RUTHFULLY YOURS

Vicky Hartzler (R) Incumbent –
http://www.vickyhartzler.com/
http://www.ontheissues.org/house/Vicky_Hartzler.htm**
http://hartzler.house.gov/

Rated -6 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)
ISSUES

FOREIGN AFFAIRS
A top priority of mine will always be to ensure the safety and security of our great nation, and central to this priority is the recognition that the national security of the United States is directly tied to the strength and security of the State of Israel. The Middle East continues to experience instability with mass demonstrations in numerous countries, Hezbollah pointing rockets at Israel, Hamas controlling Gaza, and the looming threat of Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. security assistance to Israel has never been more important for our own interests. Any strategy less than the full commitment of our nation to the state of Israel would represent a serious and disconcerting change in U.S. policy.
I have expressed my support for Israel publically on the floor of the House of Representatives in order to express disappointment with President Obama’s proposal for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders. President Obama’s call for Israel to make more sacrifices in the pursuit of peace in the Middle East is unacceptable. The borders that were established in 1967 followed three wars launched against Israel. For Israel, acceptance of the 1967 borders would mean that Israeli sacrifices were for nothing. We all want to see peace in the Middle East. However, it is unrealistic and naive to think that peace will come as a result of Israel – the only democratic state in the region – making more concessions. Restoring the pre-1967 borders would be a victory for Hamas, a terrorist group committed to Israel’s demise. This is not the path to peace and the President should acknowledge this. Peace can only come about through the Palestinians and other Middle Eastern countries accepting Israel’s right to exist. We must stand strong for Israel.
Pushing for Additional Iranian Sanctions: We must continue to highlight the persistent threat of a nuclear Iran. Iran continues its illicit drive for nuclear weapons in defiance of multiple mandatory U.N. Security Council resolutions. As one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism, Iran provides weapons, money, and training to groups, which seek the destruction of both the United States and Israel. Iran has a global terrorist network and actively undermines U.S. peace efforts though its support of groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Stringent economic sanctions remain our only peaceful option by which to persuade Iran to suspend its quest for nuclear weapons. We must work relentlessly to enforce existing U.S. sanctions on foreign companies that work in Iran’s energy sector and on banks that facilitate Iran’s international transactions.

Assisting Taiwan: The United States and Taiwan have a long history of close relations. Taiwan is a stable democracy, a strong ally, and an important trading partner. Congress has played an important role in this relationship by passing the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979 to sustain our close bilateral relationship and to advance the mutual security and commercial interests of the two nations. This has served as a cornerstone of U.S.-Taiwan relations, and it has helped preserve peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. I am a proud member of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus that works in a bipartisan way to enhance and strengthen U.S.-Taiwan relations and to ensure that Taiwan continues to be a free, democratic country. This membership, along with my membership in the Congressional China Caucus, shows strong support for countering the threat from China. Taiwan lives under a constant military threat from the People’s Republic of China. Taiwan is a fellow democracy facing a very serious threat and at this crucial time in their history, we must stand with our ally.

ENERGY
America should continue to develop its domestic energy sources to keep prices reasonable for consumers at home and at the pump. We have an abundant supply of natural resources in America that we must use to meet our nation’s energy needs, and these resources should be utilized responsibly. However, the current administration has done nothing but increase the cost of doing business and hold up common sense infrastructure improvements like the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Keystone Pipeline would create 15,000 manufacturing jobs and 118,000 spin off jobs that would help put Americans back to work. I have co-sponsored two bills that would remove red tape and streamline the Keystone Pipeline approval process, H.R.3 the Northern Keystone XL Route Approval Act and H.R.334 the Keystone for a Secure Tomorrow Act. When President Obama took office gas prices across the U.S. were around $1.90 a gallon, but his policies have created uncertainty for the market leading to higher energy prices, slower economic recovery, and a severe lack of employment opportunities for the average American.

Recently, President Obama has decided to extend a series of executive orders to increase the cost of producing domestic energy since his legislative agenda has failed to gain support from elected officials in Washington. This top down approach will increase the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate carbon emissions from new and existing coal burning power plants. Public utilities across the U.S. have made significant efforts over the past 10 years to diversify their portfolios and have upgraded systems to decrease emissions and implemented new technologies as they have become available. However, this administration does not understand or does not care about the impacts that these rules will have on ordinary Americans. Such drastic changes will put billion investments at risk of closing down and increase the cost of electricity that will unduly burden the middle and lower class citizens across the U.S. Instead of working with Congress and the power generation industry, this administration is pushing a “Washington knows best” policy that could have detrimental effects on average Americans.

IMMIGRATION
A compassionate solution for the illegal immigrant population living and working in the United States can be accomplished without resorting to amnesty. I cannot support a policy which rewards the criminal behavior of violating America’s immigration laws. Current illegal immigrants should not receive all the rights and privileges they would have been eligible for had they come legally. They should not be eligible for citizenship. To pardon lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their offence is inappropriate and will accelerate the flow of illegal immigrants.

The opportunity to work in the United States is a valuable one, and those who break our laws should not have the privilege of competing in the same labor market as law-abiding citizens of our great nation. Granting amnesty to those who cross our borders and enter our nation illegally is not the answer to solving the problem of illegal immigration, especially when there are so many people around the globe who wait their turn to apply for visas and pursue legal paths to immigrate to the United States. The following actions represent some of the steps I have taken since assuming office to address illegal immigration:

Border Protection: I have co-sponsored the National Guard Border Enforcement Act. This legislation directs the Secretary of Defense to deploy at least an additional 10,000 members of the National Guard for border control activities along the U.S.-Mexico border until the Secretary of Homeland Security certifies that the federal government has achieved operational control of the border. The border must be secured, and enforcement at the border must be effective. Congress must authorize and routinely fund adequate border enforcement personnel, technology, physical infrastructure, detention facilities, and judicial and prosecutorial resources. There is a direct relationship between border security, national security, illegal immigrations, border violence, contraband smuggling, and illegal drug peddling.

Eliminating the Visa Lottery Program: I have co-sponsored the SAFE for America Act. This bill would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate the diversity immigrant program. This would eliminate the visa lottery system, which rewards 50,000 annual green cards based on “random selection” instead of humanitarian need, family connection, or other economic or cultural value to the United States. We should give preference to those who seek to enter the U.S. for education, humanitarian, or job-specific reasons—not arbitrarily grant visas from a random pool of applicants.

Mandating E-Verify: I will fight to ensure that all employers must verify the legal immigration status of all employees. I have co-sponsored the Jobs Recovery by Ensuring a Legal American Workforce Act of 2011, which would make E-Verify, the basic pilot federal employment verification program, permanent and mandatory for all employees. E-Verify deters the employment of illegal aliens by searching employee information against government records to ensure a person’s identify. The ability of employers to rely on illegal labor must be stopped. In harsh economic times, it is important to make sure illegal aliens are not in the workforce.
HEALTHCARE

In 2012, the Supreme Court handed down its decision on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This page can serve as a resource to keep you updated on issues related to President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

I am disappointed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s failure to overturn President Obama’s health care law. The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court allows for the full implementation of the 2010 law, despite its flawed design and questionable constitutional basis. The law still fails to address the issue of adequate funding, and will drive up health care costs, making it harder for small businesses to hire workers. However, while the ruling is cause for dismay, supporters of the free market and individual liberty can take some comfort in the dissenting view that this law violates the U.S. Constitution. My House colleagues and I remain committed to repealing this troublesome law in its entirety. This ruling highlights the critical need for a Congress and White House committed to refocusing attention on health care legislation that provides affordability, cost transparency, choice for senior citizens, and will protect the right of citizens to keep their current insurance policies.

The fundamental flaws of the Affordable Care Act will have grave impacts on the nation for decades to come. Americans will see more than $500 billion in tax increases during a time of economic hardship. It forces Americans to buy into government-approved insurance programs, or else face an extra tax burden. The federal government should not be allowed to force its citizens to buy a private product and then strictly mandate what is in that product. Many of the tax increases will come from businesses and insurance companies themselves, with many taxes based on each company’s share of the market. At a time when Americans are struggling to find work, this law makes it even harder for small businesses to hire workers.

Swedish political correctness goes into reverse as black teacher is excluded from “black film” class

The expulsion of the black trainee school teacher simply for being black is being described in the wider Swedish media as an instance illustrating that the country’s politically correct attitudes may need a re-think.

In what close observers of political correctness in Europe are describing as one of the most remarkable confusions in recent years, it is being reported from Sweden that a black student school teacher was sent out of a “black film class” for fear of prejudicing discussion among the mainly white students.

Sweden’s The Local, reported: “A Swedish trainee teacher was asked to leave the classroom because the pupils were about to discuss a film with black actors, and her presence could “inhibit the debate”.

The school’s “logic” was framed in terms of a deeply-held belief in Swedish officialdom that racial, religious and cultural groups think in terms of the groups to which they belong, rather than in terms of any given item that they are asked to talk about.

The teaching student, from Malmo University, has filed an official complaint to Sweden’s discrimination ombudsman. She said that the film had focused on criminality among young black boys. After it had been shown, the class teacher threw her out so that the students could discuss the matter without her presence getting in the way of the discussion.

“To make a long story short you could say that the school’s actions have been, to say the least, remarkable,” the student teacher, Hosana Hadgu, was quoted by The Local as saying.

Sweden is well known for taking a bizarre approach on some occasions to issues involving race, religion and culture though usually such instances reflect a hypersensitive attitude to minorities.

For example, in December 2013 the Swedish parliament removed a baroque masterpiece of a semi-naked Juno from the building’s dining room for fear of offending Muslims and feminists. The move provoked, in equal measure, hilarity and consternation among art lovers.

The expulsion of the black trainee school teacher simply for being black is being described in the wider Swedish media as an instance illustrating that the country’s politically correct attitudes may need a re-think.

Samantha Power neglects opportunity to stop Iran from gaining seat UN women’s rights body, then tweets her outrage

Has there ever been a more transparent human rights poseur than UN Ambassador Samantha Power? The self-styled “genocide chick” rose to academic prominence riding the topic of genocide (she’s against it, doncha know), formulating a doctrine she called “responsibility to protect.” Like any good marketer, she turned that into a catch-word “R2p” and played footsie with the prospect of using her slogan to justify intervening in Israel to protect the poor Palestinians who just want to be left alone so they can slaughter Jews with no counter-punching from Israel. Cultivating a glamorous persona based on her fashionable ectomorph body type and flowing long red hair, she has risen to the stratosphere of political academics.

Power definitely knows PR, but actual diplomacy and even basics of showing up are another thing. Patrick Goodenough of CNS News reports:

The Obama administration on Wednesday criticized Iran’s election to the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) – but neither the U.S. nor any other delegation objected when given the opportunity to do so, thus allowing Iran to get the seat “by acclamation.”

Iran will now serve on the CSW, a body dealing with gender equality and the advancement of women, for another four-year term, having already been a member since 2011.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power took to Twitter to express her views: “Yet again Iran unopposed & was ‘elected’ to Commission on Status of Women. Given record on women’s & human rights, this is an outrage.”

But Richard Grenell, who served as spokesman for four U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. during the George W. Bush administration and is a close observer of the world body, was unimpressed with her reaction.

“Ambassador Power can tweet her outrage after the fact all she wants,” he said. “She should have been in the room for the vote and demanded a secret ballot rather than allow an automatic acclamation by her silence.” (snip)

… had just one ECOSOC member objected to Iran’s candidacy, a secret ballot vote would then have been called. And had Iran not received the required minimum 28 votes, that would have allowed another member state from Iran’s regional group, Asia, to step in as an alternative.

Yet neither the U.S. nor any other member of ECOSOC objected. Other democracies on the council include 13 European nations, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and India.

A webcast of the ECOSOC session shows just how the process unfolded.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Treatment to stop epilepsy development. Attacks of epilepsy that have been brought on by head injury could be prevented using a new treatment developed by a team including scientists from Ben-Gurion University. In laboratory tests, Losartan (marketed as Cozaar) significantly cut down seizures.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/blood-pressure-drug-could-end-injury-caused-epilepsy/

Genetic-engineered tissue to repair muscle injury. For the first time ever, Israel Technion scientists have transplanted engineered muscle tissue containing major blood vessels to repair a damaged abdomen. The breakthrough may lead to full abdominal surgery in humans using laboratory-generated tissue.
http://www.jpost.com/Health-and-Science/Technion-breakthrough-Transplanting-of-engineered-tissue-to-repair-muscle-injury-348040

The DNA on/off switch. Hebrew University of Jerusalem geneticists have identified how different species of animals can have so many identical genes. Genes are silenced by on/off patterns in the epigenome. They also explain how twins with identical DNA sequences can have so many different characteristics.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=16953

What gene silencing can achieve. Weizmann Institute graduate Leemor Joshua-Tor describes her research which includes the discovery of a protein that can destroy defective genes in the RNA that are responsible for viruses and diseases such as macular degeneration and cancer.
http://www.newsday.com/business/executive-suite-leemor-joshua-tor-1.7537860

Hypoparathyroidism treatment gets US boost. Israel’s Entera Bio has obtained orphan status from the US FDA for its oral treatment for hypoparathyroidism (decreased function of the parathyroid glands). The condition results in muscle cramping, twitching, or involuntary contraction, and several other symptoms.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-dna-biomedical-jumps-on-orphan-drug-status-1000933656

Radio waves treatment for Barrett esophagus. Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center now offers radiowave treatment instead of surgery to eliminate abnormal cells and prevent the development of cancer in patients suffering from Barrett esophagus. Instead of 10 days’ hospitalization, patients go home the same day.
http://www.jpost.com/Health-and-Science/Health-Scan-Radio-wave-treatment-instead-of-surgery-for-Barrett-esophagus-349921
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

The world’s top producer of in-cab mobile terminals. Israel’s Micronet supplies half a million terminals for fleet vehicles such as trucks and taxis – more than any other manufacturer. The company’s new A317 model just released now allows users to run apps developed for Android-based tablets.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-tablet-firm-is-top-mobile-terminal-maker/

Belt protects against radiation. Israel’s Stemrad has developed a belt to protect first responders from gamma radiation – for situations such as the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The belt protects the pelvic area, where most of the body’s renewable bone marrow is concentrated.
http://www.jpost.com/Health-and-Science/Israeli-company-develops-radiation-belt-for-nuclear-emergencies-347862

Israeli radar to protect South Korea from the North. A team of South Korean military and acquisition officials has been dispatched to Israel to purchase low-altitude surveillance radars capable of detecting small, unmanned drones from North Korea. South Korea recently discovered three UAVs near the border.
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20140409000962

The cutting edge of desalination. British trade journal Global Water Intelligence has bestowed its top awards on Israel’s IDE Technologies. Initiatives such as the Soreq plant and the Carlsbad project “will ensure that IDE remains at the cutting edge of the desalination industry for at least another four decades,”
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-ide-wins-award-for-sorek-desalination-plant-1000933165

Israeli scientists spring-clean the planet. To mark Earth Day, Weizmann Institute’s latest e-magazine includes the work of Professor Berkowitz who has transformed toxic chemicals in water into harmless compounds. Also Professor Bayer who designed bacteria that turns waste paper into sugar. And much more.
http://www.weizmann-usa.org/e-news/14-04/landing/spring-cleaning-for-the-planet.htm

An app to make you enjoy music. Weizmann graduate Yuval Karminka found that 85% of non-musicians wish they had learned to play a musical instrument. He then founded JoyTunes that produces popular music learning apps that encourage the novice musician to advance in their practicing.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3028711/whos-next/piano-hero-how-joytunes-makes-young-musicians-actually-like-practicing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn_b_bcX3tg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJUFdEXPAc

Israelis get their jabs. The vaccination rate among Israeli children is among the world’s highest and the availability of free immunization is among the best the world, the Health Ministry announced during World Immunization Week. About 95 percent of babies and children receive routine vaccinations at well-baby clinics.
http://www.jpost.com/Health-and-Science/95-percent-of-Israeli-children-get-their-recommended-vaccinations-350313

“Love of the prophet requires hatred of the Jews,” the Moroccan Muslim cleric al-Maghili (d. 1505) declared, as quoted by Dr. Andrew G. Bostom’s latest book Iran’s Final Solution for Israel: The Legacy of Jihad and Shi’ite Islamic Jew-Hatred in Iran. Bostom’s masterful compendium shows that al-Maghili’s sentiments are hardly rare in Islam, making a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran a nightmarish threat for Israel and beyond.

The “civilizational war waged by Shiite and Sunni jihadists” today is “consistent with Islam’s classical jihad theory,” Bostom demonstrates with copious quotation of Islamic theological sources and historical primary sources. Of 40 Koranic references to jahada or “struggle,” the Arabic root of jihad, for example, 36 address violence, according to one study. “Muhammad himself,” normative canonical Islamic accounts indicate, “was the ultimate prototype sanctioning jihad terror.” Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna therefore had a “seamless connection” to “traditional Islam itself,” as his translated writings show.

Additionally, “orthodox Islamic jurisprudence” holds that “non-Muslims peacefully going about their lives—from the Khaybar farmers whom Muhammad ordered attacked in 628, to those sitting in the World Trade Center on 9/11/01—are complicit.” In particular, Muhammad the “Muslim prophet-warrior developed a penchant for assassinating individual Jews and destroying Jewish communities by expropriation and expulsion… or massacring their men and enslaving their women and children.” Only humiliating submission to Islam and its “blood ransom jizya poll tax” per Koran 9:29 can spare Jews and Christians as dhimmis this fate.

A “central antisemitic motif in the Koran… decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews… for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah.” The “Koran’s overall discussion of the Jews is… a litany of their sins and punishments.” A “sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” even appears in Koran 5:64. “Sunni dogma” in particular holds the black-Jewish Abdullah ibn Saba “responsible… for promoting the Shiite heresy and fomenting the rebellion and internal strife associated with this primary breach in Islam’s political innocence.”

Jews under Muslim rule had to observe the “rightful bounds” of a “subjected relationship,” even “in mythically ‘tolerant’ Muslim Spain.” When Granada’s Muslim rulers appointed Jewish grand viziers, the “results were predictably tragic” in 1066. Pogroms claimed 4,000 Jewish lives, more than those lost 30 years later during the First Crusade’s Rhineland passage. Today, “Zionism… has posed a predictable if completely unacceptable challenge to the Islamic order, jihad-imposed chronic dhimmitude for Jews, of unprecedented, even apocalyptic magnitude.”

News Media Ambush Cliven Bundy
…and sucker-punch “conservatives.”

First, the purpose of this column is neither to confirm nor deny that I agree with Cliven Bundy’s purported “racist” remarks, as reported in the New York Times. That is a fabricated issue, and in a court of law would be an objection-rich leading question. Unlike many politicians and media names who supported Bundy’s defiance of the Bureau of Land Management’s paramilitary raid on Bundy’s ranch and the theft and slaughter of many of his cattle, I’m not going to “distance” myself from the man and what he stands for, which is the courageous stand he has taken against a looters’ government. There is no good reason to sneak off and hide in a corner.

No, the purpose of this column is to castigate all those supporters who turned tail and beat a hasty retreat in order to placate those who are the true “racists” of our time: the liberal/left. After all, no one can risk criticizing any facet of the welfare state or the political establishment without now being called “racist” by the liberal/left.

Tom Roten, who interviewed me on his radio show on April 25th, observed that it took the New York Times several days to concoct its “racist” charges, which were insinuated on its April 23rd article, “A Defiant Rancher Savors the Audience That Rallied to His Side,” because Bundy’s remarks were made and recorded on April 19th.

Rand Paul, Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, and other “conservative” voices – such as the “Young Conservative” site – ought to have known better. They speak often enough on the subject of how the liberal/left media look for a chance to smear and denigrate individuals whose ideas go counter to the prevailing received liberal/left wisdom ,and will stoop to any tactic to accomplish the marginalization or even elimination of opposing viewpoints. They ought to have been able to spot a set-up and call it for what it was.

No, they ran like rabbits. You wonder if they’re as smart as they claim to be. Instead, they fell for it as well as did Cliven Bundy, but not as innocently. Paul, Hannity, Van Susteren, and the others have the luxury of crafting their statements.

Many among the dysfunctional family of nations would still rather have us out of their sight than see us where we are, sovereign in our own land.

Strangely, to gauge the depth of the family of nations’ predisposition against the family of Israel, we should embark on a detour to faraway Guyana, or as it was once known – British Guiana. The forgotten “New Balfour Declaration,” that earmarked that crown colony as an alternative to the Jewish National Home in this country, is particularly relevant on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It encapsulated all the “goodwill” that the family of nations could once muster toward the beleaguered Jewish people. Things are still no better.

Yesteryear’s Guiana unexpectedly contextualizes the ongoing unique bias towards the Jewish state today and its depiction as an outlaw occupier (even in tiny stretches of its own homeland, directly contiguous to its own miniature independent domain).

Indeed, the bias that preceded the very founding of the Jewish state pretty much foreshadowed the antagonism it would arouse decades later.

That antagonism doesn’t derive from aversion to Israel’s supposed strength (i.e. our so far insufferably successful self defense). It fulminated most shamefully when the Jewish people couldn’t conceivably have been more helpless – on the eve of the Holocaust. Worse yet – this antagonism wasn’t merely rife in the Third Reich. It also thrived among the democracies, even if in a sinisterly duplicitous guise.

In Germany, anyone who read Hitler’s Mein Kampf was in no doubt about what’s in store down the line. Concentration camps already operated; Jewish heads were busted in the streets; Jewish businesses were vandalized; Jewish property was robbed; Jewish books were burned; Jewish children were kicked out of school; all Jews had to don yellow-star patches and add either Sara or Israel to their Germanized given names.

Nonetheless, this didn’t really change churlish attitudes towards Jews in democratic societies, though it annoyingly ramped up the discomfiture quotient. Jews were attempting to escape and the free world resented them for knocking at its gates. The British Foreign office, in rare candor, referred to them as “unwanted Jews.”

Fiendishly mocking western hypocrisy, Hitler tauntingly invited the flustered democracies to shelter his Jews, if they were so fretful about them. He knew that for all their feigned piety, these countries wouldn’t take his provocative dare.

The Brandeis University administration professes to be deeply concerned about the rights of black Africans.

In the 1980s, it divested its holdings in companies that did business with the South African apartheid regime. In 2000, it invited Bishop Desmond Tutu to give its commencement address, despite Tutu’s long record of hostile statements about Jews and Israel.

So when the news broke April 14th that 100 black schoolgirls in Nigeria had been kidnapped by an Islamist militia “to use as cooks and sex slaves” (as The Associated Press put it), one would have expected the Brandeis campus to be up in arms.

Eager students should have been circulating petitions in front of the cafeteria and collecting spare change to purchase food packages to send to the hostages.

High-minded professors should have been digging out their magic markers to create picket signs demanding action to save the girls from their Islamist abductors.

Amateur folksingers should have been holding impromptu concerts in the middle of campus to raise awareness of the plight of these “cooks and sex slaves.”

The Brandeis administration should have been announcing that it would be giving an honorary degree to an African woman who has been outspoken against Muslim extremist violence against black women in Africa.

Oh, wait. They did that already.

Chloé Simone Valdary on Her Passionate Defense of Israel — on The Glazov Gang
An African-American Zionist discusses her love of the Jewish state — and the Left’s vicious and racist attacks on her.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/chloe-simone-valdary-on-her-passionate-defense-of-israel-on-the-glazov-gang/

How long will we, as a society, tolerate the proactive propagation of harebrained, hazardous hallucinations-irrespective of how demonstratively detrimental they are to the security of the state & safety of its citizens?

The real question is not whether the Palestinians are willing to accept some semantic formula having to do with the Jewish state, but whether they are ready to accept the Jewish state itself. This question is raised in all its gravity by the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” to Israel for the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and their descendants… Israel can live without any semantic recognition of the Jewish state, but not with this demand. Is the Palestinians’ current position their final word? The only way to put this to the test is by submitting a peace plan that would offer the Palestinians a viable state on the basis of the 1967 lines, with a right of return to the Palestinian state, but not to Israel. Because the present Israeli government will not produce such a plan, the United States should.

– Alexander Yakobson, “Jewish state – Semantics versus the real thing,” The Jerusalem Post, April 17.

Don’t you get it? They don’t want peace. They want victory. We should want the same.

– JPost reader “rebaaron” in a talkback to Yakobson’s article.

This is not an article for those weak of stomach. It approaches bluntly – some might say brutally – most searing issue of today, one that threatens to rip apart the fabric of Israeli society. However, the topic must be broached boldly, without allowing the niceties of politically correct protocol to blur the issues.

The legitimate limits on free speech