The Green Prince was the code name for Shin Bet agent, Mosab Hasan Yousef, whose exploits were chronicled in his 2010 biography, Son of Hamas. An engrossing documentary based on his biography opened the annual Sundance Film festival this past Thursday evening. Yousef is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a Hamas co-founder. Mosab was captur] at 17, imprisoned […]
The National Jewish Book Council (NJBC) announced on January 15, 2014 its 2013 awards for books in several categories. Dr. Phyllis Chesler’s memoir, An American Bride in Kabul published by Palgrave Macmillan won The Krauss Family Award in Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg in the category of Biography, Autobiography and Memoir. We reviewed Dr. Chesler’s memoir in the January 2014 New […]
Following the Iconoclast post yesterday on the “Two Faces of Sen. Dianne Feinstein”, there was an exchange of views with Shoshana Bryen, Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center and Sarah Stern, President of the Endowment for Middle East Truth. We were discussing a matter related to the threat that Iran posed to the US in the Western […]
Ted Belman, editor and publisher of the blog Israpundit writes: The Two-State Solution is dead. All that remains is for the US to declare it so. Palestinians leaders and Israeli leaders have made it clear. In a speech on Jan 10/14, Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas made it crystal clear that he would never abandon the “right of return”, would […]
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is much in the news as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee given the release Wednesday of the long-awaited bi-partisan Benghazi Report. Contrast that with her withering criticism of the nearly veto-proof new Iran Sanctions legislation. On Tuesday she rose on the floor of the US Senate to give a ringing condemnation of […]
One wonders what is in the heads of security officials at Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford when they cleared Mozaffar Khazaee to work on testing of the engines for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Khazee, a dual US Iranian citizen since 1991 got laid off by P&W last August and steals thousands of pages […]
As if on cue, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani trumpets how the Islamic Regime won big time with the announced Joint Plan of Action (JPA) implementation last Sunday in Geneva. As The Guardian noted in a report, “Iran nuclear deal means ‘surrender’ for Western Powers, says Rouhani”: Speaking on Tuesday in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, Rouhani said the […]
Harold Rhode, whom we interviewed in the December 2013 edition of the New English Review (NER), has an review of a new book in Sephardic Horizons about Turkish treatment of its once numerous Jewish population; 100,000 at the start of WWII now less than 15,000. The book is Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust by Corry Gutstadt, originally published in German […]
In separate announcements, Iran and the P5+1 reached agreement on the implementation of the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) to begin on January 20, 2014. The original announcement of the interim agreement between the P5+1 and the Islamic regime in Tehran had been made on November 24, 2013. Friday reports came that the JPA agreement […]
Ariel Sharon, Arik Ha Melech (Arik the King), the late Israeli Prime Minister, as many Israelis nicknamed him, was gruff and opinionated. Yet he left an indelible mark on Israel’s history. At critical moments he exhibited effective military leadership from the 1956 Sinai Campaign to the 1973 October War when he exploited a cross canal […]
While the P5+1 negotiation on a possible agreement to curtail Iran’s nuclear program is going on in Geneva, a virtually veto-proof new Iran Sanctions bill is gathering support in the US Senate, Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013 (NWFIA). NWFIA had 26 bi-partisan co-sponsors when it was introduced on December 19, 2013. See our Iconoclast […]
Yesterday, at the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual meetings in Chicago there was Panel 48, one of more than 800 on this year’s program. The MLA has a membership of more than 30,000 university and college academic specialists in English, literature and history. This panel in particular has drawn media attention and controversy because of the […]
Pictured: French Anti-Semitic Comic Dieudonne’ and French Soccer star Nicolas Anelka in Nazi-like quenelle salute French Court of the State re imposed a ban on the performance of controversial comic Dieudonne’ within minutes of an administrative tribunal decision in Nantes lifting it. Dieudonné was in the midst of a tour of several major French cities, […]
Turkish Premier Erdogan has aggressively pursued a purge of police involved with public prosecutors corruption investigation in a desperate move to stave off potential losses for the AKP in the March 2014 municipal elections. His actions reflect the internecine battle between two former Islamist allies, Erdogan of the AKP and Sheikh Mohammad Fethullah Gulen and […]
The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had two instructive quotes on peacemaking with the Palestinians: You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies. I believe that in the long run, separation between Israel and the Palestinians is the best solution for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has plenty of unsavory enemies […]