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Russia and Israel seem to have a growing affinity for each other. A few weeks ago, Israel abstained from a vote in the UN censuring Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported [link at URL] that this is a sore spot for the White House and a diplomatic novum on the world scene. A senior Israeli official said that Israel's absence from the United Nations vote was viewed around the world as an extremely irregular measure, a departure from a long-standing Israeli policy of voting with the United States in the UN. While the Americans viewed...

The daughter of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is claiming that she is “certain” that the televised footage showing the ousted leader in prison is not of her father, Al Arabiya reports. According to the report, the daughter Alshymaa shared two pictures of Morsi on her Facebook page, one while he was president and the other of him during his trial. She claimed in a comment that the one in prison does not resemble her father. …

Islamofascism: With an eye toward the 2016 election, the radical Muslim Brotherhood has built the framework for a political party in America that seeks to turn Muslims into an Islamist voting bloc. 'Muslim voters have the potential to be swing voters in 2016," said Nihad Awad in launching the benign-sounding U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, whose membership reads like a Who's Who of Brotherhood front groups. "We are aiming to bring more participation from the Muslim community." USCMO also aims to elect Islamists in Washington, with the ultimate objective of "institutionalizing policies" favorable to Islamists — that is, Shariah law....

Recently, I was a panelist on MSNBC. The topic was same sex marriage. A fellow panelist called for a Marriage Spring. We know what that means. Or we think we do. The unmarriage advocate wants us to hurry up and overthrow the existing order. Do it as the Arab Street has been doing it: Assemble a vast mass of people entering the square to insist on change. Demand an end to an oppressive old order. And it will all happen with stunning suddenness—just as the winds of change have blown through the Arab world. Or so they say. We all...

London (AFP) - A former wife of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah appealed to US President Barack Obama on Thursday for help in the case of four daughters she says are being held in a royal palace. Alanoud AlFayez, 57, a Jordanian national who has lived in London since her divorce from the Saudi monarch in 2003, said her children needed to be "saved". "Since 13 years, my daughters Sahar, Maha, Hala and Jawaher are being held captive," AlFayez told AFP. "They need to be saved and released immediately." She added: "Mr Obama should take this opportunity to address these grave...

A court in Egypt has sentenced to death 528 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. They were convicted of charges including murdering a policeman and attacks on people and property. The group is among some 1,200 Muslim Brotherhood supporters on trial, including senior members. Authorities have cracked down harshly on Islamists since Mr Morsi was removed by the military in July. Hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested. They are expected to appeal. The verdict now goes to Egypt's supreme religious authority, the Grand Mufti (a senior Islamic scholar), for approval or rejection, says the BBC's Orla Guerin in...

CAIRO — U.S. Navy SEALs seized control of an oil tanker that had illegally taken on a cargo of crude oil peddled by rebels in Libya who had earlier captured key oil ports, the U.S. military announced early Monday. The seaborne raid, staged off of the Cypriot coast, came at the behest of the governments of Libya and Cyprus, the Pentagon said in a statement. “No one was hurt tonight when U.S. forces … boarded and took control of the commercial tanker Morning Glory,” the statement said. The SEAL team, backed by helicopters, launched its operation late Sunday local time...

An Egyptian singer known for his anti-government songs said Saturday that authorities stopped him from performing at an arts festival attended by the country’s interim president and military chief for “security concerns.” The halted performance Thursday from young singer Mohammed Mohsen comes as the broadcast of a show featuring a popular satirist who skewers public figures apparently was deliberately jammed again Friday. Mohsen said representatives from the presidency escorted him out of the Cairo Opera House before his performance was to begin and left him there as the concert went on without him. …

The Egyptian government, sworn in on Saturday, takes office as a fresh wave of labour unrest sweeps the country, adding to the turmoil from a chaotic and violent political transition. In a televised address on Sunday, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb said he called on the “patriotism” of Egyptians and that this was the moment for work, not strikes. A crippling stoppage by bus drivers last week has just ended but postal workers in many parts of the country remain on strike. Doctors, pharmacists, steel and textile workers have all carried out industrial actions in recent days. The strike by about...

An Egyptian court acquitted six police officers Saturday on charges of killing 83 protesters during the country’s 2011 revolution, the latest in a string of trials that rights group say failed to hold the country’s security forces accountable for demonstrators’ deaths. The acquittals come as ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, toppled in July by the military, faces a host of criminal charges. Morsi appeared Saturday in court and shouted from inside a soundproof defendants’ cell, urging his supporters to continue protests and vowing to try the country’s military chief and Republican Guards commander for killing his supporters. The police officers’...

The anti-balaka have outgrown their name. These militias in the Central African Republic, once united under a moniker meaning “anti-machete” in the local Sango language, are exacting their own vicious revenge upon the mainly Muslim rebels who overthrew the government last March and waged months of terror against the Christian population. They are now accused of atrocities far worse than what first prompted them to take up arms. An Amnesty International report on Feb. 12 said attacks on Muslims in January by anti-balaka militias, made up of Christians and animists, had amounted to “ethnic cleansing.” Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor at...

Unclassified documents and emails, never published in Western media until now, regarding the secret Muslim Brotherhood spy working for the America Embassy in Cairo, are being presented in the trial of Mohammed Mursi. They reveal the activities of a liaison between the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the Muslim Brotherhood’s most senior leaders. Though employed by the embassy, Ahmed Aleiba does not have diplomatic immunities and was arrested by Egyptian authorities last month, according to the New York Times Bureau Chief, David Kirkpatrick. The trial, which begins on February 16th, will determine if Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Khairat Al-Shater and ousted...

Is the Israeli Mossad behind the Arab Spring? According to a play which recently aired on Egyptian television, the answer is yes. The anti-Semitic play, entitled "The Spy," recently aired on the Egyptian Al-Hayat TV channel. It was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). The play displays anti-Semitic stereotypes and portrays Mossad officials preparing "for a huge operation of espionage and sowing disunity" which targets the entire Arab world. The play features a group of Mossad officials, five men and one women, and the men are all dressed up in hareidi attire. The males are all named...

Is the Israeli Mossad behind the Arab Spring? According to a play which recently aired on Egyptian television, the answer is yes. The anti-Semitic play, entitled “The Spy,” recently aired on the Egyptian Al-Hayat TV channel. It was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). The play displays anti-Semitic stereotypes and portrays Mossad officials preparing “for a huge operation of espionage and sowing disunity” which targets the entire Arab world. …

Despite our endless blather about democracy, we Americans seem to be able to put our devotion to democratic principles on the shelf, when they get in the way of our New World Order. In 2012, in the presidential election in Egypt, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won in a landslide. President Obama hailed the outcome. One year later, the Egyptian army ousted and arrested Morsi and gunned down a thousand members of his brotherhood. The coup was countenanced by John Kerry who explained that the Egyptian army was “restoring democracy.” Comes now the turn of Ukraine. In 2010, Viktor...

EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) — Egyptian military aircraft struck suspected positions of al-Qaida-inspired fighters in villages of the Sinai Peninsula, killing 13 people, military officials said Friday, in a stepped-up offensive after militants downed an army helicopter, raising concerns over an increasingly well-armed insurgency. The military is battling Islamic militants in the northern part of Sinai who have escalated a campaign of bombings and shootings in retaliation for last summer's army coup that ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and for the ensuing crackdown against Islamists. The wave of violence, largely targeting Egypt's police and security forces, has increasingly spread to other...

An Australian journalist, who is being held in an Egyptian jail with two colleagues, says their detention is an “attack on freedom of speech”. “We have not been formally charged, much less convicted of any crime,” Peter Greste wrote in a letter. The Al-Jazeera journalists were arrested on 30 December in Cairo for allegedly holding illegal meetings with the banned Muslim Brotherhood. …

Although the title of a panel at the Modern Language Association indicated it would be a forum for dissident Iranian artists, the panelists made few claims that the dictatorship there might dispute. Several panelists debated interpretations of contemporary Iranian art and film in a session entitled, “Media, Justice, and Revolution in Contemporary Middle East.” Only 15 people in attendance, including a moderator and three panelists. The panel featured Babak Elahi, an associate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Pouneh Saeedi, a Trent University professor and Amy Motalgh of the American University of Cairo. Elahi analyzed an Iranian art website...

The Middle East’s Disappearing Borders Seth Mandel | 01.09.2014 - 6:10 PM “The last year was a good one for al Qaeda, and for jihadism more broadly,” wrote the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Daveed Gartenstein-Ross earlier this week. He continued: “Al Qaeda affiliates drove Iraq to its highest violence levels since 2007, capped off a year of increasingly sophisticated attacks in the Horn of Africa with a notorious assault on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, and took control of entire cities in northern Syria while attracting large numbers of foreigners to that battlefield.” The article is among a recent crop of...

The top U.S. military commander for Africa says the Pentagon is planning to begin training 5,000 to 8,000 Libyan soldiers by midyear to help bolster the nation's security. The U.S. is also looking into providing additional airlift assistance to South Sudan, where violence has killed more than 1,000 people and driven 180,000 from their homes in the last month. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Gen. David Rodriguez, head of U.S. Africa Command, said the U.S. is planning a 24-week training program to help the Libyans, as part of a broader international effort to shore up security in the country...