RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s hard to generalize about Hillary Clinton’s email situation except that she tried to afford herself an extraordinary privilege as a high-ranking official, and then caused for herself exactly the problems (and worse) that she presumably was trying to avoid.

It’s the White House Travel Office, the Rose Law Firm billing records, the Seth Ward option (don’t ask), the health-care task force, etc., all over again.

Mrs. Clinton is a screw-up. And when a trait takes such trouble to announce itself, note must be taken.

Complicating the legal question, of course, is the fact that she didn’t exactly hide her behavior. The State Department knew she was conducting business on a private server. Her boss, the president, exchanged emails with her via what was self-evidently a private email account.

All this being so, many Americans probably would have been happy to see the difficulties bypassed by Mrs. Clinton simply returning all her emails and devices intact to the State Department. This she did not do. In response to reasonable and unavoidable questions about whether her arrangement and subsequent actions violated the law, the Obama administration had no choice but to launch a criminal investigation.

Now a simple home truth is that Mr. Obama and his attorney general, Loretta Lynch, from day one, were hardly indifferent, objective observers of the process. They did not want Mrs. Clinton charged.

In our imperfect world, most will understand the dilemma before FBI Director James Comey: Would it be more damaging for the country, FBI and personal reputation to actively intervene in the election by indicting Mrs. Clinton or to passively intervene in the election by giving her a pass?

A non-act is somehow easier to pass off than an act. Yet events of the last few days point to the absurdity of him clearing Mrs. Clinton when he still hadn’t seen 33,000 pieces of evidence. By definition, unless the FBI is full of remarkably unsuspicious cops, the emails that Mrs. Clinton and her aides deleted would seem the ones most likely to contain evidence of improper activity.

Mr. Comey perhaps failed also to foresee how the server issue would become entangled with the WikiLeaks theft of Clinton Foundation emails, contributing to a rather more multidimensional view of the back-scratching and buck-raking world the Clinton entourage inhabited. CONTINUE AT SITE

When the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn was founded in 1973, it had a worthy mission: to make healthy and affordable food available to everyone who wanted it. But recently, the Coop appears to have lost its way. In April, it suspended four loyal, long-time members for a whole year – three of them members from the Coop’s inception. The reason? Allegedly, the four disrupted a Coop meeting. But in reality, they were singled out from among hundreds of Coop members who vociferously objected to a hateful and bigoted anti-Israel presentation at a Coop meeting, which was aimed at getting the Coop to boycott an Israeli company called SodaStream.

This wasn’t the first time that an anti-Israel boycott was proposed at the Coop; the membership had already considered and soundly rejected one in 2012. But the Israel-bashers were persistent, this time displaying inflammatory anti-Israel photos at a Coop general meeting. The photos weren’t verified, they had no context, and the boycott proponents did not even establish their connection to SodaStream. Members at the meeting reported that not only was Israel viciously attacked; Jews were, too, with outrageous and incendiary comments like “Jews are aggressive toward black children.”

The four suspended Coop members were no doubt passionate and vocal about their objection to this anti-Israel boycott effort, and they had good reason to be: A boycott of Israeli products such as SodaStream would violate New York State law and could subject the Coop to liability.

New York’s Human Rights Law prohibits boycotts based on national origin, among several other protected categories. The law doesn’t require evidence of a formal boycott campaign; it’s enough if there’s a pattern of conduct that commercially disadvantages members of a protected class, which describes the anti-Israel vendetta at the Coop.The four suspended Coop members were no doubt passionate and vocal about their objection to this anti-Israel boycott effort, and they had good reason to be: A boycott of Israeli products such as SodaStream would violate New York State law and could subject the Coop to liability.

Camp owners were shocked by the comparison of Jewish campers emulating IDF exercises with Hamas terrorist training camps.http://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/ny/now-they-are-going-after-jewish-summer-camps/2016/11/02/

Camp Mesorah is a co-educational Modern Orthodox sleep-over camp sprawling across more than 100 acres in New York State’s Catskill Mountains. The camp focuses on sports, Torah, Jewish unity and love for Medinat Yisrael. Some people can’t stand that last part – especially any suggestion that the Israeli Defense Forces should be respected and emulated.

Why? Because the IDF, you know, is a military force and if Jewish campers in upstate New York emulate IDF troops while engaging in team-building and obstacle courses, that really is akin to glorifying torture and violence. In fact, “it’s like the Hamas camps.” At least that’s what some non-affiliated busybodies are claiming.

It’s absurd, but that’s how some Israel-denigrators – even Jewish ones – play the game. Even when it comes to attacking a team-building summer activity for Jewish campers.

Founded in 1990, Mesorah hosts approximatly 800 campers throughout the summers, starting from rising fourth graders through the tenth grade. Nearly one hundred of those Mesorahans come from Israel, and the camp has strong Zionist roots. Campers are encouraged to learn about and learn to love Israel, and making Aliyah is viewed as a positive aspiration. As Joseph Stansky, Mesorah’s co-owner, told the JewishPress.com on Tuesday, “many campers have IDF t-shirts and sweatshirts which they bought at novelty shops on Ben Yehudah [Street in Jerusalem].”

A brief visit to the camp’s website reveals hockey rinks and basketball courts, baseball diamonds and tennis courts, a lake for boating, and two shuls, a kollel, learning gazebos and a library. The owners have brought the camp into the digital age with a section on the website for parents and other family members to regularly see pictures and videos of the campers. There are also promotional videos for interested families.

The promotional videos are rolled out one at a time over the course of the post-summer year, in anticipation of the next summer’s season. One video rolled out just after the Jewish holidays this year focused on the camp’s “IDF-Paintball Program,” which shows campers in camouflage gear engaged in an intensive (by American Jewish camp standards) obstacle and team building course. Many of the campers are wearing their IDF t-shirts.