RUTHFULLY YOURS

Every year, from Israeli Independence Day until May 15, extreme left-wing organizations in Israel hold events commemorating “Palestinian Nakba Day,” while my family’s real tragedy — and that of a million other Jews — remains forgotten. The time has come to make a fundamental change regarding the rights and property of Jews from Arab countries and their descendents, who make up more than 55 percent of Jewish residents in Israel today.

While the Palestinian refugee problem is well-known to everyone, few in Israel are aware of the Jewish refugee problem. The experiences of Jewish people who immigrated to Israel from Arab countries are diverse — some chose to move because of Zionism, but others fled or were expelled from their home countries under threat to their lives. Overall, some 900,000 Jews from Arab countries left their homes between 1948 and 1970. In Morocco, Jews were treated relatively well. In Syria, they were not allowed to sell their property. In Egypt and Iraq, Jews were expelled, forbidden to return and their money and property were taken from them in accordance with laws set by Arab governments.

When I look back at the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, I marvel at how naïve I was that the passage of major legislation was going to “solve” the problem of discord between the white and black race.

On May 3, the Wall Street Journal reported on a survey regarding racial disturbances around the nation such as those that wracked Baltimore. “A resounding 96% of adults surveyed said it was likely there would be additional racial disturbances this summer…” To nobody’s surprise, blacks and whites “viewed the situation differently.”

“Asked to choose between two possible explanations for recent events, 60% of blacks said they reflected ‘long-standing frustrations about police mistreatment of African-Americans.’” Some 27% of black respondents said they thought the disturbances were caused by people as an excuse “to engage in looting and violence.” I favor the latter explanation because I doubt that our nation’s police forces engage in deliberate harassment and mistreatment of blacks.

Seymour Hersh’s sensational article The Killing of Osama bin Laden, in the London Review of Book, accuses Obama and his White House of lying about the circumstance of Osama bin Laden’s killing. “The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll,” says Hersh.

Hersh’s long article refutes President Obama’s account as well as that of many members of his administration’s, but does not even mention Hillary Clinton. Why this omission?

Speaking at the U.S. Naval Academy on April 2012, then Secretary of State, Clinton hinted her contribution to the decision to kill bin Laden: “We did our very best to try to give the president our honest assessment.

ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE’S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People’s Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People’s Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called “Israel”.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel.

WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the comity of nations.

WE APPEAL – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream – the redemption of Israel.

PLACING OUR TRUST IN THE ALMIGHTY,WE AFFIX OUR SIGNATURES TO THIS PROCLAMATION AT THIS SESSION OF THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE, ON THE SOIL OF THE HOMELAND, IN THE CITY OF TEL-AVIV, ON THIS SABBATH EVE, THE 5TH DAY OF IYAR, 5708 (14TH MAY,1948).

David Ben-Gurion

Daniel Auster Rachel Cohen David Zvi Pinkas Mordekhai Bentov Rabbi Kalman Kahana Aharon Zisling Yitzchak Ben Zvi Saadia Kobashi Moshe Kolodny Eliyahu Berligne Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Eliezer Kaplan Fritz Bernstein Levin Abraham Katznelson Rabbi Wolf Gold Meir David Felix Rosenblueth Meir Grabovsky Loewenstein David Remez Yitzchak Gruenbaum Zvi Luria Berl Repetur Dr. Abraham Golda Myerson Mordekhai Shattner Granovsky Nachum Nir Ben Zion Sternberg Eliyahu Dobkin Zvi Segal Bekhor Shitreet Meir Wilner-Kovner Rabbi Yehuda Leib Moshe Shapira Zerach Wahrhaftig Hacohen Fishman Moshe Shertok Herzl Vardi

During its 46th commencement ceremony held at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, the Vice Provost for Global Initiatives, University Professor, and Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at University of Pennsylvania addressed the graduates as commencement speaker and received an honorary degree.
How bizarre that a man who thinks people should die at age 75 rather than burden the medical system and who has also written (January 2015) that“screening healthy people who have no complaints is a pretty ineffective way to improve people’s health” should be honored and speaker at an institute ostensibly devoted to preventing and healing with no age cutoff. In fact Mt. Sinai Hospital has an excellent department of gerontology.

Leaders of the “Black Lives Matter” movement are obliquely endorsing killing cops and rioting as legitimate forms of political activism as the radical community organizers of the so-called Black Spring ramp up political violence and civil unrest.

For example, on-the-record statements by Twitter stars DeRay Mckesson, 29 and Johnetta Elzie, 26, are all over the Internet. Mckesson and Elzie are influential activists who have become legacy-media darlings by using social media to push their racial-grievance agenda.

A very long, fawning profile of the duo by writer Jay Caspian Kang, who in his day job is an editor at The New Yorker magazine, elucidates what they believe.

Both of these community organizers bounce between reverence for nonviolent action and a refusal to condemn violent activism, which this writer would argue is tantamount to endorsing violent activism.

Mckesson and Elzie believe that the legacy of the Martin Luther King Jr. has been distorted.

Mr. Obama will be a relatively young man when he retires from the most powerful position on earth – the Presidency of the United States. He will be 55, just a year older than Bill Clinton was when he left office, and seven years younger than was George W. Bush. What will he do for an encore? Will he go back to Hawaii and paint, like Mr. Bush? Will he use his years in public service as a means to accumulate personal wealth, as Bill Clinton has done? Or will he use the Presidency of the U.S. as a stepping stone to become the leader of the world – free and not free?

Descending from the imperial throne of the American Presidency cannot be easy. Though, there have been Presidents like Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush who, like Cincinnatus, exchanged the robes of Commander in Chief, if not for the plowshare, at least for a life away from the media and the siren call of fame. But humility is not in Mr. Obama’s DNA.

John Kerry returns from his latest Russian visit bearing two baskets of potatoes and a t-shirt.

The t-shirt, given to him by Foreign Minister Lavrov, might as well say, “I wasted my time in Russia and all I got was this shirt.”

It’s a diplomatic success only in relation to Kerry’s previous humiliations such as the time that Russia’s adeptly slimy foreign minister kept him waiting for a week before returning his call while the State Department spokeswoman announced to the world that [3] Kerry was “ready to talk whenever Foreign Minister Lavrov can find the time.”

The Putin regime enjoys humiliating the United States, but even it seems to have tired of degrading Kerry who ruins their fun by failing to realize what is going on. Instead Kerry has become a nonentity; a forgotten messenger boy. It’s a fitting purgatory for the formerly tireless leftist activist in the Senate.

For the seventh year in a row, President Obama has proposed defunding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a school-choice program that allows inner-city students in the nation’s capital to escape failing and often dangerous public schools.

As Stephen Moore detailed recently in the Wall Street Journal, the Opportunity Scholarship Program serves nearly 5,000 students, 95 percent of whom are African-American. It funds private-school tuition for poor families, so that their children can attend schools they would otherwise not be able to afford. It accounts for a minuscule 0.0005 percent of the federal budget.

Havana — I’ve visited more than my fair share of dictatorships, but Cuba is the only one where travelers at the airport must pass through a metal detector upon entering, in addition to leaving, the country. Immediately after clearing customs at José Marti International Airport, visitors line up for a security check. Anyone found carrying contraband — counterrevolutionary books, say, or a spare laptop that might be given to a Cuban citizen — could find himself susceptible to deportation.

Contrary to popular conception, traveling to Cuba as an American was not difficult before President Barack Obama’s announcement last December of “the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years.” All anyone had to do was transit through a third country and not disclose his visit to Cuba upon reentering through U.S. customs. It was the aura of the embargo that dissuaded Americans. Moreover, there have long been myriad legal exceptions for Americans to travel to Cuba: They merely had to obtain a license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) under one of twelve broad, rather vague, permitted categories, such as “educational” and “research.” “Tourism” as such was and remains prohibited. But since January, travelers to Cuba need not obtain any OFAC license at all. This essentially means that any American who wants to venture to Cuba, including those who plan to do nothing but sit on the beach all day and dance salsa all night, are now free to do so.