By the way, the story that this dude is peddling (that Phalanges Party apologized for Sabra and Shatila massacres) is false

Gemayel has never apologized and this statement which he posted is taken from an effort by a group of Lebanese to write what Parties should be saying if they were to atone for their past crimes.

PS Not that an apology for war crimes suffices. 

This is the syllabus of the UC, Berkeley course which the university and Zionist hoodlums found to be anti-Semitic

Read here

Obama's legacy

"The Obama administration has signed a $38 billion military aid pact with Israel in what the State Department boasts is the “single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in US history.”  The record agreement will provide Israel with $3.8 billion annually over 10 years beginning in 2019, up from $3.1 billion under the current deal.  At a time when the US government supposedly can’t afford to provide poor and working Americans with basic services like universal health care – something Israelis enjoy – it is striking that there is always money available to enable Israel’s ongoing destruction of Palestine.  Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has expressed opposition to universal health care and free college tuition, cheered the aid deal.  “Senator [Tim] Kaine and I applaud the agreement on a new memorandum of understanding regarding American security assistance to Israel,” said Clinton in a statement released by her campaign.  Clinton also used the deal as an opportunity to saber-rattle against Iran, show off her military hawkishness against ISIS and reiterate her commitment to combating growing activism against Israel’s criminal conduct, which Israel refers to as “delegitimization.”  “The agreement will help solidify and chart a course for the US-Israeli defense relationship in the 21st century as we face a range of common challenges, from Iran’s destabilizing activities to the threats from ISIS and radical jihadism, and efforts to delegitimize Israel on the world stage,” she said, reiterating her January promise to “take our relationship to the next level.”"

Canadian value

"Suspicion of all immigrants who are not white, or are not members of the former British Empire, is a Canadian value. Canada’s founding prime minister, John A. Macdonald, argued that Chinese immigrants to Canada were unfit to vote because they exhibited “no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations.” " (thanks Amir)

Practicing secularism in France

"Mohamed Manoubi a, lui aussi, reçu des appels de soutien de « toute la France et même de l’étranger ». Commerçant tunisien, marié à une Française, il s’est installé à Albert, dans la Somme, en 2010. Il a ouvert son salon de coiffure il y a un mois et demi. « Tout se passait très bien, niveau clientèle et voisinage », nous raconte-t-il.

Et puis, lundi 12 septembre, c’était l’Aïd el-Kébir. « C’est notre Noël à nous. » Alors, le week-end précédant la fête religieuse, il poste un message sur la page Facebook de son commerce et indique qu’il fermera l’établissement lundi 12, « en raison d’une fête religieuse ».  « Vers 7h30 dimanche matin, je me lève et je m’aperçois qu’il y a un truc noir devant notre habitation. » Le salon de coiffure se situe dans la maison du commerçant et de sa famille. « Je me dis que ce doit être un sac poubelle, mais non. C’est une tête de cochon grillée. » Mohamed Manoubi porte plainte dans l’après-midi." (thanks Rachid)

Haaretz and Mohammad Dajani: and why is it that all Arab normalizers are NOT smart? It has been my observation since my youth

First he says: "The first time I heard about the Holocaust was at the American University in Beirut, and that, written in Arabic, was the denial narrative."  This is a flat out lie.  He went to AUB prior to 1975, where the professors of history and political science were all people who warned against the use of the Protocols and who talked to their students about the reality of Jewish suffering n Europe.  Who denied to him the holocaust at the university?  Unless he took courses with the fascist sectarian Charles Malik.  I entered AUB in 1978, and both Walid Khalidi and Rashid Khalidi and Hanna Batatu spoke to us against anti-Semitism and I remember vividly how Walid Khalidi bristled when a student merely mentioned the Protocols in class and Walid went on to speak to us about the anti-Semitic origins of the Protocols and warned us against ever citing it as a source. This guy is a fabricator to make himself a hero among his Zionist friend.  Also, the PLO in Lebanon was producing a whole body of literature which rejected anti-Semitism and the denial  of the Holocaust. Unless the guy was a Muslim Brotherhood at the time because the PLO didn't speak about denial of the holocaust, and certainly not Fath which he said he was a member of.  2) Sari Nusaibeh, who is no fierce anti-Zionist, exposed his lies: "In an email correspondence with Haaretz, Al-Quds University’s former president, Nusseibeh, rejected Dajani’s allegations: “It is a great pity Prof. Mohammed wishes to implicate the university in his unfortunate affair." 3) here is another lie: "In 1967, he says, he underwent military training in southern Lebanon".  Another flat out lie by this guy: there was no military training in South Lebanon in 1967 (prior to the Cairo agreement, mind you).  Those who wanted military training either went to Jordan or to Syria.  He made this up.  But here is the political philosophy of this guy: he is opposed to peaceful struggle against Israeli occupation and is opposed to armed struggle against occupation. He wants the Palestinians to just forget the post and move on: "“I don’t support the use of violence, I don’t support BDS and I don’t support anti-normalization. "  Zionists truly like the most unimpressive Arabs and for good reason.  

This is how the US ignited the Lebanese civil war (3)

My weekly article in Al-Akhbar: "This is how the US ignited the Lebanese civil war (3): Lebanon Blesses Israeli aggression".

This is how a Saudi publication portraying the Congressional law which allows US citizens to sue Saudi royals

No, I am not saying that the Syrian regime would not commit such war crimes but look at this source of documentation: chlorine bomb attacks in Syria

"The finding by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the global chemical weapons watchdog, is based on Western and regional intelligence, the diplomat said."

Four British soldiers 'forced Iraqi teenager into river where he drowned'

""The Ministry of Defence has said it is “extremely sorry” for the death of an Iraqi boy who drowned after being forced into a dirty canal by British soldiers."  "The soldiers involved in Ahmed's death were tried in a British court for manslaughter and acquitted in 2006." (thanks Youcef)

An Open Letter to the UC Berkeley Administration Regarding Academic Freedom

"We, the undersigned, are the students of Ethnic Studies 198: Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis, the student-designed Decal course that was suspended yesterday, Tuesday, September 13th.  We are a diverse group of students that includes Christians, Muslims, and Jews; we are white, Black, Latin@, Asian, North American indigenous, Middle Eastern, and more; we study Peace and Conflict Studies, Ethnic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, Media Studies, Economics and Engineering. In short, we are a sample of some of the wide and varied backgrounds, beliefs, and interests that compose the campus community. One characteristic we all possess in common, however, is a genuine interest in the academic discussion surrounding Israel and Palestine.  For some of us, this course was an opportunity to learn more about an issue we previously knew little about; for others, it was a chance to engage in discussion and debate with individuals whose views on the issue differ from our own. For still others of us, this class also fulfilled unit requirements for financial aid and other considerations. Regardless, these opportunities have been, suddenly and without warning, torn from us by your decision to suspend the class. We hold any claims made by campus administration or by outside organizations against the course to be blatantly false, especially any claims or concerns that the course would only tolerate a single or particular view. We the students collaboratively designed and established community agreements to ensure that we would engage with course content and each other in a mature and respectful manner. Any and all participants were welcome to attend the course, irrespective of background or preconceived perspectives on the subject matter. Therefore, criticisms of the course from outside its attendants are wholly unfounded, and do not reflect the views and opinions of those of us who were excited to engage with this material, and one another, in open academic inquiry.  The decision to suspend Ethnic Studies 198: Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis is a violation of our academic freedom. This is an alarming development to have transpire on the same campus that not only hosted the Free Speech Movement, but which also routinely claims and utilizes the same Movement’s legacy to market itself as a world-class institution, a bastion of tolerance and diversity, and the site of intellectual inquiry — inquiry that is sometimes discomforting, but always enriching. Your decision constitutes nothing less than an act of discrimination against students who wanted to debate and discuss this contentious issue in a spirit of genuine sincerity, mutual respect, and open-minded curiosity.  Again: the decision to suspend our course is both discriminatory and a violation of our academic freedom. We demand the reinstatement of the course."

A former lousy right-wing French Justice Minister explains defensively why she gave an Arabic name to her daughter

""Do you find it scandalous to give your mother's name to your children?" she asked, in a vigorous defence of her choice of name.  "I loved my mother. I have a little girl, and I called her after my mother. Like millions of French people do every day."

Mickey Mouse in Arabia

Watch Mickey Mouse in Arabia.

Is there any war crimes that this state has not committed many times?Israeli Soldiers Murdered Dozens of Captives in the first decades after Nakbah

"According to testimony obtained by Haaretz, captives were ordered to line up and turn around, before they were shot in the back. The officer who gave the order was released after serving seven months in prison, while his commander was promoted to a high-ranking post."

Disney does the Hajj: Diaa Hadid in Mecca, again

Notice that she conflates whatever rules and regulations Saudi regime does with what she calls "Islam":  "There it was again. I was at once frustrated by Islam’s nitpicky strictures on women’s dress".  But the cutest thing is that Ms. Hadid delves into feminist discussion here: "At its founding, 1,400 years ago, Islam was revolutionary for its time in seeing women as spiritual equals. But in its contemporary conception, the day-to-day gender roles trouble me."  She is troubled by the gender roles: but where? Where in Islam? Lebanon? Tunisia? Egypt? Or Saudi Arabia? For her Islam (as Said pointed out in Orientalism) is uniform and unchanging.  And she then proceeds to offer us her views of Islam and gender. But that is odd. She is a correspondent in Gaza and the West Bank for the Times: will the New York Times ever ask--or even allow--, say a Jewish correspondent of the Times in Israel or somewhere else to offer readers a critique of Judaism? That would be so odd, if you think about it.  Notice the extent of her generalization: "Each day in Mecca provided powerful reminders of a religion that seems to simultaneously embrace women and push them away."  So whatever she encountered on a trip (sponsored by the Saudi government) is to be blamed on "Islam".   And then she suddenly tells us the conditions of her trip: "She got here only because the Saudi government allows some women over 45 to come with an older female companion. (I got around the mahram requirement because I came on a journalist visa, which included a different kind of guardian, a Saudi minder named Abdul-Rahman who accompanied me during all my reporting.)"  And basically Ms. Hadid blamed Islam for any unclean bathroom she saw in Mecca.

Sabra and Shatila massacres

Remembering the victims and pointing the figures at the culprits.  I will translate the gist of something I have just written in Arabic on FB. Who is responsible for Sabra and Shatila massacres:
1) First degree: the Israeli enemy in all of its sectors.  Followed by the US government which gave false assurances to the Palestinian people that it will be responsible for the safety of Palestinian civilians after the evacuation of the Palestinian fighters from Lebanon.  Also, the Lebanese Forces militias and the other South Lebanon Army: both of which were armed, trained, and developed by the Israeli occupation enemy.
2) Second degree: the Lebanese regime at the time especially president Ilyas Sarkis, his foreign minister, Fu'ad Butrus and puppet prime minister Shafiq Wazzan and head of Lebanese army intelligence Johhny `Abduh. You can add the name of Sa'ib Salam: all those put pressures on the PLO and disregarded the questions of safety of the Palestinian people.
3) third degree: those in the PLO leadership, like Arafat, who accepted the assures and pledges of safety of Palestinians from the enemies of the Palestinian people in the US administration.  You can also include those leaders of the Lebanese National Movement (like Walid Jumblat) who negotiated secretly under the table with the right-wing militias and who made arrangements for themselves while putting pressures on the PLO to leave Lebanon  at any price.  

For some reason, US media did not mention this from Colin Powell's emails: "fmr SecState says Israel has 200 nukes all targeted on Tehran"

"According to hacked emails reviewed by LobeLog, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged Israel’s nuclear arsenal, an open secret that U.S. and Israeli politicians typically refuse to acknowledge as part of Israel’s strategy of “nuclear ambiguity.” "

And how many rockets and nuclear war heads does Israel have?

"Israel’s enemies collectively have some 230,000 projectiles, more than half of which are in Hezbollah’s arsenal in Lebanon. In any full-scale war, Hezbollah could fire 1,500 rockets per day, and target central Israel with dozens of long-range rockets per day." (thanks Amir)

For the history books, these were the Arabic tweets by Diaa Hadid of the New York Times before I pointed them out and she deleted them all

I received them from readers who saw them and saved them.  Those of you who can read Arabic will get a kick out of them.

I will sell my farm (I have no farm) if this is not a translation by Google into Arabic

For the history of book of Western correspondence in the Middle East and the native speakers.  (It was sent to me as I am blocked from her page).

Disney goes to Mecca: Diaa Hadid covers the Hajj.

Regarding this post about Hadid's writings about the Hajj: I was informed (since I am blocked from her Twitter page, for some reason) that Ms. Hadid erased all her Arabic tweets after I pointed out that her Arabic reads like Google translations from English.

The religious bigotry and ignorance of Elliott Abrams: about the minuscule number of Syrian refugees in the US

He is arguing that too many Muslim Syrians are being admitted into the US.  Well, the number of Syrian refugees admitted into the US is very small: some 10,000.  Abrams is complaining that not too many Christians were admitted. Well, Syrian Christians are far more likely to have family connections in Lebanon (like among Assyrian Christians) or even in the US.  Those who are applying as refugees are more poor and have no family connections and thus are more likely to be poorer Muslims.  Let us remember that Lebanon admitted more than one million refugees and the sectarian foreign minister of Lebanon and the Maronite church have favored the entry of Palestinian Christians while working to deport the majority to Syrian refugees.  But imagine if one were to talk about Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union in the same way that this Abrams is talking about Syrian refugees?  There were more Jewish refugees allowed into the US than, say, Muslim or Christian refugees.  If one were to make a case about that one would be automatically accused of anti-Semitism by none other than this Zionist fanatic Abrams.

Saudi Ukaz cartoon shows Khamenei as the devil

Zionist hoodlum engages in their typical thuggery against another professor: "Open-records requests involving a SUNY Plattsburgh professor who backs the Israel boycott"

"Sharoni, a professor of gender and women’s studies who was raised and previously taught in Israel, is co-founder of the group Faculty Against Rape and a supporter of the BDS movement. She’s long written and spoken about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of gender, but it’s comments she made earlier this year that sparked what she calls a campaign of harassment. In an interview with an online magazine, The Establishment, about why feminists should care about the conflict, Sharoni compared victim blaming in rape cases to public attitudes about Palestinians.

“This is the assumption that Palestinians basically bring the violence on themselves. It’s similar to telling the survivor that it’s what she was wearing, that she gave mixed messages,” Sharoni is quoted as saying. “For example, ‘They didn’t agree to the partition, they’ve rejected attempts to make peace, they elected for Hamas …’ There’s no responsibility and no accountability for the perpetrator of violence, even though that perpetrator is breaking international law.”

Sharoni added, “In addition to blaming the victim, Palestinians are not believed, which is the same with survivors. ‘They’re exaggerating, it’s not that bad, because Israel is a democracy.’ It’s actually very similar to saying, ‘No, he’s actually a nice guy,’ about a man accused of rape.”

The interview was later posted to Alternet and caught the attention of bloggers. They included Jay Taub, who wrote a post called “Simona Sharoni Should Resign From the State University of New York at Plattsburgh.” Critics took to Twitter, as well, and Sharoni said some sent physical threats via email.

Sharoni and the association say she contacted several university leaders to inform them about the situation in April, and to ask them to affirm Plattsburgh’s commitment to academic freedom. She says she’s received no official response.

Last week, Sharoni received an email from Sean Brian Dermody, a vice president for administration, informing her that someone had made a series of open-records requests about her hiring, continued employment and conferences attended while at Plattsburgh. He said he was reviewing the request and in the meantime asked her to gather the records in question and be prepared to turn them over. A second email from Dermody said to gather all correspondence about her hire, Sharoni said. 

“It appears to us that these [open-records] requests are part of the continuing campaign to harass and intimidate Sharoni because she has expressed certain political views,” the association wrote in its letter to Plattsburgh. “We therefore call upon university officials to exercise extreme caution and responsible judgment in reviewing and approving [such] requests for records pertaining to Sharoni, so as not to be complicit in furthering the campaign of harassment being waged against her.”

The letter also calls on Plattsburgh to “publicly and vigorously affirm its commitment to the principles of free speech and academic freedom as well as its intention to defend Sharoni and other faculty members against harassment and threats by politically motivated individuals and groups based outside the university community.”

Sharoni said via email that while she was quoted accurately by The Establishment, blogs have distorted her comments to make a direct comparison between Israel and rape -- not just how people talk about the conflict. “I am on record about not using rape as a metaphor for violence,” she said. “The point of the interview and the talk that it was based on was to compare discourses about violence.”

The professor said she is so far the subject of five open-records requests from someone affiliated with group she believes to be pro-Israel (that could not immediately be confirmed). It's "clear that the main goal behind this request is to intimidate me and damage my scholarly reputation by painting me as a subversive ‘troublemaker’ on my campus and more broadly,” she said. “All the information requested should be protected. The fact that a senior scholar like myself -- a tenured full professor with international reputation -- is being subjected to such requests has a chilling effect on junior scholars.”

She added, “The first question I asked during my faculty orientation at Plattsburgh in 2007 was about academic freedom. I don't think it is too much to expect that an institution that I have contributed to, as a faculty member and department chair, would issue a statement denouncing the vile threats directed at me last spring, which included rape and death threats, and affirm their support for free speech and academic freedom.”

Ken Knelly, a spokesman for Plattsburgh, said the university “will continue to review records and make determinations of disclosure in accordance with New York State law,” which operates on the presumption of access."

America Has Spent Nearly $5 Trillion on Wars Since 9/11

"Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has spent $3.6 trillion on wars. When you add in the amount of war funding that the departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security have requested for next year — and then the estimated costs of our present commitments to veterans — the overall price tag comes to $4.79 trillion, according to a new report by Brown University’s Watson Institute.

For $4.79 trillion we could forgive all outstanding student-loan debt in the United States, provide universal preschool to all American children, buy ourselves a high-speed rail system — and still have a couple trillion left over for a rainy day."

How Zionist hoodlums forced UC, Berkeley to cancel a course in the middle of the semester: unprecedented

""Universities should never suspend courses in the middle of a semester except under the most dire circumstances, where a course has been proven to violate university policies and cannot be fixed, or some kind of extraordinary fraud has occurred.

Nothing like that exists in this case. In fact, nothing like that has even been alleged by the administration, which relies upon bureaucratic snafus to justify suspending this course.

On Sept. 14, UC Berkeley Assistant Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof wrote to me that “The administration was first made aware of this issue last week when students, faculty and staff noticed posters for the course and expressed concern about the syllabus and, among other things, its compliance with Regents policy.”

InsideHigherEd likewise reported:

However, the public clamor was not the tipping point for Hesse’s decision, Mogulof said. She began her inquiries into the course last week, after a colleague raised concerns about the course to the dean internally. This occurred before public criticism began.

But it was two weeks ago, on Sept. 1, that Mogulof was quoted in a Jewish newspaper responding to concerns about the course from critics.

(UPDATE: Mogulof reports that his original timeline reported in the press was inaccurate, and that the administration first heard about the course on Aug. 26 from a faculty member. But this raises still more questions about a course that began on Sept. 6. If there were legitimate academic concerns about the syllabus, why not contact the instructor about them? Why wait 19 days and then suddenly ban the course? Hesse’s whole complaint is that the failure to deposit a copy of syllabus with her office deprived her of the opportunity to examine it for problems. Now we find out that she had 11 days before the course started to examine the syllabus and she did nothing.)

The administration seems anxious to claim that their decision was made in reaction to the concerns of students, faculty, and staff on campus. But the truth is that Berkeley faced a global onslaught of organizations attacking them for allowing this course. In a letter to Chancellor Dirks on Sept. 13, 43 Jewish, civil rights and education advocacy organizations declared that the class was “intended to indoctrinate students to hate the Jewish state and take action to eliminate it:”

But interestingly, even these organizations did not call for suspending the course; they were solely focused on preventing a similar course from being approved in the future.

By this point, though, Hasse appeared to have a plan to save Berkeley from the bad publicity and put the blame on the student who proposed the course for failing to follow proper procedures. A few hours later on Sept. 13, she emailed the instructor and the faculty who approved the course, informing them that she had suspended the course. It was the first time she had contacted the student instructor.

Berkeley was quick to alert the press about the news, and to blame the student instructor."

Zionist intimidation of the academe

There is no question that Zionists have succeeded in establishing a climate of intimidation in the academe, just as they had succeeded years earlier in establishing a climate of intimidation in the US Congress and US media.  There is not sufficient outrage and reaction by US leftist academics (not to mention others) to the Zionist censorship campaigns.  The movement which used to fight its battles in the name of freedom now fights against freedom in the name of...freedom.  A movement which pioneered the art the boycott now fights boycott in the name of boycott.  But Zionists should know: that the age in which we live and the public expressions by millions on social media make their attempts to monopolize the narrative about Israel impossible.  New students are learning on their own about Palestine and no matter how many classes you cancel and how many careers of professors you derail.  For that and for many other reasons, your project is doomed to failure. It really is a matter of time and for that you increasingly act desperate, and assume that with this new tactic maybe you can save Zionism from the attacks of critics.  You just can't legitimize an illegitimate project.  

France under the socialists

It has to be said, first under Sarkozy but more so under the socialists: France has become (state and society) one of the ugliest and most hateful Western democracies.  Even Americans sometimes express surprise at the levels of French intolerance. That should be indicative.

PS Not to mention how the socialists took the relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia to yet another higher levels.  

"When pork flies: The F-35, the Pentagon’s $1.1 trillion flying money pit, is (sort of) ready for duty"

"Years of delays, management shakeups, engine and software problems — and most important — cost overruns have made this Lockheed Martin jet initiative a punching bag and pork barrel project.

As far back as 2001, the cost of the program was termed astronomical, with initial estimates pegged at $233 billion. The price tag has ballooned to about $400 billion, with plenty of glitches still to be worked out. (A high-ranking member of the Pentagon is denigrating the jets for their defects even as they’re being declared ready for combat.) Throw in the average price of $135 million a plane and pilot helmets that will run $400,000 apiece, and the total cost of the F-35 program will exceed $1.1 trillion. 

In case you’ve been wondering where your hard-earned tax dollars go, now you know.

Recent efforts to reel in costs have bordered on satire. In July, Lockheed Martin announced plans to spend an additional $170 million as part of a cost-reduction program that it claimed would reduce other costs by $1 billion over five years. Then just a month later, the Pentagon approved an additional $1 billion for Lockheed Martin to offset the aerospace company’s costs to suppliers, effectively wiping out whatever taxpayer savings Lockheed had been touting just weeks earlier."

Notice the uncharacteristically mild language of director of Human Rights Watch when it comes to Israel

Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth)

9/12/16, 8:44 PM Netanyahu, a leader of illegal settlement ethnic imposition, complains of ethnic cleansing.

Notice that Human Rights Watch's only problem with Israel is "the illegal settlements".  Otherwise, Israel would have been invited to lead HRW.

Repugnant rhetoric of Bashshar Al-Asad in Darayya

Particularly distasteful was the typical Ba`thist rhetoric about "agents and traitors".  The political language of the Ba`th is as bad as the prisons of the Ba`th.  

This is how Liz Sly refers to the alliance between "moderate" Syrian rebels and Al-Qa`idah variants

"This accord also adds new complications in the form of a provision for the United States to carry out joint airstrikes with Russia against extremists whose positions are known to be entangled with the moderate rebels on some front lines."

How "moderate" Syrian rebels (including some supported and armed by US) show solidarity with Al-Qa`idah in Syria

Read here.

The lies and slander of Zionist hoodlums exposed: Pro-Palestinian Group Vindicated of Anti-Semitism Charges After CUNY Probe

"An independent investigation has vindicated a pro-Palestinian group charged with fostering an anti-Semitic climate at the nation’s largest urban public university.

Two lawyers hired by the City University of New York to investigate alleged instances of anti-Semitism found that expressions of political opposition to the State of Israel are not inherently anti-Semitic, and that such expressions are protected under the First Amendment.  The investigation and the events that triggered it are part of a broader trend of campuses becoming political battlegrounds, where heavyweight Israel advocacy groups, like the Zionist Organization of America, spar with pro-Palestinian activists. Students for Justice in Palestine, the subject of this investigation, is a frequent target of such groups — but not the only one.  “The report finds what we’ve said all along, that the ZOA’s claims that SJP engaged in anti-Semitic activity are completely unsubstantiated,” said Radhika Sainath, an attorney with Palestine Legal.  The lawyers’s conducted their investigation after the ZOA wrote a scathing letter in February accusing local chapters of SJP of creating “a hostile campus environment” for Jewish students at CUNY. The ZOA, one of the country’s oldest pro-Israel organizations, has been campaigning against SJP for years.  Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights have documented what they call a “Palestine exception” to free speech, which they say is a pattern of censorship on campuses and a silencing of criticism of Israel. The ZOA, Palestine Legal said in a statement, is at the forefront of these efforts.  “[The report] confirmed that SJP cannot be scapegoated for accusation of anti-Semitism on campus,” said Nerdeen Kiswani, a former SJP leader at CUNY who graduated in June. “The facts on the ground are that standing against Zionism is not anti-Semitic and is protected under free speech.”  Similar allegations against SJP and other pro-Palestinian groups have also been dismissed at San Francisco State University and the University of California Irvine, according to Palestine Legal. The U.S. Department of Education also dismissed complaints against pro-Palestinian groups at at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and UCI in 2013, and against Rutgers in 2014."

PS Circulate widely.

Diaa Hadid of the Times writes about the Hajj: Disney goes to Mecca

The native informant of the Times, Diaa Haddid, went to the Hajj and has been writing about it.  I can't look at her twitter account because she--for some reason--has blocked me.  But she has shared some of her tweets here: please, if you are an Arabic speaker read her tweets IN ARABIC.  Does she not come across as someone who google translated her English into Arabic? She uses English expressions that no one uses in Arabic as in "walk on foot", or "pictures to come": do you know how hilarious those expressions sound in Arabic? Is she writing in a language with which she has such poor command to come across to her employers that she is a native speaker when she clearly is not?  And I never knew in my studies of Islam that Islam has a "modesty code" until I read Hadid: "to adhere to Islamic modesty codes".  And notice that she is at pain to tell the readers that she is not a real Muslim and that she is doing this Hajj as a schtick for the paper and at one point she says: "I even prayed.".  Oh, how nice of you.  And cliches are clearly favored by your writer: "I mean no disrespect when I say Mecca is, well, a mecca for shopping."  And what would the native informants be without vomiting insults against Muslims that Western readers have come to expect: "Sitting next to a group of Saudi women who resembled large black crows..." Can you imagine if this was a description of Jewish women in prayer? Can you imagine the outrage?  And her schtick about her mother wanting her to get married is not funny and pretty old after three mentions in one article.  And look at the cultural sensitivity that you expect from a Times native informant: "In my news media delegation, there is a Yemeni woman who looks like a sweet granny until she flips on her niqab."   

How US helped fund and arm Al-Qa`idah in Syria

Comrade Amer writes about the methods in which US aid and arms for "moderate" Syrian rebels wound up with Al-Qa`idah in Syria--with the full knowledge of the US government.

Not in the US press: corruption of Mahmoud Abbas

Abbas fired a Palestinian leader of Fath because she exposed corruption of the leaders.

Where is the outrage? Zionist hoodlums closed down a course at UC, Berkeley and called it anti-Semitic

At UC, Berkeley students can teach courses if other students are willing to take the course, and provided a faculty person is willing to sponsor the course.  At UC, Berkeley Zionist hoodlums lobbied against an already-approved course and shut it down.

Members of the Zionist lobby came back from a short trip to Saudi Arabia full of advocacy, propaganda, and enthusiasm for the royal family

Zalmay Khalilzad: "One byproduct of the Saudi focus on ISIL and Iran seems to be a more enlightened view by Riyadh toward Israel. My visit left me convinced that key segments of the Saudi leadership are serious about their modernization plans and are pursuing it with vigor and professionalism." (thanks Basim)

"U.S. tests Iran's reaction to spy planes; then complains about unprofessional Iranian behavior"

From a reader: "At some point during the flight, the Iranian military warned the two aircraft to change course or risk getting shot down. The US military planes ignored the warning and continued flying in international airspace, although close to Iranian territory, the officials told Fox. “We wanted to test the Iranian reaction,” one US official told Fox News when asked why the US jets were flying close to Iran." "The official said the Iranian behavior was characterized as “unprofessional.” "

Muslim woman set on fire in New York City

"A Muslim woman had her blouse set on fire outside an upscale boutique in Manhattan, police sources told The New York Daily News. The 36-year-old woman was wearing traditional Muslim attire and was able to douse the flames herself, in what appears to be the latest anti-Muslim attack in New York City."

Google & the Pentagon

"Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive officer of Google, will head a new Pentagon advisory board aimed at bringing Silicon Valley innovation and best practices to the U.S. military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday." (thanks Amir)

"Facebook Is Collaborating With the Israeli Government to Determine What Should Be Censored"

"Having just resolved that censorship effort, Facebook seems to be vigorously courting another. The Associated Press reports today from Jerusalem that “the Israeli government and Facebook have agreed to work together to determine how to tackle incitement on the social media network.” These meetings are taking place “as the government pushes ahead with legislative steps meant to force social networks to rein in content that Israel says incites violence.” In other words, Israel is about to legislatively force Facebook to censor content deemed by Israeli officials to be improper, and Facebook appears eager to appease those threats by working directly with the Israeli government to determine what content should be censored.  The joint Facebook-Israel censorship efforts, needless to say, will be directed at Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians who oppose Israeli occupation. The AP article makes that clear: “Israel has argued that a wave of violence with the Palestinians over the past year has been fueled by incitement, much of it spread on social media sites.” As Alex Kane reported in The Intercept in June, Israel has begun actively surveilling Palestinians for the content of their Facebook posts and even arresting some for clear political speech. Israel’s obsession with controlling Palestinians’ use of social media is motivated by the way it has enabled political organizing by occupation opponents; as Kane wrote: “A demonstration against the Israeli occupation can be organized in a matter of hours, while the monitoring of Palestinians is made easier by the large digital footprint they leave on their laptops and mobile phones.”  Notably, Israel was represented in this meeting with Facebook by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, an extremist by all measures who has previously said she does not believe in a Palestinian state. Shaked has “proposed legislation that seeks to force social networks to remove content that Israel considers to be incitement,” and recently boasted that Facebook is already extremely compliant with Israeli censorship demands: “Over the past four months Israel submitted 158 requests to Facebook to remove inciting content,” she said, and Facebook has accepted those requests in 95 percent of the cases...While the focus here is on Palestinians’ “incitement,” it’s actually very common for Israelis to use Facebook to urge violence against Palestinians, including settlers urging “vengeance” when there is an attack on an Israeli. Indeed, as the Washington Post recently noted, “Palestinians have also taken issue with social-media platforms, saying they incite violence and foster an Israeli discourse of hatred, racism and discriminatory attitudes against Palestinians.”  In 2014, thousands of Israelis used Facebook to post messages “calling for the murder of Palestinians.” When an IDF occupying soldier was arrested for shooting and killing a wounded Palestinian point blank in the head last year, IDF soldiers used Facebook to praise the killing and justify that violence, with online Israeli mobs gathering in support. Indeed, Justice Minister Shaked herself — now part of the government team helping Facebook determine what to censor — has used Facebook to post astonishingly extremistand violence-inducing rhetoric against Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his other top ministers have done the same. As Al Jazeera America detailed in 2014:

The hate speech against Arabs that gathered momentum on Facebook and Twitter soon spilled out onto the streets of Jerusalem as extremist Israelis kicked up violence and caused chaos. This violence then made its way back online: YouTube and Facebook videos show hundreds of angry Israeli mobs running around chanting, “Death to Arabs,” and looking for Palestinians to attack. A video of an Israeli Jew attacking a Palestinian on a public bus shouting, “Filthy Arabs, filthy Arab murderers of children,” emerged from Tel Aviv. And more video footageshowing Israeli security forces using excessive force on a handcuffed Palestinian-American boy further called into question who was really inciting this chaos." (thanks Ali)

No way: "Fire at Orlando gunman’s mosque was ‘set intentionally,’ authorities say"

"“Unfortunately, within the past year, we’ve seen an unprecedented rise in bigotry in our society,” he said Monday, adding: “It’s becoming a great concern to the American Muslim community.” Michael Parsons, whose parents live across the street from the mosque, told the Associated Press that since the shooting, “a lot of people have been driving by hollering and yelling expletives at the church or mosque or whatever they call it.”"

A long feature about Theresa May in the Washington Post

But it is about her attire and shoes in particular.  Kid you not.