By Ted Belman
The upshot of the Levy Committee Report will be that Israel will end the de facto building freeze and start construction of settlements in earnest. It will also signal the end of the pursuit by Israel of the two-state solution. The Israeli center will no longer believe that Israel is an occupier and instead will believe that the land is theirs, which it is.
By Alex Abel
Here’s a list of something exciting to do in Jerusalem each night of the week. This doesn’t have to be taken literally – choose your favorites or mix and match, depending on how long you’re here. Post below with any other ideas of your own! Saturday A classic and possibly overdone routine for Birthright groups: […]
Those who read my book, Where There Are No Men, already know that no real struggle can be conducted by the Yesha Council. We understood that the hard way when we established the Zo Artzeinu movement, and we have since explained how we reached this conclusion in detail.
For Israel, and also its cross-pressured U.S. ally, there would be very difficult problems to solve if an enemy state such as Iran were permitted to go fully nuclear. These problems could lethally undermine the conceptually neat, but probably unrealistic, notion of balanced nuclear deterrence in the region.
By Dov Gilor
We left Reno, Nevada, early Sunday morning and decided to take the scenic route to Salt Lake City, rather than travel by super highway, but Route 50 turned out to be not very scenic as we crossed Nevada and Utah. We stopped at a roadside table at noon, where the men heated and ate LaBriute meals while the women enjoyed their cottage cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, fruit and vegetables. We have followed this pattern of meals ever since the women decided not to eat the packaged meals.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
Mourning, repentance – and love of the Land of Israel. These are arguably the major themes of these Three Weeks of Mourning over the destruction of the Holy Temple. The first two are well known and require little elaboration. But how does love and concern for Eretz Yisrael fit in to the picture?
The day school tuition crisis is not new. It has been brewing for years. School costs continue to rise while unemployment and underemployment remain high. And one also needs money to live in a neighborhood with shuls and mikvehs, to buy kosher food, to make proper simchas, to cover Yom Tov expenses, etc.
A watershed moment took place in Brooklyn last month on primary night. Those who care about private school education should sit up and take notice.
A recent CNN Money article focused on how more students than ever are requesting need-based financial aid from the private schools they attend. “Private schools are getting flooded with financial aid applications, and a growing number of the parents seeking help are earning $150,000 or more a year,” the article stated. It also pointed out that “overall, the average cost of tuition at private schools across all grades is nearly $22,000 a year, up 4% from a year ago and 26% higher than it was in the 2006-07 academic year, according to the National Association of Independent Schools.”
“The Scream,” a unique and evocative painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944), sold recently at Sotheby's for nearly $120,000,000. The price was attributed to its being the last of four editions still in private hands and the fact that it has been an icon of Western culture for over a century. The colors are vivid, the mood is stark, and the being on the bridge is overwhelmed by his surroundings. It captures a man alone in a world awry.
It’s human nature to hide our heads in the sand. That may be because we are mostly optimistic. We believe everything will be all right even when we know we are taking a chance.
A comment by Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz the other day set us thinking about an element in the draft debate that could only manifest itself in an Israeli context.
We were struck by a petition drive launched by the National Jewish Democratic Council demanding that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the Republican Party reject contributions from billionaire donor Sheldon Adelson.
UNESCO proved once again that UN rules mean nothing if they get in the way of furthering an anti-Israel agenda.
By Aaron Klein
Thousands Of Radicals Poised To Fight Assad At least 5,000 global jihadists are positioned near Syria’s borders with Turkey and Lebanon attempting to infiltrate Syria to aid the opposition fighting Bashar Assad’s regime, a senior Syrian government official told to this column. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Syrian military hopes to […]
By Jason Maoz
A new biography of the late Walter Cronkite has forced even admirers of the iconic CBS anchorman to reassess the man long held up as a paragon of journalistic ethics and objectivity.
Books. Some people love them; others claim they can do without them. For Zalman Alpert, they are essentially his life. For the past 35 years, Alpert has served as a reference librarian at Yeshiva University (YU). Educated at Columbia University’s School of Library Services and New York University’s School of Education, where he attained a master’s degree in Modern Jewish History, Alpert is one of those individuals who knows a little (sometimes a lot) about everything. Over the years, he has contributed articles to such works as Encyclopedia of Hasidim; Jewish American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia; Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture; Midstream; and The Jewish Press.
By dvora
“Let me be honest with you,” the rosh yeshiva began. It was not a good sign. I was sitting for a farher, an entrance interview, with the rosh yeshiva of a well-known yeshiva in Jerusalem, and it was about to go very badly. I was, to be fair, a very unusual applicant. I had just graduated from law school. My classmates and friends were headed off to prestigious clerkships or to seek their fortunes. I had other plans. My secular learning had now outpaced my Torah learning, and it was time, I believed, to catch up.
A tight, organized network of Iranian terrorists seems to be using elementary schools, universities and government institutions -- not to mention manipulating the multicultural system -- to promote its messages of propaganda and hate, apparently with the ultimate goal of conquering the "infidel."
By Jeremy Rosen
Real progress is being made to generate lab grown meat that tastes as good as the real thing without the fuss -- isn’t this something we Orthodox Jews should welcome?
By J. E. Dyer
The period of the Obama tenure, and now the 2012 election, are forcing Americans to reconsider, in a way I’m not sure we have for a good 200 years, what the vote means, and what politics means to our lives. Since 1792, the sense has gradually crept upon us that when we elect a president, we are electing our collective future. That sense took a giant leap forward with the FDR presidency, and frankly, it took another one when Reagan entered office.
By Moshe Herman
Yishai is joined by Hillel Ma'or, an instructor at the Caliber 3 range outside of Efrat to discuss his journey to Judaism and also Israel.
Unfortunately, Israeli governments have not taken the correct line from the beginning. By not vehemently opposing Arab claims, insisting that the territory was disputed rather than occupied, and asserting Israel’s own rights under the Mandate, they allowed the PLO — with the willing connivance of anti-Zionist forces throughout the world — to make its point of view part of the conventional wisdom.
Ordinarily, an attack by the political hack of one party about a mega-contributor to another party would not merit attention or comment. But what made Harris’s vitriol most unfortunate was that it was one Jew deriding the two foremost private supporters of Jewish identity and the State of Israel in the entire world.
By Barry Rubin
Because of political reasons and especially due to the ideological monopoly of certain forces over Western institutions, most of the academics, analysts, journalists, and politicians who speak on these issues get away with pushing the moderation thesis. They are virtually never asked to provide proof. This wrong idea thus sets current U.S. policy and creates a great risk of future crisis, instability, repression, and severe damage to U.S. interests.
By Tracy Frydberg, ICB Reporter
Though still a minority, many women are changing the landscape and breaking new ground for future female leaders. Pro-Israel organizations StandWithUs and The Israel Project both were established by females.
By J. E. Dyer
The Tumultus Post-Americanus is now well underway. There is no initiative on our collective part – we have done nothing but react in the last three years – and possibly even less appreciation of how the world is changing. The forms of international discourse – the processes of the UN, the G-8 and G-20, the IMF – are being adhered to now because they are a convenience, not because they produce anything useful.
Whenever the Muslim Brotherhood are asked if Sharia law will be imposed, the response is that their intention is to build a "democratic and civil state" that guarantees freedom of religion and the right to peaceful protest.. But anyone who traces the actions of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists over the past decades -- in Egypt, Tunisia or anywhere else in the Arab world -- will see that their intention is to further Islamize their societies, not to create civil alternatives.
Jordan has managed until now to remain untouched by these problems, and King Abdullah II knew how to navigate matters of the kingdom in a way that the waves of the revolution washing over the rest of the Arab world did not yet wash over his kingdom. But in the past few weeks - mainly since the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco - a different sort of problem is now becoming apparent: the problem of radical political Islam.
Forty-five years after the Six Day War, declassified transcripts of the Israeli cabinet and government committee meetings in the days after war that ended on June 10, 1967 were released this June. The documents provide a breathtaking insight into the efforts of Israeli leaders to reach a peace settlement with the countries and groups which had been at war with Israel.
In March last year, thousands of Palestinians, inspired by the "Arab Spring," launched their own protests in the West Bank to demand reforms, democracy, and regime change. But the Palestinian revolt was short-lived. Abbas's security forces, backed by Fatah thugs, attacked the young men and women who were protesting in the center of Ramallah, torching their tents and beating them with clubs and rifle butts.
I am a Democrat and do not agree with many of Sheldon Adelson's political views, but I think it's outrageous for the National Jewish Democratic Council to level unfounded allegations against Adelson. I don't know who Harris purports to speak for as President of the National Jewish Democratic Council, but his partisan gamesmanship is an embarrassment to many Jewish Democrats.
The half-life of Polonium-210 is 138 days. This means that after 8 years, only about 4.3 x 10-7 — 0.00000043 — of the original amount of Polonium would be left. So even if Arafat’s iconic underwear had been loaded with the stuff after his death, it would be undetectable, or at least at much lower levels than the Swiss laboratory found.
Brown Lloyd James, according to its website, "is managed by an elite group of distinguished former news executives, top-level White House and Downing Street political advisors, high-profile entertainment industry executives and experts in international affairs. Our staff have been at the right hand of presidents, prime ministers, media barons – and yes, even The Beatles."
There are few choices as personal and important as the educational environment in which our children are immersed for most of their waking hours. Yet in the United States, unless parents want to risk bankruptcy just to afford tuition, they are given no choice.
By Moshe Herman
Yishai Fleisher presents a talk that he gave to the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem about why the concept of internationalizing the city is not a good idea.
By Barry Rubin
Yasir Arafat is dead. I sat across from him in his Gaza office. He even had a copy of my history of the PLO on his book shelf so he must have been of sound mind at the time. But it’s not my fault. I told him to start jogging and cut down on sweets.But he didn’t listen.
By Moshe Herman
Yishai and Malkah talk about a recent beauty pageant for Holocuast survivors along with contrasts between new German and Israeli Laws. They also discuss a gift that was recently delivered from a fan.
Finally, after many years of effective disregard, a core irony in the matter of Iranian nuclearization can be acknowledged: For President Ahmadinejad, and also his clerical superiors, any prospect of hastening the Shiite apocalypse – a decidedly “sacred” prospect linked to war with Israel and/or the United States – could be welcomed. Naturally, this religion-driven view of a "terrible beauty" would contrast starkly with senior leadership attitudes in both Jerusalem and Washington. In these plainly more secular circles, of course, any thought of a conscious encouragement for Final Battle must always be rejected.
The photo of homosexual soldiers on the IDF’s official website should have set off many alarm bells for many public figures. But they were all afraid. The heavy-handed politically correct code paralyzes our representatives. They prefer to remain silent and let somebody else fend off the arrows that are sure to come. MK Uri Ariel (National Union) deserves our appreciation and admiration, as he was the only MK to courageously state the simple truth by calling on the IDF to conduct itself on this issue as it has in the past.
The Jewish Press sat down in its Brooklyn offices with Republican State Senator David Storobin.
By Dov Shurin
Let me tell you how special it is to live in Eretz Yisrael. The other day I decided it was time for me to say the entire Book of Psalms – Tehillim. I’m the father of ten children and fifteen grandchildren (b’li ayin hara), so the power of Tehillim is where I turn, for my family’s needs.
The UN Security Council has not managed to have a discussion about Syria since April, but President Obama has finally figured out how to have the Council "briefed" on the subject by Navi Pillai – a renowned Israel-basher: give up Israel for Syria. As a veto-wielding member, the U.S. could have nixed the program, but instead insisted only that the Syrian meeting be held in the morning and the Israel-bashing in the afternoon; Ms. Pillai will have time in between for lunch.
It's strange that it took more than a week for State to notice, and that the statement was not made by Secretary of State Clinton. After all, since June 26, Ms Clinton had time to comment on the Solomon Islands’ and Venezuelan independence days, the national days of the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia and Burundi, and of course Canada day; speak at the Climate Clean Air and Green Embassy event in Helsinki, Finland; and much more.
By dvora
Former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir passed away last weekend. In the course of my career as a correspondent for The Jewish Press at the UN and in Israel, as well as a parliamentary aide and spokesman for Israel’s first science minister, Professor Yuval Ne’eman, I met with dozens of world leaders, ministers, high-ranking officials and ambassadors. None of them left as indelible a mark on me as did Shamir.
By David Mandel
Ten years ago, If you had asked a victim of sexual abuse what he or she wanted most, the answer would have been, “I want my abuser to apologize, to acknowledge that it was his fault and not mine.” Today, if asked that same question, the victim would speak of prosecution and justice.
“If you put Google, Apple, and Microsoft together, it still doesn’t compare to the miracles of Jewish renaissance I have witnessed in this country,” I said to two reporters from The New York Times and Moscow Times.
The victory of the Zionist movement was won despite long odds, desperate hardships and grievous costs in blood. The men and women who battled those odds did so in the face of the conventional wisdom of their day that told them they had no chance of forcing the British Empire to make good on its promise to create a National Home for the Jews or to defeat an Arab and Muslim world determined to crush the newborn state of Israel. They needed not only courage but also an iron will and the patience to bear great suffering while never losing sight of their goal.
The Swedish rescuer Raoul Wallenberg was born 100 years ago this summer, and his centennial is being commemorated with events in many cities across Europe and North America. On July 26, a symposium in his memory will be held at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research in Jerusalem.
The Jewish Press joins Jews around the world in mourning the death, at age 96, of Yitzhak Shamir, a key leader in Israel’s fight for independence who later served as a top Mossad official, speaker of the Knesset, foreign minister and prime minister.
The traditional view of the United States Supreme Court as the ultimate, objective, arbiter of our system of government and thereby protector of our liberties took an enormous hit last week when the court upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare.
I came to know Mr. Shamir quite well when I hosted him at the University of Oxford in the mid-90’s. He seemed all but forgotten even then and told me that his dramatic drop in popularity in Israel had been due to the euphoria over the premiership of Yitzchak Rabin and his dramatic overtures for peace. He told me this with a touch of resignation. It seemed he did feel underappreciated. More importantly, he seemed to divine the coming catastrophe.
We all know we have to take the Three Weeks seriously. But at the same time we all just want the time between the 17th of Tammuz and Tisha B’Av to pass already.
By J. E. Dyer
We must not let our concept of the purpose and character of a tax be corrupted, precisely because taxing us is a power accorded Congress in the Constitution. The definition of “tax” is, in fact, the most important limit on what Congress can do with its power to tax. In the wake of the Obamacare ruling, defining “tax” is defending our liberty – or, from the opposite perspective, attacking it.
By Barry Rubin
That’s right! The powers have agreed to a transition to a new government which will go into effect as soon as the current dictatorship agrees to be overthrown and its rulers flee for their lives and watch their supporters probably be massacred.
I don't need to tell you how important the upcoming US presidential elections are, and you can be a part of that! Don't look at the numbers. Don’t ask: "Will my vote really matter??" Simply register, with no cost involved, and let the powers in America see how many expats voted.
The honor and dignity, if there can be any, goes to the Israeli athletes and to Israel itself; the shame and disgust goes to the Olympic committee. For 60 seconds, the athletes and audience and around the world, 60 seconds of silence could have been a show of triumph over terror, of honor in brotherhood and peace - instead, they will remain, 40 years late and beyond, an endless mark of shame.
By Moshe Herman
Yishai Fleisher is joined by Alternative Peace Activist Yehuda HaKohen to discuss the roots and life of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
By Moshe Herman
Yishai and Malkah talk about a recent trip to Netanya along with a new Jewish prize and Russian President Vladimir Putin's trip to Israel.
By Danny Danon
I had the honor of spending an evening with the former Prime Minister. I was enthralled with his stories and life lessons, especially with his core conviction that a leader must truly believe in and be ready to defend his policies. If a leader does so, he told me, there is no need to worry about the criticism that will inevitably follow any brave decision.
By Soeren Kern
A recent survey conducted by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior provides additional insights into the beliefs of Muslims in Spain. Entitled "Values, Attitudes and Opinions of Muslim Immigrants," the report shows that more than half the Muslims in Spain consider themselves to be "very religious." Only 39% say they are opposed to establishment of Islamic Sharia law courts in Spain.
Absurd, isn’t it - Israel should take a loan to support an organization that officially considers Jews the offspring of apes and pigs and venerates ‘heroes’ like Samir Kuntar and Dalal Mughrabi whose heroism consisted of murdering Jewish children?
There I was, in dire gloom, cart frozen well distant from the cash register. I was sorely aggrieved. Until I remembered a flash of soul-searching during my flight when I promised I would try to improve my grumpiness a bit and seek alleged silver linings even in dismal circumstances. What could I do save give my commitment the old college try.
When Free Speech Collides with Hate Speech, Truth is the Remedy.
By Tarek Heggy
The Obama administration's support for the Muslim Brotherhood emanates from an extremely flawed understanding of its agenda, which has been unchanged since its inception in 1928. The two pillars of this project have been: First, abolishing the entire judicial and juridical system that was introduced in Egypt in 1883 and was based on the Napoleonic Code. Second, reviving the political vision of a Caliphate, which aims at uniting all Muslim societies under a single ruler.
Since its existence was revealed during the 1980 Presidential campaign, "stealth" has become surrounded by an aura of mystery and invincibility that tends to obscure its value in being able to defeat the most advanced air defense systems.
By Barry Rubin
Lenin once reportedly said that he would get the capitalists to sell him the rope with which to hang them. But Egypt is a far clearer case of such a situation. Will the dhimmis finance the consolidation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s power in Egypt? It sure looks like that will happen though they probably will be cheap about it.
Yitzhak Shamir, like the biblical hero Joseph, made the long and miraculous journey from the depths of prison to the throne - the position of the executive chief, protector and provider for the nation of Israel.
By Moshe Herman
Yishai is joined presents a moving segment commemorating the upcoming anniversary of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. He is joined by Ankie Spitzer, widow of Andre Spitzer, one of the murdered athletes.
The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood is "God is our objective, the Qur'an is our law, the prophet is our leader, jihad is our way and death in the name of Allah is our supreme aspiration." Their symbol expresses this ideology well: the color green represents Paradise, two swords in the center express the two avowals of Islam - there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger - and one word, which appears in the Qur'an just once: "Wa-aidu" - "and prepare."
By J. E. Dyer
Understand this: it doesn’t matter if ObamaCare is repealed next year. Repeat as necessary until understood. The SCOTUS ruling is on the books. Congress can make you buy anything, as long as it fines you if you don’t. The concept of constitutional limits on the power of government has been effectively removed from our guiding idea of law and jurisprudence.
By Barry Rubin
An Egyptian friend visited China a few years ago and asked a counterpart, “China has been the victim of so much oppression and imperialism. How do you deal with that?” The response was, “We got over it.” My friend was astonished, but he realized that his own society would be far better off if it eschewed the politics of revenge and bitter hatred. In contrast, Israel and China share a focuses on positive national construction, raising living standards, and seeking peace.
From elected officials to people in the street, from the highly educated secular upper class to yeshiva students to the working poor, numerous Israelis seem to share a lexicon and intellectual framework which denigrates and dehumanizes Africans, belittles their suffering, and trivialized their plight.
By Moshe Herman
Managing Editor if Jewish Press Online, Yishai Fleisher, is joined by activist Jack Berger. Together, they discuss a recent trip to Hebron and its importance to the Jewish People along with the situation in Beit El.
Economic prosperity and the peace process with Israel are not going to convince most Palestinians to vote for people like Salam Fayyad or Mahmoud Abbas. The future leaders of the Palestinians are currently sitting in Israeli prisons. They include dispatchers of suicide bombers, heads of terror cells, ordinary terrorists and political leaders of various terror groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
By J. E. Dyer
This is what a tax now looks like? This is an open invitation to “tax” via whatever mandate sounds good to you. What sort of unequal-before-the-law mandate would not fit this definition of a tax? Congress can do anything it wants, by the logic of this decision, with the judicial precedent set that levying mandates equals using the power to tax.
Democracy without a legitimate constitution and a Bill of rights, especially protecting the rights of minorities, can become a very scary thing. What you get is a tyranny of the majority. So the United States, as the world’s foremost democracy and sole superpower, must insist that elected regimes be restrained by a constitution that safeguards against a gravitation toward tyranny.
Discrimination, intolerance, and racism in the Arab world persist in many forms: they affect women; all non-Muslims; dark skinned people, Blacks, would-be refugees, and migrants.
Unlike those nations, such as Saudi Arabia, that have eliminated Christianity altogether, Muslim countries with significant Christian minorities saw much persecution during the month of May
The sweetness of Israel has seeped into the lives of unsuspecting Iranians, in the form of cherries grown in the Holy Land.
By Rachel Henderson, Israel Campus Beat
As they look back at the recently completed academic year, many campus Israel activists can point to examples of apartheid walls and walkouts, but these instances do little to ruffle their optimism. As they look ahead to the upcoming academic year, they focus on improving the campus Israel environment and building a stronger community commitment to peace and coexistence.
In a speech delivered in Tehran, Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi accused the Jewish people of spreading illegal drugs around the world, killing Black babies, starting the Bolshevik Revolution and causing many of the world's other ills.
The Genocide Convention criminalizes not only various acts of genocide, but also (Article III) conspiracy to commit genocide and direct and public incitement to commit genocide. Articles II, III and IV of the Genocide Convention are fully applicable in all cases of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. For the Convention to be invoked, it is sufficient that any one of the state parties call for a meeting, through the United Nations, of all the state parties (Article VIII).
It is impossible not to notice the similarity between the Ulpana situation and the Sharon-led Expulsion from Gush Katif. In both cases a prime minister elected by the Right, whose ideology certainly does not endorse destruction in Israel’s heartland, veers sharply left and compels his ministers and coalition to support a Peace Now move – a move completely against their will.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
Just 15 miles to the north of Jerusalem, the Jewish effort to return to the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria (Yesha) suffered a severe blow this week – or did it?
Over the past several years the editorial page of The New York Times has taken on an increasingly desperate tone. There is no doubt that the advent of the Internet and conservative talk radio came at great cost to the Gray Lady, which for some time now has seemed incapable of framing issues in the methodical – if wrongheaded – manner it once did. But the level of shrillness in recent days is completely off the charts.
By Meir Indor
Why Israeli authorities changed their minds and let Nizan Tamimi go to Jordan to reunite with his wife - and fellow convicted terrorist - Ahlam. Hint: The same reason Palestinian prisoners' hunger strikes are successful.
Disbelief and denial are two words that can describe the alcohol and drug problem in the Jewish community, and that is a problem in itself.
I have tried to lead a life in which the core values are Ahavas Torah and Ahavas Yisrael. To the extent I have succeeded I did so by taking an unusual route – one I do not generally recommend. I moved into the Torah world and Torah learning after I already had a sophisticated secular education and a clear path to a wide choice of prestigious professional opportunities.
Worried about a nuclear Iran? Do you think such a development would not only threaten Israel's existence but would intimidate the Arab countries of the Gulf, put the radical Islamist regime in position to threaten the West, and lead to unmanageable nuclear proliferation? Have no fear! Kenneth N. Waltz, the highly respected professor of international relations at Columbia University, argues in a recent article of Foreign Affairs magazine that "Iran Should Get the Bomb."
When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told the passionately pro-Israel members of the Faith and Freedom Coalition that he would “do the opposite” of the things that President Obama has done regarding Israel, the room erupted in applause. They understood exactly what he meant because they know the Obama administration has not strengthened the U.S.-Israel relationship. President Obama has brought that strategic alliance to its lowest point in decades.
Gov. Mitt Romney has made some outrageous comments and taken some extreme positions in this presidential campaign. But few, if any, are more baffling than his latest statement on his plans for the U.S.-Israel relationship. Asked what he would do to strengthen America’s alliance with Israel, he said, “by and large, you can just look at the things the president has done and do the opposite.”
Egypt’s future remains in flux. On Sunday, Mohammed Morsi of the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement became Egypt’s new president, narrowly defeating the secular Ahmed Shafiq by 52-48 percent. Just two weeks ago, however, Egypt’s military council issued an interim constitution stripping the president of most of his powers. A few days before that, the Supreme Constitutional Court dissolved Egypt’s parliament, controlled by radical Islamic parties, on a legal technicality.
By dvora
Music played loudly while the men danced. On the women’s side of the mechitzah, we tried to speak over the sounds. I leaned over the table to hear what my co-worker’s wife was saying.
By Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON – Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi is the declared winner of Egypt’s presidential race and his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, continues to lie near death in a coma – just like the legacy he tried to craft for himself and his country.