Is the CIA lying? ...
“It’s bad enough to not prosecute these officials but to reward and promote them is incomprehensible,” Udall said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “The president needs to purge his administration.” Udall reiterated his call for the resignation of CIA director John Brennan, saying he should no longer lead the agency because officials hacked into the Intelligence Committee’s computers during their investigation and deleted a file. He also spilled some findings from the so-called Panetta review, which was not included in the Senate panel’s report but is expected to paint a damning picture of the CIA’s public statements about the interrogation program. “Director Brennan and the CIA today are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture,” Udall said. “The CIA is lying. This is not an issue of the past, this is going on today.” “To date there has been no accountability for the CIA’s actions or the actions of Director Brennan.” Udall criticized Obama, saying he has failed to live up to his campaign promises about transparency and accountability for the CIA’s techniques. “The White House has not led on transparency, as then-Sen. Obama promised in 2007,” he alleged.
"The conversation about militant Islam has been systematically repressed."...
Matti Friedman again explains how NGO's and the media prepare the ground for anti-Israel propaganda...
HEARTBREAKING PHOTO:
- R' Moshe Twersky (60)
- R' Kalmen Levin (55)
- R' Avram Goldberg (68)
- R' Arye Kupinsky (43) pic.twitter.com/fRdpiKNdXf
— Israel News Feed (@IsraelHatzolah) November 18, 2014Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian leaders of inciting violence and promised to “respond harshly.” In the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip, calls over loudspeakers praised the attackers. In East Jerusalem, crowds hurled stones at Israeli police fanning out around the neighborhood where the attackers lived. The Associated Press, citing Israeli police, said those killed included one Briton and three Americans — among them Rabbi Moshe Twersky, who taught at an English-speaking religious school in Jerusalem and was a member of one of the most respected families in Orthodox scholarship.... Twersky’s grandfather, Joseph Soloveitchik, was a renowned Boston rabbi, and his father, Rabbi Yitzhak (Isadore) Twersky, was longtime director of The Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard. Twersky’s brother, Mayer Twersky, one of the heads of Yeshiva University in New York, the flagship American school for Jewish Orthodox studies.Here is raw video of the police shooting the perpetrators, and of the victims of the attack:
Almog Shiloni, 20, of Modiin, died of multiple wounds to his stomach and chest, an official from the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer Hospital said. “After resuscitation efforts that began in the field and continued for hours in the hospital, the stabbing victim who arrived at the hospital earlier today was declared dead,” a spokesperson announced. When Shiloni was first brought into the hospital following the attack he had no pulse, although doctors were able to restart his heart.His girlfriend, who was talking to him on the phone at the time, rushed to the scene when she heard a commotion and Almog didn't answer. When she arrived at the scene she saw "Almog lying in a pool of blood as emergency teams tried to resuscitate him." In the afternoon a 26 year old woman, Dalia Lemkus, was stabbed to death and two others were wounded in a knife attack in Gush Etzion (the Etzion Bloc) by a terrorist who was shot and wounded by a security guard.
The stabber was shot by a guard on duty at the site, police said. Initial reports indicated he was killed, but later reports dispelled that claim. Magen David Adom said he was in serious condition. A 26-year-old man suffered light-moderate injuries, and a man in his 50s was lightly hurt in the incident. Their names were not released. Channel 2 reported that the older man was driving by the scene when he saw the attack in progress, then stopped his car and wrestled with the attacker before suffering an injury to his face.Sherri Mandel, whose teenage son Kobi, was killed in 2001 during the so-called "Aqsa intifada," wrote a tribute to Lemkus, What the didn't tell you about Dalia, at The Times of Israel:
Court shuts down defense attempt to contest her Israeli bombing conviction in prosecution for making false statements on naturalization application....
“This week’s events are a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world,” Harper said in his address to the nation. “We are also reminded that attacks on our security personnel and our institutions of governance are by their very nature attacks on our country, on our values, on our society, on us Canadians as a free and democratic people who embrace human dignity for all. But let there be no misunderstanding. We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated.”The attack began just before 10 am on Wednesday, when Zehaf-Bibeau fired on the ceremonial guard at a war memorial across the street from parliament. It was here that Corporal Nathan Cirillo was shot; he later died from his wounds. Zehaf-Bibeau then made his way past armed guards and into the building where MPs from both parties were caucusing. Kevin Vickers, the House of Commons sergeant-at-arms, shot Zehaf-Bibeau dead before anyone else was injured. CBC News has terrifying raw footage from inside Parliament's Centre Block:
“A private car which arrived from the direction of the French Hill junction hit a number of pedestrians who were on the pavement and injured nine of them,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement. “Initial indications suggest this is a hit-and-run terror attack,” Samri said. The baby died at the nearby Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus a few hours after the incident. A spokesperson for Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom said a 60-year-old woman and seven other people, including the baby’s father, were also lightly and moderately wounded in the attack. ...The suspect , Abdelrahman al-Shaludi, previously served time in jail and has been identified by Israeli government spokesman Ofir Gendelman as a member of Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for partnering with Hamas and inciting violence.
Demonstrators, primarily associated with Jewish groups, plan to rally outside Lincoln Center with 100 wheelchairs, in honor of the slain handicapped Leon Klinghoffer, on whom “The Death of Klinghoffer” is based. Klinghoffer was hurled from the Achille Lauro cruise ship by PLO terrorists in 1985 after it was hijacked. The opera, which centers on the terrorists who perpetrated the murder, has been accused of glorifying terrorism and incorporating anti-Semitic tropes.The Klinghoffer opera is not new; it was first produced in 1991, and has drawn protests wherever it goes. I recall hearing the news of the hijacking and the shocking manner of Klinghoffer's death at the time it occurred. But back then I was unaware of the almost immediate post-modern interest of some in understanding---empathizing with, and even sympathizing with---Klinghoffer's murderers. In the years since, and especially post-9/11, such enabling attitudes have become only too common. "The Death of Klinghoffer" is an example of the genre. In the olden days, an opera on such a theme might have featured the terrorists as traditional villains steeped in evil, with thunderous and dissonant music to signify the horror of what they did. But in this version they are given sonorous and lovely melodies to sing and sympathetic words to utter. But it wasn't enough to portray the murderers in a sensitive light; the Klinghoffers and their associates are portrayed less nobly:
More than 20 years ago, in his review of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's premiere of the opera, The New York Times chief music critic, Edward Rothstein, questioned the presentation of Jews and Palestinian Arabs as "symmetrical victims of each other's hatreds." Rothstein later wrote that the opera's depiction of its Jewish characters reduced them "to petty triviality" compared to their Palestinian counterparts.The opera's librettist, Alice Goodman, is an interesting tale herself. Born and raised as a Jew in Minnesota, educated in literature at Harvard, married to a British poet, she became an Anglican priest and opera librettist.
Upcoming trial of convicted terrorist Rasmieh Odeh on falsely filling out naturalization application gets heated....
Police had a very visible presence Wednesday at schools in Cranston, Johnston and Warwick. Officers will be present all day after a letter threatening beheadings at the elementary schools in the three communities was received by the Johnston Police Department on Tuesday. Police said the handwritten letter was one page, and it is being analyzed at the state crime lab at the University of Rhode Island. Police departments said they would cover every school in the three communities. "When these threats come in, we take them very serious. But at the same time, we don't want these threats to disrupt our daily life, including important work that they do here educating students," Cranston Police Col. Michael Winquist said. The police presence calmed the fears of some parents.
One of groups is co-sponsor of Steven Salaita Chicago-area speaking tour....
It's just workplace violence, disconnected from anything....
Arab Bank, a major Middle Eastern bank with $46 billion in assets, was accused of knowingly supporting specific terrorist acts in and around Israel during the second Palestinian uprising of the early 2000s. The verdict is expected to have a strong impact on similar legal efforts to hold financial institutions responsible for wrongdoing by their clients, even if the institutions followed banking rules, and could be seen as a deterrent for banks that conduct business in violent areas. The plaintiffs in this case, about 300 victims of 24 terrorist attacks, said the acts had been carried out by Hamas, and accused Arab Bank of supporting the organization by handling transfers and payments for Hamas members.The Times quotes Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on the significance of the verdict.
“What this has done is it’s made the effects of American law felt in far-off places, and that is significant,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former terrorism finance analyst for the Treasury Department. “I don’t think any country, any bank, would want to be cut off from the U.S. financial sector, and they’re going to start thinking very carefully about whether they accept financial transactions” even from people or groups who are not on designated terrorist lists.The damages were not determined and will be decided at a future trial.
Or maybe the editors decided that it was all on the level, and the money influenced neither Indyk’s government work on the peace process nor Brookings’ analysis of the Middle East. Or maybe journalists just don’t think it’s worth making a big fuss out of obvious conflicts of interest that may affect American foreign policy. Maybe Qatar’s $14.8 million doesn’t affect Brookings’ research projects or what the think tank’s scholars tell the media, including the New York Times, about subjects like Qatar, Hamas, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other related areas in which Qatar has key interests at stake. Maybe the think tank’s vaunted objectivity, and Indyk’s personal integrity and his pride in his career as a public servant, trump the large piles of vulgar Qatari natural gas money that keep the lights on and furnish the offices of Brookings scholars and pay their cell-phone bills and foreign travel.Smith also observed that the Qatar connection made Indyk poorly suited as an interlocutor for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Armed groups have made advances in the area of UNDOF positions, posing a direct threat to the safety and security of the UN Peacekeepers along the “Bravo” line and in Camp Faouar. All the UN personnel in these positions have thus been relocated to the “Alpha” side. UNDOF continues to use all available assets to carry out its mandated tasks in this exceptionally challenging environment.The "Alpha side" is Israel. https://twitter.com/LTCPeterLerner/status/511583877295403008
According to court documents, Ali Muhammad Brown described his June murder of 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin as a "just kill" and said it was an act of "vengeance" meant to compensate for U.S. military killings in the Middle East.Brown is a devout Muslim, and has been extremely vocal about his opposition to U.S. intervention in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
"All these lives are taken every single day by America, by this government. So a life for a life," he told investigators, according to the documents. Brown further justified killing Tevlin by claiming the shooting was a "just kill," meaning he targeted an adult man and did not put any women, children or elderly people in danger. In police interviews, Brown described the U.S.'s military campaign in the Middle East as evil and said if a "man sees evil, then he must take action against that evil," the court papers show.
