12/17 Links Pt1: The un-American Studies Association, Is Hamas on the verge of bankruptcy?

From Ian:

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American Studies Association members ratify anti-Israel academic boycott

I’m most shocked at the low turnout for the vote. Given the time and energy devoted by the anti-Israel backers of the boycott, only 825 or so votes were in favor. At the same time, opponents (who were ambushed by the proposal) only managed to get about 375 people interested. Effectively, most people didn’t care. Apathy is perhaps the saddest lesson from this given the odious nature of the proposal, and it’s how anti-Israel zealots are able to drive issues far out of proportion to their actual numbers.
In a nation that overwhelmingly supports Israel at historically high levels, a highly organized cadre of anti-Israel radicals was able to pull off a multi-year effort successfully. They put their people in charge of a previously non-partisan academic organization, waited to ambush the opposition, made sure the flow of information was one-sided, and in the end used a relatively small but motivated group of symathizers to commit the entire organization to an act widely condemned outside the anti-Israel community.
It’s a lesson in how good people let bad people win, and should be a wake up call to supporters of Israel and/or academic freedom.

ASA issues member talking points to counter university pushback over Israel boycott

Apparently ASA is so concerned about how its academic boycott will be received at Universities around the country that it has posted talking points on its website.

The un-American Studies Association

There are 200,000 dead in Syria and millions of refugees, zero academic freedom in China ... well, why go on; none of these matters seems worthy of notice by the ASA. It is illuminating that one of the endorsers of this move (actually, it is the second name that appears) on the ASA website is Angela Davis, former Communist Party candidate for national office and now a distinguished professor emerita of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She, like the ASA, has long been blind to human rights abuses -- except in Israel.
This move by the ASA will not harm Israel, but it is enlightening for anyone with children attending or soon to be attending college that this group of academics harbors such an extraordinary bias. The much larger American Association of University Professors has opposed this and all academic boycotts, but that is only partial comfort. The AAUP opposition means that ASA members had a principled and academically defensible basis for voting against the boycott of Israel, yet they voted for it. Those votes express not only bias against Israel, for the reasons Summers notes, but a bias as well against the spirit of free inquiry that is supposed to infuse American academia.

Israel, Jewish groups slam ASA academic boycott

ASA President Curtis Marez was quoted by The New York Times as admitting that the organization had never before endorsed a boycott of any kind against any other nation's universities.
According to the report, Marez did not dispute the fact that other countries, including some in the Middle East, have far worse human rights records, saying, "One has to start somewhere. … There is a particular responsibility to answer the call for boycott because [the U.S.] is the largest supplier of military aid to the State of Israel."

The ASA’s Guide to World Peace

Earlier today, members of the American Studies Association voted to confirm the organization’s decision to boycott Israel. As far as we can tell, this is an historic occasion—with the exception of South Africa, no other country has been deemed so vile by American academics as to warrant banning all collaboration with its universities and scholars. In the spirit of public service, then, and to commemorate this occasion, we offer the following chart, the ASA’s Guide to World Peace.

World Jewish Congress denounces "Orwellian anti-Semitism" of US academic group's Israel boycott move

"This vote to boycott Israel, one of the most democratic and academically free nations on the globe, shows the Orwellian anti-Semitism and moral bankruptcy of the American Studies Association (ASA).
“The Middle East is literally filled with dead from governments’ reaction to the convulsions of the ‘Arab Spring,’ but the American Studies Association singles out the Jewish State, the one Middle Eastern country that shares American values, for opprobrium? No wonder many Americans dismiss the academy as deeply biased and disconnected with reality."

JPost Ed: Tragedy in the North

On Sunday, a soldier from the Lebanese Army murdered St.-Sgt.-Maj. Shlomi Cohen, 31, of Afula. Two of about ten bullets fired from the Lebanese side of the border hit Cohen in the chest and neck and he lost control of the civilian vehicle he was driving on the Israeli side of the border near a naval base next to Rosh Hanikra.
In August, near the same spot, a bomb blew up an army jeep, injuring four soldiers. And in 2010, Lebanese snipers shot at Israeli soldiers on the border, killing one and injuring another. Relatively speaking, however, since the second Lebanon war in 2006, the border has remained fairly quiet.
The tragic killing of Cohen, father of a baby girl, does not appear to be a sign of an escalation of tensions.

Security Council condemns shooting death of IDF soldier near Lebanon border

The 15-member body said that a UN investigation confirmed that a Lebanese soldier had acted on his own volition and opened fire at an IDF non-commissioned officer who was in his vehicle at the time the shots were fired.
The Council said it was "a serious contravention of the existing operational rules and procedures as related to resolution 1701," a reference to the resolution which effectively ended the Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah in August 2006.

Analysis: Israel opts for restraint in face of Lebanese provocation

Urgent questions remain unanswered: Why did the LAF soldier pull the trigger? If he was indeed a rogue attacker, how will the LAF deal with him? And why did the IDF allow St.-Sgt. Maj. Shlomi Cohen, 31, to travel alone near the border in an unarmored vehicle at night? As the IDF investigates, the incident will serve as a reminder that the Lebanese border, usually calm and stable since the ceasefire that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War, can still produce sudden outbursts of deadly violence at any time.
In today’s increasingly volatile region, such incidents have the potential to spark a wider escalation, one that could see Hezbollah and the IDF begin to trade blows. In fact, senior IDF commanders are seeing large-scale preparations by Hezbollah for its next clash with Israel.

Rivals Abbas and Mashaal Hold Rare Telephone Call

Hamas's leader-in-exile Khaled Mashaal telephoned Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas this past weekend, in a rare telephone call between leaders of the rival parties, the official news agency Wafa said.
"Mashaal telephoned president Abbas to thank him for his efforts at different levels, particularly sending aid to the Gaza Strip," Wafa reported, referring to the support sent by the PA to Gaza as it recovers following the major winter storm in recent days.

Is Hamas on the verge of bankruptcy?

Isolated and alone, the Hamas government in Gaza has lost nearly all of their external support, and internally they are attempting to keep a lid on any disquiet. The wave of optimism felt in the tiny enclave after Muhammad Morsi rode into power in Egypt must now feel like a distant memory. Morsi never fulfilled the promise that was expected from Hamas' Muslim Brotherhood cousins. Now with the once ruling party being hounded out of Egypt, Hamas has to look elsewhere for support.
Two key historical allies of Hamas have also possibly fallen by the wayside. The relationships with both Iran and Qatar’s look uncertain in the future.

Car bomb targets Hezbollah post in eastern Lebanon

However, there were conflicting reports on the source of the explosion and the number of casualties resulting from the blast in the remote, scarcely inhabited area was not immediately clear.
The Lebanese National News Agency said it was a suicide bomber, adding that the driver detonated his vehicle near the village of Sbouba in the Baalbek region, about two kilometers (a mile) from a base belonging to the Iranian-backed group. The report said the explosion caused an unspecified number of casualties among Hezbollah members and civilians.

Kerry’s Self-Defeat Ahead of Syria Conference

Sometimes it seems that Secretary of State John Kerry lives in an alternate universe, one in which the Palestinian Authority seeks peace, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is liberal, Iran’s Islamic Republic seeks only to generate electricity, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a leader who for the good of humanity might give up power to an opposition against whom he maintains a military edge.
Hence, Kerry is moving full-steam ahead with plans for the “Geneva II” conference to discuss Syria’s future. Thirty-two countries—including Iran—will participate, because in Kerry world, having as many countries as possible attend a conference makes it easier to reach a solution. Even Iran will attend because, again in Kerry’s alternate reality, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps answers to Iranian diplomats.

Syria: Turkey Supplied 47 Tons of Weapons to Islamist Rebels

The Turkish government has supplied Syrian rebel forces with more than 47 tons of weapons in the past few months it has been revealed - this despite the Islamist government strenuously denying such charges in the past.
According to official documents filed under UN Comtrade (the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database), Turkish arms have been flowing into Syria since June. Recent months have seen the highest volume of traffic, with almost 29 tons of weaponry transferred in September alone.

Convicted Terror Supporter Attends Congressional Briefing

A convicted terrorist supporter who is currently under house arrest attended a Capitol Hill briefing hosted by a pro-Muslim Brotherhood group in a congressional office building earlier this month, according to reports.
Sami Al-Arian, a former engineering professor at the University of South Florida, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to aid the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in 2006. He has been under house detention in Northern Virginia since 2008 for refusing to testify in a subsequent terror financing trial.

Taxi driver killed by lynch mob after running over pro-Morsi protester

Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood killed a taxi driver by slitting his throat after he ran over a female protester on Monday in Egypt's Nile Delta governorate of Daqahliya.
According to a preliminary medical report, 24-year-old Mohamed Othman died from a deep cut in his neck, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.
Eyewitnesses told Al-Ahram that the taxi driver ran over the protester after he demanded a crowd let him pass and they refused. Members of the crowd killed him and torched his car.

Russia, Egypt Ink $2 Billion Weapons Deal

The Egyptian military could purchase up to $2 billion worth of attack planes, air defenses, and short-range anti-tank missiles, according to the Russian newspaper Vedomosti, which quoted sources in Moscow’s Defense Ministry and elsewhere.
The deal was announced days after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu concluded a series of high-level meetings in Egypt.

AFP: Disputes Over Geneva Language Mean “No End in Sight” for Negotiations to Even Begin Nuke Deal Implementation

There is ‘no end in sight’ for talks aimed at implementing the Geneva interim agreement announced last month between the global P5+1 powers and Iran, according to an Agence France-Presse article that was published last week.
“There are definite differences of opinion on the interpretation (of the Geneva text). Not that I am saying these are insurmountable but both sides are looking to negotiate the most robust deal they can,” one Western diplomat involved in the talks told AFP. “What this means, and this is not a surprise, is that we will not get this resolved by the end of this week…. They are going to have to get together more frequently than they thought.”

Calls Mount to Free 2 Iranian Opposition Leaders

A stone’s throw from President Hassan Rouhani’s office, in an alley blocked off by security forces, Iran’s main opposition leader has been living under house arrest together with his wife for the past thousand days or so.
Only months ago, merely uttering in public the name of the leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, could have led to arrest; a newspaper’s printing it invited almost certain shutdown.
Last week, however, calls for the release of Mr. Moussavi and another prominent opposition leader, Mehdi Karroubi, echoed over the campus of Shahid Behesti University in Tehran, shouted by students who carried a green banner, the color of the 2009 anti-government protests that propelled both men, presidential candidates at the time, into their opposition roles — and ultimately house arrest.

Saudi political activist sentenced to 300 lashes, 4 years in prison, rights group says

A political and human rights activist in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to 300 lashes and four years in prison for defying the king and calling for democracy, a rights group said Sunday.
Omar al-Saeed, a member of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), was sentenced in the city of Buraidah on Dec. 12 and is the fourth of his group to be imprisoned this year.