Friday, August 02, 2013
Barry Rubin: America’s Real "Dangerous Slide" is to be on the Wrong Side in the World
Would you ever imagine that the leading American newspaper would openly advocate siding with radical Islamist forces in the Middle East against all of America's allies and friends, and I mean with eyes wide open and with full awareness that it sought to overthrow them? Well, the day has come.US embassies to shut down Sunday due to terror threat
How has the argument for this strategy, which the Obama Administration is already pursuing being made?
A New York Times July 30th editorial entitled “Egypt’s Dangerous Slide” shows a real catastrophe for the United States. What is amazing is that it takes less than five minutes to deconstruct Obama Administration’s Middle East policy.
US embassies and consulates across the Middle East and Asia — including in Israel — will be closed on Sunday due to an al-Qaeda-related terror threat, officials said Thursday.Senate Confirms Power as UN Ambassador
The US has been “apprised of information that out of an abundance of caution and care for our employees and others who may be visiting our installations, that indicates we should institute these precautionary steps,” said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.
She has also been criticized for past statements against Israel, including a 2002 interview in which she said that "external intervention" may be necessary to prevent "genocide" and "major human rights abuses" in the "Palestine/Israeli situation".Antisemitic Perdana Global Peace Foundation from Malaysia Added to Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People
During that interview, Power responded to a hypothetical question and said that if given the opportunity she would advise the president to sacrifice billions of dollars of aid to the Jewish state, allocating the funds instead to “the new state of Palestine.”
Two weeks ago she appeared to have done a complete 180, slamming the UN’s "unacceptable bias" against Israel and pledging to lobby hard to get Israel a seat on the Security Council in 2018.
Power said at that time that America enjoys a "special relationship" with Israel, whose "legitimacy should be beyond dispute, and its security must be beyond doubt."
She added, "Within this (UN) organization built in the wake of the Holocaust... we also see unacceptable bias and attacks against the state of Israel."
Contrary to the requirements of the UN Charter and the supposed criteria for UN accreditation - which preach "respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion" - Mohamad has a long history of antisemitism.Israeli Arab businessmen backtrack on Ramallah 'Fox' store following protests
As far back as September 1986, he gave a speech at meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement, in which he stated: "the expulsion of Jews from the Holy Land 2,000 years ago and the Nazi oppression of Jews have taught them nothing. If anything at all, it has transformed the Jews into the very monsters that they condemn so roundly in their propaganda material. They have been apt pupils of the late Dr. Goebbels."
Today, his antisemitic (anti-American and anti-Israel) diatribes continue unabated on his "chedet" blog - conveniently available directly from the website of the now UN-accredited "Perdana Global Peace Foundation" - which he controls.
Fox is an Israel-based clothing store that has many stores around the country, including in the Arab sector.EXCLUSIVE: SWC’s Rabbi Cooper Responds to Roger Waters’s Open Letter: ‘He Needs a Reality Check’
One of the businessmen is from east Jerusalem, while the second is from the North.
The two won the franchise to open a Fox store in Ramallah, the first of its kind in the Palestinian territories.
The new project was supposed to provide jobs for nearly 150 Palestinians, some of whom had already received training to start working in the Ramallah branch.
Although the owners had obtained permission from the PA Ministry of Economy to open the clothing store, Palestinian activists and journalists launched a campaign against the opening of the store in Ramallah.
“I’m representing an institution that represents the reality, not the cultural imagery, of anti-Semitism and Jew hatred. So whatever his motivation, it is the impact of the things he is doing: the images he uses, his affiliation with the BDS movement,” said Cooper, who referred to Waters as an “open hater of Jews” after footage of the pig balloon was initially released.Netanyahu: Rouhani reveals true face sooner than expected
Rabbi Cooper explained that the real dangers posed to Jews in Europe are manifold, and that Waters’s imagery is toxic and incendiary: “The reality of 2013 means he needs a reality check and to rate that over his cultural and political viewpoint.”
“Every Jewish institution in Europe has armed guards in front of it. And this guy has the chutzpah to float a pig that has the Star of David on it. It’s an update of the classic Jewish stereotype that goes back to the middle ages. You can’t get a more fundamentally anti-Semitic symbol than that,” Cooper said.
Rouhani spoke in Tehran Friday — just two days ahead of his inauguration — after attending International Quds Day events in solidarity with the Palestinian people.Iranian Supreme Leader’s Twitter Feed: Western Governments Under Zionist Control, Will Soon Be Overthrown
Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Rouhani as saying: “The Zionist regime has been a wound on the body of the Islamic world for years and the wound should be removed.”
“Even if others hasten to deny his remarks, this is what the man thinks and this is the plan of the Iranian regime,” said Netanyahu, adding, “his statements should shake the world from the reverie some have found themselves in since the [June 14 presidential] elections. There’s a new president, but the intentions of Iran remain the same — to obtain nuclear weapons that will threaten Israel, the Middle East and the peace and security of the entire world.
The official Twitter feed of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei today lashed out amid renewed peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials, emphasizing instead that Israel must be destroyed to make way for a Palestinian state.Top Iran Official Calls for Israel’s Destruction, Blames Muslim Violence on Jewish State
Iranian state media reported this week on statements made by Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi in which the powerful Iranian official – Naqdi is the commander of the Basij paramilitary force – explained the sources of regional instability and how to solve them. A lot, it turns out, hangs on the Jewish state’s existence and elimination:Top Iran leader issues edict on Bahai faith
The fatwa, or religious edict, by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is his latest against the group. It supports similar fatwas in the past by other clerics.Kerry: The Egyptian Army 'Saved Democracy'
An Iranian news website, Tasnim, reported Wednesday that Khamenei called the Bahai “deviant and misleading.”
Bahai followers are frequently under pressures from Iranian authorities, which has prompted outcry among international human rights groups.
Kerry made the remarks in a interview in Pakistan, where he earlier congratulated the new government on an historic transition of democratic power in a country long dominated by the military.Report: Egypt Coptic Christians Have One of Their ‘Worst Months’
He was asked by Geo television why the United States had not taken a clear position on military intervention against Morsi’s democratically elected government.
According to the report, April was “one of the worst months for Christian Copts.” On April 5, six Christians were killed near Cairo after a dispute between local Muslims and Christians escalated. Afterwards, what the report called a “collective punishment” spree against Christians resulted in “the injury of at least 20 other Copts, an Evangelical church being set on fire, and an attack on a Coptic church.”Egyptian Athlete's Public Anti-Israel Display Condemned
On Thursday, the British Jewish News website reported how Egyptian-born Mohamad Salah, who plays for Switzerland's FC Basel, found himself at the center of controversy after it emerged that he refused to shake hands with Maccabi Tel Aviv players during this week’s Champions League qualifying game.Former ThyssenKrupp Chairman Who Saved Hundreds of Jewish Oil Workers During Holocaust, Dies at 99
In a statement, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Lehner, chairman of ThyssenKrupp’s supervisory board, said: “During World War 2, together with his wife, he set an impressive example of courage and humanity by saving hundreds of persecuted Jews from the SS, risking his own life in the process. He played a key role in the post-war reconstruction of Germany. He is held in high esteem both in Germany and abroad.”Eric Burdon rocks Israel — no misunderstanding
Turns out, he was just a boy whose intentions were good. Clearly, he had just been misunderstood. Because here in the flesh, following local fave T-Slam’s opening act at a jam-packed Zappa Shuni Amphitheater in Binyamina, was Eric Burdon.Does the new iPhone feature Israeli start-up’s eye-tracking tech?
Less an Animal, more a stomping grandpa with a comfortable paunch, Burdon belted through a tight, blistering mix of greatest hits and newer recordings Thursday night, and was plainly enjoying himself from the get-go. The relentless death threats that led his manager to announce two weeks ago that he’d be canceling this Israel trip? Not a mention. The subsequent cancelation of that cancelation? Not a word. Just a big smile from behind his shades at the start, a “thank you, you’ve been a great audience” at the end, and half a century’s controlled musical mayhem in-between.
Whenever rumors about new iPhones abound, they tend to focus on what tech advances those phones will include. The latest spate of (persistent) rumors on an upcoming Apple release feature technology developed by an Israeli company, uMoove, which allows devices to respond to the movement of a user’s eyes and face.EyeYon’s noninvasive answer to a common eye problem
Called eye-tracking, the technology is already available to an extent in Samsung’s Galaxy S4 device. With the S4, users can pause a video by looking away from the screen while it’s playing. The phone “knows” when to pause playback because of the eye-tracking technology built into it; if the front-facing camera detects that a user’s eyes have moved, the video stops playback.
You may not have heard of corneal edema, but this painful eye condition caused by accumulation of fluids is not uncommon as a result of eye surgery, trauma or aging. The edema (swelling) causes the cornea to lose its transparency, affecting vision and leading to irreversible scarring of the cornea.
Until Israeli startup EyeYon Medical invented its patented therapeutic contact lens, Hyper CL, there was no effective way to relieve symptoms of the condition – which can be cured only with a donor cornea from a deceased person.
