RUTHFULLY YOURS

  Whatever they may disagree about, Western leaders are in complete agreement about one thing: the new self-styled caliphate, the Islamic State, has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. It’s a comforting, reassuring vision for Western non-Muslims facing a massive influx of Muslim immigrants and jittery about the prospect of Islamic terrorism, except for just […]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/the-ferguson-lynch-mob-and-what-it-doesnt-know-on-the-glazov-gang/ This week’s Glazov Gang was guest-hosted by Ann-Marie Murrell and joined by Monty Morton, Nonie Darwish and Karen Siegemund. The guests gathered to discuss, The Ferguson Lynch Mob and What it Doesn’t Know, analyzing the the Left’s rush to judgment, division and hate — without the facts (starts at 15:00 mark). The guests also […]

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/ The right to protest may not be specifically found in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights; though the rights to freely assemble, petition and speak are integral to the Bill of Rights. However, peaceful protests are embedded in our culture and history and manifested by those like Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ Media conveys immediacy, but it doesn’t convey culture. Its famous flattening effect makes shoppers at a Staples in D.C. or a Whole Foods in Berkeley feel like they’re right among the toppled buildings of Aleppo or Gaza, without actually giving them any insight into the motivations of the players. They’re watching foreign movies in […]

http://atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-260814.html The late Leo Strauss (1889-1973) was a thinker sufficiently nuanced to allow a wide range of interpretation of his views, and a teacher broad-ranging enough to influence students with divergent interests. I am honored to contribute occasionally to theClaremont Review of Books, associated with the so-called West Coast Straussians (although I am persona non grata among […]

http://www.ilanberman.com/15246/last-shot-for-reality-to-pierce-russian-fantasy USA Today On Tuesday, Russian president Vladimir Putin will meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, in Minsk, Belarus in an effort to bring an end to the crisis in Ukraine. The summit is shaping up to be a critical turning point in the six-month-old conflict over the soul of Ukraine. It is by […]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Kurdistan-The-one-state-solution-for-regional-stability-in-the-Middle-East-372301 This development – not the silly idea of an “Arab spring/awakening,” or the establishment of another Arab Palestinian state – will change geopolitics in the coming decades. One of the most important hopeful and positive developments in the modern Middle East, at least since the establishment of Israel, is the emergence of a de […]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15570#.U_4Km2P4Kc1 It is a settled matter that the IDF are tops in bravery and ethical warfare. Give them any job, and it’s done. But when politicians run the war, Chelm is likely to happen – Chelm being the town inhabited by those fabled “wise men” loved by tradition for their well-meaning but bumbling ways, like […]

This dispatch can also be read here:
www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001481.html

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“STICKS AND STONES WILL BREAK MY BONES — BUT WORDS WILL INDEED HARM ME”

[Note by Tom Gross]

Haaretz journalist Ari Shavit’s new book “My Promised Land” has been gaining a great deal of attention in recent months. Another new book, which has so far garnered less attention from the likes of the New York Times, because unlike Shavit, it hasn’t made dubious claims about Israel’s actions at the 1948 battle of Lydda – an historian writing in the Daily Beast for example, called Shavit’s claims “a gross historical distortion” – is Joshua Muravchik’s “Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel,” published by Encounter Books.

Below, with the permission of Joshua Muravchik and of Roger Kimball of Encounter Books, I attach one of the shorter chapters from “Making David Into Goliath”.

Before that, I attach some other links of interest.

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NEW YORK TIMES CORRESPONDENT USED PICTURE OF YASSER ARAFAT AS HIS FACEBOOK PROFILE PHOTO

I posted all these items on my public Facebook page at the time they appeared, and if you want to see similar items in future, please “like” this page: http://www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia

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* Among the points made in this lengthy essay by Richard Behar in Forbes magazine is that the New York Times Gaza correspondent used a picture of Yasser Arafat as his Facebook profile photo (hardly an indication of neutrality). (Towards the end of the piece, Richard Behar, who is also a subscriber to this list, mentions and links to my own reporting.)

The videotaped beheading of photojournalist James Foley shocked us, but it should not have. The Islamic fascisti such as ISIS have always preyed on the innocent and defenseless. Twelve years ago, a like group of barbarians kidnapped and murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. They did the same to him as ISIS did to Foley: an innocent American reporter was kidnapped, held incommunicado, and then beheaded on videotape for the propaganda and shock value.

History abounds with such events, barbaric murders on scales both large and small. A particularly notable one began one hundred years ago tonight.

In its murderous rampage through Belgium at the outset of World War One, the German army commonly committed mass murders of civilians. As historian John Keegan recounts, 211 were murdered in the town of Andenne, 384 in Tamines, and 612 in Dinant. And then, on the night of August 25, the Germans began the burning of Louvain.

In Keegan’s description, three days of sacking and burning left the Fifteenth Century town deserted. More than 200 civilians were murdered, 42,000 forcibly evacuated, and the library of 230,000 books — Louvain was “the Oxford of Belgium” — was burned. For three days, the Germans rampaged and at the end the town was in ruins.

These atrocities weren’t conducted by special troops of barbarians. They were committed by several of the most elite Prussian regiments. Whatever seed of evil existed in their minds lived on in the death squads of Hitler’s SS and Gestapo which were also comprised of ordinary Germans. It was a big step between Louvain and Auschwitz, but not a step that was too tall for ordinary soldiers to climb. Ordinary Japanese soldiers, at least officers armed with swords, took pleasure in decapitating American prisoners. What they did was the same as what ISIS did to Foley. Evil can become ordinary, even celebrated, within the armies of some nations.

We now have dire warnings about ISIS from the Pentagon and Congress. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has said ISIS is unlike any other terrorist group we have encountered, better funded and even more radical than al-Qaeda, if that is even possible. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey says we would have to use military force not just in Iraq but also in Syria to inflict major damage on ISIS. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, warns that ISIS is a major threat to us at home. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) says they are developing a method to blow up a U.S. city.