Arab-Israeli Conflict

Are tallitot just Judaeo-Israelite shmaghs?

And what would a One-Statist shmagh look like? Would it be a blue and white checked smagh? Or a black, white & green-striped tallit?

This mornings Stratfor Podcast is titled "Erdovan's Davos Walkout Lays Down the Marker". I haven't heard it yet (hoping to, on the exercise machine), but just from that title, you can see one thing: the recognition of Israel has been anathema in the Muslim world, but if you had wondered if any good could ever come out of recognizing them, this is it. The fact that Turkey is seen in the Western World as a "moderate" Muslim state and has respect for being one of very few Muslim states to recognize Israel gives Erdogan's action much more weight than, say, a Pakistani or Indonesian leader doing the same. I am not saying Pakistan should up and recognize Israel, but it's something for Pakistanis to think about in the debate of whether and when to think about "normalizing" relations.

The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.
                                                                                                               - Joseph Heller, Catch-22

           After a failed trial whose verdict was declared by Time Magazine to be “one of the Justice Department's most embarrassing legal setbacks since 9/11,” the American government has been resorting to legal ruses and an outright manipulation of the judicial system to keep the high-profile Palestinian-American professor Sami Al-Arian imprisoned indefinitely. Now, after five years of imprisonment under conditions condemned by Amnesty International as “gratuitously punitive,” Dr. Al-Arian could be sentenced any day to at least five more years. His case has been powerfully presented in this gripping YouTube video.