RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Iron Dome, well this particular hi-tech defensive shield certainly has been splendid in protecting Israeli parents and their kids from rocket attacks coming in from Gaza – and we’re speaking about thousands of Hamas rockets over a period of a dozen years.

So the Iron Dome keeps being blessed for all the wonderful work it’s been doing, and Amen to that – but is this the answer?

Not for me.

I love the Iron Dome for all the right reasons. But I have learned to hate the Iron Dome because it keeps Israelis conditioned to expect a lifetime of warfare.

It means there is no end to the terror.

It means that Israelis cannot expect their government to fully protect them.

It means that Israel has surrendered into accepting a life on the run.

It keeps Israelis trained into believing that they have no right to expect peace or tranquility, ever.

It means that Israeli kids can never be tucked into bed safely. The next siren can go off at any minute. This time, will the Iron Dome succeed?

This time – will it fail?

Is this any way to live – for parents, for kids?

http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/british-reporter-returns-from-gaza-and-gives-heartbreaking-account-of-what-he-saw/

Jon Snow… J’accuse!
Dear Jon Snow
I watched your recent report from Shifa Hospital, as well as the additional piece on your return from Gaza; with great interest.
As you rightly say to viewers “we have to know that in some way we actually share some responsibility for those deaths”. And let me say that I “did choose to watch” and I am indeed “motivated to do something”. That something is this…

Jon Snow, I accuse you of being complicit in the wilful and reckless endangerment and death of these same children and other innocents in Gaza.

I accuse you of aiding and abetting Hamas in their diabolical plan to manipulate world opinion by ruthlessly engineering the maximum possible death toll among their own civilian population, especially their children.

I accuse you of wilful negligence, professional misconduct, and abject failure to report the facts as they truly are.
Yes Jon, I watched your macabre, heart wrenching “infomercial” / “propaganda film”, which might have been written by Hamas itself.
I can’t say as I am that surprised, as I remember how you described Hamas rockets in the past as “nothing more than fireworks, pretty harmless really”.
Well Jon, let us examine the facts as they truly are…

Four days ago, one of your harmless fireworks managed to kill 4 Israelis and wound 9. Last week your harmless fireworks killed a 32 year old father and wounded his whole family, leaving his three month old baby daughter fighting for her life and her four year old brother with serious shrapnel wounds. Your harmless fireworks also injured two sisters, one of ten years old currently fighting for her life in hospital and her thirteen year old sister wounded but recovering. That same harmless firework also injured an 81 year old disabled man.

Perhaps the saddest and most ironic examples of your harmless fireworks in action are two of many Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets which misfired, one which hit the Shifa hospital killing 16 and the other hitting a playground in the Shati refugee camp killing 10 children. Indeed one of your colleagues, an Italian journalist has confirmed that it was a misfired Hamas mortar shell which hit the UN school killing another 17 and injuring countless others.
As an experienced reporter who wants his reports “to mean something”, surely they can only do so if they are honest, non-partisan and factual. In your report you purposely omitted key facts concerning the plight of innocents in Gaza and failed to provide important information which could put the desperate situation of these poor and unfortunate people into proper context.

An Open Plea to the President and All Other Sworn Federal, State, and Local Public Officials Concerning Marijuana Policies and Laws in the United States: What Part of “I swear to take Care that Laws be faithfully executed” or “I swear to support and defend the Constitution” Do You Not Understand?

Public officials in the U.S. take oaths to support and defend the nation’s Constitution and laws. Indeed, the President of the United States takes an oath and has a Constitutional obligation in Art. II, Sec. 3 to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. The President swears or affirms “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. Those serving in elective or non-elective roles at all levels in government swear to support and defend the Constitution. All may want to keep in mind the following questions when it comes to U.S. laws and Constitutional obligations:

Can a State constitutionally pass and implement laws that are in effect in violation of Federal law and that are in contravention of International Treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory?
Can the Federal government constitutionally allow a State to take actions that are in violation of Federal law and in contravention of International Treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory?
Should sworn Federal officials countenance or even, in effect, promote civil disobedience and disregard for duly enacted Federal laws?
Does the failure of a public official to act when a felony is committed constitute “imprisonment of a felony”, itself a crime according to 18 USC 4 and punishable by fines, imprisonment or both?
When a State legislature votes to enact a law that is in violation of Federal laws, is the Governor of such a state obligated to veto such a law? The Governor of New Hampshire has vowed to use her veto power if the New Hampshire State Legislature passes legislation that would allow recreational use of marijuana.
What is the significance of the January 15, 2014 ruling of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to “uphold three lower court decisions” and “(follow) previous rulings by federal appeals courts and the U.S. Supreme Court” and thereby affirm the Federal government’s policy that “California medical marijuana dispensaries have no protection under state law from drug prosecutions” (LegalNewsJournal.com, 2014 Jan 16)?
What are the implications for the rule of law and the primacy of the U.S. Constitution if the laws of the U.S. and the International Treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory are abandoned, ignored, disobeyed, or otherwise unenforced?

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/yes-sue-our-lawless-president?f=puball

“Today, however, President Obama has taken the concept of discretion and so distorted it, and has taken the obligation of faithful enforcement and so rejected it, that his job as chief law enforcer has become one of incompetent madness or chief lawbreaker. Time after time, in areas as disparate as civil liberties, immigration, foreign affairs and health care, the President has demonstrated a propensity for rejecting his oath and doing damage to our fabric of liberty that cannot easily be undone by a successor.” (Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, Washington Times, July 31, 2014)

Americans and many around the world are increasingly fearful of a President who has demonstrated no regard for the checks and balances of our incredible Constitution, the oldest in the world that still functions to protect individual rights and which sets forth the divisions between our legislative, judicial and executive departments of government.

Congress, however, will not impeach President Obama, but the House will sue him on the basis of just one of the many examples of his dictatorial use of executive orders to ignore the power of the legislative branch to pass laws he took an oath to enforce. He has unilaterally and illegally altered the Affordable Care Act 27 times, his signature legislation that former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said Congress had to pass “so we can find out what is in it.” No Republican member of Congress voted for this two-thousand-page-plus law, passed late in the evening of Christmas Eve, 2009.

The decision to impeach a President is essentially a political one and Republicans understand that the impeachment of President Obama would be interpreted by nearly half of the voters as an attack on a President they support. There have only been two impeachment actions in U.S. history and both have failed.

The nation is significantly divided regarding the President and Congress has been in gridlock as Democrats as the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, has refused to let more than 300 House bills sent to the Senate be debated and voted upon.

Suing the President has ample history. It is hardly “a stunt” as Democrats have labeled it. New York Democrat Louise Slaughter called it “preposterous”, but failed to mention that eight years earlier, in 2006, she was a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by congressional Democrats against George W. Bush!

From Northern Iraq to Northeastern Syria, from Nairobi, Kenya to Benghazi, Libya, from Lahore, Pakistan to the rugged mountains of Mali and Afghanistan, militant Muslims have executed tens of thousands of their fellow Muslims and are on a killing rampage against Christians. The world is shocked and distressed.

The Muslims’ killing campaign did not end with their defeat at the gates of Vienna. Their eviction from Spain was a temporary forced retreat. But now Muslims have, in huge numbers, penetrated the gates of every city and town in Europe and North America without even having to use their swords.

Distressed by the Muslims’ trouble-making and killing sprees, civilized nations are bending over backwards in the hope of placating them and helping them join the family of humanity by admitting hordes of immigrants and offering them all manner of hospitality and assistance. All these gestures remain in vain and to no avail. Many of the new arrivals, deeply infected by the Islamic ethos, find it impossible to assimilate in the host countries. Instead, they strive to impose their defunct order which is the cause of their own backwardness and inhumanity on the host nations.

The non-Muslim world is at its wits’ end. No accommodation or kindness seems to stem the tide of Islamic violence. Countless numbers of proposals have been advanced in dealing with this systemic Islamic disorder. Some feel that, in general, Muslims are law-abiding citizens of their adopted countries and it is only a minority that is responsible for the violence and mayhem. Thinking along these lines has prompted people to say that the solution to Islamic violence rests with Islamic leaders. That is, Islamic leaders should speak up and condemn jihad and jihadists.

Western armchair theorizers and wishful thinkers need to take time and study the Islamic system in order to avoid making demands on Muslim leaders-demands that will never be met because they are completely unrealistic.

Islam presently has its stranglehold over on a billion humans, posing an existential threat to all non-Muslims. When this billion and a half adhere to the pathological belief of Islam and use it as their marching orders of life, the rest of humanity ignores this threat at its peril.

Islam, yet again, has risen from the ashes and is on a campaign of conquest throughout the world. Hordes of fanatical Islamic foot soldiers are striving to kill and get killed. What they all want is the opportunity to discharge their homicidal-suicidal impulses, on their way to Allah’s promised glorious paradise. And in the background, granting the foot soldiers’ wishes, are their handle

‘Hitler Was Right!’
With Europe’s Muslim immigrants come ancient hatreds and a revival of anti-Semitism.

The Bergische Synagogue in the German town of Wuppertal has a history with arson. The nearly 120-year-old synagogue was burned down during Kristallnacht in 1938. Rebuilt after World War II, it was targeted again about a week ago by arsonists who threw Molotov cocktails at the house of worship (although, thankfully, they failed to set it aflame).

Welcome to the New Europe, where the street thugs have learned a lot from the Old Europe. Their protests of the Gaza War during the past few weeks haven’t been anti-Israel so much as anti-Jew. Some of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world — Paris, Berlin, London — have witnessed demonstrations airing hatreds associated with Europe’s darkest crimes.

You don’t have to be a German speaker to sense the ugliness in the chant, “Jude, Jude feiges Schwein! Komm heraus und kämpf allein!” That was the verbal calling card of protesters in Berlin a few weeks ago. Translation: “Jew, Jew, cowardly swine, come out and fight on your own!”

The former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany warned that Jews shouldn’t do anything to make themselves recognizable in public. The current president says, “We would never in our lives have thought it possible anymore that anti-Semitic views of the nastiest and most primitive kind can be chanted on German streets.”

In France, protesters have stormed synagogues yelling “Hitler was right!” and “Death to the Jews!” — apparently forgetting in the heat of the moment that what they are supposed to be upset by is disproportionate Israeli attacks in Gaza, not that Adolf Hitler didn’t finish the job.

On Twitter, the hashtag #HitlerWasRight was trending globally in mid-July. Usually, Israel-bashers accuse the Jewish state of being the new Nazi Germany. But don’t sweat the details. All they know is that they hate the Jews, and they will use whatever rhetorical provocation at hand to communicate their venom.

Two weeks ago, the British medical journal Lancet, considered to be one of the world’s leading medical publications, published “An open letter for the people in Gaza.” Signed by four European doctors on behalf of 20 others (17 from Italy and three from the UK), the letter had virtually nothing to do with medicine. Rather, it was a grotesque attack on Israel. Some excerpts:

“We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression.”

“Israel’s behaviour has insulted our humanity, intelligence, and dignity as well as our professional ethics and efforts.”

“We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre.”

“Among other lies, it is stated that civilians in Gaza are hostages of Hamas.”

“These attacks aim to terrorise, wound the soul and the body of the people, and make their life impossible in the future.”

“We as scientists and doctors cannot keep silent while this crime against humanity continues.”

The four signatories were Paola Manduca, professor at University of Genoa, Italy; Sir Iain Chalmers of the UK; Derek Summerfield of the London Institute of Psychiatry; and Mads Fredrik Gilbert, professor at University Hospital of North Norway.

Nowhere in Lancet is it noted that each of them has devoted much of his or her life to delegitimizing Israel.

The first signatory, Paola Manduca, has, for years, gone around the world giving “expert” testimony against Israel and on behalf of those who would destroy the Jewish state. In 2006, for example, she wrote that Israel was using and experimenting with heretofore unknown weapons against Arabs:

Perry is a smart man who tripped on his flubs during the debates. Subsequently, conservatives have adopted all his plans…..tax reform, immigration control, domestic energy, healthcare…..Is he presidential? Remember how Nixon came back from defeat and ridicule to become President in 1968 when folks tired of the Johnson “great society” agenda of the left?….rsk

As Rick Perry looks out at us from countless cable-news channels this summer, his border chess match against the Obama administration underscores his potential 2016 skill set. Two portraits emerge.

One is of a wiser, seasoned executive ready to jump into a race already rich with governors. He’s armed with more reliable conservatism than that of Chris Christie; and he has a meatier résumé than Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, or Mike Pence. This portrait features Perry’s proud record of protecting his state from the scourges of the Obama years, racking up stretches of job creation and growth that have far outpaced the stagnant national economy. It also features his unapologetic recruiting of employers and residents from right under the noses of liberal governors in states lumbering under the weight of expansionist governance. Around my outpost in Texas, I meet these newcomers all the time. They are transplanted Californians and New Yorkers who confess they will miss the Pacific beaches or the Manhattan skyline; they will not miss the suffocating taxes and regulatory environments of their prior homes.

But as they arrive in Rick Perry’s Texas, another portrait emerges of the governor who may seek to become our next Texan president. This one depicts a candidate far too conservative to capture independent voters in a general election, and it shows a man whose previous White House run collapsed under the harsh lights of national scrutiny.

So which one is the real Rick Perry?

We cannot erase history, particularly the video evidence of the now-famous “oops moment” in a November 2011 debate when Perry could not remember the third federal agency he would eliminate if he were elected. Self-deprecating humor served him well in the immediate aftermath, but it was not enough to pull the campaign out of a ditch at least partially of Perry’s own making.

Elite opinion believes Israel will lose “long-term” whatever happens in the next weeks. Not necessarily.

In postmodern wars, we are told, there is no victory, no defeat, no aggressors, no defenders, just a tragedy of conflicting agendas. But in such a mindless and amoral landscape, Israel in fact is on its way to emerging in a far better position after the Gaza war than before.

Analysts of the current fighting in Gaza have assured us that even if Israel weakens Hamas, such a short-term victory will hardly lead to long-term strategic success — but they don’t define “long-term.” In this line of thinking, supposedly in a few weeks Israel will only find itself more isolated than ever. It will grow even more unpopular in Europe and will perhaps, for the first time, lose its patron, America — while gaining an enraged host of Arab and Islamic enemies. Meanwhile, Hamas will gain stature, rebuild, and slowly wear Israel down.

But if we compare the Gaza war with Israel’s past wars, that pessimistic scenario hardly rings true. Unlike in the existential wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, Israel faces no coalition of powerful conventional enemies. Syria’s military is wrecked. Iraq is devouring itself. Egypt is bankrupt and in no mood for war. Its military government is more worried about Hamas than about Israel. Jordan has no wish to attack Israel. The Gulf States are likewise more afraid of the axis of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood than of Israel — a change of mentality that has no historical precedent. In short, never since the birth of the Jewish state have the traditional enemies surrounding Israel been in such military and political disarray. Never have powerful Arab states quietly hoped that Israel would destroy an Islamist terrorist organization that they fear more than they fear the Jewish state.

But is not asymmetrical warfare the true threat to Israel? The West, after all, has had little success in achieving long-term victories over terrorist groups and insurgents — remember Afghanistan and Iraq. How can tiny Israel find security against enemies who seem to gain political clout and legitimacy as they incur ever greater losses, especially when there is only a set number of casualties that an affluent, Western Israel can afford, before public support for the war collapses? How can the Israelis fight a war that the world media portray as genocide against the innocents?

In fact, most of these suppositions are simplistic. The U.S., for example, defeated assorted Islamic insurgents in what was largely an optional war in Iraq; a small token peacekeeping force might have kept Nouri al-Maliki from hounding Sunni politicians, and otherwise kept the peace. Israel’s recent counterinsurgency wars have rendered both the Palestinians on the West Bank and pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants in Lebanon less, not more, dangerous. Hamas, not Israel, would not wish to repeat the last three weeks.

Two wars – one in Gaza the other in eastern Ukraine – are unfolding simultaneously. They have nothing in common except this: both should be being seen as unambiguous in terms of which side is right and which wrong. And second, both are likely to end in a strategic (i.e. long-term) defeat for the right side because of the attitudes that shape the approach of Western leaders to both wars.

The facts are not in dispute. In Ukraine, the legitimate government in Kiev is trying to restore Ukrainian sovereignty over its territory, in practical terms seized by Russia in a proxy war using professional special troops, intelligence officers and mercenaries (kontraktniki) to train assorted thugs known collectively as “rebels” or “separatists” who are being armed and supplied by Russia.

In Gaza, Israel is battling a fundamentalist terrorist organization dedicated to killing Jews, Christians and gays and oppressing women. As in Ukraine, they attacked first, by firing hundreds missiles at Israeli cities and towns.

Yet in neither case has the justness of the causes led the “West” to wish for a victory by the “right” side, rather than a “truce” or “ceasefire,” which, as everyone knows, the “wrongs” are going to violate as soon as they recover, regroup, and resupply.

Why?

Two reasons in the post-modern canon could provide an explanation. First, while someone’s victory implies someone’s defeat, “peace” – no matter how fraudulent or short-lived – superficially has no losers, and for that reason is vastly preferable. Second, the “right” and “wrong,” the “just” and “unjust,” the “good and evil” are inherently suspect because values themselves are suspect. Western opinion makers appear to have learned from elite universities that “values” are “individual” and “subjective.” As a result, they must be taken out of political discourse and decision-making. Hence, too, the coverage by the elite media of the West of both wars as “conflicts” in which the word “just” or its synonyms never once appear, both sides are somehow equally at fault, and therefore a victory by one side is not more morally agreeable than by the other.

So strong are these ideological imperatives that not even a tragedy can influence them. Neither the downing of the MH17, almost certainly by a Russia-supplied surface-to-air missile, nor the murder of three Israeli teenagers nor repugnancy over the deliberate sacrifice of civilians by Hamas can introduce morality into these wars and make victory over evil preferred to peace.