| Italy set to pass law making Islamic worship much more difficult. (And it might affect Jews, too.)noreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 29 Jun 04:45 AM Fro | | From IndiaTV and ShiaWaves:
Italy-- home of over 2.5 million Muslims-- is set to pass a controversial law that would ban prayers in public places and unauthorized worship buildings. According to Anadolu News Agency, if passed, the law could shut down thousands of Islamic prayer spaces amid the fact most of the prayers are being held in private spaces. The bill, which was drafted by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, will target prayer spaces that are not in mosques or those that have never received formal approval to be used for worship. According to a report published by the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy (UCOII)in 2017, there were 1,217 Muslim prayer spaces in Italy, of which only six of these were officially mosques. Approximately 50 others have obtained authorization for religious activities. The remaining spaces, predominantly situated in garages, warehouses, apartments, and basements, are classified as cultural associations but are also used for prayers. Proponents of the bill openly acknowledge their aim to prohibit these non-mosque Islamic worship spaces. I did not read the text...Read More |
From Ian: There is no such thing as 'making peace' To cry peace, peace, when there is no peace, as the Jewish prophet, Jeremiah, taught us long ago, is not an expression of hope but a foolish and dangerous abrogation of reality. It dulls the mind and the aspiration of a people who then become lost and blinded under a veritable veil of deception. Peace is impossible for a nation like Israel without its own demonstration of unassailable military strength and its utter rejection of concessions to an obdurate enemy. The Muslim world respects strength. It treats concessions with complete and utter scorn. It considers overtures of peace as a sign of weakness and becomes emboldened in its aggression. When that enemy is an Arab entity unwilling to make any concession whatsoever, and when the world expects Israel always to give and the Arabs always to take, then to continue along that same path to nowhere, becomes an Israeli self-delusion, leading to worse: Self destruction. It is high time for Israel to be making demands upon the Arabs, starting with territorial concessions from the vast Arab and Islamic world. Based upon prior precedents in Muslim history going back to the time of Mohammed and his dealings with the Quraish tribe in Mecca, the Arabs will never make peace or accept a Jewish sovereign state in territory they have previously conquered in the name of Allah – even though the ancestral and Biblical Jewish homeland...Read More |
Interview with Tuvia Victor of Havat Efraim Havat Efraim, the
El Children's Zoo, comes upon one like a surprise. My friend had said "I'm
going to the petting zoo in Beit El. Do you want to come with?" I eagerly accepted. It's not that I cared so much about
seeing a "petting zoo" but I really, really wanted to go to Beit El. Somehow in
43 years of living in Israel, I had never managed to see this important biblical
city. Here was my chance and I was taking it with or without the animals. It was a magical day. Havat Efraim, or "Efraim's Farm" is not really a "petting zoo"
(or "pinat chai" as the Hebrew-speaking locals call it), though there is a
bunny pen for this purpose. It's a proper children's zoo, albeit small, nestled
inside a wooded area, with numerous water features and proper benches to sit on.
Some of the animals roam free, while others are in cages, and the place just seems
to wind on and on, as you constantly come upon yet another interesting species
of animal, just around the corner. The man who runs this impressive—and impressively-sized—children's
zoo is Tuvia Victor. It is doubtful that Victor ever expected to become a
zookeeper. Born in South Africa, the Tuvia Victor with a deer at Havat Efraim, Efraim's Farm
accountant/insurance and pension agent has
lived in Beit El since he was married, now nearly 37 years ago. Today, the
Victor family is a living representation of the...Read More |
Several weeks ago I wrote about how Saudi Arabia is positioning itself as the leader of the Middle East, and what it wants to accomplish.
Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, at the Aspen Ideas Festival this past weekend, described the vision in more detail - including where Israel fits in. "We want to see a thriving Israel," she said. "We want to see a thriving Palestine. Vision 2030 talks about a unified, integrated, thriving Middle East and last I checked, Israel was there. We want a thriving Red Sea economy." The princess continued. "We don't say normalization, we talk about an integrated Middle East, unified [as] a bloc like Europe, where we all have sovereign rights and sovereign states, but we have a shared and common interest. So that's not normalization. Normalization is you're sitting there, and I'm sitting here, and we kind of coexist, but separately. Integration means our people collaborate, our businesses collaborate, and our youth thrive." The Saudi vision is to have a unified Middle East bloc of nations where there is not...Read More |
From Ian: White House Hires Anti-Israel Professor From University Engulfed in Anti-Semitism Controversy The White House's newest hire is a City University of New York (CUNY) professor who has accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and "systematic genocide," a move that is raising alarms among the many people who are already concerned about the Biden administration's failure to combat anti-Semitism on America's college campuses. Ramzi Kassem, a professor at CUNY's law school, was tapped to serve as a senior policy adviser for immigration in the White House's Domestic Policy Council. Kassem is a vocal Israel critic who spent a portion of his time as an undergrad at Columbia University writing scathing criticisms of the Jewish state, a Washington Free Beacon review found. Kassem, who helped defend terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, charged the Jewish state with genocide and decried "unconditional" support for Israel. Kassem's hiring comes as the Biden administration fights the perception it is feeding Israel's opponents. A closely watched White House plan on combating anti-Semitism, for instance, was recently watered down by anti-Israel activists. The State Department admitted on Monday that it is boycotting research partnerships with certain Israeli organizations. CUNY announced that Kassem "will work to support the Biden-Harris agenda across a range of immigration issues" using his expertise as "a national leader...Read More |
The absurd charge of "pinkwashing" says that Israel promotes gay rights in order to distract the world from its treatment of Palestinians. In short, the progressive argument states, when Israel does something progressive, it must be done for evil purposes. But what about the hundreds of millions of Muslims who are explicitly homophobic? Well, they have a different take on Jews, Zionism and gays.
The Iraq-based Buratha News Agency asked 35 Muslim writers, political analysts, and academics to give their opinions on what they called "Western countries' calls for perversion and pornography."
Several of them blame Jews and Zionists for spreading homosexuality through the world. Writer Adnan Jawad says that the West, "led by Washington and with the Zionist mentality," spread homosexuality to help destroy the "golden billion" Muslims in order to get to their natural resources. Similarly, political analyst Dr. Ali Al-Taweel claimed, "The golden billion plan that floated to the forefront of the media these days through the statements of American officials and Zionists is not separate from the issue of homosexuality, which they are promoting strongly." Political science professor Dr. Jassim Al-Hariri responded that "The Zionists encourage homosexuality, as the head of the first international group of male homosexuals was a Jew, Magnus...Read More |
In a perfect example of how the media reports what it wants to report and doesn't bother to check facts, we see these screaming headlines today: It takes only a couple of minutes to find the podcast where she made these comments - two weeks ago - do a quick search on the transcript, back up two minutes (to about 1:12:00) and hear what the context was. Barr was speaking about how social media and regular media is now censoring people and forcing them to only speak what they claim is "the truth." Host: "There's always been a ceiling on speech, hasn't there?" Roseanne: "Of course! Nobody wants to hear the real truth. They're horrified now. They're ready to go with bullshit, it's easier... you know I'm glad that they did set up all these guidelines so that we only are allowed to speak 'the truth'. And 'the truth' is that Biden got 81 million votes by winning 36 counties, and that is just incredible it really really is, and that of these 81 million supporters who gave him more votes than any president has ever gotten before. He came with a mandate from these 81 million voters. You know I'm just glad that they were very careful to make sure that nobody could detract from that proven 'truth,' you know what I mean?....You can't even speak on those platforms (like YouTube) . You can't even speak on that in those platforms, no, you can't say that's all a lie. 'The election was not rigged 36 counties can give you 81 million votes...Read More |
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