RUTHFULLY YOURS

Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former senior director of the National Security Council. He is finishing a book on President Eisenhower and the Middle East. He tweets @doranimated.
The new memoir by Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to Washington, tells all—except for one thing.

“More than [about] policy…, Barack Obama was about ideology and a worldview often at variance with Israel’s.” These words constitute the thesis statement of Ally: My Journey across the American-Israeli Divide, the new memoir by the historian Michael Oren, who served as Israel’s ambassador in Washington from 2009 to 2013. Given the grave urgency of the regional and international challenges facing the Jewish state, and given what is widely perceived today as a severe crisis in America-Israel relations, the book couldn’t be timelier—as the instantaneous media ruckus attending its publication amply testifies.

While the date may be extended slightly, today marks the official deadline for concluding a U.S.–Iranian atomic-weapons deal. One might think that Obama’s supposed partners in peace would use conciliatory words befitting the occasion. Instead, top Iranians keep kicking hot gravel in his face.

• Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei recently declared that America “is stubborn, difficult to deal with, breaks promises, and is a backstabber.”

• “I will not allow foreigners to come and talk to the nation’s dear scientists and children and interrogate them,” Khamenei said last month. “Our rude and brazen enemy expects us to let them talk to our scholars and scientists about a fundamental national and domestic [achievement], but such permission will never be issued.”

• When a crowd that Khamenei addressed early this month chanted “Death to America,” he got swept up in the excitement. “Yes,” Khamenei chimed in. “I, too, say death to America!”

I loved reading the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie books to my daughter.

The somewhat Aesopian theme is that if you give the mouse what it wants – a cookie – it will just want more: a glass of milk, a straw, etc.

The story came to mind last week, a week that began with many vowing to inter the Confederate flag and that ended with the Supreme Court mandating that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. As far as culture-war victories go, the flag news was big, but the marriage ruling was tantamount to VE Day.

It might be too much to think that progressive activists and intellectuals would demobilize after such a “Mission Accomplished” moment. But a reasonable person might expect social-justice warriors to at least take the weekend off to celebrate.

But no. Even when the cookie is this big, the mice want something more.

Michael Oren, the widely respected historian who served as Israeli ambassador to the U.S. from 2009 to 2012, blasts The New York Times in his soon-to-be released book, “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide.”

“Most malicious was the op-ed page of The New York Times, once revered as an interface of ideas, now sadly reduced to a sounding board for only one, which often excluded Israel’s legitimacy,” he writes. “The page’s contributors accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, brutal militarism, racism of several stripes, and even ‘pinkwashing’ — exploiting its liberal policy toward lesbians and gays to cover up its oppression of Palestinians.”

There are obvious shortcomings in the British government’s demand that all “beliefs” deserve “mutual respect.” While it is important in a free society to tolerate beliefs we dislike, we should not be required to “respect” them.

If the government would stop funding and backing religious separatism, and start using existing laws to prosecute preachers who incite violence and promote terrorism, these measures would go a long way to preventing extremists from operating with impunity. Censorship, on the other hand, will harm everyone.

On May 27, a few weeks after the elections, Queen Elizabeth II addressed the British parliament with a speech that laid out a number of important proposed bills, including changes to immigration and the welfare system; a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, and, most importantly, a series of new measures to tackle Islamic extremism.

The “Extremism Bill,” the government has announced, will “unite our country and keep you and your family safe by tackling all forms of extremism.” It will also “combat groups and individuals who reject our values and promote messages of hate.”

Sister Hatune Dogan might seem like your sweet, quiet, little nun at first glance, but she packs dynamite under her habit like that of a righteously indignant crusader dedicated to rescuing the innocent from slaughter.

She has traveled the globe, pleading with governments to allow her to speak on the atrocities she’s witnessed under ISIS. But instead of excusing that the terror group is not following true Islam, she has a message for the armchair activists, whose main focus is to defend so-called moderate Islam.

The death of Tariq Aziz has affected people in different ways. George Galloway — an old friend of the former Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq — naturally mourned him. Channel 4 newscaster Jon Snow felt that Aziz had been a “nice guy in a nasty situation”. Nobody much seemed to recall that Aziz had been at the heart of a regime which killed more Muslims than any other in modern times. But apart from that, his death brought only one other thing to mind — an object lesson in misreading your opponents.

After his capture Aziz was questioned by both coalition and Iraqi representatives. Segments of these sessions were released years ago and included a nugget of Aziz’s surprise at the UK joining the war against Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. One reason for his surprise was that he knew the Archbishop of Canterbury had opposed the war. You can see how he got there. Leading cleric of the established church: how could any government ignore such a force? Everyone now knows how much the US and UK misread the Iraqi regime in 2003. But the misreading was regrettably mutual.

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I recently signed up to Netflix in the hope of finding things to watch when wishing to relax. Inevitably I go straight to “documentaries” and watch a newish film called The Last Nazis. The filmmakers — youngish men and women — are ostensibly in search of the few remaining Nazi criminals and on their “journey” find one old man who tells them that he can remember nothing while plying them with drink and another who gives them a meal while playing a sweet old man act. They fail to discover anything about their subjects and — ill-briefed and apparently unwilling to ask any probing questions — they plainly cannot do their job. The film is a dud, a wash-out: they didn’t get the story.

Except that then you realise that in their view they did. For this is not about the Nazis, it is all about them.

The family goes nuclear: Chinese birthrates have defied the one-child policy, with up to 30 per cent of births uncounted

Beijing is Brobdingnag peopled by Lilliputians. The superhuman scale of its buildings and public spaces, starting with the Great Hall of the People abutting Tiananmen Square, is calculated to overwhelm rather than uplift. Its main urban arteries are freeways that pedestrians can traverse only by bridge, with businesses displaced onto access roads. People dress to blend in, not to stand out. The surface impression reinforces every Western prejudice about conformist, colourless China. But the first impression is woefully wrong.

France preparing to resume business with Iran- Foreign minister will reportedly travel to Tehran quickly if accord signed; 100 companies plan September delegation.

France is gearing up for the resumption of its substantial economic dealings with Iran, under the assumption that a nuclear agreement with Tehran is likely in the near future, Reuters reported Monday night.

Around 100 French companies are reportedly planning to participate in a delegation to Tehran in September to review business opportunities in the Islamic republic.

And a French diplomat told Reuters that Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius planned to visit the Iranian capital soon after an agreement is signed in a bid to normalize relations.

Jimmy Carter Tries To Rewrite Israel’s History by David Harsanyi
The former president wants to take credit for Middle East peace. To do so he has to skip over a momentous historic event.

Jimmy Carter’s new book, “A Full Life: Reflections at 90” is a breezy and predictable reminiscence of the 39th president’s life, from his rural Georgia upbringing to his post-presidential charitable work. You should take it out of the library. I can’t admit to reading every word, but I did have a particular interest in the parts focusing on Carter’s perception of his own presidency. And, as you might have guessed, according to Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter is one of the dynamic and indispensable leaders this country has ever known.