RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://sarahhonig.com/2014/04/11/another-tack-st-edwards-and-the-empty-peace/

No devotee of Yes Minister, yesteryear’s BBC’s classic, can forget St. Edward’s Hospital – that spanking new cutting edge facility that had no patients or medical personnel. Nonetheless, St. Edward’s hustled and bustled, a veritable hive of activity and creative energy. For 15-months since its much-ballyhooed inauguration, an administrative staff of 500 bureaucrats filled the hospital’s offices, pushed papers and generated red tape.

Sounds exaggerated? A bit over-the-top for real life? Not really. John Kerry’s peace project, for example, replicates the parody’s blueprints with mind-blowing precision. It is for diplomacy what St. Edward’s was for health care – an incredible lot of much-ado about absolutely nothing.

The biggest snag in Kerry’s persistent peace offensive is that it lacks the commonsense basic essentials to even begin to achieve what it was promoted to do. It couldn’t possibly live up to the hype. St Edward’s couldn’t heal the sick because none had been admitted. No doctors or nurses were on hand either. It was a hospital in name only.

Kerry’s peace process is a process in name only. It featured no negotiations between seekers of peace. Indeed there was no one who wanted what Kerry tried to ram through, just as no one got treatment at the hospital with no patients. Kerry and his crew engaged in frenetic shuttles just as the hospital’s ancillary staffers busied themselves self-importantly.

In both cases no good came of it and no good could come of it. The prodigious hum and buzz benefited no one. There was no reality behind the façade.

Kerry’s peacemaking affectation depended on there being actual peacemakers. But the last thing any Palestinian honcho could afford was to strike any sort of a deal. If Arafat couldn’t do it at Camp David back in 2000 (despite Ehud Barak’s unprecedented concessions), surely Mahmoud Abbas couldn’t do it now. Abbas’s last-minute dodge is no different from Arafat’s hasty skedaddle from the talks that America’s then-President Bill Clinton fervently fostered.

Like Arafat, who was immeasurably more powerful, Abbas doesn’t want to end the conflict and be saddled with a puny Palestinian state. His aim is to discredit, delegitimize, destabilize and eventually destroy the Jewish state (which he significantly refuses to recognize).

That’s why he disdainfully rebuffed Ehud Olmert’s egregious largesse at Annapolis in 2007. No Israeli concession – no matter how generous – can ever be good enough when compromise isn’t the real Palestinian endgame but the barely disguised means to achieve the reverse of insincere pledges.

The in-your-face extortion practiced by Abbas didn’t simply attest to an insatiable appetite. It was an effort to stymie Kerry’s entire undertaking, to put up obstacles so outrageous that no one could possibly surmount them. To Abbas’s shock and dismay, however, his Israeli interlocutors proved to be softer soft-touches than he conceivably imagined.

Abbas could never have anticipated that Kerry would so stanchly side with the Palestinian Authority and essentially function as its accomplice in squeezing and duping Israel. The American Secretary of State repeatedly threatened Israel with petrifying BDS (Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions) punishment. He also offered one shriveled carrot – belatedly freeing Jonathan Pollard, who’s anyway soon up for parole and who by any criteria should have been liberated long ago.

The idea of exchanging Pollard for sadistic mass-murders isn’t just morally repugnant. It also substantiates suspicion that Pollard is kept behind bars as a bargaining chip. Erstwhile American Special Envoy to the Middle East, Dennis Ross, owned up that he had recommended using Pollard as a quasi-hostage to be held for ransom. Simple justice was evidently out of the equation in this case.

In his 2004 book The Missing Peace, Ross quotes himself as telling Clinton at the 1998 Wye Summit (p.438) that “I was in favor of his [Pollard’s] release, believing that he had received a harsher sentence than others who had committed comparable crimes. I preferred not tying his release to any agreement, but if that was what we were going to do, then I favored saving it for permanent status.”

Get it? Pollard, as an asset of statecraft, should not be squandered on any interim arrangement but reserved for the bigger barter transaction – official Washington’s variation on the human-trafficking theme.

Clearly, then, the notion of trading Pollard isn’t new. This leads us, on the eve of Passover to ponder one more Seder-like “how-is-this-different” question. How is this recent Pollard sweetener different from the sweetener dangled under Netanyahu’s nose 16 years ago?

Really now…why the high dudgeon at Brandeis now? I would think that the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali should be honored at being disinvited by the radical campus that passes for a “liberal arts” university in Waltham , Massachusetts. Why just this past November 2013 Brandeis professors called on university to ‘resume, redouble’ ties with Al-Quds […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/americas-suicide-pact-with-communism?f=puball

It was a Founder and our second President, John Adams, who said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

He was right and I am sure he would be appalled to know that the Constitution has since been interpreted to permit the murder of the unborn or that the ancient definition of marriage has been trashed to permit people of the same sex to “marry.” The legalization and use of marijuana is a further sign of decline.

These and other elements of the values expressed and expected by the Founders are eating away at the present and future of the United States of America. The Supreme Court was created to rule on what the Constitution’s actual words say and mean, not on the passing aspirations of generations who have abandoned the fundamental principles of the remarkable government it created.

The Constitution represents a federal government that was granted limited powers. The rest were retained by the States, but Communism and Socialism are based on a strong central government, one ruled by an elite class of intellectuals to oversee all elements of the economy and to set the rules by which everyone must live even if they conflict with their religious convictions and moral values.

The degradation of the nation has tracked the rise of Socialism, begun with Karl Marx’s creation of Communism. Born in Prussia in 1818, Marx was influenced by the writings of Hegel, a German philosopher. Marx’s socialist writings would get him expelled from Germany and France. In 1848, with Friedrich Engels, he published The Communist Manifesto and was exiled to London where he wrote the first volume of Das Kapital, living there until his death in 1883. Suffice to say that the Communism he unleashed would cause the death of hundreds of millions, particularly in Russia and China where it was embraced.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4258/uk-jihadists-charity-workers

The full truth is a bit more chilling, Sharif and his wife are supporters of ISIS, the leading Al-Qaeda-aligned group in Syria. Al Jazeera reports that in areas under ISIS control, “men [have]… been beheaded, their heads mounted on spikes. Children…slaughtered.” Other posts found on the couple’s Facebook pages include videos glorifying jihadi fighters; praise for late Al Qaeda leaders such as Abdullah Azzam and Anwar Al-Awlaki; and calls for an Islamic state.

The British media continues to label British Islamist volunteers who support jihadist movements in Syria as “charity workers.”

In December, the BBC aired a documentary about aid convoys to Syria, but – as reported by Gatestone Institute – neglected to inform viewers of the convoy volunteers’ support for jihadi “martyrs,” Al Qaeda operatives and extremist preachers.

Although the UK Charity Commission subsequently started an investigation into these charities, the failure of the media to research their interviewees continues to impair efforts to tackle the abuse of British taxpayers’ charitable initiatives.

On April 1, Britain’s Channel 4 aired an interview with two “charity workers” in Syria – Tauqir Sharif and his wife, Racquell Hayden-Best. Sharif and his wife work with a number of different charities involved with “aid convoys” to Syria, including One Nation, which is also presently funding a Hamas-run charity in Gaza.

Channel 4 did provide a little bit of background, noting that Sharif has:

…a long history of activism – he was one of those aboard the Gaza aid flotilla which was raided by Israeli forces in 2010. He has campaigned to raise awareness about Syria and met the former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg when Mr Begg visited Syria last year. They were due to speak at a live online “webinar” event about the conflict, but it was cancelled after Mr Begg was arrested and charged with Syria-related offences.

The full truth is a bit more chilling: Sharif and his wife are supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the leading Al Qaeda-aligned group in Syria. ISIS evolved from a group called Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was known for “its butchery and oppression, which included killing Sunni and Shiite civilians with spectacular suicide attacks, bombing Shiite mosques, uploading videos of beheadings on jihadist forums, and forcing local Sunnis to abide by its interpretation of Islamic law.”

ISIS is at least as violent as its predecessor. Al Jazeera reports that in areas under ISIS control, “men [have]…been beheaded, their heads mounted on spikes. Children…slaughtered.”

Unlike its predecessor, however, ISIS has supplemented its violence with dawa’h programs – a system of social provision, or “soft-power outreach” – in areas under its control. A key component of this dawa’h, the Hudson Institute reports, is providing educational outreach initiatives “as part of its wider strategy to foster a new generation of Syrians in support of its ideological agenda. … ISIS runs a number of schools in areas where it has consolidated its presence… [and] offers other services to complement their educational outreach, such as their school-bus services in the Aleppo town of al-Bab.”

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4256/iran-europe-nuclear-dual-use

The illegal transfer of dual-use equipment to Iran continues unabated, due to lax enforcement and the failure of European governments to keep pace with the growing number and sophistication of actors involved in security-related trade with Tehran.

“Iran continues to seek items for its prohibited activities from abroad by using multiple and increasingly complex procurement methods, including front companies, intermediaries, false documentation and new routes.” — Confidential U.N. Panel of Experts

Spanish police have arrested four individuals suspected of attempting to export to Iran industrial machinery that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction.

The machinery involves so-called dual-use equipment—products and technologies that can be used for both civilian and military applications.

Although the European Union bans the export to Iran of certain dual-use machinery and technology that could be used to aid Iran’s military program, loopholes abound and enforcement remains patchy.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jeff-ludwig/the-israeli-solution-3/print/

Caroline Glick’s latest book, The Israeli Solution, carefully explains the political, legal, demographic, and military position of Israel in the modern world. She corrects many faulty notions that are prevalent about Israel. The reader learns from her that Israel was not created as an emotional reaction by a world horrified by the Holocaust. Its legitimacy and destiny as a state is grounded in historical and political realities that antedate the Holocaust and in the prayerful longings of the Jewish people to be restored to and to rule their own homeland after dispossession by the vengeful Romans 20 centuries ago.

Although Glick does not place much emphasis on the visionary and incredibly determined work of Theodore Herzl and Chaim Weizman, their vision is foundational and cannot be separated from the existence of present-day Israel. Rather, she derives Israel’s right to exist primarily from three sources: the continued presence of Jews in the territory now called Israel for 2000 years, the Palestine Mandate to the British, and from the British after World War I, and U.N. Resolution 181 which established the state of Israel (as a Jewish state).

With amazing logic and compelling detail, she depicts every phase and aspect of Israel’s struggle to come into existence and remain in existence from 1920 until the present. The reader can see plainly that the Arab world accepted France’s mandate to create an independent Syria and Lebanon and the legitimacy of the British prerogative to create Iraq and Jordan, but at the same time found the British mandate for a Jewish state to be illegal and untenable. Self-determination became a by-word, a new, significant idea in international affairs after WWI and especially after Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but self-determination for the Jews, who had remained as a continuous presence in Palestine for 2000 years – to this, the Arab world’s resounding answer was “no.” Israel has had to struggle all these decades against a pathological and almost fiendish opposition by the Arab world to her claims. The Israeli Solution is utterly and properly offended by the racism and religious bigotry of the Arab world with respect to the Jews living in their midst.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/negotiating-with-terrorists-doesnt-work-2/print/

Let’s set aside the moral issue that it’s wrong to negotiate with terrorists and the practical issue that negotiating with terrorists encourages more terrorism. Those are both right and obvious, but there’s also a third issue. Negotiating with terrorists doesn’t work unless they intend to stop being terrorists.

The peace process between Israel and the PLO has never worked and will never work because the members of the terrorist group never intended to stop being terrorists. The PLO yammers on about Palestine, a country that never existed and a name that has nothing to do with the Arab conquerors they descend from, but functions like a terrorist group, not like a state.

Diplomats and politicians write up annual reports claiming that the Palestinian Authority has made progress with its civic institutions and its economic development. The truth is that if anything it has actually gone backward.

Mahmoud Abbas has no intention of running for office. The elected legislature has long been defunct and actual decisions are made by the PLO Council. The Palestinian Authority is a dictatorship run by high profile leaders of a terrorist group. It is less open and democratic than it was a decade ago and it wasn’t very open and democratic back then either.

The only progress that the latest incarnation of the peace process achieved was to give Abbas enough confidence to boot his Prime Minister who was there to assure the Euros that there was some slightly competent management at the helm. The same pundits who were praising Fayyad for salvaging the Palestinian Authority have already forgotten about him.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/375426/print

The Left is trampling free speech for the sake of orthodoxy.

What if you believed that the planet might not have warmed up over the last two decades, even though carbon emissions reached all-time highs?

Or, if the earth did heat up, you thought that it was not caused by human activity?

Or, if global warming were the fault of mankind, you trusted that the slight increases would not make all that much difference?

The Los Angeles Times would not print your letter to the editor to that effect.

The CEO of Apple Inc. might advise that you should “get out of this stock.”

Or maybe if you were a skeptical climatologist, you would cease all research and concede that man-caused global warming needed no further scientific cross-examination — as columnist Bill McKibben recently advocated.

If you were a drought-stricken California farmer and worried about diversions of irrigation water to support fish populations, you would be told by the president of the United States that the real problem is not a failure to build reservoirs and canals but is due entirely to global warming, which is a “fact” and “settled science.”

What if you supported equality for all Americans regardless of their sexual preference, but — like presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and about half the country today — opposed making gay marriage legal?

If you were the CEO of Mozilla, Brendan Eich, you would be forced to resign your position.

If you owned a fast-food franchise like Chick-fil-A, boycotts of your business would ensue.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4864/some_good_decisions_at_last_in_middle_east_talks_crisis

Finally some good sense:” I would suggest a step further still – returning to “routine dealings with the Palestinians” as they were before Oslo, before the rest of the world poked it’s collective finger into the hornets’ nest.”…rsk

Nick Gray is Director, Christian Middle East Watch, a British organisation dedicated to objective and factual discussion of Middle Eastern issues, especially of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

As the doomed-from-the-start Israel-Palestinian talks finally crumble into dust, some good decisions have finally come from all sides. None of them will salvage the unsalvageable, but all show signs of reality taking precedence over fantasy.

Just over a week ago, on the eve of releasing the last scheduled batch of Palestinian terrorists (sorry, “gallant freedom-fighters”), the Israeli government cancelled the move unless they received a guarantee that the Palestinians would extend the peace talks to the end of this year.

“Not fair!” screamed the Palestinian leadership. “Oh, no!” sighed John Kerry and his team, “not more obstacles.” Despite the resulting accusations, this was a good decision by Israel. It is almost a certainty that the Palestinians would have scuttled away from the talks once they got their last promised prisoner release; no doubt to acclamation from the Palestinian “street”.

In a scenario so oft-repeated it gets boring, Israel has again been pressured to make more and more painful concessions while Mr Abbas has got away again with a total lack of compromise, offering only more and more demands that he knows Mr Netanyahu cannot meet.

Abbas has shown clearly in the past months that he does not want to end the decades-long conflict. He will never recognise Israel as a Jewish state and he is not about to destroy the fantastical dreams of the refugees and Palestinian diaspora to return to the homes they left in 1948 or 1967. Of course this is at least in part because he wants to end his life in retirement and not in a pool of blood.

The rise in diplomatic temperature has caused what may prove to be the last round of frantic shuttle diplomacy by John Kerry as he rushed back to the region last week to try by any means possible to stop his peace bid from exploding in his face.

And here we come to another good decision.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4866/norway_s_capital_to_get_first_muslim_only_school_to_teach_arabic_and_muslim_values

Norway’s capital’s first Muslim-only school will teach “Arabic and Islamic values as well as the standard subjects on the curriculum, replacing the subject of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics with Islam, Religion and Philosophy”

Amid cross-party opposition, Norway’s education ministry has approved an application for the capital city Oslo to get its first Muslim-only school, the country’s English language online media outlet, The Local reported on Tuesday.

The school, which reports said would have 200 students when it is fully operational, is to be founded at the behest of the Association of Muslim Mothers.

According to the report in The Local: “…the school would teach its pupils Arabic and Islamic values as well as the standard subjects on the curriculum, replacing the subject of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics with Islam, Religion and Philosophy.”

Islam and multiculturalism are highly sensitive subjects in Norway in the wake of the massacre perpetrated by far-Right extremist Anders Breivik in July 2011. Breivik killed eight people in a bomb attack in Oslo and a further 69 at a socialist youth camp on Utoya island. Breivik cited as one of his primary motivations the alleged “Islamisisation” of Europe.

Nonetheless, even members of the opposition Labour Party have voiced concerns that the move to open such a Muslim-only school could be divisive.

“We spend a lot of money on inclusion in Norway, and now we are apparently going to be spending it on segregation.” the Labour chairman of Norway’s parliamentary education committee, Trond Giske, was quoted in the above mentioned report as saying.

The growing Muslim population of Norway is estimated at 4-5 percent, with that figure rising to between 8 and 10 percent in Oslo.