RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/opinion/turning-rabbi-firers-blessings-into-a-feminist-curse/

A nationwide argument erupted in Israel over the limits of religious freedom and practice in the public sphere, particularly when involving state-funded or municipal venues.

Leave it to Israelis to create and engage in a heated controversy where it need not exist.

The brouhaha surrounding a benefit concert whose proceeds were earmarked for the health-care NGO, Ezra Lemarpe—founded and directed by genius medical autodidact Rabbi Avraham Elimelech Firer—is a perfect example.

The concert, a tribute to the 50-year career of Israeli singer Shlomo Artzi ahead of his 70th birthday, was supposed to take place on Nov. 20. It was canceled on Monday by Firer, who was fed up and clearly hurt by the commotion that his religious beliefs were causing.

The carry-on began when it emerged that certain female singers would be on the program, along with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and other prominent performers. But the rabbi is a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jew who adheres to the modesty directive that men may not hear women singing, as their voices can be seductive.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15137/palestinians-hamas-iran

What Iran evidently wants is to see Arabs protesting against the US and Israel — and against nothing else.

It now remains to be seen whether the Arabs who have finally woken up to realize that Iran — and not Israel — is the real threat to their well-being will be able to keep up the momentum and continue their uprising against corruption and Iranian dominance over their countries.

Instead of firing rockets at Israel and demonstrating at the Gaza-Israel border, Palestinians ought to learn from their brothers in Lebanon and Iraq who their real enemies are: Iranian-backed dictators and fake Palestinian leaders, who only know how to lead their people towards further suffering.

In the context of its effort to thwart the current anti-corruption protests in Lebanon and Iraq, Iran has enlisted Khaled Masha’al, the former head of the “political bureau” of the Palestinian Hamas movement, to warn Arabs about the consequences of their demands for reform and democracy.

Iran considers the anti-corruption protests a major threat to its interests in the region. That is most likely why it has decided to unleash Hamas and its other proxies — Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq — against the demonstrators on the streets of Beirut and Baghdad. What Iran evidently wants is to see Arabs protesting against the US and Israel — and against nothing else.

As far as Iran’s leaders are concerned, Arabs demanding reform and democracy are damaging Tehran’s effort to dominate Arab countries and prepare for war against Israel. Iran seems to believe that thanks to Tehran’s technological advances, destroying Israel has become possible. “The sinister regime [Israel] must be wiped off the map, and this is no longer a dream but an achievable goal,” said Major General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Speaking at the “Jerusalem Pioneers Conference” in Turkey earlier this week, Masha’al expressed concern that the anti-corruption protests, which are also directed against Iran, could turn out to be harmful for the Palestinians.

His major concern, he said, is that the Arabs’ preoccupation with their domestic problems and conflicts would divert their attention from the Palestinian issue and push it to the bottom of their list of priorities. “We hope that this is a temporary preoccupation,” Masha’al said. “We hope that Palestine will return to the top of the [Arabs’] agenda.”

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/close-down-unrwa/

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was created in 1949 via UN Resolution 302 (IV) with a short-term mandate. It flouted its original mission and perpetuated rather than alleviated the Palestinians’ status as refugees. It has long since become corrupt and functions essentially as a front group. The UN should close it down, and Palestinian refugees should be integrated into the economic systems of the countries that sheltered them. 

In December 1949, in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was established by the UN through Resolution 302 (IV) to “carry out in collaboration with local governments the direct relief and works programmes” for the rehabilitation of the Palestinian Arab refugees, and to “consult with the interested Near Eastern Governments concerning measures to be taken by them preparatory to the time when international assistance for relief and works projects is no longer.” In fact, not only has the agency failed to accomplish this goal, but it has functioned instead as a de facto anti-Israel front group and a fig leaf for Palestinian intransigence.

UNRWA has prolonged rather than resolve the plight of Palestinian refugees. Worse, by encouraging the Palestinian fixation on the “right of return” – the standard euphemism for the destruction of Israel via demographic subversion – it impedes negotiations for a permanent peace agreement. The agency should be eliminated and the responsibility for Palestinian refugees shifted to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), like other post-WWII refugee groups throughout the world.

Not for the first time, the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services is currently investigating UNRWA’s top management for abuses of power, including sexual misconduct, nepotism, bullying, and retaliation. The Swiss, Dutch, and Belgian governments have all suspended payments to UNRWA while the investigation is ongoing.

UNRWA’s top official, Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl, was accused of appointing as an adviser a woman with whom he was romantically involved. The pair traveled on business class flights across the globe. Deputy Commissioner-General Sandra Mitchell was accused of bullying and of manipulating the system to find a well-paid job for her spouse, Robert Langridge, who was promoted. Chief of Staff Hakam Shahwan was accused of behaving like a thug, placing people loyal to him in positions of power, and lobbying to take over UNRWA operations in Jerusalem.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/al-baghdadi-and-trumps-syrian-chessboard-caroline-glick/

U.S. President Donald Trump’s many critics insist he has no idea what he is doing in Syria. The assassination of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the weekend by US Special Forces showed this criticism is misplaced. Trump has a very good idea of what he is doing in Syria, not only regarding ISIS, but regarding the diverse competing actors on the ground.

Regarding ISIS, the obvious lesson of the Baghdadi raid is that Trump’s critics’ claim that his withdrawal of US forces from Syria’s border with Turkey meant that he was going to allow ISIS to regenerate was utterly baseless.

Trump fundamentally changed the US’s counter-terror fighting doctrine, particularly as it relates to psychological warfare against jihadists.

The raid did more than that. Baghdadi’s assassination, and Trump’s discussion of the mass murderer’s death showed that Trump has not merely maintained faith with the fight against ISIS and its allied jihadist groups. He has fundamentally changed the US’s counter-terror fighting doctrine, particularly as it relates to psychological warfare against jihadists.

Following the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration initiated a public diplomacy campaign in the Arab-Islamic world. Rather than attack and undermine the jihadist doctrine that insists that it is the religious duty of Muslims to fight with the aim of conquering the non-Muslim world and to establish a global Islamic empire or caliphate, the Bush strategy was to ignore the jihad in the hopes of appeasing its adherents. The basic line of the Bush administration’s public diplomacy campaign was to embrace the mantra that Islam is peace, and assert that the US loves Islam because the US seeks peace.

Along these lines, in 2005, then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice prohibited the State Department, FBI and US intelligence agencies from using “controversial” terms like “radical Islam,” “jihad” and “radical Islam” in official documents.

The Obama administration took the Bush administration’s obsequious approach to strategic communications several steps further. President Barack Obama and his advisors went out of their way to express sympathy for the “Islamic world.”