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The Invisible (Female) Palestinians by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

Instead of referring to the female candidates by name and publishing their pictures, the electoral lists are using the terms “the wife of” or “sister.”

“It is disgraceful for any Islamic, national or independent list to scrap the names of the women. If they are not willing to recognize the woman’s name, how will they accept the role of the women woman’s name, how will they accept the role of the women after they are elected? … I’m against the participation of women in this manner. Let men participate in the election alone.” — Nahed Abu Taima, Media Development Center at Bir Zeit University.

Dr. Walid Al-Qatati, a writer and analyst specializing in Islamic affairs, said that the move reminded him of wedding invitations that are sent out without naming the brides.

When Palestinian women carry out attacks against Israelis, Palestinian society glorifies them as heroes. Then the names and photos of these women are plastered across billboards. Yet it appears that when the women wish to work for life rather than for death, their identities are not fit for public consumption.

In a move that has outraged Palestinian women and various Palestinian factions, a number of Palestinian lists contesting the upcoming local elections, scheduled to take place on October 8, have decided to omit the names and photos of female candidates.

Instead of referring to the female candidates by name and publishing their pictures, the electoral lists are using the terms “the wife of” or “sister.”

Critics have denounced the move as a “sign of retardation, extremism and bigotry.” Other Palestinians have gone so far as comparing the removal of the female candidates’ names and photos from the lists to the cruel pre-Islamic practice of infanticide (wa’d).

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Iran: The Return of Ahmadinejad & Co. by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

Iran’s Supreme Leader and the senior cadre of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been vocally critical of the nuclear deal. They fear further diplomatic and political rapprochement between the US and Iran, now that they have already achieved their objectives of the lifting of the four major rounds of the UN Security Council’s sanctions.

After the nuclear deal was implemented, polls showed that 63% of Iranians expected to see improvements in the economy and living standards within a year. But currently, in a new poll, 74% of Iranians said there had been no economic improvements in the past year.

Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying he wants to “redefine revolutionary ideals” set up by the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, appears to be launching a campaign to run in the upcoming Iranian presidential elections, in February, 2017.

Ahmadinejad was well-known for his incendiary and provocative speeches, which included denying the Holocaust. At the end of his presidential term, from 2005 to 2013, his approval rating was extremely low, and he managed to drive away most constituents across political spectrum, including the topmost hardline leaders. He also became the first Iranian president since 1979 to be summoned by the parliament (Majlis) to answer questions regarding his activities and policies.

After all of this, the common conception among politicians, scholars and policy analysts was that Ahmadinejad would never return to politics. It seemed that his retirement plan focused on founding a university and teaching, but his plan to open a university failed.

Despite his low popularity among people, however, the “principalists” (ultra-conservatives) were still on his side, due to his fierce anti-US, anti-Western and anti-Israel policies and rhetoric, as well as the fact that he remains a major figure in the coalition of several conservative groups, the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran.

After Ahmadinejad’s presidency, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appointed him to the Expediency Council, Iran’s highest political arbitration body, which arbitrates between the Guardian Council (the supervisory body over the parliament and elections) and the Islamic Consultative Assembly (parliament). The Expediency Council is predominantly made up of Iran’s hardline clerics, and functions as an advisory institution to the Supreme Leader.

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A History of ‘Evenhanded’ Failure Evelyn Gordon

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

Among those diplomats and journalists who don’t simply blame the Arab-Israeli conflict entirely on Israel, the preferred approach is “evenhandedness.” This approach, epitomized by the “cycle of violence” cliché, holds that both sides want peace and are equally to blame for its absence. Remarkably, this view has persisted despite decades of proving wrong in ways that hurt the very countries which espouse it – as demonstrated yet again by newly released documents from the Nixon Administration.

The documents, which Amir Oren reported this week in Haaretz, include redacted versions of the CIA’s daily presidential briefings on the eve of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The agency’s cluelessness is mind-blowing.

On October 5, 1973, one day before the war began, the CIA acknowledged that “The military exercises underway in Egypt seem to be on a larger scale and are being conducted more realistically than previous ones,” but nevertheless insisted that “they do not appear to be preparations for an offensive against Israel.” The agency even dismissed an obvious danger sign as a reasonable response to fears of Israeli aggression: “Cairo may have put its air defense and air forces on alert as a precaution against an Israeli reaction to the initial phase of the exercise.”

On October 6, just hours before the war began, the CIA’s briefing was similarly disconnected from reality:

Tension along Israel’s borders with Egypt and Syria has been heightened by a Soviet airlift that is in its second day. Neither the Israelis nor the Arabs seem bent on starting hostilities, but in this atmosphere the risk of clashes is greater than usual. … Both the Israelis and the Arabs are becoming increasingly concerned about their adversaries’ military activities, but neither side seems bent on starting hostilities … A military initiative at this time would make little sense for either Cairo or Damascus.

Once again, the agency seemed to view potential Israeli aggression as the main concern: “Syria’s cautious President [Hafez] Assad appears braced for a possible second blow from Israel rather than seeking revenge for his recent loss of 13 MIGs to Israeli fighters … Nevertheless, the Syrians’ fears could lead to a mobilization of their defenses, which in turn could alarm and galvanize the Israelis. Such a cycle of action and reaction would increase the risk of military clashes which neither side originally intended.”

And once again, it ignored clear danger signs, like the evacuation of Soviet dependents from Egypt and Syria. While admitting that this could be due to “fear of an outbreak of hostilities,” it optimistically suggested that instead, “The Soviets might be using the excuse of rising tensions to reduce their presence without annoying the Egyptians.”

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Israeli filmmaker uninvited to campus conference over ‘political correctness and BDS’

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

The film was referred to by ‘The New York Times’ as “one of the first close-up view of the motives and personalities in a group that rarely opens up to outsiders.”

Syracuse University has passed over formally inviting Israeli film director Shimon Dotan to their international film conference “The Place of Religion in Film.”
Dotan had previously been informally invited by one of the events organizers, William L. Blizek, according to The Atlantic. The film Dotan was due to show at the March 2017 conference was his feature-length documentary ‘The Settlers’ which chronicles the history of the settlements, the people who live there and the movement as a whole.

The film itself was referred to by The New York Times as “one of the first close-up views of the motives and personalities in a group that rarely opens up to outsiders.”

It was shown at the Sundance Film Festival (and was made with financial support from the Israeli network YES and from the European network ARTE, among others) and opened throughout Israel recently.

However, despite an invitation, and interest on the part of the filmmaker Dotan, he was uninvited to the event due to the “BDS faction on campus.”

The Syracuse University BDS faction made no known statements or threats to Dotan’s possible participation and were perhaps unaware of it all together.

A rejection email Dotan received from Professor Hamner of the Religion Department of Syracuse University stated that the group would make things unpleasant for the Israeli filmmaker and possibly damage the reputation and credibility of the organizers and the event.

The email added that they regretted not having the opportunity to see the film and as such they could not vouch for it.

The film has been highly rated among critics. It mainly focuses on the radical fringe settlers and, according to reviews, is perceived as showing settlers in a negative light.

Dotan said he wants people to understand the reality, in all its complexity. “I don’t think Israel faces a military threat, but I think it does face the threat of disintegration from within… I think there is a threat to democracy and to the moral fabric of the country… I want the film to present a dialogue with the settlers in a way that will enlighten people.”

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EFRAIM KARSH :THE OSLO DISASTER

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

Prof. Efraim Karsh, the incoming director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, skewers the Oslo diplomatic process as “the starkest strategic blunder in Israel’s history” and as “one of the worst calamities ever to have afflicted Israelis and Palestinians.”
“Twenty three years after its euphoric launch on the White House lawn,” Karsh writes in this comprehensive study, “the Oslo ‘peace process’ has substantially worsened the position of both parties and made the prospects for peace and reconciliation ever more remote.”
“The process has led to establishment of an ineradicable terror entity on Israel’s doorstep, deepened Israel’s internal cleavages, destabilized its political system, and weakened its international standing.”
“It has been a disaster for West Bank and Gaza Palestinians too. It has brought about subjugation to corrupt and repressive PLO and Hamas regimes. These regimes have reversed the hesitant advent of civil society in these territories, shattered their socioeconomic wellbeing, and made the prospects for peace and reconciliation with Israel ever more remote.”
“This abject failure is a direct result of the Palestinian leadership’s perception of the process as a pathway not to a two-state solution – meaning Israel alongside a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza – but to the subversion of the State of Israel. They view Oslo not as a path to nation-building and state creation, but to the formation of a repressive terror entity that perpetuates conflict with Israel, while keeping its hapless constituents in constant and bewildered awe as Palestinian leaders line their pockets from the proceeds of this misery.”
Karsh details at length how the Oslo process has weakened Israel’s national security in several key respects.
On the strategic and military levels, it allowed the PLO to achieve in one fell swoop its strategic vision of transforming the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into terror hotbeds that would disrupt Israel’s way of life (to use Yasser Arafat’s words).

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EDWARD CLINE: A GALLERY OF GAFFES

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder,
is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they
call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes
a wreck.” —Thomas Jefferson, to James Smith, December 8, 1822

You ask yourself: Why do the “gullible” make it so easy to mock and ridicule them? But, then, one could spend a career wondering about the cerebral workings of our politicians and other notables. Why is a stone so quiet, and inanimate? Because that’s just the way it behaves, or doesn’t behave. Here is a selection of memorable gaffes (or lies masquerading as innocent gaffes or lapses in synaptic activity).

We start with our reality-challenged, addled Secretary of State, John Kerry, who recently uttered something in Bangladesh that wins some kind of award for upper class twitism. According to CNS new and other sources, he opined:

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday during an appearance in Bangladesh that the media could “do us all a service” if they didn’t cover terrorism “quite as much.”

What would he prefer the MSM to cover, instead of the continued spate of Islamic terrorism? It isn’t as though it regularly reported the rapes by Muslims in Germany and Sweden, or the numerous honor killings in Muslim countries, or the number of gays thrown off of roofs in ISIS territory. Perhaps the annual pie-eating contest in Indianapolis? The annual Iditarod race in Alaska? How about the horrendous murder rates in “gun-controlled” Chicago? Nix the latter. It would be too much like reporting on Syria.

No country is immune from terrorism,” Kerry said at a press conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh. “It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

And that’s okay with Kerry. “Ignorance is Strength,” don’t you know? What the people don’t know won’t hurt them, until the next terrorist attack hurts them by the score. This piece of mental gibberish is in line with the German-Swedish policy of suppressing any news that would tend to make native Europeans less enthralled with how consistently and ubiquitously savage their new “refugee” neighbors” are. As the National Review’s Jim Geragehty noted on August 30th,

You can’t write satire about this administration anymore; it’s become too inherently contradictory and absurd.

Not even Saturday Night Live could make up this kind of statement for laughs. It’s too bad Edgar Bergen, the ventriloquist, isn’t around to create a John Kerry dummy.

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China’s Insult and Obama’s Climate Kowtow: Claudia Rosett

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

President Obama took office in 2009 promising that his brand of engagement would yield global respect for the United States. We’ve since had more than seven years of leading from behind, standing “shoulder to shoulder” with the “international community,” snubbing of allies, appeasing of enemies and cutting America down to size. As Obama makes what will likely be his final official visit to China, how’s it going?

Well, China, as host of the current G-20 summit, rolled out the red carpet — or at least the red-carpeted airplane stairs — for the arriving leaders of such countries as Britain, Australia, Germany and Russia.

For President Obama, arriving yesterday on Air Force One, there was no such dignified reception. Instead, there was a shoving match with the press and a confrontation with National Security Adviser Susan Rice, in which a Chinese official shouted “This is our country. This is our airport.” For lack of any portable stairs rolled to the front door of the presidential plane, Obama was left to jog down the aircraft’s own stairs at the back.

Obama downplayed the insult, telling reporters “not to over-crank the significance.”

Maybe that makes sense in the bubble-world of the Ben-Rhodes-foreign-policy narrative, where the tide of war is forever receding, the arc of history bends toward justice, the oceans rise and fall at the command of Obama’s pen and phone, and the echo chamber, on cue, applauds.

But China’s reception was an insult, pure and simple. No one need study the tea leaves to understand that this was a gesture of gross disrespect, seen around the world, putting the American president in his place — especially as compared with the warm reception for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

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Revolution against ‘rich parasites’ at utopian Burning Man Festival as ‘hooligans’ attack luxury camp By Nick Allen,

Posted By on September 4th, 2016

It is supposed to be a utopian vision of peace and love but this year’s Burning Man Festival has been marred by “hooligans” carrying out a “revolution against rich parasites”.

The festival plays out each year in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert where 70,000 people build a city in a week, burn a giant wooden effigy of a man, and then restore the arid playa to its original state.

In recent years it has become popular with Silicon Valley millionaires, and billionaires. Luxurious so-called “plug-n-play” camps have sprung up which use hired staff like cooks, builders and security, and allow international jetsetters to drop in for quick visits.
Many traditional “Burners” claim that is a betrayal of the sprit of “radical self-reliance” that is a cornerstone of the festival, which began in 1986.

As anger boiled over one camp called White Ocean, which hosts high profile DJs on a state-of-the-art stage, became the focus of anger.

The camp first made an appearance at Burning Man three years ago and its founders included the British DJ Paul Oakenfold and the son of a Russian billionaire.

While the camp was holding its “White Party”, at which revelers dress all in white and listen to techno music, it was attacked by vandals who flooded it with water and cut power lines.

In a dismayed post on Facebook camp leaders said: “A very unfortunate and saddening event happened last night at White Ocean, something we thought would never be possible in our Burning Man utopia.

“A band of hooligans raided our camp, stole from us, pulled and sliced all of our electrical lines leaving us with no refrigeration and wasting our food, and glued our trailer doors shut.

“They vandalised most of our camping infrastructure and dumped 200 gallons of potable water flooding our camp.”
The camp leaders said they felt like there had been an effort to “sabotage us from every angle” because “some feel we are not deserving of Burning Man”.

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Calling Trump names won’t stop him becoming US President By Simon Heffer

Posted By on September 4th, 2016

The liberal media are too quick to rubbish Donald Trump Credit:

Just two months before the free world elects its next leader – if you believe America leads the free world, that is – the world’s liberal media seem united on two things. The first is that Donald Trump is a monster. The second is that he will lose the US presidential election on November 8.

The first contention may well be true. I am not sure I would want Mr Trump to marry my daughter (if I had one), and he has said and done things both as a businessman and as a politician of which most civilised people would not be proud. However, as I have been writing here since last autumn, his defeat is no certainty.
It is one thing for an army of pundits, mainly in America but also here, to decide that because they think a man is vile, with opinions to match, he cannot win an election. But there is no logic behind that assertion. One need only look at some who hold high elected office in our own and other democracies to work that out. The present leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, for example – about to be returned to that position by a thumping majority – has feted the Irish Republican Army and associated with some of the vilest anti-semites.

Mr Trump defies gravity. Every time he says something that would end the career of a politician in most of the Western world, his poll ratings rise. A crude attempt to libel his wife has just spectacularly backfired. Mrs Clinton leads in the polls, but the gap is closing. After the conventions she led in a Fox News poll by 9 per cent. Now she leads in the same poll by 2 per cent. Her leads have particularly shrunk in swing states. The liberal establishment in America, while pretending Mr Trump is toast, quakes with fear at the thought that he just might pull it off.
Earlier in the summer The New Yorker, the parish magazine of East Coast liberalism, published an issue in which every cartoon ridiculed Mr Trump. Its readers were not entirely charmed, one or two pointing out that if Mr Trump really was irrelevant, what was the point in emphasising his existence in this way? Since then it has avoided saturation coverage, but most editions of the magazine include something painting Mr Trump as deeply undesirable, or highlighting elements of his campaign as if it were a freak show. The daily email the magazine sends its subscribers also routinely contains another exercise in solemn vilification of the Republican candidate. These boys are clearly worried.

“One or two readers of The New Yorker pointed out that if Mr Trump really was irrelevant, what was the point of an issue with every cartoon ridiculing him?”

And they are right. First, Mrs Clinton remains unappealing to a vast body of Americans, including to many Democratic party supporters. The question of the potential security breach for which she was responsible in using a private email server has harmed her character. The FBI documents just published exposing her carelessness with classified information reinforce the impression that when it comes to important regulations, there is one law for her and one for everybody else.

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MY SAY: AN ANSWER TO IAN TUTTLE WHO ASKS “IF HILLARY WINS, WHAT SHOULD CONSERVATIVES DO?”

Posted By on September 4th, 2016

If she wins, all those conservative Never Trumpers- David French, Krauthammer, Bret Stephens, George Will, Kevin Williamson, and you Mr. Tuttle, to name only a few, should hang your heads in shame for enabling her victory. Your silly hopes for 2020 will have been dashed by a loaded Supreme Court, unlimited and unvetted immigration of Jihadists, and a completion of the fundamental transformation of America by an Alynsky acolyte. Most painful of all, no matter who wins, you and those other conservatives will have lost all your standing and influence….Have a nice day….rsk

“A Clinton restoration will leave Americans looking for alternatives — will conservatives be ready?

A new Washington Post/ABC poll, released on Tuesday, shows that Hillary Clinton’s post-convention era of good feelings lasted approximately three weeks. Despite months of relentless media coverage of Donald Trump, his endless string of campaign calamities (including a weeklong spat with the family of a fallen American soldier), and the increasingly widespread view that Trump is a bigot — the worst thing you can be in American public life — the two candidates are about equally unpopular. He’s viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of registered voters; she’s at 59 percent.

Which is to say that, if Hillary Clinton is elected in November, she is in for a miserable four years. Because none of the sources of her unpopularity are going away.

First are the scandals. Ongoing litigation surrounding Clinton’s e-mails and her use of a private e-mail server would stretch into her first term in office, and is certain to yield further embarrassing revelations (like this week’s discovery that Clinton failed to turn over several e-mails related to the Benghazi attacks), and it was recently reported that field offices of the FBI are considering investigating the e-mail scandal in conjunction with various U.S. Attorneys’ offices. Even if those inquiries turned up nothing, their presence would continue to prompt questions about how seriously Clinton is taking security and transparency concerns as president (having spent her several years as secretary of state evading both). And, of course, looming over all of this will be the question of the Clinton Foundation. Given everything we know already about the way the Clinton Foundation operated during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, could we trust that the foundation and her White House would be truly separate? Hillary Clinton’s presidency would almost inevitably sit under a cloud of suspicion.