http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5429 Last week, while the first batch of Palestinian terrorists was being released from Israeli jails, the Palestinian Authority was too busy condemning Israel to express satisfaction. This is because the Israeli government had approved the construction of hundreds of new houses in east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. The plans to build these new units […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/vladimir-tismaneanu/the-soviet-invasion-of-czechoslovakia-45-years-later/ In August 1968, the Warsaw Pact tanks and half a million-strong military killed the Prague Spring. It was not simply the end of a daring political experiment, but also a gigantic defeat for the dreams of reconciling communism and democracy. Marxist revisionism, the utopian endeavor to rediscover the presumably forgotten thesaurus of left-wing radicalism, suffered […]
http://mosaicmagazine.com/supplemental/2013/08/how-to-survive-as-a-jew-in-sweden/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=6ec50fcfa7-Mosaic_2013_8_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-6ec50fcfa7-41165129 The following, written as a private letter to Michel Gurfinkiel, appears here by permission of the author. Dear Mr. Gurfinkiel, On April 26 of this year, I was on a train with my five-year-old son Charlie. We were on our way to spend shabbat with friends in the city. You see, our town, significant […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356306/attacking-enemies-islam-andrew-c-mccarthy There is a reason why it is often said that there are no good choices for the United States in Egypt. In my weekend column, I argued that there are only two realistic alternatives at the moment. The first is the self-defeating option popular with the Obama administration and the GOP’s erratic McCain wing: […]
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/08/21/why-the-failure-of-egypts-secular-army-to-protect-coptic-churches-matters/ Expatriate Egyptian Coptic Christian writer Samuel Tadros has just observed how Egypt’s Copts—the country’s indigenous, pre-Arab Islamic jihad inhabitants—have been under siege by a recent spate of Muslim Brotherhood inspired and led church burnings, which punctuates the worst outbreak of anti-Coptic Muslim violence since the era of Muslim Mamluk rule (i.e., […]
If You Like Syria, You’ll Love ‘Palestine’ With the ongoing revelations about Syrian regime atrocities, regional and global attention has seemingly shifted from more usual concerns about Palestinian statehood. Nonetheless, the two issues are closely related, especially in their common reflection of irremediable fragmentations in the Arab world and in their resultant propensities for escalating […]
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/aug/21/egypts-army-pharaoh-we-can-cheer/ NEW YORK, August 21, 2013 — Morsi is down. Mubarak is up. Welcome to the Middle East. An hour from now it could go the other way. But as of the moment, Islamist and former president Mohamed Morsi is still in jail. Meanwhile, non-Islamist and former president/strongman Hosni Mubarak is being released from jail. […]
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/08/21/arab-spring-worst-soap-ever/ I didn’t care for the “Arab Spring,” but the “Arab Summer” is a blockbuster!Liberals’ rosy predictions for Egypt’s Islamic revolution didn’t turn out as planned. Who could have guessed that howling mobs in Tahrir Square in 2011 would fail to produce a peaceful democracy? Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had supported U.S. policy, used his […]
http://sarahhonig.com/2013/08/22/running-the-gauntlet/
Just a few days ago, mobs of Muslim Brotherhood supporters attacked a Franciscan school in suburban Cairo. They demonstratively pulled down the cross, smashed it to bits and replaced it with a black al-Qaida flag. That was just the beginning.
They looted the school, gutted it meticulously for hours and later burned down what remained of the classrooms. Then came the climax as three nuns were grabbed and paraded through the streets like humiliated prisoners of war.
The frenzied throngs, spat on the helpless female captives, poured refuse on them, slapped and groped at them and heaped abuse and scorn. This too lasted for hours during which the nuns literally ran the gauntlet, not knowing where they are headed and why they are at all going.
The sacking of the school wasn’t unique or unexpected. Egypt’s Christians, who comprise ten percent of the 80-million population, have long been hounded and persecuted. Their lot grew alarmingly dire after Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow and during the short-lived tenure of Mohamed Morsi.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/21/pipes-obamas-foreign-fiasco/
It’s a privilege to be an American who works on foreign policy, as I have done since the late 1970s, participating in a small way in the grand project of finding my country’s place in the world. But now, under Barack Obama, decisions made in Washington have dramatically shrunk in importance. It’s unsettling and dismaying. And no longer a privilege.
Whether during the structured Cold War or the chaotic two decades that followed, America’s economic size, technological edge, military prowess, and basic decency meant that even in its inactivity, the U.S. government counted as much or more in world developments than any other state. Sniffles in Washington translated into influenza elsewhere.
Weak and largely indifferent presidents like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton mattered despite themselves, for example in the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 or the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 1990s. Strong and active presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had greater impact yet, speeding up the Soviet collapse or invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
But now, with Barack Obama, the United States has slid into shocking irrelevance in the Middle East, the world’s most turbulent region. Inconstancy, incompetence, and inaction have rendered the Obama administration impotent. In the foreign policy arena, Obama acts as though he would rather be the prime minister of Belgium, a small country that usually copies the decisions of its larger neighbors when casting votes at the United Nations or preening morally about distant troubles. Belgians naturally “lead from behind,” to use the famed phrase emanating from Obama’s White House.
