by Amir Taheri, GATESTONE • December 18, 2022
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. (Photo by Omer Messinger/Getty Images)
By Giulio Meotti, GATESTONE • December 18, 2022
The Masjid Umar mosque in Leicester, England. (Image source: NotFromUtrecht/Wikimedia Commons)
VGNI
The phrase “At the double” is a particularly appropriate title this week. Not only are Israeli innovations and achievements continuing at an incredibly fast pace, but they now seem to be coming in pairs. Two cancer treatment breakthroughs; two big events to mark Israel’s Disabilities Awareness month; two organizations launching major agriculture technology initiatives; two major international trade successes; and two sets of archeological finds from the Biblical Hanukkah period.
In the 18th Dec 22 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
By MARTIN SHERMAN
Do the Palestinian-Arabs genuinely wish to establish a state for themselves? Or do they really wish to dismantle the state of the Jews?
To this day, I cannot understand why the Palestinian leadership did not accept the far-reaching and unprecedented proposal I offered them. My proposal included a solution to all outstanding issues: territorial compromise, security arrangements, Jerusalem and refugees – Former PM Ehud Olmert, Washington Post, July 17, 2009
by Geoffrey Clarfield, NEW ENGLISH REVIEW (January 2016)
NEW YORK – “Bar-Ilan University is the only Zionist university left in Israel,” proclaimed Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of Bar-Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, at a gala dinner of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA ) held Tuesday night in New York.
— Haaretz-Israeli Newspaper, November 22, 2011
Preface
As more and more American and Canadian campuses are being infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood and their fellow travelling cultural Marxists, more and more, Jewish students find that they are being physically threatened and often attacked on the college and university campuses of these two democratic countries.
Bear Klien, Your Russia is the partner (and has been in the past) of Israel’s great enemies. USA sells Israel’s weapons including partnership on F35. So USA which is super flawed is still not the partner of Israel’s greatest enemies.
I did leave the site due to your supporting Russia an enemy defacto of Israel due to it selling Iran weapons including nuke technology. You should acknowledge your misjudgment and error on this fact. It would be a sign of integrity.
The head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said in an interview broadcast Friday that Russia was looking to help Iran, which would pose a threat to US allies in the region.
“What’s beginning to emerge is at least the beginnings of a full-fledged defense partnership between Russia and Iran, with the Iranians supplying drones to the Russians, which are killing Ukrainian civilians as we speak today,” William Burns told PBS.
By Hassan Mahmoudi, AM THINKER
The protests in Iran are now in their fourth month, and the government is responding with increasing aggression. It has already executed two protesters, both for murder, condemned another protester to death, and has accused 20 or more protesters of crimes punishable by death.
Recently, the Iran Human Rights Society printed a letter from a high school student who was arrested for attending a protest. The law enforcement agents to whom he refers were probably members of the Ministry of Information (MOIS) intelligence service because they tend to drive Samand brand white cars. However, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps occasionally work with MOIS, with the IRGC seizing people and then delivering them to MOIS for interrogation. Given the known track record of the regime when it comes to those who threaten it, there’s good reason to believe the letter is legitimate.
Read more…
by Majid Rafizadeh, GATESTONE • December 17, 2022
Farideh Moradkhani, niece of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, denounces the Iranian regime in a video posted on YouTube. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
By Ted Belman Dec 26/14
The Holocaust didn’t occur because of Hitler but because of the Church. Hitler merely built upon the policies of the Church and drove them to their logical conclusion.
Of course I am familiar with the idea that but for Christianity, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened, but wasn’t fully aware of the debt owed by Hitler to precedents set by the Church for the details of his policies, including the final solution.
By Patricia Tolson, EPOCH TIMES December 15, 2022
New documents reveal how the United States government used a secret Twitter portal to censor COVID-19 content that contradicted the government’s narrative.
In its ongoing probe into Twitter’s censorship practices, America First Legal has obtained a fourth set of documents (pdf) exposing a secret Twitter portal, which U.S. government officials used to censor dissenting COVID-19 views in violation of the First Amendment. It’s a revelation Elon Musk described as “extremely concerning.”
Read more…
T. Belman. I see a different aspect of the problem. Israel has passed Basic Laws but there is a disagreement whether are superior to ordinary laws. The concern seems to be that the override law will allow, infringement of rights.
Israel does not have a constitution. Therefore the “rights” are not defined in a constitution. They are derived by the Court from the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty (1992)
“The basic human rights in Israel are based on the recognition of the value of the human being, the sanctity of his life, and his being a free person, and they shall be upheld in the spirit of the principles included in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.”
“One should not violate the life, body, or dignity of a human being as such.”
When the Court overrules a law they usually hold that the law infringes on a person’s “dignity”. It alone decides what rights “dignity” encompasses. This is an overreach. It should be up to the Knesset to decide what rights are encompassed.
From left: Dr. Tamar Hostovsky Brandes, Prof. Yaniv Roznai, Adv. Yonatan Green, Prof. Moshe Koppel and Times of Israel editor David Horovitz at a ToI Live event in Jerusalem’s Israel Democracy Institute, December 15, 2022. (Oded Antman/IDI)
Prominent legal scholars discussed the incoming coalition’s plans to curtail the High Court’s power during a Thursday event hosted and live-streamed by The Times of Israel, exploring its likely far-reaching impact on Israeli democracy and society.
by David Stockman
The unspeakable stain of the Covid tyranny requires the very opposite of the “pandemic amnesty” that the craven poltroons at the Atlantic magazine suggested recently. That’s because the precedent was such a grave affront to constitutional liberty and capitalist prosperity that those responsible should be exposed, hounded and shamed, and prosecuted where warranted, so that future power-grabbers will forever be reminded that tyranny cannot be imposed with impunity.
By Victor Davis Hanson, AM GREATNESS
Before the midterm November elections, Sam Bankman-Fried was a left-wing billionaire heartthrob.
He properly grew up on the Stanford campus, where his parents were well-known left-wing activist law professors. He went to a tony prep school and on to MIT.
Bankman-Fried mocked society’s bourgeois capitalist conventions by dressing and looking like a slob in cut-offs and T-shirts.
Read more…
Tufts University, in Medford, Mass., shown several years ago, denounced antisemitism while championing free speech.PHOTO: BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
Adina Pinsker commutes to Rutgers University in Newark, N.J., to study supply-chain management. She is also active in Hillel International, the nation’s largest collegiate Jewish organization.
When she arrives on campus, she takes an indirect route to class and tucks inside her shirt the silver Star of David she wears around her neck. These are precautions, she said, to avoid harassment from students who dislike Israel, the people who support it, or both.
By Tanya Berlaga, AMER THINKER
Last week, Congress passed the “Respect for Marriage” Act. As usual, the name the proponents (or, sometimes, opponents) invent for the bill does not accurately represent its purpose. You may remember that the “For the People” Act was a lot less useful to the people than it was to the Democrat party. The “Inflation Reduction Act” did nothing to reduce inflation. And the “Don’t Say Gay” bill did not ban the word “gay.”
Read more…
Elizabeth Frawley Bagley at Senate confirmation hearing, May 2022<
>
The Biden administration has announced the establishment of an inter-agency group that will co-ordinate US government efforts “to counter antisemitism”.
President Joe Biden said: “Antisemitism has no place in America. All Americans should forcefully reject antisemitism — including Holocaust denial — wherever it exists.”
By Daniel Greenfield, 15 Dec
It’s December. The cold winds are blowing and darkness comes early. Worker productivity drops across the board except for the one class of workers who don’t work any other time of the year.
Congress.
With the midterm elections in the rearview mirror, the Senate is a furious hive of activity, dirty deals and furious negotiations as its small membership uses the opportunity created by the incoming House Republican majority to rush legislation through the lame duck session.
Read more…
JStreet is not Jewish or pro-Israel, it exists solely to advance Democrats. It is anti-Israel and the Reform Movement is now the same. Op-ed.
Ilhan OmarReuters
(JNS) J Street, a far-left organization that has done more to turn Israel into a partisan issue than any other, has joined other anti-Israel Jewish groups (Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Habonim Dror North America, J Street, New Israel Fund, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and T’ruah – note that the Reform Movementisout in the open) in an attempt to browbeat Kevin McCarthy—likely to be the next speaker of the House—into not kicking virulent antisemite Rep. Ilhan Omar off the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
UAE PRESIDENT Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed is greeted by Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the beginning of the G20 Summit last month, in Bali. (photo credit: Leon Neal/Reuters)
When the presumptive next prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his goal of expanding the Abraham Accords to include additional countries, speculation arose as to which Arab or Muslim state would be the next to normalize ties with Israel. Though unlikely to materialize soon, one particularly attractive candidate is located over 8,000 km. away in southeast Asia – Indonesia.
