The Muslim-Jewish Dialogue (MJD) has organized a reception for non-Arab Ajmi Muslims at Baycrest, the Jewish community’s leading edge gerontology and geriatric facility in Toronto, in recognition of May’s Jewish History Month in Ontario.

Tariq Khan, on behalf of Muslim guests, said, “Muslims and Jews are cousins. and I am very glad today we are jointly marking the Jewish Heritage Month. Islam and Judaism share a common origin through Prophet Abraham and thus, both are considered Abrahamic religions. One of the common teachings in both religions is to serve humanity selflessly.”

He maintained that throughout Muslim history, “whether in Khilafat-e-Rashida (The Pious Caliphate), Umayyad Dynasty, Abbasid Empire, Muslim Spain or Ottoman Era, there is no record of any religion based armed conflict found between the two. Muslims and Jews lived in relative peace with one another all over the world, and Muslim Spain is still considered as the Golden Era for Jews.”

“The Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with religion, and it was initiated by communist Arab rulers,” according to Khan. “Instead of welcoming the Jewish people who came back to their holy land which was lost 2,000 years ago and joining hands with them to serve humanity together, so-called Arab nationalist rulers invaded the modern state of Israel.

“To get sympathies and support of Muslims living all over the world, the communist rulers of the Arab world, shamelessly converted their adventurism into a religious battle between the two faith communities. No doubt, God is kind and never supports unjust; they were defeated. Now, it is time for Muslims to understand the facts, recognize the reality and work together with their Jewish cousins to make this planet hate-free and a wonderful place for everyone,” concluded Khan, who is editor of Weekly Press Pakistan.

Mark Adler, local member of Parliament for the Government of Canada and who is involved in the Jewish community, offered full assistance to the group to expand good relations between the two religious communities.

The Muslim and Jewish guests toured the current display in a museum on the main floor of the Baycrest. The exhibition features sacred and secular head gear from all over the world, worn by Jews and non-Jews.

This article was written by Andrea Spindel for the Tazpit News Agency.

Iran is ending it s first contingent of approximately 4,000 Hezbollah terrorist organization fighters, all of them Shi’ite Muslims, to fight with the Assad regime days after the Obama administration announced it will arm rebels, mainly Sunni Muslims who have been aided by the Sunni Muslim Al Qaeda’s proxy, Al Nusra.

American arms to rebels in Syrians have to pass through Jordan or Turkey. Add to this anti-Syrian and anti-Iran alliance the Sunni kingdom in Saudi Arabia, which would like nothing more to see the Iranian regime collapse, along with its threat to build a nuclear bomb and its ambition to dominate a pan-Islam state throughout the Middle East.

Ditto for the Gulf States.

Iran has thrown down the gauntlet by its sending Hezbollah troops to help Syrian President Bashar Assad. Both countries are dependent on each other.

A victory by Assad is unthinkable. It would totally destroy American’s image of a world power.

If the rebels can overcome Hezbollah and Assad’s army, Iran would be severely weakened, if not decimated.

Until then, Israel faces increasing instability in Lebanon, dominated by pro-Syrian and Hezbollah, and in Syria.

The Obama administration’s decision to take sides  in the Syrian Civil War sucks up Jordan and Turkey as totally dependent on success for the United States, and Israel can only pray that the instability does not turn the Golan Heights into an active war zone.

Once the Al Qaeda-linked terrorists get their hands on weapons, they always can be turned on Israel in the future, the exact same threat that Israel faces against Hezbollah.

Everyone is turning against everyone, and the best outcome for Israel in the Sunni-Shi’ite war is that both sides lose.

The United States also might wish for the same. It is backing the Sunni Muslims, whose terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks.

The Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt has broken off with Syria. Hamas, headquartered in Syrian only two years ago, now is accused by Assad as training rebels to attack his regime with Kassam rockets.

One interesting sidebar to this proxy war is the Palestinian Authority.  Does anyone remember  that the PA-Israeli issue is supposed to be the heart of all of the problems in the Middle East?

Good American Muslim citizens in Boston have been shocked to find material in local mosques backed by the Muslim Brotherhood movement and calling for jihad against the United States.

Boston has been eyeballed by anti-jihad monitors since the Boston Massacre in April, carried out by Islamic terrorists Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. They were not known to be part of the Muslim Brotherhood, but they attended mosques that preach radical Islam.

“The fact is that these fellows attended, blocks from their house, a radical mosque that has been the center of controversy in Boston for 10 years,” according to CBN (Christian Broadcast Network), quoting  Charles Jacobs, who heads Americans for Peace and Tolerance. The organization monitors local Islamic radicals.

Referring to the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Jacobs said, “The founder of that mosque, blocks from where the Tsarnaevs lived and where they prayed, was Abdulrahman Alamoudi.. He is the model of deception in American-Muslim history…

“He…convinced President Clinton and also President George W. Bush that he was precisely the kind of moderate Muslim leader that America was looking for,” Jacobs said. “In fact, he deceived everyone. He’s now in jail for 23 years for giving money, for funding al Qaeda.

Other worshippers at the Cambridge mosque have included an al Qaeda member convicted of plotting attacks on New York City and a man sentenced to 17 years in prison for planning a shooting spree on a Boston-area shopping mall.

One former trustee of the mosque is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader and terrorist supporter who’s banned from entering the United States.

The explosive material found in the mosque is not new.

One moderate Muslim leader who visited the mosque 10 years ago told CBN. “We go upstairs and I find the library and it’s full of flyers, full of newsletters in Arabic,” Dr. Ahmed Mansour of the International Quranic Institute said. “And they call for jihad against America and against the Jews and against the Christians.”

The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States hides under the name Muslim American Society (MAS), which the Muslim Brotherhood founded in 1993. and which federal prosecutors have called “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”

MAS opened up another mosque four years the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury and goes by the lovely-sounding name of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.

It cost $15,5 million to build. Getting money was no problem. More than half of it reportedly came from Saudi Arabia, the country whose terrorists pulled off the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Both mosques are run by the same leadership and have the same ideology, according to Jacobs.

Massachusetts politicians endorsed the Roxbury mosque although two months earlier, the mosque’s cleric incited Muslims who had been arrested for terrorism.

“Grab onto the typewriter, grab onto the shovel, grab onto the gun and the sword,” Imam Abdullah Farooq told his listeners.

The current imam of the mosque was supposed to attend an event in memory of the victims of the Boston Marathon terror attack, but the governor, the same man who endorsed the Roxbury mosque in 2009, told him he could stay home. The imam, William Suhaib Webb, has been called by many to be a moderate Muslim leader.

But many in his mosque are not happy with his moderation.

When Webb spoke favorably about President Barack Obama, Muslims complained on line, charging the Obama is a “war criminal.”

Webb also said he could nit publicly pray over the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon terrorist who was killed in a shootout. Tweet responses scolded him..

However, the situation in Boston and other American cities is approaching that of most European countries where radical Muslims have gained a foothold in their communities to the point that leaders are charged with racism if they oppose them.

“If you question them, even if you question them, you’re a racist, Islamophobic bigot,” Jacobs said.

Samantha Power, President Obama’s nominee to replace Susan Rice as Ambassador to the United Nations, “cares deeply” about Israel’s security needs, Israeli ambassador to Washington Michael Oren recently told The New York Times.

“Samantha Power and I have worked closely over the last four years on issues vital to Israel’s security,” he said. “She thoroughly understands those issues and cares deeply about them.”

Oren is as much a politician as he is a diplomat. He admitted he usually does not comment on presidential nominees until they are confirmed by the Senate.

So why did he have to go out of his way and tell The New York Times, Obama’s unofficial press agent, that Power is such a great fan of Israel, where 11 years ago she advocated calling for US troops to act as policemen?

Oren saw the need to defend the President and score points if she is confirmed by the Senate, even though the nomination of Power has left many Jewish groups and leaders on different sides of the fence.

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) did not surprise anyone by strongly opposing her nomination, while the Conservative Jewish movement came out in favor of her, as did the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The American Jewish Committee had no comment, and B’nai Brith said it was withholding approval of Power’s nomination until she addressed her earlier remarks under oath during Senate confirmation hearings.

“Israel has few real friends at the United Nations and at the top of the list is the United States, and it is really incumbent on the representative to be prepared, willing and able to rebuff and repel that kind of language,” said the group’s executive vice president, Daniel Mariaschin.

Power’s supporters have pointed out that she was on the front lines to work against anti-Israel resolutions in the United Nations, particularly the Palestinian Authority attempt to win United Nations Security Council approval for becoming a full-fledged member of the United Nations. The Obama administration threatened to cast a veto, which in the end was not necessary because the PA was lacking one vote to win the necessary two-thirds approval for the motion to move to the floor of the General Assembly.

Power may “deeply care” about Israel. Every US political leader is “Pro-Israel” because every one of them knows what is good for Israel, much better than the dumb Israelis. The American government also knows what is good for Iraq, Egypt, Syria and almost every other place in the universe, including the moon.

Being “pro-Israel” is not a condition to be the American Ambassador to the United Nations. First and foremost, the Ambassador must be pro-United States.

But that is like being pro-Israel. Every one has his or her own meaning of what is good for America.

Samantha Power obviously thinks Obama is good for America, as did most of the electorate. She was one of his strongest supporters even before anyone heard of his becoming a presidential candidate in 2008.

She also thinks “engaging enemies’ is good for the United States. It is the “engagement” policy that helped bring then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to declare, two months after the beginning of the Arab Spring protests in Syria, that Assad is a “reformer.”

By the way, it was the same Clinton, when she campaigned against Obama for the Democratic party’s nomination for its presidential candidate, whom Power called a “monster.”

Power also has mouthed off at people whom she thinks are violating human rights.

She once not only called Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon violators of human rights, she also put them on the same level in her declaration against “Sharafat.”

When Power hears of human rights violations, she goes bonkers and always assumes the “other side” is to blame. That is why she backed the Muslims against the Buddhists in Burma.

The Canada Free Press wrote, “In her 2004 review of a book by the radical leftist Noam Chomsky, Ms. Power agreed with many of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and expressed her own concerns about what she called the ‘sins of our allies in the war on terror,’ lumping Israel with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia, and Uzbekistan.

In 2007, she stated, the American government’s relationship with Israel “has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics….”

After the vicious murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by Muslim terrorists several weeks ago, there were several instances of vandalism against mosques, as well as a few small demonstrations organized by the English Defense League, which were met with opposition from “anti-fascist” protesters. But the predicted “wave of anti-Muslim sentiment” did not materialize.

Gordon Ross relates British reactions to another perceived ‘outrage’, one that happened in 1947.

By Gordon Ross

There can be no comparison between the 1947 anti-Jewish riots in the UK and the very recent 2013 anti-Muslim demonstrations.

In August 1947, consequent upon retaliatory actions taken by Jewish militants of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (so-called “terrorists”) against the occupying British mandatory authorities in the land of Israel, there was a serious backlash from sections of the indigenous UK population against Jews in the UK in anti-Jewish riots which were at their worst in Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. Synagogues, Jewish shops, centres and individuals were attacked, and demonstrators called for violence against Jews. There wasn’t any significant protest against the riots from outside the UK Jewish community.

Daniel Trilling described them thus:

In Birkenhead, near Liverpool, slaughterhouse workers had refused to process any more meat for Jewish consumption until the attacks on British soldiers in Palestine stopped. Around Merseyside, the anger was starting to spill on to the streets as crowds of angry young men gathered in Jewish areas.

On Sunday afternoon the trouble reached Manchester. Small groups of men began breaking the windows of shops in Cheetham Hill, an area just north of the city centre which had been home to a Jewish community since the early 19th century. The pubs closed early that day because there was a shortage of beer, and by the evening the mob’s numbers had swelled to several hundred. Most were on foot but others drove through the area, throwing bricks from moving cars.

Soon the streets were covered in broken glass and stones and the crowd moved on to bigger targets, tearing down the canopy of the Great Synagogue on Cheetham Hill Road and surrounding a Jewish wedding party at the Assembly Hall. They shouted abuse at the terrified guests until one in the morning.

The next day, Lever said, “Cheetham Hill Road looked much as it had looked seven years before, when the German bombers had pounded the city for  12 hours. All premises belonging to Jews for the length of a mile down the street had gaping windows and the pavements were littered with glass.”

By the end of the bank holiday weekend, anti-Jewish riots had also taken place in Glasgow and Liverpool. There were minor disturbances, too, in Bristol, Hull, London and Warrington, as well as scores of attacks on Jewish property across the country. A solicitor in Liverpool and a Glasgow shopkeeper were beaten up. Nobody was killed, but this was the most widespread anti-Jewish violence the UK had ever seen. In Salford, the day after a crowd of several thousand had thrown stones at shop windows, signs appeared that read: “Hold your fire. These premises are British.”

There were no Jewish clerics in the UK preaching hatred, incitement to violence, murder and treason from the pulpit, no young UK born ‘disaffected’ Jews demonstrating against the UK and burning its national flag in the streets, setting explosives here or travelling to the Middle East to join or train with the militants there, as has been the case in recent years with a number of Imams and other UK born Muslims.

In 2005 there were the 7/7 London Islamist bomb outrages, resulting in many dead and injured.  Since then there has been an ongoing Islamist terror campaign, with Islamist demonstrators calling for violence against and murder of non-Muslims, and a continuing barrage of complaints and demands issuing from the Muslim community, including the demand for the introduction of shariah law!  In 2010, a Muslim woman was put on trial for the attempted murder of an MP.  She stabbed him in the stomach because he had supported the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.  She would not plead against the charge because she refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the court, and a plea of ‘Not Guilty’ was accordingly entered by the court on her behalf.  Fortunately the jury found her ‘Guilty’. In May this year, Islamist extremists murdered a British soldier on the streets of Woolwich, London, in full view of passers-by.

This latest Islamist outrage has provoked some anti-Muslim demonstrations and attacks, which the authorities here and other appeasers have been quick to condemn, but nothing that can in any way be compared with the anti-Jewish riots of 1947, and there were no significant demonstrations or protests from any section of the ‘indigenous’ UK population against the earlier Islamist extremist attacks and demands.

The only demonstrations staged here before were in support of Islamist terrorist groups like Hezbollah (in August 2006: “We are all Hezbollah now”) and Hamas, and those against the Jewish nation-state of Israel when it dared to defend itself against enemies dedicated to its destruction and the destruction of all Jews everywhere. Such demonstrations have often been led by prominent public and political figures such as former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone (whose inclination is to welcome and embrace known extremist Islamic cleric hate-mongers), gorgeous George Galloway (of ‘Big Brother’ fame) and senile radical left-winger, Tony Benn (complete with Arab keffiyah around his scrawny neck), and have persuaded some people in the UK to the view that ‘Britistan’ is truly on the way!

© Gordon Ross 2013

Gordon Ross is a non-practising (retired) solicitor, currently living in north London.  After practising law in London for almost 30 years, both in employment and on his own account, he immigrated to Israel in 1983 and re-qualified as an attorney at the Israel Bar.  In 1987 he returned to London, solely in order to take up employment as an in-house lawyer in commerce, which position he held until retirement towards the end of 2008.

He is keenly interested in history, both ancient and modern, and in international politics, particularly where Israel and the Middle East are concerned.

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With SodaStream, we could have saved 500 million bottles on Game Day alone. If you love the bubbles set them free.”

PepsiCo is negotiating with Israeli-based SodaStream to buy out the firm for $2 billion, according to the Israeli Calcalist business newspaper. SodaStream’s shares in Germany shot up nearly 20 percent after the report.

SodaStream, listed on NASDAQ, manufactures machines that make carbonated drinks from tap water and also produces flavors, carbon dioxide refills and re-usable bottles.

Officials at the two companies refused to comment on the report or were not available.

SodaStream has become a big hit in the United States, where the company “stole the show” with its commercials during the Super Bowl this year, drawing bitter complaints from carbonated beverage companies, which applied pressure to CBS for SodaStream to tone down its message  that buying carbonated beverages in plastic bottles is bad for the environment. Pepsi and Coke also did not like the idea of SodaStream making fun of their companies, and the original version of the commercial was canned but can be seen below

A buyout by PepsiCo, or possibly by Coca Cola if SodaStream wants to try for a larger purchase, could place the company’s facility in Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, in jeopardy.

Soda Stream is a favorite target of the Boycott Israel movement because of the plant’s location beyond the old borders of Israel. The rub, as Lori Lowenthal Marcus explained in an article Tuesday night, is that SodaStream’s American-born CEO Daniel Birnbaum promotes hiring and treating Palestinian Authority Arabs just like Jews.

Both Arab and Jews share the company dining hall in Maaleh Adumim, and there are facilities for both Muslim ands Jews to pray.

The Maaleh Adumim factory employs approximately 900 Arabs from Judea and Samaria. “Everyone works together – Palestinians, Russians, Jews,” a Palestinian employee named Rasim at the Maaleh Adumim site previously has been quoted as saying. “Everything is OK. I always work with Jews. Everyone works together, so of course we’re friends.”

The report of a possible buyout sent the shekel-dollar rate down approximately half a percentage point, to below 3.65 shekels to the dollar, because of the possible injection of $2 billion worth of shekels.

The Norwegian daily newspaper Dagbladet said Jewish reactions to its caricature on circumcision “are similar” to riots that erupted over cartoons mocking Mohammed eight years ago.

Referencing Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten caricatures of Mohammed in 2005, Dagbladet wrote in a statement, “We now have similar reactions to a cartoon that Dagbladet printed last week.”

Several people died in what The New York Times termed “a wave of violent protests by Muslims” in the Middle East and Europe over the caricatures mocking Mohammed.

Last week, several Jewish organizations condemned the Dagbladet caricature, which showed two people, who were widely perceived to be Jewish because of their clothing, maiming a child with a fork and bolt cutter while holding a book and professing their faith.

Dagbladet has justified itself and criticized the Jewish reaction by simply re-defining anti-Semitism as love for Jews. The caricature was not at all against Jews, said the paper, which went on to claim it actually is champion of snuffing out anti-Semitism.

Not only that. It seems to understand that the anger of Jews is a camouflage for some kind of evil intentions.

“The groups which said the circumcision caricature was anti-Semitic “leave little room for nuances and reflections,” the paper wrote in a statement published this week on its website.

“They claim that this is proof of Dagbladet’s anti-Semitic views. We come from a different angle and have a different interpretation of the cartoon,” the statement read. “It is important to distinguish between friend and foe when considering this question of values. Dagbladet has a long and consistent history of fighting anti-Semitism.”

The JTA contributed to this report.

The Quartet’s Middle East envoy Tony Blair, who for years has tried to “engage” Hamas and Fatah terrorist regimes, wrote this week, “There is a problem within Islam – from the adherents of an ideology that is a strain within Islam. We have to put it on the table and be honest about it.”

Blair wrote his new enlightenment in the London Daily Mail following the recent beheading of a British soldier by a Muslim who attacked him on a London street in broad daylight.

While agreeing that every religion has its extremists, Blair wrote, “I am afraid this strain is not the province of a few [Islamic] extremists. It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal, open-minded societies.”

Blair has close contact with Muslims. His sister-in-law Lauren Booth who converted to Islam in 2010 and secretly wed social worker Sohale Ahmed in a Muslim ceremony months ago, although his first wife said he still is married to her.

“She stole my husband from under my nose. It’s absolutely disgusting,” said the woman,” quoted by the London Sun. ”I regarded her as a friend, a Muslim sister. But she’s not even a good woman, never mind a good Muslim.”

Booth is a good radical Muslim. She sailed to Gaza three years to support Hamas and was arrested by Israel when she tried to set foot in Israel.