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(8) Finally, there are countless individual examples of anti-Israelists explicitly having Jews on their minds when they are attacking Israel. The following short list is, again, representative of a vastly greater number of similar examples. |
"O God, help our weak brothers in Palestine score victory over the usurper Jews. O God, destroy the Jews, who have gone too far in their tyranny, corruption, and aggression. O God ... make them a prey for Muslims." |
So goes a prayer by Shaykh Salah al Budayr and broadcast by Saudi TV from the holy mosque in Medina on June 28, 2002. Many antisemites at least make an effort to distinguish their use of "Zionist" and "Jew"; not, apparently, Shaykh al Budayr. |
Ditto for Lincoln University Professor Kaukab Siddique and his many social media postings. Siddique lauds Hamas (for example) for fighting "very well against the Zionist monster. Israel admitted that 13 of its best troops were killed today. One military Jew was captured. Civilian casualties of the Palestinians were ext... |
In a widely covered story in August 2016, a half-dozen anti-Israel students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, most affiliated with campus anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), were exposed for their extensive antisemitic social media activity -- which drew no discernible line between anti-... |
In 2015 the student government at the Durban University of Technology in South Africa called on the university to expel all Jewish students, "especially those who do not support the Palestinian struggle." Not only does this phrasing imply they still would like to expel even those Jewish students who do "support the Pal... |
In 2015 UCLA student Rachel Beyda was grilled by four student government representatives on whether her Jewish background would make her unfit to serve impartially as on the school's Judicial Board. "Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community," she was asked, "how do you see yourself be... |
Nevertheless it strikes me as incontrovertible that much of the time, perhaps most of the time, particularly on campuses and across the Arab and Muslim worlds, what most people are talking about, when talking about Israel -- is "the Jews." And it also strikes me as by and large reasonable for people to do so, most of t... |
Salaita is actually right here: for if the Jews really are guilty of all things that Israel is regularly accused of, then morality dictates that one do everything in one's means to stop them. We might say the same thing in response to medieval Christian antisemitism, and Nazi racist antisemitism: if the Jews really do ... |
How could any person of conscience act otherwise? |
Honestly admitting that most talk about Israel just is talk of the Jews will necessarily shift the conversation to where it properly should be. |
To help see this, I propose an experiment: that wherever an anti-Israelist uses the word "Israel" or "Zionists," substitute "Jews," or "the Jews." When they claim that Zionism is a settler-colonialist enterprise, they are claiming that Jews are settler-colonialists; when they claim that Israel commits ethnic cleansing,... |
Of course it isn't antisemitic per se to advocate for Palestinian rights or to condemn the policies of a state government. Nor was it antisemitic per se for medieval Christians to defend their children from ritual murder or for Nazis to protect their country from the powerful global organization (the Elders of Zion) ai... |
And that is when the question, the real question, becomes clear. |
It isn't about whether the anti-Israelist is speaking about Jews or not, because she clearly is. It is instead about whether what she is saying about Israel (i.e. the Jews) is true, fair, substantiated, or reasonable -- or, to the contrary, as all reasonable non-antisemites see the medieval Christian and Nazi claims to... |
It is all the more worrisome when this antisemitism manifests itself on campuses which, as institutions of higher learning, are supposed to be veritable bastions of epistemic rigor. When the campus commitment to epistemology is abandoned, as is occurring all over the Western world, things get uncomfortable for the Jews... |
Taking a long, hard look at the current penchant for accusations of ritual murder, one is left with a most oppressive feeling -- a feeling that any impressionable individual will find hard to bear. Just think about it: these things are being said about us -- about me, about you, about your mother! So whenever we Jews s... |
Dewsbury’s Crow Nest Park held its annual family fun day last weekend. |
Despite the weather doing its best to hamper conditions, plenty of people braved the rain and enjoyed themselves. |
Features from the day included fun fair rides, Crafty Devils and circus skills, children’s games, and the very popular ‘Friends’ raffle as well as cake and plant stalls. |
Are We Ready for a Mobile-first World? |
However, there is a ways to go before mobile platforms become the primary place where consumers turn for entertainment and getting things done, players at this week's CTIA Wireless trade show said. |
Nokia Siemens Networks announced new capabilities in its network software to make video streams run more smoothly over mobile networks. Among other things, the enhancements can reduce video stalling by 90 percent, according to the company. But even Sandro Tavares, head of marketing for NSN's Mobile Core business, sees ... |
For example, giving the best possible performance for streaming video and other uses of mobile may require steering traffic to the right network if both cellular and Wi-Fi are available. AT&T is developing an "intelligent network selection" capability to do this, Rinne said. When AT&T starts to deliver voice over LTE, ... |
Dec. 3 (UPI) -- A video captured at a New York City subway station captured the moment a station agent was chased out of her booth by a large rat. |
The video, posted to Twitter, shows the big rat scrambling across the desks in the station booth at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Grand Street station. |
A second video shows the rat climbing on equipment inside the booth. |
The MTA said in a statement provided to KABC-TV that safety of customers and employees is "of utmost importance." |
The agency said it is working to "help ensure this doesn't happen again." |
One was a numbers runner from Boston who was set up by the mob. Another was a Central Valley welder whose lawyer failed to do even basic defense work. A third was a mildly retarded Chicago man who spent 17 years in prison for murder and was let go only after someone else confessed. |
The three men are among nearly 100 former convicts who share a numbing notoriety: All were freed from death row and released from prison, some just hours before execution, because of questions about their guilt. |
Amid a remarkable flurry of recent debate about who society executes and why, the freed convicts are Exhibit A in a controversial push by Democratic congressional leaders beginning this week to reform death penalty procedures nationwide. |
Backers say the $50-million measure protects the innocent by ensuring that prisoners have access to DNA testing and adequate lawyers. Opponents attack it as a back door to "abolishing" the death penalty through procedural hoops, making it all but impossible to enforce. |
What all agree is that the Democrats' stunning takeover of the Senate earlier this month now means a much higher profile and a legitimate shot at success for the proposal, which Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) has made one of his priorities. |
And that has death penalty supporters worried. |
"The death penalty is certainly under attack. It's under a well-funded and virulent attack, and much of it unfortunately is based on misinformation," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, a conservative group that supports capital punishment. |
No one on either side of the debate thinks the United States will return any time soon to the climate of the mid-1970s, when the U.S. Supreme Court banned execution as cruel and unusual punishment. |
But even death penalty advocates such as Scheidegger detect a "softening" in recent attitudes, with debate often centering less on the morality of capital punishment than on how it is applied. |
"I think the growing national consensus on the death penalty is that if we're going to have the death penalty, it has to be fair," said Stephen Bright, a prominent death penalty opponent in Atlanta who will testify Wednesday at a Senate hearing that kicks off what promises to be vigorous debate on Leahy's proposed Inno... |
Recent polls show that, while a majority of Americans still favor the death penalty, the numbers are shrinking. California saw a particularly sharp drop, with support declining from 78% in 1990 to 58% last year, according to a Los Angeles Times Poll. |
The pace of executions also appears to be slowing. There have been 37 executions in the nation so far this year, down from 85 for all of 2000 and 98 in 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. |
The steady stream of death row inmates declared innocent, including a Florida man acquitted less than three weeks ago of murdering a Tampa couple, has alarmed many people. Illinois has exonerated so many inmates facing execution--13 in 13 years--that Gov. George Ryan declared a death penalty moratorium last year. |
With about 3,700 prisoners nationwide sentenced to death, officials in some parts of the country have rejected calls for moratoriums. But a series of recent developments has revitalized the debate, testing the resolve of death penalty backers and emboldening critics. |
Consider the events of just the last three weeks. |
* In Indiana, the federal government carried out its first two executions in 38 years amid intense controversy. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh's execution was postponed for a month after the government admitted it failed to give the defense 4,000 pages of documents. Lawyers for Juan Raul Garza, a drug kingpin ... |
* In Washington, D.C., Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft declared just days before Garza's execution that there was no ethnic or geographic bias against federal death row inmates. Criminal trends, not discrimination, explain why about 80% of the federal inmates facing death are minorities, he said. Ashcroft's findings enraged c... |
* In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill preventing the execution of mentally retarded convicts, a move in step with recent decisions in other states. In Texas, the Legislature did the same in an effort to soften the state's notoriety for executing people, but Gov. Rick Perry vetoed the measure. |
* In Alabama, the electrocution of a man with an IQ of 69, convicted in the killings of his ex-wife and two others, was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court after his attorneys argued that mentally retarded convicts should not be put to death. (Mental retardation is usually defined as having an IQ below 70.) The high cour... |
* In Europe, where most nations ban the death penalty, President Bush told reporters that "we should never execute someone who is retarded," a seeming shift from his position as governor of Texas that sent White House aides scrambling to clarify his remarks. |
* And in France, opposition to capital punishment forced the United States to forgo the death penalty against James Charles Kopp, accused of killing an upstate New York abortion provider, before the French would agree to extradite him following his March arrest. |
"What I think we're seeing," said Elisabeth Semel, director of the American Bar Assn.'s Death Penalty Representation Project, "is that this country is undergoing a reexamination of the death penalty. |
"We haven't reached the point where we can say the death penalty has been rejected, but the doubts and the discomfort and the dissatisfaction are becoming very pronounced," she said. |
So pronounced that many death penalty supporters believe that the debate has tilted too far toward protecting the rights of the accused and away from protecting the rights of the victims. |
In the view of some law enforcement groups and supporters of the death penalty, Leahy's proposed Innocence Protection Act risks pandering to the guilty. |
The bill seeks to ensure convicted offenders access to DNA testing and to prevent the premature destruction of biological evidence. |
It also would provide $50 million for a national commission to establish standards for ensuring that death row inmates have competent lawyers to defend them. States that do not meet the standards could lose substantial federal funds for prisons and other projects. |
Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, said incompetent defense attorneys extend well beyond a few lawyers in Texas who were caught napping during capital punishment trials. |
"The quality of legal defense in this country is just horrible," he said. "People are being processed through the courts like an assembly line. It's just not justice." |
While all agree that the goals of the legislation are noble, opponents counter that the vast majority of inmates are ably defended. Joshua K. Marquis, a prosecutor in Oregon who is a board member of the National District Attorneys Assn., said the ill-advised reforms contained in the legislation could wreak havoc on the... |
DNA isn't a "magic bullet" that can instantly determine the true culprit in any crime, Marquis said. He maintained that the Leahy bill allows so much "wiggle room" in determining who gets DNA testing that it invites abuse by criminals who have no legitimate prospects of getting out of prison. |
"As drafted, I'm concerned that this would basically be a functional abolition of the death penalty, and it would create an enormous logjam" of forensics tests, he said. "There's a great deal here that would make the death penalty virtually impossible to enforce." |
Marquis testified against an earlier incarnation of Leahy's bill last year, when a competing plan from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), with much less expansive DNA requirements, helped kill Leahy's proposal. |
Eleven more death row inmates have been freed since January 2000. And with the Democrats' takeover of the Senate, Leahy has replaced Hatch as the influential chairman of the Judiciary Committee. |
Passage of Leahy's measure is considered far from a done deal. Although it has more than 200 co-sponsors from both parties in the House and Senate, it faces a potential threat from a fellow Democrat: Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. |
Feinstein has offered a compromise that would limit those defendants eligible for DNA testing. Her version also would use financial inducements, rather than penalties, to encourage states to meet national standards for defense attorneys. |
Whichever version wins out, "Leahy deserves credit for making this a huge issue," said a senior aide to another Democrat. |
"This is an issue that people didn't even want to touch a few years ago. I mean, competent counsel for defendants? That's considered being weak on crime," the official said. "Leahy has already moved this issue a lot further along than anyone really thought it could go." |
Pakistan has recalled its ambassador in New Delhi for consultations amid escalating tensions with nuclear-armed neighbour India, Pakistan's foreign office spokesman said on Monday. |
"We have called back our High Commissioner in India for consultations. He left New Delhi this morning," Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Faisal said on Twitter. |
India recalled its ambassador to Pakistan last week to discuss Pakistan relations in the wake of a suicide bombing in the disputed Kashmir region that killed 44 Indian paramilitary police. New Delhi says Pakistan had a hand in the attack, which Islamabad denies. |
Echo And The Bunnymen are to celebrate their 25th anniversary with a world tour and by releasing remastered and expanded versions of their classic albums. |
The band, who played their first date at Liverpool’s legendary Eric’s Club on November 15, Echo And The Bunnymen see their first five albums – ‘Crocodiles’, ‘Heaven Up Here’, ‘Porcupine’, ‘Ocean Rain’ and ‘Echo & The Bunnymen’ – get the reissue treatment. |
All five will be repackaged and feature new inner artwork and photos, plus personal comments from the band. Each album is bolstered by a healthy ration of extras, non-album singles, B-sides, EPs, live tracks and studio out-takes, many of which are either ultra rare or are previously unreleased. |
The band go on a world tour to celebrate their anniversary later this year, taking in the UK, USA, Brazil, Japan, Australia and mainland Europe. |
To check ticket availability for the UK shows, call the NME Ticketline on 0870 1 663 663. |
France walked away with a clutch of gold medals at the "2nd FAI World Indoor Skydiving Championships" on Sunday 22 October 2017, after putting in solid performances across a range of disciplines at the three-day competition in Laval, Canada. More than 200 competitors from 23 countries converged on the SkyVenture wind t... |
LEXDEN’S homegrown lord returned home to talk to students at the school he had wanted to go to. |
Lord Lexden was born in Lexden and went to Holmwood House in nearby Chitts Hill. |
He had hoped to go on to Colchester Royal Grammar School but instead was sent to the independent Framlingham College in Suffolk. |
He finally got his chance to go to the grammar school where he spoke to sixth form students about the function of the House of Lords. |
During his speech, the Tory peer defended its role as a delaying and revising chamber without the ultimate power of veto. |
The guy from the right, at the right place, at the right time. |
The battle over Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch wasn't lost during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. It was lost long before, in 2016, when progressives failed to adequately express the outrage they felt over the way Republicans blocked the nomination of Merrick Garland. It was over when the offic... |
It was over when the Obama administration inexplicably failed to press the legal and political case it had to get Garland that hearing and a vote. It was over when too many Democrats believed, tragically, that they could wait out Garland's nomination and have President Hillary Clinton renominate him. It was over when D... |
Gorsuch is the guy who takes home the prize at the fair because the guy with the winning ticket can't find it. |
Gorsuch's confirmation hearing this week was, predictably, devoid of any details about his judicial philosophy or ideology. But it was not devoid of insight. Judge Gorsuch revealed himself to be something different than the folksy Westerner, the Gary Cooper, that Americans are expected to buy. He is an honorable man. H... |
Every judicial nominee promises to "judge the law neutrally." Every judicial nominee pledges to keep an open mind. Every candidate sucking up for Judicial Committee votes says he or she will respect precedent and be true to Constitutional values. And then the nominee becomes a judge, or a justice, and is free to "judge... |
The nominee's ties to Colorado billionaire Phillip Anschutz, only briefly explored during the hearing, tell us more about what Gorsuch will mean to America than his homespun talk of mutton-busting and family ski trips. The nominee was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he has been chosen for the High Court by th... |
The Republican plan for Justice Gorsuch is to patrol the furtherest right wing of the court with Justice Samuel Alito. |
And that is precisely what he will do. Good news for big corporations. Bad news for environmentalists. Good news for prosecutors. Bad news for citizens seeking to rectify injustice. Good news for those wanting more religion in government. Bad news for those fighting for voting rights and civil rights and consumer right... |
Is it possible that Justice Gorsuch will one day betray those who have spent so much to support his nomination? Sure. He will occasionally surprise the country with a ruling that angers conservatives and heartens liberals. It may even happen a few times each term. Is there a chance he will move more consistently toward... |
The difference between Neil Gorsuch and Merrick Garland is the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is the difference between Republican and Democratic control of the Senate. It is a difference that ought to forever end the debate that there is no difference between the political parties and that electio... |
DENVER — The Chicago Cubs earned a dramatic win Sunday over the Colorado Rockies, coming back to score three runs in the ninth inning for the victory. |
Trailing 5-3 in the top of the ninth inning at Coors Field in Colorado, the Cubs made it 5-4 on an RBI single by Welington Castillo. |
Dexter Fowler followed up with a two-run home run to take the lead, 6-5. |
Closer Hector Rondon shut down the Rockies in the ninth to earn the save. |
The Cubs improve their record to 3-2 on the season. |
The team’s next game will be Monday when they host the Cincinnati Reds. |
Hospitals in India are starting to tag newborns, mothers and medics as well as installing extra security cameras and educating staff to spot baby thieves amid fears that baby trafficking is becoming an organised crime nationwide. |
Officials said this was part of a drive starting at government-run hospitals in southern Tamil Nadu state to ensure nurses, doctors, and visitors know of the threat of babies being stolen from maternity wards and sold illegally for adoption. |
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