Great and very relevant reads from Bev

BEV GOLDMAN
In her weekly OPINION & ANALYSIS blog, Bev Goldman brings Jewish Report Online readers some fascinating and most relevant reads from around the world. Try these for size, and print out what you like for Shabbos reading: 

---

1. How UN mixes, anti-Semitism, Holocaust & Israeli war crimes

Anne Bayefsky, JCPA, January/February 2015

While focusing on anti-Semitism has been studiously avoided by the United Nations, the subject of the Holocaust has served as the consolation prize.   The UN does not want to deal with anti-Semitism because the organization would be exposed as the global platform for anti-Semitism. The foreign policy of the majority of nations today condones and even promotes anti-Semitism.  Five of all the ten emergency sessions of the General Assembly in its history attacked Israel. The Assembly did not hold one emergency session about genocide in Rwanda or Sudan.  The most insidious argument is the ignorant and twisted claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exacerbates anti-Semitism. At the root of this assertion is the idea that the victims of anti-Semitism have a responsibility to ameliorate the pathology of their enemies.  How is it possible that in a matter of days the UN apparatus went from discussing anti-Semitism, to the Holocaust, to Israeli war crimes? 

---

2. Islam and appeasement

G Murphy Donovan, American Thinker

Europe and America are impaled on the horns of a strategic dilemma. On the one hand, the world is besieged by jihadi religious terror, barbarity, and serial wars with jihadists.  Concurrently, most of the civilized world defends the very religious cultures, Sunni and Shia Islam especially, where the problems originate.  To be clear at the outset; with Islam today, there seems to be less and less daylight between secular and religious imperatives.

---

3. Defeating Islamic State requires comprehensive strategy

Paul McHale, Stars and Stripes

Speaking before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month, Secretary of State John Kerry described global terrorism as “nothing more than criminal anarchy, a nihilism which illegitimately claims an ideological and religious foundation.” Is he serious? A de facto Islamic caliphate has now been established in the heart of the Middle East and Kerry sees it as nothing more than a criminal conspiracy. Quick, call the cops.

CLICK HERE FOR LINKS TO ALL ITEMS

4. Egypt’s war in the Sinai: a struggle that goes beyond Egypt

Yoram Schweitzer, INSS
Egypt is in the midst of a war that can be categorized as a low-intensity conflict. This category represents a common pattern of military campaigns in the early twenty-first century: sub-conventional wars fought by armies and security services belonging to states against armies of terrorilla- fully armed and hierarchical organizations that operate among civilian populations, combining guerilla and terror warfare tactics with the logic of terrorism. Egypt’s campaign in Sinai has tremendous significance for Israel.

5. Anti-Semitism is once more on the march in Europe

Richard Cohen, Washington Post
Anti-Semitism is the most durable and pliable of all conspiracy theories. It supposedly accounts for the death of Christ and the Jewish dominance of the liberal media. It carefully noted the disproportionate number of Jews in the communist movement and in the capitalist movement. Anti-Semitism can account for the wealth of the Jews and their scientific and artistic achievements. They are – we are – a most nimble people. We’ve had to be.

6. Obama’s secret Iran strategy

Michael Doran, Mosaic

The president has long been criticized for his lack of strategic vision. But what if a strategy, centred on Iran, has been in place from the start and consistently followed to this day?  And how eager is the president to see Iran break through its isolation and become a very successful regional power? Very eager.