RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.jewishledger.com/
The Big Lie: Israel Apartheid Week
Spring is here and so too are Israel Apartheid Week and poison ivy. Apartheid Week is an insult to all thinking Americans in and out of academia, just as poison ivy is an irritant to our skin and well-being. Charles Jacobs, founder of the Boston-based Americans for Peace and Tolerance, reminds us of the venality of the Apartheid Week movement as it personally attacks and intimidates individual students while playing havoc with the truth on campuses throughout the country.

“At Harvard”, he tells us, “students personal space was violated when ‘eviction notices’ were pasted to the doors of their dormitory rooms by members of the so-called Palestine Solidarity Committee. This kind of Saul Alinsky in-your-face type of intimidation goes beyond the norms of society and it, along with the threat and reality of physical harm, is behavior that ought not be tolerated.”

Nasty ‘apartheid walls’ — a mockery of the barriers Israel has used to effectively defend its citizens from the real and present danger of terrorism — and other symbolic constructs are springing up on campuses around the country as a way to push forward lies about Israel’s alleged discrimination against its Arab minority.

Meanwhile, no matter how depraved and vile the mendacity of the Arab effort, college administrators generally, under the false flag of ‘free speech,’ stand aside. It is a stretch to interpret the actions of these Apartheid Week demonstrators as speech that is free if it is aimed at those it targets and bullies.

Almost more egregious than the lack of college reaction to the intimidation of Jewish students is the lack of a full-throated response from key elements of the Jewish community. Yes, there are groups that are active. Charles Jacob’s American Peace and Tolerance, The David Project (another group Jacobs helped found), the Zionist Organization of America, Stand-With-Us, Campus Watch, CAMERA and others are now working on many campuses, but coordination is yet to happen and much goes undone.

Hillel, in the best position of any Jewish organization to respond on campus, has a mixed effort with a Shaliach program on 56 campuses and active support for the Israel on Campus Coalition, an organization it helped start. But it does not deal with Apartheid Week directly nor does it confront this systemic threat on all campuses.

There are, of course some stellar participants who rise to the occasion. A stalwart cadre of Hillel leaders around the country who have seen this all before deal with it bravely and with intelligence. But there is also a passivity on a number of campuses and not just where there is an absence of any organized Jewish presence. Even more difficult though, are campuses where faculty and/or administration aid and abet the intimidation of Jewish students and demean pro-Israel opinion. Columbia University and Brooklyn College stand out as recent examples of this type of travesty. Federations too are more often than not capable of only the most pro forma actions, and rarely connect with students and faculty on campus who have to confront these falsehoods.

The Apartheid Week people, on the other hand are well programmed, intrusive and without opposition too often have free reign on campus for their hatred and lies.
The proper answer for the besieged pro-Israel students and faculty on every campus, of course, is the ultimate one: the truth. Not a defensive truth or a partial one. But a focus on the Israeli reality in which five million Jews and two million Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, live together in a democratic open society.

It is the Arab Middle East where the mirror image of Israel exists. That is the land of hatred and apartheid. That is the land where the ancient Jewish presence was excised by either forced emigration or violent intimidation, and the slaughter of Christians, Jews and other minorities, including Muslims who don’t practice Islam in the way the majority prescribes it, continues. That is the land where women are demeaned and gays persecuted. It is the land of countries where personal freedom exists hardly at all.

For some reason, our organizations and leaders shy away from these truths and because of that they are absent from this very argument.

It is Israel where all citizens have the right to vote. It is Israel where democratic institutions such as a free media exist. In a more rational world it would be Arab apartheid that would be highlighted this month, while Israel’s bravery for being that lonely beacon of individual rights and democracy for all would be celebrated.
Israel Apartheid Week as we know it is a total fabrication meant to snare the unknowing and seduce the uninformed. It is foreign to our soil and ought to be opposed by every American.

Two things you can do:

1) Ephraim Karsh of the Middle East Forum provides an excellent essay on the previous page.(see below) Read it and forward it to anyone on a college campus whose email address you may have (the essay may also be forwarded from the Ledger website, www.jewishledger.com).

2) Support organizations and individuals actively involved in this struggle; work with Hillel and urge them to stand tall; take steps to fill the void on campuses without any Jewish organization. Working to bring the Jewish world together on this issue is the best way to let those who malign Israel and murder the truth know they can’t do it with impunity.

It’s unfortunate that this apartheid accusation occurs every spring. But as we pointed out, so does poison ivy. Poison Ivy and the lies of Apartheid Week never fully go away, but when summer comes we usually have them both under control.

—nrg

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/case-drones-home-article-1.1287635#ixzz2NWFlrz5a

There were good reasons to object to John Brennan’s confirmation as CIA chief. But the administration’s refusal to handcuff America’s ability to defend itself by promising never, under any circumstances, to use a drone against American citizens in the U.S. is not one.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) filibustered Brennan’s nomination because, he believed, “no American should be killed by a drone, on American soil, without first being charged with a crime, without first being found guilty by a court.”

While Paul claimed to rely on our Constitution, in fact his position is contrary to what our Constitution provides and what our Founders intended. The Constitution declares its purpose is to “insure domestic tranquility (and) provide for the common defence” — both of which impose on our government the duty to provide security for this country.

Rendering the President unable to use whatever measures are then needed, including a drone, to prevent terrorist murders of our people, by an enemy who is a U.S. citizen, would handcuff our government’s ability to perform that function.

Alexander Hamilton, one author of the Constitution, and a primary advocate for its adoption, wrote in Federalist Papers No. 23 concerning “the care of the common defence” as requiring “powers . . . without limitation: Because it is impossible to foresee or define the extent and variety of national exigencies, or the correspondent extent of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them . . . for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power.”

Anschluss legacy Forty-two percent of Austrians believe that “not everything was bad under Hitler,” according to a poll conducted by the Viennese newspaper Der Standard. That’s very telling, especially this week when Austria marks the 75th anniversary of the Anschluss – its merger with Nazi Germany. In the postwar years, Vienna sought to shirk all […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-wonderful-wizard-of-ozeroland Hollywood is so bankrupt of ideas that it seems all it can do is: “Remake” films from the past, altering and adapting them for dumbed-down audiences or what filmmakers assume are dumbed-down audiences, and make them politically correct (e.g., The Four Feathers, Clueless, the latter based on Jane Austen’s Emma, Cape Fear); Produce “prequels” […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/jack-kerwick/why-americans-should-know-and-care-about-south-africa/ Front Page Magazine recently published a particularly important article, Arnold Ahlert’s, “The Gruesome Reality of Racist South Africa.” In painstaking detail, Ahlert goes where angels fear to tread in exposing the murderous, borderline genocidal, conditions under which white South Africans are systematically forced to labor. The very same Western media that campaigned tirelessly against […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/palestinians-well-protest-obamas-visit/

President Obama’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, scheduled for Wednesday to Friday next week, may spark violent Palestinian protests. In fact, it’s already doing so.

On Wednesday Israel Hayom reported that the previous day Israeli troops had entered a “refugee camp” near Hebron in the West Bank to detain Palestinians caught throwing Molotov cocktails at Israeli vehicles. (Almost two decades after the creation of the Palestinian Authority, these “camps”—neighborhoods—are yet to be dismantled because the Palestinian leadership sees their residents eventually moving en masse to Israel itself.)

The Israeli troops found themselves under a life-endangering hail of rocks; returning fire, they killed a Palestinian named Mahmoud Titi and wounded two others.

Titi’s funeral on Wednesday set off further riots.

The above Israel Hayom report notes that Israeli “defense officials…are concerned that the latest incident could incite a spate of violent disturbances in Judea and Samaria,” and that they “believe…certain Palestinian elements are planning to use U.S. President Barack Obama’s momentous trip to Israel next week as the impetus to stoke disquiet.”

There are also tidings of Palestinian intentions not only to direct protests at Israel but also at Obama himself.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/why-obama-needs-another-dictator-to-replace-chavez-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by Bob Zeidman, award-winning novelist, Larry Greenfield, Senior Fellow at the American Freedom Alliance and Howard Hyde, author of the new pamphlet, Pull the Plug on Obamacare. The Gang members discussed Why Obama Prefers to Deal With Dictators. The dialogue occurred in Part I and focused on the post-Chavez era. Part II dealt with Hyde’s pamphlet and whether it is too late to resist Obama’s health care plan. The segment also included an analysis of Obama’s Billion-Dollar Giveaway to the Muslim Brotherhood. To watch both parts of the two part series, see below:

Part I:

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/michelle-antoinettes-big-b-day-bash/

This week the Obama administration announced that due to the awful, terrible, nasty, horrible sequestration, they would have to shut down the White House tours for the public. The same week, a White House source told the Daily Mail that Michelle Obama was planning a birthday blowout for her 50th. In attendance: Adele and Beyonce.

The White House did say that the Obamas would pay for the party. But that’s highly unlikely – it’s supposed to take place at the White House, which requires Secret Service protection, high-class dining, and all the fringe benefits.

The White House website currently carries a populist quote from Michelle Obama: “It’s the ‘People’s House.’ It’s a place that is steeped in history, but it’s also a place where everyone should feel welcome. And that’s why my husband and I have made it our mission to open up the house to as many people as we can.”

Unless those people don’t earn several million dollars per year for singing. Then they can stick it.

Interview: What Went Wrong With Bernard Lewis?

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2013/03/12/interview-what-went-wrong-with-bernard-lewis/

I spent an hour with my colleague, the prolific author [1] Robert Spencer, discussing Bernard Lewis [2], nonagenarian doyen of Islamic Studies. The entire interview, conducted as a segment for Robert’s outstanding weekly series of Jihad Watch programs on the Aramaic Broadcasting Network, is embedded above. Please read the summary assessment of my concerns before watching the interview. A more detailed analysis of Lewis’s analytic pitfalls can be read here [4].

Accrued over a distinguished career of more than six decades of serious scholarship, Bernard Lewis [2] clearly possesses an enormous fund of knowledge regarding certain aspects of classical Islamic civilization, as well as valuable insights on the early evolution of modern Turkey [5] from the dismantled Ottoman Empire. A gifted [2] linguist, non-fiction prose writer, and teacher, Lewis shares his understanding of Muslim societies in both written and oral presentations, with singular economy, eloquence, and wit. Now 96 years old and still active, these are extraordinary attributes for which Lewis richly deserves the accolades [6] lavished upon him.

I began expressing my concerns with the less salutary aspects of Lewis’ scholarship in a lengthy [7] review [8]-essay [9] (for Frontpage) on Bat Ye’or’s seminal book Eurabia—The Euro-Arab Axis [10], published December 31, 2004. Over the intervening years—in the wake of profound US policy failures vis a vis Islamdom at that time, and subsequently, till now—this disquietude has increased considerably. As I demonstrate in my recent book, Sharia Versus Freedom [11], Lewis’s legacy of intellectual and moral confusion has greatly hindered the ability of sincere American policymakers to think clearly about Islam’s living imperial legacy, driven by unreformed and unrepentant mainstream Islamic doctrine. Ongoing highly selective and celebratory presentations of Lewis’s under­standings—(see this [12] for example) —are pathognomonic of the dangerous influence Lewis continues to wield over his uncritical acolytes and supporters.

In Sharia Versus Freedom [11], I review Lewis’s troubling intellectual legacy regarding four critical subject areas: the institution of jihad, the chronic impact of the Sharia on non-Muslims vanquished by jihad, sacralized Islamic Jew-hatred, and perhaps most importantly, his inexplicable 180-degree reversal on the notion of “Islamic democracy.” Lewis’ rather bowdlerized analyses are compared to the actual doctrinal formulations of Muslim legists, triumphal Muslim chroniclers celebrating the implementation of these doctrines, and independent Western assessments by Islamologists (several of whom worked with Lewis, directly, as academic colleagues; discussed at length here [4]) which refute his sanitized claims.

Journalist David Warren, writing [13] in March 2006, questioned the advice given President Bush “on the nature of Islam” at that crucial time by not only “the paid operatives of Washington’s Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the happyface pseudo-scholar Karen Armstrong,” but most significantly, one eminence grise, in particular: “the profoundly learned” Bernard Lewis. All these advisers, despite their otherwise divergent viewpoints, as Warren noted [13], “assured him (President Bush) that Islam and modernity were potentially compat­ible.” None more vehemently—or with such authority—than the so-called “Last Orientalist [14],” nonagenarian professor Bernard Lewis. Arguably the most striking example of Lewis’s fervor was a lecture [15] he delivered July 16, 2006 (on board the ship Crystal Serenity during a Hillsdale College cruise in the British Isles) about the transferability of Western democracy to despotic Muslim societies, such as Iraq. He concluded with the statement, “Either we bring them freedom, or they destroy us.” This stunning claim was published [15] with that concluding remark as the title, “Bring Them Freedom Or They Destroy Us,” and disseminated widely.

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/342913

Sometime in the first years of the new millennium, “global warming” evolved into “climate change.” Amid growing controversies over the planet’s past temperatures, Al Gore and other activists understood that human-induced “climate change” could explain almost any weather extremity — droughts or floods, temperatures too hot or too cold, hurricanes and tornadoes — better than “global warming” could.

Similar verbal gymnastics have gradually turned “affirmative action” into “diversity” — a word ambiguous enough to avoid the innate contradictions of a liberal society affirming the illiberal granting of racial preferences.

In an increasingly multiracial society, it has grown hard to determine the racial ancestry of millions of Americans. Is someone who is ostensibly one-half Native American or African-American classified as a minority eligible for special consideration in hiring or college admissions, while someone one-quarter or one-eighth is not? How exactly does affirmative action adjudicate our precise ethnic identities these days? These are not illiberal questions — given, for example, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren’s past claims of being Native American to gain advantage in her academic career.

Aside from the increasing difficulty of determining the ancestry of multiracial, multiethnic, and intermarried Americans, what exactly is the justification for affirmative action’s ethnic preferences in hiring or admissions — historical grievance, current underrepresentation due to discrimination, or both?

Are the children of President Barack Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder more in need of help than the offspring of immigrants from the Punjab or Cambodia? If non-white ancestry is no longer an accurate indicator of ongoing discrimination, can affirmative action be justified by a legacy of historical bias or current ethnic underrepresentation?