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NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the right of the publicly funded Brooklyn College to sponsor an anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) conference.
Bloomberg said Feb. 6 at City Hall that though he “violently” disagrees with the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, a university should be free to sponsor a forum on any topic, The New York Times reported.
The Feb. 7 event at the college featured Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of the BDS, and Judith Butler, an academic who openly speaks sympathetically about Hamas and Hezbollah.
The college’s political science faculty was an official co-sponsor for the event. The primary host was the Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that says it is aimed at “helping end Israeli apartheid and the illegal occupation of Palestine.”
Members of the City Council threatened to withhold funding it provides to the college if the program goes forward, which the mayor rejected.
ROME — Pope Benedict XVI’s eight-year reign as head of the world’s one billion Catholics sometimes was a bumpy one for the Vatican’s relations with Israel and the wider Jewish community.
But it was also a period in which relations were consolidated and fervent pledges made to continue interfaith dialogue and bilateral cooperation.
Both elements were evident in the tributes that flowed from Jewish leaders following the surprise announcement Monday, Feb. 11, that due to his advanced age ...
MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank — For proponents of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, SodaStream would appear to be a straightforward target.
The Israeli company, which sells a popular kitchen gadget that turns tap water into carbonated drinks, has a large factory in a West Bank settlement. When SodaStream announced that it would run an ad during the Super Bowl, the pro-Palestinian boycott campaign against the company reached a fever pitch.
But for hundreds of Palestinians, SodaStream isn...
SOFIA — In his many years of service for France’s spy agency, Claude Moniquet has seen much evidence linking Hezbollah to terrorist-related activities in Europe and beyond.
The attacks, says Moniquet, a 20-year veteran of the DSGE intelligence service, go back as far as 1983, to the bombing of military barracks in Beirut that killed nearly 300 people, including 58 French soldiers.
But the evidence, he says, was ignored.
So Moniquet believes that Bulgaria’s announcement this week that it...