Friday, February 10, 2017

The Threat America Is Neglecting in Afghanistan - Michael Kugelman, Alex Stark (Wilson Center/National Interest) It’s as if a fifteen-year-old war that still involves more than eight thousand American troops and claims American lives has simply been forgotten. 
On C-Span - Gen. Nicholson said a few thousand more troops are needed to adequately train, advise and assist the Afghan military. Gen. Nicholson also voiced concerns about the increase of external actors interfering in Afghanistan, specifically Russia and its efforts to publicly legitimize the Taliban.


With all his tough talk, will President Trump work to free Robert Levinson. Robert Levinson, 67, an American citizen, is a retired DEA and FBI agent. In 2007, while researching a cigarette smuggling case as a private investigator, he was abducted in Iran and has since been held hostage.

How to Handle Hizbullah in Latin America - Emanuele Ottolenghi (Christian Science Monitor) For nearly four decades, Hizbullah has relied on local Lebanese expatriate communities to establish networks across Latin America. These networks have bought political influence among local elites, built alliances with organized crime, and offered financial services to both. As a result, today Latin America is a key center for Hizbullah's sophisticated global financial network.

From Honest Reporting: Certain West Bank “settlements” (which are typically called “outposts” by Israelis) are actually illegal under Israeli law, if they are not properly approved and permitted by the Israeli government. One example is the recently evacuated Amona outpost. This new law would legalize such outposts provided they were built with a good-faith belief that the land does not already belong to a private Palestinian owner. Yet even more significantly, the law is widely expected to be struck down by Israel’s Supreme Court, raising the possibility that this is more of a political maneuver than a serious change to Israeli law and policy.
From Palestinian Media Watch: The importance of propaganda and vocabulary as demonstrated by the list of words the PA calls "Israeli and American poisoned terms."


UNRWA Teachers Incite Terrorism and Anti-Semitism - Hillel Neuer (UN Watch) UN Watch presented a new report to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee showing 40 new cases of UNRWA schoolteachers in Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria whose Facebook pages incite to jihadist terrorism and anti-Semitism, including by posting Holocaust-denying videos and pictures celebrating Hitler. The UNRWA teachers and staffers celebrated the terrorist kidnapping of Israeli teenagers, cheered rockets being fired at Israeli civilian centers, endorsed various forms of violence, and praised erasing Israel from the map.

From PMW: The No Bonuses for Terrorist Act of 2017 (H.R. 789), if passed, will require the US Secretary of State to certify that the PA and PLO have terminated all financial rewards to terrorists and their families. In describing the new bill, Representative Ted Budd showed his familiarity with PMW's findings in The PA's Billion Dollar Fraud, which exposed last year that the PA has funneled its salary payments to terrorists through the PLO in order to deceive donors.
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