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Purveyor's JournalSyrian Army Says Captured Israeli Jeep Is Proof Of Aid To Rebels
By HAARETZ (text)
The Syrian army on Monday displayed an Israeli-made Jeep it said was captured from a rebel organization during recent battles for control of Qusayr, a Syrian city near the Lebanese border. Damascus claimed the vehicle was proof of Israeli and U.S. aid to the Syrian opposition.
Israeli officials denied the claims of aiding the rebels. They said the jeep was a model that was retired from Israel Defense Forces service years ago and it is not clear how it reached the rebels.
The Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen, which has ties to Hezbollah, broadcasted video of Syrian army personnel next to the Jeep, which showed bullet damage.
The vehicle is identifiable as a relatively old, armored model of the Sufa Jeep, which is manufactured in Israel under license from Chrysler.
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http://www.france24.com/en/20130521-syrian-army-says-israeli-jeep-proof-aid-rebels
US’ Diminishing Influence In The Middle East
The United States, previously dubbed a key player in shaping events in the region, is displaying weakness and indifference at a time when the Middle East has found itself in turmoil not witnessed in decades, which threatens to alter the Sykes-Picot borders.
Despite efforts by Secretary of State John Kerry to revitalize dormant peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians or engage more positively in the Syrian crisis, it is becoming clear that he lacks the presidential sway to make things happen.
Unlike the conventional belief that second-term presidents are able to take bold decisions in domestic and foreign affairs after conquering re-election pressure, the second Obama term seems far from taking such a stance.
For one thing, the administration is reeling under mounting domestic crises from his first term, from fiscal issues and how to deal with the growing budget deficit, to whether to retain the existing health care program or embark on new initiatives.
In addition, foreign crises, such as the explosion that killed an American ambassador at the US Consulate in Libya, forced the administration to release e-mail correspondence, while the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began targeting conservative groups, going as far as monitoring AP correspondence.
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http://www.arabnews.com/news/452486
Apple Bites Back at Congress During Tax Hearing
WASHINGTON, May 21 (RIA Novosti) – The head of the US-based multibillion dollar computer firm Apple told a Senate panel on Tuesday his company has paid “every single dollar” it owes in taxes, despite a new congressional report that says Apple shifted billions of dollars in profits away from the United States and into subsidiaries in Ireland where it gets a special tax rate of less than two percent.
“Apple does not move its intellectual property into offshore tax havens and use it to sell products back into the US in order to avoid US tax; it does not use revolving loans from foreign subsidiaries to fund its domestic operations; it does not hold money on a Caribbean island; and it does not have a bank account in the Cayman Islands,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“Apple has substantial foreign cash because it sells the majority of its products outside the US,” he said in opening remarks to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is looking into how multinational corporations are able to move profits to offshore tax havens and avoid paying US taxes.
The committee’s report, released on Monday, finds Apple has used a complex web of offshore entities to avoid paying billions of dollars in US income taxes.
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http://en.rian.ru/world/20130522/181279550/Apple-Bites-Back-at-Congress-During-Tax-Hearing.html
Settlers Severely Beat Handicapped Boy Near Hebron
HEBRON (Ma'an) -- Settlers assaulted a 16-year-old handicapped boy in Yatta on Tuesday, leaving him with bruising all over his body, official news agency Wafa reported.
Mohammad Shawaheen, 16, was attacked east of Yatta by settlers from Maon. He was taken to hospital for treatment
--CLIP
Israeli forces rarely prosecute settlers for violence against Palestinians and their property, which is routine in the occupied West Bank.
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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=597645
Jewish Concerns about History Channel’s 'The Bible'
The popularity of the History Channel’s The Bible shows that Americans still yearn for inspiration from the Greatest Story Ever Told. For all of its positive power, however, The Bible may inadvertently perpetuate negative images of Jews and Judaism.
For centuries, dramatic presentations of the biblical narrative were bad news for Jews. Passion plays—often timed to coincide with the Easter-time commemoration of the Crucifixion—not only portrayed Jesus’ Passion on the Cross, but ignited the passions of the crowds who took to the streets during Holy Week to seek revenge upon people whose ancestors Christians were taught were responsible for Jesus’ death. In some cases, fiery preachers further incited the populace with allegations that Jews were killing children and using Christian blood in their Passover matzah. The fatal consequences of these portrayals spilled out over centuries. Christians internalized the charge that Jews caused the death of God and, with it, the lethal teachings of collective guilt of all Jews.
In our time, the calumny still endures. In December 2005, Venezuelan firebrand President Hugo Chávez castigated “some minorities, the descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ, [who] have taken over the wealth of the world.” In a world of skyrocketing anti-Semitism—where even in the United States almost two-thirds of all religion-based hate crimes, according to the FBI, target Jews who amount to less than 2 percent of the population—the way the Crucifixion is depicted in 2013 still stirs concern among Jews.
Mercifully, most Christians today do not believe in collective guilt or condone anti-Semitism. The Vatican’s Nostra Aetate debunked the charge of deicide and turned anti-Semitism into a sin. Protestant groups—conservative and liberal—have forged respectful relationships with Jews and Judaism. A common denominator of Christian response—if there can be such a thing—is that guilt for Jesus’ death is the burden of all sinners, but not of one person or group, especially when Jesus said, “No one takes my life; I lay it down myself” (John 10:18).
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http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/05/jewish-concerns-about-history-channelrsquos-the-bible
GOPer Who Got Millions in Farm Subsidies Thinks the Poor Should Starve Rather Than Get Food Stamps
May 20, 2013 |
Stephen Fincher, a deranged Republican congressman from Tennessee, is very angry that the federal government is committed to preventing poor people from starving to death:
Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, who supports cuts to the program, had his own Bible verse from the Book of Thessalonians to quote back to Vargas: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat,” he said.
The program in question is SNAP, better known as food stamps. Fincher and his ultra-right-wing friends in the House are furious about the fact that the worst economic crisis in 80 years has resulted in more Americans needing food stamps. The whole point of programs like SNAP and other automatic stabilizers, of course, is that they kick in when the economy is struggling and people need help. Fincher is shocked and horrified by this heinous policy of ensuring that poor people and their children don't starve. Food is to be earned! Sure, this is the richest country in the history in the world, but if we provide our citizens with food to eat, then freedom is obviously dead.
He fulminates about people who are allegedly "unwilling to work" sucking off the government teat with impunity. This is a patently dishonest representation of the SNAP program. Most people who receive food stamps cannot be dismissed as losers who are "unwilling to work." Nearly half (47%) of all food stamp recipients are children. Another 8% are 60 years of age or older. The "working poor" - people who live in a household with income from work - represent another 41%. Between children, the elderly, the working poor, and people who want a job but cannot find one - someone should tell Fincher that there are still more than 3 unemployed job seekers for every 1 opening - that leaves very few people who can be accurately described as being "unwilling" to work. It's also worth noting that the average monthly SNAP benefit is a whopping $287. It takes a deeply disturbed person to crusade against providing this class of people with food to eat, when the economy is this battered, and when the broad economic benefits of the program have been so well established (at least in the reality-based community).
Now, this would not normally be worthy of mention. Hardly a day goes by without some Republican sadist expressing fury that poor people have it so good. Devising new ways to make the peasants suffer is what makes Republicans wake up in the morning. What's fascinating about this particular case, though, is Fincher's background.
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http://www.alternet.org/goper-who-got-millions-farm-subsidies-thinks-poor-should-starve-rather-get-food-stamps
IRS Official Lois Lerner Will Plead The 5th Amendment
Source: TPM
Lois Lerner, the official in charge of the exempt organizations division at center of the targeting scandal plaguing the Internal Revenue Service, invoked the Fifth Amendment on Tuesday, refusing to testify before a House oversight hearing this week.
“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” an attorney for Lerner told committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) in a letter obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
Since she intends not to answer questions, the letter requests Lerner be exempt from the hearing since her appearance would “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.”
Lerner initially revealed during a Q&A session in Washington that Internal Revenue Service agents at the Cincinnati branch office improperly scrutinized conservative non-profit groups for additional reviews from 2010 to 2012. Lerner only recently disclosed that the question was planted, however.
Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/irs-official-lois-lerner-will-plead-5th-amendment
Israeli Forces Shoot Teen Near Ramallah
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces on Tuesday shot and injured a Palestinian teenager in Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah, witnesses and the Israeli army said.
Witnesses told Ma'an that Atta Sabah, 13, was walking with school friends when Israeli forces opened fire at the group and hit him in the back.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers opened fire at a Palestinian trying to hurl a firebomb at Israeli forces during a riot in the area.
She said the Palestinian failed to respond to warning shots and that soldiers fired "towards his lower extremities."
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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=597868
Israel Army Warns Syria Of Golan Unrest 'Consequences'
ERUSALEM (AFP) -- The head of Israel's armed forces warned Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday of "consequences" if fire continues from Syrian territory against Israeli troops in the occupied Golan Heights.
"If he disturbs the Golan Heights, he will have to bear the consequences," Lieutenant General Benny Gantz said in an address at Haifa University and broadcast on Israeli television.
"We cannot and shall not allow the Golan Heights to become a comfort zone for Assad," he said.
He spoke hours after Israeli troops and Syrian forces exchanged fire across the sensitive ceasefire line on the Golan Heights, but Israel denied Syrian claims one of its vehicles had been destroyed.
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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=597906
Dispelling Modern Myths Of Muslim Anti-Semitism
By Mark R. Cohen
On one of my many trips to Israel, in January 2012, words spoken at the celebration of the founding of the PLO in Ramallah were disseminated far and wide via the Internet by Palestine Media Watch, shocking many in and outside of the country. Introducing the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one of the officials referred to the “enemy” (Israel) as “apes and pigs,” quoting a famous verse from the Qur’an according to which God, through His prophet Muhammad, censures the “Sabbath breakers” for violating (Jewish) law and condemns them to be transformed into “apes and pigs.” In his own speech, the Mufti quoted an equally famous Islamic hadith: “’The Hour (of Divine Judgment and Resurrection) will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind rocks or trees. Then the rocks or trees will call out: ‘Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him; except for the Gharqad tree, which is the friend of the Jews.’ Therefore it is no wonder that you see Gharqad trees surrounding the Israeli settlements and colonies.” This hadith, with its anti-Semitic overtones, is famously quoted in the Hamas “Platform” as license to kill Jews.
Anti-Semitism in the contemporary Muslim world is real. It pervades the media in the very countries that are most inimical to Israel. It appears in political speeches, in cartoons, in the press and on Middle Eastern radio and television. It resonates all too familiarly with the anti-Semitism that fueled the Holocaust.
For a people who have suffered the consequences of anti-Semitism since the Christian Middle Ages, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust, such expressions of anti-Jewish hatred in the Muslim world, side-by-side with Islam’s version of Holocaust denial, militates against hopes for rapprochement, political or otherwise, with Israel’s Arab neighbors and strengthens politicians’ resolve to resist statehood for the Palestinians.
Where does contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism come from? Does it stem from the Qur’an and other foundational Islamic texts? Is it endemic to Islam? Is it therefore ineradicable? Many, especially Jews, and especially Israeli Jews, believe this to be true.
Or is this anti-Semitism new, originating in Western (Christian) Jew-hatred that arrived in the Middle East on the heels of colonialism, and later became clothed in Islamic garb? And, if so, has this Muslim anti-Semitism somehow been enflamed by the rise of Zionism and the conflict with Israel?
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http://972mag.com/dispelling-modern-myths-of-muslim-anti-semitism/71791/
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