RUTHFULLY YOURS

When I was a kid, I mean a little kid, my favorite nurse in my father’s office — he was a doctor — was Mrs. Mindus. I’m not sure how old she was or even how she spelled her name — I was about six and the year was 1950 — but she was a sweet woman and very welcoming to me when I visited the radiology office. She used to bring me crayons and a coloring book and sometimes candy as if I were her own child. The only other things I remember about her were that she spoke with an accent and she had a string of numbers tattooed on her arm.

I wondered what the numbers were. I had never seen anything like that on a grownup’s arm. She explained to me she had been in a concentration camp — Auschwitz — and felt lucky to have gotten out, maybe guilty as well, because the rest of her family had been gassed. My father told me about it too — about Mrs. Mindus’ dead husband and their dead children and so forth. I think he wanted me to know about it.

This was, as you might imagine, hard for a six-year old boy to wrap his mind around. But those macabre numbers on Mrs. Mindus’ arm had a profound effect on me. I thought of them frequently growing up and I think they had some influence on what I did in life, joining up with the civil rights movement at the age of twenty and then later making some movies about the Holocaust.

Often, however, as with many memories, Mrs. Mindus faded from my mind as I enjoyed my life, living la vida artistica, writing novels and films, traveling abroad. Those horrifying events were in the past. It could never happen again. Even when Israel was at war in 1967 and again in 1973 I never really worried. (Later histories by Michael Oren and others have taught me otherwise.) Anti-Semitism was, for the most part anyway, a thing of the past, of concern only to the Anti-Defamation League and similar organizations. They could take care of the rare outbreaks.

How naive I was!

Now more than ever in my life I am haunted by Mrs. Mindus. The tatooed numbers spook me, not because I expect to see friends and family being carted off to the camps, but because I see a world of anti-Semitism metastasizing so quickly across the globe there might not be time for that. From Paris to Caracas, from Brussels to Bangkok we hear chants of Jew-hating as loud, ugly and perhaps even more wide-spread than we did in the 1930s. Paris has even had a new Kristallnacht. And in dear old Blighty, “Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas!” goes the cry on the London streets with Jewish Labor Party leader Ed Miliband [1] for all intents and purposes leading the band himself!

Aaron Rothstein is a third-year medical student at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.
Hamas launches rockets from hospitals. Israeli hospitals treat the family of Gaza’s ruler. The Lancet, true to form, publishes an attack on Israel.
“Here is a hand-to-hand struggle in all its horror and frightfulness,” wrote Henri Dunant, a nineteenth-century international activist, in his book A Memory of Solferino. The book concerns the Battle of Solferino in June of 1859 between the Austrians and the French. Dunant describes the combatants “trampling each other under foot, killing one another on piles of bleeding corpses, felling their enemies with their rifle butts, crushing skulls, ripping bellies open with sabre and bayonet.”
An 1897 illustration depicting ambulance corps from
Russia (left) and England (right).
Image via Shutterstock
But amidst these horrors, Dunant gives us at least some hope in the form of the field hospitals. As a volunteer there, he points out that French surgeons did not rest for more than twenty-four hours, amputating legs and taking care of soldiers, eventually fainting from exhaustion. And this was not just done for French soldiers. Dunant observes that many wounded Austrians and Hungarians were “given the same food as the French officers, and their wounded were treated by the same doctors.” In the hospitals only the soldiers’ uniforms on the shelves above their beds, not the quality of the care they received, indicated which side they fought for.

After witnessing this, Dunant proposed that the international community establish relief societies composed of volunteers and sanctioned by a convention that would govern the treatment of the wounded during wartime. His proposal drew huge international support and on August 22, 1864, 16 countries signed onto the first treaty of the Geneva Conventions which, in its first article, reads that “Ambulances and military hospitals shall be recognized as neutral, and as such, protected and respected by the belligerents as long as they accommodate wounded and sick. Neutrality shall end if the said ambulances or hospitals should be held by a military force.”

Implied in this law is a principal far more ancient, one embodied in the physician’s Hippocratic Oath. In it, the doctor swears, “in every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself from all intentional ill-doing….” The physician, therefore, is responsible only for the good of the patient no matter what uniform that patient may wear. The Oath makes no exception for wartime or for the treatment of an enemy. Even if physicians disagree about who be

Is the U.S.-Israel alliance and special relationship coming to an abrupt end thanks to the Islamophile American president?

My growing concern that the U.S.-Israel alliance may be on the verge of strangulation was underlined in a recent article by Carol Brown, which contained an embedded video of Caroline Glick’s recent superb and deeply moving talk given at the Center for Security Policy.

Ms. Glick is the Senior Contributing Editor at The Jerusalem Post, author of The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, as well as an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Security Policy.

The proof may exist in what took place just over a week ago. Apparently acting on orders from the White House, the FAA banned all U.S. airlines flying to Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport because shrapnel from an intercepted Hamas rocket had landed a mile away.

This arbitrary decision, without any consultation with the Israeli government, was imposed despite the fact that no such similar ban was put in place for U.S. airlines flying over Ukraine or into Pakistan, Afghanistan and other locations where civil aircraft have been shot out of the sky.

Only with the principled actions of Senator Ted Cruz was this outrage abruptly ended. But the fact that it occurred and was aimed only against America’s strongest and most loyal ally in the Middle East, and that the source of its implementation may well reach back into the White House, is deeply disturbing.

Will Obama now begin an arms embargo against the embattled Jewish state, including not re-supplying anti-missile missiles for the Iron Dome or spare parts for the weapons used in the war against the Hamas terror regime in Gaza?

Dinesh D’Souza on “America: Imagine a World Without Her” — on The Glazov Gang.
The acclaimed conservative author and filmmaker discusses his new book and motion picture — playing in theaters everywhere.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/dinesh-dsouza-on-america-imagine-a-world-without-her-on-the-glazov-gang/

How will future generations look back on our gravest national emergency of all time? And how will they regard what their forebears didn’t do about it?

This will include what we didn’t do about border nullification, which collapsed the U.S. as a sovereign nation. What we didn’t do about the alignment of our foreign policy with that of jihad movements, which meant the end of liberty, also life itself, for our best allies. What we didn’t do about the growth of tyranny from corruption and Marxism in this cradle of liberty.

Most of our progeny – and certainly those millions descended from the Latin American (and other) populations President Obama invited to invade the former United States – will never ask such questions. But some Americans – those who will throw off their burqas and speak English in the privacy of their caves – will be aghast at the paralysis of their ancestors who lost all.

“Seriously,” they will say to a granny whose granny told her. “You’re telling us that in 2014, the people still had the vote? Still had the Internet? That they still could elect a Congress with the powers of the purse, which could, at the very least, have provided funds to states for the National Guard to stop the Invasion of 2014-2024 (taught by government schools as the ‘Gran Liberacion’)? And they did … nothing?”

“That’s right,” she will croak. “They did nothing.”

“Why? Tell us again why they didn’t love liberty enough to defend” – their voices will drop to a whisper – “the Former Constitution and impeach the tyrant?”

Why, indeed. The very old lady, confused herself, will restate the reasons, the ones she first heard long ago. They still wouldn’t make sense, but it was almost all the history they had left.

The reason was the Republicans – that was the name of the Stupid Party before the Obamacrats instituted the single-payer health care and political system combined – would have had a terrible time dealing with Obamacrat anger against impeachment proceedings in an election year. “In an election year” sounded like one word, the way she said it.

President Obama cannot pressure Israel effectively when it comes to suspension of joint military exercises, disruption of the supply of advanced military systems, supporting anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council, etc.

Contrary to President Obama and all prior US presidents (since 1948), Congress has displayed systematic and sweeping bi-partisan support of the Jewish state, which constitutes one of the very few bi-partisan consensus topics on an otherwise highly polarized Capitol Hill. In fact, since the conclusion of the 1993 Oslo Accords – when Israel ceded the Gaza Strip and 40% of Judea and Samaria to the PLO – many US legislators have outflanked Israeli prime ministers from the hawkish side.

According to the US political system of limited government and checks and balances – and unlike all other democracies – the Executive (the President) is balanced by the Legislature (the Congress), which is co-equal and co-determining, independent of the President, possessing the power of the purse and the muscle (but not always the will) to amend and suspend presidential policies, as well as to initiate its own domestic, foreign and national security policy.

Congress has demonstrated its foreign policy and national security muscles – in defiance of presidential policies – by ending the US military involvement in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia (the Eagleton, Cooper and Church Amendments), Angola (the Clark Amendment) and Nicaragua (the Boland Amendment); forcing the USSR to open its gates to free emigration (the Jackson-Vanik Amendment); suspending the supply of AWACs to Iran on the eve of the Khomeini revolution; refusing to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; upgrading US-Israel strategic cooperation in a significant manner; providing Israel with advanced military systems; and forcing the Obama Administration, in February 2011, to prevent Israel’s condemnation in the UN Security Council.

Immigration has not led to integration, as the multiculturalists have wished, but to intimidation.

It is time to draw the line and stand with Israel against terrorism.

When the Turkish neighbors of Leah Rabinovitch, a Jewish woman in Amsterdam, adorned their apartment with a Palestinian flag, she did the same with an Israeli flag. Leah lives in a neighborhood where 48% of the population is of non-Western origin – many of them Muslims. Stones were thrown through her windows, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at her balcony and an anonymous letter was put in her letter box. “Hitler will be back. Death to the Jews,” it said.

Fifteen different policemen, Rabinovitch says, advised her to remove the flag. She refused. She also received a letter from Rochdale, the Dutch company owning the apartment block. “Rochdale has noticed the Israeli flag on your balcony. This is a provocation,” the letter said. The company then urged her to remove the flag and warned that otherwise she would have to cover all costs of vandalism herself. Did the neighbors with the Palestinian flag receive a similar letter? No, they did not. In Europe, displaying the Israeli flag is a provocation, displaying the Palestinian flag is not.

A view of the apartment building in Amsterdam where Leah Rabinovitch lives. After hanging an Israeli flag, she was subjected to stone-throwing, a death threat and a firebombing. (Image source: AT5 News video screenshot)
Seraphina Verhofstadt, another Jewish woman in Amsterdam, also reacted to the many Palestinian and Hamas flags in Amsterdam by displaying the Israeli flag. She received threats that her throat would be slit. When she left her apartment, she was assaulted by youths wearing Palestinian shawls and severely beaten.

In Europe, immigration has not led to integration, as the multiculturalists have wished, but to intimidation. People defending the West and its values, people who show their solidarity with the West’s international allies, such as the U.S. and Israel, are threatened with vandalism and worse.

Unfortunately, at the same time, however, the defenders of Western values are also losing public support among indigenous Westerners, who no longer seem to believe that Israel has the moral right on its side.

Netflix, a bargain Internet venue featuring a cornucopia of movies and TV series for a minimal monthly charge, is a craps shoot, a spin of the roulette wheel, what winning or losing card emerges from the banker’s baccarat shoe.

One thing you can depend on before a movie unreels, European or American, is a series of initial credits: Widget Cinema….in association with Piglet Productions….A Floyd Floozy Film….in cooperation with the Film Board of Patagonia….A Wholesome Fare Film…..a Cayman Island Entertainment Production….together with Melody Lane LLC…..in partnership with Howling Banshees Studios….Handcrafted Cinema Company….and on and on, each with its own animated graphics. One almost falls asleep waiting for the cast and directorial credits. For a person who grew up with the MGM lion, the Columbia lady, Paramount’s Mount Everest, and even the British Rank/Ealing Studios muscle man hitting a giant gong, and other signature production credits, the parade of entities responsible for most of the movies offered by Netflix is disconcerting. But, apparently that’s “progress.”

After a movie has been made, do these entities vanish like puffballs, or go airborne like dandelion seeds, or roll out of sight like tumbleweeds? Are they intertwined tax dodges, or cinematic pyramid schemes? I have yet to see a single “associated with” name reappear in the credits of any of the independent productions. Major producers, such as TriStar with its white Pegasus, limit such credits to one or two before introducing the major producer. And the older MGM and RKO credits, for example, put the “associated” entities in parenthetical positions somewhere around the major studio’s name. One never really notices them.

That complaint being lodged, here are some appraisals of a handful of Netflix’s offerings.

Barbara Sukowa plays a credible Hannah Arendt, released in 2012, as the German-Jewish author of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil ( 1963). This “docudrama” of her conflict with other Jews about the true nature of the men behind the Holocaust highlights her struggles as she attends Adolf Eichmann’s trial. She was not prepared for the bitter opposition to her covering the trial for The New Yorker, and was ostracized by many of her best friends. This is definitely worth watching qua docudrama, with great chunks of Arendt’s life left out or merely shown in passing, such as her affair with Martin Heidegger, the Nazi intellectual.

Also from 2012 is No God, No Master, a deceptive title because it has little or nothing to do with God or masters. The title is nowhere explained in the film. The phrase was an early anarchist slogan coined by French anarchist Auguste Blanqui in 1880. However, the film is just a very well done “docudrama” of the early years of the FBI’s first director (then known as the Bureau of Investigation), William Flynn, ably portrayed by David Strathairn, and is set chiefly in 1919. It chronicles the detective work of Flynn before he was appointed B.O.I. director. When he stepped down after two years at the post, he was succeeded by J. Edgar Hoover. The story begins with his trying to determine who is responsible for a series of package bombs left on the doorsteps of prominent Boston men or mailed to them.

SPANISH JOURNALIST on why Hamas is never filmed or photographed in action
“If ever we dared point our cameras on them, they would simply shoot and kill us.”
Algemeiner A Spanish journalist told Israeli filmmaker Michael Grynszpan that the reason television news does not broadcast images of Hamas fighters in action is because of fear of immediate execution.
Grynszpan, who directed the film ‘Forgotten Refugees‘, about the 800,000 to 1 million Jews expelled from their homes in the Arab world in the 1950s, posted his interview with the unnamed Spanish journalist on Facebook on Wednesday.

Mushir Al Masri, a Hamas MP and media spokesman, being interviewed by media in front of backdrop showing a destroyed house, and being filmed inside the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza. The photo was posted on Twitter by WSJ correspondent Nick Casey, and has since been removed.
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“I met today with a Spanish journalist who just came back from Gaza. We talked about the situation there. He was very friendly. I asked him how come we never see on television channels reporting from Gaza any Hamas people, no gunmen, no rocket launcher, no policemen. We only see civilians on these reports, mostly women and children.”
“He answered me frankly: ‘It’s very simple, we did see Hamas people there launching rockets, they were close to our hotel, but if ever we dared pointing our camera on them they would simply shoot at us and kill us.’”
“Wooh, impressive. Then I asked him ‘Would you mind saying that on camera? I can film you explaining this…’”
“For some reason I cannot really understand, he refused and almost ran away. I guess my camera is as dangerous as Hamas threats…”
“So just for you to know, the truth will never appear on the images you see on television.”

To prevent an even more brutal and extreme successor from taking over, Gaza must be dismantled and the non-belligerent population relocated.

Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.

– Golda Meir, cited in The New York Times, December 9, 1978

We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

– Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons, March 1, 1848

If only Israeli strategic policy were founded on the enduring, down-to-earth wisdom embodied in the two preceding quotations. They convey the essence of Israel’s international and regional environments – the cynical self-interest that characterizes the former, and the unbridled brutality that characterizes the latter.

In recent decades, any understanding of these basic precepts seems starkly absent from the formulation – and certainly, the implementation – of Israeli strategic plans.

Politics as moralistic self-recrimination

As The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens recently pointed out, the conduct of Israel’s international politics, which ought to be an exercise in power and preservation of self-interest, has degenerated into moralistic self-reflection and self-recrimination.

In an international environment characterized by cynical self-interest and a regional environment characterized by unbridled brutality, such behavior is wildly inappropriate, and unless reined in and reversed, self-destructive.

As Operation Protective Edge drags on, needlessly and inexplicably, into its fourth week, one thing is becoming excruciatingly clear: Israel has lost all sense of strategic direction.