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In this mailing:
- Mohammad Amin: Iran: Rouhani's
Re-Election Is Not the Key to the Country's Economic Recovery
- Shireen Qudosi: The World Needs to
Drive Out Destructive Fantasies
- Douglas Murray: Censoring You to
'Protect' You
by
Douglas Murray • May 25, 2017 at 5:00 am
- The editor of The
Vanguard at Portland State University decided that it was more
important to cover up a story than to break it, more important to
evade truths than to expose them, and more important to treat
students -- and the wider world -- as children rather than
thinking sentient adults able to make up their own minds.
- That students such as
Andy Ngo exist is reason for considerable optimism. So long as
there are even a few people left who are willing to ask the
questions that need asking and willing to tell people about the
answers they hear -- however uncomfortable they may seem right now
-- all cannot possibly be lost.
- Indeed, it is
imaginable, that with examples such as this, students in America
could be reminded not only that truth will always triumph over
lies, but that the current trend of ignorance and censorship might
one day soon begin to be turned around.
Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Doug
Pensinger/Getty Images)
In the culture-wars currently rocking US campuses, the
enemies of free speech have plenty of tools on their side. Many of
these would appear to be advantages. For instance the employment of
violence, thuggery and intimidation against those who disagree are
generally effective ways to prevent people hearing things you do not
want them to hear. As are the subtler but more regularly employed
tactics for shutting people down, such a "no-platforming"
people or getting them disinvited after they have been invited, should
the speaker's views not accord 100% with those of their would-be
censors. As also noted in this space before, many of the people who
campaign to limit what American students can learn also have the
short-term advantage of being willing to lie without compunction and
cover over facts whenever they emerge.
by
Shireen Qudosi • May 25, 2017 at 4:30 am
- The Palestinians and
other powers such as the OIC, the UN and domestic interest groups
do not get a veto over reality.
- If we are going to
"reset" the Middle East, we need to reset our thinking
as well, starting with accepting that Israel has a right to exist.
Israel exists, and Israel has a legitimate claim to Jerusalem.
Further, the Jewish people have proven themselves as more capable
custodians of Jerusalem than their Muslim neighbors, who are
already burdened by challenges in their own territory.
- Alongside us, the world
must drive out the fantasy that Jerusalem is not Israel's capital.
Jerusalem is the heart and soul of Israel. To deny Jerusalem as a
part of Jewish and Israeli identity is the same as denying Mecca
as inherent to Muslim identity.
U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to
the Western Wall in Israel was the most iconic moment of his recent
visit to the Middle East. (Illustrative photo by Chris McGrath/Getty
Images)
The most iconic moment of President Donald Trump's visit
to the Middle East was not his "speech on Islam"; it was his
visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
The Western Wall is a contested space, and that
controversy has bled outside Israel's borders. U.S. Secretary of State
Rex Tillerson recently reignited the debate, mentioning the Wall as
being in "Jerusalem", instead of in Israel. It is a play on
language often used to deny Israeli sovereignty over a space that
clearly belongs to the Jewish people, as the U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations, Nikki Haley, quickly rectified in response.
How we talk about religion matters. If we want to be
effective in moving forward, it is important to be truthful. The truth
is that Israel won the Six Day War, thereby liberating eastern
Jerusalem from Jordan, which had seized it illegally when it attacked
Israel in 1948-49 and expelled all Jews from eastern Jerusalem.
by
Mohammad Amin • May 25, 2017 at 4:00 am
- The true culprit in
Iran's economic failure is Iran itself, whose internal barriers
make a flourishing economy a pipe-dream. These include: the
absence of free-market competition, due mainly to the monopoly of
conglomerates affiliated with Ayatollah Khamenei and the
Revolutionary Guards over a huge sector of the country's economy,
which affects at least half of its GDP; the precariousness of the
rule of law; the deterioration of human rights; and the exorbitant
cost of military intervention in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, as well as
the bankrolling of the Lebanon-based Shiite terrorist organization
Hezbollah and other regional proxies.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani.
(Photo by Sergey Guneev/Host Photo Agency/Ria Novosti via Getty Images)
The clear victory on May 19 of incumbent Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani over his key rival, Ebrahim Raisi -- the
candidate supported by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – indicated that voters were concerned
above all with the economy. Raisi, an extremist and isolationist like
Khamenei, was the candidate who represented hardline power politics and
Middle East hegemony.
It was during Rouhani's first term in office that the
nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was
signed between Iran and six world powers This not only led to the
lifting of crippling international sanctions from the regime in Tehran,
but seemed to signal an effort to renew diplomatic and commercial ties
the West.
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