RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the headline, the “T” that precedes the BS in TBS stands for “Total.”

The BS stands for what it usually stands for.

TSS is the increasingly common acronym for the “two-state solution.”

Time to remove kid-gloves

The aftermath of Operation Protective Edge leaves little room for niceties in the conduct of the public debate on Israel’s security and on the measures it should adopt to preserve its security. This is no time to call a spade as a manually operated device whose principle function is to create elevation differentials in the surface of the Earth.

We can no longer afford to recoil from the unpleasant necessity of calling a spade a spade.

The recent – and likely-to be-repeated – round of fighting in Gaza should have driven home to anyone with a smidgen of common sense and common decency that conceding territory to Arab control is both futile and fatal.

The revelations of the terrorist capabilities developed in the wake of the 2005 abandonment of Gaza – in terms of overhead missiles and underground tunnels – underscored just how dangerous, detrimental and dysfunctional it is to exchange Jewish land for some wisp of hope of peace with the Arabs. The truth is so glaringly apparent that this nefarious, nonsensical notion can no longer be excused or condoned by assuming well-intentioned naiveté.

It is imperative, therefore, to conduct an open public debate – however heated and blunt, even brutal – about the motives of obdurate adherents of this disproved dogma and the reasons for them clinging so doggedly to it.

Resolute refusal to recognize reality

Elucidation of these issues is becoming increasingly urgent, for it is becoming ever more difficult – if not impossible – to reconcile concern for the security of Israel, and its survival as the nation-state of the Jewish people, with continued support for a doctrine of territorial concessions and political appeasement – and the resolute refusal to abandon belief in the need for Palestinian statehood, given all the evidence conflicting with it.

The urgency of the debate is heightened by the fact that an indisputably failed formula still enjoys strong support from prominent public figures in Israel, who have served the country with great distinction both as diplomats and as warriors.

THANKS TO E-PAL….B.PINSKY

The category is Jewish baseball stars. Which of these is the correct Jeopardy! question?

Which player hit 6 home runs in a single game?
Which player has the 2nd highest batter-to league home run percentage? A record that lasted 48 years and was bested only by Babe Ruth?
Which player is widely acknowledged as the first “professional” in the history of baseball, setting the stage for the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NA) in 1871 and the evolution of the game into a professional sport?
Which player led baseball’s first professional league in home runs for the first three years of its existence?
Who was the first Jewish manager?
Which Jewish superstar is NOT in the Baseball Hall of Fame?

THE ANSWER IS LIPMAN PIKE

Yes, all of these questions are correct. Though you are forgiven if you thought the answer to question #2 was Hank Greenberg, who has the third highest Homer to League ratio (two Jews and the Babe in the top three spots). And you are excused if you are asking, who is Lipman Pike, and why haven’t I heard of him? Most people, even baseball fans, haven’t.

It’s not as if Pike didn’t capture headlines during his lifetime. Known for his power, his good looks and his bushy mustache, Pike was not only a slugger (nicknamed “The Iron Batter”), but he was also one of the fastest base runners of his day, and quite a showman. In 1873 he challenged a racehorse named Clarence to a hundred-yard sprint, and the hundreds of fans who paid 25 cents each watched Pike win by a nose, and collect the $250 purse ($5,000 in today’s money). Pike’s funeral, on October 10th, 1893, was one of the largest public events of his day, attended by teammates, fans, politicians and much of Brooklyn’s Jewish community.

The Labour hopeful for Woking said Israel is “evil” and said it was learning from Hitler

A Labour party candidate has been suspended after launching a tirade against Israel on social media, calling it “evil” and questioning why the Islamic State (Isis) hadn’t yet attacked it.

According to the Sunday Times, Labour’s candidate for Woking, Vicki Kirby, also said Hitler might be the “Zionist God”, in a series of comments made on her Twitter account.

She is reported to have posted: “We invented Israel when saving them from Hitler, who now seems to be their teacher,” while another said: “I will never forget and I will make sure my kids teach their children how evil Israel is!”

Another tweet read: “Apparently you can ask IS/ISIS/ISIL questions on ask.fm. Anyone thought of asking them why they’re not attacking the real oppressors #Israel?”

The veracity of these tweets was confirmed to The Independent by Labour.

British MPs to vote on motion calling for Palestinian state
The debate will offer the MPs the first-ever opportunity to vote on the vexed issue.

LONDON – British MPs will have an unprecedented opportunity to vote on whether there should be a Palestinian state when the House of Commons resumes after its current party conference break on October 13.

A group of MPs from all major political parties, headed by Labor’s Grahame Morris – including Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, Liberal Democrat Sir Bob Russell, and Green Party former leader Caroline Lucas – have secured a debate under a relatively new procedure for a full-scale, whole day’s debate in the Commons chamber.

The motion reads: “This House believes that the government should recognize that state of Palestine alongside the State of Israel.’’ With those proposing the motion appearing determined to push the issue to a vote, seasoned Westminster observers fear a vote in favor of immediate recognition of a Palestinian state could cause a substantial shift in public opinion and lead to added pressures on the government to change its current policy, which favors securing an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians before considering granting Palestinians recognition.

The debate will offer the MPs the first-ever opportunity to vote on the vexed issue. As the topic for debate has been chosen by backbenchers, it is very unlikely party whips will order MPs to attend or advise them how to vote, so predicting any possible outcome is virtually impossible.

However, The Jerusalem Post understands that the pro-Palestinian lobby will not have it entirely its own way. Several pro-Israel MPs from across the political divide in the Commons have just tabled an amendment that in effect insists that any call for establishing a Palestinian state should come about only “on the conclusion of successful peace negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.”

Many of the UK’s estimated 300,000 Jews will observe with concern, after having lurched from proclaimed friendship with the Jewish State to criticism.

LONDON – Ed Miliband’s Labor Party started its four-day annual conference in Manchester on Sunday, the last showcase opportunity prior to next May’s general election, with serious question marks about its leader’s approach to Israel Miliband, a self described “atheist Jew,” has long had what he once called a complicated relationship with Israel.

He will walk a tightrope of his own making, one that many of the UK’s estimated 300,000 Jews will observe with concern, after having lurched from proclaimed friendship with the Jewish State to criticisms, especially during the recent Gaza war, that have sorely tested the friendship and support of Jewish voters.

Miliband has never been shy of referring to his family’s history, with constant reminders of how his parents survived the Holocaust, and – from time to time – praise for Israel for providing a safe haven for his grandmother.

Jewish communal leaders have made strenuous efforts to engage with him, and when he spoke at the Community Security Trust’s annual Dinner in the spring, he went out of his way to praise their efforts and spoke of his journey to his Jewish roots.

Even then, however, Israel hardly got a mention.

When he chose to make Israel the destination of one of his first trips as opposition leader, there was optimism he might begin to understand Israel’s dilemmas better, and so it appeared when he spent four days with his wife visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories in the days before Passover.

A few days ago, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth
Roth,tweeted the following statement: “Germans rally against
anti-Semitism that flared in Europe in response to Israel’s conduct in
Gaza war. Merkel joins.” Roth provided a link to a New York Times
article about the rally, which took place in Berlin.

Roth’s framing of this issue is very odd and obtuse. Anti-Semitism in
Europe did not flare “in response to Israel’s conduct in Gaza,” or
anywhere else. Anti-Semitic violence and invective are not responses
to events in the Middle East, just as anti-Semitism does not erupt
“in response” to the policies of banks owned by Jews, or in response
to editorial positions taken by The New York Times. This is for the
simple reason that Jews do not cause anti-Semitism.

It is a universal and immutable rule that the targets of prejudice are
not the cause of prejudice. Just as Jews (or Jewish organizations, or
the Jewish state) do not cause anti-Semitism to flare, or intensify,
or even to exist, neither do black people cause racism, nor gay people
homophobia, nor Muslims Islamophobia. Like all prejudices,
anti-Semitism is not a rational response to observable events; it is a
manifestation of irrational hatred. Its proponents justify their
anti-Semitism by pointing to the (putatively offensive or repulsive)
behavior of their targets, but this does not mean that major figures
in the world of human-rights advocacy should accept these pathetic
excuses as legitimate.

If we must speak Gaelic, Amaideas!

All the media hype to the contrary notwithstanding, the referendum on independence for Scotland was very close to a farce. Ironic, too, that such political balderdash should have taken place in the historic home of a half dozen of the world’s most noted political thinkers.

That it was media-driven was made even more apparent in the closing hours after the victory of commonsense took over. CNN, unfortunately that worldwide purveyor of stylish rubbish, set the tone. Amanpour, who never met a cliché she couldn’t misappropriate, led the pack in the little inquest, with talk of “the great democratic process”. That, of course, despite the fact that not a single of the extremely difficult problems which would surface with “independence” from currency to defense had been debated in any real sense. Then there was a spokesman for facebook who nattered on for several minutes on how important the social media had been to “the process” without presenting one solitary fact. And bringing up the rear was a bimbo from a leftwing American thiMk-tank – the Scots didn’t have enough muddlers on their own, apparently – who supposedly advised the Scottish demagogic leader, Alex Salmond, on economic issues. But, as with every major concern in the whole proposed process of leaving the United Kingdom, neither she nor he – an economist and onetime banker – gave a clue as to how a new impoverished mini-state would organize its finances or its currency.

From its origins in 2012 when U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron acquiesced to the referendum, blithely assuming there was no question of the overwhelming strength of “unionist” support, the referendum was treated cavalierly. Cameron had rejected, by the way, Salmond’s offer to put a third option on the ballot, the very one which Cameron and other U.K. leaders of all the major parties have now promised the Scots, that is, an expanded self-government. So much for the political perspicacity of the British Conservative Party leadership which has little if any following among the Scots. [No one even mentions that the name “Cameron”, despite the PM’s very posh background, is of Scottish origin, widespread throughout “the Anglo-Saxon” world and typical of the many indivisible links that bind all the British isles’ peoples.]

As Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas made the claim that his Fatah lost 17 times more members than Hamas in the recent Operation Protective Edge, Fatah praised one of its Gaza rocket commanders in a special video.
A week ago Abbas said in a meeting in Cairo that Hamas only lost 50 terrorists, “while 861 Martyrs fell from Fatah,” emphasizing that “Israel is responsible and it is the one attacking our people in the Gaza Strip,” reports the official PA news agency WAFA as translated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).
In a video on the official Fatah Facebook page two weeks ago, Abbas’s faction praised its rocket commander Mohammed ‘Al-Za’anin’ of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. The terrorist of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade was taken out by an IAF airstrike on August 26, “one hour” before the ceasefire agreement “as he was preparing to launch his final rocket barrage” on Israeli civilian centers, according to the video.
The video opens with the Quran quote (Sura 3:169): “And never think of those who have been killed in the cause of Allah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, receiving provision.” The Fatah terrorist is described as follows: “he carried a rifle, and bombarded the depths of the (Zionist) entity with rockets. He believed that armed resistance was the only way to liberate Palestine. (He) loved military activity. (He) inflicted pain on the occupation time after time.” Closing the description, the Fatah narrator glorifies the terrorist “martyr,” saying “his pure body gathered up the earth, until his dignified soul rose to its creator. He sacrificed his soul for Palestine.” The video also featured a song with such memorable lines as “fire RPGs (rocket propelled grenades), launch the KN rockets (mid-range rockets)…sow terror among the enemy’s soldiers…launch your rockets, make the sons of Zion tremble and burn.

Robert Spencer on the Fog of Jihad-Denial — on The Glazov Gang
The heavy price we pay for our culture’s delusions on Islam.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/robert-spencer-on-the-fog-of-jihad-denial-on-the-glazov-gang/