EGYPTIAN FATHER KILLS THREE DAUGHTERS WITH A SNAKE!!!! BY RAYMOND IBRAHIM

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/egyptian-father-kills-three-daughters-with-snake/

An eye-opening story concerning an Egyptian father who killed his three young daughters with snakes last April was largely missed in the West. According to Emirates24:

An Egyptian man killed his three young daughters aged 7, 5 and 3 by letting a poisonous snake bite them. According to ‘Al Youm Al Sabea’a’ newspaper, the three kids were found dead in their bed in Bani Mazar town of Al Minya governorate of upper Egypt. Forensic reports confirm the kids died due to snake poison. The man allegedly bought two cobras and let them bite the children while they were asleep so as not to be caught. He was divorced from their mother because he doubted her. He alleged that the children’s mother was in a relationship before marrying him and, therefore, denied that he fathered the kids. But she insisted he support the three daughters. However, when his second wife gave birth to a boy, he decided to do away with the children, he confessed to police under arrest.

While Emirates24 gives the story a Western spin—saying the man doubted his wife’s fidelity and the true parentage of his daughters—the Egyptian show, Al Haqiqa (“the Truth”), which devoted an episode to this matter, never mentioned this angle, but rather portrayed him as killing his daughters simply because they were girls. Among the many people interviewed who verified this was the maternal grandmother, who said that, beginning with the birth of the first daughter, the man became hostile saying “I hate girls” and had to be placated to return to his wife. This scenario was repeated more dramatically with the birth of the second daughter. When he discovered his wife was pregnant with a third daughter, he tried to poison the pregnant woman but failed. He then spent a year plotting how to kill the girls without getting caught and had even tried earlier snakes which proved ineffective, until he finally succeeded.
After stressing that the father was clearly not insane, but acted in a very deliberate manner, the host of Al Haqiqa, Wael Ibrashi, explained that “this matter deserves discussion, since these mentalities are present in Egyptian society. We never thought that these understandings that existed in pagan [jahiliyya] times concerning female infanticide would ever return, but they have returned.”

P. DAVID HORNIK: OBAMA’S WAR ON JEWISH JERUSALEM ****SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/obama%e2%80%99s-war-on-jewish-jerusalem/

On Wednesday we heard that Jerusalem (along with, no less significantly, the Palestinian “right of return” and Hamas) had been omitted from the Democratic Party’s platform for 2012. On Thursday we heard that Jerusalem had been reinstated—by means of the ludicrous voice vote shown in this already viral video, in which it is not at all clear that the ayes really have a two-thirds majority or even a majority at all.

Whether or not the original omission was President Obama’s doing, it was certainly consistent with the content of another much-viewed video from slightly over a month ago, in which White House spokesman Jay Carney, by refusing to say what city the White House considers the capital of Israel, made perfectly clear that the city is not Jerusalem. It is also consistent with Obama’s failure to visit Israel since being president—which would entail coming to Jerusalem in pomp and splendor and at least tacitly acknowledging it as the capital, a message the president does not want to convey to the surrounding countries.

Back in June 2008, candidate Obama, in a speech to AIPAC, surprised everyone by declaring that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” That drew a sharp rebuff from Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas among others. And one day after his AIPAC statement Obama backtracked, telling CNN: “Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations.”

DAVID HOROWITZ: REFLECTIONS OF A DIASPORA JEW ON ZIONISM, AMERICA AND THE FATE OF THE JEWS ****READ IT ALL

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/david-horowitz/reflections-of-a-diaspora-jew-on-zionism-america-and-the-fate-of-the-jews/print/

Editors’ note: In the following speech accepting the Ben Hecht Award for Outstanding Journalism from the Zionist Organization of America, David Horowitz notes that he wants everything that the Zionists want–a muscular Israel willing and able to defy the growing Jew hatred in the world; a Jewish State “armed to the teeth” and ready to use its military; an Israel augmented by the addition of its historical birthright of Judea and Samaria. Yet the paradox is that until now, Horowitz notes, he has never considered himself a Zionist in the sense that Theodor Herzl and other founders used that term. Herzl’s dream was that a Jewish homeland would “normalize” the Jewish people in the eyes of an historically hostile world, end their persecution, and “solve” the “Jewish problem.” Horowitz states that he always considered this possibility to be a “fairy tale” because of his understanding of the way envy and hatred operate on the international scene, especially with the advent of “Third Worldism.” In addition to becoming a refuge, Israel also became a magnet for homocidal intentions. The events of 9/11 changed everything. Because of the rise of Islamism in the U.S.–especially influencing those who were once Israel’s strong defenders–as well as in the Middle East, Horowitz says that “supporters of freedom are all Zionists now.” Below is the text of the speech that Horowitz gave last night, Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012, in Philadelphia.

Let me begin by saying how honored I am to be invited to this podium by the Zionist Organization of America and Mort Klein, its courageous leader. For decades Mort Klein and the ZOA have stood on the frontline defending the state of Israel and American Jews, and they are doing it now in what is certainly one of the darker periods for the Jewish people – darker all over the world – in our 5,000-year history. I applaud you for supporting Mort Klein and his team. I am touched by the recognition of an organization like this for the modest work I have done in behalf of Israel and the Jewish people.

Still, there is a paradox at the heart of this honor awarded me by the Zionist Organization of America, which will take me a moment to explain. It is true that I am widely attacked by anti-Semites and Jew-haters and the enemies of Israel as a Zionist — and an arch Zionist at that. I have been called variously a Zionist Jew, an “Israel Firster Zionist Jew,” “a rabid Zionist” (by Julian Assange no less), a “radical right-wing Zionist,” an “extreme Zionist,” an “extremist Zionist stalwart,” an “unrepentant Zionist,” an “ultra Zionist” and a “Zio-Nazi.”

Today, anti-Zionism is the cause of Jew-haters and anti-Semites the world over, and for Jews embarrassed by the fact that they are Jews and that others fear and despise them for that reason. Even the rare Jewish magazine of the left that is actually a supporter of Israel, is uncomfortable with the connotations of the Zionist label, and with what it means for Jews to defend themselves. In a recent unflattering profile, the Tablet magazine described me as touring the country “making the case for a muscular Zionism.”

I plead guilty to this charge. I plead guilty though I have never actually been a Zionist, or made a case for Zionism in the sense that Herzl and traditional Zionists understand it. Yes, I want muscular Jews and a muscular Israel. I want Jews proud of the extraordinary nation-state Jews created in 1948 out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. I want Jews who are armed, and Jews who will defend themselves with arms if necessary. Muscular in every way. Yes.

I want more than just individual Jews armed. I want a Jewish nation-state possessing in its arsenal the most advanced modern weapons available, a state that can be counted on to defend Jews from their global enemies, and particularly their enemies in the Muslim world who are legion and who have sworn our destruction, and who are openly planning to complete the job that Hitler started. I want a Jewish state, armed to the teeth, because Islamic Nazis, who are the storm troopers of a second Holocaust, are already mobilized, and because — as we discovered during the first Holocaust — there are not enough non-Jews in the world who are willing and prepared to defend us.

I am glad that Israel exists. I am glad that there is a country that will preserve Jewish culture, and be a model to the world of what Jews can do when they are given the chance. Today Israel is per capita the world’s leading scientific and technological innovator and contributor to human advancement. As a Jew I am proud of that.

I am also thrilled that in the creation of Israel Jews have regained their birthright. After 2,000 years of exile, the oldest surviving indigenous people in the world has won the right to some of its stolen homeland. I look forward to the day when Judea and Samaria, the historic centers of Judaism, become part of the Jewish homeland as well.

That homeland is now occupied by Palestinian Arabs who are at war with Israel, who have proclaimed their Jew-hatred to the world, and who have forfeited any right to the territories by conducting five unprovoked, armed aggressions against the Jewish state. The official policy of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is to make Jerusalem and the entire region of Palestine Judenrein. No other country in the world is expected to suffer such genocidal assaults without securing borders that are defensible, and Israel should not be expected to either.

Nonetheless, there is a paradox in this honor given to me, a Jew who has never been to Israel and who has never considered himself a Zionist in the sense that its founders intended. Theodor Herzl and his followers embraced the Zionist idea because they believed that the creation of a Jewish nation would provide a solution to the “Jewish Question” – the fact that Jews had been a homeless people for nearly two thousand years and were ghettoized and persecuted in the alien lands to which they were driven.

Herzl’s Zionist idea was grounded in the belief that the establishment of a Jewish state on Jewish land would finally “normalize” the Jewish people and end their persecution. The Zionist idea was that by including Jews among the nations, Jews would become ordinary, and like other peoples — that their inclusion would finally “solve” the Jewish problem. That was the meaning of Zionism as Herzl understood it, and indeed as it was understood until the Holocaust and the actual creation of the Jewish state.

But Herzl’s dream proved to be a fairy tale, as delusional in its way as the dreams of socialism, communism and progressivism, whose believers hoped would provide solutions to the conflicts and sufferings that blight our human state. All these isms took hold in the 19th Century, and became forms of modern faith. The traditional religions they supplanted had trusted in a Divinity for such a solution, but were forced into retreat before the advance of Darwinian theory and modern scientific developments. All the messianic visions of the modern age were driven by the desire for an earthly redemption that would resolve our human dilemmas and achieve what the heavenly redemption could no longer convincingly offer.[1]

Among these fantasies of a better world than the one we inherited, Zionism was the most conservative, and the most practical. The quests for a socially just future are based on no human reality but on the expectation of a human miracle, a transformation of who we are and what we have been into something wonderfully different. Zionism by contrast was based on the experience of actual peoples who had already taken their place among the nations. It was a quest for normality. Not for a world transformation but for an integration into the existing world of others.

But even this modest hope of the Jews has proved an impossible dream. It is true that half of Herzl’s goal has been realized, and in an astounding way. Yet its very realization has proved the hope that inspired it to be a folly. By all standards of civilization and modernity Israel should be admired and emulated by the rest of the world. Instead, the Jewish state is hated and is a pariah among the nations, just as Jews themselves are pariahs in most of the world outside America today.

Far from creating a refuge, Israel has become the focal point of all the genocidal intentions against the Jews, which have never been more overt or more global. Today Israel is the site of a Holocaust for which the Islamic world openly yearns, and which the rest of the world – with the possible exceptions of America and Canada — will not lift a finger to prevent. This sobering reality has changed the meaning of Zionism, and has made it a more comfortable fit for me. Call it the Zionism of Survival.

In the household I grew up in, I was not brought up to be a Zionist because my parents were Marxist progressives who looked to a socialist future to provide an earthly salvation, and an end to the persecution of the Jews. My parents and their comrades believed that mankind’s conflicts would be resolved by a universal class whose revolution would abolish all nations and unite all peoples, and thus remove the distinctions that made them Jews.

My realization that this was not going to happen occurred through my relationship with a Marxist mentor named Isaac Deutscher. Deutscher had written a book called The Non-Jewish Jew, by which he meant Marxists like us – Jews who were of Judaism but not in it. By the time I came under his influence in the 1960s, he had become a defender of Israel and had been one since the Second World War. Deutscher viewed Israel as a “raft” state – a refuge that Jews could cling to after they had been shipwrecked in the storms that periodically engulfed them. The particular storm he was referring to was Hitler’s “Final Solution.”

During the interwar years, a debate had raged in Europe’s leftwing circles, which carried momentous consequences for those who participated in it. The debate was about how Jews should respond to the looming fascist threat. The Zionists were urging Jews to flee the continent and take refuge in the Palestine Mandate. Marxists like Deutscher argued that the Jews should stay in Europe and fight for the socialist revolution. But as Deutscher ruefully acknowledged later, the Jews who listened to the Zionists were still alive, while those who listened to Marxists like him were dead.

Under Deutscher’s influence, I became a quasi-Zionist, a believer in the raft state. Israel should exist and be defended until the socialist transformation abolished nation-states and solved the problem of the Jews once and for all.

Don’t think for a moment that this is some quaint Marxist delusion now consigned to the historical dustbin. The idea of a world without borders is alive and well in the international left and among liberals and progressives in America. It is the idea that animates the Democratic Party’s attacks on American sovereignty, and it is a vision whose intellectual leaders are Jews.

One of its canonical articles is called “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” — for the latter and against the former. It was written by Harvard philosopher Martha Nussbaum. According to Nussbaum, the cosmopolitan ideal which progressive people should aspire to is “the person whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world.” This attitude – that we are not Jews or Americans – but “citizens of the world” — explains why people on the left are so uncomfortable with — or simply hostile to — issues of national security and patriotism. It explains why progressive Jews can be indifferent to the survival of the Jewish state.

Even as I absorbed Deutscher’s lesson about the raft state, my belief in the progressive fantasy was rapidly eroding. I had begun to doubt the possibility of a redeemed future, a future fundamentally different from those with which we were historically familiar. As these doubts grew, they were changing my view of the unredeemed present. By the middle of the next decade I no longer believed in a new world order. This had immediate and profound consequences for my attitude towards Israel and my identity as a Jew, and as an American as well.

There was not going to be a future in which there were no longer nations or peoples in conflict; there was not going to be a future in which Jews would cease to be the objects of envy and resentment, and virulent hatred. There was not going to be a future in which a refuge – a raft state — was no longer useful.

Then came 9/11 and the Islamic attack on the World Trade Center. It was an event that made millions of people aware of the Islamist movement in the Muslim world and the fact that they were conducting a holy war against infidels in general, and Jews in particular. The incubator and leading force of this holy war is the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded by an admirer of Hitler and a godfather of the call to push the Jews of Palestine into the sea. Today, the spiritual leader of the Brotherhood is the Egyptian imam, Yusef al-Qaradawi, who has publicly prayed that the Muslim believers will finish the job that Hitler started.

Millions of Jews are in denial when it comes to the determination of Islamists to kill them. In part, this denial is psychological and familiar as when people face a prospect that is too terrible to contemplate. There are a billion and a half Muslims in the world today who worship a prophet who has told them that “the day of redemption will only come when Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, when the Jews hide behind the rocks and the trees, and the rocks and the trees cry out, ‘Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.’” For a billion and a half Muslims that is the word of God. Denial is one convenient way of dealing with this fact.

FRANK SALVATO: THE TRUTH IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE TRUTH

http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/6716

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-truth-is-deadlong-live-the-truth?f=puball

Not long ago I opined about how we need to make truth and honesty a
major litmus test in this year’s General Election. Not only do I stand by that declaration, I am doubling down on it. At a time when politicians – and especially Progressive and Liberal Alinskyite Democrat politicians – have successfully conditioned the American people to disregard the truth where the hard realities facing our nation are concerned, I can’t in good conscience pretend that their dishonesty – disguised as political spin – isn’t affecting the country. At a time when our fiscal house is teetering on collapse, our stature on the world stage dramatically diminished, we cannot afford to continue to allow Chicago-style Alinskyesque politicians to play ideological games with our future. The stakes are too high.

It is important to understand that the manipulation of the truth – both in words and in deeds – occurs on both sides of the aisle. Such is the nature of politics, or, rather, such is the state of politics We the People have come to tolerate. How many times have you heard a friend, neighbor or acquaintance say of a politician’s dishonesty, “Hey, they all do it!” To that end, we reap what we sow; we get what they pay for.

That said, the Progressive Movement has sired a special kind of dishonesty; one that serves an ideological purpose, and a purpose that seeks to reinvent the United States as something our nation was never meant to be.

According to R.J. Pestritto, the Charles & Lucia Shipley Chair in American Constitution and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Hillsdale College:

“…progressives wanted a thorough transformation in America’s principles of government, from a government permanently dedicated to securing individual liberty to one whose ends and scope would change to take on any and all social and economic ills.

Video Exposes Northeastern University’s Muslim Chaplain as an Islamist Extremist : Charles Jacobs

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/video-exposes-northeastern-universitys-muslim-chaplain-as-an-islamist-extremist

Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) today released a video (www.nuextremism.com) showing Northeastern University’s Muslim Chaplain, Imam Abdullah Faaruuq to be a supporter of convicted Islamist terrorists, and a religious leader who is inciting Boston Muslims against the U.S government.

“Our video shows that there is a culture of extremism at the Islamic Society of Northeastern University (ISNU) – the Muslim student group on campus under the leadership of its spiritual advisor, Imam Faaruuq,” said human rights activist Dr. Charles Jacobs, APT President.

Just days after a description of the findings documented in the video were published in the Boston Jewish Advocate, and the video’s imminent public release was announced, Imam Faaruuk’s page on the Northeastern website was removed.

Charles Jacobs, President of APT said, “His relationship with Northeastern University has been terminated.” We commend Northeastern’s President Joseph Aoun for this, but more needs to be done. We need to understand how this was allowed to persist for years, and we need to be sure there are processes in place to monitor and correct any teachings of hate at the University.

JONATHAN KARL: THE STEELWORKER FEATURED AT THE DNC DID NOT WORK FOR BAIN…..

http://news.yahoo.com/steelworker-featured-dnc-didnt-bain-165325041–abc-news-politics.html

Steelworker Featured at DNC Didn’t Work for Bain

By Jonathan Karl | ABC OTUS News – 3 hrs ago

CHARLOTTE, NC – SEPTEMBER 05: Former employee at companies controlled by Romney’s Bain Capital David Foster speaks during day two of the Democratic National Convention at Time Warner …more Cable Arena on September 5, 2012 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The DNC that will run through September 7, will nominate U.S. President Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) less

The Democratic National Convention on Wednesday featured three speakers billed as “former employees of companies controlled by Bain Capital.”

They each told compelling stories about jobs lost, allegedly because of the actions of Bain under Romney’s leadership.

But it turns out one of those employees never actually worked for a company controlled by Bain Capital. David Foster was supposedly one of those former employees on the convention schedule. He told the story about 750 steelworkers who lost their jobs when the Bain-controlled company GST steel filed for bankruptcy in the early 1990s.

“In 2001, with GST bankrupt and Romney still CEO of Bain, I stood in front of hundreds of steelworkers in their 50s and 60s, and retirees in their 70s and 80s, and told them Romney and Bain had broken their promises. Jobs, vacation pay, severance, health insurance and pension benefits that were promised – they were all gone,” he said. Read his full speech here

But Foster, according to a former spokesman for GST Steel, never actually worked for the company. “David Foster was never an employee of GST Steel’s Kansas City plant. He was employed by the United Steelworkers of America as their regional union director to represent GST Steel, but was not employed at our facility,” according to BC Huselton, who was head of HR at GST. Instead, Foster was a union organizer, who negotiated for workers that did work for the company. Foster explained in his remarks that he was an organizer during his dealings with GST Steel.

MICHAEL ORDMAN: GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/time-and-place-everything

Much can be said for being in the right place at the right time. After five years of life in the Jewish State, I certainly feel this is the country that is central to the future of this planet. The speed of development of Israeli innovations is simply unbelievable. With medical and scientific breakthroughs announced on a daily basis, we live in a time of miracles.
Take for instance the case of the Russian with a ruptured aorta in the heart. Moscow’s doctors had given up on him but realised that transporting him to Israel might save his life. 24 hours after highly complex surgery at Beersheba’s Soroka hospital, the 50-year-old medical tourist was disconnected from most of the devices keeping him alive, except for his iPod on which he was watching films.

Many of Israel’s medical research discoveries will only bear fruit towards the end of this decade, but we have much to look forward to. A cure for diabetes is likely, thanks to researchers at Israel’s Technion and Ben-Gurion University who have engineered insulin-producing tissue. They have found that transplanting the tissue into animals, lowers blood sugar levels. By 2020 we may also witness the paralysed being able to speak. Three Israeli professors have recorded neurone patterns during speech attempts and converted these into computer-generated synthesised speech. I’m certain this could help “locked in” syndrome sufferers such as Stephen Hawking take a more articulate place on the world’s stage.

One Israeli hi-tech device is literally “out of this world”. Israel’s Ricor Cryogenic & Vacuum Systems manufactures the K508 Integral Stirling 1/2W Micro Cooler. This neat little device is currently optimising the temperature of NASA’s vital CheMin chemical analyser on the Red Planet.

Many of Israel’s clean-tech developments have certainly come just at the right time. The residents of New Orleans re-settled following Hurricane Katrina will appreciate their new modern neighborhood being heated by the advanced solar panels supplied by Israel’s Solaredge. Meanwhile, Israel’s aptly named “Better Place” electric car infrastructure broke a world record when one of its battery-switched cars travelled 1172 miles on electric power over the course of 24 hours.

DERSH BLAMES THE DEBACLE ON “ROGUE DEMOCRATS”….SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/09/06/exclusive-dershowitz-blames-rogue-democrats-for-dnc-jerusalem-debacle-calls-on-president-obama-to-do-more/

I’ve really had enough. He is not stupid…but will fully blind. Any self-respecting Jew who heard the loud and decisive “boos” at the DNC when Israel and Jerusalem were mentioned and still finds excuses for them is no longer self-respecting or respectable…..period…..rsk

Exclusive: Dershowitz Blames “Rogue” Democrats for DNC Jerusalem Debacle, Calls on President Obama to do More

As President Obama prepares to accept the Democratic nomination for his second term in the White House on Thursday night in North Carolina, one of the United States’ most vocal supporters of Israel is calling on Obama to reaffirm his party’s entire platform language on Israel from 2008, and vowed to fight “rogue elements” within the Democratic party who seek to end the positive relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

After failing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city in their initial 2012 platform, which prompted a sharp rebuke from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Democrats reinstated language on the issue from their 2008 and 2004 versions, however Dershowitz told The Algemeiner that his party did not go far enough. Isolating Hamas until it renounces terrorism, solving the Palestinian refugee crisis through a Palestinian state alone, and affirming that a two-state solution could not realistically force Israel back to its borders of 1949 should be publicly endorsed by President Obama within the coming weeks, after statements on these issues were also left out of the Democratic platform this year.

DAVID SINGER: PALESTINE….NARROWING THE GREAT DIVIDE

The political rift between Hamas and Fatah arising from their struggle to control the minds and the hearts of the Palestinian Arabs has continued unabated and unresolved for the last six years.
DAVID SINGER IS A PROMINENT LAWYER AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS ANALYST IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA….AND “DOWN UNDER” HE’S REALLY ON TOP AND ONE OF MY BEST E-PALS…..RSK

Gaza and the West Bank have become two separate and distinct political fiefdoms that have materially contributed to making the attainment of the “two-state” solution envisaged in the Oslo Accords and the Bush Road Map impossible to achieve. The divide is so wide that the areas themselves have been dubbed “Hamastan” and “Fatahland” – signifying the utter hopelessness of reconciliation between two very polarized forces.

Political commentators Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff have succinctly summed up the position in their recent article – “Palestinian unity can wait – discord still growing between Hamas and Fatah”-

“Both entities – the West Bank (Fatahland) and the Gaza Strip (Hamastan) – continue their bizarre dance: endless negotiations on the need for unity with zero actions or results, and a reality that only proves how wide the internal Palestinian divide is.”

The results of a recent survey indicate that there is also deep division between the “1948 Arabs” – those who did not flee the 1948 War between the Jews and six invading Arab armies – and those Arabs who did – identified as the “1967 Arabs.”

The survey was undertaken by Professor Shifra Sagy, director of the Conflict Management and Resolution Program at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev – with funding from the German research foundation DFG.

The study came at the initiative of some of Professor Sagy’s Palestinian students. It was co-directed with her postdoctoral student Dr. Adi Mana, and PhD students Anan Srour and Serene Madjali.

The survey was taken among 1104 Israeli Arabs and 948 West Bank Arabs – who were all personally interviewed.

Views were expressed by each group on the following matters – and commented on by Professor Sagy:

1. Loyalty to the land:

“We asked Arabs of ’48 about their narrative, which is that they were loyal to their land when they didn’t desert it and stayed. The ’67 people look at the same issue, and they say the ’48 Arabs stayed on their land because they gave up and succumbed to the occupation without any resistance,”

2. The relative well-being of the 1948 Arabs as compared to the 1967 Arabs

“The ‘48 Arabs say this is our right as citizens of Israel, but in the West Bank, the popular narrative is that this relative affluence is because Israel coopted them into being loyal,”

3. On marrying each other

60 percent of Israeli Arabs surveyed said they would not want their daughter to marry a West Bank Arab, while 41% of West Bankers had the same attitude to their daughter marrying an Arab with Israeli citizenship.

JULIA GORIN: MURDER AND CORRUPTION IN KOSOVO? YOU DON’T SAY

http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2899

It Still Won’t Keep Maddie Albright from Getting her War-begotten Goodies

No sooner did I blog about the multiple-stabbing “suicide” of Kosovo’s privatization czar, and no sooner did I read that “Albright Capital Management has bid for the privatisation of Kosovo’s most profitable company PTK” (note: “The telecoms infrastructure that PTK today owns was initially funded by the citizens of all of Serbia before it was seized without any reparations”), than I was forwarded the following update:

Firm Eyes Kosovo’s Contested State Telecom (Aug. 30)

Kosovo is preparing to sell a majority stake in its state-owned post and telecom company PTK, a deal that could yield as much as €600 million ($753 million) for Europe’s newest and poorest country.

The bidding, set to begin next month [September], has attracted interest from European and Turkish phone operators, as well as from an investment company headed by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was a major backer of Kosovo in its war against Serbia. Already, however, the sale process has been clouded by corruption allegations, legal challenges, and the death of the state privatization agency’s chief, Dino Asanaj. In June, his body was found in his apartment in Kosovo’s capital city of Pristina, with 11 stab wounds. Authorities say he committed suicide.

Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, is an economic basket case. National unemployment stands near 45 percent, and per capita income hovers around $7,000, the lowest in Europe. The International Monetary Fund this year approved a $134 million bailout for the country and urged its government to raise more money by selling a stake in profitable PTK. “We expect big impacts on the economy and the telecommunication sector on the one hand, and at the same time we want to signal foreign investors that Kosovo is an attractive country to invest and do business [in],” Economy Minister Besim Beqaj says.

The government has tried, and failed, to privatize PTK before. An attempt launched in 2010 fell apart last year following a corruption investigation at the company. And earlier asset sales were tainted by accusations of wrongdoing: At the time of his death, privatization chief Asanaj faced investigation for allegedly demanding a bribe from purchasers of a privatized hotel property.