🇸🇦 Reporting from Riyadh: Tablet magazine’s Armin Rosen, reporting from Saudi Arabia, spotlights the seismic changes the country has undergone in recent years as part of an effort by Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, to modernize the Gulf nation. “MBS is gambling that the fruits of openness and modernity can be reaped on Saudi terms, and that prosperity, stability, and a recharged, secularized sense of national purpose won’t shatter existing norms or generate dangerous civic appetites. The reforms have created a rising class of ambitious executives, entrepreneurs, and artists, and for now almost everyone seems to accept the idea of a national horizon defined by the wisdom and vision of a single family, and perhaps even a single man. His program has created an atmosphere muggy with floating potential, as the palace carries out an uncertain experiment on tens of millions of people. MBS’s subjects could be the engine and the beneficiaries of the only successful 21st-century governance project in any populous Middle Eastern state — or they could mark the disastrous limits of utopia declared from on high.” [Tablet]
🙊 Mahmoud’s Mal Mots: In Newsweek, former White House Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt decries the behavior and rhetoric of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, following the Palestinian leader’s recent comments at the U.N. comparing Israelis to Nazis. “Abbas, Hamas, PIJ, and other terrorist and militant groups continue to stand on the wrong side of history. They continue to drag Palestinian society backwards. They continue to miss opportunity after opportunity to turn a new page in their relations with Israel, the Jewish people, and the international community. At 75, Israel continues to thrive and prosper and has made peace with numerous Arab neighbors. while continuing to seek peace with others. It desires peace with the Palestinians, a peace that keeps Israel safe and both populations secure and thriving, one that is based on reality and truth. Yet, today’s Palestinian leadership, like those who came before them, use the United Nations to remain mired in the abyss, while seeking the destruction of Israel. They seek an unachievable peace based on false promises made by Palestinian leaders and others around the world. The road to peace requires courage, truth and an understanding of reality. Denying the Jewish people historical rights within their ancestral homeland will never lead to peace. It is a fool’s errand, fraught with endless strife and continued defeat for those who pursue it.” [Newsweek]
⚖️ Good and Evil: In a speech adapted for Just Security, the World Jewish Congress’ Menachem Rosensaft considers the ambiguity of individuals who both acted to save and destroy Jewish lives during the Holocaust, using the example of Bulgaria’s King Boris III as an example. “To be valid, history must be predicated on absolute, uncompromising truth, not manipulation. Eighty years ago, 48,000 Jews were not deported from Bulgaria while 11,343 other Jews were cruelly loaded on trains bound for Treblinka, where they were murdered. These are two interdependent realities that cannot be and must not be allowed to be uncoupled. The fact that 48,000 Bulgarian Jews were saved in no way diminishes the tragedy and in no way mitigates the horror of the 11,343 Jews who were sent to their death at the behest of the government of King Boris III. And the fact that the Jews of Macedonia, Thrace, and Pirot were deported to be killed takes nothing away from the equal truth that the same King Boris was part of, in Bauer’s words, the ‘unlikely alliance’ that kept the Jews of ‘Old’ Bulgaria from suffering the same fate.” [JustSecurity]
📉 Eye on Icahn: Bloomberg’s Tom Maloney and Amanda Gordon interview Carl Icahn following the release of a report that accused his company of malfeasance and cut Icahn’s net worth by $15 billion. “These days, Icahn mostly holes up at his mansion on the chic private-island enclave of Indian Creek, northeast of downtown Miami. Locals call the island the Billionaire Bunker. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are neighbors. So is hedge-funder Eddie Lampert. Security patrols the place via boat. Last week, a guard — one of 20 or so personnel who keep watch over the roughly 30 mansions — promptly turned a reporter away at the small bridge. Icahn says he’s still playing tennis, still mixing martinis, still unwinding with a movie or two. At times, he sounds almost wistful, holding forth about his old exploits. At other times, he sounds like he’s looking forward to new battles ahead. Just the other evening, over a filet of Dover sole, he and son Brett, presumptive heir of Icahn Enterprises, were going on about the possibilities of AI. ‘People come and ask me, “How do you feel?” Maybe it sounds strange, but it doesn’t really affect me a whole lot. It’s my nature,’ Icahn says.” [Bloomberg]
🎥 Playing the Role: The New York Times’ Laura Collins-Hughes talks to Iranian-American actor Arian Moayed about his rise to fame as an actor frequently cast in villainous or otherwise unsettling roles. “The actor Arian Moayed has an old passport photo that he usually keeps in his wallet: a black-and-white image of a small, darling boy with big dark eyes, wearing a whimsical sweater. We had been talking for nearly 90 minutes when he mentioned it. I’d asked if he remembered anything from his earliest childhood, in Iran in the 1980s. ‘The thing that I remember the most is fear,’ he said. ‘The feeling of fear. Everywhere.’ Then he told me about the picture. It’s him at 5 or so, shortly before his family immigrated to the United States in 1986. He described the look on his face — ‘real angry’ — and his memory of sitting for the photo: how his mother, her hijab slipping, kept urging him in vain to smile. ‘And on the car ride back,’ he said, ‘I told my mom that I thought that the camera was a gun and I was at a firing range. Because in Iran, on television, they would be showing public executions in the news.’” [NYTimes]
"strategy" - Google News
May 24, 2023 at 06:48PM
https://ift.tt/FdCVyXG
Daily Kickoff: When will the White House release its strategy on antisemitism? - Jewish Insider
"strategy" - Google News
https://ift.tt/WCNgQMw
https://ift.tt/OMzP9u0
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Daily Kickoff: When will the White House release its strategy on antisemitism? - Jewish Insider"
Post a Comment