SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY AT YIISA 
Post-Doctorate Research Fellowship, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), Yale University
Applicants are invited for a Research Fellowship tenable for one year, renewable for one further academic year, commencing in September 2008. Applications are welcome from candidates from various academic disciplines, with a strong background in the study of antisemitism and related fields. YIISA is dedicated to the scholarly research of the origins and manifestations associated with antisemitism globally, as well as other forms of prejudice, as it relates to policy.
Click here for full description

YIISA SEMINAR
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21 @ 4:15 PM
Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Rm. 101 (63 High St.)
Symposium: Africa and Contemporary Antisemitism
Speakers:      
Dr. Hubert Ngatcha Njila
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS); Centre d’Études Nord-Américaines (CENA), Paris
“Antisemitism in Africa: Post 9-11”
 
Professor Shalem Coulibaly
Université de Ouagadougou, departement de philosophie; École Nationale d'Administration et de Magistrature (ENAM)
“Negation of Memory: Jewish and African Responses to the New Antisemitsm and Racism”
        
Professor Olufemi Vaughan, D.Phil, Discussant
Professor of Africana Studies and of History; Affiliate Professor, Political Science; Associate Dean, Graduate School, Stony Brook University; Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center        
 
YIISA SPECIAL EVENT
MONDAY, MARCH 3 @ 4:00 PM
The MacMillan Center, Luce Auditorium (34 Hillhouse Ave.)
Why It Is Difficult to Research Antisemitism
Speaker: Michel Wieviorka, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; Centre for Sociological Analysis and Intervention (CADIS)
 
 
REPORT
 
The Muslim Brotherhood: A Moderate Islamic Alternative to al-Qaeda or a Partner in Global Jihad?
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) The Select Committee on Foreign Affairs of the British House of Commons issued a report in the summer of 2007 concluding: "As long as the Muslim Brotherhood expresses a commitment to the democratic process and non-violence, we recommend that the British Government should engage with it and seek to influence its members." Ironically, while prominent voices in the West are calling for a new political dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood, in the Arab world many serious analysts warn about its continuing violent nature and global ambitions.
Click here to read
 
MIDDLE EAST

A Coming Hamas-Israel War?
(TIME) It's difficult to decide which will go over the edge first, Lebanon or Gaza. Maybe both at the same time, hand in hand, and ­ if you believe Israel ­ with a gentle shove from Iran. Bets are on Gaza to explode first. Although Hamas claimed that Monday's suicide bomber in Dimona, the first in a year, came from the West Bank, the Israelis still are investigating whether he got into the country from Gaza via Egypt while the border fence at Rafah was breached.
Click here to read
 
PA glorifies Dimona terrorists
(Jerusalem Post) The terrorists who perpetrated Monday's suicide bombing in Dimona were glorified in three newspapers controlled by the Palestinian Authority, including the official Al-Hayat al-Jadida which is controlled by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Media Watch reported Wednesday.
Click here to read
                                             
Dimona Suicide Bomber Had a Coffee First
(AP) It was not long after the gruff man with darting eyes demanded a cup of coffee at her restaurant that Revital Biton heard the blast. In retrospect, the 29-year-old owner of Revital's World Class Pizza said Tuesday she wished she had called police when the jittery Arab man came in.
Click here to read
 
Shin Bet chief: Rockets, missiles were smuggled into Gaza
(YNet) Considerable amounts of high quality weaponry were smuggled into Gaza through the breached border with Egypt along the Philadelphi rout, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin stated during a cabinet security briefing Sunday.
Click here to read
 
Intelligence official revives Iran doubts
(Financial Times) Admiral Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, said the November national intelligence estimate had concluded that Tehran had ceased only efforts to covertly enrich uranium and design nuclear warheads. “The only thing that they’ve halted was nuclear weapons design, which is probably the least significant part of the programme,” he told the Senate intelligence committee.
Click here to read
 
Iran testing advanced centrifuges
(Reuters) Iran is testing an advanced centrifuge at its Natanz nuclear complex, diplomats said on Wednesday, a move that could lead to Tehran enriching uranium much faster and gaining the means to build atom bombs.
Click here to read
 
Report: Tehran says it is building a second atomic power plant
(Haaretz) Iran has started building a second atomic power plant, Tehran's ambassador to Russia, Gholamreza Ansari, was quoted as saying on Friday by Itar-Tass news agency. "Now we need to think about the fuel for it," the news agency quoted him as saying.
Click here to read
 
Iranian Nuclear Rewrite
(Wall Street Journal) Questioned this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Director of National Intelligence defended the "integrity and the professionalism" of the process that produced last December's stunning National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear program. Yet his testimony amounts to a reversal of the previous judgment.
Click here to read
 
Iran helps Syria develop missile that can target Israel better
(Haaretz) Syria has successfully developed a new surface-to-surface missile that would enable it to target Israeli installations such as airports, ports and factories with greater accuracy, according to briefings recently presented to senior ministers.
Click here to read
 
Mossad Chief: Iran is the biggest threat to Israel
(Jerusalem Post) ran will attain offensive nuclear capabilities within three years and remains the central strategic threat to Israel, not only because it is striving for the attainment of nuclear weapons but also because of its influence on more imminent threats - such as Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria - according to an assessment presented to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee by Mossad head Meir Dagan Monday.
Click here to read
 
Report: Egyptian radicals enter Gaza to aid Palestinian militants
(YNet) Approximately 2,000 Egyptian activists in radical Islamic organizations have infiltrated into the Gaza Strip in order to assist militant Palestinian groups since the fence between Gaza and Egypt  was pierced, according to a report in the Egyptian Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper on Wednesday.
Click here to read
 
The presidents and the mural
(Guardian)  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's populist, attention grabbing president, has reportedly accepted an official invitation to visit Egypt - new evidence of an accelerating rapprochement between the Islamic Republic and the most populous country in the Arab world.
Click here to read
 
Cairo 'exploring' ties with Tehran
(Washington Times) Diplomats yesterday cautioned against excessive alarm over a series of visits to Cairo by senior Iranian officials, saying Tehran's bid to end three decades of estrangement is unlikely to yield an early restoration of formal relations. Officials said the Egyptian government recognizes that Iran is a major player in the Middle East and is interested in "exploring" normalization ­ a step that would undercut U.S. efforts to isolate Iran.
Click here to read
 
Ahmadinejad's Egypt visit not on agenda 
(Press TV) Iran's Government Spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham has said that no visit to Egypt is on the agenda of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He added that resumption of relations between Tehran and Cairo is a two-way diplomatic process and stressed that Tehran's diplomacy is based on national and regional interests and the power of the Islamic Republic.
Click here to read
 
Iran liberals sharply lower election hopes
(Gulf Times) Iran’s disgruntled reformists have drastically scaled down their expectations for parliamentary elections next month after the authorities disqualified half their candidates, the press reported yesterday.
Reformists had been hoping to mount a serious challenge to the conservative domination of parliament and create a springboard for returning to power in 2009 presidential elections.
Click here to read
 
Lebanon in confrontation with Syria, Iran: Hariri
(Reuters) The leader of Lebanon's pro-Western majority in parliament said on Thursday the country was in direct confrontation with Syria and Iran, which back the Hezbollah opposition group in its conflict with the Beirut government.
Click here to read
 
1 Killed in Palestinian-Egyptian Clash
(Washington Post) Egyptian forces and Hamas police exchanged fire across the Gaza-Egypt border Monday, and defiant Hamas leaders warned they would not permit Gaza's resealed frontier to remain closed for long.
Click here to read
 
Al Qaeda said to focus on WMDs
(Los Angeles Times) After a U.S. airstrike leveled a small compound in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions in January 2006, President Pervez Musharraf and his intelligence officials announced that several senior Al Qaeda operatives had been killed, and that the top prize was an elusive Egyptian who was believed to be a chemical weapons expert.
Click here to read
 
Children 'taught to kidnap and kill at al-Qaeda camp' in Iraq
(Times) The boys look about 11 or 12, some even younger. They wear balaclavas to hide their faces. They sport AK47 assault rifles that dwarf their small frames, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, pistols and in one case a suicide belt. The three-minute film shows the children ­ perhaps 20 in all ­ being taught to kidnap and assassinate at what appears to be an al-Qaeda training and indoctrination camp in the Iraqi countryside.
Click here to read
 
Ill winds blowing from the South
(Haaretz) Now that they’re finished making snide remarks and putting each other down over the failure of the Second Lebanon War, Ehud and Ehud have joined forces on the Gaza front. It was here that Yasser Arafat delivered his “blood and fire” speech the moment he set foot in the country after the Oslo Accords in May 1994. It was here that the chairman launched his incitement campaign and gave the green light for terrorist attacks and intifadas. It was here that he uttered his favorite curse against Israel, telling us to go drink the sea of Gaza.
Click here to read
 
Hamas source: Extremists poured into Gaza
(Jerusalem Post) Thousands of Arab men have flocked into the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the past two weeks, offering to join in the fight against Israel, sources close to Hamas said Wednesday.
Click here to read
 
Gaza Baptists targeted by extremists
(NY Daily News) The small evangelical Baptist community has been a principal target of the extremists because of its missionary work, which has been halted. "Christians get killed here, let alone a Muslim who converted," said Ashraf, 36, who did not give his last name. "I stopped going to church even before the coup."
Click here to read
 
Religious police in Saudi Arabia arrest mother for sitting with a man
(Times) A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.
Click here to read
 
Lebanon cleric advises 'modern Shiites'
(Los Angeles Times) Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah's liberal fatwas, or edicts, have shocked conservative Muslims around the world. "A woman can respond to physical violence inflicted on her by a man with counter- violence as a self-defense measure," Lebanon's senior-most Shiite cleric wrote in a fatwa late last year that shocked conservative Muslims around the world.
Click here to read
 
Hamas: We’re Allowed to Lie
(Israel National News) Hamas leaders spoke to the Arabic language Ash-Sharq il-Awsat newspaper recently and explained that as Muslims, they are allowed to lie.  In an interview printed on Thursday, senior Hamas terrorists explained, “A Muslim is permitted to say things that oppose his beliefs in order to prevent damages or to be saved from death.”
Click here to read
 
In Egypt, high-risk blogging
(Los Angeles Times) Cyberspace can be a messy, dangerous place, especially if you're Abbas, who with keyboard, digital camera and a bit of cunning has become one of Egypt's most popular bloggers. His posts, often with scratchy video, catalog police torture, political oppression, labor strikes, sexual harassment and radical Islam. He's been vilified and threatened, but has managed to stay out of jail, operating in an uncensored realm beyond the independent and state-controlled media.
Click here to read
 
Arbour criticizes Arab human rights charter
(Canadian Jewish News) Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has lined up behind several human rights and watchdog organizations that criticized the recently ratified Arab Charter on Human Rights for categorizing Zionism as a form of racism.
Click here to read
 
NORTH AMERICA
 
Intelligence Chief Cites Qaeda Threat to U.S.
(NY Times) Al Qaeda is gaining in strength from its refuge in Pakistan and is steadily improving its ability to recruit, train and position operatives capable of carrying out attacks inside the United States, the director of national intelligence told a Senate panel on Tuesday.
Click here to read
 
Senators say US to boycott follow-up of UN anti-racism meeting because of anti-Israel ideas
(MSNBC) A U.S. senator says the United States has decided not to attend next year's follow-up to the 2001 U.N. World Conference on Racism because the panel seems certain to repeat anti-Semitic and anti-Israel positions of the original gathering.
Click here to read
 
For the Record: Government Reminds Court of CAIR/MAS Ties to Terrorists
(Investigative Project on Terrorism) The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is demanding that the Air Force Academy alter a panel of speakers slated for a terrorist symposium this week, saying it's an unbalanced presentation dominated by anti-Muslim speakers. But recently, and for at least the third time, federal prosecutors have called out CAIR as part of a covert Muslim Brotherhood effort in the United States.
Click here to read
 
EUROPE
 
Institute: Terror Threat Widens
(Washington Post) Senior researchers at Britain's International Institute for Strategic Studies warned Tuesday that "neo-Taliban" groups operating in Pakistan's tribal areas may soon become a global menace.
Click here to read
 
French Envoy Condemns Iran Statements
(AP) A French ambassador summoned by Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned recent comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad implying Israel would be destroyed, a French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Monday. Pascale Andreani confirmed that France's ambassador to Iran had been summoned over the weekend as part of a continuing dispute between the two countries ­ largely over Iran's nuclear program. Iranian news reports Sunday said the Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassador, Bernard Poletti, to protest France's policy toward Iran's nuclear activities.
Click here to read
 
EU official: Half of European anti-Semitism related to radical Islam
(Jerusalem Post) The figure comes from European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security Franco Frattini, who is responsible in the EU for combating racism and anti-Semitism in Europe. Frattini mentioned it in a conversation with Minister for Diaspora Affairs Isaac Herzog last week, and said it was based on European Union reports.
Click here to read
 
Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'
(BBC) The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable". Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system and that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.
Click here to read
 
The Decade of Appeasement
(Weekly Standard) Last week, Germany marked the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, on January 30, 1933. No nation in Europe bears the shame of Nazism and anti-Semitism more heavily, yet none seems more determined to prevent their recurrence. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier no doubt spoke for many over the weekend: "The memory of the genocide committed by the Germans serves to keep us alert and fight anti-Semitism and racial hatred around the world."
Click here to read
 
Rector of major Ukraine college says 'no such thing as anti-Semitism'
(Haaretz) Jewish and Israeli bodies that monitor anti-Semitism worldwide are unable to understand how in the middle of the Ukrainian capital there operates an academic center that publishes entire series of books and regular editions of newspapers with explicit anti-Semitic content, and why the central government refrains from taking determined action against it.
Click here to read
 
Grave near Kiev is reminder of 20th century's only blood libel
(Haaretz) A well-tended grave in Kiev is the resting place of Andrei Yushchinsky, a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, whose violent and mysterious death would never have been recorded by history if it hadn't sparked off the only blood libel of the 20th century, the trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis, a poor Jewish man accused of Andrei's death for political and anti-Semitic reasons.
Click here to read
 
Ireneusz Krzeminski on anti-Semitism in Poland
(Courrier International) Sociologist Ireneusz Krzeminski of the University of Warsaw explains current-day anti-Semitism in Poland in an interview with Kamila Baranowska. "Polish anti-Semitism is an aversion to symbolic 'Jews'.
Click here to read
 
MISCELLANEOUS
 
Knesset to swear in 2nd Ethiopian MK
(Jerusalem Post) Shlomo Mula begins nearly all his speeches with the same sentence: "I walked 800 kilometers from Ethiopia to Sudan." On Monday, Mula will take one more journey, as he is sworn in to the Knesset as the second Ethiopian MK in Israel's history. Mula is replacing Avigdor Yitzhaki (Kadima), who officially tendered his resignation Thursday due to "serious doubts over [Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert's ability to lead the government in the wake of the Winograd Report."
Click here to read
 
Chávez's Anti-Semitism
(Washington Post) Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his followers have sought to harass and intimidate the Catholic Church, the media, university students, political opponents and multinational companies doing business in Venezuela, to name just a few targets. Thus it can hardly come as a surprise that Chávez would also attack the Jewish community.
Click here to read