RUTHFULLY YOURS

Editor’s Note: The following article is adapted from one that ran in the September 21, 2015, issue of National Review.

German opposition to Hitler, though it never enjoyed mass support, drew on three main sources: the Communists and Social Democrats, the army, and the churches. Each of them had occasional successes; none seriously threatened the Third Reich. The Left, though brave, was penetrated by the Gestapo and not very effectual. Senior army officers were largely hostile to Hitler, discussing politics freely in private, protecting their own anti-Nazi dissidents, and hatching several plots to remove or assassinate him. But their caution, political unrealism, and aversion to “revolution” ensured that most of their plots fizzled out. Only Claus von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt came near to success. The relative independence of the churches until very late in the war enabled them to resist the regime on specific issues — notably, its euthanasia of disabled and mentally ill people — but they failed to mount any kind of general resistance to Hitlerism. Indeed, they were shamefully divided among themselves, both within and between denominations, in their overall attitude to Nazism. Some churchmen bravely defied it; some supported it enthusiastically; some equivocated.

My Battle against Hitler: Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich helps to explain why the churches, in particular the Catholic Church, failed so lamentably. It consists of the memoirs of Dietrich von Hildebrand, a German theologian and philosopher who mounted a consistent campaign of resistance to Nazism from academic posts in Munich and Vienna, together with a selection of his articles for the anti-Nazi Austrian journal Der Christliche Ständestaat (“The Christian Corporate State”), which he edited between 1934 and 1938. Faithfully translated and edited by the father-son team of John Henry Crosby and John F. Crosby, it gives us one dedicated Christian’s privileged insight into how Nazism both corrupted and overcame Catholic intellectual resistance in Central Europe.

Yesterday, President Obama signed off on sanctions relief for Iran. The relief will take effect when the International Atomic Energy Agency verifies Iran has cut its enriched-uranium stocks, restructured its heavy-water facility at Arak, and dismantled its centrifuges. In a statement, the president promised that the U.S. will be ‘‘closely monitoring’’ Iranian compliance ‘‘to ensure Iran fully fulfills each and every one of its commitments.’’

But this is fiction. Recent facts on the ground — and in the air — already prove President Obama is allowing Iran to bend the deal into mush. First off, consider Iran’s ballistic-missile test on October 10. According to the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., the test breached international law and the missile was “inherently capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.” But White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claimed Iran’s breach was ‘‘altogether separate’’ from its responsibilities under the nuclear deal. While the Obama administration says it will take Iran to task at the U.N., we can expect any action will, in true U.N. form, be deafeningly pathetic.

Disabling certain areas of the brain with transcranial magnetic stimulation can reduce a person’s belief in God and negativity toward immigrants, claims a new study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.Researchers found that TMS reduced subjects’ belief in God, angels and heaven.

The research is the result of a collaboration between researchers from the University of York in the UK and investigators from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA).

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a procedure currently used to treat depression. It works by using magnetic energy to stimulate nerve cells in areas of the brain involved in mood control.

In this latest study, however, Dr. Keise Izuma, of the Department of Psychology at the University of York, and colleagues set out to test TMS on another brain region: the posterior medial frontal cortex, involved in detecting and solving problems.

Let the nuclear arms race begin…
obama nukes

In May 2015 President Barack Obama defended the nuclear deal with Iran as the only possibility to avert a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

In June Saudi Arabia inked a deal with France to build two nuclear reactors.
Saudi Arabia holds the second largest oil reserves in the world.

This week the United Arab Emirates signed a deal with Russia to supply the country with enriched uranium needed for the UAE’s nuclear power plant.

This comes one month after Democrats approved Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

http://www.zionism101.org/

The purpose of this site is to teach about the history of Zionism.

Zionism is the political movement that began in the late 1800s and resulted in the creation of the modern State of Israel.

For nearly 2,000 years, since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D., the Jews had prayed for the re-establishment of a Jewish state.

The Jews made many attempts to reassert their sovereignty in the Land of Israel. All of them failed. Zionism succeeded.

Discover the people who made it happen, the battles they fought, the setbacks that nearly defeated them. Come to understand the power of the Zionist idea and how it moved millions.

In Deuteronomy, the people of Israel are told that their enemies will come from one direction but will flee in seven. Nowadays, something like the opposite seems to be true, with Israel’s enemies coming at her from many directions. One of these is from within. These internal enemies are the subject of Jews Against Themselves, a collection of 18 essays written over a span of 30 years by the scholar Edward Alexander. Alexander describes “the new forms taken by Jewish apostasy in an age when Jewish existence is threatened more starkly and immediately than at any time since the Nazi war against the Jews.” He notes that there are always readers astonished to learn that Israel-bashing Jews exist. But precisely these home-grown haters are the ones who “play a disproportionate role in blackening Israel’s image.”

Like Jewish apostates of medieval times, these “modern Jewish apostates,” carry out with greater zeal than non-Jews the persecution of their brethren. But there are differences between the medieval and modern apostate. In medieval times, Jews fled from their religion. Today, they trumpet their Jewishness. Here Alexander quotes Cynthia Ozick: “So it is as self-declared Jews, as loyal and honorable Jews, as Jews in the line of the prophets … that we nowadays hear arguments against the survival, or the necessity, or the legitimacy of the state of Israel.”

W e have been an admirer of David Isaac’s commendable documentary series, “Zionism 101”. It is a beautiful constructed graphic Baedeker and comprehensive guide to the origins and evolution of religious and political Zionism. We count him among the leading defenders of Israel, the Jewish nation and the Diaspora, the ‘galut’. Thus, I found it in character for him to publish a review of a new book of withering essays by University of Washington scholar, Edward Alexander, “Jews Against Themselves”. Isaac’s review of Alexander‘s collection of jeremiads, “The Enemy Within” published in today’s Washington Free Beacon excoriates these diverse ‘shadtlanim’ beyond the usual suspects. Isaac pays tribute to Alexander withering and acerbic wit in these essays. He writes:

Alexander describes “the new forms taken by Jewish apostasy in an age when Jewish existence is threatened more starkly and immediately than at any time since the Nazi war against the Jews.” He notes that there are always readers astonished to learn that Israel-bashing Jews exist. But precisely these home-grown haters are the ones who “play a disproportionate role in basic

Isaac notes Alexander’s theme threading his oeuvre defending Israel against the usual and not so usual suspects::

The dark, creepy murk of Steven Spielberg’s 2011 Lincoln also seeps into his new film, Bridge of Spies, an account of the 1957 exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union of captured espionage agents, the Russian Colonel Rudolph Abel and the American pilot Gary Francis Powers. This gloom can be attributed to Spielberg’s suggestion, in both films, of American political anxiety. After the ebullient history of Amistad, he has gone to the shadowy partisan chicanery behind Lincoln’s 14th Amendment to the Constitution and now to this consideration of the United States’ lack of innocence in global matters. Scenes of Abel’s and Powers’s secretive missions, and eventual imprisonment, juxtapose how our government and military matched Russia’s unprincipled subterfuge.

In Lincoln the weird darkness passed for cynical realism, but in Bridge of Spies it conveys disillusionment. When attorney James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) defends Abel before the Supreme Court, the imagery is overcast, somber; when Powers is detained by a Russian court, sunlight shines through the casements. Seem anti-American? In visual terms, Bridge of Spies is an ACLU movie. Through Donovan’s difficult maneuvers (against public disapproval and family discouragement), Spielberg pursues the sanctity of civil-liberties issues. Donovan, an insurance lawyer who served at the Nuremberg trials, must fight Cold War paranoia — presented as an eternal threat to America democracy.