Arlene Kushner on Russia Heating Up The Situation In Syria -- And Israel's Response

From Arlene Kushner:
May 21, 2013

Strong for All Things

There are multiple ways in which enormous strength is required of the Israeli government now.  In no situation is this more the case than with regard to Syria and armaments shipped there, either for use by Syria or for transfer to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The situation is rife with threats, claims, charges, counter-charges, and rumors.

What seems to be the case is that Russia recently shipped its Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles to Syria.  And this is bad news:

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Feminist Story the Media Missed at the Kotel

The Feminist Story the Media Missed at the Kotel

by Jonathan Rosenblum
Jerusalem Post
May 17, 2013


That the Women of the Wall's (WoW) monthly visits to the Western Wall will provoke insults, spitting, and sometimes worse from a group of haredim at the Western Wall is old news. But there was another story last Friday that the media either missed or botched entirely: the thousands of Jewish women and girls who filled the area directly in front of the Kotel and almost to the back wall of the Kotel plaza, completely dwarfing the group of one hundred or so women associated with WoW. (The figure of 400 to 500 WoW given by some media outlets is patent nonsense.)

When I arrived at the Kotel a little past 7:00 a.m., there were about 25 (not 2,000 as reported by Ha'aretz) young haredi men standing on the upper level at the far north of the Kotel Plaza shouting and ruining the prayers for all those on the men's side who had come to pray on Rosh Hodesh. (I had already heard on the radio that police had arrested one haredi man.) What surprised me, however, was that the most prominent video camera remained exclusively focused on this small group among the many thousands then at the Kotel.

Looking Back -- Both Democrats and Republicans Got The Arab Spring Wrong

The following by David P. Goldman is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

Dumb and Dumber

by David P. Goldman
Tablet Magazine
May 20, 2013

http://www.meforum.org/3510/dumb-and-dumber

Errors by the party in power can get America into trouble; real catastrophes require consensus.

Rarely have both parties been as unanimous about a development overseas as they have in their shared enthusiasm for the so-called Arab Spring during the first months of 2011. Republicans vied with the Obama Administration in their zeal for the ouster of Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak and in championing the subsequent NATO intervention against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Both parties saw themselves as having been vindicated by events. The Obama Administration saw its actions as proof that soft power in pursuit of humanitarian goals offered a new paradigm for foreign-policy success. And the Republican establishment saw a vindication of the Bush freedom agenda.

Video: Professor Eugene Kontorovich on The Legal Case for Israel

Yesterday I posted the video of an interview with international law professor Eugene Kontorovich on the Jewish right to Israel and the double standards that are applied to it.

Here is a second, earlier, video -- this one of a lecture Professor Kontorovich gave last year on The Legal Case for Israel, featured on Torah Cafe.

Enjoy.

Here is the video:

Nidra Poller on The Muhammad al-Dura Hoax

This Wednesday, the French Court of Appeal is expected to rule in the defamation case brought by France 2's Charles Enderlin against French media analyst Philippe Karsenty who accused Enderlin of fabricating the story of Mohammed Al-Durah.

In light of that, I am reposting the following 2011 article by Nidra Poller with permission of Middle East Media.

For more background information on the Al-Durah hoax, check out The Al-Durah Project, which gives you the opportunity to check out evidence -- including comparing raw footage of what happened with the edited version broadcast on France2.

The Muhammad al-Dura Hoax and Other Myths Revived

by Nidra Poller
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2011, pp. 71-78 (view PDF)

On September 30, 2000, a day after Yasser Arafat launched his war of terror, euphemized as the al-Aqsa intifada, state-owned France 2 Television broadcast a news report, filmed by a Palestinian cameraman, of the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old Palestinian identified as Muhammad al-Dura. The dramatic voice-over commentary by the station's long-time Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, described how the boy and his father Jamal were pinned down by Israeli gunfire at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. The father pleaded frantically with the soldiers to stop shooting, to no avail. "A last burst of gunfire," intoned Enderlin, "the boy is dead, his father critically wounded."

Despite a mountain of evidence disputing the charge of his intentional killing by Israeli soldiers in 2000, 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura, seen cowering with his father, became the poster child of the "Second Intifada." As seen in this billboard, his image soon attained iconic status in the Arab world and helped refuel myths of bloodthirsty Jews.

The bloodless images of Jamal and Muhammad al-Dura were instantly seared into the public mind. Distributed free of charge to international media, repeated endlessly like a raucous war cry, the Dura video provoked anti-Jewish violence in Israel and, on a scale not seen since the Holocaust, throughout Europe.[1] The recently-created al-Jazeera television—founded in 1996—was significantly boosted by exploiting the Dura death scene.

Recognized almost immediately as a staged scene by astute observers, denounced by others as an unfounded accusation against Israeli soldiers, the Dura video has been analyzed, investigated, dissected, exposed, taken to court, attacked, defended, exploited, and debated for almost ten years.[2]

Forget Iran -- What Are The Chances of Saudi Arabia Developing A Nuclear Capability?

The following by Naser al-Tamimi is reposted here with permission Middle East Forum:

Will Riyadh Get the Bomb?
Saudi Arabia's Atomic Ambitions

by Naser al-Tamimi
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2013 (view PDF)

http://www.meforum.org/3509/saudi-arabia-nuclear-bomb

As the impasse over Tehran's nuclear program worsens, those most likely to be directly effected by an Iranian bomb are showing greater alarm. While the media fixates on Israel and its possible reaction, other regional players have no less at stake.

Despite Riyadh's long-held advocacy of making the Middle East a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, there has been much speculation in the last two decades about the possibility of its acquiring or developing nuclear weapons should Tehran obtain the bomb.[1] In the words of King Abdullah: "If Iran developed nuclear weapons … everyone in the region would do the same,"[2] a sentiment echoed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, former head of Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Directorate.[3] Has Riyadh decided to go down the nuclear road, or is this bluster a desperate bid to stop Tehran's nuclear program dead in its tracks?

Iran Fears Growing Israel-Azerbaijan Cooperation

Lt.-Col. (ret.) Michael Segall
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA)

• The visit to Israel in April 2013 by Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mamadyarov intensified growing Iranian concerns over the tightening ties between Jerusalem and Baku, both of which view Iran as a threat. Iran's progress in its nuclear program and the failure of the nuclear talks with the West have raised Tehran's threshold of sensitivity about a military attack on its nuclear facilities, and it increasingly fears that Azerbaijan is turning into a base for such a strike.

Video: Eugene Kontorovich on Israeli Settlements -- Real International Law and Double Standards

Eugene Kontorovich is a Professor of Law at Northwestern and a contributor at The Volokh Conspiracy blog

In this video, Professor Kontorovich examines the actual issues of International Law as they apply to Israeli settlements and the double standards applied to them.

Also see his video on The Legal Case for Israel

Here is the video of his appearance on Shalom TV:

Obama Praises Turkey's Erdogan As Erdogan Puts A Knife in the US's Back

The situation is getting very dangerous and with a "friend" like Erdogan it is clear that Obama’s policy toward Syria, Iran, the advance of revolutionary Islamism, and the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” is in serious trouble.
Barry Rubin

Barry Rubin writes about further signs of Obama's failed foreign policy as Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan Praised at White House as He Subverts U.S. Interests

Rubin notes 5 factors that should have mitigated against the warm reception that Obama gave Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan during his visit to the White House -- yet didn't. Here is a summary of 2 of them:

Raymond Ibrahim: Islamic Forced Conversions - Past and Present

The following by Raymond Ibrahim is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

Islamic Forced Conversions - Past and Present

by Raymond Ibrahim
The Blaze
May 16, 2013

http://www.meforum.org/3508/islamic-forced-conversions

The lost history of Christians forced to convert to Islam—or die—is reemerging, figuratively and literally. According to the BBC: "Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony [last Sunday] at the Vatican—a list which includes 800 victims of an atrocity carried out by Ottoman soldiers in 1480.They were beheaded in the southern Italian town of Otranto after refusing to convert to Islam."

The BBC adds in a sidebar: "The 'Martyrs of Otranto' were 813 Italians beheaded for defying demands by Turkish invaders to renounce Christianity. The Turks had been sent by Mohammed II, who had already captured the 'second Rome' of Constantinople."

In Germany, UN Helps Islamist Attack on Free Speech Against Thilo Sarrazin

The following by Andrew Harrod and Sam Nunberg is reposted here with permission of the Middle East Forum:

UN Pressures Germany to Bow to 'Hate Speech' Hysteria

by Andrew Harrod and Sam Nunberg
Frontpage Mag
May 16, 2013

http://www.legal-project.org/4080/un-pressures-germany-to-bow-to-hate-speech

A recent decision by the United Nation's (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) foreshadows an ominous future for free societies should Muslim entities like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) achieve their goal of having "Islamophobia" defined internationally as a form of prejudice.

Former German central bank board member Thilo Sarrazin has got himself in trouble with the UN, as theTurkish Union in Berlin-Brandenburg (Türkischer Bund in Berlin-Brandenburg or TBB) stated with satisfaction in an April 18, 2013, German-language press release. The spokesman of this German-Turkish interest group, Hilmi Kaya Turan, praised a February 26, 2013, "historic decision" by the CERD condemning Germany for not having prosecuted Sarrazin's criticism of Arab and Turkish immigrants.

Why Is It Difficult For The West To Behave Rationally And Defend Itself Against Terrorism?

The Price of Blindness

by Jonathan Rosenblum
Jerusalem Post
May 3, 2013


In preparation for Yom Yerushalayim, I've just finished The Battle for Jerusalem: An Unintended Conquest by long-time Jerusalem Post reporter Abraham Rabinovich. (The book is an expanded e-book version of his 1972 classic.) Rabinovich interviewed over 300 combatants in the battle, and it shows. No one captures the experience of war from the fighters' perspective better than Rabinovich.

While reading The Battle for Jerusalem, it struck me that Israel's need to constantly defend itself against threats to its very existence from 1948 to the present, has prevented the most basic human instinct – the instinct for self-preservation – from atrophying here to the degree it has throughout the West.

Retiring Yale classicist Donald Kagan, 80, expressed concern in his valedictory interview with the Wall Street Journal's Matthew Kaminski that the delicate flower of democracy is threatened today. He laments the development of a culture that "makes it difficult for us [i.e., the West] to behave rationally when the rational thing is to be tough." He sums up the basic lesson of growing up in the tough Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn: "If you don't want trouble with someone be sure he has something to be scared of."

Kagan attributes the West's failure to absorb that lesson to culture and a lack of political leadership. Democracy, he argues, requires free, autonomous, and self-reliant population, and they are in increasingly short supply in an America of office workers and disability recipients.

Israelis, however, have been forced to be tough for wont of choice. And the experience of war has developed the qualities Kagan considers fundamental for democracy and the capacity for leadership.