RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/176395#.UtpcF7ROmUl

An American pro-Israel group has weighed-in on the brouhaha over Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s recent controversial comments about US Secretary of State John Kerry, in which Ya’alon branded America’s top diplomat “obsessive and messianic” in his quest to impose a deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Ya’alon particularly took issue with what he saw as the plan’s disregard for Israel’s security concerns, saying that the security arrangements it detailed were “not worth the paper it was written on”. A recent report suggested that the Defense Minister’s diatribe was provoked by a concerted American campaign to use top military officials to convince Israel to make sweeping concessions.

Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI) added its voice to countless others – including politicians, military veterans and rabbis – who spoke up in support of Ya’alon’s comments.

In a bid to “remind” Kerry of the existential threat posed by a withdrawal – particularly by rocket attacks – AFSI took the initiative to republish a recent presentation by Langfan illustrating the strategic importance of the Judea-Samaria region, and translated it into Hebrew and Russian “in case he doesn’t understand plain English”.

http://www.commdiginews.com/todays-best/does-john-kerry-want-israel-destroyed-2207/ December 15, 2014 —  That man John Kerry, our Secretary of State, sure has some appetite. He is insatiable, at least for Israel. Reports keep coming in telling us that Kerry wants peace and security for Israel, even at a price of Israel without Israelis. So Kerry has been engaging in dogged shuttle diplomacy. […]

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2748/Secrets-of-Katyn-Forest-Whats-Really-Buried-There.aspx

The power of history to speak to us depends on our ability to hear it. When we are deaf to its secrets, or too confused or conditioned to decipher them, we miss the opportunity to be empowered by them. We thus fail to overcome the propaganda our own government, like the dictatorships we revile, has all too often deceived us with.

I am struck by this aura of static around a sensational new discovery. Researcher and author Krystyna Piorkowska, the Associated Press reported this week, has unearthed a “lost” U.S. document, dating back to 1945, known as the Van Vliet report on the Katyn Forest Massacre. Few Americans are familiar with the World War II-era massacre, let alone with U.S. Army Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet, so what is history telling us?

Its message is one that we as a people are deeply conditioned to reject. It concerns decades of U.S. appeasement, support and collusion regarding the USSR, and even in some of the evil empire’s worst atrocities. In American Betrayal I re-examine this terrible pattern, long obscured by false narratives of the “good war” that I learned along with everybody else, for evidence of Soviet agents’ influence on U.S. strategy. Equally important is the corrosive impact this subversion has had on our nation’s character. Nowhere is this moral impact more evident than at Katyn.

http://spectator.org/articles/57426/each-according-his-delusions
The latest faux issue to insinuate itself into our political polemics travels under the unedifying name of “income inequality.” As political abstractions go, this one is more incoherent than most. (Shabbier too in its naked appeal to envy and resentment.) Almost no one who uses the term says what he means by it. But it has the ring of yet another incitement to leftist larceny.

Since President Obama heaved this dead cat into the room a few weeks ago, I’ve been waiting for anyone speaking for the Republican Party to say that this hustle is nothing more than Marxist boilerplate. Since no one in the Grand Old Party has either the courage or the awareness to say this, I guess it’s up to me.

If income inequality is the problem, then income equality is the goal. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, to coin a phrase (or to each according to his or her fanciful desires, if we are to adopt the Sandra Fluke addendum to the original Marx).

Are we to have a government committee to insure that the corporate CFO with the 10th floor corner office makes the same as the security guard sitting in the ground floor lobby? Should universities add what the full professor of women’s studies and the janitor in her building make and pay them both half the total? Should the guy who drives the studio limo make the same as Tom Hanks did on his last picture? Should the burger flipper at the corner McDonald’s make the same as the chef de cuisine at the Chez Pretense? On a more personal example of blatant income inequality, Obama, with his presidential salary and other sources of income, fetches in a multiple of what I make. Will he be sending me a check to equalize things between us? I won’t hold my breath.

http://bit.ly/1aYGyua

1. (Bloomberg, Gwen Ackerman and David Wainer, January 8, 2014): “Israel’s technology industry is growing up and the stock market is benefitting. Investors and entrepreneurs are increasingly choosing initial public offerings (IPO) over buyouts, with eight Israeli companies raising $361MN in 2013, the most since 2007. While mergers and acquisitions still represent the highest proportion of transactions, with $6.3BN in 2013, Israeli companies opting for listings from London to NY are closing the gap…. Owners of Israeli companies no longer seek to sell their early-stage companies to get a speedy return on their money…. Israel’s Enzymotec raised $71MN in September, and its shares have almost doubled since then. Israel’s Eix.Com garnered $127MN from investors in November; Israel’s largest IPO in the US in more than six years, and its stock is up 48%. Technology companies contribute about 80% of Israel’s industrial exports…. Among the largest Israeli technology companies changing hands in 2013 were the purchase of Waze by Goggle for $966MN and Cisco’s acquisition of Intucell for $475MN. Other companies have resisted buyers. Check Point grew by raising money from selling shares, multiplying in value since its 1996 NASDAQ IPO and is now worth $13BN.”

2. In 2013, twenty Israeli companies were acquired, for over $4BN, by foreign companies, compared to $3.9BN in 2012, $5BN in 2011, $1.6BN – 2010, $1.3BN – 2009, $2.6BN – 2008, $3.6BN – 2007, $10.1BN – 2006, $3.4BN – 2005 and $0.7BN in 2004 (Globes Business Daily, Nov. 13, 2013).

3. In 2013, Israeli companies raised $1.565BN on Wall Street, compared to $627MN in 2012, $1BN – 2011, $400MN – 2010, $190MN – 2009, $200MN – 2008, $1.84BN – 2007, $974MN – 2006, $1.16BN – 2005 and $1.25BN in 2004 (Globes, Nov. 13, 2013).

4. The NY-based International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF) acquired Israel’s Aromor for $88MN (Globes, Jan. 16). Canada’s Dorel acquired Israel’s Tiny Love for $50MN (Yedioth Achronoth, Jan. 12).

http://www.investigativeproject.org/4270/hizballah-preparing-for-war-with-israel Hizballah continues to entrench itself in the Syrian civil war, while facing a string of radical Sunni bombing attacks in their Lebanese strongholds. The terrorist organization is also facing renewed international backlash regarding its alleged role in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. These challenges contribute to the group’s deterioration in […]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/australia-fm-dont-call-settlements-illegal-under-international-law//

In an exclusive interview with The Times of Israel, Julie Bishop suggested that, contrary to conventional diplomatic wisdom, the settlements may not be illegal under international law. She refrained from condemning Israeli initiatives to build additional housing units beyond the Green Line or from calling on Israel to freeze such plans, merely saying the fact that settlements were being expanded showed the need for the sides to quickly reach a peace agreement.

“I don’t want to prejudge the fundamental issues in the peace negotiations,” Bishop said. “The issue of settlements is absolutely and utterly fundamental to the negotiations that are under way and I think it’s appropriate that we give those negotiations every chance of succeeding.”

Asked whether she agrees or disagrees with the near-universal view that Israeli settlements anywhere beyond the 1967 lines are illegal under international law, she replied: “I would like to see which international law has declared them illegal.”

The position that settlements breach international law — adopted by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union and many other states and international bodies, but rejected by Israel — is based on an interpretation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Article 49, paragraph 6, states that an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Violations of the convention are considered war crimes under international law. Israel is a party to the convention and therefore bound by it.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-Fray-Sovereignty-Yes-but-beware-of-annexing-Area-C-338475
Partial annexation of Judea-Samaria will solve none of the problems Israel faces today, and exacerbate many

As we know, Area C includes the entire Jewish population and along with it a small number of about one hundred thousand Arabs.

– Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely, Sovereignty, Issue 2, January 2014

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

– Sherlock Holmes, “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”

As readers will recall, last week I mentioned that a new edition of the political journal Sovereignty was recently published by Women in Green and the Forum for Sovereignty. The journal carried various ideas for alternatives to the two-state paradigm. Among them was my proposal for a tripartite “Humanitarian Paradigm,” the details of which I have elaborated on here in numerous columns.

Laudable initiative, lamentable proposals

The journal is certainly an eminently laudable – and long overdue – initiative, in that it highlights the need for concerted intellectual endeavor to break the stifling stranglehold that the two-state paradigm has had on the political discourse since the early 1990s.

Lamentably, however, it has been a platform for several suggestions that are likely to be no less detrimental than the two-state principle they aspire to supplant.

Map of the West Bank.Last week, I focused attention on the grave dangers of policies which advocate annexing the entire area of Judea-Samaria and conferring permanent residence – and subsequent citizenship – on Palestinian-Arabs living there.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7051

On Thursday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a surprise trip to Amman to meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah II. This isn’t the first time the two leaders have held clandestine conversations at the royal palace over the past five years. But the circumstances surrounding this particular visit are especially noteworthy.

Not only did it come on the heels of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest round of Middle East shuttling; it took place a mere two days after a scathing, off-the-record indictment of Kerry, made by Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon, was published in Yedioth Ahronoth.

Though Ya’alon’s remarks — that Kerry is “obsessive” and “messianic” and should “take his Nobel prize and leave us alone” — were spot on, he must have taken temporary leave of his senses for uttering them in the presence of a reporter and believing they would remain private.

Netanyahu wisely opted to stay out of the fray, though he was likely among those who told Ya’alon to issue a public apology, and fast. Netanyahu has had enough trouble trying to keep Kerry from imposing conditions for a Palestinian state that would spell the destruction of Israel. And just when he thought he was beginning to make a tiny bit of progress in getting it through Kerry’s thick skull that Palestinian incitement to kill Jews poses an obstacle to American peace fantasies, out popped Ya’alon’s sentiments about the secretary of state, giving the Obama administration yet another excuse to rap Israel on its already raw knuckles.

In the language Golfese- a bogey is something you score- “one over par on a hole” (Huh? I don’t play but I have heard the term) and it is not a good thing.

In Israel, however, a “Bogie” is terrific. It is the nickname of General Moshe Ya’alon who just riffled John Kerry’s feathers by calling him obsessive and messianic and adding “he should win a Nobel prize and leave us alone.” The State Department got its collective knickers in knots and demanded that he apologize.

Why should he apologize to a man determined to shrink Israel to indefensible borders; to a man who so overtly supports Israel’s Islamic enemies; who slandered the United States of America and its fighting forces which he branded as “war criminals” guilty of “…war crimes committed in Southeast Asia [were] not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”??? That was his testimony to Congress in 1971 . As an anti war activist he continued the libels accusing American troops of raping, cutting off ears, heads, and limbs, and razing villages in the manner of Genghis Khan, and other unspeakable atrocities.