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* Denis MacEoin: A "Guide" to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by the United Church of Christ
* Amir Taheri: Russia: Dreaming of a Return to the West


** A "Guide" to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by the United Church of Christ ([link removed])
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by Denis MacEoin • September 15, 2019 at 5:00 am
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* Titled, "Promoting a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel", and sub-headed "A Guide for United Church of Christ Faith Leaders", this toxic document is a desperately one-sided, inaccurate, and counter-factual exercise in futile politics.
* There is no room in it for a Jewish, Israeli or moderate Christian voice; just hatred of Israel and defence of the Palestinians who, time after time, have turned down generous offers of peace. The naïvety of the UCC is particularly striking in its choice to take at face value the Palestinian statement that if Israel ended its occupation, "Then they will see a new world in which there is no fear, no threat but rather security, justice and peace." That is simply bunkum. Sadly, the Palestinians have a history of regarding every goodwill gesture by Israel as a retreat, as the triumph of aggression over diplomacy -- as if to say: We shoot at Israelis and they leave; so, let's keep shooting!
* Palestinian terrorism against Israelis has continued up to 1967, right through the period of Israeli non-occupation. There were no "settlements" then. Rather, the Palestinians have always regarded all of Israel as one big "settlement". Just look at any Palestinian maps; they cover both the entirety of Israel and the Palestinian territories.
* The UCC boasts that it is "a just peace church", but instead of supporting peace and justice, it defends mass murderers. It complains about the defensive actions of the Jews but is knowingly silent about the horrors wrought by Palestinian wars and terrorism.

Wafa Samir al-Biss personifies the deep dehumanization of Jews by Palestinian terrorists and those multitudes who praise and honor them. Ms Biss attempted to bomb Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, Israel -- the very hospital where, as a burn victim, she had been treated for months by Jewish and Muslim doctors and nurses. Pictured: Soroka Hospital. (Image source: Avishai Teicher/PikiWiki/Wikimedia Commons)

Welcome to yet another skewed guide on the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. After a vote to support boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel in 2015, an organization affiliated with the UCC, the UCC Palestine Israel Network (UCCPIN), published a guide to Israel-Palestine affairs. Titled, "Promoting a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel," and sub-headed "A Guide for United Church of Christ Faith Leaders", this toxic document is a desperately one-sided, inaccurate, and counter-factual exercise in futile politics. Legally, UCCPIN operates under the aegis of one of the denomination's local conferences. Its Guide is, therefore, not the direct work of the church's leadership, but is clearly endorsed by a section of it.

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** Russia: Dreaming of a Return to the West ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • September 15, 2019 at 4:00 am
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* Russia may be talking in Slavophile tones but deep in its heart, desires to be readmitted into the Western camp. This is seen in the way Russians dress, the kind of food they eat, the beverages they drink, the music they listen to, the TV shows and the films they watch, and the books they read. Queues in front of McDonald's joints may be a vulgar sign of creeping Westernization.
* The results of this month's municipal elections, declared last week, show a clear setback for Putinism in its Slavophile version. The president's United Russia party lost more than a third of its seats in Moscow that, as in other metro-centric countries, has set the tone for national politics at least since the 1920s.
* Putin wants to fool the Western democracies into helping negotiate a bad patch before he returns to his old shenanigans. President Macron's call for reintegrating Russia into the G7 summit last month was dismissed by other participants even before it made it onto the agenda.

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has behaved much like a loose cannon, causing nasty surprises, not to say mystification, not only in the West but also in China and elsewhere. (Photo by Kenzaburo Fukuhara - Pool/Getty Images)

If every nation, like every language, has its grammar, what is the grammar that might help us understand Russia today?

Even the least observant foreign visitors to Russia these days are likely quickly to discover the first rule of that metaphorical grammar: the unity of opposites. On one side, we have a Russia that is attached almost obsessively to its "otherness". On the other, we have a Russia that craves after "sameness" as a member of the family of Western nations.

This "otherness-sameness" duality is not new in Russian history.

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