RUTHFULLY YOURS

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that in situations where hunger strikes are organized as a means of pressuring the relevant authorities into releasing detainees, a refusal to comply with the demands of the hunger-strikers does not constitute a violation of Article 2 — provided that there is a regulatory system in place guaranteeing all the necessary measures are taken to monitor and manage these situations, including unrestricted access to appropriate medical care.

Israel has the benefit of the European Court rulings to refer to, as well as the provisions many fellow democracies have on their statute books concerning the membership of proscribed groups and the criteria for proscribing them — in the case of less liberal democracies like France, they are more wide-ranging than those applied in Israel.

Israel has a dilemma. Is it better when confronted with hunger-striking “activists” belonging to terror groups to let them starve themselves to death or not to let them starve themselves to death, even if it means feeding them by force.

Most of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Syria have long served as large weapons warehouses controlled by various militias belonging to different groups. This has been happening while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is formally in charge of the refugee camps, continues to look the other way.

The 120,000 Palestinians living in Ain al-Hilweh are “unfortunate” because they are not being targeted by Israel. Otherwise, there would have been an international outcry and the UN Security Council would have held an emergency session to condemn Israel and call for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Instead, Ain al-Hilweh may soon fall into the hands of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists.

The Syrian Army has also been dropping barrel bombs on the camp almost on a weekly basis. But because Israel cannot be blamed, Palestinians killing Palestinians is not something that the international media and community are interested in.

Instead of admitting their responsibility for turning the camps into military bases, Palestinian leaders often prefer to blame others, preferably Israel, for the plight of their people.

In a famous remark two years ago during a Google Plus Hangout, President Obama boasted that “this is the most transparent administration in history.” This is belied by Administration officials, from Hillary Clinton on down, who have run their communications off the government grid.

A bipartisan consensus has long held that a healthy democracy requires a significant measure of government transparency. That is why since 1950 Washington has operated under the Federal Records Act, which requires the government to preserve documents about its decisions.

Since the 1960s the government has been subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), giving citizens the right to view those records. In 2009 the National Archives issued rules requiring agencies to preserve employee work on nonofficial accounts in a government record-keeping system.

In November 2014, the leaders of Saudi Arabia made one of the biggest bets in history. Their strategy was flawed, and they’ve already lost.

In an OPEC meeting that month, Saudi Arabia announced it would maintain high oil-production levels despite falling prices. The Saudis were betting that by keeping prices low they could protect their market share and kill America’s energy renaissance—a rebirth driven largely by Texas, which produces 37% of America’s oil and 28% of its marketed natural gas.
The Saudi strategy seemed to make sense. The conventional wisdom was that energy producers working in “tight” shale formations would be squeezed by low prices, since their extraction methods—hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling—are more expensive than conventional drilling. So, surely, once that happened Texas would be in serious trouble.

Columnists at the New York Times and elsewhere said the “Texas miracle” was fading, or even dead . . . and some of them seemed happy about it.

But an interesting thing happened on the way to the collapse of the Texas economy—it didn’t collapse.

What a world we live in when a website promoting adultery is held more accountable than a U.S. secretary of state.

Only weeks after a hack exposed the names and other confidential information about Ashley Madison’s mostly male clientele, it’s hard to see how the company can recover. By contrast, Hillary Clinton remains the Democratic Party’s likely 2016 nominee for president, even though we’ve known since at least March 2013 (thanks to a Romanian hacker named Guccifer) that she conducted State Department business over her private email, which has in turn helped her evade the normal oversight and accountability for White House appointees.

How can this be?

One big reason is that much of the back-and-forth about Mrs. Clinton’s emails has focused on secondary disputes: the latest batch of emails coughed up by State in response to a federal judge’s order, the classified information that may be on these emails, and whether what she did was akin to the mishandling of classified information that resulted in a deal for Gen. David Petraeus under which he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.

Democracies that trade substance for charisma don’t last. Trump is America’s answer to Hugo Chávez.

If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.

If you have reached physical maturity and still chuckle at Mr. Trump’s pubescent jokes about Rosie O’Donnell or Heidi Klum, you will never reach mental maturity. If you watched Mr. Trump mock fellow candidate Lindsey Graham’s low poll numbers and didn’t cringe at the lack of class, you are incapable of class. If you think we need to build new airports in Queens the way they build them in Qatar, you should be sent to join the millions of forced laborers who do construction in the Persian Gulf. It would serve you right.

Since Mr. Trump joined the GOP presidential field and leaped to the top of the polls, several views have been offered to explain his popularity. He conveys a can-do image. He is the bluntest of the candidates in addressing public fears of cultural and economic dislocation. He toes no line, serves no PAC, abides no ideology, is beholden to no man. He addresses the broad disgust of everyday Americans with their failed political establishment.

President, London Center for Policy Research http://www.londoncenter.org/

Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan recently reaffirmed Iran’s position that issues involving Iran’s missile program are not matters for discussion. Presumably Iran is determined to keep developing its missile force. As for attempts to clarify Iran’s past activity regarding the “military dimensions” of its nuclear program, Dehghan noted that Iran will definitely not grant anyone access to its security and military “secrets.”

Concerning statements made by President Obama and Secretary Kerry after the deal was signed, Dehghan said, “The U.S. officials make boastful remarks and imagine that they can impose anything on the Iranian nation because they lack a proper knowledge of the Iranian nation…the time has come now for the Americans to realize that they are not the world’s super power and no one recognizes them as such any longer.”