RUTHFULLY YOURS

It is sadly fitting that, for the first time since 1978, this year the lighting of the first Hanukkah candle coincides with Christmas Eve.

Though the two holidays have nothing in common, they are often lumped together. This is partly due to their proximity on the Gregorian calendar. It is also a period when Jewish and Christian students in the West are let out of school for what is now called “winter vacation,” with a lot of gift-giving and overeating taking place.

But this year, Jews and Christians would do well to embrace a deeper similarity, and say prayers for one another — even while some are drinking eggnog at the foot of lavishly decorated trees, while others are feasting on jelly donuts around lit candles.

Last year on Dec. 24, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi attended mass at St. Mark’s Orthodox Coptic Church in Cairo to show that things in his country were going to be different now that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was no longer at the helm. This gesture, like el-Sissi’s strengthening ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was particularly significant in a region ravaged by full-fledged genocidal war and horrific low-resolution conflicts. The message he was trying to convey was that Egypt under his rule would treat its Christian minority with respect. In the months since then, he has also made moves to embrace his country’s treaty with the Jewish state, with which he shares the goal of fending off terrorists in Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. Perhaps mystically, the last time Hanukkah and Christmas Eve fell on the same night occurred three months after the signing of the Camp David Accords, the precursor to that treaty.

El-Sissi’s efforts have not paid off too well on either front. At the Rio Olympic Games in August, though his government warned judoka Islam El Shehaby that if he did not compete against Israeli contender Or Sasson he would be stripped of his Egyptian citizenship, fellow countrymen from all walks of life urged him not to “shame Islam” by fighting Sasson, and afterward denounced him for sharing the mat with a Jew.

Also in the year since el-Sissi went to church, Islamist terrorists have continued, as before, to commit heinous acts of violence against the Copts. This month, during Sunday prayers at the very cathedral that el-Sissi visited in 2015, two dozen worshippers were killed and many more wounded when a bomb went off in the packed premises. Though there is still some confusion as to whether the mass murder was carried out by suicide bomber or a terrorist who laid the explosives near a pew, the Islamic State organization took happy credit for the snuffing out of the lives of innocent Christians, mostly women and children, and vowed to continue its annihilation of “apostates” everywhere.

El-Sissi announced that the suspected perpetrator was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who had established ties with a Sinai-based Islamic State affiliate.

This year Chanukah starts on December 24 in the evening and ends on the evening of January 1, 2017 . No one ever explains it better than retired ambassador Yoram Ettinger…rsk

1. Chanukah and Jewish immortality. In 1899, Mark Twain wrote: “Jews constitute but one percent of the human race…, [but] their contributions to literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are away out of proportion to the weakness of their numbers. They have made a marvelous fight in all the ages, and had done it with their hands tied behind them…. The Egyptians, Babylonians and Persians rose and then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed, made vast noise and they are gone…. The Jew saw them all, beat them all and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies…. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

2. The Chanukah Menorah (a nine-branched-candelabra) commemorates the legacy of the Maccabees, which has been a pillar of fire for the Jewish people, highlighting the prerequisites of spiritual and physical liberty, in defiance of formidable odds: faith, optimism, patriotism, memory and adherence to value and principle-driven culture. The Maccabees have become a universal role-model of national and religious liberation struggle against all odds, the victory of long-term, principle-driven faith over short-term, convenience-driven cynicism and opportunism; the victory of tenacious optimism over pessimism and political-correctness.

3. Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben Gurion: “The struggle of the Maccabees was one of the most dramatic clashes of civilizations in human history…. The Maccabees overcame one of the most magnificent spiritual, political and military challenges in Jewish history due to the spirit of the people, rather than the failed spirit of the establishment ….” (Uniqueness and Destiny, pp 20-22, Ben Gurion, IDF Publishing, 1953)

4. The US connection:

* On December 2, 1993, in Billings, Montana, white supremacists tossed a brick through a window of a Jewish home that displayed the Chanukah Menorah. On the following morning, the Billings Gazette – reflecting sentiments of local churches and civic leaders – printed a full-page Menorah, which was pasted on the windows of over 10,000 non-Jewish residents in a show of solidarity. Some Billings’ residents displayed their Not in Our Town spirit, displaying Chanukah Menorahs on Billings’ main street. The Billings’ Chanukah gesture has been commemorated annually. A Chanukah candle-lighting was recently held at the State Capitol in Helena, MT.

*A bust of Judah the Maccabee is displayed at West Point Military Academy, along with those of Joshua, David, Alexander the Great, Hector, Julius Caesar, King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon – “the Nine Worthies.”

*John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, Thomas Paine and the organizers of the Boston Tea Party were referred to as “the modern day Maccabees.”

* According to the Diary of Michael and Louisa Hart, George Washington was introduced to Chanukah in December 1777 at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. He was challenging the much superior British military. A Jewish solider lit a Chanukah candle, explaining its significance: a conviction-driven, tactical victory against immense odds. Washington replied: “I rejoice in the Maccabees’ success, though it is long past…It pleases me to think that miracles still happen.” On June 19, 1778, Washington implemented the battle tactics of Judah the Maccabee, defeating the British troops.

While the medieval Saudi system of justice was flogging the gentle blogger Raif Badawi 50 out of the stipulated 1000 lashes, a delegation of UN bureaucrats landed in Jeddah to promote an international conference on religious freedom.

The Saudis use these international seats to advance their oppressive agenda, and to press the Western democracies to punish criticism of Islam.

Through the shameful trial of Geert Wilders, Dutch authorities sent a message of surrender to the Saudis and other rogue Islamic regimes that punish dissent.

Did the Dutch prosecute Wilders on behalf of the Saudis, who threatened to impose sanctions on the Netherlands?

The UN and the Western democracies are putting the defense of human rights and freedom in the hands of one the world’s worst violators of religious and intellectual freedom.

Sharia courts are already fully operating in the Netherlands. They know something about “human rights”: stoning, flogging and chopping off heads.

Who will rescue our right to speak?

“My husband has been languishing in a Saudi prison since June 17th, 2012. Our children live with me in the city of Sherbrooke, Québec in Canada. They have not seen their father for five years now… On January 9, 2015, Raif received the first 50 lashes… Will members of the United Nations Human Rights Council join the European Parliament and ask for Raif’s release?”

Unfortunately, the UN members did not respond to this appeal by Ensaf Haidar, the fearless wife of the most famous blogger of the Arab world, the gentle Raif Badawi, imprisoned and flogged by the Saudis for his secular ideas. A few days after Ensaf’s appeal, the United Nations welcomed Badawi’s executioners, the Saudis, at the UN Human Rights Council. The Saudi representative, Abdulaziz Alwasil, will be decisive on three major issues at the UN Palace of Nations in Geneva: women, religious freedom and the system of justice.

What a great achievement for Saudi Arabia: The country flogs poets and bloggers, and its sheikhs have no other concern than filling their sumptuous palaces with wives and concubines, and then stoning them to death if they become “adulterous”. Saudi Arabia is where a Shiite cleric was publicly beheaded and where a Christian cannot wear a tunic or a cross.

The British government supported the Saudi bid to be re-elected at the Human Rights Council (British Prime Minister Theresa May was urged in vain to oppose the Saudi election to the Geneva body). The Obama Administration did the same: Samantha Powers, the U.S. ambassador at the UN, called the Saudi bid at the UN a “procedural position”.

Many of what pass these days for mature adults believe the views of sixteen-year-olds are worth taking into account, and why wouldn’t they? Their own views are baseless invocations of ideas blowing in the wind, therefore no more valid than those of callow youths.
Ever have annoying experiences? Well, of course we all do. I have more these days because I get annoyed by MSM commentators, even by the dwindling number of conservatives. No-one can tell me that the quality of commentary has improved in the past thirty to forty years. I don’t know why precisely. Perhaps it is the fault of post-modern education which, so I understand, encourages barely-formed minds to have views instead of concentrating on absorbing building blocks for rational thinking.

I am glad to say that when I was sixteen I had no views at all. My recollection is that having views was not encouraged. Every mature adult knew that the views of a sixteen-year-old were worthless. Now views have supplanted building blocks. They are, if you like, anchorless views. Accordingly, the new breed of mature adults thinks that the views of sixteen-year-olds are worth taking into account. Why wouldn’t they? Their own views are baseless invocations of ideas blowing in the wind and therefore no more valid than those of callow youths.

The manifestation of this trend towards generalised imbecility is what I call foggy thinking. I was in quite a few ‘pea-soupers’ when growing up in England. You simply couldn’t see a metre in front or behind you. I can only assume that pea soup has crept into commentators’ cranial cavities.

The number of deaths from guns dwarfs deaths from terrorist attacks in the US we are regularly told by left-wing commentators. Juan Williams on Fox News is the latest I have heard spouting this guff during a discussion of the Islamic massacre in Berlin. Quite honestly, what are we supposed to take from this kind of comment?

Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple) spoofed it brilliantly in Quadrant a little time ago. I recall he suggested that Britain in WWII might have been better served concentrating on reducing heart attacks than on countering the blitz, which took far fewer lives.

A related topic that generally has me weeping in frustration is the thought, often propagated by conservative commentators, that it is extremely difficult to identify the few among Muslim migrants who might do us physical harm. The implication is that if ‘extreme vetting’ worked it would be fine to allow Western societies to be inundated by ‘peace-loving’ Muslims. No, it wouldn’t, dummies!

The Devil is a novice. His biggest trick is to convince us that he doesn’t exist. In the face of survey after survey showing religious and social intolerance among Muslim communities most everywhere and in the face of supposedly democratic Muslim countries like Indonesia and Pakistan wanting to punish and execute their citizens for insulting Islam, apparently the vast majority of Muslims are fine and dandy. And this narrative gains strength after each horrific Islamic terrorist massacre. What a trick!

Here we have subscribers to a supremacist, intolerant and violent creed being given a pass because only a relative few (tens of thousands, or is it more?) of their number out of 1.6 billion are monstrous literalists. Well, these monsters could not and do not emerge from a vacuum. They are a product of their creed; a vile excretion from the mass of subscribers.