By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C – The Washington Post ran several articles and columns this week about the emergence of once-secret U.S.-Taliban talks designed to pave the way for an American exit from Afghanistan. Writers have likened them to the talks that preceded our exit from Vietnam. Maybe, but there is another cautionary tale [...]
KABUL (WJC)–General David Petraeus, the US commander in Afghanistan, has warned that soldiers’ lives will be endangered if a Florida evangelical church goes ahead with a planned burning of the Koran – Islam’s holy book – on Saturday, the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Petraeus said the planned torching of the Koran would be [...]
By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM– More than any other national leader, Barack Obama has a global constituency. The world does not vote in American elections, but his capacity to fulfill his obligations depends on the cooperation of other national leaders, and the opinions of publics that have at least a minimum of influence on them. Balancing [...]
By Rabbi Ben Kamin SAN DIEGO — Muslims themselves should not take too much solace in President Obama’s recent avowal of support for the Cordoba House and mosque project at the cusp of ground zero. Spoken in the midst of a Ramadan gathering at the White House, the president‘s jaw driven outward in a now trademark signal [...]
By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–The issue of the New York City mosque near ground zero has awakened discussion of that big gorilla in the American living room. Despite all the platitudes slung back and forth about religious freedom and the separation of church and state, and the assertion that the problem of terror is not Islam, [...]
By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Israel is too small and too poor for the demands that it lays upon itself, and are imposed by the world. My favorite newspaper photo of the day shows a file room at a court house. It came with a story about a plaintiff’s case of medical malpractice that failed [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Monday, in the wake of the killing of an IDF officer inside Israel by Lebanese Armed Forces personnel, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) announced that Congress would block the disbursement of $100 million in U.S. military aid to Lebanon. Lowey chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee that authorizes such funds. Similarly, [...]
SAN DIEGO (Press Release) – For the first time in its 21 year history, the Human Rights Watch Film Festival is coming to San Diego. The 2010 Human Rights Watch Film Festival is the world’s foremost showcase for films with a distinctive human rights theme and creates a forum for courageous individuals on both sides of [...]
By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Anti-Semitism is ancient, although the term itself appears only from the 19th century onward. By the latter part of the 20th century, Arabs were ridiculing the charge that they were anti-Semites, on the grounds that they are Semites. Tendentious claims aside, no less a reference than the Oxford English Dictionary defines anti-Semitism [...]
By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–”Document Leak May Hurt Efforts to Build War Support” Each of us may have a different view of that headline in the New York Times, which derives from the paper’s activities, along with the Guardian, Der Spiegel, and WikiLeaks, to bring purloined documents to the public’s attention. Some will condemn the paper as working against the national interest [...]
