RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mr. Mattis, a retired four-star U.S. Marine Corps general and former commander of U.S. Central Command, is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

A retired four-star Marine Corps general on the clarifying effect of combat experience, the poison of cynicism and how veterans can help revive American optimism.

Our country gives hope to millions around the world, and you—who knew that at one time your job was to fight well—kept that hope alive. By your service you made clear your choice about what kind of world we want for our children: The world of violent jihadist terrorists, or one defined by Abraham Lincoln when he advised us to listen to our better angels?

I searched for words to pay my respects to all of you here tonight and had to turn to others more articulate than I to convey what our service meant. Someone once said that America is like a bank: If you want to take something out, then you must be willing to put something in.

For the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—poorly explained and inconclusive wars, the first major wars since our Revolution fought without a draft forcing some men into the ranks—the question of what our service meant may loom large in your minds. You without doubt have put something into the nation’s moral bank.

Rest assured that by your service, you sent a necessary message to the world and especially to those maniacs who thought by hurting us that they could scare us.

Attention parents of college students across America. Apparently, your children may not be safe.

This isn’t a warning about real physical dangers on campus, from sexual assault to random shootings. Rather, some advocacy groups say college students are at risk – maybe you’d better sit down for this – of being exposed to ideas and opinions they may not like.

It’s getting so bad that this week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) New York chapter demanded that Brooklyn College “take measures to ensure the safety of Muslim and Arab-American students” because of an upcoming speech by a harsh critic of Islam.

Pamela Geller, who has posted bus ads comparing Islamic terrorists to savages, is a polarizing figure. But her speech will be just that – a speech at a college campus. Not too long ago, such places encouraged students to “think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.”

We live in a country where we embrace liberal democracy, gender equality, freedom of speech and individual freedoms, so we naïvely think that everyone who comes here has the same values. Wrong. Those are the very values that the terrorists abhor.

We must be aware that there are organizations and individuals right here in the United States and Canada who have exactly the same ideology as Boko Haram, the Taliban and ISIS. The only difference is these North American organizations are required to follow the law of the land.

In many instances, these subversive organizations have succeeded in suppressing free speech by aggressively intimidating academic institutions.

This threatening, silencing and censoring is the other face of terrorism.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Israeli government’s decision to apply to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), despite Washington’s displeasure, is an expression of Israel’s strong interest in increasing its economic engagement in Asia.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his capacity as minister of finance, signed a letter of application to join the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) on March 31, despite Washington’s displeasure. Fully aware of Washington’s failed attempt to convince its allies not to join the AIIB, the decision to apply demonstrates Israel’s understanding of the rising importance of Asia, especially China, to Israel’s economy.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: China’s “New Silk Road” is Beijing’s latest project aimed at creating a belt of railroads, highways, pipelines and broadband communications stretching through China to the West, and a “maritime Silk Road” combining sea routes with port infrastructure from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. This project comes at a point where the role of the US in the Middle East is declining, and it is likely that China will aspire to adopt a larger role in the region. Israel’s geographical position and technological advances makes it possible for Israel to play a bridgehead role in the project, and the opportunity to shape Chinese thinking and strategy in the region for decades to come.

China’s “New Silk Road” might become history’s most ambitious investment in infrastructure. Some Chinese strategists predict an Israeli role in the project on par with, or possibly even more important, than that of Turkey. China calls the project “One Belt and One Road,” referring to a belt of railroads, highways, pipelines and broadband communications stretching through China to the West, and a “maritime Silk Road” combining sea routes with port infrastructure from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean.

SIGNAL, Sino-Israel Global Network & Academic Leadership, (中 以 学术 交流促进协会) is an action-oriented institute enhancing China’s and Israel’s strategic, diplomatic, cultural and economic relationship through high level interchange. SIGNAL has established significant, long-term alliances between China and Israel that serve as the foundation for mutually beneficial and broad-based cooperation between the two nations.

Aims and Objectives

SIGNAL, Sino-Israel Global Network & Academic Leadership, was founded with the aim of focusing on the realm of academia to enhance China’s and Israel’s strategic, diplomatic, cultural and economic relations. Significant, long-term academic alliances between China and Israel will surely cement and promote mutually beneficial and broad-based cooperation between the two nations.

China’s importance on the global scene cannot be overemphasized. Israel excels in innovation and creative solutions. Thus far, the absence of an established platform for leading professors and academic analysts in Israel and China to exchange views and knowledge on the intellectual plane has undoubtedly limited the kind of concentrated, innovative thought and cooperation that can advance local and global stability. A well-conceived program that opens an ongoing academic dialogue between these two nations, which share so many historical, cultural and contemporary parallels, is therefore bound to engender tectonic, positive changes.

Both China and Israel realize they have much to gain by enhancing their academic relations. Scholars, leaders of academic institutions and experts from both nations have expressed great interest in developing closer academic ties through SIGNAL’s various programs, such as:

The Virtual Resource Center – the first Chinese-language source of both introductory and scholarly materials on Israel and its people.
The historic establishment of the first Israel Studies Program (ISP) at a Chinese university – Sichuan International Studies University in Chongqing.
A series of China-Israel strategic studies seminars, conferences and workshops.
Scholar and student exchanges, promoting the pursuit of academic degrees in Israel by Chinese and in China by Israelis, facilitating relationships between Israeli and Chinese authors and publishers, and many more programs.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, quondam secretary of state and presumptive heir to the presidencyof the United States, spent Monday, April 13, in her Secret Service van heading out to Iowa. She was undoubtedly preparing diligently for several hours of arduous mixing and mingling with “everyday Americans.” We don’t know whether she had time that morning to take a look at the Wall Street Journal, with its report that “the Kremlin has formally lifted its own ban on the delivery of S-300 missiles to Iran, setting the legal groundwork for the possible Russian sale of a powerful air-defense system to Tehran.”

We do know that the delivery of the S-300s had been suspended under pressure, first from the Bush and then from the Obama administration. And we do know that, as Foreign Policy magazine reported in 2010, the S-300 success was being “touted by the White House as a new dawn in the U.S.-Russia relationship.” As Elliott Abrams put it last week in recounting this history, “Oh well: That was then and this is now.”

India’s IT firm Tech Mahindra is partnering with US-Israeli technology company Comverse Inc. to set up a research and development centre in Israel.

Tech Mahindra provides IT and Networking solutions to telecom companies worldwide. Comverse Inc. offers business solutions to telecom service providers. Its portfolio includes value added services, revenue and customer management.

Tech Mahindra is part of Mahindra Group, a $16.5 billion Indian multinational. The technlogy company employs more than 98,000 people in 51 countries.

Days after the Technion announced that a team led by Nobel Prize laureate Professor Aaron Ciechanover had discovered how proteins could be used to suppress cancer and control tumor growth and development, the institute revealed that it had entered into an exclusive agreement with India’s Sun Pharmaceuticals — the world’s fifth-largest specialty generic pharmaceutical company and India’s top pharmaceutical company.

Under the agreement, researchers from the Technion and Sun will conduct studies on how high concentrations of two proteins can protect tissue from tumors. A study published in the medical journal Cell this week discussed how the proteins can suppress malignancies.

Along with Ciechanover, the research team included Dr. Gila Maor and Professor Ofer Binah. In a statement, Ciechanover said that the research held a great deal of promise of an effective drug for treating cancer, “although this is not a certainty, and the road to such a drug is long and far from simple.”

WE HAVE ENTERED a state of emergency. The Obama admin­istration is pursuing policies that effec­tively serve the pur­poses of one of Amer­ica’s greatest foes and treat one of America’s dearest friends as though it were an adversary. The White House has implicitly taken up the cause of normalizing Iran and has become at the very least complicit in the international goal of isolating Israel.

Barack Obama has decided the key to his legacy is a deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran that will en­shrine its nuclear capacity but delay its ability to build and deploy a bomb for a time—that is, assuming Iran doesn’t cheat, which is an assumption that requires a leap of geopolitical faith Blaise Pascal would have blanched at. Meanwhile, 970 miles from Tehran, the State of Israel finds itself the unwanted focus of another Obama legacy effort: the effort to drive a wedge be­tween the two countries and thereby realign America’s interests in the Middle East away from Israel’s interests.