http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/06/06/kerrys-embarrassing-peace-process-obsession/?print=1 There’s an old saying: it’s better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. This is Secretary of State John Kerry’s problem. Remarkably — in just a matter of weeks — Kerry has painted himself into a corner by staking his term as secretary of state on […]
http://sarahhonig.com/2013/06/07/another-tack-a-very-israeli-story/
Over the years I have translated to English some of the Hebrew poems I found most evocative and/or meaningful to me personally. Among them are quite a number by Fania Bergstein. Her name most likely means nothing to most Israelis, although so many know her rhymes by heart. They just aren’t aware of who wrote them, who enriched our childhood, whose lines became cherished household staples.
Amazingly, Fania Bergstein faded into undeserved anonymity. But she’s important to understanding our Israeli identity, why we are here, what moves and motivates us.
She died young, at age 42, some 17 years before the Six Day War to which she is tragically connected. There is relevance to remembering her these days when we mark another anniversary of that 1967 showdown, which has increasingly become yet another occasion to besmirch our self-defense, demonize us as land-grabbing imperialist ogres and castigate us for having inconsiderately emerged victorious.
Fania provides context and connections to who we really are. Hers is a quintessentially Israeli story – not only figuratively so. Israeli was her married surname.
I was a toddler when I first encountered her but her name didn’t sink in. Her verses did, however. By my third birthday, I had memorized all the stanzas in her book Bo Elai Parpar Nehmad (come to me pretty butterfly). My mother taught me to recite them with “feeling” and my father caught a butterfly for me, let me hold it for a moment and then release it – as in the title poem:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/can_you_hear_over_now_good_it_nothing_qgHME9HiVwERzgXlofcIoO First off, let me assure you that the Obama administration isn’t interested in your phone calls. You’re interested in your phone calls. Your mother is interested in your calls — especially if she’s not getting enough of them. If you’re lucky, the people on the other end of your calls are interested, though that […]
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/putin_wife_are_kaputski_CMzeqpvUUt26HYY980N5NJ
Marriage fizzles as affair rumor sizzles
Other than that, Mr. Putin, how was the show?
Russian President Vladimir Putin took in the ballet with his wife, then publicly addressed his mysterious 30-year marriage:
It’s over.
Putin, long rumored to have carried on an affair with sultry Russian gymnast Alina Kabaeva, made the announcement yesterday while appearing in public for the first time in more than a year with his wife, Lyudmila.
Standing in the lobby of a Kremlin hall after watching the first act of the ballet “Esmeralda,” the Putins answered questions from a state TV interviewer.
What about the rumors that Russia’s first family doesn’t live together anymore? “Is that true?” the interviewer asked.
“Let us disappoint the men who are raising themselves upon the ruin of this Country.” — John Adams http://www.newmediajournal.us/ The number of scandals involving the encroachment of the Obama Administration into – and onto – the constitutional rights of American citizens is beyond stunning. And it is without question criminal in many cases. But with […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350388/obamas-ethical-gymnastics-victor-davis-hanson
Presidential ethics are now situational. Obama is calling for a shield law to protect reporters from the sort of harassment that his attorney general, Eric Holder, and the FBI practiced against Fox News and the Associated Press. Through such rhetoric, he remains a staunch champion of the First Amendment — even though he now has the ability to peek into the private phone records of millions of Americans.
The president is outraged that the IRS went after those deemed politically suspicious. So he sacked the acting head of the IRS, Steven Miller, who was scheduled to step down soon anyway. The administration remains opposed to any partisanship of the sort that might deny tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, founded by the president’s half-brother Malik, but would indefinitely delay almost all the applications from those suspected of tea-party sympathies. Consequently, Lois Lerner granted the former’s request in 30 days, but took the Fifth Amendment when asked the reasons for obstructing the applications of the latter.
These ethical gymnastics were not entirely unforeseeable. Obama ran as a reform candidate for the Senate in 2004, while his campaign was most likely involved in the leaking of the sealed divorce records of both his primary- and general-election opponents. As a senator, he characterized recess appointments as tainted, only as president to make just such appointments — some of which later were declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Senator Obama employed filibusters to block judicial appointments; President Obama now condemns as bad-faith partisans any who might follow his own former custom. He championed public campaign financing before he became the first general-election presidential candidate since the program was enacted to opt out of it. President Obama has railed against any who would vote against raising the debt ceiling as putting partisanship ahead of the national interest — which, as senator, he himself had done. He ran in 2008 on the excesses of the Bush administration’s War on Terror, and then as president embraced or even expanded almost all of the very programs he had so adroitly demagogued in his campaign.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350409/get-behind-gomez-john-fund
Republicans feel they can’t catch a break with U.S. Senate races. First, they lost every close contest but one in 2012, bringing their total seats from 47 to 45. A seat in New Jersey opened up with the death of Democrat Frank Lautenberg this week, but GOP governor Chris Christie strangely left his party adrift by calling a snap special election in October that leaves underdog GOP candidates little time to organize and raise money. New Jersey hasn’t elected a Republican senator in over 40 years, but there was hope that if Christie had delayed the election till November 2014 an appointed incumbent could have built a credible record and held the seat.
Then there is Massachusetts, where on June 25 a special election will be held to fill the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State John Kerry. Internal polls show Democratic congressman Ed Markey, a 37-year veteran of the House, holding only a single-digit lead over Republican businessman Gabriel Gomez. Nonetheless, Republicans are privately resigned to disappointment — just two years after Scott Brown shocked the nation by winning a special election for a vacant Massachusetts Senate seat.
“Markey has oodles more money than Gomez, there is no fierce urgency among conservatives about winning, unlike with Scott Brown’s 2010 race, and Gomez doesn’t have Brown’s ability to soothe the ruffled feathers of conservatives,” one prominent GOP consultant told me.
Indeed, Gomez is a challenging figure for conservatives to unify behind — even in blue Massachusetts. He has said his party “is stuck in the past” and has refused to sign pledges against raising taxes and to repeal Obamacare. Indeed, during the campaign’s first debate on Wednesday, Gomez went out of his way to praise Romneycare, the intellectual inspiration for much of Obamacare. He simply doesn’t favor a federal solution using many of the same policy tools, he explained. That approach did wonders to confuse voters when Mitt Romney tried it less than a year ago.
Despite their differences, one thing is certain, which is that the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood are intent on more Sharia, more radicalism, and less freedom for all, wherever they gain influence.
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=47498a2e1ad97dd3d09ae19c5&id=2b3950049a&e=ce445aaf82
For western lay people, it can be hard to distinguish one radical Muslim from another. What is the difference between Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood? Are they really all that different? And why do Western governments seem to favour and even partner with Brotherhood-backed groups, but denigrate Salafis?
The 2011 People’s Assembly elections in Egypt focused the world’s attention on the Salafis when they proved to be the ‘dark horse’ of that poll, winning 25% of the seats. This, together with the Muslim Brotherhood’s 47%, gave Islamists almost three quarters of the seats in the Assembly. How do these two powerful Islamic groups compare?
Today the Brotherhood and Salafis also figure prominently in reports from Syria. Both brands of Islamists field rebel forces in Syria, and Brotherhood leaders dominate the Syrian National Council, which has been recognized by the Arab League and some UN states as the legitimate representative of Syria.
Often the past Western politicians have made the mistake of dismissing the Salafis as marginal extremists, while being all too willing to lap up the Brotherhood’s propaganda about their democratic credentials. A good example was David Cameron’s statement in Parliament this past week concerning the Syrian National Council, as he sought to downplay any suggestion that the conflict in Syria had a religious basis:
“When I see the official Syrian opposition I do not see purely a religious grouping; I see a group of people who have declared that they are in favour of democracy, human rights and a future for minorities, including Christians, in Syria. That is the fact of the matter.”
As troubling as Cameron’s ignorance about Brotherhood ideology appears to be, even more disturgin is his intent to forward military support to rebel groups, at the very time that a report has come from Syrian refugees of genocidal measures being enacted by Islamist rebels against the Syrian Christian minority.
This past week evidence has also emerged that among the insurgents who attacked the American Embassy in Benghazi in September 2012 were Egyptians, captured on video saying that ‘Dr Morsi sent us’. Yet Dr Morsi, the Brotherhood President of Egypt, is claimed by the US as an ally, and Brotherhood operatives have had long-standing high-level access to and support from the US Government.
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/06/06/the-thatcher-legacy One who does not disparage politicians as a class can still say that Margaret Thatcher was something relatively rare: a conviction politician, willing to forfeit popularity in order to advance policies in which she fervently believed. Free of double-talk, devoid of triangulation, indifferent to spin, Thatcher did what she thought right and was largely […]
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13407
The Chief Rabbi’s stirring words at this week’s “Closer to Israel” rally in London’s Trafalgar Square.
“In July 1938 leaders of 32 nations gathered in the French spa town of Evian knowing that something terrible was going to happen to the Jews,
Knowing that unless they did something a tragedy would unfold that would exceed all the twenty centuries of anti-Semitism put together.
And one by one, without exception, the nations of the world closed their doors. At that moment the Jewish people knew that on all the vast surface of this planet there was not one square inch they could call home in the sense given by Robert Frost as the place where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.
Today because of Israel the Jewish people has a home.
And when the war was over and one third of our people had been murdered, the Jewish people could have sat and wept and raged at the darkest night humanity has ever known.
But it didn’t.
It looked forward not back.
