The Peace Process

BREAKING: J Street Rejected by American Jewish Umbrella Group in ‘Big Tent’ Litmus Test

from the Algeimeiner April 30, 2014

JNS.org – In what many observers will see as the de facto expression of mainstream U.S. Jewry’s outlook on J Street, members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on Wednesday voted 22-17 (with three abstentions) to reject the membership application of the self-labeled “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby. J Street secured the votes of only about a third of the Conference’s 50 members.

The 42 Conference members in attendance in New York exceeded the 75-percent quorum needed to hold the vote, but J Street fell significantly short of the required threshold of a two-thirds affirmative vote from the Conference’s full membership. The result that 25 organizations either voted against J Street or abstained meant that half of the Conference’s members declined to support J Street’s application.

“The Conference meticulously followed its long-established Process and Procedures Guidelines in considering J Street’s application. … The present membership of the Conference includes organizations which represent and articulate the views of broad segments of the American Jewish community and we are confident that the Conference will continue to present the consensus of the community on important national and international issues as it has for the last 50 years,” said Conference of Presidents Chairman Robert G. Sugarman and Executive Vice Chairman/CEO Malcolm Hoenlein.

J Street said in a statement, “This is a sad day for us, but also for the American Jewish community and for a venerable institution that has chosen to bar the door to the communal tent to an organization that represents a substantial segment of Jewish opinion on Israel.”  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

RELATED (Forward)

RELATED (Commentary)

RELATED (Legal Insurrection)

RELATED (Times of Israel)

ADL will vote to admit J Street to Conference of Presidents

Abe Foxman cites the need ‘to ensure the integrity and credibility of American Jewish advocacy’

BY RON KAMPEAS April 30, 2014, 4:36 am

TA — “There is more tolerance for dissent in Israel than in the Jewish community,” Abraham Foxman told me yesterday at the Anti-Defamation League’s annual Washington conference.

That’s one reason the ADL’s national director gave for why it makes sense for J Street to be admitted to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

“We will support the admission of J Street not because we agree with them, not because we support their views, but in order to ensure the integrity and credibility of American Jewish advocacy and of the Conference of Presidents,” he said.

The ADL nod swells mainstream, centrist support for the admission into the community’s foreign policy umbrella of J Street, a group that calls itself “pro-Israel, pro-peace” and is often critical of Israeli government policy.

Backers of J Street’s admission say they have reached “critical mass” for J Street’s entry — 34 of the conference’s 51 members.

Also favoring entry in the secret ballot that may take place Wednesday afternoon are the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the community’s domestic policy umbrella; the Union for Reform Judaism, and the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly. “The RA will be voting affirmatively for J Street to become a member of the COP,” its executive vice president, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, told me in an email.

I understand that the Jewish Federations of North America also likely will vote in favor.

Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Read more: ADL will vote to admit J Street to Conference of Presidents | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/adl-will-vote-to-admit-j-street-to-conference-of-presidents/#ixzz30Ka70Yjn
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

Please CLICK HERE for full article

No takers on my debate challenge to Vassar pro-boycott faculty, but I’m still going

Posted by William A. Jacobson    Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at 3:29pm

The Case for Israel and Academic Freedom still will be made.

You may recall My debate challenge to Vassar pro-boycott faculty who signed an Open Letter defending the American Studies Association academic boycott of Israel:

Any or all of the 39 Vassar faculty members are welcome to debate me. All I insist on is equal time cumulatively. If none of the 39 Vassar faculty agree to debate, I will give a lecture on why the academic boycott of Israel should be opposed.

The organizers of the debate, the recently renamed Vassar Conservative Libertarian Union (VCLU), informed me a short while ago that none of the 39 Vassar faculty who signed the Open Letter had accepted my debate challenge by the deadline of last night.

Accordingly, I will go to Vassar and give a lecture on The Case for Israel and Academic Freedom, focusing on rebutting the support for the academic boycott of Israel expressed in the Vassar faculty Open Letter.

Here is the revised event poster provided to me by VCLU:

NOTE: Where is the academic integrity of the Vassar Faculty? Is there no one who is smart enough to debate? Or do they just hide behind Professor Shreier's snarky curriculum? There is much more to this... 

Thanks to HONESTREPORTING.COM

In April 2012, CBS’s 60 Minutes broadcast one of the most biased pieces of reporting of that year (and a Dishonest Reporter Award finalist) on the status of Christians in the Holy Land. Bob Simon presented an unbalanced picture blaming Israel for virtually every difficulty experienced by Palestinian Christians.

The segment included an interview with Christy, a young Palestinian from Bethlehem, whose family home had been affected by Israel’s security barrier on three sides. Christy was forced to flee to the UK to escape persecution by Palestinians who disagree with her political views and sympathy for Israel’s case. At meeting in London in 2013, Christy explained to me how Bob Simon and CBS had, through selective editing, misrepresented her views on the security barrier and the situation of Christians in Bethlehem.

Christy greatly impressed me, both for her courageous stance and the intelligent manner in which she presented her side of the Palestinian issue in stark contrast to the anti-Israel propaganda that so dominates the discourse.

We were, however, unable to report Christy’s case on the HonestReporting site at the time due to the precarious situation that she and her family back in Bethlehem found themselves in.

Now, despite having experienced death threats both in Bethlehem and in the UK, Christy has very bravely put her story on YouTube in the form of a lecture given to a Swedish university and a personal appeal to Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to hold to a promise given to her that a Palestinian state would respect fundamental human rights and democracy.

Christy gives us a view of life under the Palestinian Authority not often told, particularly from the media that all too often downplays or completely ignores the lack of freedom and internal violence within Palestinian society.  Please CLICK HERE to read

20 Photos That Change the Holocaust Narrative

GREAT List of photos.

Please CLICK HERE to see this!

The Palestinians and the Holocaust

the Algemeiner April 27, 2014 Petra Marquardt-Bigman

NOTE: Another fabulous article from Petra. A MUST READ! 

In the past few weeks, several reports highlighted the vitriolic backlash that followed a visit by a group of Palestinian students to Auschwitz at the end of March. The controversial visit – apparently the first of its kind – was organized as part of a joint program on Reconciliation and Conflict Resolution with the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and was led by Al-Quds University professor Mohammed S. Dajani.

The media reports on this visit leave little doubt that Professor Dajani reacted to the abuse and threats directed at him with admirable courage and integrity; it is also clear that he greatly inspired the students who participated in this trip. Moreover, the organizers of this program obviously had only the best of intentions. Yet, it is arguably deplorable that nobody seems to have made an effort to use this opportunity to teach the Palestinian students about the collaboration of Haj Amin al-Husseini with the Nazis. As one of the Palestinian students who visited Auschwitz reportedly noted afterwards: “It is a strange thing for a Palestinian to go to a Nazi death camp. But I would recommend the trip.”

Quite obviously, this student remained completely unaware that when Palestinians visit a Nazi death camp, they have no reason to feel like detached spectators for whom it is somewhat “strange” to come. On the contrary, when Palestinians visit a Nazi death camp, they are following in the footsteps of the man who is nowadays sometimes referred to as “Hitler’s mufti” and they have the chance to understand what this Palestinian ally of the Nazis saw and what he envisaged for the Middle East after the Nazi victory he hoped for. Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

The Jewish vs. Muslim claim to Jerusalem (poster)

Thanks to Elder of Ziyon for this:

A Palestinian Student Defends Her Visit to Auschwitz

“It is impossible for me to make believe that there was no human tragedy perpetrated against millions of Jews and non-Jews.”

The Atlantic April 28, 2014 Zeina M. Barakat

In March, I was one of 27 Palestinian students who visited the Auschwitz-­Birkenau death camps with Professor Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi. When we returned from Poland, the condemnation of our trip—and of Professor Dajani himself—in the media, and on Facebook and Twitter, was deafening. Equally deafening was the silence of my fellow travelers, who were so cowed into muteness by the virulence of the criticism that only a couple came to Professor Dajani’s defense. 

As the coordinator of the Palestinian team, I am now breaking this silence.

For the last decade—ever since I enrolled in the American Studies program at al-Quds University in Jerusalem, received my master’s degree, and then moved to the other side of the desk to became a lecturer—Professor Dajani has been my teacher and mentor. Learning about the Holocaust—and its universal message about the threat of intolerance and genocide—has been a central theme of our work. Together, we co-authored with Martin Rau a book in Arabic on the Holocaust to create awareness of this most tragic event among Palestinians. We distributed the book both inside and outside the university, delivered lectures to civic groups, and showed films on the Holocaust in our workshops. More than once, we took our students to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Finally, the time came to travel to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Please keep reading

On Yom HaShoah, World Leaders Call for Combating of Anti-Semitism

Algemeiner April 28, 2014

JNS.org – On Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, world leaders called for the combating of anti-Semitism.

President Barack Obama said in a statement, “On this Yom HaShoah, let us recommit ourselves to the task of remembrance, and to always oppose anti-Semitism wherever it takes root. Together, we must give enduring meaning to the words ‘Never Again.’”

On his Facebook account, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called on the world to “combat anti-Semitism in all its forms.”

“Yom HaShoah reminds us that the Holocaust must never be forgotten and that we must remain vigilant against all forms of prejudice and hatred to ensure that such unspeakable acts of inhumanity never happen again,” Harper said. Click to Keep Reading 

Statement by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) Regarding Vassar College’s Recent Controversy Involving Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the International Studies (IS) Travel Class to Israel

from SPME, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East

Boycott Calls Against Israel

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP): Targeting Israel-Related Activities 07.04.14 Editorial Note, SJP, with chapters on numerous campus, has evolved an effective technique to target Israeli-oriented activities.  Among the tool of choice in the SJP arsenal are heckling, disturbances, protest and others.  According to critics, the tactics are designed to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in order to dissuade students from attending such events. The statement of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East  (SPME) describes one such occurrence - at Vassar College.   Members of SJP are highly motivated and easy to mobilize - a characteristic that contrasts with the more low-key supporters of Israel.  College authorities have had a hard time controlling this phenomenon because of adherence to the rules of academic freedom that strives to give both sides of the debate a voice. Unfortunately, SJP intends on propagating only one "narrative," making it virtually impossible to conduct a rational and civilized campus debate.  The real aim of the SJP is to project an image of Israel as an apartheid state deserving to be targeted by BDS.  The "moral clarity" necessary for sustaining the BDS movement cannot tolerate alternative views.   April 1, 2014 PHILADELPHIA, PA—Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), a grass roots organization of over 30,000 academic members, expresses its great concern with recent events at Vassar College, growing out of a student and faculty response to the “International Studies 110” class (IS) which traveled over Spring break to Israel. The IS trip was taught and led by Vassar professor of Earth Science and Geography, Jill Schneiderman, and associate professor of Greek and Roman Studies, Rachel Friedman. Its educational purpose was to look “at issues of water rights and access to the Jordan River, as well as disparities in water distribution in Palestine and Israel.” Locations visited by students in the class included sites throughout Israeli and Palestinian Authority controlled territories and a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem. Professor Schneiderman’s teaching objective was inclusive. “I was motivated to propose and teach such a course because from my perspective as an earth scientist,” she wrote in a blog, “I understand how daily and future access to clean water in ample supply is one of the key issues about which people in the region fight. It is also a problem on which Arabs, Jews, Jordanians, Palestinians, and Israelis have worked together with integrity and compassion.” For 25 years IS trips had been offered without dispute. Only this year did the issue of the propriety of visiting a specific country—in this case, Israel—become a topic of discussion and condemnation—led by Vassar’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). SJP is very clear in its opposition to the Jewish state, and they regularly vilify Israel, Zionism, and supporters of Israel; SJP previously constructed a mock security wall on Vassar’s campus. SPME is very concerned that through SJP’s response to the IS course—and the subsequent the meeting held by Vassar’s Committee on Inclusion and Excellence on March 3rd to discuss guidelines for activism at the school in the context of the trip—SJP has created a climate of fear and intimidation that has enveloped the Vassar campus, particularly for Jewish students and faculty, and others who might support Israel. On February 6th, nine members of SJP appeared at the classroom for the IS course and formed a human barricade to impede students from entering the classroom. An SJP leaflet distributed to students described Israel as sponsoring apartheid and asserted that “the indigenous people of Palestine” did not want students going on the trip. Professors Friedman and Schneiderman have noted that the demonstration by SJP was inappropriate because it took place at the classroom itself, misguided because it misrepresented both the purpose and substance of the course, and threatening and intimidating to students enrolled in the class because of the physical presence of the demonstrators and the ululating and heckling that accompanied the protest. When the class did finally begin, protestors continued to shout and students inside the classroom told the professor that they “felt unsafe,” “bullied,” and “harassed.” SPME believes protestors do not have the right to “occupy” classroom spaces and to physically insert themselves between students and faculty in teaching situations at any time. SPME is also troubled by the fact that the SJP’s interference with the conduct and teaching of the course was met, not with sanctions from the administration, but in fact with another opportunity to further denigrate Israel and Israelis in a school-wide public panel held on March 3 by Vassar’s Committee on Inclusion and Excellence to discuss guidelines for activism at the school. In fact, that meeting was arranged primarily because SJP members had complained to the administration. SPME is also concerned that this March 3rd meeting, called an “Open Forum on the Ethics of Student Activism and Protest at Vassar,” which some 200 people attended, was arranged by the administration solely for the purpose of giving SJP members and their supporters on campus additional opportunities to demonize and attempt to delegitimize Israel—in the context of the IS trip—and to repeat misinformation and slanders, rather than to seriously examine the events that took place. The few pro-Israel speakers at the meeting were heckled with finger snapping and made to feel unwelcomed in the discussion, leading Professor Schneiderman to feel that “last night was knocked off-center by a belligerent academic community dedicated to vilifying anyone who dares set foot in Israel,” as she expressed in a blog posting.  KEEP READING! VERY IMPORTANT Also, please see this related article by CLICKING HERE

Zionism Denial

from the Daily Beast April 17, 2012

NOTE: GREAT! Article from the archives. Says it all. H/T to Petra, @WarpedMirrorPMB 

As Israel marks its national Holocaust Remembrance Day, many around the world will secretly roll their eyes. 'There they go again the Zionists, using their precious Holocaust to justify their state, their power, their faults, reveling in a world guilted into silence.'

There are those who believe, too many, that without the holocaust there would have been no Israel. Most of them make this assumption in good faith. The American President himself, in his June 4, 2009 Cairo speech, spoke of "the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied."

But when so many believe that without the Holocaust there would have been no Israel, those who want Israel erased from map and memory, or isolated as an illegitimate state come to resent the Holocaust, or at least its association with Israel.

The American President wanted to make an important stand against Holocaust denial in the capital of the Arab world. He did not understand that by reaffirming the dangerous equation that the global legitimacy for Israel is rooted in the Holocaust, he fanned the motivation to engage in Holocaust denial for those who continue to believe, as they always have, that Israel is not a legitimate state.

Holocaust denial, Holocaust minimization ('6 million is an exaggerated number') Holocaust 'equalization' ('there were other genocides and ethnic cleansings, the Holocaust was no different'), Holocaust reversal ('what the Nazis did to the Jews is what the Jews are doing to others'), Holocaust marginalization ('other people were also killed in the War') and Holocaust by association ('the Palestinians are the secondary victims of the Holocaust'), are all but different facets of the same effort—to rob Israel of what seems like a powerful and indisputable source of legitimacy.  Great, huh? CLICK to KEEP READING

Thanks to South African Friends of Israel

https://www.facebook.com/SouthAfricanFriendsOfIsrael

J Street on the Docket

Will Left-Leaning Israel Lobby Be Let Into the Tent?

J STREET

Uphill Fight: J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami came under attack at a committee meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.

By Theodore Sasson

Published April 27, 2014, issue of May 02, 2014.

NOTE: The goal is Peace in Israel. The means may vary. This is going to be very interesting and cannot be ignored: 

On April 30, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations will vote on J Street’s application for admission. It will be a significant moment not just for the left-leaning lobby, but also for the Jewish establishment as a whole, which will have to provide a verdict on whether the communal tent should include an organization that has publicly opposed the policies of the current Israeli government.

The 51-member Presidents Conference includes the larger religious, advocacy, service, fraternal and fundraising organizations. Newly established groups like J Street must wait five years before applying to join, and a vote of two-thirds of the membership is required for acceptance. The fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi was admitted earlier this year as the newest member.

From a bit farther in the article: (Italics are mine)

A vote against J Street would also call into question the Presidents Conference’s own claim to represent organized American Jewry. With dozens of chapters across the country and on college campuses, the support of more than 700 rabbis and cantors, and annual conventions that attract thousands — including Israeli Knesset members from both the government and the opposition — J Street certainly qualifies as a major Jewish organization.

Moreover, as the Pew Research Center’s 2013 survey documented, J Street’s political platform — in favor of a two-state solution, opposed to settlement expansion and skeptical of the aims of the current Israeli government — represents a strong tendency in the American Jewish public.

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/197114/j-street-on-the-docket/?p=all#ixzz308f9xOM9


READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

Me

Driving Mr. Yarkoni #Yalla

by Yael Steinber April 17, 2014 Times of Israel Blogs

NOTE: This is great. "just do it" or YOLO? Its #Yalla

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of touring with Itzik Yarkoni, founder of BOMAH: The Brand of Milk and Honey, and social media consultant to Hasbara Fellowships.  This was the second of two tours that I have done with Itzik, the first was in October 2013. It is BOMAH’s mission to rebrand Israel through personal stories. Our tours have been with the purpose of helping pro-Israel student groups gain a grasp of social media, helping them rebrand the perception of Israel throughout Southern California. I had expected that the many hours and hundreds of miles traveled together would give me an education in Facebook, Twitter, and marketing; and they certainly did! What I did not anticipate was that one little hashtag would gift me a peek into the Israeli work ethic: #Yalla

Read more: Driving Mr. Yarkoni | Yael Steinberg | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/driving-mr-yarkoni/#ixzz308WwBcWB
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

Click to read the article

Instagram Yom HaShoah

Click Here

The Jewish People will never stand defenseless again

thanks to chutzpahnational.org

ADL: I am not a stereotype. Get to know me!

Another Horrible Vassar College Student Site

Shit White People Say at Vassar College

NOTE: Amazingly Anti Semitic

CLICK HERE TO READ

Its a spinoff from this awful twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/search?q=shitliberalzionistssay&src=typd

Interview with Vassar Professor Joshua Schreier

NOTE: Somehow this guy is in charge of Middle East Studies? Scroll down in the paper (LINK) to read the interview. Thoughts? Mine are not nice, so I'll refrain from sharing for the moment. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE VASSAR CHRONICLE ARTICLE


Other hair raising Vassar Chronicle Links are here:

HERE


HERE

BDS and Thuggery

from DIVEST THIS! at divestthis.com

I don’t think I’m alone in being appalled by the degree to which nasty behavior – up to and including intimidation and violence – has gone mainstream within the BDS “movement.”

Now anti-Israel activism has always had its ugly side that included vandalism, threats, and shouting down those with whom the boycotters disagree. I can recall the divestniks storming the podium when they lost the divestment vote they forced on the City of Somerville as far back as 2004, the same type of public tantrums we saw when the Methodist Church or Carleton College told them “No” more recently.

But in most of the cases just mentioned, BDS supporters were able to keep the Mr. Hyde portion of their personality in check, at least during what I call the “all smiles” period when they were trying to convince an uninformed audience that both they (and what they were requesting) were all perfectly reasonable.

But recent behavior in schools like Michigan, Vassar,  Northeastern and elsewhere seem to indicate that the boycotters no longer feel the need to be bound by civilized norms even during a period when it would be to their benefit to pretend to be something other than a bunch of single issue fanatics ready to do anything to get their way.  CLICK TO KEEP READING

The Youngest Holocaust Survivor from Oskar Schindler’s List, Now 75, Tells her Story

Before moving to Israel and establishing a family, Eva Levi, 75, lived a very different reality. She is the youngest person alive who lived through the horror of the Holocaust thanks to the famous Oscar Schindler. Today, a few days before Holocaust Memorial day, she tells her story.

CLICK TO READ

NOTE: Wonderful story.

Today, April 27, 1940, Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of a concentration camp which would be situated near the Polish village of Oswiecim.

by Danny Ayalon

Today, April 27, 1940, Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of a concentration camp which would be situated near the Polish village of Oswiecim. Eventually, the world would tremble at the sound of the name of that concentration camp: Auschwitz.

Auschwitz: one word, an overarching name that stood as the name for an evil that spanned over 3 large camps including the dreaded Birkenau and the lesser known Buna-Monowitz, and 45 sub-camps. 1 million Jews were murdered within Auschwitz's confines, by a brutal German extermination machine that instead of ignoring it, chose to heed the ancient call of anti-Semitism, embracing it and taking it to an extreme that could only be reached thanks to the help of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and willing volunteers from a myriad of countries across Europe.

Three years later, on April 27, 1943, Polish Home Army Captain Witold Pilecki successfully escaped Auschwitz, after having volunteered to infiltrate it and spending nearly 3 years inside the camp. Captain Pilecki personally reported on the extermination in the camps, which by then was advancing at a terrifying rate, but his reports were seen as exaggerations. The indifference of the world towards the plight of the Jews, as certainly as the German hatred of the Jews, contributed to their deaths.  CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING

J Street U Brandeis’ Talia Lepson Harasses Pro-Israel Student

J Street leader to pro-Israel student: ‘Jews hate you’

BY: Adam Kredo  
April 27, 2014 1:30 pm

A top J Street leader at Brandeis University harassed a pro-Israel student activist early Saturday morning, calling the student a “shit bag” and telling him that “Jews hate you,” according to those who witnessed the incident.

Daniel Mael was walking to his dorm room on the university’s campus late Friday night when he encountered Talia Lepson, a J Street U Brandeis board member, who purportedly referred to Mael as a “shit bag” and angrily told him “Jews hate you.”

“I don’t feel comfortable on campus knowing people will lob verbal insults at me simply because we disagree,” said Mael, who has filed an incident report with the Brandeis police over what he described at the “uncivil environment that is developing on campus and the attempts to isolate students with differing opinions.”

The incident is just one of several at Brandeis lately in which pro-Israel students have come under fire for their attempts to defend the Jewish state on campus from groups such as J Street.

Mael said that he and a friend were returning to their dorm rooms at around 12:45 a.m. on Saturday when he came across Lepson—who says she currently works as a political intern at the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—and a group of her friends.

“As they approached, Talia Lepson give me a really, really intense stare and then I turned to the students and said, ‘Shabbat shalom,’” said Mael, who is an observant Jew. “I was being serious. I thought that religion and politics are not necessarily intertwined. I thought you could still be nice.”

CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING

Haj-Amin Al-Husseini, founder of Palestinian national movement+Adolf Hitler.

Never Forget

On The Lisa Wexler Show, talking Vassar and BDS

On The Lisa Wexler Show, talking Vassar and BDS

This is a great interview. Enjoy!

web inciter gets sentenced

http://mobile.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/04/25/us/ap-us-muslim-website-threats.html. http://mobile.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/04/25/us/ap-us-muslim-website-threats.html

Abbas to announce his Hamas-backed government will recognize Israel

BY AVI ISSACHAROFF April 25, 2014, 8:37 pm

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will on Saturday formally present the political platform of his anticipated new

government, in the wake of his Fatah faction’s unity pact with Hamas, a Palestinian official told The Times of Israel on Friday.  

The official, who asked not to be named, said Abbas would tell the PLO’s Central Committee that the new government — scheduled to be established within the next five weeks — would recognize Israel and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. The government would also be committed to a two-state solution, with an independent Palestine alongside Israel.

The new government would also support continued negotiations with Israel in order to achieve the two-state solution, the official said.

Abbas, in his address, will stress that the new government will be comprised of technocrats rather than politicians, the official said. There will be no Fatah or Hamas representatives in the government, he added.

The official expressed criticism of Israel’s bitter response to the unity pact. The PA’s support for Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, he said, was designed to boost peace efforts, not to cause their collapse. “We knew in advance that Hamas would agree to the conditions that we and the Egyptians had put to them,” he said, “to the effect that the new government would be headed by Abu Mazen [Abbas] and would operate according to his directives, and that an agreed date would be fixed for Palestinian elections.”

The economic sanctions that Israel said Thursday it would impose on the PA — including the use of taxes collected by Israel on the PA’s behalf to offset PA debts to Israel — were likely to lead to the weakening of the PA’s security apparatus, he also said.

Read more: Abbas to announce his Hamas-backed government will recognize Israel | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-to-announce-his-hamas-backed-government-will-recognize-israel/#ixzz2zvW0YXss
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

In San Francisco and in Palestine, It’s Time To Grow Up and Take Responsibility

From smashing Google Glasses to rejecting peace talks, failing to understand natural rights is leading to some very dark places

By Liel Leibovitz|April 18, 2014 12:00 AM|Comments: 101

Earlier this week in fog city, a young reporter wasassaulted for wearing Google Glass. A woman ran up to him, grabbed the wearable computing device, shouted some slogans, and then smashed the gadget to the ground. The attack was the latest in a slew of Glass-triggered incidents, the device having come to represent the struggle between the Bay Area have-nots and the young, savvy, and affluent techies who, so goes the public outcry, have priced them out of the city. From targeting a Google executive’s home and demanding $3 billion to “create autonomous, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist communities throughout the Bay Area and Northern California” to staging rowdy protests against the designated buses that ferry employees from downtown San Francisco to the various Silicon Valley campuses where many of the newly gilded gentlefolk work, an anti-technology backlash is making the city’s streets unsafe for the young, the affluent, and the digitally savvy.

What’s behind these outbursts of malice? The glass-smashers and yard-invaders cry income inequality, arguing, like so many on the left these days, that America’s economic and moral woes can both be boiled down to the single fact that the gap between the nation’s wealthiest and the rest of us has increased dramatically in recent years.

There are many reasons why this cri de coeur is, at best, misguided, some of which were neatly captured in an unfairly maligned column by David Brooks. The real problem, as Brooks poignantly noted, wasn’t that a sliver of Americans were earning very big bucks; it was that too many Americans were sinking into poverty, pushed down the ladder by thorny socioeconomic issues, like lack of decent educational opportunities or teen pregnancy, that have little to do with the boom enjoyed by the few and the fortunate. Still, march into too many hallowed halls these days, from newsrooms to college classrooms, and you’ll hear little but chatter about the 1 percent. No wonder: Ideas—the real stuff that helps fix lives and create opportunities—are hard to come by and demanding to execute. Indignation is cheap and easy.

CLICK TO KEEP READING