RUTHFULLY YOURS

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin is a lecturer in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Chairman of NCJA’s Academia and Campus Life Committee.

http://forward.com/articles/150968/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=The%2520Forward%2520Today%2520%2528Monday-Friday%2529&utm_campaign=Daily_Newsletter_Mon_Thurs%25202012-02-09

Mark Yudof, president of the University of California, claims that two federal complaints against his university, alleging a hostile environment for Jewish students, are without merit. While expressing general support for the recent extension of the provisions of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include Jewish students, Yudof does not believe that the situation on UC campuses rises to the standards of the federal statute. He recently told the Forward: “I think it is about people engaged in abhorrent speech on our campuses. But I am skeptical at the end of the day that with those two instances we will be found to be in violation of Title VI.”

As a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of a Title VI complaint filed on behalf of Jewish students at my university, which has been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education since March 2011, I strongly disagree with Yudof’s assessment.

Although he implies that the primary target of my complaint is “abhorrent speech” on campus, this is simply not so. Rather, my complaint focuses on university faculty and administrators who have regularly and egregiously abused their positions as employees of a public university and violated the tenets of their profession to promote their own virulently anti-Israel political agenda, which in turn has had deleterious effects on many Jewish students.

Consider the following examples included in my complaint:

1) A conference titled “Alternative Histories Within and Beyond Zionism” took place at UCSC, sponsored by eight departments. Four professors and one graduate student, none of them scholars of Israel or the Middle East, though all of them self-proclaimed anti-Zionists and anti-Israel activists, delivered papers demonizing the Jewish state, denigrating its founding ideology and promoting efforts to harm Israel, such as divestment campaigns. The five talks were replete with lies, distortions and gross misrepresentations of the facts, including claims that Zionism is racism; Israel is an apartheid state; Israel commits heinous crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing; Israel’s behavior is comparable to Nazi Germany, and Jews exaggerate the Holocaust as a tool of Zionist propaganda. All five speakers agreed that Israel should be dismantled as a Jewish state.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/90690/fool%e2%80%99s-gold/

Middle East expert Robert Kagan argues in a new book that American foreign policy has spawned a golden age of liberal democracy. He’s wrong.

” A Somalia-style debacle in Egypt, an Islamist tyranny in Tunisia, civil war in Syria, and similar horrors through the Arab world now seem a likelier terminus for the so-called Arab Spring than a “healthier world order.”

America’s global activism made possible today’s golden age of liberal democracy and free markets. This is what Brookings Institution Middle East expert Robert Kagan argues in his new book, The World America Made. What makes the work so disappointing is that Kagan stops the discussion just where it ought to begin, that is, with the religious and cultural content that informs democratic institutions.

Kagan’s purpose in defending U.S. foreign-policy activism here is to deflect criticism of America’s unpopular engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is no easy task, and to perform it, Kagan adopts the two-stage approach to persuasion made famous by Prof. Harold Hill in The Music Man: Establish first that there is trouble in River City, and then propose a solution, namely a marching band. Kagan also offers a marching band, but with 40 divisions behind it.

Where River City is concerned, Kagan’s argument is unexceptionable: Without American leadership, the feckless Europeans can’t be counted on to do anything, and the Chinese can’t be counted on not to do things badly. America shouldn’t abandon its position as the leading world power.

What America should do with that position is a different question. In his

http://sarahhonig.com/2012/02/09/another-tack-sabines-misrepresented-murder/

“In 1913, when Sabine was expecting her first child, Freud wrote her, expressing the hope that the baby “will develop into a stalwart Zionist.” He added: “We are and remain Jews. The others will only exploit us and will never understand or respect us.”

There is a message here for the Jewish state almost a century later.

By August 11, 1942, pioneer psychoanalyst Sabine Spielrein must have ditched all illusions about German civility. On that day, she and her daughters – accomplished cellist Renate, 28, and promising violinist Eva, 18 – were, like thousands of other horrified Jews, force-marched through the central streets of the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. They were herded toward Zmiyevskaya Balka (Snake Gully), where they were soon shot, together with many Red Army POWs.

Thus – ignominiously and brutally – ended the tempestuous 57-year life of a strong-willed woman, exceptionally independent and nonconformist for her time. In Western cultural enclaves, she’s sporadically remembered (in books, plays and films) for her affair with one of the fathers of psychoanalysis, Carl Jung.

It was a big deal back in the early years of the 20th century, when she lived in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It was a case of opposites attracting. Jung, an unabashed anti-Semite, was both enticed by the spirited petite and repelled by her Jewishness. She was mesmerized by his Aryan looks and fantasized about a love-child in whom the best of the Jewish and Aryan would splendidly combine.

Sigmund Freud, whose great break with Jung was sparked – among other causes – by this liaison, wrote to Sabine: “You must learn to discern the difference between friends and enemies (I mean Jung).”

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/02/republican-military-hero-first-female-to-command-fighter-
Republican Military Hero & First Female to Command Fighter Squadron Will Announce Run For Congress Today

This is exciting news…
Colonel Martha McSally was a pilot in the United States Air Force. She was the first American woman to fly in combat since the 1991 lifting of the prohibition of women in combat. McSally is also the first woman to command a USAF fighter squadron, the 354th Fighter Squadron (354 FS) based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

in 2001 Martha McSally successfully challenged the military policy that required US and UK servicewomen stationed in Saudi Arabia to wear the body-covering abaya when traveling off base in the country.

Here’s more on Martha McSally…
Southern Arizona is buzzing with the possible entrance of a new candidate in the special election to replace Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Martha McSally, the woman who, in 2002, challenged the Department of Defense rule requiring American servicewoman in Saudi Arabia to dress in a Muslim Abaya and headscarf when travelling off base, reportedly plans to formally announce her candidacy Thursday.

McSally, who retired from the Air Force as a colonel, was also the first woman in United States history to fly in combat, and the first woman to lead a squadron into combat, in the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan. McSally is a Distinguished Graduate of the Air Force Academy, earned her Master’s Degree, in Public Policy, from the JFK School of Government at Harvard, and in 1995 was one of only seven active duty Air Force officers selected for the prestigious Legislative Fellowship Program in Washington. She spent the last few years teaching military and foreign affairs to world leaders at the George C. Marshall Center in Germany.

She’s also champion triathlete and has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro

Democrats in the Southern Arizona district, are lining up behind former Giffords’ aide Ron Barber to replace the outgoing congresswoman. Barber is being described by local Democrats as a “placeholder” or “caretaker” until the end of Giffords’ term. But it’s hard not to wonder if the entrance of a dynamic, young Republican woman will change the nature of this race.

McSally is conservative, pro-life, pro-2nd amendment, and everything else that voters in a Republican-leaning district are yearning for. So have the Democrats in Arizona’s 8th congressional district made a mistake? Some people are starting to think so. Martha McSally isn’t Gabrielle Giffords. But her dynamic personality, her clear convictions and accomplished resume could be just what conservatives need if they want to win the race that one Washington insider called, “the next biggest thing to the Presidential” race this year.

For all questions and inquiries, please contact Sam Stone at 520-488-9286 or Sam@mcsallyforcongress.com.

Now, this IS exciting news. Go Martha, Go!

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290715/iran-s-final-solution-israel-andrew-bostom
Persian Shiite anti-Semitism is deep-seated and points to genocide.

Reza Khalili (pseudonym), a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has reported the latest restatement of the Iranian Shiite theocracy’s Jew-annihilationist jihadism:

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification’ to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

Putatively (and perversely), these genocidal pronouncements are a “response” to Israel’s own planned efforts to thwart Iran’s longstanding, repeatedly expressed desire to destroy the Jewish state and “Zionists” (i.e., non-dhimmi Jews) in general. Shiite Iran’s obsessive calls for the destruction of Israel and the mass murder of Jews are driven by a deeply rooted theological Islamic anti-Semitism.

Past as Prologue

The Mujtahids [authoritative interpreters of Islamic law] and Mulla are a great force in Persia and concern themselves with every department of human activity from the minutest detail of personal purification to the largest issues of politics.

The Persianophilic scholar E. G. Browne wrote those words in the 1920s about the entire pre-Pahlavi period of Shiite theocratic rule, from the ascension of the first Safavid shah, Ismail I, at the outset of the 16th century through Reza Shah Pahlavi’s installation in 1925, at the end of the Qajar dynasty. These Shiite clerics emphasized the notion of the ritual uncleanliness (najis) of Jews in particular, but also of Christians, Zoroastrians, and others, as the cornerstone of relations toward non-Muslims. The impact of this najis conception was already apparent to European visitors to Persia during the reign of Ismail I. The Portuguese traveler Tome Pires observed (between 1512 and 1515) that “Sheikh Ismail . . . never spares the life of any Jew,” while another European travelogue notes “the great hatred [Ismail I] bears against the Jews.”

The writings and career of Mohammad Baqer al-Majlisi elucidate the imposition of Islamic law (Sharia) on non-Muslims in Shiite Iran. Al-Majlisi (d. 1699) was perhaps the most influential cleric of the Safavid Shiite theocracy in Persia. For six years at the end of the 17th century, he functioned as the de facto ruler of Iran, making him the Ayatollah Khomeini of his era. By design, he wrote many works in Persian to disseminate key aspects of the Shia ethos among ordinary persons. In his Persian treatise “Lightning Bolts Against the Jews,” Al-Majlisi describes the standard humiliating requisites for non-Muslims living under sharia, first and foremost the blood-ransom jizya, or poll-tax, based on Koran 9:29.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4187613,00.html
Kissinger, Mehta awarded Israel’s Presidential Medal
President Shimon Peres announced new initiative meant to honor individuals who contribute to society, Israel’s global image….YAIR ALTMAN

KISSINGER’S TREATMENT OF ISRAEL WAS APPALLING. HE THREATENED “REASSESSMENT” OF AMERICAN POLICY IF ISRAEL DID NOT ACCEDE TO THE DEMANDS OF ANWAR SADAT IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE HARD FOUGHT 1973 WAR WHICH SADAT AND HIS OLD PAL ASSAD LAUNCHED IN A SURPRISE ATTACK ON YOM KIPPUR. MORE RECENTLY, TAPES REVEALED HIS ANIMUS TO ISRAEL…..RSK

Renowned diplomat Henry Kissinger, Human rights activist Judith Feld Carr, Chairman of Variety Israel Uri Slonim and famed Philharmonic Orchestra Director Zubin Mehta were awarded Israel’s Presidential Medal at a press conference held at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, Thursday.

The Medal, awarded for the first time, is considered a gesture of gratitude by President Shimon Peres, honoring individuals who made a significant contribution to Israel’s society and its global image.

The selection process entailed an advisory committee headed by the former Chief Justice Meir Shamgar and Israel’s fifth President Yitzhak Navon.
Kissinger, who served as secretary of state during the Nixon Administration and the Yom Kippur War, received the award for his “unique contribution to Israel and his peace-making efforts in the Middle East.”

CNN’s Israel bureau is downsizing, reportedly to cope with a reduced budget due to falling advertising revenues.

(hat tip, Jean-Patrick Grumberg at www.Dreuz.info) s7.addthis.com/static/btn/v2/lg-bookmark-en.gif

That doesn’t explain why they fired four Israeli Jewish journalists (out of a crew of 8), and retained only Arab journalists. The local chief editor of CNN is now an Arab.

Among the long time news personnel let go were Moshe Cohen, editor, fired after 10 years with CNN; Izi Landberg, Producer, about 25 years with CNN; Avi Kaner cameraman fired after 10 years with CNN; and Michal Zippori desk producer.

CNN’s usual procedure in the past was to send both a Jewish and an Arab reporter out on stories. Now, they’re only going to send an Arab journalist, with all that implies. It’s no secret to anyone that Arab journalists have to toe the Fatah and Hamas line if they want to do reporting on stories in Gaza and the Arab occupied areas of Judea and Samaria without taking the risk of being murdered.

CNN’s coverage of Israel and the Middle East conflict has been questionable for a very long time, and it’s going to get even worse now that it will only be reported from one side’s point of view. The fact that this also coincides with the brass at CNN’s point of view and their willingness to take steps to ignore even basic journalistic ethics to promote shows how far a once respected news source has fallen.

Designs on Jerusalem are on the Vatican’s agenda, now that the city is in Jewish hands. From Giulio Meotti

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Controls/SendFriend.ashx?print=1&type=1&item=11255

Several days ago, Israel gave up to the Vatican some sovereignty over the “Hall of the Last Supper” on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, the complex of buildings where David, Solomon, and Jewish kings of Judea, are said to be buried, although that is contested.

Vatican officials then met with representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Ramallah. The talks were co-chaired by Mgr. Ettore Balestrero, the Holy See’s Under-Secretary for Relations with States, and by Palestinian minister, Ziad Al-Bandak.

The basis for the new Vatican-PLO agreement is a memorandum signed by Palestinian and Vatican officials in 2000 and which repeated the Vatican’s call for an international mandate to preserve “the proper identity and sacred character” of Jerusalem. The Catholic Church wants Israel relinquishing sovereignty at the Western Wall and the Temple Mount.

http://www.steynonline.com/4812/paul-the-parochial

“I wish I could like Ron Paul more, really I do. But libertarian narcissism is as banal as any other strain. Ten years of desultory, inconclusive, transnationally constrained warmongering is certainly a problem. But know-nothing parochial delusion is not the solution.”

Uncle Sam has now spent a decade running around the Hindu Kush building grade schools and shoveling taxpayer-funded Viagra to every elderly village headman with one too many child brides. According to the World Bank, the Western military/aid presence accounts for 97 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP. And, within a week of the West’s departure, it will be as if that 97 percent had never been there, and all that remains will be the same old 3 percent tribal dump of mullahs, warlords, poppy barons, and pederasts, all as charmingly unspoiled as if the U.S. and its allies had quit 48 hours after toppling the Taliban in 2001.

It is two-thirds of a century since the alleged hyperpower last unambiguously won a war, and that ought to prompt a little serious consideration of the matter. Instead, we have Ron Paul, who says all would be well if we stopped “endlessly bombing” “these countries.” To which penetrating insight his fans respond with: “Bring them home! Bring them home!” For some reason, I attract a lot of correspondence from Paulites arguing that, if I truly mean what I wrote in the paragraph above, then Ron’s my man. A retired U.S. Army officer writes from South Carolina:

The US Military is a Peace-Making force, not a Peace-keeping Nation Building one. I am sure Dr. Paul would cut out the district military pork of Congress (whom 80% have NEVER served unlike him!), the $600 toilet seats, and $80 hammers, etc ad infinitum, ad nauseam. . . . Quit playing whack a mole and other stupid social games, either utterly vanquish like against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan or DO NOT GO IN! They are for MacArthur: nuke the Chicoms if needed. . . . Send in Seal Team 6 to take out Bin Ladens, etc. None of this PC stuff, otherwise we would not have won WW1 and WW2!

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/09/the-hamas-fatah-reunion/ The cruel farce known as the peace process took another downturn this week as Fatah and Hamas signed a unity agreement in Doha, Qatar. It’s not the first such agreement they’ve signed, and none of the previous instances was a smashing success. Most notably, the two sides’ Mecca Agreement of February 2007 collapsed four […]