Riots, strike in Kafr Kanna after Arab youth shot dead by police
Riots erupted on Saturday in Kafr Kanna, an Israeli Arab town in the Galilee, a day after police shot a 20-year-old man from the village who later died of his wounds.Obama's legacy now depends on the Middle East
Demonstrators on Saturday set tires alight, threw stones and blocked roads in the village as they clashed with police to protest the killing. The village’s regional council also declared a strike in response and demanded a thorough investigation of the incident. Riot police were on the scene.
Police said Kheir a-Din Hamdan tried to stab an officer during an attempt to arrest him in the northern Arab town near Nazareth.
A short, edited surveillance video on the popular Israeli-Arab news website Panet claims to show the incident.
Hamdan is allegedly seen attacking a police van, banging on the windows. An officer gets out and, as Hamdan is seen retreating, is shot. He writhes on the ground, before police drag him into the van. He was taken to hospital where he died of his wounds.
On the Palestinian front Obama has already learned that he is no position to make history, having seen his administration’s brave effort to change local hearts yield little but the breaking of the heart of Secretary of State John Kerry.Romney hammers Obama as ‘dictatorial’ to friends like Israel, ‘naive’ on Iran
On the Iranian front, Obama is in for a collision with the new Congress – whose agreement he must secure to lift American sanctions.
An attempt to back a deal in which the goods would be delivered by other nations sanctioning Iran, from Europe to the UN, may yield an agreement, but not a place in history – because a deal with Iran against the will of the American people will not stand. Instead, it will be exposed as a capitulation, with its architects recalled as Chamberlains.
This leaves us with Islamic State.
Here, the die has already been cast. Obama is already in that war, and will likely be drawn deeper into it with full Republican support. Here, somewhere between Baghdad and Nineveh, Obama may find his place in history, providing he finally musters the vision, prudence, poise and resolve that most voters thought his first six years in office lacked.
On this front, the war effort Obama is in the process of launching may generate true victory over a true enemy representing a real problem for the entire world.
Should that happen, the man who took to the podium in Cairo eager to appease the Muslim world, will end up etched in millions of Muslim minds as Enemy No. 1 – a humbled statesman as bewildered as a Halloween pumpkin at October’s snow.
The Obama administration was in the hotseat at the inaugural Israeli American Council National Conference Friday, facing critiques from former Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney and former Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman.
Friday marked the first-ever national gathering of Israelis living in America. Organizers said that the event sold out weeks in advance, noting that the entire Israeli-American community is currently estimated at over 600,000.
Speaking days after a strong Republican victory in Congressional elections, Romney described his former opponent’s approach to Iran as “naïve” while Lieberman emphasized his disapproval of recent criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by an unnamed administration official who used the term “chickenshit.”
Romney complained that Obama “continues to diminish himself and America and leads bad people to think America can be pushed around.” At the same time, in a criticism of the president’s policies on Israel, he slammed Obama for being “divisive and dictatorial to our friends.”