RUTHFULLY YOURS

To paraphrase Michelle Obama, after seven years of her husband’s being in office, I can safely say many of us are, for the first time in our lives, ashamed to be Americans.

His disingenuous State of the Union speech last night was one reminder of this; the seizing of two Navy riverine vessels by Iranian Revolutionary Guards yesterday was another.

The ten sailors on board those boats are lucky. News agencies have announced that they have just been released. According to CNN, “the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and U.S. officials appear to be at odds over whether the U.S. apologized for the incident before their release.” The release came after Iran had inspected the boats and decided they weren’t engaged in espionage but had simply broken down and then drifted into Iranian waters. Disturbing video of the sailors’ capture shows them disarmed, on their knees and with hands behind their heads.​

It’s not clear which is more pathetic: that Iran apparently demanded an apology from the United States for what was clearly an accident, or that these vessels suffered a mechanical failure in a critical situation and then lost communication with their command ship. It’s a painful reminder that our armed forces have been starved of funds to maintain and repair equipment during Obama’s watch as commander-in-chief, and they’ve also watched their numbers steadily shrink.

Even worse, this incident comes weeks after Iran taunted us by suddenly test-firing a missile less than 1,500 yards away from American ships that were patrolling the Hormuz Straits. We of course did nothing, just as we will do nothing to retaliate against Iran for seizing our Navy personnel this time. Next time, the test-firing might be only 500 yards away, or 500 feet. Next time, American sailors might not be released. And why not? Tehran clearly views America with contempt, pegging us as a feeble former superpower trapped in death-spiral decline. Our own president sees us the same way, so why shouldn’t one of our leading enemies?

‘See something, say something.” We’ve all seen ads from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that ask people not to turn a blind eye to suspicious activity. But all too often the reality, both in the U.S. and even more so in Europe, is that neighbors, politicized police departments, and the mainstream media act as if the slogan should be “See Something, Do Nothing.”

After the two San Bernardino terrorists killed 14 people last month, KNX Radio in Los Angeles reported that a neighbor didn’t report suspicious activity at the couple’s apartment for fear of being accused of racial profiling. Before he launched the 2009 Fort Hood massacre, Major Nidal Hasan spouted violent Islamic rhetoric to his neighbors on the base, but they ignored him for fear of being accused of “Islamophobia.” As part of a court settlement with the ACLU, the New York City Police Department has just ended its mapping program that allowed it to identify places in the city that an Islamic terrorist might frequent. The settlement also required the NYPD to take down from its website a 2007 report called “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.”

Ostrich-like behavior that puts political correctness ahead of security concerns is even more prevalent in Europe. Just after German chancellor Angela Merkel broadcast a New Year’s Eve welcome (with subtitles in Arabic) to the million new migrants that had entered Germany during 2015, a mob of a thousand men — largely of “Arab or North African” origin — sexually assaulted more than 100 German women near Cologne’s train station. The number of overall criminal complaints, including theft, stemming from that night now stands at 561. Of the 31 people whom police are investigating in relation to the Cologne attacks, 18 are asylum seekers. Similar attacks also occurred in Hamburg, Stuttgart, and five other German cities. All told, there 167 reports of sexual assault on New Year’s Eve.

At first, Cologne officials did all they could to avoid reporting the politically awkward facts surrounding the crime orgy. Then police reports leaked out. One man detained by police allegedly scolded them: “I am Syrian. You have to treat me kindly. Ms. Merkel invited me.” Another tore up his permit to stay in Germany and said: “You can’t touch me. I’ll just go back tomorrow and get a new one.”

As cable news chewed over Iran’s capture of ten American sailors in the Persian Gulf just hours before President Obama’s final State of the Union address on Tuesday night, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews pointedly observed that one of the captured Americans was female.

Now, perhaps Matthews was just being comprehensive in his reporting. But the all but unmistakable implication of the hostage situation was: The situation was all the more urgent.

Now why should that be so? Feminists declare that men and women are equal. They petulantly decry any atavistic male courtesy towards females as a relic of a still oppressive patriarchal culture. According to feminist ideology, it should be of no greater concern if a female soldier falls into enemy hands, including those of Islamic terrorists, than if a male does.

As the Pentagon moves inexorably to put females into combat units, let’s hope for the sake of our military capabilities that this abstract ideology holds firm. But it almost surely won’t. The enemy capture of female soldiers during a hot war will in fact provoke even greater than usual political pressure to quickly rescue them, if necessary overriding sounder but more time-consuming strategies. The prospect of a female soldier being raped by her captors or, say, “merely” being beheaded will override all other military considerations. If two platoons are captured, the one with females in it will undoubtedly take precedence in any rescue effort, thus jeopardizing unit morale and cohesiveness and combat effectiveness.

And don’t expect feminists to object to this military double standard. They revive traditional norms of chivalry on a moment’s notice in order to play the victim and sexism cards. Indeed, it was feminists who screamed the loudest at Donald Trump’s scuffle with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly during the first Republican debate. Kelly had accused Trump of being a misogynist because of his nasty comments about various celebrity women, most infamously Rosie O’Donnell. But Trump was not being a misogynist in those earlier insults, he was being a feminist: treating men and women with an equal degree of tastelessness. Typical of all feminists, including Republican ones, Kelly wanted it both ways: decrying as sexist a man who publicly derides a woman, while purporting to stand for female equality. But if women are equal to men, they should be equally the target of male boorishness, not granted some special protected status. Trump rightly brushed off Kelly’s sanctimonious hectoring. But his refusal to apologize to Kelly for his alleged past sins of sexism only subjected him to more feminist criticism for not treating his female interlocutor with a politeness utterly lacking in his treatment of men. (The outcry over Trump’s nasty comments about Carly Fiorina, no worse than his usual fare, was similarly hypocritical.)

The Iraqi dictator wanted the world to believe he was much tougher and far better armed than was actually the case — a bluff that eventually put his head in a noose. With their crowing and preening about a purported H-bomb, Pyongyang’s elite may have made the exact same mistake.
There are troubles and concerns, certainly, but on the whole Australians have reason to regard the year just begun with a measure of guarded optimism and confidence. Mostly that is because our blessed country is far removed, at least for the moment, from the terrible triumvirate of insanity, turmoil and idiocy that reigns over the rest of the planet.

Even so, the year started with a bang, literally, when North Korea exploded what it claims was a hydrogen bomb. While Pyongyang’s psychopaths strut and posture, the rest of us might want to turn our attention from beach and barbecues, at least for a moment or two, to wonder where it all might lead. North Koreans can deliver their latest bombs whenever the whim strikes them, thanks to the Soviet rocket technology that is ready to be placed underneath fresh batches of warheads. The fact that North Korea’s missiles are old fashioned, primitive by contemporary standards, is small consolation. Sure, they lack the range and accuracy to hit Sydney or New York, but they can make Tokyo or Seoul without too much of a problem.

Now cast your mind back to how it all started, how five nations — America, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea — set out to entice the North Koreans into behaving themselves, the bribe being food in return for a pledge to stop developing nukes. This farce dragged on for more than a decade, with North Korea telling shameless lies while continuing its infernal programme while insisting that its interest in matters nuclear had nothing whatsoever to do with weaponry. No, those reactors and research facilities were strictly for peaceful purposes! Everyone knew there wasn’t a grain truth in the charade, but our leaders chose to go along with it. That way they could wave pieces of paper and declare peace in our time, leaving it the next generation of leaders to cope with Pyongyang’s bluster. And isn’t that what politics — as opposed to security — is all about? Kicking the can down the road, making it the next bloke’s problem.

Last January 1, on a Friday afternoon when Tel Aviv and the rest of Israel were transitioning into the restful Sabbath mode, a gunman on Dizengoff Street—Tel Aviv’s main thoroughfare—fired from a sidewalk into a bar and killed two young men, wounding seven other people.

The shooter, Nashat Milhem, was a 29-year-old Israeli Arab from the village of Arara in northern Israel. Just before the shooting he left his backpack in a grocery store; the backpack had a Koran in it. Just after the shooting he hailed a taxi and—under circumstances that remain unclear—killed the taxi driver, also an Israeli Arab, then abandoned the taxi, and managed to escape back to Arara on that same day.

It took Israeli security forces a week to locate and close in on Milhem in Arara on Friday, January 8. Although the hope was to take him alive and get information from him, in trying to escape from the house where he was hiding he opened fire on the security men and was shot dead.

The January 1 shooting came just two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a major, unprecedented plan to channel up to 15 billion shekels ($3.8 billion) into improving the living conditions of the Israeli Arab sector, which makes up about one-fifth of the Israeli population. The sequence of events has sparked an intense national debate in Israel about the Israeli Arabs and their future.

A survey of this sector taken in 2013 came up with some encouraging results. It found that 53 percent of the Israeli Arabs “accepted Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish-majority state,” compared to 47 percent a year earlier, and that 63.5 percent—up from 58.5 percent—considered Israel “a good place to live.”

It also found 42.5 identifying as Israeli Arabs rather than as Palestinians—up from 32.5 percent two years earlier.

A survey reported in November 2015, however, had less cheerful tidings. It found 17 percent of the Israeli Arabs saying they support ISIS, and 57 percent saying the Israeli Islamic Movement—whose extreme northern branch was outlawed that same month—represents them.

Unlike the Palestinians in the territories, whose political status is not yet decided, the Israeli Arabs are citizens with full rights. They are not required to serve in the Israeli army, and most—apart from the small Druze Arab sector and small numbers of Christian and Bedouin Arabs—do not.

Although Israeli Arabs serve in the parliament, cabinet, and Supreme Court, and many have found professional success, their sector overall is poorer and considerably more crime-ridden than the Jewish sector.

The government’s new plan is aimed at improving their lot. It is not conditioned on matching rights with obligations—that is, on Israeli Arabs agreeing to serve in the military or even in a nonmilitary framework (known as “national service”).

But as Netanyahu put it when visiting the scene of the shooting in Tel Aviv: “Israel will enforce its laws and its sovereignty over all parts of the state [including Arab-populated ones]. We will build new police stations, recruit more police officers; we will enter every community and demand adherence to the laws of the state.”