http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ A TRUE WORK OF ART The New York Times reported in 2009 that Art in Embassies spends about $4.5 million a year for permanent art acquisitions; chief curator Virginia Shore said at the time that artists and dealers support the program via favorable pricing; for the embassy in Beijing, an outlay of $800,000 yielded […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335127/egypts-predictable-unraveling-andrew-c-mccarthy As Egypt under the heel of Mohamed Morsi unravels, here’s the late-breaking news: The Muslim Brotherhood is the enemy of democracy. This has always been obvious to anyone who took the time to look into it. Nevertheless, it has not been an easy point to make lo these many years. Even as the Justice […]
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/12/06/egypts-economic-breakdown-deepens-the-crisis/ Prospective economic ruin has energized Egypt’s political crisis since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in January 2011. Mohammed Morsi’s Islamists and the opposition are not battling in the streets of Egyptian cities about economics, to be sure, but about how to govern a country that cannot meet the basic needs of most of its […]
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/12/07/msm-awakes-washington-post-finally-covers-justice-dept-scandal-resignation/
PJ Media was the first national news site to report a story of corruption in the Justice Department that has now led to the resignation of U.S. Attorney Jim Letten in Louisiana. The Washington Post finally covered the scandal in a front page story today. Yet the paper had not previously reported on the findings of a federal judge for over a week after Adams reported them here at PJ Media.
The judge found that at least two government lawyers had written anonymous blog posts on a New Orleans’ Times-Picayune website that attacked the defendants and their lawyers in a federal prosecution being handled by the Louisiana U.S. Attorney’s Office and the infamous DOJ Civil Rights Division. There were also leaks of grand jury proceedings in the same case.
Letten’s chief assistant Jan Mann was involved in the wrongdoing that the federal judge said was not only unprofessional and unethical, but may have also included “apparent false testimony/statements (by commission or omission), suborning false testimony, and making false statement to a federal judge.”
This matter is so serious that the judge sent copies of his order and findings to the Louisiana Bar Association for possible disciplinary proceedings against the lawyers.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/al-qaeda-runs-free-in-area-the-size-of-texas/ A Democratic-led Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee learned at a hearing this week that not only is al-Qaeda not on the run, but it controls a huge chunk of west African territory as a safe haven and possible launching pad for attacks. Earlier this year, a military coup deposed Mali’s government, leaving the country split […]
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=294955 At the UN General Assembly last week, histrionic spin trumped historical substance, while sinister subterfuge went unchallenged. They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israeli freedom. – Pilar Rahola, Spanish journalist The appearance of the Palestinian national personality comes as an answer to Israel’s claim that […]
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/21123-Differing-Chanukah-Stories-Still-Argued.html Differing Chanukah Stories Still Argued The earlier written narrative of the Maccabean revolt against Hellenization and outlawing Jewish worship differs in emphasis from the later “official” Jewish take on the result. The portion of the Apocrypha (biblical era writings not included in the Jewish Bible) dealing with the events does not mention a miracle […]
This dispatch can also be read here: http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001321.html
* “The fragrance is pleasant and attractive, like the missiles of the Palestinian resistance, and especially the M-75”
* Chants of ‘Jews to the gas’ and bomb threat greet Israeli musicians in Belgium
* Stevie Wonder pulls out of pro-Israel concert after pressure from staff at the UN
* Former editor of The Sun: anti-Israel coverage is “a form of proxy for anti-Semitism” by many journalists
* Young Afghan woman beheaded by her husband for refusing to work as a prostitute
(One or two of the items below are from last month, but I didn’t have time to include them in a dispatch until now.)
CONTENTS
1. MacKenzie: anti-Israel coverage is “a form of proxy for anti-Semitism”
2. New perfume in Gaza named after Hamas missile
3. Huge billboards in Gaza say “Thank You, Iran” in Arabic and Hebrew
4. Two arrested for beheading teenage girl in Afghanistan
5. Chants of ‘Jews to the gas’ and bomb threat greet Israeli musicians on European tour
6. Batsheva dance performance interrupted in Britain
7. Stevie Wonder pulls out of yesterday’s “Friends of the IDF” concert after UN pressure
8. Krauthammer: The UN became a playpen for dictators
9. Despite ongoing atrocities, Ivory Coast elected as UN Commission Vice-Chair
10. Iranian writers, poets call for end to censorship
11. Iran to investigate jailed blogger’s death
12. Two Israeli documentaries make shortlist for Oscars
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=6661
You summoned our ambassadors to be reprimanded over the most natural thing on earth: settling our own country. You’ve got it wrong. We never settled on “occupied Palestinian territory.” This is our country, the Jewish people’s only homeland. We didn’t come to Israel because of the pogroms or the Holocaust. We didn’t ask you to do us any favors “at the Palestinians’ expense” because other countries had a centuries-long hobby of destroying, killing and wiping out Jews.
We came home because it was what we wanted, with all our souls, for generations. We never gave up the dream of returning to Zion. No matter where on earth they were, Jews prayed facing toward Zion. Three times a day they asked to be allowed to behold the return to Zion with their own eyes. Even as they thanked God every time they ate bread, they always prayed in grace after meals: “Have mercy on Zion” and “Build Jerusalem speedily, in our own time.” At the happiest moment of their lives, groom and bride swore the oath of Zion’s exiles, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget itself.” Even during the exile, the cycle of the Jewish year was set according to the agricultural seasons in the land of Israel. Our people started returning to our land in steadily-growing groups over a hundred years before the Zionist movement was established.
And the land kept faith with its own. It never accepted another nation. After we were exiled, no state ever existed here. Most of the land remained desolate for centuries. Nomads passed through it. After the Second Temple was destroyed in the first century C.E., many Jews remained there. They survived the Christian occupation until the seventh century, when the Muslims occupied the land and gave the Jews there two choices: conversion to Islam or exile. Those who cleaved to the God of Israel went into exile. Those who cleaved to the land of Israel converted to Islam. They lived like the anousim — forced converts — of Spain for a generation or two and then were assimilated. What a historical irony — the real old-timers among the Arabs in Israel have Jewish roots. Most of the rest arrived after we started coming back home. Like the Muslim immigrants in your countries, Muslims from the region came to the land of Israel seeking work. Many of them arrived here when the British conquered the country.
http://www.theamericasreport.com/2012/12/06/the-gaza-crisis-and-the-intellectual-left-in-latin-america-a-dark-picture/ The recent Gaza crisis, during which Israel responded with a limited military operation to stop Hamas missile attacks against Israeli populations, unleashed a number of reactions by intellectuals in Latin America. Some of these reactions were expected but others raise serious concerns about the direction Latin America is taking in what is called “the […]
