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2016

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Who Is Responsible for Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party? Jeremy Corbyn. Something is rotten in the United Kingdom By James Kirchick

By on May 12th, 2016

James Kirchick, a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative, is a columnist at Tablet. He is a former writer at large for Radio Free Europe based in Prague and a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow based in Berlin. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/202104/anti-semitism-labour-party-corbyn

The most charitable explanation for Jeremy Corbyn’s inept handling of the British Labour party’s latest anti-Semitism row (which have become so numerous that one wag created a clock counting the “number of days since [Labour’s] last anti-semitic incident”) is that it once again demonstrates his indecisive leadership style. After it was revealed that MP Naz Shah had authored social media posts advocating the deportation of Israeli Jews to America, likening the Jewish State to Nazi Germany, and comparing Zionism to al-Qaida, Corbyn initially refused to suspend the lady from Bradford West. Only after members of his own caucus publicly demanded it did Corbyn finally cave and withdraw the whip.

Then came the defense of Shah by Corbyn’s longtime friend and ally, former LondonMayor Ken Livingstone. In a truly weird, touring performance across several BBC programs meant to defend the disgraced Shah, Livingstone performed a sort of poor man’s impersonation of David Irving, claiming that Hitler was himself a Zionist. Digging his heels further, Livingstone claimed that Shah and other Labour figures accused of anti-Semitism have been smeared because “a real anti-Semite doesn’t just hate the Jews in Israel.” It takes one to know one.

Livingstone also said that he had “never heard anyone say anything anti-Semitic” in his near half-century involvement with Labour, which is a bit rich coming from the guy who once claimed that the Conservative Party was “riddled with homosexuals.”

Like his belated punishment of Shah, Corbyn only reluctantly suspended Livingstone from the party. And as if to send a signal to what is clearly a significant, and growing, anti-Semitic constituency within his party, Corbyn simultaneously reprimanded fellow Labourite John Mann MP, the heroic chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism who publicly confronted Livingstone and accused him of being a “Nazi apologist.”

As Labour and the media debate whether or not there is an anti-Semitism “crisis” within the party, nearly everybody seems to agree on at least one thing: Jeremy Corbyn himself is no anti-Semite. This generousness extends even to Corbyn’s harshest critics. “It is not that Labour’s leadership is anti-Semitic,” opines the New York Times’ Kenan Malik in a piece titled, “The British Left’s Jewish Problem.” “There is no reason to believe Corbyn is an anti-Semite,” writes the Financial Times’Robert Shrimsley in a column explaining why he can no longer vote for a Corbyn-led Labour Party.

On the contrary, there is every reason to believe Corbyn is exactly that.

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Americans, the Almost-Chosen People By David P. Goldman

By on May 12th, 2016

On Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, lessons for our world from theirs
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/202040/americans-the-almost-chosen-people

When we speak of culture in general, we typically think of fixed roots in the form of memory, custom, and habit. Yet the salient characteristic of the American character is restlessness, as Tocqueville observed. We are journeyers rather than settlers. We are risk-takers, entrepreneurs, and innovators. How then should we think about ourculture?

One approach is to steer clear of the problem and define America as a “propositional nation,” as John Courtney Murray contended. A proposition is something one assents to rationally. Culture, by contrast, is the context in which we perceive things, which we receive from our ancestors and pass down to our descendants. It is pre-rational, instinctive rather than intellectual, a manifestation of who we are rather than what we think. It is the way in which we cannot help but understand the world.

It is one thing to assert that a proposition is true and quite another thing to pledge one’s life, fortune, and sacred honor. The American Revolution is in some ways the strangest conflict in history: There is no other example of prosperous, property-owning people who were free to publish their thoughts and practice their religion taking up arms against the world’s most powerful empire. Four generations later, half a million Northerners died to end slavery.

If America is merely a propositional nation, moreover, then this proposition can be taught to any other nation, like a proof in logic. From Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush, our attempts to instruct the rest of the world in the American proposition have had baleful consequences, and it behooves us to consider the side of being American that cannot be learned but rather must be lived—what we call culture.

American culture is so singular that the general concept of culture we inherit from the Old World does not suffice to cover it. Critic Russell Kirk refers us to T.S. Eliot, who wrote:

[T]he term culture … includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the 12th of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th century Gothic churches, and the music of Elgar.

These are the sorts of quaint things American tourists used to look for in England, that is, when England still had them. If we Americans had things like that, we would put them in a theme park. I do not mean to deprecate Eliot. His is the common-sense way to think about culture, and to deviate from it takes us into deep water. Nonetheless, Eliot’s definition does not well suit the American example.

For Martin Heidegger, our Being-in-the-World, or Dasein, always occupies a particular space in a particular temporality. “Heritage” for Heidegger refers back to something like an autochthonous peasant archetype. In his later years Heidegger withdrew to a cabin in the Black Forest to write dithyrambs to the German Heimatendangered by the encroachment of technology. Americans do not stay in any one place long enough to accrete the Bodenständigkeit, or rootedness, that Heidegger sought at the core of our Being. No wonder Heidegger hated America.

Recently Alexander Gauland, the deputy chair of the ultra-right Allianz für Deutschland, called Americans “a people thrown together by chance without an authentic culture.” It is true that we do not have a high culture to compare to Europe’s, for all the good that did them. We cannot claim a national poet with the stature of a Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe. Not until the 1920s did we discoverMoby-Dick when critics in search of an American classic rescued Melville’s work from 70 years of obscurity. We have Walt Whitman, the butt of innumerable parodies, and Hemingway, the subject of a famous imitation contest.

America nonetheless has a distinct national culture, with a national epic, a national poem, and a national place.

It is instructive to start in medias res, with the most original and influential work of American fiction, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, whence “all modern American literature comes,” as Hemingway said. Its flaws shed light on our problem as much as do its virtues. Twain devised the most arresting image in American literature: the runaway boy Huck and the escaped slave Jim, fragile and free on the great river. The evocative opening of the novel, though, eventually fades into a disappointing sequel to Tom Sawyer. “The book ends so lamely,” Harold Bloom rightly observes. Nonetheless, we forgive Mark Twain his sin of literary construction and love the work. Our critics, I think, misunderstand why. Lionel Trilling thinks Huck is a “servant of the river-god,” while Bloom cannot decide whether Huck is a “wholly secular being” or an “American Orphic.” This seems far-fetched. What fascinates us in Huckleberry Finn is not the plot but the image of the journey itself. Twain gives us the most poignant picture of a journey ever imagined by an American: the vulnerability of the two fugitives against the backdrop of the great current that bisects the American heartland.

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Misnomer Mischief By Marilyn Penn

By on May 12th, 2016

Certainly the most famous transgender in America is Caitlin Jenner who has graced the cover of many magazines, occupied two slots on reality t.v., received recognition and many awards from the media, the LGBTQ movement and praise from the president of the U.S. Her Woman of the Year award from Glamour magazine for her “courage” in telling her story prompted the return of a similar award issued in 2001 to first responder police officer Moira Smith who rushed into the South Tower to save lives on 9/11, dying at the age of 38. Her husband questioned why this award was now being given to a man when there were so many heroic women in the military, police force, fire brigades or medical teams who put their lives on the line daily. Less forgivable was President Obama’s own use of the word “courage” coming from his position as Commander in Chief with dedicated troops offering their lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and various other global hotspots. That same word simply doesn’t apply to a man squeezing himself into a bustier, hiding his package between his thighs and posing for the cover of a magazine whose title more aptly fits the situation – Vanity Fair.

Caitlin, formerly known as Bruce, has not had sexual reassignment surgery although it does appear he has had breast implants; we may soon find out if the rumor that she will be photographed nude turns out to be true. In any event, it is true that gender dysmorphia can now be rectified by the sufferer without altering the biological equipment that was present at birth. This means that many transgender women are actually bi-gender, sporting features common to both sexes: breasts, hairless face, smooth skin, female hormones and a penis. Ordinarily, what’s underneath one’s clothes would be unknown to anyone but the individual and those people with whom he was intimate. That has changed however, with the Justice Department stipulation that transgenders must be entitled to use the bathroom, locker room and shower facilities of whichever sex they choose to call their own. The state of No. Carolina disagreed and issued a law reserving bathrooms and locker rooms to biologically appropriate users. In answer to this flouting of her department’s ruling, Loretta Lynch claimed, “They created state-sponsored discrimination against transgender individuals who simply seek to engage in the most private of functions in a place of safety and security.” (NYT 5/10/16) The question is for whom?

For adolescents who have been spared exposure to the multiple pornographic sites on t.v. and the internet, the sight of a boy or man with a penis and breasts would certainly be confusing, if not alarming. The same is true for many adults, despite the growing attempts by social and conventional media to become increasingly explicit with previously considered “fringe” elements of sexual behavior. Several series and films on cable tv have featured bondage, torture and recreational urination as just some other kind of sex the folks enjoy. This defining deviancy down has now decided that the rights of bi-genders trump the rights of those with conventional gender identity. Somehow, a girl who thinks she’s a boy and vice versa, has been parlayed from a gender dysmorphic problem with an abnormally high suicide rate (even after sexual reassignment surgery) to a civil rights issue. Our president, attorney-general and NY governor want us to believe that all the Caitlin Jenners have not only the freedom to morph into the opposite gender but the constitutional right to do so. Why bi-gender people deserve more consideration than people suffering from other forms of delusional thinking remains a mystery. A white woman who chooses to identify as black will not be protected under the same acts that prohibit discrimination by race. A man who wishes to be known as Napoleon and dresses accordingly will not be tolerated in the military and probably not even at the local gym. Neither the military nor the gym will be forced to provide a place for him to park his horse.

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Baltimore epilogue: a funeral amid the riots: Julia Gorin

By on May 12th, 2016

This time a year ago I dreamt that Aunt Berta was in my kitchen in Las Vegas, telling me she was rescinding my invitation to her “jubilee.”

“What jubilee are you talking about?” I demanded. “You just had your jubilee last year when you turned 100. But fine, go ahead and disinvite me. See if I show up to your funeral. Or if I do, see if I bring your beloved Lev (my husband).”

My father’s aunt just listened meekly as I berated her, and soon wakefulness dawned. What if Berta actually was referring to her funeral? Oh, but she couldn’t be dead. Berta doesn’t die. Besides, holding on until 100 is understandable, but what’s the point of 101? And would she really want to bring people to Baltimore — right into the middle of the riots?

The phone rang. It wasn’t yet six o’clock, and it was my mother.
“Eh, Lyusha?”

“Da. Is this about Tota Berta?”

“Someone already told you?”

“No, I just had a dream she was telling me not to come. You think she was letting me off the hook?”

My mother, only ever momentarily impressed by my sporadic ESP, answered, “It’s possible. Anyway, your father is in no shape to fly, but I’m going so let me know whether to buy one ticket or two.” We hung up.

It was hard to believe Berta was gone. Once someone makes it to 101, you figure that person just isn’t going anywhere. Clearly, God has forgotten about them.

The president, for one, did forget about Berta. She never got the presidential letter you’re supposed to get when you turn 100. Granted, she didn’t vote for Mr. Obama, and another Russian-American — a group known for conservative leanings — might have mused, “Forthis I lived a hundred years?” But Berta looked forward to that letter. I had assured her it would come to the Section 8 apartment building where she lived, which was situated between Park Heights Avenue and Reisterstown Road.

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No Death Penalty for a Benghazi Jihadist — Is this Law or Politics? By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on May 12th, 2016

In a terse submission to the federal district court in Washington, D.C., the Obama Justice Department has announced that it will not seek the death penalty against Ahmed Abu Khatallah. He is the only terrorist charged in the Benghazi massacre of September 11, 2012, in which U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other American officials were killed in an attack carried out by dozens of jihadists.

Government lawyers provided no explanation for this decision. If you are wondering whether politics played a role in it, you have good reason to be suspicious.

On the face of it, Khatallah is a textbook case for capital punishment. The Benghazi indictment alleges that he willfully and maliciously caused the death of Americans in a terrorist attack that he helped coordinate. The facts of his offense check several of the “aggravating factor” boxes in federal death-penalty law. There is, moreover, a national-security component, inherent not only in the Benghazi atrocity itself but in the perverse incentive that the government’s failure to seek an available death sentence would create for others considering mass-murder attacks against American installations overseas.

In addition, terrorists imprisoned by the United States after being prosecuted for successful attacks against America become iconic figures in the jihad. As long as they live, they can and do inspire more attacks, recruitment, and fundraising.

Thus, legal and national-security considerations militate in favor of seeking capital punishment. Remember, Mr. Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979. An attack on our ambassador and on sovereign American facilities abroad is an act of war against the United States. Since national security is the core responsibility of the federal government, there can be no federal offense more worthy of capital treatment.

We are talking about the Obama administration, though, so there are always political considerations. And when it comes to Benghazi, they always take precedence.

A criminal trial is an opportunity for a defendant to challenge the government’s version of events. It is not like a press conference or a congressional hearing, at which administration officials can get away with spin and stonewalling. Presided over by an independent judiciary applying rigorous rules of due process, criminal trials arm highly capable defense lawyers with copious discovery of the government’s files and legal avenues to demand further disclosures. And because of the life-and-death stakes of death-penalty litigation, federal law gives no one more ample opportunity to test the government’s story than a death-penalty defendant.

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The meaning of true independence: Col. Richard Kemp

By on May 12th, 2016

“What kind of talk is this, ‘punishing Israel?’ Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we 14-year-olds who, if we misbehave, get our wrists slapped? Let me tell you whom this Cabinet comprises. It is composed of people whose lives were marked by resistance, fighting and suffering.”

These were the words of Prime Minister Menachem Begin delivered to the U.S. President Ronald Reagan in December 1981. Begin, one of the greatest leaders and fighters of our times, knew the meaning of true independence.

He knew that it was not about firecrackers, dancing in the streets or lighting flames. It was about standing up for yourself and submitting to no man. Declaring to the world, “this is where we stand.”

Israel’s independence was bought at a high price in Jewish blood, fighting first against the might of the British Empire and then against five powerful Arab armies which sought its destruction.

For 68 years Israelis have fought again and again to defend their independence against enemies who would subjugate their country. No other nation has struggled so long and so hard, surrounded by such unyielding hostility.

But in making their stand, Israelis have never had to stand alone. From the beginning, Jews from the U.K., the U.S., Europe, Australia, South Africa and around the world rallied to the fight for independence under the glorious banner of the Mahal. Among them were non-Jews, including a Christian soldier from my own regiment.

In the years since, and even today, the courage of their young successors, the “lone soldiers”’ of the diaspora, travelling thousands of miles from the safety of their homes to stand and fight here to preserve Israel’s independence, inspires awe and humility. As Begin said: “This is the land of their forefathers, and they have a right and a duty to support it.”

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John Kerry is Iran’s Lobbyist in Chief By: Benjamin Weingarten –

By on May 12th, 2016

Secretary of State John Kerry is Ben Rhodes’ useful idiot. That is the most generous conclusion one can come to after news broke of the Secretary’s frustration with Europe’s reluctance to do business with the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Sec. Kerry believes that European businesses are refusing to trade with the Iranians for (feigned) fear that they might run afoul of U.S. sanctions against the “moderate” mullahocracy were they to engage in commerce.

Let Sec. Kerry be clear: Iran is “open for business.” “If they [the Europeans] don’t see a good business deal, they shouldn’t say, ‘Oh, we can’t do it because of the United States.’ That’s just not fair. That’s not accurate,” says the Boston Brahmin with a heart of gold.

But Sec. Kerry’s rhetoric, meant to insulate America against such criticism, is not about defending America’s interests. It is actually about defending Iran’s.
Sec. Kerry today is aiding, abetting and enabling Iran through encouraging economic activity the proceeds of which will be used to underwrite jihad.

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MY SAY: DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY- GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR’S FAREWELL SPEECH TO WEST POINT MAY 12,1962

By on May 11th, 2016

This month, hundreds of students of America’s military academies will be graduating to serve in all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Godspeed to all who choose to serve and protect America. Here is General MacArthur’s most inspiring speech. No one has said it better.

General Douglas MacArthur’s Farewell Speech to West Point

General Westmoreland, General Groves, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps. As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, “Where are you bound for, General?” and when I replied, “West Point,” he remarked, “Beautiful place, have you ever been there before?”

No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this, coming from a profession I have served so long and a people I have loved so well. It fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily for a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code – the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the meaning of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always.

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. Read it all….

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Oxford: Law Students Do Not Have to Learn About Rape or Violence Law If It’s Too Triggering By Katherine Timpf —

By on May 11th, 2016

Oxford University’s undergraduate law professors are providing “trigger warnings” before lessons about rape or violent crime so that students who might be made uncomfortable by such material can leave.

“Before the lectures on sexual offences — which included issues such as rape and sexual assault — we were warned that the content could be distressing, and were then given the opportunity to leave if we needed to,” one student said, according to an article in the Daily Mail.

This is, obviously, insane. Students are in law classes, presumably, because they have an interest in potentially pursuing a career in law. And the people in these fields — prosecutors, judges, attorneys, etc. — certainly cannot just up and leave the courtroom any time they feel uncomfortable.

After all, law jobs, by their very nature, in large part deal with things that are illegal — things which, by nature, are often uncomfortable or even downright disturbing. If you can’t handle talking about it in class, then you can’t handle those careers.

Now, this sounds like it should be obvious, but Oxford is far from the first place we’ve seen this idiotic logic at play. In fact, Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk wrote a piece in The New Yorker back in 2014 explaining that “student organizations representing women’s interests” have been so successful in pushing the idea that students “should not feel pressured to attend or participate in class sessions that focus on the law of sexual violence” that “even seasoned teachers of criminal law, at law schools across the country, have confided that they are seriously considering dropping rape law and other topics related to sex and gender violence . . . because they are afraid of injuring others or being injured themselves.”

This isn’t just annoying or stupid — it’s actually dangerous. After all, rape law’s being too “triggering” to teach will result in fewer people knowing how to prosecute rapists. It’s putting the misguided, abstract idea of achieving an emotional “safe space” above actual safety in a real, tangible way. Clearly, it’s time to wake up and take a look at our priorities — fast.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review.

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A Trump Win Would Destroy Clinton’s Legacy — and Obama’s By Jim Geraghty

By on May 11th, 2016

#NeverTrump movement laments that a President Trump, with his authoritarian instincts, lack of interest in policy details, and populist demagoguery would be disastrous for the country. But there’s a silver lining, and an aspect that has largely been ignored by all-too-confident Democrats: A Trump victory in November would destroy the legacies of Hillary Clinton and President Obama.

Right now, Clinton is still the favorite to win the presidency. But the first general-election surveys are showing a sudden drop in Clinton’s once-huge polling lead. A Harvard poll finds Clinton ahead only 46 percent to 40 percent nationwide and 45 to 41 in swing states; Quinnipiac finds Clinton leading by one point in Florida, leading by one point in Pennsylvania, and trailing by two points in Ohio.

Trump has defeated one consistent conservative lawmaker after another in the GOP primary, and Democrats would be foolish to underestimate him. If it wasn’t obvious already, they have just as much to lose as Republicans in November.

Start with Clinton. On paper, she should be able to mop the floor with Trump. She’s experienced; he’s not. She knows and understands policy details; he makes it up as he goes along and contradicts himself frequently. She should be able to appeal to the African-Americans, Latinos, and Millennials, who propelled Obama to office; Trump’s numbers are toxic among those demographics. She starts with an Electoral College map heavily favorable to Democrats; he’s got to figure out how to win a bunch of states that Obama won twice, despite being literally the least popular, least liked, least trusted major-party presidential nominee in the history of polling.

And yet there remains the possibility that Clinton could collapse. A Trump victory in November would affirm every criticism lobbed her way since she appeared on the national scene in 1992: too dishonest, too arrogant, too cold, too calculating, too out of touch, too vindictive for the American people. Democrats would suspect, with justification, that they dodged a bullet in 2008: If Clinton can’t beat Trump, how would she have fared against John McCain and Sarah Palin, even amid the economic meltdown?

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