The man who leapt to congratulate election winners such as Vladimir Putin has had a markedly different attitude toward Israel’s newly elected leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. After delaying a congratulatory phone call this past week, Obama then used the call to lecture Netanyahu and threaten a change in U.S.-Israel relations. First, the lecture. The New York Times reported yesterday that Obama gave a strongly worded lecture [to] Mr. Netanyahu about an Election Day Facebook posting in which the Israeli leader warned that Arab voters were going to the polls “in droves,” an assertion widely interpreted as an attempt to suppress the Arab vote. “We indicated that that kind of rhetoric was contrary to what is the best of Israel’s traditions — that although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland and the need to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly,” Mr. Obama said. “If that is lost, then I think that not only does it give ammunition to folks who don’t believe in a Jewish state, but it also, I think, starts to erode the meaning of democracy in the country.”
How anti-Semitic is Germany? The Central Council of Jews is warning members of the community against wearing traditional head coverings. It is a precaution that 26-year-old Mark Krasnov has been taking for some time.
Before Mark Krasnov leaves his Berlin home, he always asks himself: Should I play it safe or should I wear the kippah? “I don’t want to provoke anyone or for people to get any silly ideas,” says the 26-year-old Jewish man. The result is that he hardly every wears the headgear when he goes out. He feels it’s too risky.
The question of Jewish safety in Germany became the subject of public debate on Thursday after Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, wondered in a radio interview whether it “really made sense” in “problem neighborhoods with large Muslim populations to make oneself recognizable as a Jew by wearing a kippah?” He suggested that in “might be better to choose a different head covering” in such instances.
The one area Germany has been particularly docile in is building a military presence in Europe and beyond. Although Germany’s army, the Bundeswehr, intervened in 1995 in the former Yugoslavia as part of a humanitarian mission, it has been reluctant to send its army elsewhere. Now, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told the Welt Am Sunntag newspaper on Sunday (March 8, 2015) that forming an EU army would be one of the best ways for the bloc to defend its values, as well as its borders. Juncker posited that, “An army like this would help us better coordinate our foreign and defense policies, and to collectively take on Europe’s responsibilities in the world.” He added, “Europe’s image has suffered dramatically and also in terms of foreign policy, we don’t seem to be taken entirely seriously.” Britain and France reject the idea of an EU army, fearing it will jeopardize NATO. Germany though, favors it, and supports the idea. As NATO ties are weakening and a volatile and aggressive Russia looms large upon Europe, Germany is seeking a new national and regional defense framework, and an EU army appears to be its answer.
Racist students in Oklahoma are expelled — but what about those who attack Jewish students?
The University of Oklahoma cut all ties with the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity chapter on campus after a video surfaced in which fraternity members were chanting a racist song on Monday, March 9th.
A statement from SAE’s national headquarters apologized for the “unacceptable and racist behavior.” The University of Oklahoma’s SAE chapter closed, all members have been suspended (including those not in the video), and those recognized in the video have been expelled. I applaud University of Oklahoma President David Boren’s message calling students involved in the incident, “disgraceful.”
Last month sophomore Rachel Beyda applied to and stood before UCLA’s Undergraduate Students Associate Council (USAC) to become a member of its Judicial Board. She was questioned for a reported 40 minutes about anything but her qualifications for the position. Questions about Beyda’s religion were posed such as, “given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community,” Fabienne Roth, a member of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, asked, “how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remark about the dangers of a Palestinian state has sent advocates of Palestinian statehood into a rage so hysterical that you would think he had questioned somebody’s sacred religious beliefs.
On second thought, maybe he did. The Palestinian statehood crowd has become so inflexible and doctrinaire, and so oblivious to the changing realities of the Middle East, that their political positions are starting to resemble a set-in-stone religious faith.
Here’s what the prime minister said: “Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state, anyone who is going to evacuate territories today, is simply giving a base for attacks to the radical Islam against Israel. This is the true reality that was created here in the last few years.”
His point was simple and straightforward. His logic was impeccable. The response of critics has been exactly the opposite.
Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party got its best numbers not in Jerusalem, where it only won a quarter of the vote, or Sderot, the city under siege where it still got less than half, or Maaleh Adumim, a city of some 40,000 known as a “settlement” because it is located in ’67 Israel where it also took less than half.
Its best numbers appear to have come from Arab-al-Naim, a Bedouin settlement, where it scored three-quarters of the vote.
The residents were uninterested in any of the accusations of racism being aimed at Netanyahu by the media. Instead they were interested in housing. As one resident put it, “I used to sleep in a cave with my goats. Now I ask my daughter what wallpaper she wants in her room.”
Netanyahu’s election comment about Arabs being bused in to vote has been seized on as a useful excuse to explain how the media’s poll numbers that showed Netanyahu losing align with the actual results by claiming that a rash of racist Israelis rushed to vote. But that fails to explain why the exit polls were still badly wrong. A more realistic explanation is that the media’s polling was biased against Netanyahu. But it’s easier for the media to accuse Netanyahu of racism than admit to its own biases.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) forbids any of it signatories to have nuclear weapons. Full stop.
Under the terms of the NPT, the P5+1 have no legal authority to amend the treaty unilaterally, to abrogate the treaty, or to allow nations that are signatories to the NPT to abrogate the treaty.
Since when can the UN Security Council amend U.S. treaty law? The UN can certainly propose amendments, but it cannot approve such changes on behalf of the U.S. Congress and the American people.
If Iran is allowed nuclear weapons capability, other nations — especially throughout South America, already infiltrated by Iran — will doubtless follow suit.
In Iran, would this agreement have the force of law, or would the Supreme Leader — who just this week said, “Death to America” — be allowed to change its terms unilaterally? And what would be the consequences to him if he did?
Dr. Denis MacEoin has a PhD in Persian Studies (Cambridge 1979) and has lectured in Arabic and Islamic Studies. He has contributed to the major encyclopedias on Islam and Iran, the Encyclopedia of Islam 2nd. ed., The Encyclopedia Iranica, and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam in the Modern World.
As the current U.S. Administration said it would take Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu “at his word,” it is, of course, safe to assume that it will take Iran’s Supreme Leader at his word, as well.
On Sunday, March 21, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was lowing about progress in the “peace talks,” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was calling for “Death to America.” Mercifully, his call came before the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany) — illegally, under the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — tried to allow Iran to bolt its obligations under the NPT and acquire nuclear weapons.
Khamenei’s announcement, reported by the Times of Israel, appears to vindicate the views of Israel’s farsighted, newly re-elected Prime Minster, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the voters who overwhelmingly elected him, as well as France’s courageous former Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius.
Netanyahu recently explained that the circumstances of escalating extremist Islamism in the region at this time make handing over more land to terrorist groups, such as the Palestinian Authority’s government and Hamas, inauspicious. U.S. President Barack Obama said he would take Netanyahu at his word. It is therefore safe to assume, of course, that the current U.S. Administration will take Iran’s Supreme Leader “at his word,” as well.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/03/22/video-ayaan-hirsi-ali-speaks-out-in-new-book-heretic/
Watch as the infamous activist, blacklisted by Brandeis University for her anti-Islam views, discusses her new book Heretic and the concept of reforming Islam. Martha Raddatz has no problem outing herself as a turncoat feminist, accusing Hirsi Ali, herself a survivor of female genital mutilation, of unfairly attacking Islam now that she has left the religion.
Raddatz and the pro-Islam Manalo Omar are also quick to gang up on Hirsi Ali when she highlights one of the many Qu’ranic calls for death to infidels currently being used to justify Sharia law and jihad, citing both “the Torah” and “the Bible” as containing violent verses. When Hirsi Ali replies by questioning where the Christians are who take these verses as literally as their Islamic counterparts, Raddatz changes her line of questioning without changing her politically correct tone.
“Doesn’t [your book] incite people to hate Muslims?” is Raddatz’s conclusion, not her query, proving once again that the West’s multiculturalist elite are the greatest threat to Islamic reform.
“I spent the first four years of Obama as the White House correspondent for ABC News and it was just fascinating to watch the relationship deteriorate from the very beginning when — I’m sure I’m going to mess up the chronology here — but there was a Biden trip to Israel and he landed and immediately new settlements were announced. There was Netanyahu not being permitted to come through the front door one time, an honor usually reserved for the Dalai Lama,” Tapper said during a discussion at the Center for Strategic Studies in Washington titled “Foreign Policy Hotspots.”
“And what was interpreted by President Obama as Netanyahu lecturing Obama in the Oval Office. And I think it’s fair to say that the respect Netanyahu and Obama have for each other knows bounds, but beyond that it has affected the relationship. Yes, the defense cooperation, the intelligence cooperation and that continues. There is this undergirding of the two countries being allied but the idea that it’s irrelevant, which is something that you hear sometimes from Obama’s supporters, that it doesn’t really matter that these two don’t get along, of course it matters that these two don’t get along. I think it had very bad consequences, especially for Israel,” CNN Chief Washington Correspondent Tapper also said.
