RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3250/anti-semitic-ioc

The official OIC biography does not make a reference to Count Baillet-Latour as an organizer of the Nazi games. The OIC honors him as one of the great figures of the Olympic Movement. In 1936, after the games, the Count became an honorary member of “Freude und Arbeit,” the Nazi sports organization of propaganda minister Goebbels. The Count’s wife congratulated Hitler when he annexed the Sudetenland, and in 1940, when Germany invaded her home country, thanked him “for bringing Nazi ideology to Belgium”.

During the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, Count Jacques Rogge, the Belgian who is the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), refused to hold a minute of silence for the eleven Israeli Olympic athletes murdered forty years ago at Munich. Instead, a week before the official opening of the Games, the Belgian aristocrat held a minute of silence during a minor ceremony in the Olympic village.

Count Rogge has announced that he will also attend a ceremony in London today, Monday August 6, organized by the Israeli embassy and the London Jewish community, and that he will speak at a ceremony in Munich on September 5. Critics of Rogge claim that the Count was afraid to mention the murdered Israelis in the opening ceremony of the London Games because he feared that this would upset member states of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). Fear of the OIC made the IOC cower.

Normally, when an athlete dies, as in the case of a Georgian athlete two years ago during the Winter Olympics, the IOC President expresses his condolences during his official speech, while the Olympic flags are flown at half-staff.

The families of the 11 murdered Israeli sportsmen declared that they were “very hurt” by Rogge’s decision. Ilana Romano, widow of weightlifter Yossef Romano, said that the Count had let “terror win.” Ankie Rekhess, widow of fencing coach Andre Spitzer, said that Rogge was using the upcoming Munich ceremony as an excuse not to hold the minute of silence and questioned his motives for attending the Munich event. “If they cannot do the right thing at home, in the Olympic ceremony, why come?”

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3253/will-egypt-muslim-brotherhood-orient-to-saudi

Depending on whom you believe, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood will ally with Saudi Arabia (according to Fouad Ajami) or Iran (according to former Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar. These are mutually exclusive scenarios given the extreme enmity between Riyadh and Tehran, intensified by Syria’s civil war. I don’t believe either scenario, but both of them are worth reading as gauges of the complexity of the Middle East’s descent into chaos. >First, Ajami, the tireless cheerleader of the Arab Spring and true believer in Arab democracy (in Tablet last week):

It should have come as no surprise that Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, made his first official foreign visit to Saudi Arabia. Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood man, went to Arabia last month for both religious and political reasons: He prayed in Mecca, and then there was a formal summit in Jeddah with the Saudi monarch and his crown prince. There was nothing concealed—the summiteers announced that theirs would be an alliance of “moderate Sunni Islam.” There was no need to mention Iran and its tributaries, the embattled Syrian regime, and Hezbollah in Beirut: For Saudi Arabia, this is the most natural of alliances, a return to the time of Hosni Mubarak when the Saudi-Egyptian axis held sway.

Nowhere does Prof. Ajami mention what the casual reader of any newspaper knows, namely that the Saudis hate and fear the Muslim Brotherhood as much as they hate and fear Iran, because the Muslim Brotherhood is the only force with the potential to overthrow the Saudi monarchy. This remarkable lapse identifies the article as prescriptive rather than descriptive, that is to say, more of Ajami’s wishful thinking. He adds:

The People vs. The Democratic Party — on The Brewster Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
Eric Allen Bell, Michael Walsh and Evan Sayet discuss Walsh’s new booklet that puts the Democratic Party on trial.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/the-people-vs-the-democratic-party-on-the-brewster-gang/

Olympic Hypocrisy: Jokes and Jews Need Not Apply Written by Selwyn Duke http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/12324-olympic-hypocrisy-jokes-and-jews-need-not-apply It’s hard to beat the comic hypocrisy of the United Nations, which condemns Israel while having let nations such as Cuba and Libya sit on its human-rights council. But Western Olympic committees are giving it a run for its money. Some have […]

http://www.jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain/item/guest_post_can_jews_believe_kyrsten_sinema_20120805/

Guest post: Can Jews believe Kyrsten Sinema?Posted by Shmuel Rosner

This guest opinion piece by Jay K. Footlik follows a Rosner’s Domain expose on Arizona Congressional hopeful Kyrsten Sinema’s statements about Israel. You can find the original piece here, and Sinema’s response here. Additional reading, from Commentary, is here.
One of the great features of America’s Jewish community is our ideological diversity. On just about every issue, foreign and domestic, you can find American Jews taking opposite positions. We argue about everything.
Yet we, as a community, do unite around certain core concepts and principles. Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, there is a consensus on some very basic things. The importance of religious freedom. The value of every life. The vital contribution of Judaism to civilization. And, of course, Israel’s right to exist as a secure state.
Anyone who seeks to receive the community’s support must agree to these core principles. This does not mean ideological conformity. Far from it. Some American Zionists feel that Israel can afford to do more at the peace table to assure its security. Others say it should do less than it has done or promised to do. But that Israel should be a homeland for the Jewish people, secure in its borders, is beyond debate. Anyone disagreeing with that idea places themselves outside the community.

Which raises the question of whether American Jews should support the candidacy of Kyrsten Sinema, one of two leading candidates for Congress in Arizona’s new ninth district.