RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Tuesday, nearly eight years after former KGB officer-turned-dissident Alexander V. Litvinenko was killed by radioactive poisoning, the British government announced it was opening a formal investigation into the matter. The decision is likely to further strain already tenuous relations between Russia and Great Britain, who are at odds regarding Russia’s annexation of Crimea, their support of Bashar Assad in Syria, and their possible complicity in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

The move represents an about-face for Home Secretary Theresa May, following the London High Court’s decision in February rejecting her refusal not to hold a public inquiry. May’s reluctance had stemmed from concerns about what effect it would have on British-Russian relations, which have long been strained by the murder. But despite denials by British Prime Minister David Cameron, it appears the murders of 298 passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists has provided the ultimate impetus for reconsideration.

“I am announcing today the government’s decision to establish an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 to investigate the death of Mr. Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006,” May announced on the uk.gov website. “The inquiry will be established by the Home Office. The inquiry will be chaired by Sir Robert Owen, a senior judge who is the current Coroner in the Inquest into Mr. Litvinenko’s death.”

During the long legal process leading to May’s announcement, Owen insisted the British government possessed documents that “establish a prima facie case as to the culpability of the Russian state in the death of Alexander Litvinenko.”

A history of bad blood between Litvinenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin goes back to 1998. At the time Putin, a former KGB officer, was appointed to head the FSB, which is what the KGB became after the fall of the Soviet Union. Litvinenko had also been a KGB officer working in counterintelligence before getting a 1997 promotion to senior operational officer in the FSB department investigating organized crime at the new agency. Litvinenko incurred Putin’s wrath when he and four other FSB agents conducted a news conference during which they accused the head of the organized crime directorate of ordering the assassination of Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky was a powerful businessman and political operative allied to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

After Litvinenko warned Berezovsky about the plot, he was fired and subsequently arrested three times. After spending a month in jail he was released after promising not to leave Russia. But he acquired a forged passport and fled with his wife and son seeking asylum in Britain on Nov. 1, 2000.

Russian president Vladimir “Teflon” Putin is on a roll—or so we’re led to believe by the media. The Russian president combines the slick machismo of James Bond, the cojones of George Patton and the craftiness of Cardinal Richelieu.

Actually, in his dealings with Cuba, Putin looks more like Barney Fife. We’re not accustomed to seeing Mr Macho-Cool Vladimir Putin made an international jackass. But many Cuba-watchers snickered as the hapless Russian President met with the Castro brothers on July 11th and “wrote off” their $32 billion debt to the Soviet Union.

“That old thing? I never liked it anyway,” Cuba-watchers easily imagine Putin hissing through gritted teeth. “We will provide support to our Cuban friends to overcome the illegal blockade of Cuba,” is what Putin actually hissed for the record.

Vladimir Putin rose to the rank of Lieut. Colonel in an organization that tortured and murdered at roughly TWICE the rate of the Nazi SS. So his offense at the “illegal” U.S. embargo of a KGB-founded, terror-sponsoring regime should provoke only chortling and snorting. Instead it’s probably causing a fit of the vapors at the State Dept. and in faculty lounges nationwide.

Not that Putin left Cuba completely empty-handed. Instead the Russians reclaimed the Evil Empire’s largest foreign spying base, located in Lourdes just south of Havana. The Soviets built this complex– capable of electronic spying on everything from the U.S. Military’s Central and Southern command to NASA facilities– in 1967 and manned it until 2001. That year financial problems and pressure from the U.S. forced the Russians to close and abandon it. Interestingly it was (then) Russian President Vladimir Putin who felt compelled to lock it up and scurry out.

This re-colonization by the Russians of a spy base on our very borders is obviously important, but surely a true Russian Richelieu could have reclaimed the base for less than $32 billion, especially with an Obama in the White House.

Putin’s visit to the colonial outpost his “old” outfit (the KGB) helped convert from a vibrant capitalist nation swamped with European immigrants into a vast sewer, slum and prison that repels even impoverished Haitians disgusted most Cuban dissidents. The loathing of most Cubans (including many communists) for Che Guevara owed much to Guevara’s groupie-like devotion to the Soviets who infested Cuba and roundly repelled almost all Cubans.

Putin’s fleecing by the Castro brothers provides more proof (if we actually needed any) that rarely in modern history has any item of U.S. foreign policy triumphed as patently (or hilariously) as the so-called U.S. embargo of Castro’s Stalinist kleptocracy. Here’s a glittering gem amidst the rubble of so much recent U.S. foreign policy.

As the Israeli-Hamas conflict rages, a familiar pattern asserts itself: Israel bends over backward to demonstrate her moral innocence to the world, and the world heaps condemnation on her anyway. Israel always feels compelled to restrain her military superiority because victory in that arena means losing the battle in the arena of public opinion despite extraordinary efforts. It’s worth questioning whether the moral victory Israel is striving for accomplishes anything except to perpetuate the hostilities and ensure more Israeli deaths at the hands of Arab terrorists.

Forced to defend herself, but under the microscope of worldwide scrutiny, Israel has gone to extreme lengths to avoid civilian deaths. Business Insider calculated that Israel has taken such unprecedented measures that she is “raising the standards of what can be expected in warfare.” The IDF issues warnings to civilians prior to neighborhood incursions. Israeli doctors treat wounded Gazans. Israel agrees to a ceasefire only to have Hamas break it. In one instance, Israel even spared the lives of fourteen Hamas operatives in order not to incur civilian casualties. And yet she is still decried for a “disproportionate response” against the craven Hamas, who hide behind women and children, store weapons in hospitals, and happily press their own citizens into martyrdom to wage a very effective propaganda war.

“Disproportionate response” is a completely idiotic complaint that has never before been raised in wartime except to punish Israel, itself surrounded by a massively disproportionate Arab population. No one ever won a war by countering an aggressor with carefully measured, tit-for-tat responses. Conflicts are won by striking back so disproportionately that the enemy’s military forces are devastated and, more importantly, its will to fight is crushed so thoroughly that the threat is extinguished.

Defense Minister and former chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon recently accused Netanyahu of not combating terrorism with a strong enough hand: “Why are we, a sovereign nation with a strong army, begging a terror organization to give us calm? We need to recover the deterrence in a way that they are the ones begging for calm. What are we teaching our enemies all over the world? That they can do anything to us and we’ll turn the other cheek.”

It is worth reminding ourselves what sort of enemy Israel is dealing with, and what kicked off this most recent warfare: the murder of three Jewish teenagers – one an American citizen – kidnapped by Hamas and left in a shallow grave last month, which left the world – or at least the civilized world – heartsick and angry. The boys had been shot shortly after they went missing, “killed in cold blood by human animals,” as Prime Minister Netanyahu said. So Israel and decent people everywhere mourned, because we love life; meanwhile our nihilistic enemy, who boasts that they love death more, celebrated.

On Thursday evening, Reuven Rivlin was sworn in as Israel’s 10th president. Due to incessant rocket fire into Israel and the war going on in Gaza, the event was held without the customary fanfare. A somber, modest ceremony took place at the Knesset, in the presence of the upper echelons of Israeli society from across the political spectrum.

Conspicuously absent from the proceedings were the Arab members of Knesset. As they have shown in word and deed, the sympathies of these particular democratically elected officials do not lie with the country of their citizenship. And their boycott of the changing of the guard of the presidency was a statement of their identification with the enemies of their state.

Someone else who expressed solidarity with the terrorists in Gaza this week was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. On Wednesday, the chief mullah, whose government funds and arms the terrorists in Gaza, called on the Palestinians to remain steadfast in their fight to destroy Israel.

“The only way to deal with this savage regime is to continue resistance and armed struggle,” he said in an address to students in Tehran. “We believe that the West Bank should also be armed like Gaza and those who are interested in Palestine’s destiny should act in this regard.”

It wasn’t mere lip service: On Thursday, the Bazaaris’ Basij (a militia connected to the Revolutionary Guards) opened a bank account precisely for this purpose, inviting donations for the cause of supplying West Bank terrorists with weapons.

Khamenei has good reason to be optimistic well beyond the violent Palestinian protests at the Qalandiya checkpoint Thursday night. Such incidents are small fry compared to the global goings-on that are working in his favor.

This week, Iran received an extension from the P5+1 countries (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) to reach an agreement that would curb its nuclear program. The original deadline was July 20. Now the Islamic Republic has until Nov. 24 to continue pulling the wool over the eyes of West, while its centrifuges spin unhindered.

In addition, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a Palestinian-drafted resolution against Israel, strongly condemning “the failure of Israel, the occupying power, to end its prolonged occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including east Jerusalem; and condemns in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations carried out in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 13 June 2014 that may amount to international crimes.”

There’s something darkly coincidental in the fact that the latest weapon to be deployed against the survival instinct of both Israel and the United States is an alleged “heartlessness” when it comes to children.

The people of Israel are castigated in news media, social media and the “international community” (read: the scoundrel United Nations, of whose budget U.S. taxpayers pay 22 percent) as lacking in “humanity” itself. Why? Because as the IDF fights to end Gaza’s endless rocket barrages against Israel, many children under the age of 18 number among the civilian dead. This London Telegraph headline is not untypical: “Israel’s offensive in Gaza has ‘killed more children than fighters,’ say human rights groups. Israel has been accused of waging ‘war on the children’ of Gaza …”

No mention in the article, however, of Gaza’s purposeful, strategic use of “human shields,” which leads to such civilian casualties. No mention of the directive from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of the Interior instructing civilians to remain in their homes on receipt of advance warnings from Israel to vacate before a military attack, as the Washington Free Beacon first reported. No mention that despite building networks of military tunnels, Gaza authorities neglected to build any bomb shelters for civilians! No mention of Gaza’s use of schools and other civilian sites to store rockets and other military material, and of its use of hospitals as Hamas command centers.

No, the story is tightly focused on Israel’s supposed “war on children.” This libel is tweeted, screamed and news-anchor-intoned into poisonous propaganda designed to sap the life from Israel’s survival instinct, or at least alienate her supporters. In the stage-managed furor, the pressure on the Jews of Israel builds: Stop defending your borders, your people and your nation. Stop everything and “save the children of Gaza.”

Only emotion to the point of frenzy bursts into such agitprop, but it is vital to note that the emotion showing through is hatred for Jews, not love for children. If it were the latter, we would see rage directed at the society that steeps its young in the Jew-hatred of jihad and then turns them into “martyrs” – not at the Jewish society seeking to protect its people, young and old, and, at far too much risk, Gaza’s as well.

Admittedly, there are great differences between Israel’s plight and our own. For one thing, the Israelis are more fortunate in having a government that actually wants to protect its people from invaders. Israel enforces its own border, having fortified it with a fence. Now, it fights for its inviolability. Our government, meanwhile, has left our border effectively open, even after 9/11, and has demonstrated no interest in re-establishing national sovereignty.

That said, there are similarities to note in the political attacks on Americans who hope to repulse what they see as deathblows to our remnant republic coming out of the “border crisis.” Anyone worried about the nullification of the southern border; the accelerating usurpation of dictatorial powers by the president; the perils to national security and public safety of open borders; the perils, also, to the survival of our English-speaking culture rooted mainly in Europe, is excoriated in the public square for having no “humanity.” Just like Israelis, such “mean-spirited” Americans must hate children, too, because this is all about “immigrant kids” in need, right? No – but that’s the dominant narrative.

One million bigots to march against Israel in London
The anti-Israel march planned for Saturday in London is being called by a horror movie-level gallery of hateful, totalitarian groups. They’re aiming for the one million bigot rally

This could make the Guinness Book of Records. The largest collection of bigots ever in one place and at one time. The plan is for a million people — every single one a bigot by definition — to join a rally in London on Saturday to abuse and defame the Jewish state for having the temerity to defend itself against terror, and even to exist.

The list of groups who are calling for this obnoxious event tells its own story. Here is the breakdown from the Stop the War Coalition:

“Demonstration called by: Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Friends of Al Aqsa, British Muslim Initiative, Muslim Association of Britain, Palestinian Forum in Britain.”

Crikey. The moral weight of such groups! The only one missing is the Adolf Hitler revival band.

Obviously, they won’t get a million people on the march. If they get 10,000 that will be a big deal for them. But let’s be open minded. If they do get a million people, we really should send this in as a world record.

To be clear. Anti-Zionism is the most widely-held, and most dangerous form of bigotry in the world today. We can’t stop the bigots from marching; but we can call them out for what they are.

Shall we do it?

Top Italian “intellectual” says Israel worse than Nazis, and would like to kill Israelis personally, except that he doesn’t know how to shoot a gun

Former Italian member of the European Parliament, and leading “intellectual”, Gianni Vattimo has caused an explosion of anger in Italy, Israel and beyond for inciting the killing of Israelis and saying Israel was “worse than the Nazis”. “Shoot those bastard Zionists,” he screamed.

Speaking on Italy’s Radio 24, Vattimo said he would like to kill Israelis personally, but couldn’t because he didn’t know how to shoot. He said that Europeans should club together to get more arms to Hamas so that they could kill more of their opponents.

Hamas is a violent anti-Semitic terror group advocating the end of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish people.

According to Italy’s English language news outlet, The Local, the response from Italy’s Jewish community has been outrage:

“Rabbi Barbara Aiello, Italy’s first female rabbi, told The Local that “anti-Israeli sentiment is anti-semitism dressed up in fancy clothes”.

“Imagine if what is said about Jews was said about Italians. For example: ‘I don’t object to Italians I just don’t believe that Italy has a right to exist!”

Mass anti-Semitism has consumed much of Europe in response to Israel’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza. The French government recently condemned anti-Semitic outbursts surrounding the ongoing conflict.

Israel’s disastrous unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005 faces possible reversal with the Israeli army’s re-entry into Gaza in July 2014.

Israel’s decision to take the gloves off came after 1381 rockets had been indiscriminately fired from Gaza into Israeli population centres over a period of ten days with Hamas then rejecting a ceasefire proposed by Egypt – but accepted by Israel.

An attempted Hamas raid from the sea – caught on video during this criminal rocket bombardment – had reached Israel’s Zikim Beach, culminating in five Hamas terrorists being killed and one Israeli soldier wounded.
However Israel’s military spokesman described the final tipping point – again captured on video –

“Earlier today, the IDF identified around 13 Palestinians who had infiltrated Israel through a tunnel dug from Gaza. The tunnel began in the southern Gaza Strip and its exit was near Kibbutz Sufa in Israel. The terrorists were heavily armed with RPGs and assault rifles and were prepared to carry out a massacre. The IDF foiled their attack, saving countless Israeli lives.”

Until a cease fire is inevitably declared – Israel is now proceeding to destroy the network of tunnels running under Gaza – capturing or immobilizing the large number of rockets and armaments stored in Gaza – and killing any terrorists attacking them from the myriad number of terrorist groups operating in Gaza.

What will happen when the hostilities cease?

Kensington High Street was awash with Israeli flags as British Jews flocked to south-west London to show their support at the Zionist Federation (ZF) rally this afternoon.

An estimated 5,000 Israel supporters – many wearing blue and white outfits for the event – held up placards that called for an end to Hamas terrorism.

From grandparents to students and children, supporters joined together to sing ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ and ‘Hatikvah’ at the event near the Israeli Embassy, where a special toast to the Queen was also made.

ZF chairman Paul Charney, who read a tehillim prayer for the fallen Israel Defence Forces soldiers, said: “The whole of Israel is looking at the UK and saying we have friends.

“The road to peace does not run through Hamas.

“If these so called pro-Palestinian demonstrators really cared about the Palestinians they would be standing alongside us here today.”

Louise Ellman, the MP for Liverpool Riverside, said she had come to the rally to “show my support for people of Israel as they defend themselves”.

The Labour Friends of Israel chair went on to describe Hamas as a “terrorist organisation.

“I am here for an end to the rockets on both sides.

“I’ve called on our government and supporters of both Israelis and Palestinians to work for a ceasefire.”

Debate is raging in the expert community over what ISIS is: a state, transnational ideology, or just a way of life? The case for ‘state’ is made by in a Defense News article [1] where a state department official testifies that ISIL (ISIS) is ‘no longer a terrorist group, it’s a full blown army’.

In a telling assessment that provides a glimpse into Obama administration officials’ thinking about the situation in Iraq, [US State Department’s Brett] McGurk told the panel ISIL is “no longer a terrorist group.”

Rather, he said the group has morphed into “a full-blown army.”

This is comforting to the State department. If ISIS is a state, the same as Canada, then it can be contained in the same way any ordinary country is restrained; by alliances, diplomacy, sanctions. The all purpose nostrum of diplomacy is to ‘statify’ an adversary. If Hamas, for example, can be turned into a state, then it becomes something familiar and safe, that in time might even have an embassy in Washington.

Others view ISIS as a transnational organization [2], with a broad global appeal, the heir to al-Qaeda. Briefly, the good news is that young militants are no longer joining al-Qaeda. The bad news is that they are joining ISIS instead.

Islamists now coming of age are more frequently dismissing al-Qaida as a worn down and ineffective organization, the wire service reported on Wednesday. Using social media services known for attracting candidate supporters, the young radicals have increasingly voiced admiration for the newer group that declared a new “Islamic State” last month in recently seized Middle Eastern territory.

One supporting piece of evidence that ISIS is transnational rather than a state are warnings that Norway is preparing for a possible Syria-linked terrorist attack [3]. Canada wouldn’t do that, now would it? States don’t do that. Ideological movements do.

Benedicte Bjoernland, head of Norway’s intelligence service, announced at a press conference this morning that the agency has received “‘reliable information’ about plans for some kind of attack ‘within days,’” linked to jihadists in Syria. This is the sort of threat many Western countries have recently been worried might come out of Syria eventually. Norway is beefing up its airport and border security in response to the threat.