Ben-Dror Yemini: The problem with Islam
Any debate on Islam in Muslim countries and among Muslim communities in the West is like stepping into a minefield. When it comes to the media outlets and academe, for the most part, the subject of Islam sparks a convoluted and apologetic discourse; on the social networks, on the other hand, the discourse it prompts is a racist one.The anti-Semitic derangement
The thing is there's a problem. It's hissing and bubbling. Many Muslims realize there's a problem. The Egyptian president spoke recently of "a need to effect a substantial change in Islam." And in 2004, Abdulrahman al-Rashed, the former general manager of the al-Arabiya television news channel, said: "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims."
The problem is not a handful of Jihadists involved in terrorism. The problem is that the Muslim world in recent years has produced most of the high-casualty conflicts across the globe. The Muslim world struggles to embrace universal values, such as the status of women. And the problem extends to the free world. Entire neighborhoods in Europe are becoming "no-go zones" for veteran residents, and the police too in some cases.
Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb stated that the major problem was resistance to integration. The percentage of social misfits and individuals opposed to integration is higher among the Muslim communities than among the other minorities. In addition, many of the world's Muslims, even those who live in the West, want to see Sharia law in effect, not only for themselves, but also forcibly for others. They are basically saying in the clearest of terms: We have come here to impose our values on you.
Anti-Semitism is commonly regarded as a variety of racism, but the prolific English historian Paul Johnson suggests that it should be seen as a kind of intellectual disease, fundamentally irrational and highly infectious. It exerts great self-destructive force, Johnson wrote in a notable 2005 essay, severely harming countries and societies that engage in it. In a pattern that has recurred so predictably that he dubbed it a “historical law,” nations that make Jewish life untenable condemn themselves to decline and weakness.
For example, Spain’s expulsion of the Jews in the 1490s, and its subsequent witchhunt of the converted “New Christians” who remained behind, meant a loss of Spanish financial and managerial talent at the very moment the New World was being opened up to lucrative colonization. That had “a profoundly deleterious impact,” Johnson argued, “plunging the hitherto vigorous Spanish economy into inflation and long-term decline, and the government into repeated bankruptcy.” More than 500 years later, Spain — where, incidentally, Valls was born and lived until his teens — still regrets that self-inflicted wound, and has looked for ways to rectify it.
Johnson pointed out other prominent examples of the phenomenon. Czarist Russia’s persecution of Jews, reinforced by the encouragement of brutal pogroms, fueled a massive migration of Jews to the West, especially to Britain and the United States; those countries’ cultural and entrepreneurial gain was Russia’s debilitating loss. Germany’s descent into demonic Jew-hatred under the Nazis ended in devastating military defeat, followed by a decades-long Cold War rupture and the end of German renown as Europe’s intellectual center. The Arab world, steeped in anti-Semitism and obsessed with the Jewish state, squandered vast oil riches “on weapons of war and propaganda,” wrote Johnson. “In their flight from reason, they have failed to modernize or civilize their societies, to introduce democracy, or to consolidate the rule of law.” Arab culture once led the world in learning, innovation, and pluralism. Today it is a world leader in almost nothing, save fratricidal violence and Islamist fanaticism.
France’s Jews are leaving, and that bodes ill for the society making them unwelcome. The prime minister put his finger on it: If there is no Jewish future in France, if the anti-Semitic cancer has metastasized so alarmingly that tens of thousands of French Jews are ready to flee, then France will indeed no longer be France. It will be something darker and more deformed, wrecked by an injury it inflicted on itself.
Douglas Murray - Tracking Terror [Fox News]
Douglas Murray - Obama and Charlie Hebdo
Douglas Murray - Charlie Hebdo [BBC Counties]
Belgium sends troops to Jewish sites, Britain boosts patrols amid raised terror fears
Belgian paratroopers fanned out Saturday to guard possible terror targets across the country, including some buildings within the Jewish quarter of the port city of Antwerp, amid heightened security threat.British PM David Cameron Confirms Extra Security for UK Jews, Says ’100 Percent Protection’ is Impossible
It was the first time in 30 years that authorities used troops to reinforce police in Belgium’s cities, and came a day after anti-terror raids netted dozens of suspects across Western Europe.
Britain’s police chiefs, meanwhile, increased patrols at Jewish sites and were studying ways to increase protection of police officers and the Jewish community after the terrorist attacks in Paris. According to The Guardian, the terror threat against British police was raised to severe, the country’s highest, and chiefs weighed issuing additional Tasers to officers.
Chief counter-terror officer Mark Rowley said the attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris and anti-Semitic rhetoric from extremists has led to “heightened concern” for the Jewish population in Britain.
He said police are meeting with Jewish community leaders to discuss security plans, and are adding extra patrols. Rowley also said the “deliberate targeting” of police in recent terrorist attacks has raised fears about the safety of serving officers.
A recent plot to attack police in London was scuttled, and police have been singled out for attacks in other countries.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has confirmed his backing for extra security measures to protect the Jewish community following last week’s Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris.The Face of Terror: Pictures of Belgian Would-be Killers
“The government has a very strong relationship with the Jewish community and talks to them regularly about these issues,” Cameron told the UK’s Channel 4 News.
Cameron, who was visiting Washington for talks with President Obama, confirmed that London’s Metropolitan Police would step up patrols in Jewish neighborhoods. Asked whether the measures were based on specific threats, Cameron said, “We don’t give a running commentary on specific threats, but these steps were taken because of what happened in Paris and because…it’s the right thing to do.”
The Prime Minister pointed out that absolute security was not something that could be guaranteed. “There’s no way you can give 100 per cent protection in an open and free society,” Cameron said. “I would stress that while we have very strong and capable intelligence services…there’s an important role for the public as well.”
After local sources named the two terrorists living above a bakery who were killed during a police raid this morning, remarkable photographs from the pair’s unsecured social media accounts have allowed an insight into a life of Jihad.Charles Krauthammer: Obama: Charlie who?
A set of photographs apparently taken inside the Islamic State and posted to Redwane Hajaoui’s Facebook account show the two men smiling and posing with AK-47 Assault rifles, the same kind they used to defend themselves from the police assault this morning.
One photograph shows a young girl, who appears no older than four years old. Explaining the girl is his cousin ‘Yasmin’, Hajaoui jokes she is “My future wife :$ loollll”.
Belgian Police have said the pair, besides their AK-47’s, also had a number of smaller firearms and explosives, and that they may have planned to hijack a bus, and behead a senior police officer, reports The Express.
Hajaoui’s Facebook also details some of his recent travels and interests. He has ‘checked in’ to ISIS battleground Aleppo five times, the most recently in October last year and professes to ‘like’ the Liam Neeson thriller Taken, and Real Madrid football club.
On Sunday, at the great Paris rally, the whole world was Charlie. By Tuesday, the veneer of solidarity was exposed as tissue thin. It began dissolving as soon as the real, remaining Charlie Hebdo put out its post-massacre issue featuring a Muhammad cover that, as the New York Times put it, “reignited the debate pitting free speech against religious sensitivities.”Churches burned in Niger, photographer shot in the chest in Pakistan and violent clashes in Jordan: Muslim world reacts angrily to Charlie Hebdo's 'survivor' edition
Again? Already? Had not 4 million marchers and 44 foreign leaders just turned out on the streets of France to declare “No” to intimidation, and pledging solidarity, indeed identification (“Je suis Charlie”) with a satirical weekly specializing in the most outrageous and often tasteless portrayals of Muhammad? And yet, within 48 hours, the new Charlie Hebdo issue featuring the image of Muhammad — albeit a sorrowful, indeed sympathetic Muhammad — sparked new protests, denunciations and threats of violence, which in turn evinced another round of doubt and self-flagellation in the West about the propriety and limits of free expression. Hopeless.
As for President Obama, he never was Charlie, not even for those 48 hours. From the day of the massacre, he has been practically invisible. At the interstices of various political rallies, he issued bits of muted, mealy-mouthed boilerplate. Followed by the now-famous absence of any high-ranking U.S. official at the Paris rally, an abdication of moral and political leadership for which the White House has already admitted error.
But this was no mere error of judgment or optics or, most absurdly, of communications in which we are supposed to believe that the president was not informed by staff about the magnitude, both actual and symbolic, of the demonstration he ignored. (He needed to be told?)
Photographer Adif Hasan is now recovering after being shot in the chestPalestinians Burn French Flag on Temple Mount to Protest New Charlie Hebdo Cover
Around 200 protesters believed to have been involved in Kuratchi rallies
Four die in Niger, 45 wounded, as angry protesters burn down churches
Violent clashes in Jordan after King and Queen attend 'solidarity march'
Palestinians burned the French flag in protest of the new cover of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Friday.Jimmy Carter Needs History & Geography Lessons (Among Many Other Lessons)
Several hundred Palestinian protesters gathered on the Temple Mount during prayer services on to demonstrate against the magazine’s decision to publish an image of the Prophet Mohammed on its Jan. 14 cover.
In a video, the protesters can be seen waving the Hamas flag and other Islamic flags while chanting “jihad, jihad, we will die in the name of God,” “Allahu Akbar,” and “Muhammad [is] our master and leader forever” as they set fire to the French flag.
On January 12, 2015, Jimmy Carter, the former President of the United States – who has never met a dictator or terrorist that he did not like and has never met an Israeli leader right of Lenin that he did like – on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was among the factors that led to the deadly attacks in Paris on January 7-9 at Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket.French Prime Minister: 'I Refuse to Use This Term Islamophobia'
What Carter specifically said (perhaps while he was thinking about how grateful he is for all of the millions of dollars donated to the Carter Center by various oil-rich Arab dictatorships) was: “Well, one of the origins for it [the extremism that led to the al-Qaeda and ISIS supporting terrorists killing 17 people in France] is the Palestinian problem. And this aggravates people who are affiliated in any way with the Arab people who live in the West Bank and Gaza, what they are doing now — what’s being done to them. So I think that’s part of it.”
Setting aside that Carter is 100% wrong on Israel and has been since he (thankfully) became a former President and decided to let his misguided hate for Israel and his love for almost every dictator and kleptocrat on the planet really shine, it appears that Carter is either trying to deliberately misinform people about the origins of extreme radical Islamist violence in order to claim that this Islamist violence has something to do with Israel or he is in serious need of some history and geography lessons.
Early Examples of Extremist Islamist ViolenceIn 641 AD, the Caliph Umar decreed that Jews and Christians should be removed from all but the southern and eastern fringes of Arabia. The two populations in question were the Jews of the Khaybar oasis in the north and the Christians of Najran. Only the Red Sea port of Jedda was permitted as a “religious quarantine area” and continued after 641 AD to have a small complement of Jewish merchants.
The prime minister of France, Manuel Valls, has emerged over the past tumultuous week as one of the West’s most vocal foes of Islamism, though he’s actually been talking about the threat it poses for a long while. During the course of an interview conducted before the Charlie Hebdo attacks, he told me—he went out of his way to tell me, in fact—that he refuses to use the term 'Islamophobia' to describe the phenomenon of anti-Muslim prejudice, because, he says, the accusation of Islamophobia is often used as a weapon by Islamism's apologists to silence their critics.The promise for Israel of the 11th Aliya
Most of my conversation with Valls was focused on the fragile state of French Jewry—here is my post on his comments, which included the now-widely circulated statement that, “if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France”—and I didn’t realize the importance of his comment about Islamophobia until I re-read the transcript of our interview.
“It is very important to make clear to people that Islam has nothing to do with ISIS,” Valls told me. “There is a prejudice in society about this, but on the other hand, I refuse to use this term 'Islamophobia,' because those who use this word are trying to invalidate any criticism at all of Islamist ideology. The charge of 'Islamophobia' is used to silence people. ”
Valls was not denying the existence of anti-Muslim sentiment, which is strong across much of France. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, miscreants have shot at Muslim community buildings, and various repulsive threats against individual Muslims have been cataloged. President Francois Hollande, who said Thursday that Muslims are the “first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism, intolerance,” might be overstating the primacy of anti-Muslim prejudice in the current hierarchy of French bigotries—after all, Hollande just found it necessary to deploy his army to defend Jewish schools from Muslim terrorists, not Muslim schools from Jewish terrorists—but anti-Muslim bigotry is a salient and seemingly permanent feature of life in France. Or to contextualize it differently: Anti-Muslim feeling appears to be more widespread than anti-Jewish feeling across much of France, but anti-Jewish feeling has been expressed recently (and not-so-recently) with far more lethality, and mainly by Muslims.
The day former French prime minister Leon Blum was trucked from Dachau to the Austrian Alps, his life still hung in the balance – as did those of the other distinguished prisoners around him. These has-beens ranged from the former chancellor of Austria to the former commanders of the German army, the Greek army and Danish intelligence.Rampant anti-Semitism a major aliyah factor, French Jewish leader says
Yet the war ended three weeks later, and at 71, a triumphant Blum was back in Paris – where he emerged as an emblem of French Jewry’s tormented past and resilient future. A popular politician and resourceful statesman, he negotiated a huge US loan for France’s reconstruction, also returning for a third and last stint at France’s helm.
It had been 155 years since France became the first European country to abolish all anti-Jewish laws, 51 years since it framed Alfred Dreyfus and less than half a decade since it saw nearly a quarter of its Jews whisked east to their deaths. Along with Blum, some 250,000 Jews survived the Nazi horror – a figure that has since more than doubled, as a tolerant, prosperous and stable France attracted North African Jews and gradually became European Jewry’s gravity center.
Seventy years later, the era that began when Blum emerged from his captivity is drawing to a close.
The attack in Paris last week on a kosher supermarket, and those before it on the Jewish Museum in Brussels and the Otzar Hatorah School in Toulouse, underscore a security crisis checkered by hundreds of small-scale anti-Semitic incidents.
Rampant anti-Semitism in French public schools and threats against Jewish ones are spurring Jewish emigration, a leader of French Jewry said.Bronx Borough President, Ruben Diaz Jr. "Why I am Visiting Israel"
“The atmosphere for Jews in France is pretty bad,” said Roger Cukierman, president of the CRIF federation of French Jewish communities,aid.
The choice for parents, he added,” is either to send children to public schools, where they may be beaten and insulted [for being Jews] or to send them to Jewish schools, where they may be targets for fanatics and murderers. This is why we see more and more people deciding to go to Israel.”
Cukierman’s comments were made Thursday in a conference call with members of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, an umbrella group representing 50 national Jewish organizations in the United States. On Jan. 9, four Jews were killed at a kosher supermarket near Paris.
Christian private schools are emerging as a preferred choice for many Jewish parents, according to Cukierman.
Bronx Borough President, Ruben Diaz Jr. will be touring Israel with a group of Latino leaders, to lead a "discussion about the future of Jewish/Latino relations, both here and abroad, and take the first steps toward cementing a lifetime bond between these two communities"Gaza French cultural center defaced with anti-cartoon grafitti
From the Gotham Gazette
...I have been to Israel before. I have seen, firsthand, the attacks the Israeli people face every single day. But the people of Israel persevere. Now, more than ever, their example deserves our praise and our support.
The horror of the attacks on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket—and the subsequent exodus of Jews from Paris—show us just how critical our support of Israel is right now. As Martin Niemöller wrote, reflecting on the Nazi atrocities of World War II, "First they came for the Jews..."
The walls of the French Cultural Center in the Gaza Strip were spray painted with graffiti before dawn Saturday in reaction to a cartoon published in the latest issue of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo whose cover depicts the prophet Mohammed holding a “Je Suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) sign under the headline “All is forgiven.”Iran bans paper for ‘I am Charlie’ headline
“You will go to hell, French journalists,” read one of the slogans daubed on the walls of the cultural center compound, which has been closed since it was damaged in a fire last October.
“Anything but the prophet,” read another.
Police were deployed outside the compound’s main gate as well as on the adjacent main road, an AFP correspondent reported.
Last month, a bomb attack claimed by small ultra-conservative Islamist group Jund Ansar Allah caused minor damage to the compound’s walls.
Iran has banned a reformist newspaper for publishing on its front page the headline “I am Charlie,” state news agency IRNA reported Saturday.Alan Dershowitz: Are Israeli Settlements the Barrier to Peace?
Mardom-e Emrouz published the slogan next to a picture of Hollywood star George Clooney who had said it at the weekend’s Golden Globes.
The words have come to symbolize the fight for freedom of expression after a January 7 deadly attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
“The court in charge of cultural affairs and the media imposed the ban on the newspaper for publishing a headline and a picture which it deemed insulting,” Mardom-e Emrouz director Ahmad Sattari told IRNA.
Its chief editor Mohammad Ghouchani also said the paper was banned “for having published something linked to Charlie Hebdo,” according to the news website nasimonline.ir.
US pans ICC war crimes probe of Israel as ‘tragic irony’
The United States on Friday condemned as a “tragic irony” the International Criminal Court’s decision to open a preliminary probe into possible war crimes committed by Israeli forces against Palestinians.Hamas, PLO hail ICC probe into Israeli-Palestinian conflict
“We strongly disagree with the ICC prosecutor’s action today,” State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement. “It is a tragic irony that Israel, which has withstood thousands of terrorist rockets fired at its civilians and its neighborhoods, is now being scrutinized by the ICC.”
“As we have said repeatedly, we do not believe that Palestine is a state and therefore we do not believe that it is eligible to join the ICC,” said the statement. “The place to resolve the differences between the parties is through direct negotiations, not unilateral actions by either side.”
Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip, said on Saturday the Islamist terror group appreciated the move.We should make life harder for Palestinian leadership
"What is needed now is to quickly take practical steps in this direction and we are ready to provide (the court) with thousands of reports and documents that confirm the Zionist enemy has committed horrible crimes against Gaza and against our people," he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, in Ramallah, high-ranking PLO official Hanan Ashrawi said the move was a turning point.
"We believe this is a very important step, however modest, because for the first time in its history, since its creation, Israel is going to be subject to accountability, especially to legal and judicial accountability, in terms of its own persistent violations of Palestinian rights and international law," she said.
"So now this signals to Israel that it is no longer subject to preferential treatment, entitlement, a sense of exceptionalism, and of course, impunity and power politics. Israel has to be treated like all other countries in the world and it has to be subject to the law and not above the law," she added.
Israel has already made moves to freeze Palestinian tax revenue and is rightly considering more. A travel ban on Palestinian officials to international institutions might be an appropriate, non-violent mode of escalating the pressure.One state, two-state-NO STATE for UNRWA
After all, if the Palestinians have no intention of being reasonable with Israel, why should Israel facilitate their unreasonableness? Let them declaim against the Jewish state from Ramallah rather than New York, the Hague, or Geneva.
Surely they've got plenty to do back home -- there must be quite a backlog of pending approvals for squares and streets to be named after terrorists, for example.
But it shouldn't just be down to Israel. The "International Community" claims to want Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate together.
While the Palestinians continue to both glorify terrorism and make negotiations impossible by their antics at outfits like the International Criminal Court, the United States and Europe should be imposing travel bans and tax freezes on the Palestinians of their own.
The Palestinian leadership has had a free pass for far too long. Now is the time for all of us to get tougher.
Remember those famous words “he never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity” spoken about Yasser Arafat in 1978 by Abba Eban? Those words echo through time to all who claim they want to see a Palestinian state. Why, to this day, have the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity for a state?Israel Allows Gazans to Pray at Al-Aqsa
Surely it has occurred to others that the reason that these people never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to make a state, a per-requisite for nation-building, is that they don’t want peace.
They don’t want a state because they don’t want peace. They don’t want peace because it will kill their Golden Goose-UNRWA
I suggest that UNRWA as a charity is big business, too big to fail. UNRWA and the Palestinians are a perfect fit, like a hand in a glove.
Michael Freund in the Jerusalem Post wrote “They (The Palestinians) actually wish to lose. They want to generate further disappointment and frustration on the Palestinian street, in order to ensure the continuation of the low-level intifada that has been raging for months.”
Yes, Israel remains a scapegoat for all that ails the Arab street, but there’s more.
Nearly 200 Palestinian Arabs from Gaza were allowed by Israeli authorities to travel to Jerusalem on Friday to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency reported.Egypt: Explosives-laden smuggling tunnel uncovered between Sinai, Gaza
According to the report, a group of 185 Palestinian Muslims left the coastal enclave via the Erez crossing into Israel for an exceptional visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Sources at the Palestinian liaison office told Ma'an that no Gazans had been able to pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque last week because the Palestinian liaison office had suspended work after a dispute with Hamas security services.
On October 5, some 500 Palestinians in Gaza prayed at the mosque for the first time since 2007, having been prevented by Israel from traveling to Jerusalem since that time.
The decision to allow Gazans to travel to Al-Aqsa was reached part of the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that ended Israel’s counterterrorism Operation Protective Edge in Gaza last summer.
Egyptian security forces on Saturday uncovered a underground smuggling tunnel running from northern Sinai into Gaza that housed large quantities of mortar shells and explosives, Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.Media Whitewash Terror Supporter Maher Hathout
Egyptian sources in Cairo told Ma'an that the approximately 1,200 meter-long tunnel's entrance was located inside a house on the Egyptian side of Rafah, on the eastern border of the Palestinian enclave.
The Egyptian military said it had destroyed the tunnel and was preparing to raze the smuggling house that contained the estrange to the underground passageway, Ma'an reported.
The inhabitants of the dwelling had reportedly fled.
"Maher Hathout, who passed away in Los Angeles earlier this month, was a founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, leader of the Islamic Center of Southern California, and a prominent figure in many other U.S. Muslim groups and causes — in short, he had been one of the most important Muslim American leaders for more than thirty years. As such, the statements he made over the years took on special significance. He spoke for a large segment of the U.S. Muslim community, and he was never challenged by his coreligionists over the positions he took."Obama Reiterates: I Will Veto New Sanctions on Iran
What were some of those positions?
According to the obituary of Hathout circulated by the Associated Press, he was “deeply patriotic.” If so, he sure had a funny way of showing it. Consider his view of Hezbollah, the terrorist group that slaughtered 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983: “Hezbollah is fighting only for freedom,” Hathout declared in the Los Angeles Times on November 30, 1998.
Evidently nobody at the L.A. Times checked their own files when composing their obituary of Hathout. Completely ignoring Hathout’s view of Hezbollah, the Times reported that he worked to “undermine Islamic justification for terrorism” and promoted “a theology that wedded traditional Islam with a forward-looking, global outlook.” He fought for “social justice,” and he was “a leading advocate for peace between Islam and other religions.” The only time he stirred controversy, according to the Times, was over “disparaging remarks he had made about Israel.”
U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday reiterated once again that he will veto proposed bipartisan legislation to impose new sanctions on Iran so long as diplomatic negotiations over a nuclear deal remain underway.U.S. Lawmakers Voice Increased Concern Over Slipping Western Leverage in Iran Nuke Talks
"I will veto a bill that comes to my desk," Obama said in response to a question from ABC News at a joint news conference with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron.
"There is no good argument for us to undercut, undermine the negotiations until they play out," Obama said, adding that hitting Iran's economy with new sanctions in the next 60 to 90 days would violate an interim agreement reached last year, deepen recriminations, and heighten the risk of a military confrontation.
"Congress needs to show patience," Obama said, according to ABC News, though he stressed that if a deal is not reached, "I would be the first one to come to congress to say we need to tighten the screws.”
The comments come as Republican and Democratic lawmakers continue to press ahead with a plan for more sanctions on Iran despite Obama’s objection. (h/t Jewess)
Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.) on Tuesday warned that sanctions relief provided to Iran by the current interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA) had bolstered the Iranians’ negotiating position in nuclear talks with the West, and suggested that lawmakers in Washington would vote to boost the leverage of American negotiators in coming months. Casey’s remarks underscored longstanding concerns from Congressional lawmakers of both parties that the administration, which remains opposed to any such new legislation, nonetheless lacks sufficient leverage to extract meaningful concessions from Iran.State Dept: Iran’s New Nuclear Reactors Don’t Violate Joint Plan of Action
They also echo previous comments from other Democrats calling for increased pressure on Iran and increased Congressional oversight over the talks in general. Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) had in October blasted the administration in the aftermath of reports that administration was planning to circumvent Congress in securing a nuclear deal with Iran.
Iran’s announced construction of two light-water reactors does not violate the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) signed between Iran and the P5+1 nations in November 2013, a State Department official told the Washington Free Beacon today.Turkey's Staggering "Shoeboxgate"
“We are aware of the announcement and are reviewing the details,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on record. However, “in general, the construction of light water nuclear reactors is not prohibited by U.N. Security Council resolutions, nor does it violate the JPOA,” the official said. …
“We have been clear in saying that the purpose of the negotiations with Iran is to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively for civilian, peaceful purposes,” the official said. “The talks that we have been engaged in for months involve a specific set of issues relative to closing off all possible pathways to Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb. That remains our focus.”
The Obama administration has maintained that one of the JPOA’s goals was to “stop the advance of [Iran’s] nuclear program.”
Imagine an audio recording of the president calling his son and telling him to get rid of all the cash he keeps at home; and his son, after trying for several hours, telling him there are still millions left.Turkish journalist could face prison over tweet
For Erdogan, his election victories meant that all allegations of corruption were baseless. For the first time in the history of justice, voters had acted as the jury for a high-profile corruption case.
Erdogan's ambitions are also about securing a two-thirds majority in the May election so that the constitution can be amended.
For the past year, Erdogan's administration has suspended, reassigned, prosecuted and jailed thousands of (mostly) police officers on charges of attempting illegally to topple his government.
The main opposition party replied: "If you don't trust the top court, how do ordinary citizens trust the ordinary courts?" Good question.
Turkish prosecutors are seeking a jail term of up to five years for a prominent female journalist arrested over a tweet suggesting a cover-up in a corruption scandal that shook the government, media reported on Saturday.Analysis: Turkey Trying to Cover Up its Terror Ties by Walking in Paris Solidarity March
Sedef Kabas, a broadcast journalist and anchorwoman, has been charged with “targeting public servants tasked with fighting against terrorism,” the Dogan news agency reported.
“As understood from the content of the tweet, it is clear, without any doubt, that Kabas threatened the plaintiff… and tried to discredit him,” Dogan reported, quoting from the indictment.
Police detained Kabas last month after raiding her home in an upscale neighborhood on the Asian side of Istanbul, taking away her laptop, iPad and cellphone.
“Do not forget the name of the prosecutor who dismissed the December 17 case,” Kabas had written on Twitter, including the name and the picture of the prosecutor.
The newspaper added that by participating in Paris’ solidarity march, “Turkey was trying to wash its hands of terrorism.”Saudi delays more flogging of blogger on medical grounds
Turkey is suffering from increasing isolation, both at the regional and international levels, as a result of its stances on several issues in the Middle East and due to its non-participation in the war against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) just over its border in neighboring Syria.
The tension between the Arab states and Turkey is also due to the anger expressed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, now the president of Turkey, after the ousting of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood from the Egyptian government in June 2013. Since Morsi’s ouster, Turkey has hurled allegations at the Egyptian government led by new President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, branding him a dictator. The recent rapprochement between Egypt and Qatar only increased the isolation of Turkey. Until recently, Qatar and Turkey were the only open supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region, and now it appears that Turkey stands alone.
But the terrorist acts that were carried out in Paris provided Turkey with a new chance to get close again to Europe. Davutoğlu called the attacks “acts of terrorism,” but also attacked European countries for refusing to allow his country to join the European Union. He said that if European countries were not imposing obstacles to Turkey, cultural tensions between religions in Europe would not exist today.
Amnesty International said authorities delayed administering the 50 new lashes to Raif Badawi, which were set to take place after midday prayers. The group said Badawi was taken to a prison clinic in the morning for a check-up and that the doctor found that “he would not be able to withstand another round of lashes at this time.”Teen Muslim Girls Face Arrest in Malaysia for Hugging K-Pop Boy Band
According to the group, the doctor recommended Badawi’s flogging be postponed for a week.
Badawi’s first public flogging took place last Friday before dozens of people in the Red Sea city of Jiddah. The father of three was taken to a public square, his feet and hands bound, and whipped 50 times on his back before being taken back to prison.
Young teenage Muslim girls in Malaysia, wearing hijab, were so excited by popular Korean “boy” band B1A4 that they jumped onstage to hug and kiss (!) some musicians.Oxford University Press Bans Pork Related Material From Books
They are now being asked to turn themselves in or face arrest. The girls are being accused of having shamed Islam, their race, and their religion with such a display of affection in public. They are viewed as having violated Sharia law by touching members of the opposite sex who are also infidels. Their “crime” was caught on video:
The K-pop band is claiming that it was a staged drama, a “romance parody.”
Nevertheless, JAWI (The Federal Territories Islamic Affairs Department) will “apply for arrest warrants should the girls fail to cooperate in the investigation.” JAWI is “investigating the girls for public indecency and outraging Muslims.”
Facebook and Twitter commenters claim that the girls “are ignorant about our religion.”
Oxford University Press (OUP) has banned authors from depicting pork-related products in their children’s books in an apparent attempt to avoid offending Jews and Muslims, the Daily Mail reports.Jewish leaders skeptical of Europe’s tough talk on anti-Semitism
The new prohibition came up during a conversation about free speech on Radio 4′s Today program and was referred to as “nonsensical political correctness.”
“I’ve got a letter here that was sent out by OUP to an author doing something for young people. Among the things prohibited in the text that was commissioned by OUP was the following: Pigs plus sausages, or anything else which could be perceived as pork,” said Radio 4′s Today presenter Jim Naughtie.
An OUP spokesman justified the new regulations.
“Many of the educational materials we publish in the U.K. are sold in more than 150 countries, and as such they need to consider a range of cultural differences and sensitivities.”
As world Jewry bowed its head Tuesday during the funerals of the four French Jewish victims of Friday’s terrorist attack at a Paris kosher supermarket, senior European Jewish leaders were in Jerusalem as part of a one-day solidarity trip to Israel.EU Parliament’s Israel-relations czar defends removed anti-Semitism definition
Later, after a long day of meetings, in a series of post-dinner interviews with The Times of Israel, the visibly drained delegates from France, Belgium, Germany and Greece described feeling that European Jewry has entered a period of insecurity and uncertainty.
The day was organized under the auspices of the Israeli-Jewish Congress, an independent nonprofit founded by Russian philanthropist Vladimir Sloutsker that says it aims to promote Israel and the state of the Jewish people, and strengthen ties between Israel and the Diaspora. It brings delegates together during times of crisis as well as for regular meetings.
The leaders expressed frustration with what they see as empty rhetoric on the part of their elected officials, and demanded action to reassure their distraught Jewish communities that anti-Semitism and its more recent variant, anti-Israelism, were being addressed seriously.
The chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Israel defended a working resolution of anti-Semitism that the European Union recently removed from its website.USA and Israel. Shared Values
Fulvio Martusciello of the Group of the European People’s Party stated his endorsement of the document in an interview with JTA last week about the anti-Semitism definition, which is controversial because it cites demonization of Israel and its comparison to Nazi Germany as forms of anti-Semitism.
“Recently, the Fundamental Rights Agency has removed the definition from its website,” Martusciello said in reference to the European Union’s body responsible for combatting anti-Semitism and other forms of racism. The working definition was first adopted in 2005 by that body’s predecessor, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. FRA replaced it as the organ within the European Union responsible for monitoring and combatting anti-Semitism and other forms of anti-Semitism.
“However, I think the definition represented a landmark in combating anti-Semitism that should pave the road to effective institutional responsibility” in the fight against all forms of discrimination and intolerance, said Martusciello, who assumed the chairmanship of the delegation in October.
You can tell a great deal about the health of a society by looking at their heroes, and who they choose to honor.‘This is Your Land,’ Netanyahu Tells Birthright Participants at Program’s 15th Anniversary
A street in Ramallah is named for the notorious terrorist, Yahya( Yihyeh) Ayyash, who was the chief bombmaker for Hamas. He was the architect of multiple terror attacks, including a 1994 bombing of a Tel Aviv bus, which killed 20 , and injured dozens more.
In Israel, the values are different. There is a street named after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, noted civil rights leader.
To learn more about the Palestinian Authority's mainstreaming of terror, read Palestinian Media Watch's report: From Terrorists to Role Models: The Palestinian Authority's Institutionalization of Incitement
Taglit-Birthright Israel celebrated 15 years of bringing young Jews to Israel on Wednesday evening in Jerusalem.
The speakers and crowd at the event observed a moment of silence in remembrance of the people killed in the terrorist attacks in Paris last week.
One of the victims, Yoav Hattab, had visited Israel on a Taglit-Birthright Israel trip just two weeks before he was killed. He was laid to rest in Jerusalem on Tuesday in a funeral attended by thousands of mourners.
"I saw there [in Paris] masses of French people marching and rightfully proclaiming 'Je suis Charlie' [in support of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack]," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Jerusalem event, "and I thought to myself that we Jews have another question: Can Jews in other countries march in the street and declarem 'Je suis juif, I am Jewish'?
"In Israel, every Jew can say, 'I am a Jew, je suis juif,' out loud and proudly, without fear."