do not diverge from some prevailing politically correct paradigm.
But even given the cavalcade of the harebrained and the hallucinatory that have (dis)graced the opinion pages of the paper, Levine’s hapless harangue stands out as a real doozie.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/eric-burns/the-bedouin-rebellion-against-israel/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=119de2ccdf-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag Various Bedouin tribes are waging a full-scale rebellion against Israel. Negev Bedouin tribes are refusing to settle in designated areas developed by Israel’s government, and stealing Jeeps and other equipment from nearby IDF bases. They use the Jeeps to smuggle drugs and other contraband into Israel, from the Sinai. In central Israel and the […]
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/48071 THIS TIME IT IS THE ISRAELIS WHO WILL BOW….TO PRESSURE….RSK After six weeks of intense negotiations, a new Israeli coalition has emerged to greet President Obama when he arrives in Jerusalem on March 20th. It is a product of an obsessive democracy with diverse backgrounds and conflicting views on practically everything. . . The […]
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/muslim_mapping_NjWr913mgDLjPVDlooyEdO
That’s the title of a startling new report out of CUNY Law School. It calls for imams and other Muslim community leaders to “announce to your congregations or membership that informants will not be tolerated in your communities.” The report is co-authored by the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition, CUNY’s Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility Project, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. They argue that the NYPD’s secret surveillance of Muslim mosques and neighborhoods in the New York area has “marginalized and criminalized a broad segment of American Muslims.”
Let’s take a deep breath here. As NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly noted, his cops adhere to guidelines signed by a federal judge in 1985 and amended in 2002. Last year, an investigation by the New Jersey attorney general backed up the commissioner when it found there were “no violations of law.”
The cops are looking at these communities for one reason: They are a logical place for terrorists to hide themselves. Both the 1993 bombing of and the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were planned and enacted by Muslims living in New Jersey. So long as New York remains a terror target, there will be active plots against the city.
We saw that in December, when two Pakistani brothers were arrested for targeting New York City landmarks to avenge comrades killed in US drone attacks. The FBI didn’t know the two had come to New York from Florida — they were located by NYPD surveillance. And the lead cop in the investigation that resulted in the arrest of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law was an NYPD detective.
