RUTHFULLY YOURS

Does this sound a tad like the present when the entire Western world refuses to understand the Islamic goals of conquest and subjugation? rsk

“Nazism, writes Daniel Johnson, is best understood as a movement to destroy Western civilization, a goal it shared with Soviet Communism. Too few Europeans understood this in the 1930s. One who did was Aurel Kolnai, a Hungarian Jew who moved to England, fleeing the rising tide of continental anti-Semitism:

Kolnai’s great achievement was to show that Nazi ideology was animated by a hatred of Western civilization. Nothing less than its total defeat would suffice. “The Western cause does not mean a nation set against another nation, not even a party fighting another party: it means the world of civilization organized in moral self-awareness versus the rebels to mankind.” He was clear that “the conflict between the West and Nazi Germany is inseparably connected with the inner problem of Western society.” Kolnai also saw that the enemies of Western civilization had already combined “in an embryonic form” during the Great War. We know that as a young man in Budapest, he ardently prayed for an Allied victory over the Central Powers, even though the defeat of his Hungarian countrymen led to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, revolution, counterrevolution, and his own exile. He warned that “the Soul of the West is everything. There must be a spark to kindle the fire; there must be a living and active core around which to align mankind: the West aware of the menace of its Foe, and all that is Western and akin to Western essence, outside the West.”

It is a society that rejects religious zealotry. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslim and one can hear the five-times-a-day Muslim call to prayer, but it is muted and ignored by most.

Like Israel, Kurdistan is more democratic than any of its neighbors. Like Israel, Kurdistan is surrounded by enemies that wish it did not exist. Like Israel, Kurdistan looks West. And like Israel, Kurdistan has maintained an internal equilibrium though all the world betrays it.

Iraqi Kurdistan is full of surprises. Probably, the most unexpected discovery is how normal life is in its capital city, Erbil. Despite a late summer scare by Islamic State [IS] military gains north of Mosul and the threat of suicide bomber attacks, the social discipline of Kurdistan’s citizens is admirable. There is a relaxed state of tension. It is “business as usual.”

There is also a sense of optimism, pervasive and infectious. Entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. While there was an exodus of foreign businessmen after the initial territorial gains by the IS, foreign investors are filtering back. The Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] has already drawn up plans for large-scale projects to improve the infrastructure. Heavy-duty construction vehicles are everywhere. The most visible project is the beltway being built around the city.

This column is from Israel’s black-belt leftist newpaper which I call Al-Ha’aretz….rsk
Feminists, Islamists and university administrators have all taken extreme measures to protect their ‘right’ not to be offended. Unfortunately, censorship for this cause is widely accepted in modern democracies.

Nobody should be surprised that the dictatorial ruler of North Korea would want to censor a film that offended him, or even that he would feel entitled to break the law by threatening reprisals against the offenders. His actions emulate those of hard-left feminists, radical Muslims, university administrators, and others who seek to prevent the publication or distribution of material they deem offensive.

I recall an incident several years ago when radical feminists fired bullets through the windows of a Harvard Square bookstore to protest its sale of Playboy Magazine. I also recall being physically threatened by a group called “Dykes on Bikes” – a feminist motorcycle gang – for providing legal representation of alleged pornographers.
Then there is radical Islamic censorship that has become far more deadly. When some radical Muslims were offended by Theo Van Gogh’s film “Submission,” which exposed Islam’s demeaning views toward women, Van Gogh was murdered in cold blood and his co-producer’s life threatened by a Fatwa. Salman Rushdie had to go into hiding when a Fatwa was issued against him and his book, “The Satanic Verses.” The Yale University Press, fearful of threats of violence, censored the actual cartoons depicting Mohammed from a book about that subject, following violent reaction to the publication of the cartoons in Scandinavia.

Contrary to the two-state solution, which splits Israel between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Israeli scholar Mordechai Nisan proposes that the land west of the Jordan River should be granted to Israel alone.

“It became conventional and universally acceptable that there should be a Palestinian state next to Israel, west of the Jordan River,” Nisan, retired lecturer in Middle East Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told John Bachman and Miranda Khan on “America’s Forum” on Newsmax TV.
“This was a theme that was embedded in the Oslo Accords from 1993 and central to various rounds of negotiations, which took place in the last 20 years between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” he explained.

“But a Palestinian state hasn’t surfaced and the reasons for that are many,” he said.

There is “a grave incompatibility between what Israel needs for its own well being and national military integrity, its right to settlements in the land of Israel, and what the Palestinians demand, which is a Palestinian state emptied of any Jews and a Palestinian state, which is not ready to recognize Israel as a Jewish state at all,” he contends.

“Therefore, it’s not surprising that after 20 years, no agreement has been reached,” he added.

RIP Joseph Sargent, Director of the Greatest Jewish Action Movie

Taking of Pelham One Two Three director died at 89

Yesterday brought the news that Joseph Sargent, the director of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, died at 89. This is particularly sad because Sargent–the journeyman director with nearly 90 credits–made perhaps the greatest Jewish action movie.

Pelham, for those of you who somehow haven’t seen it, is about the hijacking of a New York City subway in the early 1970s. It’s insanely memorable–David Shire’s thumping, horn-driven score, Owen Roizman’s gorgeous and dirty cinematography, and a cast that’s a who’s who of great character actors, including Jerry Stiller, Robert Shaw and Martin Balsam.

But let’s not forget that Pelham is also, as David Edelstein put it, “a New York Jewish comedy writer’s take on the modern metropolis going meshuggener.” It’s an action movie with the soul of a Catskills timeshare.

This story was originally published on December 16, 2010.
Brooklyn’s hip Mile End deli modernizes the traditional meal once again

Mile End opened in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, at the beginning of 2008, a deli specializing in Montreal Jewish cuisine: smoked meat instead of pastrami; poutine instead of cheese fries; those flat, sweet things they serve up there instead of what New Yorkers call bagels. Foodies loved the sandwiches. Hipsters loved the Brownstone Brooklyn setting, the Stumptown coffee, and the brunch, which is just exotic enough to be adventurous and just familiar enough to be, well, brunch.

Then, Mile End began to offer an ambitious dinner menu that took your Eastern European Jewish grandmother’s evergreens and ran them through up-to-the-minute, fat-happy trends: shmaltzed radishes, veal cholent, kasha varnishkes with confit gizzards. What was this cool Canadian place doing serving traditional food? “To me, this is what deli is,” Montreal-born Noah Bermanoff, the place’s founder and co-owner, said earlier this week. “I’m not trying super-hard to be Montreal. I’m trying super-hard to serve food as I know it.”