RUTHFULLY YOURS

In defiance of the anti-Israel BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), diplomatic pressure, regional and global geo-political instability, continued global economic uncertainties and the overall anti-Israel talk brouhaha, Israel demonstrates a robust walk, as evidenced (and impacted) by an expanding net-immigration and a faster-than-expected economic recovery from the 2014 war on Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

According to the February 3, 2015, Economist Intelligence Unit, “the July-August war in Gaza appears to have had only a transient effect on the economy…. Private sector job creation has played a more significant role with strong expansion. Employment in this relatively well-paid category rose by 5.2% year on year…. The fall in the unemployment rate comes despite a rise in the participation rate among the core 25-64 year age group from 75.1% in the third quarter of 2013 to 75.8% in the final quarter of 2014, and a modest increase in the share of full time employed persons…. The unemployment rate averaged 5.9% in 2014, compared with 6.3% in 2013, having fallen to a record low of 5.7% in the final quarter of 2014…. The unemployment rate in Israel compares well with the 7.2% among OECD member states….”

ROMANTICS MAY look forward to sharing their love this weekend, but as far as the organizers of Global Divestment Day are concerned, Valentine’s Day is for breaking up.

Environmental activists have designated February 13 and 14 for collective action “to sever our ties with the fossil fuel industry whose plans will destroy the planet as we know it.” To intensify hostility toward oil, coal, and natural gas companies — which the divestment movement’s godfather, climate militant Bill McKibben, labels “Public Enemy Number One” — the Fossil Free campaign urges individuals to stop doing business with banks or pension funds that invest in fossil fuels, and encourages college students on college campuses to put pressure on administrators to rid their endowment funds of holdings in traditional energy corporations.

“Fossil fuel investments are a risk for investors and the planet,” the activists claim, so it is imperative to “loosen the grip that coal, oil, and gas companies have on our government and financial markets.” The fact that fossil-fuel stocks have generally performed well for funds investing in them is beside the point. “If it’s wrong to wreck the planet, then it’s also wrong to profit from that wreckage.”

Wreck the planet?

Joan Peters, a pro-Palestinian researcher, drastically changed her political views while writing her opus “From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine” • I seek to shed light on facts that were hidden from me, she writes.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario: An Obama administration official quits his job and devotes seven years of his life to writing a well-researched book that pulls the rug out from underneath his former boss regarding the Iranian issue. Then imagine that the book offers a sympathetic view of Israel that is factually based and that reveals information that was not previously known. U.S. President Barack Obama can only express anger, bewilderment, and frustration in response. This leaves the Democrats with a dilemma. Do they remain true to the facts or loyal to their president?

Astonishingly enough, this is a true story, though it took place in another era. It happened at a time when the administration in power — also Democratic — was about as friendly as the current administration. It happened during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was in power at the time, and Benjamin Netanyahu was making his initial foray into Israeli politics.

Joan Peters, a journalist, television producer, and political commentator, was a pro-Palestinian human rights activist during those years. She had even made frequent visits to the Middle East. Something unusual happened to her, though — she gradually changed her views. Peters had been working as a special adviser to the Carter administration. Her area of expertise was the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Obama: Liar, Liar — on The Glazov Gang
A reflection on the mindset that claims that Jewish victims of Islamic Jew-hatred are targeted “randomly.”
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/frontpagemag-com/obama-liar-liar-on-the-glazov-gang/

Today marks the 26th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie. The horrible events in Paris on January 7 serve as a brutal reminder that the obscurantist spirit of the fatwa lives on. Modern societies must therefore grapple with the meaning and consequences of the irreconcilable differences between those who demand protection for religious feelings and those who insist that nothing in public discourse should be sacred.

One narrative insists that, while violence is never acceptable, free speech should not be “abused” to insult the religious convictions of minorities. In his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, President Obama said that “modern, complicated, diverse societies” require “civility and restraint and judgment” and that, when “we defend the legal right of a person to insult another’s religion, we’re equally obligated to use our free speech to condemn such insults and stand shoulder to shoulder with religious communities, particularly religious minorities who are the targets of such attacks.”

The concern for minorities represents important progress in human rights. Without empathy for those whose religion or skin color differs from that of the majority, we would be in danger of repeating some of the worst injustices of the past, from slavery and segregation to Kristallnacht and the Holocaust. However, regarding the attack on Charlie Hebdo, the attempt to view it through the lens of a conflict between an oppressive majority and a beleaguered minority reveals a deeply ethnocentric and misguided view of what is at stake.

A recent demonstration in London (appropriately gender-segregated, of course) by more than a thousand British Muslims protesting the Charlie Hebdo cartoons showed very clearly that just because a person can claim minority status does not necessarily mean he favors tolerance. While the protesting British Muslims were perfectly happy to exercise their right to free speech and association, their core message was that those very rights should be denied to those with whom they disagree, and that insult to religious feelings is a kind of extremism not too dissimilar from that of the murder of cartoonists. Standing “shoulder to shoulder” with these demonstrators and “condemning” Charlie Hebdo would be a shameful act of intolerance no matter how good their intentions.

Teacher with Pedophobia Loses Lawsuit She claimed forcing her to be around children was discriminatory. Katherine Timpf

Why she wanted to be a teacher in the first place is not clear.

On Wednesday, an Ohio teacher lost her appeal to a 2013 discrimination lawsuit in which she had claimed that her district had failed to provide “reasonable accommodations” for her debilitating fear of children.

Maria Waltherr-Willard had worked as a French and Spanish teacher in Cincinnati for 35 years but was eventually diagnosed with “pedophobia” — a fear of children, particularly those in elementary school.

According to an article in FindLaw, Waltherr-Willard had originally taught the languages in high school — until the district didn’t need her there anymore because it had started teaching French online and already had another Spanish teacher. She then told her boss that she couldn’t teach in elementary school because of her phobia, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act demanded that the school district accommodate her.

The Proposed Resolution is more about what he won’t do against the Islamic State than what he will.

The authorization for the use of military force against the Islamic State that the Obama administration sent Congress this week is not worthy of the name. Its language is far more about what the president won’t do against the terrorist army that controls much of Syria and Iraq — limits on ground troops and a sunset provision for the authorization after three years — than what he will do. Congress should reject it.

If the threat of ISIS is as dire as the president says it is in the preamble of his resolution, if ISIS really does pose “a grave threat to the people and territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria, regional stability, and the national security interests of the United States and its allies and partners,” if ISIS really does “intend to conduct terrorist attacks internationally, including against the United States, its citizens, and interests,” then not only does the president already have the authority to strike granted to him by Article II of the Constitution and the 2001 and 2002 war resolutions, he also should not cavil or hesitate in unleashing every means at his disposal to confront and defeat the enemy. Making war is exactly what Obama should have been doing at least since last June when ISIS raised the black flag over the Iraqi city of Mosul.

Yet the urgency and drama with which the president and his advisers describe the actions and intentions of ISIS is remarkably disproportionate to their campaign against it so far: 2,600 U.S. troops in Iraq to act as advisers to the Iraqis and Kurds, a rather desultory campaign of airstrikes that has failed to degrade ISIS seriously, an admission from the vice president that ISIS probably won’t be dislodged from its redoubt in Syria because “there are no boots on the ground,” and a dispiriting, academic, wishy-washy attempt by U.S. defense bureaucrats to figure out “what makes the Islamic State so dangerous,” as well as the typical self-congratulation and smarm for assembling and maintaining an “international coalition” of allies most of whom do nothing.

His proposed resolution would upend the Constitution’s national-defense framework.
On Wednesday, President Obama proposed for Congress’s consideration an authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL). The jihadists are already being fought — albeit not nearly vigorously enough — under existing AUMFs. So Obama’s proposal, which would gratuitously repeal one of the prior AUMFs, is unnecessary. It is, in addition, so pathetic a concoction of lawlessness and aimlessness that, in a healthier political climate, Congress would not give it the time of day.

The document defies the reality of war. Phrased as a license for the “limited” use of force, it suggests that lawmakers should delegitimize combat even as they authorize it. The president would have Congress limit the duration of combat (to three years), as if war came with an end-date. He’d have Congress limit the means of combat (no ground forces), as if war could be scripted to suit the Left’s anti-war sensibilities.

Generation Xers mourning Stewart’s departure ought to be thanking the man who made the awkward comedian’s long tenure of pulling faces while making snide remarks possible; President Bush.

George W. Bush made Jon Stewart. Even Stewart has admitted that his show came into its own when Bush did. A world in which a President Gore spent eight years sonorously lecturing Americans about his love for the trees is also a world in which Jon Stewart would be out there doing pizza commercials.

It was Bush’s victory that took a flailing cable show hosted by an irritating little standup comedian with more neurotic tics than a flea-bitten Woody Allen and turned him into the voice of liberalism. Stewart’s nervous smirk and his passive aggressive mockery became the zeitgeist of urban Democrats nervously responding to Bush’s popularity and the rise of American patriotism after September 11.

Ruthie Blum is the editor of Voice of Israel radio (voiceofisrael.com).

During the 51st Munich Security Conference last weekend, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was busy conducting one-on-one “hallway diplomacy” with a number of his counterparts, among them U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz.

What emerged from these meetings was renewed optimism on the part of the West that a deal with the Islamic republic was imminent.

Kerry reported back to his boss in the White House that everything was under control: All the P5+1 powers (the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K., France and Germany) would have to do is accept the Iranian regime’s assertion that its nuclear program is peaceful, and an agreement could be signed well before the July deadline.

Kurz indicated that Austria would be happy to hold the next round of talks in Vienna, telling reporters that his government was satisfied with all the previous ones that have taken place there.