Ahmadinejad at Columbia: All News Outlets on Earth Weigh in | Parsing

By Carly Silver September 19, 2011

After a controversial speech at Columbia University in 2007, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have linked up with the New York school again to discuss his policies. And every news outlet from the Upper West Side to Israel has put their two cents in. According to a Sept. 10 article in the Columbia Daily Spectator,…

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Iran responds to UK censure of their TV station by quoting “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”

By yrosenberg May 27, 2011

No, really. Earlier this week, OfCom, the official United Kingdom broadcast regulating authority, censured Iran’s state-run Press TV for conducting and airing an interview with Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari while he was being held captive and was under coercion from the Iranian government, as doing so was (unsurprisingly) against UK broadcasting rules. The Guardian reports…

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It isn’t that Iranians cannot have Nuclear Energy, it’s their Government

By greback May 10, 2011

I have gotten my bachelor’s and started my master’s degrees in the era where Iranian nuclear proliferation has supposedly shaped the strategic map of the Middle East. It, coupled with Iranian influence, has apparently pushed Israel and its authoritarian Arab neighbors to be less than veiled about their relationship (and willingness to work together) to…

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Turkey Gets Theirs: Hypocrisy and Backfire

By greback May 4, 2011

Turkey is now paying the price for its coziness with Iran and Syria. What was probably an inevitable pitfall of its decision to orient itself toward regimes in direct opposition to Israel, Turkey may soon feel the anger of a revolutionary Syrian population eager to cut off ties with Turkey. It would be a satisfying…

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Syria’s Protests – Civil War? Peace with Israel?

By greback March 27, 2011

Syria Captial: Damascus Population: ~22,000,000; 70% Sunni Arab, large minorities of Kurds, Christians, Druze and Alawite Muslims President: Bashar al-Assad Former President: Hafez al-Assad __________ The revolutions that started in North Africa are creeping into Israel’s domain. The Levant – the eastern coastline of the Mediterranean Ocean that is home to Israel, the Palestinian territories,…

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What Is He On About??

By bzalcman September 28, 2010

When my younger sister was a lot younger than she is today, she used to kvetch a lot, especially when she wouldn’t get her way. At first, since she was the youngest, we would try to appease her. That worked for a little bit, but then she’d get cranky after a while. So then we…

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The Reading List: Shabbat Shalom from the Kiddush Club

By Ben Sales August 13, 2010

The Kiddush Club, a euphemism for a group of (traditionally) elderly men who sneak out of Orthodox Shabbos services during the haftorah to eat herring and drink schnapps, has been a tradition of American observant communities for decades. But even in Orthodoxy, writes Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, some traditions need to end. [The Jewish Week] In…

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Reading List: A 10-year old reads “Portnoy’s Complaint” and more…

By Ben Sales August 12, 2010

Good afternoon! What happens when a pre-pubescent non-Jewish kid reads a revolutionarily risque Philip Roth book about a frustrated MOT? Sentences like, “There are a lot of words in Portnoy’s Complaint that I didn’t really get, like shtupp and schlong and shmutzig and punim.  I don’t know what they mean, but they’re really fun to…

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Israel at the Olympics

By kseeger February 16, 2010

Though many critics say the Opening Ceremony of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics was not as extravagant as Beijing’s in 2008, it still had some memorable occurrences, even for Jews. If you happened to watch it, you might have noticed that Iran and Israel were marching nearby each other. While some news sources say this…

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We are All Iranians

By Ben Sales January 13, 2010

Most residents of the Islamic Republic don’t use Google, Yahoo or Bing, don’t know whether Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Explorer is better and have no friends on Facebook or MySpace. And they don’t use Twitter, but that’s where their revolution is happening. In a country where social networks exist in neighborhoods, where people write each…

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The Confused Middle

By mmogilevsky November 18, 2009

Last week I blogged about an opportunity to connect to the Jewish community outside of my school. This week I’m switching gears completely to write about a great opportunity I had right here on campus–hearing Yossi Klein Halevi speak. Halevi is a contributing editor of the New Republic and occasionally writes for the Los Angeles…

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