| Hezbollah embarrassed by extravagant weddings as Lebanon suffersnoreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 27 Jul 04:45 AM From Arab News: Empty supermarket sh | | From Arab News: Empty supermarket shelves, hours-long queues for gasoline, and resorting to sleeping on the balcony to endure no electricity for fans or air-conditioning in the summer - such has become the routine for the everyday Lebanese. "These scenes of humiliation, people should not bear," Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech last month, waving his finger as he lambasted the long fuel lines in recent weeks. "Those responsible for government formation need to listen to people's voices and look with pain at the cars queueing up for fuel and the loss of electricity and medication," Nasrallah said as he urged his supporters to be patient and to sacrifice. Indeed, Lebanese people of all backgrounds should not have to bear with the consequences of years of government corruption and a financial meltdown - and yet, it appears that Nasrallah's former representatives in government, and his party allies' current parliamentarians do not fall into that category. Free Patriotic Movement MP Ibrahim Kanaan and former Hezbollah MP Nawwar Al-Sahili both walked their elegantly-dressed daughters through fireworks-laden walkways and striking strobe lights this week - not two weeks after former Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri stepped down from attempting to form a government after 10 months. Photos and videos of the luxurious weddings were widely shared across social media as they were heavily criticized...Read More |
From Ian: A hatred that dwells alone? Antisemitism debate cuts to heart of Zionist vision Left and right When the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville in 2017 chanted "Jews will not replace us," they were deploying the same mechanism: Explain away real anxieties and fears by misdirecting them onto a nefarious Jewish power. To European conservatives of the 19th century, Jews were the unwanted liberalizers or communist agitators. But they were no safer in the Soviet sphere in the 20th century, where they quickly became the regime's favorite target. Where conservatives and nationalists hated the Jews' "cosmopolitanism," communists depicted them as a capitalist vanguard and nationalist reactionaries whose clinging to their cultural distinctiveness threatened the global progressive revolution. In hindsight, it might astonish us that Zionism could ever have believed the solution lay in changing the Jew. Antisemitism, then and now, was simply too useful to be abandoned just because the Jews of the eastern hemisphere had reorganized themselves into a nation-state. Strident opposition to Israel's existence on the ideological left has its intellectual roots in that Soviet antisemitism. In Soviet discourse, Jewish peoplehood was a very specific sort of threat: a retreat from the progressive project toward the old nationalisms that communism (and more...Read More |
If ever there was a time when one would think that antisemitism was not an issue, it would be 1946.
The horrors of the Holocaust were apparent to all. Israel had not yet been reborn. What possible excuse could ther be for Jew-hatred in 1946?
Yet if you look at the Jewish newspapers from exactly 75 years ago, you can see the headlines: In that same issue of the B'nai Brith Messenger was this article on antisemitism by Dr. Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, a German Jewish immigrant who founded the Jewish Spectator magazine. Her essay on antisemitism could have been written today. You Can't Argue With Bigots By DR . TRUDE WEISS-ROSMARIN Can anti-Semitism be fought with reason ? No , says Dr . Rosmarin. The only defense is in reforging the armor of Judaism. IF JEWISH history has proved anything ; surely it is the impossibility of fighting anti-Semitism with reason . The hatred of Jews is a primitive antagonism that sprouts from the aboriginal fear of the different , the nonconforming . Jew-hatred has never needed logical justification for enlisting followers . The triumphs of antisemitic agitators prove that the slogan "kill the Jews" is all that is needed to rally the masses . Those who would fight antisemitism with reason meet their most formidable obstacle in the nonsensical , illogical and contradictory charges they are expected to disprove . Simultaneously...Read More |
Recently, Palestinian artist Taqi al-Din Sabateen painted a picture on the separation barrier, showing an Israeli soldier who removes his helmet to reveal a KKK mask, as he glares at a Palestinian child hilding a goldfish bowl. Calling Israeli Jews racists has been fashionable since Israel existed, and it is not considered outrageous anymore. It should be. The cumulative effect of this slur - along with "genocide" and "apartheid" and all the others - is that people believe it and eventually it becomes something that you cannot even argue against because they are accepted as historic fact. Which is entirely the point. To the immediate left of this mural is another, of PFLP terrorist and airplane hijacker Leila Khaled. At the very same time that the audience is being told that Israeli Jews are like the KKK, we see that killing Israeli Jews is a heroic act - it is the "struggle" and the "resistance." Terror against Jews is not only allowed, but mandatory, because they are evil racists who think they are "chosen" and better than goyim - which is a...Read More |
From Ian: JCPA: Casualties in the 2021 Gaza War: How Many and Who Were They? This article is part of the forthcoming Jerusalem Center research report: The Gaza War 2021: The Iranian and Hamas Attack on Israel. During the 2021 Gaza War, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza claimed there were 256 Palestinian casualties. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) concluded, "at least 253 Palestinians have been killed, 129 of whom were civilians." That means 124 of the dead were combatants, close to a 1:1 ratio, an unprecedentedly low ratio in terms of civilians killed in urban warfare. At least 680 Palestinian rockets fell short or misfired, landing inside Gaza. According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel, 9 children and 10 adults were killed by Palestinian rockets. The New York Times provides a case study of inaccurate reporting on casualties among Palestinian children. On May 26, 2021, the Times published a front-page report entitled, "They Were Only Children," which displayed pictures of 67 children in Gaza allegedly killed by Israel. It included 20-year-old Khaled al-Qanou and 15-year-old Muhammad Suleiman, both confirmed Hamas members engaged in violent anti-Israel activity. A stock photo of a young girl from 2015 was also included in the Times report. Hamas is known to blur the lines between those who died of natural...Read More |
Continuing on with my summary of portions of the book, "Eight years in Asia and Africa from 1846-1855" by Jewish explorer Israel Joseph Benjamin, this was what he had to say about the Jews of Shiraz, Persia, present-day Iran: Shiraz. — Deplorable condition of the Jews.
Only about twenty years since, nearly 3000 Jews lived in this once magnificent and flourishing city. By persecutions, oppressions and odium of all kinds more than 2500 of them were compelled to go over to the Mussulman sect of Ali. Although outwardly apostate, a great number of these families still preserve in their hearts the faith of their fathers, and even find means of having their children circumcised in secret. Nine synagogues in the town testify to the former greatness of the Jewish community ; now unfortunately, they are almost all laid waste. Benjamin then goes on to describe how the Jewish women manage to remain true to their religion even after being forced to convert, and then describes how one of the Jewish leaders in the town was tortured mercilessly when he refused to convert. He ends off with another story: A rich Persian took a fancy to a Jewish girl, and brought her in the home of her parents. As, however, these visits became dangerous, he tried to persuade the girl to adopt the MussuIman faith, so that she might become his wife. "My parents would die of grief," said the Jewess,"if I forsook my religion." — "You heard...Read More |
A major online campaign to force Mahmoud Abbas to resign his position as president of the Palestinian Authority kicked off this weekend.
The hashtag #ارحل, which means simply "Leave," is base on a promise that Abbas made years ago that he would resign if there were even small protests calling for him to leave.
The protests were sparked by the apparent murder of Abbas critic Nizar Banat last month by Palestinian police.
Some of the current criticisms of Abbas now are more centered on his being way too moderate and conciliatory towards Israel, saying that he has no right to accept a two state solution.
This one quotes him as saying that "East Jerusalem is ours and West Jerusalem is theirs," asking what gives him the right to give up 80% of Jerusalem? This graphic lists the high Palestinian officials who have gone to Israeli hospitals when they are ill, leaving their people to use sub-par Palestinian hospitals. (The Palestinian Authority used to pay for all citizens who needed treatment in Israeli hospitals and stopped that a few years ago.) But while Hamas is trying to take advantage of this unrest, and indeed stokes a great deal of it, it has its own challenges with the people under its own control in Gaza.
The blast at the Al Zawiya market has spawned calls for investigations on why Hamas allows - and...Read More |
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