RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/12/06/5-hidden-gems-to-visit-in-israel/?print=1

Check out the previous installments in Kathy Shaidle’s Israel Travel Series:

5 Places to Visit in Israel (Once It’s Safe To Go Back): Part One
5 Places to Visit in Israel (When It’s Safe to Go Back): Part Two

5. Caliber 3

Since 2000, Caliber 3 has trained laymen and professionals (including the IDF) in security and counterterrorism techniques.

This Gush Etzion range is one of the few places in Israel where tourists are permitted to fire guns. That makes its 2-hour courses for tourists incredibly popular, even though they aren’t exactly a walk at the beach:

At our program we combine together the values of Zionism with the excitement and enjoyment of shooting which makes the activity more meaningful. The contact with real soldiers who have experienced anti terrorism fighting means that everything shown and taught is authentic.

Don’t worry: you aren’t expected to run an obstacle course, but there is some running back and forth, yelling, and briskly paced team competition with lots of surprises.

Stick it out and you’ll be rewarded with the chance to fire a Ruger (too heavy!) and an M16.

They’ll even serve you lunch. (This is Israel; food is VERY important.)

Definitely one of the highlights of my trip.

(P.S.: Remember to wear long pants, and leave the flip flops at home. Ask permission about whom and what you can film and photograph.)

Our trainer was Steve Gar (below), an impressive guy originally from South Africa. Besides being a weapons expert, he is studying to be a rabbi and he works with special needs youth (one of whom served as Steve’s range assistant). Sorry, ladies — Gar’s married (to a Toronto girl!).

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/the_unravelling_of_the_palestinian_propaganda.html On December 5, 2012, the New York Times published an op-ed from Saree Makdisi, a professor of English literature at UCLA, titled “If Not Two States, Then One.” Professor Makdisi and his cohort of fairy-tale-weavers are finally caught up in a fantasy of their own making. It is a textbook example of the unraveling […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/people-do-vote-for-tyranny?f=puball As the world watches and waits for the Egyptian people to vote in a nationwide referendum to be held December 15 on a new constitution drafted largely by the Muslim Brotherhood, it would be well to consider another constitutional referendum from 33 years ago when another people who’d just been through a revolution went […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/what-next-for-the-eu-the-nobel-prize-for-economics?f=must_reads Does anyone seriously suppose that, but for the EU, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg might annex the Belgian province of the same name? Or that, unconstrained by Brussels, the Italians would re-occupy Nice? Does anyone imagine, these days, that the right-on, pacifist Germans, who can barely be persuaded to join Nato peacekeeping operations, are […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/egypt-the-arab-spring-not-exactly-a-1776-moment PATRICK DUNLEAVY IS AUTHOR OF AN ESSENTIAL BOOK ON RADICAL IMAMS IN THE PRISON CHAPLAINCY PROGRAMS WHO CONVERT AND RADICALIZE YOUNG INMATES…..RSK The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection by Patrick T. Dunleavy (Sep 2011) They say a picture paints a thousand words. If so, then there can be no greater image to […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-future-of-liberty-in-a-post-literate-culture “The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such […]

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Barack Obama says he’s a Christian. Good for him (and for the Gospel). But rarely has a Christian paid such obeisance to another faith and ideology. The president’s bow and scrape to Islam knows no end. That’s not so good

The U.S. Army is soon to issue a handbook instructing soldiers to copy Mr. Obama’s example of when and how to defer to an alien ideology that stands against everything Americans are taught, whether by faith, ethics, morals or another code of good conduct.

The new manual, which runs to 75 pages, orders American military personnel to refrain from saying anything to offend the Taliban in Afghanistan, to be careful not to criticize the practice of sexual relations with children, the abuse of women, beheadings, massacres of girls and the killing of “unbelievers” and Muslims who Taliban enforcers regard as insufficiently devout in the faith. Holding to what they have been taught, whether at Sunday school or a mother’s knee, is presumably OK for American soldiers, at least for now. But they must keep such ideas to themselves.

The manual, issued in the name of the U.S. Government, obviously at the command of the commander in chief, suggests that Western ignorance and arrogance and not the Taliban are responsible for the surge in deadly attacks by Afghan soldiers against the soldiers of the allied coalition.

U.S. troops should prepare for “psychologically challenging conditions” in Afghanistan, and be prepared for “stressors” that some American soldiers have remarked from previous deployments, such as finding Afghan security forces “profoundly dishonest and [having] no personal integrity,” and “gutless in combat,” and “ignorant and basically stupid.”

The manual’s bottom line, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is that “troops may experience social-cultural shock and/or discomfort when interacting with [the Afghans]. Better situational awareness/understanding of Afghan culture will help better prepare [coalition] forces to effectively partner and to avoid cultural conflict that can lead towards . . . violence.”

The Army, citing “etiquette,” specifically orders soldiers to avoid “conversation topics” such as “anything related to Islam, mention of any other religion and/or spirituality, debating the war, making derogatory comments about the Taliban, advocating women’s rights and equality, directing any criticism towards Afghans, and mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct.” The manual, according to the Journal, is the work of the Army’s Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Some lessons, alas, are still to be learned.

Some of this advice would be just good manners at a proper dinner party for the elites and the effetes, where custom forbids talking about religion or politics. But bitching about anything and everything is a soldier’s cherished right. Any top sergeant (or major general) could tell you that bitching is crucial to good morale.