RUTHFULLY YOURS

Events are drawing Israel into a major war with neighboring Arab terrorist organizations to result in another total reordering of Mideast relationships.

Comparison of the current scene with the eve of the Six Day War in 1965 is almost unavoidable. Then, too, a reluctant Israel waged a preemptive action because of what it saw as an existential threat from an alliance of Arab neighbors.

As great as the possibility for another complete regional redispositioning is, the outcome of events is even more unpredictable than it was in 1965. Today’s situation is vastly different:

First, Egypt, the largest and traditionally the leading Arab state, will not be the tripwire which brought on Israel’s preemptive strike then. This time Cairo could well be a benevolent neutral if not an ally in any new encounter between Israel and its principle enemy, the radical Arab Islamicists. Cairo’s military junta is waging a ruthless campaign against the jihadists, voted into power but which it dislodged with considerable popular support.

Secondly, the prospect of a Soviet Union intervention is missing – and a clash of the then two superpowers – which hung over the earlier events. Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin’s nuclear arsenal notwithstanding, his ability to influence events in the region with conventional military forces and aid is marginal. In part, that is because his imbroglio in Ukraine having produced early victories is now turning into a Russian disaster.

Thirdly, the ambivalent position of the Obama Administration despite all its public protestations of loyalty to a U.S. ally, is a sharp contrast to Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s profound pro-Israel sympathies at a time when the U.S. Left had not made a bogus Palestinian crusade a central issue.

And, fourthly, there is a new aggressive and potentially nuclear-armed Iran, dedicated to the destruction of Israel, mobilizing long suppressed Shia minorities throughout the region in a Muslim sectarian conflict. Tehran’s mullahs have been able to bridge the historic Arab-Persian divide to bolster Arab Shia and even non-Shia allies.

Uthman Badar and his “moral defence” of murdering difficult women:

“For most of recorded history parents have reluctantly sacrificed their children—sending them to kill or be killed for the honour of their nation, their flag, their king, their religion. But what about killing for the honour of one’s family? Overwhelmingly, those who condemn ‘honour killings’ are based in the liberal democracies of the West. The accuser and moral judge is the secular (white) westerner and the accused is the oriental other; the powerful condemn the powerless. By taking a particular cultural view of honour, some killings are condemned whilst others are celebrated. In turn, the act becomes a symbol of everything that is allegedly wrong with the other culture.”

One doesn’t need the gift of clairvoyance to know that somewhere in Canberra, in that tricky terrain between principle and practicality, Attorney-General George Brandis is contemplating what to do with the infamous Section 18C. Should he move to have the provision scrapped altogether, as was promised before last year’s election, or might it be safer to tinker merely at the edges — scratch a word here, amend a phrase there — and leave the cudgel wielded against Andrew Bolt largely intact and ready to silence others who dare to ruffle the aggrieved and well-lawyered?

If press reports are to be believed, Brandis is copping grief even from some in his own party, who really should know better. Professional politicians with a professional interest in being professionally re-elected know that placating those noisy and ultra-quotable “community leaders” is a vocational imperative. It would be a brave politician who told the leaders of, say, his local Calathumpian ghetto that while barbarous traditions are revered in their ancestors’ homeland, they themselves have chosen to live at a remove of many thousands of miles and quite a few centuries. If they opt not to embrace the rich legacy of the Enlightenment, which Australia mostly embodies, the international departure terminal is but a short drive down Anzac Parade and, oh, just by the way, would you like a little help to get those bags into the taxi?

So it must be a tough call for poor Senator Brandis, who learnt just a few weeks ago that endorsing free speech can bring down an avalanche of criticism. Even bigots and fools have the right to be heard, he noted, it being the duty of those who detest their words and views to point out why they are so wrong, so wicked, so stupid or, as is very often the case, all three at once. It is not a difficult concept to grasp, this notion that the counter to dangerous ideas is more speech, rather than the legislated gag or ruinous cost of the many learned friends needed to conduct an adequate defence.

But for a professional politician it is a very dangerous one, as a sidelight to this week’s furor over the Festival of Dangerous Ideas’ invitation to Uthman Badar illustrates. If you have been napping under a horse trough, know that Badar’s topic was to be “a moral defence” of honour killings. That’s no infelicitous paraphrasing of his intended speech, for the subject was laid out with exquisite precision in the festival’s programme:

“Only if we remain quiet do we let this dangerous farce continue. And continue it does. This weekend a Global Dawah Day is taking place — a day on which purpose-trained, purple-T-shirted Muslims are going to be out in force trying to persuade you — or more likely, your children — to convert. There need be no doubt that the “need-to-know” principle will be applied. Expect not Korans but glossy pamphlets handed out along with “polite” invitations from “God” (which is the name Muslim missionaries usually give to Allah when they are on the prowl for recruits). They will assure anyone who is interested that Islam respects women, that Jesus is a prophet of Islam, that Islam is not an extremist religion, and so on……Perhaps they have calculated that non-Muslims are desperate for purpose in their miserable, godless lives, and perhaps this perception might have enough truth in it to persuade some of our young to embark on the one-way journey to Allah and His Messenger’s Sharia rules for life — to expand the generational growth of Islamic totalitarianism. Beware!”

“Sweet reason, love, peace and universal tolerance will be the message as the Religion of Peace launches its global push, Dawah Day, to spread the word and attract fresh converts. Those inclined to be swayed should consider the long history of Islamic missionaries promising one thing and delivering quite another

Recently, a Sudanese Muslim man took issue with me about the historical Islamisation of his country. He had told me that the Sudan adopted Islam peacefully, through the teachings of migrating Sufis. I mentioned the Sudanese Mahdi, who was definitely not peaceful, despite being a Sammaniya Sufi. My adversary, or so he soon became, angrily denied historical facts I brought up, including that the Mahdi was a Sufi, and refused to continue the conversation.

The problem with our argument, it seemed to me, was that Muslims seem to be entirely capable of believing contradictory things at the same time, and presumably amongFunst themselves there is no problem; but an outsider is not supposed to interfere with that alogical comfort zone. Perhaps, also, Muslims are as confused about the role of Sufis in their history as are non-Muslims. What is important for us is that the current Western perception of Sufism is of a kind of accessible mysticism, linked to Islam only loosely if at all, and most definitely “peaceful”.

Years ago, a Sudanese Sufi, when his sect was attacked by fanatics who deem Sufism heretical, told me that they “had no right to attack, as only God can know what is in our hearts”, which sounded terrific. But on a later occasion he affirmed that apostates from Islam should be killed. Contradictory sentiments? The dualism of Islam existing in one Muslim heart?

The problem with the image of Sufis lies in the fine print, as it were, the Koranic texts which no Sufi or any other Islamic sub-sect can ignore, even if they diverge a little from accepted tradition.For instance, celebrating the birthday of the Prophet, which renders them “as bad as Christians” in the eyes of their more fine-print-observing Muslim enemies.

You’ll have a hard time finding any mention of it in the left-wing mainstream media, but last Saturday former U.S. President James Earl Carter flew into the northern Russian city of Murmansk on a Gulfstream private jet for a little luxury fishing expedition (Russian-language link). It seems Mr. Carter would like to do all he can to legitimize Russian aggression in Ukraine, and if he can combine doing so with a gold-plated vacay, so much the better.

At almost the same moment, Ukrainian government troops were triumphantly raising the national flag over City Hall in the Eastern Ukraine city of Slaviansk, ejecting pro-Russian rebels from their main stronghold. An even more furious battle lies ahead in Donetsk, where the rebel cadre fled following their ouster. Throughout this struggle, human rights atrocities by the pro-Russian forces have been as relentless as they have been legion.

Even as the battle raged, the Putin regime was enacting tough new laws to ban separatist activity (Russian-language link) within Russia, one of the more amazing acts of suicidal political hypocrisy so far this century. And a famous Czech leader of the anti-Soviet struggle in his country was branding Vladimir Putin a war criminal for his frenzied acts of aggression against his smaller neighbors.

But none of that mattered to former President Carter. Nor did he care about Russia’s systematic efforts to “divide and conquer” the U.S. and her allies in Europe, or about Putin’s increasingly brutal crackdown on civil society, with special emphasis on the Internet. He blithely allowed his visit to be used by the Putin regime as clear proof that America doesn’t really oppose Putin’s naked imperialism in post-Soviet space, and in so doing encouraged even more such aggression from Russia.

One can’t help but recall Carter’s limp-wristed response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan during his presidency, when all the gumption he could muster was an Olympic boycott. Combined with his gross mismanagement of the economy and his humiliatingly failed policies in Iran, it’s easy to understand how desperate Carter is to somehow remain relevant.

Russian journalist Dmitry Shipilov believes that Putin’s actions in Ukraine are designed for one purpose: to frustrate any attempt to establish a democratic, freedom-focused government in post-Soviet space out of fear that such a contagion could spread to Russia itself. It’s clear that Russia’s policy towards Ukraine is that it must be poor and energy starved, permanently servile and dependant upon Russian mercy for its existence.

But Carter isn’t paying any attention to Russian journalists or human rights activists these days, nor any attention to Putin’s terrifying utterances. Just days before Carter arrived, for instance, Putin let it be known that he feels he has the right to intervene anywhere around the world where “people who consider themselves Russian” desire it, even if they don’t speak Russian. Indeed, Putin’s own henchmen are openly and proudly comparing him to Stalin. With the simple gesture of a fishing trip, Carter is telling the world all of that’s just fine with him.

Leftists can’t stop repeating blatant untruths about the case.

It still is stunning to watch someone prominent and powerful flat-out lie on TV. Like an Olympic gymnast’s perfect dismount from the parallel bars, it leaves you breathless.

Responding to the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision on Monday, Hillary Clinton told the Aspen Institute’s Walter Isaacson: “It’s very troubling that a sales clerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health-care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.”

Clinton did not daintily spin, dissemble, or mislead. She told a big, fat, shining lie.

It is holistically false for Clinton to claim that Hobby Lobby “doesn’t think she [the sales clerk] should be using contraception.”

As I documented Monday, Hobby Lobby’s health plan includes 16 different categories of birth control. They are available on a non-co-pay basis, so employees get them at no out-of-pocket cost. The Food and Drug Administration’s official list of approved contraceptives includes small drawings for each of 20 types of birth control. I assembled these sketches into two graphic illustrations. The first shows the contraceptive cornucopia available to Hobby Lobby’s workers, courtesy of the alleged barbarians who own that company.

Hobby Lobby offers its health-insured employees these 16 different forms of FDA-approved birth-control, for free. Graphic illustrations compiled by Deroy Murdock.

These products are, from left to right and top to bottom:

1. Male condoms

2. Female condoms

3. Diaphragms with spermicide

4. Sponges with spermicide

5. Cervical caps with spermicide

6. Spermicide alone

7. Birth-control pills with estrogen and progestin (“Combined Pill”)

8. Birth-control pills with progestin alone (“the Mini Pill”)

9. Birth-control pills (extended/continuous use)

10. Contraceptive patches

11. Contraceptive rings

12. Progestin injections

13. Implantable rods

14. Vasectomies

15. Female sterilization surgeries

16. Female sterilization implants

Hobby Lobby does not cover four drugs and devices that it considers abortifacients. If staffers want those items, they are free to purchase them with their own money. In the second graphic, these are, left to right:

Considering the sundry enthusiasms upon which government at all level spends our money — Harry Reid’s bovine literary interests, helping out those poor struggling people who own Boeing — it is remarkable that the job of apprehending a known felon, once deported from the United States and illegally present in Texas, fell to volunteers in Brooks County, near the Mexican border. Brooks County, like many other border areas, is overrun with illegal immigrants, and the cost of burying those illegals who die in transit, which can run into the six figures annually, has forced the county to cut back on regular law enforcement. And thus we have the volunteer deputies who brought in the felon, who after he injured his ankle had been been abandoned by the coyotes — professional human traffickers — who had brought him across the border. The volunteers were in the process of working a 26-hour shift — that’s 26 hours, not a typo. Consider for a moment that the cost of illegals’ breaking the law is so high that enforcing the law has been handed over to unpaid volunteers.

Similar scenes are playing out across the border. Nearby Duval County, Texas, was the scene of a dramatic car chase when a truckload of illegals was spotted by police, who determined that the vehicle was outfitted with a fraudulent license plate. Two were killed and a dozen injured in the pursuit. (Many years ago, Duval County enjoyed the services of an elected Democratic sheriff whose grandson is a familiar figure here at National Review.) Nearly 200,000 illegals have crossed into Texas’s Rio Grande Valley this year, and the cartels that oversee the coyote operations have the local landowners terrorized into compliance. This includes the trafficking of minors and others destined for the sex trade; perversely, the Department of Homeland Security has been known to send minors trafficked across the border on to their final destinations, thus “completing the criminal mission” of the traffickers, in the words of one federal judge.

Far from the Mexican border, in the South Carolina town of Lexington, Sheriff James Metts is a crusader against illegal immigration, one who successfully persuaded the federal government to allow his deputies to question those they believe to be illegally present in the country and, when warranted, to begin deportation proceedings on the feds’ behalf. In June, Sheriff Metts was indicted by a grand jury on charges of taking bribes from a local restaurateur to release illegals in his employ. According to the indictment, the bribes came from Gregorio M. Leon, owner of the San Jose Mexican restaurant. Both men are well known and, until recently, were admired for their community spirit. One wonders why Mr. Leon would bother with a bribe; if he were hiring illegals, he’d likely receive gentle treatment from the Obama administration. While talking tough about cracking down on those who employ illegals, the administration has in fact been systematically reducing penalties handed down for that felony, according to an inspector general’s report. Fines have been reduced by as much as two-thirds or even four-fifths; there are millions of illegals working in the United States, but there is nothing even approaching a proportional number — or a rounding error on it — of businessmen serving time for employing them.

The 12-day search for three kidnapped Israeli teens ended Monday with the discovery of their bodies near the West Bank town of Hebron.

The kidnapping and murder of the three — Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel, both 16 – was perpetrated by Hamas, the terrorist network that now runs the Palestinian government in partnership with the supposedly moderate Fatah Party of Mahmoud Abbas.

The search for the teenagers was conducted while Hamas increased its rain of missiles fired from the Gaza Strip at Israeli civilians. On Sunday, even before the boys’ bodies were found, Israeli air force jets attacked about 12 Hamas sites in Gaza believed to conceal rocket launchers and weapons factories. The Israelis responded to the discovery of the bodies by launching about three dozen more attacks on Monday night.

The rocket attacks from Gaza weren’t enough to truly infuriate Israel, but the murder of the three boys has to a degree unseen in years. An increasingly desperate search to rescue them that entered over a thousand Palestinian buildings and homes, ended with a resolute statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay,” adding the teenagers “were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by human animals.”

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In response, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said, “Netanyahu should know that threats don’t scare Hamas, and if he wages a war on Gaza, the gates of hell will open on him.” Hamas commander Khaled Mashaal reportedly telephoned Turkish President Erdogan to urge that the international community “… move quickly to halt the Zionist aggression and lift the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip.”

Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee member Hanan Ashwari told Al Jazeera that “Israeli escalation already took place, now they have an excuse of further escalation.”

Palestinians stoned the Israeli Defense Force ambulance sent to recover the boys’ bodies. The reactions of Zuhri, Mashaal, Ashwari and the stone-throwers should surprise no one because they followed the established Palestinian norm, the Palestinian narrative that is accepted by the global left and its media allies. To them Israel is to be condemned for responding to deadly force with deadly force and the Palestinians held innocent of even disturbing the fictional peace process.

Some among the Western governments and media demand that the Israelis use the “opportunity” of the teenagers’ murder to try harder to reach peace with the Palestinians. The Israelis shouldn’t and won’t because the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government is threatening another terrorist upheaval.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Non-invasive test for artery function. Israel’s Itamar Medical manufactures the EndoPAT diagnostic device that measures how well your arteries are working. Japan’s Nihon Kohden will market EndoPAT to 100,000 doctors in Japan as its flagship product for monitoring the heart and blood vessels.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-itamar-medical-signs-distribution-agreement-in-japan-1000947940

Tiny propellers can steer to the cells. Nano-sized propellers have been developed by researchers at Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. They have the potential to deliver cancer-killing chemicals directly to tumors without harming healthy cells.
http://www.jpost.com/Health-and-Science/Smallest-ever-cancer-busting-nano-propellers-developed-by-Israeli-German-team-360182

Kidney cells can regenerate. Until recently, scientists believed that the liver was the only internal organ that could regenerate. Now researchers at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv University and Stanford University have traced cell growth in the kidney. By speeding up growth they may in the future cure Chronic Kidney Disease.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/discovery-could-spare-patients-from-kidney-transplant/

Molecules responsible for depression. Weizmann scientists have identified a microRNA molecule miR135 that controls the levels of serotonin in the brain. Patients suffering from depression have unusually low miR135 levels in their blood. A treatment and diagnostic test are to be developed by miCure Therapeutics.
http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/tiny-molecule-could-help-diagnose-and-treat-mental-disorders#.U6wBdECKhD0

Positive results in Type 1 diabetes treatment study. Israel’s Redhill Biopharma announced preliminary positive data from a pre-clinical study with RHB-104 for the treatment of Type 1 diabetes. Trials of RHB-104 for treating Crohn’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis are on going and are planned for Rheumatoid Arthritis.
http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140626-905884.html

Researchers find major clue toward Alzheimer’s cure. Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered one of the reasons for the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. A molecular mechanism involving amyloid precursor protein (APP) elevates brain neuron function and “short-circuits” brain communications.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/researchers-find-major-clue-toward-alzheimers-cure/

ReWalk gets US FDA approval. US health regulators have approved the ReWalk exoskeleton system developed by Israel’s Argo Medical. ReWalk’s leg braces, motion sensors and motorized joints respond to subtle changes in upper-body movement and shifts in balance, allowing paraplegics to stand and walk.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-regulators-okay-israeli-made-robotic-legs/

Doctors remove 8 objects swallowed by infant. Specialists at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikvah extracted 8 various foreign bodies from the esophagus of a 14-month-old infant. Gastroenterologists, nutritionists and otolaryngologists extracted pumpkin seeds, orange pits, humous balls and various pebbles.
http://www.schneider.org.il/Eng/Index.asp?ArticleID=918&CategoryID=119&Page=1

A clinic to help diabetics age better. The Center for Successful Aging with Diabetes at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer is a model for how diabetes can be managed. Patients get a five-hour physical and cognitive checkup plus a plan of how to manage diabetes and avoid complications such as dementia.
http://www.israel21c.org/health/how-to-age-successfully-with-diabetes/
http://eng.sheba.co.il/Sheba_News/411.htm

Murder and mothers’ milk
During the wee hours of Wednesday morning, 16-year-old Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir was forced into a car by two men near his home in Shuafat, an Arab neighborhood in east Jerusalem. He was then killed, set on fire and left in a forest.

After identifying the body and giving a statement to the police, his father spoke to the media.

“The settlers killed my son, they kidnapped him and killed him,” he told Time magazine, displaying a photo of the two suspects on his cellphone, from footage caught by the surveillance camera of an adjacent shop.

His assertion that Israeli “settlers” had committed the crime was made before any facts were established by forensic examiners or police investigators. The assumption behind the charge was that Muhammad’s murder was a revenge attack committed by frenzied Jews responding to the abduction and slaying of Israeli teenagers Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaer and Naftali Frenkel on June 12.

As soon as word got out about Muhammad’s murder, Arab residents of east Jerusalem began to riot. Some young men proceeded to pelt Israeli police with rocks and Molotov cocktails; others smashed and torched light-rail stations, burning tires in the middle of the street. It was an eruption of violence that spread to the Beit Hanina neighborhood and continued for days.

Though the funerals of Eyal, Gil-ad and Naftali had just been held the previous day — amid increasing rocket-fire into Israeli towns from Gaza, and retaliatory strikes by the Israeli Air Force — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it his first order of business on Wednesday morning to issue a statement condemning Muhammad’s “despicable murder” and vowing to “uncover” who was behind it.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, declared: “This is a horrible and barbaric act which I strongly condemn. This is not our way and I am fully confident that our security forces will bring the perpetrators to justice. I call on everyone to exercise restraint.”

Israelis from across the political spectrum reacted similarly, rushing to denounce “price-tag” actions committed by Jews. Some went as far as Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev, who blamed Israeli society as a whole for the murder.

“The gangs of Jewish ruffians man-hunting for Arabs are no aberration,” he wrote. “Theirs was not a one-time outpouring of uncontrollable rage following the discovery of the bodies of the three kidnapped students. Their inflamed hatred does not exist in a vacuum: It is an ongoing presence, growing by the day … nurtured in a public environment of resentment, insularity and victimhood.”

I go through the headlines and news stories in over one-hundred publications daily. I do this so that I can view multiple sources on some of the same stories. Doing this allows me to formulate what is fact and what is disingenuous spin; propaganda meant to trick the public into thinking one way instead of another. Make no mistake, both ideological prospective do it. It’s the art of modern political war. But the Progressive Left has myriad vehicles to attack the ideological Right, where the Right has many fewer (thank you uber-stingy money people on the Right).

A perfect example of the Left’s disingenuous attack on the Right’s information sources comes in an article in the Huffington Post by Jack Mirkinson titled, FOX News Really Doesn’t Want to Talk About the Good Jobs News, where he writes:

“Quick! Can you find Fox News’s coverage of the latest job figures?”

He includes some main page screen shots.

“Still can’t find them? OK, we’ll help you out. What if we zoom in?…OK, OK, we’ll show you! The link is that little one right in the corner there…For some reason, FOX News appears to want to downplay the very good job numbers. For good measure, the network also downplayed the figures on its airwaves as well.”

He then goes on to show how the far-Left mainstream media outlets dutifully took the Obama Administration’s spun numbers touting them as miraculous by supplying one – one – example: a screen shot of CNN’s breaking news on the numbers.

The good numbers that Mr. Mirkinson points to are the BLS statistic that 288,000 jobs were created last month. Is that good news? Yes. Is it the miraculous news Mr. Mirkinson suggests? No.