http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/how-putin-does-it/ When Vladimir Putin became acting president of Russia after Boris Yeltsin’s resignation on New Year’s Eve, 1999, the retired KGB Major-General Oleg Kalugin, then already living in or around Washington, was asked about the former KGB lieutenant-colonel. “Never heard of him,” Kalugin answered. The youngest chief of counterintelligence in Soviet history, Kalugin may have […]
http://torahmusings.com/2013/08/can-conservative-religion-survive-gay-marriage/ I. Orthodox Judaism and Gay Marriage A leading Catholic writer, my friend and former colleague Joseph (Jody) Bottum, shocked the conservative world last week with the publication of an argument for Catholic acceptance of gay marriage. Jody’s essay in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal is wrong on many counts but sounds an alarm we […]
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/st-debaters-say-about-israel-and-the-jews/ The Israeli Debating League is heading home from this year’s European Universities Debating Championship in Manchester. The annual “Euros” tournament brings together hundreds of students from across Europe to argue about thorny issues for which they have only fifteen minutes to prepare. This year, over two hundred teams battled over the motion: “This House Believes that Israel […]
http://mosaicmagazine.com/supplemental/2013/08/the-next-aliyah/
I feel very fortunate that such distinguished figures as Daniel Johnson, David Pryce-Jones, Walter Laqueur, and Hillel Halkin accepted Mosaic’s invitation to respond to my essay on the European Jewish future, and that Annika Hernroth-Rothstein gave permission to publish her personal letter about the severe dislocations of Jewish life in her country. From other places around Europe I received additional messages sounding similar notes to hers, some of them equally shattering. Nor is there room here to list and thank all those who mentioned or recommended my article in blogs and on social media.
I could only wish my conclusions were sunnier—and that, if European Jews are news today, the news were good news. Unfortunately, a mere seven decades after the Holocaust, the prospect of stormy times is not to be taken lightly. However one may finally come down on the facts and arguments marshaled in my essay, I am deeply grateful that at least they are being discussed.
Daniel Johnson’s deeply sympathetic comment begins with an anecdote about a Ukrainian-German Jewish student who encounters anti-Semitism for the first time at . . . the London School of Economics. I love that anecdote, which says so much. I also echo Johnson’s disappointment with Karl Schwarzenberg, the Czech foreign minister who, despite his family’s heroic stance under the Nazis and his own affection for the Jewish people, has not only succumbed to repeating anti-Israel clichés but dismisses reports of anti-Semitism in 21st-century Europe. I met Prince Schwarzenberg several years ago and will never forget something he said about his father: upon learning shortly after the 1938 Anschluss that the Nazis had forbidden access by Jewish children to Vienna’s public parks, the elder Schwarzenberg opened his own palatial gardens to them.
Johnson nevertheless lists some “cautious reasons” for optimism, some of which are well founded. Indeed, given the intensity of anti-Israel campaigns throughout Europe, one marvels at the pro-Israel resilience shown by large sectors (from 25 to 50 percent in polls, depending on the questions asked) of public opinion. Israel is admired as the home of “Silicon Wadi,” as a beacon of contemporary culture (Israeli movies are very popular in France), even as a haven of human rights (especially when it comes to gays); all this offsets the boycott sentiment to some degree. Another important sign is the election in Rome of the philo-Semitic Pope Francis. While Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular are not as entrenched in Europe as they used to be, they are still the main religious force on the continent and may yet undergo a revival in the face of an increasingly assertive Islam. That they should exert a positive rather than a negative influence when it comes to Jews and Israel is certainly of relevance.
http://www.romirowsky.com/13664/peace-vs-unrwa The John Kerry-Martin Indyk negotiating team needs to come to terms with the fact that the crux of the Middle East conflict is rooted in the Palestinian “Right of Return,” the collective demand claiming a legal and moral right for Palestinian refugees, and more importantly, for their descendants from around the world, to return […]
It is confusing to read the various prescriptions from arm chair strategists for solving the problems of Syria and Egypt.
To those who want military intervention- from killing Assad to drones and military strikes and so on. What would you all say of a doctor that attempts to cure typhus by giving the patient smallpox?
Also, what kind of intervention? We don’t fight to win since the Korean war. Oops, I almost forgot “Operation Urgent Fury” which ousted a communist led coup in Grenada in 1983. And that “epic” battle was fought just two days after America did a “cut and run” after the bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, when Arab terrorists detonated truck bombs. The death toll was 241 American servicemen,representing the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since Iwo Jima.
And who would be left to rule those nations? The barbarian is dead….long live the barbarian?
Hard questions and hard answers.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/obamacares-road-to-nowhere-on-the-glazov-gang/
This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Dwight Schultz, a Hollywood Actor, Dr. Karen Siegemund, Founder of Rage Against the Media and Howard Hyde, author of the new pamphlet, Pull the Plug on Obamacare.
The Freedom Center’s National Development Director, Tiffany Gabbay filled in for host Jamie Glazov, delivering a stellar performance.
The Gang gathered this week to discuss Losing the Middle East. The discussion occurred in Part I (starting at the 8:20 mark) and analyzed how Obama is trying to hand a vital region to the enemy camp. The dialogue was preceded by a feature on ObamaCare’s Road To Nowhere.
In Part II, the Gang discussed Racial Violence and Media Silence, shedding light on the murder of Christopher Lane and our culture’s willful blindness about its causes.
To watch both parts of the two-part series, see below:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/time-after-time/ It is a widely acknowledged fact that what goes by the name of reporting nowadays, in the mainstream media, is often shamelessly slanted – and that the slant is almost invariably leftward. But it is also true that some reporters are a good deal more shameless – to the point of being incontrovertibly mendacious […]
‘Humanitarian Wars Are Also Wars’
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-pundits-weigh-pros-and-cons-of-syria-intervention-a-918849-druck.html
The US, the UK and France have laid the rhetorical groundwork for a military strike against Syria. Germany too looks as though it will not remain on the sidelines this time. But will it happen? German commentators warn that escalation may only make things worse.
Preparations for a possible US strike on Syria are underway. According to a report in the Greek daily Kathimerini on Tuesday, Washington has made a formal request to Athens for permission to use two military bases in the country, one on the island of Crete and another on the Peloponnese Peninsula. Citing sources in the Greek Defense Ministry, the paper also reports that increased activity in the country’s airspace has been registered. The US has four destroyers in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean according to separate media reports.
The news comes just one day after US Secretary of State John Kerry delivered an impassioned statement in Washington condemning the apparent use of chemical weapons in Syria last week, saying it was a “moral obscenity” and that it “is undeniable.” White House spokesman Jay Carney said over the weekend that “there is very little doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime is culpable.”
The rhetoric would seem to indicate that a military strike on Syrian forces is imminent. US President Barack Obama has spent days consulting with military leaders in Washington and allies overseas on just such a strike.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5507 After last Wednesday’s poison gas attacks in Syria that caused an estimated 1,300 civilians to die in excruciating pain, the United States finally decided to appear as if it was about to take action. Though “assessing” whether it is Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces or his opponents who are responsible for the dastardly deed, […]
