By Barry Rubin
In the olden days, when night watchmen patrolled the streets of towns, they had a standard chant: "Ten o’clock and all is well!" Sleep soundly; nothing’s wrong.
Each week, when I start to write this column I hope to be able to do the equivalent. I could just write one sentence: "This week, the stories are fairly and accurately reported so there’s nothing to write about."
By Andrew L. Jaffee
When Putin doesn’t like bad press, he has the source killed. Pretty simple — for a tyrant, that is:
The owner of an internet site critical of the Russian authorities in the volatile region of Ingushetia has been shot dead in police custody.
Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the ingushetiya.ru site, was a vocal critic of the region’s administration. …
This is Putin’s “democracy:” executing website owners in police custody, shutting down the free press, assassinating journalists (Anna Politkovskaya), poisoning dissidents (Litvinenko), grabbing private companies (Yukos) for his own portfolio, interfering in Ukraine’s elections (poisoning the opposition candidate), rigging Russia’s elections, bullying Estonia for no reason, trying to rig the Ukraine’s elections and poisoning presidential candidate Yushchenko, supplying weapons to South Ossetian extremists, violating Norwegian airspace, keeping a military force in Moldova, etc. And of course, invading little Georgia.
By Andrew L. Jaffee
U.S. financial assistance to Israel can be a contentious topic, even when discussing foreign policy issues using accurate information. Very often, opponents of Israel use wildly exaggerated, even fabricated “facts and figures” and extremely hyperbolic language to disparage the Jewish State — even claiming the U.S. has been pushed to the verge of bankruptcy by supporting Israel. The obfuscations about U.S. aid to Israel have been bothering me for a very long time, so I decided to research the numbers myself and compare my findings to the figures advanced by hysterical critics of Israel.
For example, an anti-Semitic publication, which so innocently calls itself the “Washington Report on Middle East Affairs” (WRMEA), claims that American taxpayers have paid “$3 Trillion” for supporting Israel. WRMEA tries to blame Israel for 1) rising oil prices, 2) the cost of both Iraq wars, 3) and American job losses, and has published articles with Protocols-of-the-Elders-of Zion-style headlines like “Israel has had in place a shadow government in Washington” and “Will the State Department Remain Israeli-Occupied Territory?”
Here I’ll show how exaggerations by groups like WRMEA are not even close to reflecting reality.
Bare with me as I run the numbers and document my findings.
By Phyllis Chesler
Denmark’s Free Speech Library has offered to publish Sherry Jones’ The Jewel of Medina–the very book that Random House just canceled.The Free Speech Library is an independent company under its own management but with close ties to Denmark’s Free Press Society.
Both Salman Rushdie and Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who penned the drawing of a prophet with a bomb in his turban, criticized Random House for their decision.
Westergaard expressed his dismay that “one of the large publishers is now bowing to intimidation. That is not a good omen for free speech. If the major publishers lose their nerve then I’m afraid that others will follow suit. The big publishers ought to set a good example. The fanatics have won.” … (Continue reading…)
By Andrew L. Jaffee
All for fear of offending Muslims, we have “a quiet wave of self-censorship and cultural cowardice sweeping Western art circles:” A novel (The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones) is pulled before it even got published; the “BBC has dropped a big-budget docu-drama, The London Bombers;” “the BBC hospital soap Casualty chang[ed] Muslim terrorists into animal rights activists;” and, the “Royal Court Theatre cancel[ed] an adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.” To this sorry list, I would add all the U.S. and Canadian newspapers who refused to publish the Danish Mohammad cartoons, because the editors were cowering under their desks. I turn readers’ attention to an op-ed by Mick Hume for the Sunday Times…
By Barry Rubin
The AP falsely reported that Israel is building a new settlement on the West Bank and linked this to a wrong-headed spin on an important national leader visiting Israel.
No, not Obama! He’s still just a candidate. I’m referring to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Curiously, Brown’s visit was highlighted for its criticism of Israel by the AP though his trip was seen in Israel as incredibly supportive. Indeed, Brown made the most pro-Israel statements of any British leader since Margaret Thatcher left the scene. This was especially significant since Brown is the Labour party leader and given the incredibly hostile anti-Israel sentiment in the British media and academia.
Calls for unwavering support of Israel; condemns Iranian nuclear threat
By Fern Sidman
“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch.” (Isaiah 62:1)
The electricity in the air was palpable in the nation’s capitol as these words from the prophet Isaiah served as the battle cry for a record number of over 7,000 Christian supporters of Israel who gathered on July 20-23 to attend the third annual Washington Summit of the Christians United For Israel organization at the Washington, DC Convention Center. Founded in February of 2006 by Pastor John Hagee, Senior Pastor of The Cornerstone Church of San Antonio, Texas and President and CEO of John Hagee Ministries, Christians United For Israel represents the premiere Christian evangelical national grassroots movement focused on the support of Israel. Having called upon Christian leaders from across America to join him in launching this new initiative, Pastor Hagee enlisted the help of over 400 Christian ministers, each representing a denomination, mega-church, media ministry, publishing company, or Christian university. Each one answered the call and Christians United for Israel was born. Today, CUFI boasts a membership of over 50 million Christian Zionists in America.
By Phyllis Chesler
This weekend, on both Saturday and Sunday evenings at 8pm, EST, Fox-TV will be airing a one hour documentary about honor murders in America. They interviewed me at length and you may see my face and my words on camera. … (Continue reading…)
By Phyllis Chesler
Congratulations to My Pet Jawa for asking the right questions about the AP photographer, Basmatullah Naikzad, who just stood there and watched as the Taliban murdered two women. But Naikzad did not just stand there–he also photographed the murder and then made money and gained international credit when AP ran his photo. Perhaps he shared the loot with the Taliban in return for being allowed to take photographs.
By Jonathan Spyer
An interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared in the Sunday Times this week. The interview took place in Jerusalem’s American Colony Hotel. It was concerned with Blair’s role as the Quartet’s Middle East envoy, and was written by journalist Lesley White. Journalist Lesley White is evidently not a specialist on the Middle East. I say “evidently” because the article contains a series of ludicrous errors which leave one slack-jawed in astonishment at the standards apparently now prevailing in this august publication.
By Phyllis Chesler
Good afternoon dear people!
Well, this time, the mainstream media is actually beginning to cover the honor murder in Atlanta. I do not understand why they never covered the honor murder of the Said sisters in Dallas about which I have previously written many times at this blogsite. But–in only a matter of days, CNN not only wrote about it; they also turned to an alleged expert who says that honor murders are no different than domestic violence cases world-wide. …
By Barry Rubin
We all know–though the Western media often doesn’t–that radical Arab nationalists, Islamists, and terrorists lie all the time. They then slander and threaten those who point out the truth.
Yet often, governments, journalists, and academics split the difference or even find the liars more credible since they are not governments, Westerners, or Jews.
There is one case after another of this situation. Some make global headlines like the Dura case, where French television covered up its staged broadcast claiming that Israel killed a boy in Gaza even when a French court found it was phony, or the supposed Jenin massacre, reported on the basis of one unknown Palestinian witness and maintained by many even after the UN found it phony.
By Barry Rubin
Each day we’re told that radical Islamists, terrorists, and assorted extremists are going to moderate, so why not negotiate with them, appease them, defuse their grievances, have dialog, and then everything will be okay.
But, those who are doubtful, argue, shouldn’t we have learned from history that militant ideologies are not prone to compromise and ruthless dictators don’t change their stripes. You cannot appease them, they don’t go away; displays of weakness make them more aggressive.
By Phyllis Chesler
What happened to the old New Left? How did it become a supporter of totalitarianism, Islamist fascism, nihilist isolationism, and the narrowest of party lines? When did it lose its “decency” and moral sanity? A growing number of us have been asking these questions for a long time and more have joined us since 9/11. …
By Barry Rubin
Hamas celebrated its first anniversary of power in the Gaza Strip amidst massive misinterpretations regarding the situation there.
Ironically, Hamas’s victory and survival has less to do with Israel than the rotten strategy of Yasir Arafat. He ruled the Palestinian movement for 35 years by establishing a weak, anarchic, corrupt, and factionalized structure which he played like a violin. After Arafat’s death, Fatah paid the price by collapsing in the Gaza Strip, first electorally then militarily. Having proved a failure in government, Fatah then showed itself a failure as an opposition.
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