RUTHFULLY YOURS

US State Department True to Form on the Mount of Olives

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/20/us-state-department-true-to-form-on-the-mount-of-olives/

Is the US State Department capable of getting it right when addressing deprivation of human rights endured by Jewish people? Its conduct with regard to the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem gives serious pause.

On the slopes of the Mount of Olives (Hebrew: Har Hazeitim), in eastern Jerusalem, lies a 2,500 year-old Jewish cemetery, bearing a legacy of enormous import and sanctity. Among those buried in its 1,500 Jewish graves are prophets, Zionist leaders, rabbis, writers, and an Israeli prime minister.

From 1948, when eastern Jerusalem was captured by Jordan, until its liberation by Israel in 1967, no Jews were permitted at the site; horrendous damage was done to the cemetery during those years. Although restoration has been taking place since 1967, until recently action to protect the site had been insufficient. That is now changing as the Israeli government has become more vigorously involved and the International Committee for the Preservation of Har HaZeitim has been established.

No, Israel Isn’t Turning Into Iran URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/20/no-israel-isn%e2%80%99t-turning-into-iran/ The big drama so far in Israel this week has involved Tanya Rosenblit, a 28-year-old writer and translator. Boarding a bus from the coastal town of Ashdod to Jerusalem, she stood her ground for about half an hour when ultra-Orthodox (haredi) Jewish men tried to […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/20/israels-energy-future/

“The Arab Spring has turned into winter, with Syria a slaughterhouse, tourists in Egypt fleeing chaos and Salafists, and Islamists taking power everywhere, even in Tunisia. Meanwhile, the elements of a Jewish Spring are being quietly put into place – energy security, a new strategic position as an energy exporter, dramatically improved relations with Greece and Cyprus, the prospect of better relations with every country that will buy Israeli gas, and the satisfaction of seeing hostile countries punish themselves in their attempts to punish Israel.”

Energy has always been the weak link in Israel’s thriving economy. Decades of digging and drilling yielded practically no hydrocarbons at all. Israel was forced to spend 5% of its GDP buying fuel from suppliers that did not have its interests at heart, and were often unreliable. At one point for instance, Israel purchased 40% of its natural gas from Egypt. But the pipeline across the Sinai has been bombed so many times there was often not enough time between explosions to get the gas flowing again. Post-Mubarak Egypt desperately needs the money to replace lost tourism revenue, but hatred of Israel trumps all.

The first brightening of this bleak picture came in 1998, when offshore drilling in Israel’s Mediterranean waters got under way. In 2000, a consortium led by Noble Energy of Houston struck commercial quantities of natural gas off the southern coast, west of Ashdod. By 2004, the Mari B field was in full production, with reserves of nearly 1 trillion cubic feet of gas. This remains the only currently producing offshore well in Israel.

But Noble Energy was convinced there must be bigger reserves waiting in deeper waters, and in 2009, diligent exploration paid off in a big way. The Tamar field, with 9 trillion cubic feet of gas, was the biggest offshore gas field found anywhere in the world that year. And the next year, Noble Energy struck it even richer with the 16 trillion cubic foot Leviathan field, further west of Haifa. That was the biggest offshore find of the decade. Together, these discoveries opened up entirely new possibilities. The Tamar field, with enough gas to supply all of Israel’s needs for decades, offered energy security, and the Leviathan field offered energy for export and billions of dollars a year in potential revenues.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/286226

WHY IS NRO SO DETERMINED TO SINK NEWT? …IT’S PERVERSE…..THANK GOODNESS FOR THIS COLUMN BY THOMAS SOWELL….RSK
Gingrich’s Past, Our Future Dwelling on the former speaker’s “baggage” won’t help the nation’s future.
If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.
What the media call Gingrich’s “baggage” concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the coming weeks and months.
But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of the nation?
This is not just another election, and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama’s broken promises, glib demagoguery, and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: “We are going to change the United States of America.”
Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.
Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences may be beyond our worst imagining.
Against this background, how much does Newt Gingrich’s personal life matter, whether we accept his claim that he has now matured or his critics’ claim that he has not? Nor should we sell the public short by saying that they are going to vote on the basis of tabloid stuff or media talking points, when the fate of this nation hangs in the balance.
Even back in the 19th century, when the scandal came out that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock — and he publicly admitted it — the voters nevertheless sent him to the White House, where he became one of the better presidents.
Do we wish we had another Ronald Reagan? We could certainly use one. But we have to play the hand we were dealt. And the Reagan card is not in the deck.
While the televised debates are what gave Newt Gingrich’s candidacy a big boost, concrete accomplishments when in office are the real test. Gingrich engineered the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years — followed by the first balanced budget in 40 years. The media called it “the Clinton surplus” but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was speaker of the House.
Speaker Gingrich also produced some long-overdue welfare reforms, despite howls from liberals that the poor would be devastated. But nobody now claims that they were.
Did Gingrich ruffle some feathers when he was speaker of the House? Yes, enough for it to cost him that position. But he also showed that he could produce results.
In a world where we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available, the question is whether Newt Gingrich is better than Barack Obama — and better than Mitt Romney.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

In addition to being exempt from satirical cartoons, airline security procedures and human rights– the chattering media classes in all their wisdom have decided that Muslims should also be exempt from the laws of economics.

Forget welfare, Muslims are now entitled to media welfare. When normal religions want to put on a show promoting their religion, they build themselves a cable channel. Sadly Bridges TV, the Muslim cable channel dedicated to challenging stereotypes, hating Jews and promoting Islam ran into some trouble when its founder and president beheaded its co-founder, who also happened to be his wife.

Muzzammil Hassan, turned out not just to be the president and founder of Bridges TV, but also a member of the Muslim Club for Men, and is now challenging stereotypes about Islam at Clinton Correctional Facility. But TLC stepped into the breach to provide Americans with more of that programming challenging stereotypes about Islam that they never asked for.

All-American Muslim was founded dedicated to the proposition that Muslims are just like the rest of us. They put on their Hijabs one head at a time just like the rest of us and promote wearing them more often than the Geico reptile comes on to sell insurance. After a media blitz for the launch of the series, the Americans, being the Islamophobic bastards that they are, turned the channel to watch something else.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11076/pub_detail.asp I love Hanukkah, particularly in New York City. The days are short and by late afternoon the city glows with Christmas lights, menorahs, and enticing shop windows with extravagant displays. I love crispy potato fritters (latkes) with apple sauce and exchange of presents with my kids and grandchildren. It is a happy holiday with a […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1685/pub_detail.asp   White House Stands by Biden Statement That Taliban Isn’t U.S. Enemy [FOX] Obama Health Coverage Policy Passes ‘Hot Potato’ to States [NEWSMAX] Missing $4,155? It Went Into Your Gas Tank This Year [CNBC] Study: Christian population shifts from Europe [AP] New Showdown Looms as House Shuns Payroll Bill [CBN] Hezbollah Terrorist Handed Over […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11080/pub_detail.asp
A Northeastern University Muslim chaplain, who also is a Roxbury, Mass. imam, hailed a terrorist convicted of attempting to murder Americans in Afghanistan as “brave,” while painting the United States as an oppressive nation of infidels.

“They say that she took up a machine gun while they held her captive in the other room and was ready to attack her captives. What a brave woman she is,” Abdullah Faaruuq said at a Dec. 8 fundraiser for Aafia Siddiqui.

Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist also known as “Lady al-Qaida,” is serving an 86-year prison sentence after being convicted of attempting to assault and murder American officers in Afghanistan. Prosecutors say she grabbed an Army officer’s M-4 rifle and fired it at another officer and other members of a U.S. interview team at an Afghan police compound in July 2008. She was originally detained by Afghan officials who found in her possession notes about a “mass casualty attack” in the United States, along with a list of New York landmarks.

http://letthemfight.blogspot.com/2011/12/us-taliban-talks-said-to-be-at-critical.html

Today, Stratfor reported that secret talks between US officials and the Taliban, which have purportedly been underway for sometime have now reached a critical juncture. According to the story, tentative agreements about the disposition of EPW Taliban at the Guantanamo Bay facility are being ironed out. If this passes muster with the Taliban, the US would release an untold number of known Taliban operatives back to the Afghan government and then, presumably, back to Afghan society. The report also stated the US official would expect some kind of token act from the Taliban in kind; to show “good faith”.

There are so many facets of this story that are wrong-headed that it is difficult to know where to begin. First of all, these alleged talks have proceeded for a significant period of time without direct participation by Kabul or Karzai. Apparently, US officials have felt “progress reports” to Kabul would suffice. While I am no fan of Hamid Karzai or his administration, it strikes me as presumptuous that any agreement between US officials and the so-called insurgency, the Taliban would be acceptable on it’s face to the “legitimate” government in Kabul. If these talks have any chance of acceptance by the parties who will have to live with them, it is hard to imagine that happening without both parties sitting directly across the table from one another.

When Shariah trumps free expression: Team Obama condones opprobrium for critics of Islamic extremism

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | After all, at that shrine to our most fundamental civil rights, the delegates would have found an exhibit about freedom of speech that declares: “For better or worse, the First Amendment helps shelter the varied results of free expression even when they are considered by some to be offensive or distasteful.”

Unfortunately, such shelter is precisely what the Organization of Islamic Cooperation wishes to eliminate when it comes to expression about its faith that the group’s 57 member nations and other Islamists find “offensive or distasteful.”

Advancing that agenda is the OIC’s purpose in the “Istanbul Process” that it launched with Mrs. Clinton in July in Turkey. As the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea pointed out in a withering indictment of this diplomatic exercise published last week in the New York Post, “the gathering was folly.”

Ms. Shea provides several reasons for that conclusion. Reduced to their essence, it is folly for America to be legitimating – let alone engaging in – a search for ways to “bridge” the gap between our First Amendment rights on the one hand and the Islamists’ belief that any expression that “offends” their religion is a capital offense on the other. To do so is to affront the Constitution and threaten the free and tolerant society it has made possible in this country.