At least one million people rallied across Egypt on Tuesday clamoring for President Hosni Mubarak to give up power, piling pressure on a leader who has towered over Middle East politics for 30 years to make way for a new era of democracy in the Arab nation.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is writing a policy book. The Florida Democrat\’s book will cover a \”wide swath of contemporary topics including education, health and safety, the environment, national security and innovation and technology, and will lay out an urgent challenge to our nation so we can secure our children’s future,\” according to a release Monday from her publisher, St. Martin\’s Press.
Some 150 Mideast Muslim leaders, as well as Jewish clergy and Christian representatives, visited Auschwitz together. The Muslims, from Morocco, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, were joined by political leaders from around the world as they gathered in the snow at the site of the former Auschwitz- Birkenau concentration camp Tuesday to commemorate the camp\’s liberation in 1945.
Birthright Israel has rejected a proposed partnership trip with J Street, saying it no longer works with organizations with Israel-related political leanings. J Street had begun promoting the trip last week being organized by its campus arm, J Street U, in cooperation with Israel Experience, one of several tour providers used by Birthright. But Birthright said it nixed the idea for a J Street trip focusing on progressivism and social action when it was first presented months ago.
For Israel, the popular uprising against the Mubarak regime raises the specter of its worst strategic nightmare: collapse of the peace treaty with Egypt, the cornerstone of its regional policy for the past three decades. That is not the inevitable outcome of the unrest; a modified version of the Mubarak government could survive and retain the \”cold peace\” with Israel. But if, in a worst case scenario, democratic or Islamic forces were to come to power denouncing Israel and repudiating the peace deal, that could herald the resurrection of a major military threat on Israel\’s southern border.
Video footage of Egyptian protests.
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