| Lebanon is falling apartnoreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 01 Jul 04:42 AM From AP: The crisis, which began in late 2019, is rooted in decades of corru | | From AP: The crisis, which began in late 2019, is rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by a post-civil war political class that has accumulated debt and done little to encourage local industries, forcing the country to rely on imports for almost everything. The Lebanese pound has nose-dived, banks have clamped down on withdrawals and transfers, and hyperinflation has flared. The liquidity crunch is crippling the government's ability to provide fuel, electricity and basic services. A shortage of dollars is gutting imports of medical supplies and energy. The fuel shortage has especially raised fears that the country could become paralyzed. Even private generators, used by the Lebanese for decades, have to be switched off for hours to conserve diesel. "We are really in hell," tweeted Firas Abiad, director general of Rafik Hariri University Hospital, which leads the country's coronavirus fight. Despite a heat wave, the hospital decided Monday to turn off the air conditioning, except in medical departments. Electricity cuts have affected internet connections in various cities, while bakeries warn they might have to close due to fuel shortages. The situation has become critical in recent weeks, with scuffles and shootings at gas pumps, including one in the northern city of Tripoli, where the son of one station's owner was killed. Many Lebanese decry...Read More |
Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal This morning I picked up a book from my philosophy student days, "Identity and Reality," by Emile Meyerson. It's a book about the metaphysical foundations of science, but the title inspired me. Everyone has an identity in the sense of their answer to the question "what are you?" Almost everyone has a need to find, adopt, or construct an answer. Often it's a list of things: a mother, a Jew, a football fan, a plumber, and so on. Recently "gender identity" has been added. There is no national identity with a longer pedigree than that of the Jewish people. For millennia Jews have had a unique language and religion, and a tradition that connects them to the Land of Israel, which (according to that tradition) was given to them by Hashem. Religious Jews explicitly remind themselves of this three times a day. This makes "Jewish" a very desirable identity. As Jimmy Durante said (about something else), "everybody wants to get into the act," despite the anti-Jewish attitudes that Jews have to deal with. Jewish identity is so sought-after, that one of the popular themes of antisemites is to claim that they are the "real Jews" and we are Khazars or just fakers. If a Jew chooses to live in the Land of Israel, they have additional prejudices against them. Recently a European "anti-fascist" said that as an Israeli Jew, I was "stealing the very air I breathe." But still, the Jewish identity is attractive because – here is the connection to the book I picked...Read More |
From Ian: Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities Academic freedom is the liberty which academics have, within the confines of the law, to question and test generally-held beliefs, and to put forward different, sometimes unorthodox, maybe unpopular, alternative views without being at risk of losing their jobs or being silenced at their work. A complaint sometimes made against Israel is that it culpably suppresses academic freedom in Palestinian universities. This complaint is sometimes deployed by critics of Israel defending themselves against the charge that they focus too exclusively on Israel's misdeeds at the expense of paying attention to other and worse political horrors elsewhere. Their reply is that academic freedom is a value especially in the care of academics everywhere, and so they have special reason to focus on Israel, since it's illegitimately eroding academic freedom in vulnerable institutions, while purporting to be a liberal democracy which values academic freedom and free speech. Cary Nelson's new book: Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities,[1] addresses this whole issue with exceptional thoroughness. He examines the state of academic freedom in Palestinian universities, and comments on the implications of this for the criticisms levelled by some Western academics, especially in the...Read More |
Antisemitism can be subtle: a threat not-a-threat. In which case, it can be darned hard to know how to respond. That was the upshot of a recent thread on a Jewish mommies group on Facebook. The thread begins with a long story, a kind of plea for help. A Jewish woman living with her family in a townhouse reports feeling intimidated by the behavior of a man living across from her who works for the management of her building complex. This man appears to be spying on her family and acts in a strange and vaguely threatening manner. She notes that one of her children is black. But there's not enough about this vague threat, about this man, to bring to the police. The man's suspicious conduct is amorphous: not specific enough to pin down as such, or to report. In the comments section, our Jewish mom reveals that she is actually afraid to go to the police. She fears that if she doesreport the man to the police on so little evidence, not only will there not be enough to bring him in or do anything about him, but he might find out that she went to the police. He might retaliate. All of these issue would be true of a restraining order, as well. On what basis would she request such a measure? The man hasn't done anything overtly threatening. He hasn't burned swastikas into her lawn, yelled "Kike," or thrown feces at her. Reporting the man (she calls him "The Nazi") or taking out a restraining order may not effect anything other than to anger him. And what if the man is mentally unbalanced...Read More |
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We reported yesterday that Mahmoud Abbas sponsored a supposedly "scientific" conference aimed at coming up with ways to combat the facts of Jewish history by promoting academic papers that supposedly refute it.
The conference at Open Al Quds University concluded today, featuring a speech by PA's minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Mahmoud Abu Mowais, where he said "we need the papers of this conference and a committee emanating from this conference to help us achieve the strategy of higher education and scientific research and the practical steps taken by the ministry in this field. Universities have a key role in analyzing and refuting the [Israeli] narrative, and we focused on three religious axes and legends made them claim that Palestine is their land. "
"The Zionist narrative of the Holocaust brought them thousands of immigrants, while the current criminal holocaust of the Israelis against the Palestinians must be confronted," he said.
Besides the antisemitism of comparing the Palestinian issue with the Holocaust, note that he didn't say that the Holocaust itself brought Jews to Palestine - it was the "Zionist narrative of the Holocaust."
Somehow the Zionists convinced the Jews in Europe that their relatives were slaughtered. Mowais added that "all the decisions and curricula of the occupation are focused on the fact...Read More |
From Ian: Amb. Nikki R. Haley and Richard Goldberg: A Better Blueprint for International Organizations The United States must call out China's attempts to co-opt the United Nations and its agencies. We should rally other countries to oppose China's influence. As ambassador, I lost track of how many countries expressed their fear of China's bullying. They are counting on us to have their backs – and to push back, hard. The WHO's struggles illustrate another sad reality: Many UN agencies are broken. The United States should try to fix them where possible. Yet we cannot fall into the trap of mistaking process for progress. Some parts of the United Nations just cannot be salvaged. Sometimes we are better off leaving them behind. An obvious example is the UN Human Rights Council, which is a cesspool of human rights violators – from Cuba to China to Venezuela to Russia. I pressed our allies and partners to demand reforms, but they were content with the status quo. So I led the effort to withdraw the United States from the council. We care too much about human rights and individual freedom to be part of a group that undermines both. Our principles are too important to get lost in the endless and pointless process that UN bureaucrats prefer. We also withdrew from the Human Rights Council because the United States stands with our friends. The council spent the vast majority of...Read More |
Two years ago, the House of Representatives had a unique opportunity. As the Associated Press summarized the situation at the time under the headline House Democrats fail to condemn anti-Semitism, don't rebuke Rep. Ilhan Omar: Ms. Omar has on multiple occasions questioned the support shown for Israel by most members of Congress. At one point she suggested it was because they were bought off by Jewish money and more recently she suggested Israel-backers had dual-allegiances both classic anti-Semitic tropes. The expectation was that the House was going to condemn antisemitism -- and rebuke Omar in particular. That did not happen.
Among the excuses for not condemning Omar, the Democrats claimed:o "Ms. Omar has faced unconscionable attacks as one of two Muslim women in Congress"
o "This woman has death threats"o "The question was maybe she needs security because of the kind of wrath that she has been facing. That is really unacceptable." So in the end, Omar was not condemned at all. And neither was antisemitism -- at least not in the way that had been expected: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants were rewriting the resolution to include other forms of hate speech, and they postponed a vote that had been expected to occur Wednesday. "People do feel if we're going to condemn one form of bigotry that we make sure we also condemn other forms of bigotry," said Rep. Pramilla Jayapal, co-chair of...Read More |
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Today, UNRWA's advisory committee will meet to address yet another deficit in its budget.
UNRWA has warned that by August its deficit will hit $30 million and that its annual deficit is at $150 million.
All of this is despite the US resuming aid to UNRWA to the tune of $150 million a year and an additional $33 million to help rebuild Gaza.
This happens every year - war or no war, COVID or no COVID. UNRWA cries that it is running out of money and that it won't be able to fulfil its outdated and bigoted mandate, and the nations of the world give millions to bail it out and look like humanitarians.
No one steps back and asks - why do Palestinians get schools funded by the world when no real refugee population does? Why do they get a completely separate medical infrastructure when no real refugees do? What gives fake Palestinian "refugees" a higher priority than the tens of millions of real refugees?
Why fund an agency whose entire purpose is to perpetuate the problem it is supposedly meant to fix? The number of people it has to feed and house...Read More |
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