Music: Tigran Hamasyan — ‘Mother, Where Are You’
The effort to isolate ISIS, Syria’s renegade jihadists
If the Assad regime had wanted to plant a Trojan Horse inside the Syrian revolution, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) would have provided the perfect vehicle. Whether ISIS is actually doing the regime’s bidding is almost besides the point since by design or not, the group is undoubtedly serving Assad’s interests. For all the other rebel groups in Syria, ISIS now represents the enemy within.
The conflict within the opposition — conflict which the press conveniently describes as “infighting” — predictably presents an image of a movement that is imploding; a movement whose lack of legitimacy is rising to the surface. Again, in this narrative the interests of the Syrian government and its supporters are being served.
Yesterday’s statement issued by al Qaeda’s central leadership is significant and should probably be taken at face value. It says:
Qae’dat al-Jihad (AQ) declares that it has no links to the ISIS group. We were not informed about it’s creation, nor counseled. Nor were we satisfied with it rather we ordered it to stop. ISIS is not a branch of AQ & we have no organizational relationship with it. Nor is al-Qaeda responsible for its actions and behaviors.
Aron Lund provides some background to this announcement:
In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced that the ISI would become the ISIL by extending its activity into Syria and taking full possession of the Syria-based jihadi faction known as the Nusra Front, which Baghdadi had helped create in August 2011.
All this happened without Zawahiri being informed, to his great dismay. When he complained and attempted to assert authority over the ISI(L), ordering Baghdadi to dissolve the new cross-border entity and head back to Iraq, Baghdadi simply refused to comply. From his hideout, which is probably in Pakistan, there was little Zawahiri could do about it.
But the al-Qaeda leader didn’t leave the Syrian dispute empty-handed: he gained or regained the allegiance of the Nusra Front, whose leader, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, publicly declared his allegiance to Zawahiri in an attempt to avoid being gobbled up by the ISIL. Since then, the Nusra Front has functioned as a de facto al-Qaeda branch, even though it isn’t yet publicly declared as such.
This split between the ISIL and the Nusra Front, which took place in April 2013, set in motion the process that now, after almost a year, has resulted in brutal infighting in northern Syria, with the ISIL and the Nusra Front on different sides. But it also forced al-Qaeda to finally come clean about what may have been the reality for quite a while: it no longer seems to have an Iraqi wing.
Over the last few weeks, @wikibaghdady, who presents himself as an inside source, has revealed many details about the inner workings of ISIS and Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI/ISI).
Although Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is most often referred to as the leader, according to @wikibaghdady (see an English translation of his tweets) the core leadership is a three-man military council of former officers who served Saddam Hussein and were members of the Ba’ath Party. Brigadier General Haji Bakr led the council until his death near Aleppo in January.
General Haji Bakr first met Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi when he offered his services to him due to having experience in Saddam’s Ba’athist army. He demonstrated his dedication to him and he is now considered to be one of the closest to him. However, Haji Bakr didn’t have any previous jihadi experience before that. He was accepted to the Military Council on the one condition of providing the State [AQI / ISI] with important information about the Iraqi army. When he did that and proved his loyalty, he was then appointed as the military adviser to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hafs al-Muhajir and continuously provided them with information about previous military leaders, plans and successfully linking them with previous members of the Ba’ath Party.
Although ISIS has become infamous for its outward brutality, the account of Haji Bakr’s leadership makes it clear that he imposed his own internal reign of terror.
When Haji Bakr became a leader, a new era started that was important to Iraq as well where the amount of fear between citizens increased. A lot of people considered Haji Bakr to be arrogant next to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who many considered to be a quiet personality. In addition, Haji Bakr completely changed the way he looked where he shaved his beard off and even changed the way he speaks in the first few weeks. The main issue here is that no one in the State dared to question anything taking place because questioning was considered not trusting the other person. This issue was serious to a point where it was allowed to kill another member who considered being suspicious of another.
Haji Bakr then started holding private meetings with Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi to reshape the State. The first agreement was protecting the State from the inside and out. This involved creating a security outlet that would be able to respond to any type of danger. An important step that took place was that Haji Bakr prevented Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi from meeting with leaders from other groups so they didn’t impact or advise him in any way. The orders came from the Shura council that Abu Bakr created to ensure that all decisions made were fair. After this, the two became very close and were always with each other where many considered him to be Al Baghdadi’s private minister.
Among their plans were various assassinations that in fact took place. This first started with twenty people and within a month, the number increased to one hundred people. It is essential to understand that no one in the State AQI/ISI would dare to take any orders from anyone else but Haji Bakr or Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi during that time. Every member in the Shura was carefully chosen by Haji Bakr and most of them were in the previous Baath party. One of the members’ main responsibilities was assassinating everyone who disobeys or betrays the State.
The most recent tweets reveal:
There were about twenty to thirty fighters who split from the ISIS on a daily basis. They found that fighters from Saudi Arabia were the most likely to split and that Tunisians were the least. This is when he [Al Baghdadi?] ordered that the suicide bombers should be Saudi as much as possible, and that Tunisians shouldn’t be involved since they’re the most loyal.
If a jihadist group turns out to be run primarily by former Ba’athists — a thoroughly secular political movement — this begs the question: is ISIS being viewed through the right ideological prism?
No doubt ISIS recruits jihadists, but if it is led by men who drew their power from the security apparatus of a Ba’athist state, then their overriding interests may have less to do with the creation of a Caliphate and more to do with surviving in a harbor provided by the last remaining Ba’athist government in the Middle East.
‘Not our problem’
Abed Al Jalil Khamis, just under a year old, is seen in Yarmouk camp. He later starved to death on Jan. 28, 2014.
NBC News reports on starvation and malnutrition in Yarmouk Camp, a Palestinian refugee camp just south of Damascus, whose population has been trapped under siege for months and where at least 89 people have died of starvation. In Yarmouk, “people are eating cats, grass and cactus they are so hungry.”
A comment beneath the report comes from “Pessimist”:
Not our problem. If Syrians can’t solve their own problems – too bad. Cats, rats, dogs – let them eat what they want.
Psychopaths, when shown images of people in distress, exhibit low affective empathy, which is to say they have an inability to respond emotionally appropriately to the suffering of others.
If the comment I cited was unusual, it might sound like “Pessimist” is a psychopath. Yet the sentiment — this isn’t our problem — pervades this thread of hundreds of comments.
“Let those folks climb out of their own cesspool, if they’re willing.”
“pics of starving children? really? since when did syria care about its children?”
The phrase, not our problem, appears thirty times just on the first of nine pages of comments.
There’s nothing new and nothing uniquely American about indifference. But the response to Syria goes far beyond indifference and has become a kind of angry callousness — tied to a legitimate rejection of another American war in the Middle East.
Yet even in this — wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that most Americans now see as having been futile — what appears to be the most regretted feature of these military adventures is their cost in “blood and treasure” to America.
The populations in those countries seem to be viewed by many as being just as undeserving of American sympathy as people starving in Syria.
What do all these people — the people whose suffering can be ignored — have in common?
They are Muslims and over the last decade while Muslims have been the primary target of American aggression overseas, the demonization of Muslims in American society has inexorably grown.
In an era where political correctness has had the broad effect (of questionable benefit) of tempering blunt expressions of bigotry, Islamophobia is not only prevalent but those who harbor such feelings appear to regard them as perfectly legitimate. Americans who have negative views of Muslims recognize that there are relatively few societal penalties for expressing these views.
“ohio state buckeyes fan” responds to “Hope-295312” — a commenter who appeals for an expression of empathy.
HOPE: These same folks you have such compassion for were the very same folks that were dancing in the street of Damascus after 9/11, these are the same folks that have cheered on every terrorist attack committed against the west. Frankly not our war, not our concern and if your truly had any desire for a safer world and for a peaceful Syria than you should be rooting for a war of extermination between the sides waging the civil war.
Hatred directed at a foreign other provides glue that can hold weak societies together. But the indifference many Americans express towards the suffering of children starving in Syria is not merely a reflection of a pervasive xenophobia; it also mirrors the extent to which a society that elevates the value of self-interest will also be a society in which we have a little willingness to care for each other.
Alberta oil sands pollution two to three times higher than thought
AFP reports: The amount of harmful pollutants released in the process of recovering oil from tar sands in western Canada is likely far higher than corporate interests say, university researchers said Monday.
Actual levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emissions into the air may be two to three times higher than estimated, said the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.
The study raises new questions about the accuracy of environmental impact assessments on the tar sands, just days after a US State Department report said the controversial Keystone pipeline project to bring oil from Canada to Texas would have little impact on climate change or the environment.
Current government-accepted estimates do not account for the evaporation of PAHs from wastewater pools known as tailing ponds, which are believed to be a major source of pollution, said researchers at the University of Toronto.
According to corporate interests which are responsible for projecting their environmental impact, the Athabasca oil sands beneath Alberta, Canada — which hold the third largest reserve of crude oil known in the world — are only spewing as much pollution into the air as sparsely populated Greenland, where no big industry exists.
Lead study author Frank Wania, a professor in the department of physical and environmental sciences, described the corporate estimates as “inadequate and incomplete.”
“If you use these officially reported emissions for the oil sands area you get an emissions density that is lower than just about anywhere else in the world,” he told AFP. [Continue reading…]
The limits of AIPAC’s power go on public display
The New York Times reports: The last time the nation’s most potent pro-Israel lobbying group lost a major showdown with the White House was when President Ronald Reagan agreed to sell Awacs surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia over the group’s bitter objections.
Since then, the group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has run up an impressive record of legislative victories in its quest to rally American support for Israel, using a robust network of grass-roots supporters and a rich donor base to push a raft of bills through Congress. Typically, they pass by unanimous votes.
But now Aipac, as the group is known, once again finds itself in a very public standoff with the White House. Its top priority, a Senate bill to impose new sanctions on Iran, has stalled after stiff resistance from President Obama, and in what amounts to a tacit retreat, Aipac has stopped pressuring Senate Democrats to vote for the bill.
Officials at the group insist it never called for an immediate vote and say the legislation may yet pass if Mr. Obama’s effort to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran fails or if Iran reneges on its interim deal with the West. But for the moment, Mr. Obama has successfully made the case that passing new sanctions against Tehran now could scuttle the nuclear talks and put America on the road to another war.
In doing so, the president has raised questions about the effectiveness of Aipac’s tactics and even its role as the unchallenged voice of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. [Continue reading…]
Video: The Snowden interview that someone doesn’t want you to watch?
Apparently, a concerted effort is being made to block public access to Edward Snowden’s recent interview with German television. Allegedly the interview is repeatedly being removed from YouTube and other sites where it has been posted have suffered denial of service attacks. So, if you didn’t watch when I posted it before, here it is again.
Barbara Garson: All the president’s middlemen
Every so often, the journalists who cover Washington, D.C., and its maze of federal departments and commissions and bureaus receive a strange sort of invitation. Calling you a “thought leader” or some similarly flattering form of corporate jargon, an agency urges you to attend a briefing about a particular issue — healthcare, the bank bailout, the latest jobs report. There’s only one catch: the entire briefing is to be conducted on “deep background,” which means nothing said in the meeting can be quoted. It’s a strange little dance: the government asks you to come and hear its side of the story, yet nothing said can be used with the presenting official’s name attached to it. Sometimes you can’t even quote anything said in the meeting. Then, the information is said to be shared for “informational purposes only.”
This is how the Obama administration regularly pushes its various messages. And from reading reports on these not-for-attribution meetings and chatting with friends and colleagues who have attended (I’ve never been invited), they rarely result in anything journalistically juicy or groundbreaking — with one exception. That was an August 2010 briefing at the Treasury Department at which bloggers and Treasury officials discussed President Obama’s flagship initiative for aiding homeowners facing foreclosure and those who were “underwater” — that is, owing more on their mortgages than their homes were worth. Remember, the Obama administration had deployed hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue ailing mega-banks and financial firms such as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. But struggling homeowners? Their lifeline turned out to be Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), a poorly designed, deeply flawed effort to nudge lenders into rewriting the terms of homeowners’ mortgages so that they could remain in their homes.
All along the administration argued that HAMP was designed to help middle-class Americans; Wall Street had gotten its bail out, now this was Main Street’s lifeline. But at that August 2010 briefing, Treasury officials — we’ll never know who — made an incredible admission. Here’s what economics blogger Steve Randy Waldman, who was in attendance, wrote at the time:
“On HAMP, officials were surprisingly candid. The program has gotten a lot of bad press in terms of its Kafka-esque qualification process and its limited success in generating mortgage modifications under which families become able and willing to pay their debt. Officials pointed out that what may have been an agonizing process for individuals was a useful palliative for the system as a whole. Even if most HAMP applicants ultimately default, the program prevented an outbreak of foreclosures exactly when the system could have handled it least… The program was successful in the sense that it kept the patient alive until it had begun to heal. And the patient of this metaphor was not a struggling homeowner, but the financial system, a.k.a. the banks.”
In other words, HAMP wasn’t really about regular working people scraping and clawing to pay their mortgages. It was another way of keeping the banks, not homeowners, afloat as the global financial system slowly recovered.
The people interviewed by TomDispatch regular Barbara Garson for her latest book, Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live (the paperback version of which has just been published), know the failings of HAMP all too well. As Garson writes today, the Obama administration’s inclination to rely on the private sector to solve major societal problems can lead to dysfunction, if not chaos, a fact that could spell trouble for Obama’s signature policy achievement. Andy Kroll
The public-private profiteers
If you want to play doctor, don’t hire an insurance company as your receptionist
By Barbara GarsonHealth care isn’t the first boon that President Obama tried to give us through a public-private partnership. When he took office, more than 25% of U.S. home mortgages were underwater — meaning that people owed more on their houses than they could get if they tried to sell them. The president offered those homeowners debt relief through banks. Now he’s offering health care through insurance companies.
In both cases, the administration shied away from direct government aid. Instead, it subsidized private companies to serve the people. To get your government-subsidized mortgage modification, you applied at your bank; to get your government-mandated health coverage, you buy private insurance.
Let a Hundred Middlemen Bloom
In other countries with national health plans, a variety of independent health care providers — hospitals, doctors, and clinics, among others — deliver medical care, while the government doles out the compensation. They let a hundred healthcare providers bloom, but there’s only a single payer. If the U.S. moved to single-payer healthcare, however, what would happen to the private health insurance business?
In the 1990s, the conservative Heritage Foundation floated the idea of extending health coverage to more Americans via government exchanges or “connectors” that would funnel individual buyers to competing, for-profit health insurance companies. In other words, let a hundred middlemen bloom.
The latest threat to Jewish continuity
News that the prime minister’s son, who is 23, is dating Sandra Leikanger, 25, was first reported by the Norwegian daily Dagen. The tall, svelte blonde met the younger Netanyahu at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, where the two study.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week that his son traveled with Leikanger in Norway over the summer, and that the two had been dating for months.
In an interview with ultra-Orthodox website Kikar HaShabbat, Ben-Artzi urged his nephew to cut ties with his new girlfriend, and warned him that should he choose to pursue the relationship, Ben-Artzi would personally see to it that he would not be allowed near his grandparents’ graves.
“It’s terrible,” Ben-Artzi said. “Just terrible, and the son of the prime minister no less. It is the worst thing that is threatening and was a threat throughout the history of the Jews.”
Should his nephew marry Leikanger, Ben-Artzi said he “would bury myself, I don’t know what I would do with myself, I’d take to the streets and rip the hair out of my head — and here it’s coming true.”
If his father was alive, Ben-Artzi added, that is precisely how he would respond too.
Ben-Artzi and Sara Netanyahu have not been in touch for years for undisclosed reasons.
Earlier on Monday, ultra-Orthodox Shas MK Arye Deri responded to news of the relationship by saying, “If God forbid it’s true, then woe to us, woe to us.”
Deri told the Kol Barama radio station the relationship was no mere personal matter because Netanyahu is a “symbol of the Jewish people.”
“I know friends of mine who invest tens of millions and more, hundreds of millions to fight assimilation in the world,” Deri said. [Continue reading…]
Elianna Yolkut, a Conservative Rabbi in New York City, writes: Though it might sound fatalistic, if our Jewish leadership and institutions do not stop obsessing over demographics and statistics, we will lose the true fight. Judaism will lose its wisdom, its value and its meaning. We must, as a community, dedicate our resources, time, money, leadership and energy to being the voice for the powerful messages Judaism can bring to the world, and to Jewish community; message of love and responsibility, of hope and possibility, of compassion and commitment.
Music: Tigran Hamasyan — ‘The Court Jester’
Video: Children inside the Syrian revolution
The following documentary has been shown on television in the UK and Canada. It focuses on the experiences of children who are growing up in the shattered remains of Aleppo. Watch it while you can — it may not remain on YouTube for long.
“The law of war in Syria is that the closer you are to your enemy, the safer you are from air attacks, missiles and tanks.”
*
He said to me, “Mum, don’t be sad if I become a martyr.” … I said, “We’ll all be martyrs one day but you’re still too young my son.”
*
What happened to this town?
A child was martyred.
What did he do wrong?Keep away soldiers!
Don’t obey this tyrant!
Free… free… freedom.*
“I will protest here and I will die here.”
“We were raised in Syria. We were born here. We stayed here. The regime killed us here. We lost people here. We lost dear ones here. It is us who defend our town.”
Al Qaeda breaks link with Syrian militant group ISIS
After a month of rebel infighting, al Qaeda disavowed the increasingly independent ISIL in a move likely to bolster a rival Islamist group, the Nusra Front, as al Qaeda’s official proxy in Syria.
The switch is seen as an attempt to redirect the Islamist effort towards unseating President Bashar al-Assad rather than waste resources in fighting other rebels, and could be intended to shift the strategic balance at a time when government forces are increasingly active on the battlefield. It could also embolden Nusra in its dispute with ISIL.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Goldberg writes: Two prominent Republican senators say that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told them — along with 13 other members of a bipartisan congressional delegation — that President Barack Obama’s administration is in need of a new, more assertive, Syria policy; that al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria pose a direct terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland; that Russia is arming the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and is generally subverting chances for a peaceful settlement; that Assad is violating his promise to expeditiously part with his massive stores of chemical weapons; and that, in Kerry’s view, it may be time to consider, once again, supporting the arming of more moderate Syrian rebel factions.
At a time that al Qaeda, the organization led by Ayman Zawahri, is disavowing ISIS, it’s time that Washington and the press stop using al Qaeda and al Qaeda affiliates as the preferred catch-all terms for branding America’s enemies.
Know Your Enemy 101: Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant/Syria (ISIL or ISIS) are not interchangeable terms. The idea that all these groups pose a threat to the U.S. homeland is either an expression of the ignorance of those making the claim or a cynical attempt to exploit the ignorance of their audience.
ISIS fighters kill Syrian rebel leaders
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Adnan Bakour, the leader of Liwa al-Tawhid, was among 26 people killed in a double suicide bombing late on Saturday in Aleppo.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has links with al-Qaeda, said it carried out the attack on Tawhid, a brigade aligned to the Islamic Front coalition, a group fighting the ISIL [aka ISIS] in Aleppo and beyond.
In another attack late on Saturday in Hama, the leader of the powerful Suqour al-Sham group, Abu Hussein al-Dik, was killed by the ISIL, according to sources spoken to by Al Jazeera.
Charles Lister, of the Brookings Doha Centre, told Al Jazeera that the ISIL was clearly targeting key headquarters, “strategic checkpoints and senior influential commanders” of their rival rebel groups.
The attacks are the latest in weeks of rebel infighting that has pitted a loose alliance of Syrian fighters against al-Qaida linked groups such as the ISIL. [Continue reading…]
How activism is succeeding where negotiations have failed
Rami G. Khouri writes: If you think the controversy of actress Scarlett Johansson’s relationships with Oxfam and the Israeli company SodaStream is a minor side story about Hollywood celebrities, think again.
This is the latest signal of a major direction of Palestinian and global activism against Israeli settler-colonial policies in the occupied Palestinian territories, which reveals Israel’s weak spot globally and its growing isolation because of its occupation and treatment of Palestinians.
Johansson resigned her post Wednesday as a global goodwill ambassador for the developmental charity Oxfam after coming under intense international criticism for her contradictory role as a spokesperson for Sodastream, which manufactures carbonation machines in the Israeli settlement of Mishor Adumin in the occupied West Bank. The argument against her was simply that she could not feed the jailer and the prisoner at the same time – she could not support the good work of Oxfam in improving people’s lives around the world, while simultaneously promoting an Israeli company whose factory in the occupied West Bank perpetuates the subjugation of Palestinians and their denial of national and personal rights.
This highlights how Israelis and Palestinians confront each other in three principal arenas of conflict and conflict resolution: military attacks; diplomatic negotiations; and, grassroots activism based on legal and ethical principles. The first two modes of Palestinian-Israeli interaction – warfare and negotiations – have continued unabated since the 1930s, without achieving the desired goals of either side.
This is why the third option – populist activism on moral and legal grounds – has emerged recently on the Palestinian side as the most significant new development in decades, and continues to pick up steam and worry the Israelis, as it should. I refer mainly to the movement for the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) of Israel for its denial of Palestinian human rights in three related arenas: the second-class status of Palestinian citizens of Israel; the Apartheid-like conditions Israel imposes on Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip; and the structural denial of rights to exiled Palestinian refugees living outside of historic Palestine. [Continue reading…]
The peace process is frozen, but Israel is winning
This doesn’t mean anything for the chances of a peace agreement, though, because no such chance has ever been sighted, not six months ago when the talks, scheduled for nine months, began and certainly not now, when the bad blood between the Israeli and Palestinian sides has only increased. But seeing as how the talks were hopeless, the goal of each side has been to make sure that the other side ends up with the blame for their inevitable failure. If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes out looking like the rejectionist, it would accelerate the growing boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) movement against Israel, especially in Europe, and put the wind at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ back in his diplomatic campaign in the United Nations, which envisages bringing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to The Hague. But if, on the other hand, Abbas gets blamed, then the Palestinians would be thrown on the defensive and Israel would be able to breathe much easier.
The import, then, of a heavily “pro-Israel” U.S. proposal is that it would all but compel the Palestinians to reject it, putting the blame – at least in American eyes – on them. The recent momentum of the anti-occupation movement would likely be blunted. Thus, the effect of Kerry’s incredibly dogged efforts and evident good intentions would be to strengthen the status quo – Israel’s 46-year military rule over the Palestinians – weaken the opposition to it and even further darken the dimming prospect of a Palestinian state arising alongside the State of Israel.
This is the opposite of what Kerry had in mind when he set out on his mission. But it’s exactly what Netanyahu has been playing for. And it appears the earnest, optimistic American has been played. [Continue reading…]
Music: Tigran Hamasyan — ‘Road Song’ (Froggy’s Session)
Why are Israelis afraid of an egalitarian state?
It has been a solution for its Jewish citizens and a disaster for its Palestinian subjects. The ones who are frightened by it – nearly all Israelis – ignore the reality that the one state arrangement already exists. They only are terrified by a change in its character – from a state of apartheid and occupation to an egalitarian state; from a binational state in practice that is disguised as a nation state (of the ruler), to a binational state in principle. Either way, Jews and Palestinians have lived in this one state for at least two generations, albeit apart. It’s impossible to ignore.
Relations between the two peoples in this one country have known changes: from a military regime over the Arab-Israelis until its abolishment (in 1966), from a calmer and freer period in the territories through stormy periods of murderous terror and violent occupation. In Jerusalem, Acre, Jaffa, Ramle, Lod, the Galillee and Wadi Ara live Arabs and Jews, and the relations between them are not impossible.
Relations with the Palestinians in the territories have also changed – but over the years we lived in one country, even if by the sword. [Continue reading…]
Hillary Clinton opposes new Iran sanctions
Clinton detailed her position in a letter to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), first reported on by Politico. Clinton sent the letter in response to a request by Levin for her stance on the issue.
“The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that imposing new unilateral sanctions now ‘would undermine the prospects for a successful comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.’ I share that view. It could rob us of the diplomatic high ground we worked so hard to reach, break the united international front we constructed, and in the long run, weaken pressure on Iran by opening the door for other countries to chart a different course,” Clinton wrote in the January 26 letter. [Continue reading…]
