Agrégateur de flux

Az International Studies Association (ISA - Nemzetközi Tanulmányok Egyesülete) a nemzetközi kapcsolatokkal foglalkozó oktatók, kutatók és gyakorlati szakemberek legnagyobb méretű és befolyású globális szakmai szervezete, az ISA Éves Konvenciója pedig a nemzetközi kapcsolatok tudományának legfontosabb konferenciája, közel 8000 fő részvételével évente. Idén a konvenciót virtuálisan rendezték meg.

Nagy öröm és elismerés volt, hogy az ISA programigazgatói három beadott pályázatunkat-pályázatomat is elfogadták, így a Konvenció három rendezvényén is szerepeltem. Az elsőben igen nagy megtiszteltetés volt részt venni, hiszen a szakma legnagyobb neveivel és a fiatalabb generáció sztárjaival (Joseph Nye, Monica Toft, Kori Schake, Peter Dombrowski, Nina Silove, Kevin Narizny, Emma Ashford, Thomas Cavanna) kerekasztalon vitathattam meg, a COVID-19 járvány és az elnökválasztás után milyen irányt vegyen az Amerikai Egyesült Államok nagystratégiája. A második rendezvény egy négy tanulmányból álló panel volt, ahol a már említett nagy nevek közül Monica Toft elnökölt, Peter Dombrowski, Nina Silove és Thomas Cavanna pedig tanulmányaikat prezentálták. Én a Clinton-adminisztráció Kína-stratégiájáról szóló tanulmányomat prezentáltam, valamint én voltam a többi tanulmány opponense is. Végül a harmadik rendezvény szintén egy tanulmányok megvitatására összeült panel volt, ahol két másik fiatal kutatóval együtt az amerikai-kínai viszonyról szóló tanulmányainkat prezentáltuk, a magam részéről a George H. W. Bush-adminisztráció Kína-stratégiájáról szóló cikkemet.

2021. április 1-jén az Új Világ Polgári Fórum keretében Jeszenszky Géza volt külügyminiszterrel, Szent-Iványi István volt külügyi államtitkárral és Matura Tamás Kína-szakértővel beszélgettünk arról, mit jelent Kína kihívása a Nyugat (benne Európa és Amerika) számára és hogyan értelmezzük Magyarország és Kína egyre szorosabb kapcsolatát.

A beszélgetés felvételről az alábbi Facebook- és Youtube-linkeken tekinthető meg:
Új Világ Polgári Fórumok 5.: Kína: barát vagy ellenség? Vagy egyszerre mindkettő? (Facebook)
Új Világ Polgári Fórumok 5.: Kína: barát vagy ellenség? Vagy egyszerre mindkettő? (Youtube)

Az Azonnali.hu-n vezetett világpolitikai rovatomban 2021. március 16-án a januárban hivatalba lépett Biden-adminisztráció formálódóban lévő külpolitikáját vázoltam fel, kitérve az új külpolitikai fő csapásirányaira, a középpontban lévő Kína-politika alakulására, továbbá a magyar-amerikai kapcsolatok várható alakulására. Az új amerikai külpolitika iránti érdeklődést is mutatja, hogy eddig ez az egyik legnépszerűbb cikkem az Azonnalin.

"Körvonalazódik, milyen lesz a bideni USA külpolitikája: nagyobb nemzetközi jelenlét, belpolitikai szempontok figyelembevétele és határozottabb kiállás a demokrácia mellett. De miként érinti mindez az amerikai-magyar kapcsolatokat, főleg annak tudatában, hogy az új CIA-vezér autoriternek nevezte Orbánt?"

Azonnali.hu: Formálódik Biden külpolitikája - "Amerika visszatért"

Fotó: Joe Biden / FB

I still remember when our family went to Disney World, years ago, and we went to the exhibit for "It's A Small World After All." To illustrate the point, the exhibit contained caricatures of every nationality. 
The typical Israeli was depicted as -- a Chassid. Maybe the people at Disney had trouble figuring out what an Israeli is.  Or perhaps they thought their visitors did.
Times haven't changed. Depictions of Jews in the media are often accurate.
As an extreme example, take the new show on NBC called Nurses: Set in Toronto, "Nurses" follows five young nurses working on the frontlines of a busy downtown hospital, dedicating their lives to helping others, while struggling to help themselves. In a recent episode -- which NBC has now pulled off its digital platforms -- one of the subplots is that a Chassidic boy requires a bone transplant in order to be able to walk again.
The boy, with his father at his side, refuses the transplant because the bone might be from an Arab or a woman, or -- as the nurse sarcastically chimes in -- an Arab woman.

First @nbcsnl now @nbc 'Nurses' airs a viciously antisemitic episode filled with lies about Orthodox Jews.

"A dead goyim leg ... from an arab, a woman, G-d forbid an Arab women ... Israel ... without this next step you won't walk again".

Lies and libels lead to VIOLENCE! pic.twitter.com/BvRA4Xiq9e

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) February 23, 2021 Elder of Ziyon outlines the extent to which the show Nurses mischaracterized Orthodox Jews as:

• Being against any modern medical procedures
• Being against grafting bone or tissue from non-Jews
• Being against having women's organs or bones placed in men
• Jewish men not directly addressing female nurses
• Saying that prayer and medicine are incompatible

Against that background, we can understand The Wiesenthal Center's reaction: The writers of this scene check all the boxes of ignorance and pernicious negative stereotypes, right down to the name of the patient, Israel – paiyous and all.

In one scene, NBC has insulted and demonized religious Jews and Judaism.

Overreaction? Orthodox Jews are targeted for violent hate crimes – in the city of New York, Jews are number one target of hate crimes in US; this is no slip of the tongue. It was a vile, cheap attack masquerading as TV drama. What’s NBC going to do about it? (Note: Apparently the name of the patient is Ezriel, not Israel.)
It is insulting not only for the deliberately negative slant the show casts on Orthodox Jews, but the show's writers couldn't even be bothered to do the minimal research necessary to realize that under the circumstances, no Orthodox Jew and no Orthodox rabbi would object to such an operation.
The website TV Fanatic does offer a possible context for this sub-plot and what it was intended to do -- draw a comparison with the nurse, who is a religious Christian: I understand what they were going for. Ashley [the nurse] comes from a religious background. She has issues with her conservative Christian home and with her conservative Christian mother.

They were trying to draw a parallel and stir up some feeling for her with this push-button topic. Stir up some feeling? Mission accomplished!
But even so, the thinking behind the plot of this episode is not even new.
In 2005, Grey's Anatomy ran an episode with a similar sub-plot: a 17-year-old girl who has recently become more religious finds out that she has a potentially threatening heart condition that could kill her. The good news is that her life can be saved with an operation that will provide her with a new heart valve.
But the valve is from a pig.
The subplot revolves around her refusal to accept the operation because of the source of the valve.
As Rabbi Avi Shafran wrote in response to the show at the time: That Jewish law in no way forbids such use of pig parts (only their consumption – and not even that when life is endangered) is not noted; quite the contrary, the viewer is led to believe that the girl’s refusal would be the natural stance of any observant Jew. The silliness of the scenario is only compounded by the casting of a woman as the Orthodox girl’s rabbi (and the episode’s “good guy,” of course).

...But the most egregious element of the fantasy is the character’s, well, character. The Orthodox youth is portrayed as, in the words of one viewer, “a crazy fundamentalist fanatical Jew [who] was rude and behaved horrendously to the doctors who were only trying to help her.” The character belittles her less-observant parents, cursing like a sailor in the process. Just your standard-fare nice, newly religious Jewish girl. [emphasis added]
Realism and accuracy clearly were not considerations. The writer admitted to The Forward, "Whenever there is a story that has a rabbi I never see a woman, I just see old men. I wanted to clash with the stereotype a bit."
But there is more going on in this episode on Grey's Anatomy than just a clash in stereotypes of what a rabbi looks like. As in the episode in Nurses, in this episode of Grey's Anatomy, the writer deliberately created a character who was obnoxious because of her religiosity.
As Rabbi Shafran points out:
...If the character is a positive one, or even a neutral one, no one, save perhaps an anti-Semite, would complain. But if he or she is consciously crafted to be obnoxious – and not merely obnoxious, but obnoxious in her dedication to her ostensible religious beliefs – does that not border on provocation? [emphasis added]
So what is going on here?
In 2005, Wendy Shalit examined the books written about the ultra-Orthodox world, many of which painted a negative picture, and wondered aloud about the audience for such books: What is the market for this fiction? Does it simply satisfy our desire, as one of Mirvis's reviewers put it, to indulge in "eavesdropping on a closed world"? Or is there a deeper urge: do some readers want to believe the ultra-Orthodox are crooked and hypocritical, and thus lacking any competing claim to the truth? Perhaps, on the other hand, readers are genuinely interested in traditional Judaism but don't know where to look for more nuanced portraits of this world. Does the same desire to undermine the Orthodox Jews motivate the writers of these kinds of episodes on Grey's Anatomy and Nurses?
In response to criticism of her article, Shalit writes: For whatever reason, many writers today like to create immoral haredi and newly-religious characters. The truth is, I don't know why. Perhaps because they are not from these worlds, they fail to appreciate the idealism that's there. Or perhaps it's because, as Ms. Mirvis has admitted, nowadays "there is a great deal of discomfort with religiosity, and I have to admit, I feel it myself as well."

...But when all your Orthodox characters are cold and dysfunctional, and unlike anything this group understands itself to be, then I think one must ask what else might be going on. [emphasis added] Shalit ends this article with a challenge: Let's turn the tables. Suppose there is a new genre in American Jewish literature, in which Reform Jews are vilified regularly. There is the temple's secretary who kills one of her Hadassah sisters in order to get the latest Judith Lieber bag, and a gay Reform rabbi who seduces younger male congregants. There are idealistic college coeds who want to escape Reform life, but are daunted by the prospect of learning Hebrew, so they abuse drugs instead. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is such a genre. And suppose further that these novels are a bit short on character development, that they are primarily driven by page after page of weirdo Reform characters, and mouth agape, one must turn the pages in order to satisfy one's curiosity: what will this bad Reform bunch do next? The authors, who are not Reform themselves, are celebrated in the non-Jewish world and their Reform-bashing literature is translated into multiple languages.

How would we feel about such novels? My guess is that they would not be so popular, and the fact that we have toasted such literature about Orthodox Jews for so long might -- just might -- tell us something about our prejudices. [emphasis added] There was a time that simple curiosity was the driving force in the depiction of Orthodox Jews. In his review of the book This Ain't Kosher, Elliot Gertel reveals that "the (Jewish) producers of [the TV show] Kung Fu originally thought of making the martial arts master a Hasidic rebbe."
But those were simpler days that are long behind us.

 

A nemzetközi kapcsolatok általában nagyon komoly tudományterületnek mutatja magát, hiszen mégiscsak a béke és háború kérdéseivel foglalkozik alapvetően, de még a mi szakmánkban is helye van a játéknak, a játékosságnak. Az H-Diplo a nemzetközi kapcsolatok és a diplomáciatörténet oktatásával foglalkozó szakemberek vezető globális online fóruma, amely 1993 óta működik a H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online honlapja keretében. Az H-Diplo meghívott engem és Fletcher School-beli kollégámat, Frank Sobchak nyugállományú ezredest, hogy írjunk egy cikket a játékoknak és szimulációknak a nemzetközi kapcsolatok oktatásában való alkalmazásáról szóló "kerekasztalhoz". Az H-Diplo ún. online kerekasztalok formájában tekinti át a nemzetközi kapcsolatok oktatásának különböző aspektusait. Minden kerekasztalhoz meghívnak az adott témában szakértő oktatókat, hogy esszé formában írják le saját megközelítésüket, a gyakorlat alapján leszűrt következtetéseiket, javaslataikat. Frank Sobchakkal a saját oktatási tapasztalatunkat vettük alapul ás összefoglaltuk, hogy a Harvard Egyetemen, a West Point Katonai Akadémián, a Tufts Egyetemen és a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-n (MIT) együtt és külön-külön tanított kurzusainkba hogyan integráltunk különböző nemzetközi szimulációkat. Az MIT-n közös tanításunk során például a kurzus záró vizsgájaként egy klímaváltozás elleni egyezmény elfogadását célzó ENSZ-konferencia szimulációját szerveztük meg, ahol hallgatóink az egyes államok kormányfőinek és minisztereinek, illetve nemzetközi szervezetek vezetőinek szerepét játszották és több fordulóban olyan egyezményt kellett diplomáciai találkozók során letárgyalniuk, amely a szimuláció végén elnyerhette az ENSZ Közgyűlés (az egész osztály) szavazatainak többségét. Kitérünk arra is, hogy ezen a téren sokat tanultunk a SIMULEX nevű, tanórán kívül tartott nemzetközi szimulációs gyakorlatból, amely a Fletcher Schoolban  immáron több évtizede minden októberben megrendezésre kerül Robert Pfaltzgraff és Richard Shultz professzorok irányításával. Cikkünkben olyan általános érvényű tanácsokat, javaslatokat fogalmazunk meg a fenti tapasztalatok alapján, amelyek segítségével a nemzetközi kapcsolatokat oktatók a világ bármely pontján eredményesebben tudják tanórán belüli vagy azon kívüli szimulációs gyakorlataikat megtervezni és lebonyolítani.

H-Diplo: Games and Simulations in Teaching International Relations (Zoltan Feher and Frank Sobchak)

Az Azonnali.hu-n vezetett "Keeping It Realpolitik - Világpolitika Bostonból" című rovatomban 2021. február 8-án összefoglaltam mindazokat a fontos eseményeket, amelyet az amerikai politikában január hónapban zajlottak, s amelyek értékelésem szerint jelentős fordulatot hoztak az Egyesült Államok politikai életében. A két legjelentősebb esemény, amelyről írok: a január 6-i Capitolium elleni erőszakos támadás és Biden elnök január 20-i beiktatása.

A cikkből egy szemelvény kedvcsinálónak:
"A katasztrofális 2020-as év után az amerikaiak nagy várakozásokkal tekintettek az új esztendő elé, de 2021 első hónapja sokkal eseménydúsabbra sikeredett az Egyesült Államokban, mint azt sokan várták. Pedig ez nagy szó a múlt év elnökválasztás jegyében telt utolsó néhány hónapja után, hiszen a választási kampány viharait követően is váratlan fordulatok sokasága töltötte meg a november-decemberi időszakot. 2021 januárja azonban túltett ezeken is: minden túlzás nélkül állítható, hogy az év első öt-hat hetében az amerikai politika óriási átalakuláson ment keresztül."

Hogy pontosan miben rejlik ez az átalakulás, azt megtudhatják az Azonnali.hu oldalán:
Azonnali.hu: Január kilátással - Trump megbukott, a republikánusok romokban, Bidenen a világ szeme

2021. január 25-én a Nemzetközi Protokoll Szakemberek Szervezete meghívásának tettem eleget, amikor Bokor Balázs nagykövettel, a szervezet elnökével beszélgettem Joe Biden amerikai elnök beiktatásának alkalmából az amerikai politika aktuális fejleményeiről. Megtiszteltetés volt, hogy a program második részében Bokor Balázs Takács Szabolcs washingtoni magyar nagykövettel beszélgetett a beiktatás protokolljáról és lezajlásának mikéntjéről.

A beszélgetés az alábbi linken megtekinthető:
A Nemzetközi Protokoll Szakemberek Szervezete beszélgetése a Biden-beiktatás kapcsán

2021. január 21-én a Heti TV rendszeresen jelentkező Külpolitikai kitekintő műsorában Gyarmati István nagykövettel, a műsor házigazdájával és Frank Tibor professzorral, akadémikussal beszélgettem. A műsorban Joe Biden amerikai elnöknek az előző napon zajlott beiktatásáról, Trump korábbi elnök örökségéről, a január 6-i capitoliumi erőszakról, valamint a magyar-amerikai kapcsolatok várható alakulásáról cseréltünk eszmét.

A műsort, amelyet az elmúlt 3 hétben többször leadott a Heti TV, az alábbi linken is meg lehet tekinteni:
Heti TV - Külpolitikai kitekintő: Frank Tibor, Fehér Zoltán (2021. január 21.)

A Külügyi és Külgazdasági Intézet (KKI) 2021. január 11-én 17 órakor rendezvényt szervezett a január 6-i zavargásról, melynek során erőszakos Trump-párti tüntetők egy csoportja bejutott a washingtoni Capitolium épületébe. A rendkívüli események elemzésében a KKI mellettem Mártonffy Balázst, a Nemzeti Közszolgálati Egyetem Amerika Tanulmányok Kutatóintézetének vezetőjét, valamint Varga Gergelyt, a Külügyi és Külgazdasági Intézet vezető kutatóját hívta segítségül, a moderátor Baranyi Tamás, Intézetünk igazgatóhelyettese volt. A beszélgetés során felderítettük, hogy néhány nap távlatából hogyan is történtek az események, mennyire meríti ki a puccskísérlet fogalmát, és kinek a felelőssége volt, hogy a politikai indulatok elszabadultak. A beszélgetés későbbi részében arra tettünk kísérletet, hogy felvázoljuk a lehetséges hosszú távú hatásokat: az alternatív jobboldali közösségi médianyilvánosság megszüntetésére irányuló kezdeményezéseket, a Republikánus Pártnak a „trumpizmushoz” való kettős viszonyát, a Demokrata Párton belüli ellentéteket, valamint azt, hogy a Biden-kormányzat képes lehet-e csökkenteni a feszültségeket, vagy folytatódik az erőszakos polarizáció az Egyesült Államokban.

A beszélgetés elérhető az alábbi linken:
Külügyi és Külgazdasági Intézet: Zavaros átmenet az Egyesült Államokban

 

 

Folytatjuk az amerikai klímapolitikával kapcsolatos posztokat, hiszen az Azonnali.hu-n vezetett "Keeping It Realpolitik - Világpolitika Bostonból" című rovatomban 2020. december 27-én írásban is feldolgoztam, hogyan látom a Biden-adminisztráció várható környezetvédelmi politikáját.

Egy kis ízelítő a cikkből:
"Bidenék mindenesetre készen állnak, hogy a klíma védelmében Amerika ismét aktívan lépjen fel odahaza és vezető szerepet játsszon a nemzetközi erőfeszítésekben is. Meglátjuk, hogy a feladat nehézségét és a több oldalról várható ellenállást ismerve mit sikerül terveikből megvalósítaniuk. A tét csak a bolygó jövője."

A cikk itt olvasható:
Azonnali.hu: Változik a klíma Washingtonban: mi várható Bidentől?

Kép: Andrew Harnik/AP

Ahogy legutóbbi posztomban beszámoltam: az Energiahajó Biden oldja meg a klímaválságot vagy a megújulók dübörgő forradalma? című online találkozóján, 2020. november 30-án Bart Istvánnal, a Klímastratégia 2050 Intézet ügyvezető igazgatójával, Szabo Johnnal, a CEU Környezeti Tudományok és Politika Tanszékének PhD-jelöltjével és Zsolt Melindával, az Energiaklub kommunikáció, oktatás és szemléletformálás programvezetőjéve azt vitattuk meg, mi várható az új amerikai kormányzattól a klímapolitika területén, mindezt szélesebb bel- és külpolitikai kontextusba is helyezve.

A Qubit két cikkben is tudósított az Energiahajó keretében zajlott beszélgetésről. Részletesebb beszámolójukban felidézik: "Fehér Zoltán belpolitikai és külpolitikai kontextusba helyezte a Joe Biden hivatalba lépése körüli klímapolitikai várakozásokat. Szerinte elnökként Biden a nagy vihart kavaró és mélyen megosztó elnökválasztási kampány után arra törekszik, hogy egyesítse az amerikai nemzetet, a külpolitikában pedig az új elnök eddigi nyilatkozatai alapján arra lehet számítani, hogy Biden igyekszik majd helyreállítani az Egyesült Államok vezető szerepét a világban, visszaépíteni a szétzilált szövetségesi kapcsolatokat és visszaállítani a  megtépázott multilateralizmus intézményét. A klímapolitika mindkét kontextusban helyet kap, sőt az eddigiektől eltérően a környezet ügyét Biden külpolitikai dimenzióval ruházza fel, és egyben az eddigieknél jóval kiemeltebben kezeli. Ezt jelzi a korábbi külügyminiszter és demokrata elnökjelölt, John Kerry kormányzati szintű, klímakoordinátori posztra - klímacárrá - való kinevezése és a környezetvédelem aspektusának összes szaktárcába való beemelése is."

A Qubit rövidebb összefoglalója, amelyben a beszélgetésről készült videó is elérhető:
Qubit: Az amerikai szénipar már most is a szakadék szélén táncol, picit lehetne lökni rajta

A Qubit részletes cikke a beszélgetés során elhangzott főbb megállapításokról, ahol szintén elérhető a programról készült videófelvétel:
Nem Joe Biden, hanem mindanniyunk fellépése jelenti a megoldást a klímaválságra

Véget ért a hosszú nemzeti rémálom az Amerikai Egyesült Államokban? Mikor és hogyan lép vissza az USA a Párizsi Egyezménybe, hogyan fog nekiállni az üvegházgázok visszafogásának, mi lesz a gáz-, valamint olajiparával, és hogyan befolyásolja Biden megválasztása a kínai klímapolitikát? Többek között ezeket az égető kérdéseket vitattuk meg az Energiahajó harmadik, Biden oldja meg a klímaválságot vagy a megújulók dübörgő forradalma? című online találkozóján. A 2020. november 30-án zajlott programon beszélgető partnereim Bart István, a Klímastratégia 2050 Intézet ügyvezető igazgatója, Szabo John, a CEU Környezeti Tudományok és Politika Tanszékének PhD-jelöltje és Zsolt Melinda, az Energiaklub kommunikáció, oktatás és szemléletformálás programvezetője voltak. Az Energiahajó az Energiaklub, a Qubit és a Trip Hajó közös szervezésében valósul meg.

Rövid összefoglaló a beszélgetésről:
„Az Amerika lelkéért vívott küzdelemben a demokrácia kerekedett felül” – nyilatkozott Joe Biden demokrata párti elnökjelölt pár órával az után, hogy az elektori kollégium megerősítette győzelmét a novemberi elnökválasztáson. 2021. január 20-án az új elnök átveszi a hivatalt, amivel megnyílik a lehetőség arra, hogy a Trump-adminisztráció elmúlt éveinek szélsőséges rendeleteit eltörölje. Korántsem biztos azonban, hogy a megválasztott elnök pont ott folytatja, ahol Obama abbahagyta, és eltöröl mindent, amit Trump elkezdett. Az Energiahajó rendezvénysorozat harmadik adásának meghívott vendégei egy dologban azonban biztosak, mégpedig, hogy az új adminisztráció klímapolitikai fordulatot hoz, hiszen úgy tűnik, Biden minden eddigi elnöknél elhivatottabb a klímaválság kihívásait tekintve.

A beszélgetés videója megtekinthető az Energiaboxon, az Energiaklub blogján, amely a HVG blogsite-ján működik:
Energiahajó, 2020. november 30.: Az USA újra színre lép a klímapolitikában - de vajon ugyanúgy, ahogy elment?

What Is Mobile Marketing? Mobile marketing is becoming more and more popular as businesses are becoming aware of how smartphones are almost always within arms reach. In the UK, 7 out of 10 people own a mobile phone so if you’re not using SMS marketing then you’re likely missing out. Mobile marketing allows you to quickly create, send and have your message read by your customers within minutes. The speed at which the text message is sent & received means you can utilise mobile marketing for quick sales, provide new company updates & to increase ROI and client retention.

Most people who own a smartphone check their messages and emails in the morning so from a marketing perspective it’s paramount to make full use of mobile marketing.

So why use mobile marketing?

• Instant Deliverability
• Flexible Platform
• High open rate
• High conversion rate
• It’s an opt-in method
• SMS marketing is affordable
• SMS are short, quick and very personal
• Create a free mobile site

The other advantage of utilising mobile marketing is that iPhones are getting bigger, iPads can have a Simcard & be linked to your messages so soon people will be using their mobile device for the majority of their activities giving you a huge timeframe to contact them via SMS.

Once you have the mobile numbers of your subscribers you can reach them within seconds and have the majority of them open your message as statistics show 8/10 text messages are opened. Best of all GraphicMail makes it easy for you to implement…

Creating Your Text Message

Within your account you can easily create your text message by clicking on Mobile (tab at the top) >> SMS/Text Messages >> Create or Edit (to edit an existing one). You can then use the SMS/ Text Editor to input the text message you’d like to send. If you go over the 160 character limit then it will use an extra credit when sending.

Sending Your Text Message

Once you have created your text message, you can send it by clicking on ‘Send SMS/ Text’ >> Send to List. Within this section you can choose the mailing list you’d like to send to, select the SMS/ Text message and then click the button ‘Send to List’.

View Your Campaign Results

Once your bulk text message has been sent, you will then see detailed statistics showing sent, received, clicks and more. This can be viewed by clicking on Reports & Statistics (tab on the left) >> Delivery Reports, you can then select your send and view the statistics from it.

As mobile marketing is instant and as it has a higher open rate it gives you a great opportunity to communicate with your clients helping you build a relationship with them.

The post Future of Mobile Marketing? appeared first on The Kings of War.

2020. október 27-én a Stratégiai Tanulmányok Központja Kutatás és Szakpolitika Szemináriumán James Boys brit politikatörténészt láttuk vendégül, aki jelenleg új könyvén dolgozik az ún. őrültség-elméletnek (Madman Theory) az amerikai politikában való alkalmazásáról, különös tekintettel Nixon és Trump elnökökre. Az őrültség-elmélet lényege, hogy a politikai vezető annak érdekében, hogy ellenfelét félrevezesse, irracionalitást, kiszámíthatatlanságot színlel. Boys a szemináriumon a könyvnek azt a fejezetét mutatta be, amely feltárja az őrültség-elmélet kezdeteit. A szálak az 1950-es évekbe és a Harvard Egyetemre vezetnek, ahol három tudományos elme, Thomas Schelling, Henry Kissinger és Daniel Ellsberg egymástól függetlenül dolgozták ki az őrültség-elmélet alapjait. Később együtt is működtek ebben a témában, sőt mindhárman prominens szerepet kaptak az amerikai kormányzatban, ahol a hivatalos külpolitika részévé is tették az őrültség-elméletet. Örömömre szolgált, hogy a szerzőnek én szolgálhattam opponenséül (discussant) a szemináriumon.

James Boys könyvéről és a szemináriumról szóló összefoglalóm a Stratégiai Tanulmányok Központja blogján jelent meg:

The Madman Theory, the Kissinger-Schelling-Ellsberg Triumvirate, and Harvard University – James Boys at the CSS Research & Policy Seminar

Boldog új évet, atlantisták!

Nemrég interjút adtam a Biztonságpolitika.hu alapító-felelős szerkesztőjének, Németh József Lajosnak a stratégiai kommunikáció szerepéről a nemzetközi kapcsolatokban. Az interjúban részletesen beszélek eddigi diplomáciai és tudományos karrieremről, a kreatív diplomácia általam megalkotott koncepciójáról és annak alkalmazásáról a magyar-amerikai kapcsolatokban. Örömömre szolgált, hogy a meggyőzés/befolyásolás és a haderő nemzetközi kapcsolatokban betöltött szerepének változásáról szólva támaszkodhattam mentoraim, Joseph Nye, Stephen Walt és Richard Rosecrance által fémjelzett elméletekre. Végül pedig beszélek az interjúban arról, mely fő tematika határozta meg eddigi tudományos kutatásaimat és miben állnak jelenlegi, az Egyesült Államok Kína-stratégiájának fejlődéséről végzett kutatásaim.

"Stratégiai kommunikáció; nyilvános diplomácia; kreatív diplomácia" - interjú dr. Fehér Zoltánnal

This past election, once again the perpetual question that inevitably came up was about 'the Jewish vote': which candidate won it -- and why does it even matter? The Democrats consistently brag that they own the Jewish vote, while the Republicans just keep on claiming that they are just on the verge of acquiring it.
This bipartisan fight over the Jewish vote can be traced back to Herbert Hoover.
In their 2012 book "Herbert Hoover and The Jews," Rafael Medoff and Sonja Wentling, propose that the Jewish vote became a thing in the leadup to the 1944 presidential election, when Roosevelt ran for his 4th term, against Thomas Dewey. 
A review of that book notes that in contrast to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was Hoover -- 10 years after he was voted out of office -- who stood up for European Jews. Hoover publicly advocated for the US to open its doors to Jewish refugees and repeatedly spoke out for Jews during the Holocaust years.
The book also reveals that although, at the time, Rabbi Stephen Wise and the Jewish leadership were wary of Republican politicians in general and of Hoover in particular, Republicans such as Hoover himself, Senator Robert Taft and Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce espoused strongly pro-Zionist and pro-rescue planks that were incorporated into the Republican convention’s 1944 platform. Only this threat to their monopoly of the “Jewish vote,” Medoff and Wentling argue, forced FDR and the Democrats to adopt similar planks, which have ever since remained unshakable for both parties. [emphasis added] But why would anyone ever bother with the Jewish vote to begin with? After all, for a voting bloc, there is not a lot to recommend it:

• Jews are about 1.5% of the American population o That percentage is about half of what it was 50 years ago
• And this percentage is continuing to shrink
• As a bloc, it is not even unified -- with religious Jews tending to vote Republican and non-religious voting Democratic
• While the vast majority of Jews support Israel, come election time Israel does not rank as a major issue

So what is the big deal?
In a 2016 video, Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis, listed some of the reasons why politicians vie over the Jewish vote, even despite its small size:

• Despite their small numbers, Jews turn out to vote in high numbers -- according to one estimate, 85% of all eligible Jews vote in presidential elections o Jews historically contribute large amounts of money to political parties -- both Democratic and Republican.
• Jews happen to live in key states that presidential candidates want to carry, such as Florida
• There are indications that the Democratic party is moving away from Israel, which may present an opportunity for Republicans to capture more of the Jewish vote

Four years earlier, in a 2012 article, Shmuel Rosner added another reason why politicians consider  is important, and why the attention to the Jewish vote is out of proportion to its numbers:
One would say it's the influence that Jews have in the media and their solid presence in notable positions. Others would point to their presence in celebrity circles and the arts, while still others would look to the over-representation of Jews in American politics, as advisors, consultants, pollsters, analysts and elected officials.

But you can really just call it the bellwether factor. Jews are seen as major political players because they believe that their vote really counts, because they project self-importance. They might not tip elections, but they appear as if they can.  Going further back to 2010, Pew Research found indications that the perpetual prediction of Republican gains among the Jewish vote might actually be happening: The religious landscape is far more favorable to Republicans than was the case as recently as 2008. Half of white non-Hispanic Catholics (50%) currently identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up nine points since 2008. Among religiously unaffiliated voters, who have been stalwart supporters of Democrats in recent elections, 29% currently identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up from 25% in 2008 (the proportion identifying as Democrats has fallen seven points since then). And 33% of Jewish voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up from 20% in 2008. [emphasis added] In a different article, Rosner finds indications that Jews are not actually trending Republican -- they are trending libertarian, meaning that losses in the Democratic share of the Jewish vote are not necessarily translating straight into Republican gains.
But either way, Democrats cannot take the Jewish vote for granted anymore -- despite what they may say publicly.
In 2006, a Washington Post featured an article Future of Orthodox Jewish Vote Has Implications for GOP, based not only on the conservative views of Orthodox Jews, but also on their higher birth rate.
To which Jill Jacobs, executive director of T'ruah, responded: I’m not quite ready to buy this prediction. After all, who’s to say whether today’s Orthodox babies will grow up voting Republican, Democratic, Green, or Libertarian. (or whether today’s Orthodox babies will stay Orthodox, become Renewal rabbis, or even succumb the Jews for Jesus subway ads) Still, it’s an interesting assumption that Orthodox communities will always produce kids and adults who vote according to Jewish self-interest, narrowly defined. Yeah, and who's to say whether the Democratic party will someday stand idly by as the radical left progressives of their party openly attacked not only Israel but also accuse Israel's supporters of dual loyalty?
Then there is the argument on how to even define, and measure, the Jewish vote.
Yossie Hollander, chairman of the Israeli Institute for Economic Planning, claims Contrary to popular belief, most US Jews support Trump.
His reasoning? No one is counting the Jewish vote correctly because they are overlooking certain components of the American Jewish population:

• Israelis who emigrate to the US and are citizens with voting rights -- estimates of the size of this group range from 600,000 to one million. Pollsters do not know how to reach and measure this group and manage to measure only a very small percentage of it.
• The ultra-Orthodox -- while people talk about them as a political component of the Jewish vote, Hollander writes that because the percentage of their children is relatively higher compared to the average population, the number of eligible voters is not the same ratio as in other populations, and so they end up not being surveyed.
• Immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their children -- there are about 350,000 of them and for a variety of reasons, they are rarely surveyed. 
• The "Southwest Belt" -- Over the past 30 years, there has been massive immigration in US population centers from the north to areas in Orange County California, San Diego County, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Atlanta, and Florida. Jews are part of this migration, and as a result, the Jewish communities there are growing rapidly, mostly in conservative areas. According to Hollander, most polling models still use the old population model. 

That is a criticism of the methodology behind the polls.  Compare that with political consultant Jeff Ballabon, who takes a more sociological approach and compares the Jewish vote with the Irish vote.
Ever notice that no one talks about politicians going after "the Irish vote?" To be statistically meaningful or politically relevant, a characteristic must impact voting behavior. For example, there are almost 35 million Americans of Irish descent, but it’s been decades since presidential campaigns engaged in sustained Irish voter outreach. That’s because it’s long been difficult to distinguish anything sufficiently unique – identifiably Irish - about their political behavior. Most vote precisely as their education, profession, income, and zip code alone would predict. The exceptions tend to be active, practicing Catholics who elevate concerns relevant to their faith...

The use of the term “Jewish” interchangeably to mean both ethnicity (like “Irish”) and faith (like “Catholic”) obfuscates it, but the same phenomenon is true for America’s Jews.  [emphasis added] According to Ballabon, a large segment of American Jews, like Irish Americans, are arguably not uniquely Jewish in their own political behavior: The American Left seethes with enmity towards President Trump and is thoroughly wedded to the Democrats. The vast majority of Jews who follow suit proudly confirm that they do so as progressives with universal concerns; not parochially – not as part of a “Jewish Vote.” Even when they profess concern over antisemitism, it’s glaringly limited to those alleged by progressives to be malefactors. [emphasis added] Whether radical groups put the word "Jewish" in their name or name their group after a popular saying in Pirkei Avot, that often appears to be the full extent of their identification with their fellow Jews.
Meanwhile, as for the latest fight for bragging rights to the Jewish vote, the results of this last presidential election seem to validate that the Jewish vote is no longer limited to being a Democratic cheerleading squad.
While Biden easily got the majority of the Jewish vote -- there are indications that Trump improved his numbers for the Jewish vote, which made it possible to win the state of Florida, where an AP exit poll indicated he received 43% of the Jewish vote compared to 56% for Biden. Nationally, exit polls indicated Trump received the highest percent of the Jewish vote for a Republican in decades (30%), while the Jewish vote for Biden was low for a Democrat (68%).
There are hints that the conservative element of the Jewish vote may finally be coming into its own -- and the same Jewish vote that helped Biden in some states was successfully siphoned off by Trump to win others.
But at what cost is the Jewish vote being split?
Jonathan Tobin writes that Jews in America are among Trump’s fiercest opponents – but also his most fervent supporters: For Jewish liberals, Trump is an ally of antisemites and a proto-authoritarian whose character and conduct, statements mark him as a unique threat to democracy. They can’t understand why even one Jew would consider voting for him.

...It’s not for nothing that the Jewish Democratic Council has produced ads that more or less accuse Trump of being a Nazi and, despite the offensive nature of these analogies, have found them resonating with many liberal Jews. Tobin points out that Jews, like the rest of America, are divided into 2 political cultures which feed off of different circles on social media -- circles that usually don't include the other side. The overwhelming majority of non-Orthodox Jews identify with the social justice agenda of the Democratic Party and think it forms the core of Judaism and place it higher as a priority than support for Israel. On the other hand, Orthodox Jews, and non-Orthodox Jews who identify as politically conservative, see support for Israel as a decisive issue.
At home, the Orthodox and conservative groups don't see Trump’s embrace of nationalism as a threat. Instead, they see it as the best way to defend Jews against the antisemitism of the intersectional left which is assuming a more prominent and vocal role in the Democratic Party. 
Even Jews who are members of the same, educated classes who find Trump so offensive, share the distrust that the working-class has for the mainstream media that made it their mission to defeat him, working together with the liberal social media to censor conservative views and unflattering stories about Democrats. The choice boils down to how much value you place on having a president who may be flawed, but is historically pro-Israel and supportive of a conservative political agenda, as opposed to the cherished hope of Trump opponents: that a moderate liberal like Biden can restore a sense of pre-2016 normalcy, while also keeping in check the Democrats’ radical wing. In comparison with everything we hear about the need to address the divide between American Jews and Israelis, this developing rift within the Jewish community itself, as reflected by the split in the Jewish vote, is being overlooked. 
But it is unlikely to go away.

If Blacks are a minority and Jews are a minority, why is there such tension between them?

One element that caused this friction is the way social interaction between Jews and Blacks was structured in the 1960's.

According to the book "Israel in the Black American Perspective" (1985):
In the Black community Jews were frequently associated with wealth and "parasitism." Under the least propitious circumstances, Blacks usually met Jews as storekeepers and landlords--the most visible representatives of an oppressive economic system. Such meetings were not likely to promote good will and mutual respect. [p4] But if Jewish storekeepers and landlords are such a significant reason for how Blacks viewed Jews, why would that hatred seem to be so focused on Jews?

In a footnote to that paragraph, the book's authors -- Robert G. Weisbord and Richard Kazarian, Jr. -- point out that Jews were not the only storekeepers and landlords that Blacks had contact with:
In some cities, New Orleans and Newark to mention just two, Italian-black relations were acrimonious for similar reasons. Of late, "exploitative" Korean merchants in Harlem have aroused the ire of Afro-Americans, some of whom have responded with "buy Black" campaigns and organized boycotts of the Korean businesses.

And in Detroit, Arab grocers, mostly Iraqui [sic] Christians, have experienced picketing by Blacks who denounced profiteering outsiders. Burning and looting occurred in 1983 following the killing of a Black youth by an Arab storekeeper.

Antagonism to the Arabs in Detroit was rooted in the frustrations Blacks feel when confronted by the more rapid economic progress made by first and second generation immigrants. Black hostility to the Iraquis [sic] in the Motor City is strikingly similar to that directed at the Jews in Gotham and elsewhere. [p6. Text divided into paragraphs for easier reading. Emphasis added] Over the decades, Race Riots were not directed only at Jews:
Similar to the 1943 Detroit Race Riots that devastated the Jewish population, and the 1967 Race Riots that left hundreds of Chaldean [Iraqi Arab Christian] businesses destroyed, Koreans too dealt with a destructive riot in 1992 Los Angeles. The context for the 1992 riots is the reaction to the verdict that cleared the police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King, a year after a Korean store owner shot and killed a 15-year-old Black girl because he thought she was stealing a bottle of orange juice --
The nearly weeklong, widespread rioting killed more than 50 people, injured more than 1,000 people and caused approximately $1 billion in damage, about half of which was sustained by Korean-owned businesses. Long-simmering cultural clashes between immigrant Korean business owners and predominately African-American customers spilled over with the acquittals. [emphasis added] In Chicago, there was friction between Blacks and Arab immigrants too:
Common complaints about stores predominantly owned by Muslims from Palestine, Jordan, and Yemen, are that they only provide low-quality food and don’t take any ownership over their role in the community. “The reality is that Englewood is changing, and if you don’t improve your model, in time you will go out of business,” says Gunn. Yet despite tensions between Blacks and other groups -- tensions that let to riots -- have you ever heard Farrakhan attack minorities other than Jews?

Actually, he did.

In 1995, The Chicago Tribune reported about
comments Farrakhan made Friday during a television interview in which he was quoted as saying Jews, Arabs, Koreans and Vietnamese were "bloodsuckers" who set up businesses in the black community but never gave back to those neighborhoods. Arabs?
Not just any Arabs.

The Buffalo News had the full quote:
In an interview with Reuters Television aped Oct. 4 and made public Friday, Mr. Farrakhan touched on several sensitive subjects that previously outraged Jewish leaders and prompted accusations of anti-Semitism against him.

"When we use the term 'bloodsucker,' it doesn't just apply to some members of the Jewish community. That could apply to any human being who does nothing for another but lays on that human being to suck the value of its life without returning anything," Mr. Farrakhan said in the interview.

"Many of the Jews who owned the homes, the apartments in the black community, we considered them bloodsuckers because they took from our community and built their community but didn't offer anything back to our community.

"And when the Jews left, the Palestinian Arabs came, Koreans came, Vietnamese and other ethnic and racial groups came. And so this is a type and we call them bloodsuckers."[emphasis added] Later, Farrakhan complained about the media for misreporting what he said: "It is unfortunate that the media is taking words that were spoken out of context to create division."

He never did make clear what the proper context for "bloodsuckers" was.

But the next day, Farrakhan did a turnaround, equating the suffering of Black Americans with other minority groups in the US:
In an address at Operation PUSH headquarters, 930 E. 50th St., Farrakhan said African-American men are dehumanized in the United States in the same way Japanese, Germans, Italians and, more recently, Koreans, Vietnamese and people of Middle Eastern descent have been treated in the U.S. during wars involving Americans.
..."We didn't feel their pain because they were considered the enemy," Farrakhan said to the gathering of about 100 people. "Thanks to the media manipulation, we are seen now as the enemy." To understand Farrakhan's turnaround, you need to keep in mind:

• His original comment was on a Friday.
• His "correction" was the next day, on Saturday.
• Two days later, Monday -- was his Million Man March.

Farrakhan's statement standing up for other minorities was a cynical move to avoid bad press for his upcoming Million Man March in Washington.

So why did Farrakhan have it in for Palestinian Arabs?

According to The Encyclopedia of Chicago, Palestinian Arabs started arriving at the end of the 19th century, and many settled in Chicago in particular --
By the early 1970s, they owned nearly 20 percent of all small grocery and liquor stores in Chicago, most located in African American communities, although Chicago's 30,000 Palestinians represented less than 1 percent of the city's population. By the 1990s, Palestinians had maintained this niche, but they also diversified into used-car dealerships, gas stations, auto repair shops, ethnic stores, and fast-food restaurants, remaining, however, primarily a community of small business entrepreneurs serving mostly “minority” communities. According to the 1990 census, more than 45 percent of employed Palestinians in the Chicago area worked in retail trade. The second largest concentration—some 14 percent—were professionals. [emphasis added] As with Jews, Arab Christians, Italians and Asian-Americans, there were Palestinian Arabs, too, who were store owners in Black communities.

This is not to minimize the problem of race relations or deny the validity of alleged discrimination. But the knee-jerk reaction of Farrakhan to accuse such a varied group of immigrants of being 'bloodsuckers' exploiting the Black community reveals more about Farrakhan than it does about the various ethnic groups he attacked.

Maybe that is why Farrakhan ended up focusing his hate on one group alone -- Jews.


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If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!

What is the hardest part of brokering a peace agreement?
-- Sometimes, it's just getting the two sides to sit down in the same room. -- Other times, the problem is getting the two sides just to talk. -- Even then, there is the problem of getting them to negotiate and be willing to make concessions.
And then there is the problem when you just run out of time.
Following the Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt and Syria were nearly victorious, a unique possibility for peace between Israel and Egypt presented itself. Nixon's airlift of crucial arms during the war was critical to Israel's victory -- and created an opportunity.
Richard Nixon. Public domain



Seeking to take advantage of this opportunity, in June 1974, Nixon became the first US president to visit Israel while in office.
As Rabin explained in a press conference after Nixon returned to the US: "Ever since the airlift of the Yom Kippur War, the Arabs have come to understand that America will not allow Israel to be weakened. A defeat of Israel is a victory for the USSR. Paradoxically, this is what has raised America's prestige in the Arab world, and has given Washington leverage. Today in the Middle East, Moscow is a synonym for instability and war, Washington for stability and negotiation." (Yehuda Avner, The Prime Ministers, p. 270)
Yitzhak Rabin. Public domain



This leverage as an honest broker would make it possible for the US to go beyond being a supporter of Israel's interests, and show that it was a strong and reliable ally to address the interests of the Arab world as well.
Meanwhile, Nixon began discussing with Egypt's Sadat the possibility of a final settlement, going step-by-step. On June 25, Nixon wrote to Sadat: Mr. President, I am convinced that we have witnessed in recent months a turning point in the history of the Middle East -- a turning toward an honorable, just, and endurinable peace -- and have ushered in a new era in U.S.-Arab relations. A direction has been set, and it is my firm intention to stay on the course we have chartered. (p. 271) Two months later, Nixon resigned.
The following month, Rabin was meeting with President Ford -- and Kissinger -- to continue what Nixon had started. The following year, in March, Kissinger came to the Middle East to conduct his "shuttle diplomacy," bouncing back and forth between Israel and Egypt. Kissinger pressured Rabin on a withdrawal from the Sinai, especially from the Mitla and Gidi passes, while Rabin wanted Sadat to commit himself to a "termination of the state of belligerency" with Israel.
Kissinger's efforts failed -- and he blamed Israel.
In the end, however, another attempt was made, culminating in an interim agreement known as Sinai II.
Just to get an idea of what Rabin was up against, here is an excerpt from the notes of a conversation between Sadat and Foreign Minister Fahmi with Ford and Kissinger. The context is the early warning stations in the Sinai that Rabin wanted to retain -- and Sadat's idea of a compromise, where they would be manned by US troops. Note the highlighted portions.




The term "honest broker" is overrated.
In any event, Rabin too ended up resigning because of the 'scandal' surrounding his wife, who had retained a bank account from the years when Rabin was Israel's ambassador to the US from 1968 to 1973. After that, the Israeli law forbidding citizens from holding bank accounts abroad came into play. However, another law prevented Rabin from resigning outright once the date for the next elections has been set. Instead, Rabin withdrew from the race as leader of the Labor Party, to be replaced from Shimon Peres to face Menachem Begin.
Begin became prime minister -- and it was during his term that a peace treaty with Egypt was signed. 
Rabin felt his role in making that peace treaty possible was never acknowledged, but at the same time he understood that was the way of things.
In his memoirs, Rabin wrote: When President Sadat made his historic visit to Jerusalem on 19 November 1977 I was no longer prime minister. Yet that visit -- and the subsequent moves toward achieving a peace treaty -- could never have come about were it not for the course my government adopted in signing the 1975 interim agreement. That our policy provoked the anger of Likud has not prevented Mr. Begin's government from reaping the fruits of our labors. Of course, that is how things should be, since the quest for peace is not a contest between political parties...The 1975 agreement with Egypt was never meant to be an end in itself. As its title implies, it was designed to advance the momentum toward peace, and in that sense it achieved its purpose. [emphasis added] (quoted in The Prime Ministers, p.302) Begin benefited from the foundation set by Nixon and the groundwork laid by Rabin, both of whom left their work unfinished. 
But that was not the last we heard from Rabin.
After serving as prime minister from 1974 to 1977, Rabin became prime minister again in 1992. And he was still focused on peace. In 1994, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in the Oslo Accords, along with Shimon Peres and Arafat. Rabin also signed a peace treaty with Jordan that same year.
In late 1995, Rabin described to Yehuda Avner his view of the Middle East, a description that 25 years later sounds familiar: Number one: Israel is surrounded by two concentric circles. The inner circle is comprised of our immediate neighbors—Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, and, by extension, Saudi Arabia. The outer circle comprises their neighbors—Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen and Libya. Virtually all of them are rogue states, and some are going nuclear.

Number two, Iranian-inspired Islamic fundamentalism constitutes a threat to the inner circle no less than it does to Israel. Islamic fundamentalism is striving to destabilize the Gulf Emirates, has already created havoc in Syria, leaving twenty thousand dead, in Algeria, leaving one hundred thousand dead, in Egypt, leaving twenty-two thousand dead, in Jordan, leaving eight thousand dead, in the Horn of Africa—the Sudan and Somalia—leaving fourteen thousand dead, and in Yemen, leaving twelve thousand dead. And now it is gaining influence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Iran is the banker, pouring millions into the West Bank and Gaza in the form of social welfare and health and education programs, so that it can win the hearts of the population and feed religious fanaticism.

Thus, a confluence of interest has arisen between Israel and the inner circle, whose long-term strategic interest is the same as ours: to lessen the destabilizing consequences from the outer circle. At the end of the day, the inner circle recognizes they have less to fear from Israel than from their Muslim neighbors, not least from radicalized Islamic powers going nuclear.

Number three: the Arab-Israeli conflict was always considered to be a political one: a conflict between Arabs and Israelis. The fundamentalists are doing their level best to turn it into a religious conflict—Muslim against Jew, Islam against Judaism. And while a political conflict is possible to solve through negotiation and compromise, there are no solutions to a theological conflict. Then it is jihad—religious war: their God against our God. Were they to win, our conflict would go from war to war, and from stalemate to stalemate. [emphasis added] (p. 707) The context for this description of the Middle East is Rabin's response to Avner's question as to why he shook Arafat's hand at the signing of the Oslo Accords: He and his PLO represent the last vestige of secular Palestinian nationalism. We have nobody else to deal with. It is either the PLO or nothing. It is a long shot for a possible settlement, or the certainty of no settlement at all at a time when the radicals are going nuclear. With the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism, negotiating with secular Palestinian Arabs made sense to Rabin.
Neither he -- nor then-President Clinton -- saw the potential in negotiating and working with other Arab states within those concentric circles. There's no reason they would, when all the contemporary thinking was focused on the Palestinian Arabs as a key to peace, a cold peace in line with the peace treaties signed with Egypt and Jordan with no thought of normalization. According to that thinking, it is either the Palestinian Arabs or nothing.
The Middle East achievements of the Trump administration this year took Rabin's outline and acted on it.
What Rabin might have further accomplished, we will never know. He was stopped again, this time by a bullet, from pursuing peace.
But like Nixon and Rabin, Trump too will not be pursuing his vision for peace to its full extent.

We are now in a day where there is an app for everything, our lives are pretty much run by small program applications from everything from deciding what to eat for tonight’s dinner to personal banking.

So what are the best apps out there? Well, I can’t answer that as there are so many but I can give you an overview of the apps I use, why I use them and where to get them.

1. Adium (Mac)
This is a one-stop shop for Instant Messaging on the Mac. You can organise hundreds of contacts within one main window which allows for organisation and structuring. What I like about this program is you can connect different types of chat accounts in one place; I currently use MSN, Google Talk, MobileMe and Facebook but there are 18 different options to choose from so it gives massive amounts of flexibility! The only thing it lacks for me is the use of video chat. Chuck that in and this would be a massive winner!

You can download Adium for free from www.adium.com

2. Checkpoint Widget 2.2 (Mac)
This widget allows you to compare the brightness and colour differences thus checking “Checkpoint 2.2” of the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0”. You can check the colours either by using hex references or RGB values.

This I feel is really useful and convenient when designing for screen and can be downloaded for free from the www.dirkeinecke.de.

3. Crypt3 (Mac)
This program allows you to easily encrypt files and folders so sensitive material doesn’t get ‘accidentally read’. It’s really handy if more than one person uses your machine or you save material externally to a hard drive or server with shared access.

You can download this for free from here

4. Cyberduck (Mac)
This is a basic FTP client which I tend to use for general uploading and downloading of files, it allows for bookmarking and the storing of passwords in your keychains.

This is available to download for free from www.cyberduck.com

5. Echofone (iPhone App)
This is a basic Twitter app for the iPhone that I use, it’s probably for more of a ‘social user’ such as myself as it probably doesn’t allow for the functionality of other Twitter apps, but I like it. It’s fast, allows for push notification and multiple accounts. You can also download it as a Firefox browser plugin, which I use. This places a tiny Twitter icon in the bottom right hand corner of the browser window which when clicked shows you a quick insight into the world of your twitter contacts. This is great for quickly sharing links and thoughts without having to log in to the Twitter main page, again this saves you a little time but it’s worth it!

This can be downloaded for free from www.echofon.com/

6. iCal, Address Book and Mail (Mac)
For me this is a bundled package that comes with every Apple Machine and its awesome! We use it throughout the Creativitea Studio and are all synched in together; we share contact lists, calendars and to do lists, etc, on all our machines and iPhones and find that the programs work seamlessly together as if they were one. Without this we would be completely lost and its already included!

To find out more visit Apple’s website.

7. IE Tester (PC)
The bane of every web developer’s life is cross browser testing (and IE6 support). With this program, which is free to download for the PC, you can look at your websites side by side throughout IE versions, ensuring the sites work and are looking great! There is a debug bar which is also available to download for free which allows you to look at any snagging you may have to do along the way.

You can download this for free from www.my-debugbar.com/

8. iPlotz (Air Desktop Application and Online)
iPlotz is essentially a wire framing and sitemap generating application that can be used as an online tool or as a desktop application run through Air. What I like about this program is it is so fast to put complex page structures together and elements in place. You can quickly link up all the main pages of your websites and share it as a preview URL so you and your clients can experience the new website in wire frame format. Building the pages couldn’t be simpler; you have the option of drawing out websites using a complex number of web elements, from forms, tabs and media placements. This program has it all!

iPlotz is available from a limited free account or from $15 a month subscription, visit their website at www.iplotz.com

9. Lorum Ipsum Generator Widget (Mac)
This is basically a widget that generates dummy copy to be used within your designs. You can choose from a selection of preset options; paragraphs, lists, sentences, titles and single words. You also have the custom length option, say 200 characters for instance. This simply copies the text to your clipboard to paste into place.

You can download this for free from the Apple website.

10. Navicat Lite (Mac and PC)
I haven’t really had much to do with this program, however I can see massive potential with it and have found it quite useful so far. It is basically an online database administration tool, which is built for simplifying database management. If your familiar with FTP clients, etc, you’ll find the GUI intuitive, secure and easy to use. So far I have only used it for testing my SQL connections so I haven’t fully explored the program but I will be looking into it in the near future.

Check it out at www.navicat.com. The lite version is free but for more advanced usage you can upgrade for a small fee.

So like I say, there are thousands of apps out there just destined to help us all out with our day to day lives-I can’t mention them all! If you have a recommendation, let us know and we’ll check it out.

The post Old favourites still ring true for apps appeared first on The Kings of War.

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a reporter asked Golda Meir about African leaders that were cutting off diplomatic ties with Israel under Arab pressure. The reporter claimed this proved that Israel's African policy and the aid given was a waste of time. Golda Meir disagreed:
Because what I did for Africa was not just a policy of enlightened self-interest. I did it for the benefit of the African peoples, and deep in their hearts they know this to be true. It was an expression of my deepest historic instincts as a Jew, and a demonstration of my most profound and cherished values as a Labor Zionist. [The Prime Ministers, by Yehuda Avner, p. 236] Golda Meir was not the first Zionist to speak about helping Africa.

Herzl's novel, Altneuland, describes his vision of what Jewish Palestine would look like. At one point, one of the characters declares:
There is still one problem of racial misfortune unsolved. The depths of that problem, in all their horror, only a Jew can fathom. I mean the negro problem. Don't laugh, Mr. Kingscourt. Think of the hair-raising horrors of the slave trade. Human beings, because their skins are black, are stolen, carried off, and sold. Their descendants grow up in alien surroundings despised and hated because their skin is differently pigmented. I am not ashamed to say, though I be thought ridiculous, now that I have lived to see the restoration of the Jews, I should like to pave the way for the restoration of the Negroes. [Translated from the German by Dr. D. S. Blondheim, Federation of American Zionists, 1916, available online] Herzl's desire for Blacks to be restored to their homeland was mutual.

In fact, Black support for the Jewish State predates Herzl.

In their book, Israel in the Black American Perspective, Robert G. Weisbord and Richard Kazarian start with a chapter on early Black support for the Zionist idea.

As early as the post-Civil War era, when Blacks were still too focused on their survival and that of their families to concern themselves with foreign affairs, there were still a few Black intellectuals and leaders who kept abreast of events overseas.

Some saw parallels between their own situation and that of the Jews -- and others saw Zionism and the return to the Jewish homeland as the paradigm for the transplanted Africans in the US.

Here is a summary of what the book describes about some of those leaders --

Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) Blyden was born in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, which had a significant Jewish population, and later immigrated to West Africa in 1851. He was an editor, a prolific writer of books and pamphlets, a linguist, a professor of classics, secretary of state of the newly established republic of Liberia, Liberian ambassador to Great Britain and president of Liberia College.

Edward Wilmot Blyden. Public Domain
As he describes in his book, The Jewish Question, while traveling in the Middle East in 1866, Blyden wanted to travel to "the original home of the Jews--to see Jerusalem and Mt. Zion, the joy of the whole earth." While in Jerusalem he went to the Western Wall.

Keep in mind that Theodor Herzl wasn't even born until 1860. Instead, this was the time of 'proto-Zionists' like Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, who wrote Derishat Ziyon (Seeking Zion), and Moses Hess, who wrote Rome and Jerusalem -- both published in 1862.

Weisbrod and Kazarian write:
In point of fact, Blyden in the 1860's and 1870's was much more of a Zionist than most Jews. He advocated Jewish settlement in Palestine, a phenomenon which, in his judgment would not have an adverse effect on the Arabs. Blyden reproved the sons of Abraham for remaining in the Diaspora and for not migrating to their ancient homeland, which the Ottoman Turks were misgoverning. Towards the end of the 19th century, with the resurgence of antisemitism in Russia, France and Germany, that political Zionism came into its own with Herzl and his publication of The Jewish State in 1896. The First Zionist Congress followed in 1897.

Blyden's booklet, The Jewish Question, was published the following year:
Blyden was familiar with Herzl's Jewish State and predicted that it propounded ideas which "have given such an impetus to the real work of the Jews as will tell with enormous effect upon their future history." Blyden also commented on the powerful influence of the "tidal wave from Vienna--that inspiration almost Mosaic in its originality and in its tendency, which drew crowds of Israelites to Basle in August 1897...and again in 1898." However, Blyden also thought that if the timing was not right, the Jewish State could be established elsewhere as well. He felt that because of the shared suffering of Jews and African Americans, they were specially qualified to be spiritual leaders in the world.

So he invited Jews to come to Africa --
Africa appeals to the Jew... to come with his scientific and other culture, gathered by his exile in many lands, and with his special spiritual endowments. As it turned out, when the British offered Herzl land in Africa in 1903 for a state, that invitation was nearly accepted.

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) Booker T. Washington was such a celebrity during the latter part of his life that he was invited to have dinner with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House and to have tea with Queen Victoria.

He was born into slavery, but despite the hardships, he taught himself the alphabet, got an education and went on to found the Tuskegee Institute, which he headed for 35 years.

Booker T. Washington. public domain
From his childhood, Washington had an interest in Jews, based on his familiarity of Bible stories -- and drew parallels between the histories of Blacks and Jews. In a speech he delivered in 1905, Washington said: In Russia there are one-half as many Jews as there are Negroes in this country and yet I feel sure that within a month more Jews have been persecuted and killed than the whole number of our people who have been lynched during the past forty years. While Washington believed in thrift and hard work as key to Black equality, he also thought that progress could be achieved through racial solidarity -- just as it had helped Jews: There is, perhaps, no race that has suffered so much, not so much in America as in some of the countries in Europe. But these people have clung together. They have had a certain amount of unity, pride and love of race. Washington predicted success for Jews in the US, "a country where they were once despised and looked upon with scorn and derision" -- success that was achieved largely through dedication to education and enabled them to gain positions of power and preeminence.
He did not share the back-to-Africanism of Blyden, and did not see it as a solution to Black problems in the South. Similarly, while he was a friend of the Jews, Washington didn't see a Jewish State as much of a solution for Jews either. When asked if there was anything among Blacks that compared to the Zionist movement, Washington responded: I think it is with the African pretty much as it is with the Jews, there is a good deal of talk about it, but nothing is done, there is certainly no sign of an exodus to Liberia. Based on the lesser interest in Zionism in the US at the time, it is no wonder Washington was skeptical.
W.E.B Du Bois 1868-1963 Du Bois championed the cause of racial justice -- and of Zionism as well. He was born in Massachusetts and was educated at Fisk University in Nashville, at the University of Berlin and received a Ph.D from Harvard. He wrote historical treatises, sociological studies and essays on the important issues of the day. Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP.
He saw potential in the Balfour Declaration for a similar solution for Blacks. With the defeat of Germany in WWI,  his dream was an independent free central African state carved out of German East Africa and the Belgian Congo.
It didn't happen.

W.E.B Du Bois Public Domain

He believed that such an African state would have a mutually beneficial relationship with Blacks around the world, similar to the Zionist view of a Jewish state.  In 1919, Du Bois wrote an article in the NAACP magazine Crisis that The African movement means to us what the Zionist movement must mean to the Jews, the centralization of race effort and the recognition of a racial fount. To help bear the burden of Africa does not mean any lessening of effort in our problems at home. Rather it means increased interest. For an ebullition of action and feeling that results in an amelioration of the lot of Africa tends to ameliorate the conditions of colored peoples throughout the world. And no man liveth unto himself. Du Bois started a monthly magazine for Afro-African children around 1919 called The Brownie's Book. In it, he wrote about Zionism.

• In the first issue, he told his readers about the new Jewish state planned "'round about Jerusalem"
• Eight months later, he told them that a "great Zionist congress of the Jews is meeting in London"
• He also noted proposals to "tax the Jews all over the world for the support of the new Jewish government in Palestine"
• In January 1921, he wrote about the finished blueprints for a Hebrew university on the biblical Mount of Olives in Jerusalem o In 1929, he wrote about the "murder of Jews by Arabs in Palestine."

In 1948, Du Bois published "A Case for the Jews." In it, he described Zionism as a question of young and forward thinking Jews, bringing a new civilization into an old land and building up that land out of the ignorance, disease and poverty into which it had fallen, and by democratic methods to build a new and peculiarly fateful modern state. In June 26, 1948 the NAACP adopted a resolution that The valiant struggle of the people of Israel for independence serves as an inspiration to all persecuted people throughout the world. We havil the establishment of the new State of Israel and welcome it into the family of nations.'  Marcus Garvey 1887-1940 Born in Jamaica, Garvey was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). He wrote that Africa needed to be transformed into a  Negro Empire where every Black man, whether he was born in Africa or in the Western world, will have the opportunity to develop on his own lines under the protection of the most favorable democratic institutions. His wife described his vision in a way similar to the Zionist goal of a Jewish state: Garvey saw Africa as a nation to which the African peoples of the world could look for help and support, moral and physical when ill-treated or abused for being black.
Marcus Garvey. Public Domain


In 1920, Garvey told a UNIA meeting that after WWI,  A new spirit, a new courage, has come to us simultaneously as it came to other peoples of the world. It came to us at the same time it came to the Jew. When the Jew said 'We shall have Palestine!' the same sentiment came to us when we said' We shall have Africa!' At the same time, the Jewish press was aware of what Garvey was doing and also saw the parallels between his pan-Africanism and Zionism. In the book, African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century, edited by V. P. Franklin, Hasia Diner notes in "Drawn Together By Self-Interest" that the Yiddish Press used the idioms of Jewish history to describe Marcus Garvey:


But Garvey was a complex -- and even contradictory -- figure when it came to Jews. There were statements he made that were antisemitic and when British Prime Minister Neville suggested in 1939 settling Jewish refugees in British Guiana, Garvey lashed out, claiming that British Guiana was a "Negro country" and criticized Zionism.
Walter White 1893-1955 In 1947, the UN voted on the partition of then-Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. It was an opportunity to finally create a Jewish state -- but a two-thirds majority was necessary to make it happen.
Enter Walter White.

Walter White. Public Domain
Zionists approached White, urging him to persuade two Black nations, Haiti and Liberia, to reverse their announced opposition to partition and to vote for it instead.
He was opposed to the idea of 'segregating' Jews from Arabs and resented the pressure Zionists put on him. Nevertheless, according to his autobiography, he helped "because Palestine seemed the only haven anywhere in the world for nearly one million Jews of Europe."
When the votes were cast, Liberia, Haiti and the Philippines all voted for partition -- and those votes were critical in achieving the 33 to 13 vote for partition.
Black leaders like these make for a sharp contrast to the likes of Sharpton and Farrakhan.



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