Engaging Orthodox Jewry’s Diverse Communities in Advocacy for Israel’s Security
Breaking a major taboo in the Arab world, famous Egyptian academic Saad Eddin Ibrahim went to Tel Aviv this week to give a lecture. He knew it would be controversial.
Egyptian academic Saad Eddin Ibrahim caused controversy after giving a lecture in Israel.
The 79-year old sociologist was received on Tuesday as a rock star in the packed auditorium at Tel Aviv University. Around 600 people turned up to hear him, but soon it transpired – not everyone was happy.
Ibrahim was in Israel to participate in a two-day academic conference about Egyptian society, with his topic of discussion titled: “Lesson from 100 years of changes in Egypt”.
David Harris, Contributor: The recent focus on the Jerusalem issue is a telling reminder that Israel is treated according to a totally different standard than other countries in the international system.
Of course, Israel deserves attention and scrutiny as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment — nothing more, nothing less.
First, Israel is the only state whose capital city, Jerusalem, with which the Jewish people have been umbilically linked for more than 3,000 years, is not recognized by almost all other countries.
By Edward N. Luttwak: Ronald Reagan, who outraged the Washington elite and frightened European leaders by flatly refusing coexistence with the Soviet Union, lived to see its sudden decline and fall. There is a fair chance that Donald Trump, who contradicts Barack Obama and Europe’s leaders by refusing coexistence with Iran’s ayatollah empire, will also have the satisfaction of seeing the dissolution of a regime that Obama among many others preferred to accommodate.
Whether or not this past weekend’s mass demonstrations in Iran will spread, whether a second revolution is imminent or not, the numbers for the ayatollah empire just don’t add up. A breakdown is materially inevitable.
With some 80 million people, and with oil accounting for 80 percent of its exports, Iran would need to export some 25 million barrels a day to make a go of it, but it can barely export 2.5 million. That would be luxuriously ample for the likes of Abu Dhabi with fewer than 800,000 citizens, but it is a miserable pittance for Iran, with a population more than 100 times as large.
By David P. Goldman: A jump in poultry prices sparked Iran’s protests of the past several days according to media reports. If this is true, the spark landed on long-prepared tinder. Iranian authorities claim that the 40% jump in egg prices in some Iranian cities was a temporary effect of an outbreak of avian flu, although egg prices had already risen by nearly 30% year-on-year as of November. The Iranian rial’s black-market exchange rate declined to 42,000 per dollar from 39,000 per dollar during December, portending a significant but hardly extreme rise in the overall inflation rate, which now stands at around 11%, far below the 35% rate of 2013.
Higher egg prices are an annoyance, but don’t explain the ferocity of the protests. The location of some of the most violent protests, though, is revealing. Radio Farda, an affiliate of America’s Radio Liberty, posted a disturbing smartphone video Jan. 2 showing a mob burning down the police station in the Iranian town of Ghahdarijan, 24km from the ancient city of Isfahan and too small to be found on Google Maps. It seems unlikely that the reach of Western intelligence agencies stretches into this central Iranian hamlet. But the villagers did have a grievance: the river Zayandeh Rud (“life-giver”) which gave rise to Isfahan dried up before reaching the city, the victim of Iran’s mismanagement of its dwindling water resources. Canals to distribute water to the city’s periphery were built by the Savafid dynasty in the 17th century and fostered a green city in the midst of the central Iranian desert.
Deadly protests in Iran have intensified talks within the Trump administration about imposing fresh sanctions against the Islamic Republic, as the U.S. president seized on the crisis to justify his long-standing opposition to a 2015 nuclear agreement.
President Donald Trump met Tuesday with Vice President Mike Pence and members of his national security team to discuss the protests amid deliberations already under way about reimposing suspended sanctions or adding new ones, according to two White House officials who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. The meeting came about 10 days before Trump must decide whether to continue waiving sanctions that were lifted under the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
“We certainly keep our options open” on adding to U.S. sanctions, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Tuesday. Trump took to Twitter earlier in the day to say the “people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime,” while U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said she’ll call for an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council.
Anti-government protests spurred by economic woes hit Iran for a third day Saturday, news agencies and social media reported, in what has quickly emerged as a significant challenge to the administration of President Hassan Rouhani.
Demonstrators protesting price increases and high unemployment turned out in cities and towns across the country, defying police and voicing anger at the cleric-ruled government, in an extraordinary display of public dissent.
Officials warned Saturday that citizens should stay away from “illegal gatherings,” even as protests spread to new regions.
Footage emerged late Saturday of demonstrators appearing to attack government buildings and engaging in violent confrontations with police. The BBC Persian service reported that two demonstrators had been shot in the western part of the country, citing video on social media. One video from Tehran showed protesters tearing down posters of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds absolute authority in Iran. The images were posted online and could not immediately be verified.
As the UN General Assembly voted to reject America’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, US Ambassador Nikki Haley issued a stern warning: We’ll remember this the next time you come calling for more hard-earned American taxpayer dollars. Most nation-states called her bluff, leaving many to wonder what comes next.
If President Trump wants to use his financial leverage at the United Nations to strike at the heart of the anti-America, anti-Israel institutional infrastructure, he should look no further than the agency responsible for Palestinian refugees: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
By most definitions, refugees are those forced to flee their country because of persecution, war or violence. Nearly every refugee in the world is cared for by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, whose ultimate goal is repatriation, resettlement and integration. The exception? Palestinian refugees.
Anti-government demonstrations that began in one city on Thursday have now spread to several major cities in Iran.
Large numbers are reported to have turned out in Rasht, in the north, and Kermanshar, in the west, with smaller protests in Shiraz, Isfahan and Hamadan.
The protests began against rising prices but have spiralled into a general outcry against clerical rule.
A small number of people have been arrested in Tehran, the capital.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the country’s foreign ministry to withdraw from UNESCO.
Netanyahu made the announcement that Israel would be joining the United States in withdrawing from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on Sunday during the weekly Cabinet meeting.
“I think that this is appropriate, given this organization’s biased, one-sided and absurd attitude toward us, and against the background of the US’s strong stand at the UN, which we welcome,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley sent an invitation Thursday to the 65 countries who didn’t vote against the United States in the U.N. General Assembly vote to denounce President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The invitation to the Jan. 3 reception marked a symbolic step of the U.S. taking note of who supports the country and who doesn’t.
Haley’s email invitation, which has been obtained by Fox News, asks the nations who voted no, abstained from voting or didn’t cast a vote “to a reception to thank you for your friendship to the United States.”
Author Netzach YisraelPosted on Categories News
