RUTHFULLY YOURS

One of the most closely guarded secrets in Washington, D.C. about U.S. involvement in the Syrian war is that the “moderate” rebels whom the Obama administration (and many Republicans) backed were closely aligned with al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra. They were also, at times, aligned with the Islamic State.

For regular PJ Media readers, this will come as no surprise. I’ve repeatedly documented the ties between the State Department’s “vetted moderate” rebel groups and designated terrorist groups based on snippets of reporting that challenged the administration’s official narrative.

The Islamic State laid out its plans for carving a path to Israel and overcoming the Jewish state’s defenses, from working with establish jihadists in the region to hoping for impassioned geeky converts like Edward Snowden.

The new 150-page book distributed on file sharing sites this week follows other titles in the ISIS series including an e-book on how the jihadists plan to sack Rome [2].

The title has been expected for months, and declares that the “beginning of the end of Israel” will happen in 2022 — two years after they plan to take Rome.

Where’s Tipper Gore when you need her? “One of the great political mysteries of the early 2016 presidential campaign has been solved,” David Knowles of Bloomberg Politics reports, one hopes sarcastically: “Hillary Clinton did not leave a tip at the Chipotle restaurant she visited during her road trip to Iowa on Sunday.” Manager Charles Wright tells Knowles that ”the other lady,” presumably Huma Abedein, handed $21 to the counterman. The change, less than a buck, “was pocketed rather than deposited in the tip jar as many customers at the restaurant do, said Wright.”
We’re with Mrs. Clinton on this one. If she or her entourage had failed to tip a waiter or bartender, it would have been a deviation from custom, evidence that the candidate is stingy or out of touch. But leaving a gratuity at a fast-food counter is hardly obligatory. Many chains don’t even have tip jars.

That said, there was some rough justice in Mrs. Clinton’s being subjected to such an inane journalistic gotcha, which is typical of the coverage Republican candidates get. Knowles suggests his inquiry was prompted by Rush Limbaugh, who on his Tuesday program wondered “if she left anything in the tip jar, because that would be an indication that she understands the average, ordinary everyman that she seeks to represent.” It’s a successful application of Saul Alinsky’s Rule No. 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

Hamas is consolidating its grip over the Gaza Strip and making plans to turn it into a separate state.

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah consider the purported plan a “severe blow” to the two-state solution and unity among Palestinians.

The Americans and Europeans will also have to listen very carefully to what Hamas is saying: namely that a Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza Strip — or any part of the Palestinian territories, would not end its struggle to destroy Israel and replace it with the State of Greater Palestine.

As the U.S. Administration and the international community continue to push for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, Hamas seems to be working toward establishing an independent state of its own in the Gaza Strip.

In recent weeks, reports have surfaced in a number of Arab and Western media outlets to the effect that Hamas leaders have decided to establish a “higher committee” for managing the affairs of the Gaza Strip.

Although Hamas spokesmen have denied the reports, sources close to the Islamist movement said that discussions were underway with representatives of other Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip to set up the “higher committee.”

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2015/04/a-midwestern-protest-against-the-dreyfus-verdict/

http://onthemainline.blogspot.com/2015/04/an-american-midwestern-response-to.html

This is sweet. In 1899 Wichita, Kansas very nearly elected Miss Sadie Joseph queen of the Flower Parade at the Fall Carnival, because they really didn’t like the verdict against Capt. Alfred Dreyfus in France.
Some of the history books say she *was* elected, but I checked, and she just could not beat Miss Mayme Mahaney. However, many hearts were in the right place in this corner of The Music Man-era America.

A majority of Americans of all Christian traditions typically tell pollsters they support Israel, with Evangelicals leading the way. A recent Pew survey shows 60 percent of white Evangelicals sympathizing “a lot” with Israel versus 9 percent with Palestinians.Strong Evangelical support for Israel is politically and strategically significant. Israeli leaders for decades have understandably sought friendship with Evangelical leaders and constituencies. More recently, critics of Israel, including leftist foundations, have sought to neutralize Evangelical support for Israel, with some success among Evangelical elites.

A Washington, D.C., group called Telos, headed by a former GOP congressional staffer and funded by George Soros, routinely takes elite Evangelicals to the West Bank for the pro-Palestinian perspective. To that end, a conference every two years in the Holy Land called “Christ at the Checkpoint” hosts hundreds of Evangelicals.

A professor at Wheaton College, Evangelicalism’s most prestigious school, takes students to “Christ at the Checkpoint” and is himself a prominent critic of pro-Israel Evangelicals. He was prominently featured in a film for Evangelicals several years ago called With God on Our Side, which lampooned pro-Israel theology.

It’s a manifesto smackdown, a fight among the members of the green Left for the intellectual and moral high ground. It’s also a fight that reflects the growing schism within American environmentalism. On one side are the pro-energy, pro-density humanists. They call themselves ecomodernists and are led by the Breakthrough Institute, a centrist, Oakland-based environmental group. On Wednesday, it released what it describes as an “ecomodernist manifesto,” a document that, at root, states the obvious: Economic development is essential for environmental protection. On the opposite side are the anti-energy, pro-sprawl absolutists. Their views are evident in the ongoing protests this week in Harvard Yard. A group called Divest Harvard is pushing the Harvard Corporation, the school’s governing body, to divest the school’s $36 billion endowment of any investments in companies that provide coal, oil, and natural gas to consumers. This group’s manifesto, issued in February, demonizes energy use.

The party of the future rallies behind an elderly suburban WASP lawyer whose father was a conservative businessman. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s immigrant grandparents turn out not to have been immigrants, just as Elizabeth Warren’s Indian ancestors turn out not to have been Indians, though Mrs. Clinton was one-quarter truthful about her ancestry, which is a hell of a lot more than Senator Warren can say. That’s too bad, really: If the imaginary Rodhams of old arrived on these shores and tricked the imaginary ur-Warrens into trading their land for a handful of shiny trinkets, that would have been a much better story than the burning question of whether Herself tipped at Chipotle.

It would also be a pretty good metaphor for the upcoming election. But back to the big news: Of course Mrs. Clinton didn’t tip. Herself has a date with destiny, and cash-handling is for the little people. John F. Kennedy Jr.’s colleagues at George (remember George?) used to shake their heads about the fact that the vastly wealthy young man was forever cadging coffee money off underlings — $100 million in the trust fund, but no latte money in his pocket. It’s weird being a super-rich person who has never had a real job. Ask Herself.

What he said, what they said, and what America is now saying to the world about exterminationist anti-Semitism
Imagine if at the height of Apartheid madness in South Africa, the president of the United States had decided to partner with the racist white regime in Pretoria, lift sanctions, and put that country’s illegal nuclear program on a glide path toward obtaining a nuclear bomb. Would South Africa have free and open democratic elections? Would the African continent be a better, safer place today? And what would America look like at home? Would we be a more equal country with an African-American president, or would we be something meaner and uglier? Who knows. But it seems safe to say that instead of honoring Nelson Mandela, Americans would probably be hearing a lot more of David Duke, or worse.

For 36 years now, Iranian officials have threatened to annihilate Israel. As Basij commander Mohammad Reza Naqdi said recently, “Destroying Israel is non-negotiable.” There may be different centers of power throughout the regime, as Iran experts posit, but everyone agrees with the Supreme Leader that Israel—the “Zionist cancer”—has got to go. Middle East experts and experienced Iran watchers in the West typically dismiss such threats as instrumental rhetoric intended to thrill local bigots and separate the Arab and Persian masses from their rulers. So why take such rhetoric seriously? The Iranians wouldn’t ever really use the bomb. In fact, they’re very clever, rational people.

The assertion that US foreign policy and national security are shaped by presidential omnipotence is refuted by recent precedents and the US Constitution. The latter was created by the Founding Fathers, who were determined to limit the power of government and preclude the possibility of executive dictatorship. They were apprehensive of potential presidential excesses and encroachment, and therefore assigned the formulation of domestic and foreign policy and national security policy to both Congress and the president. Obviously, the coalescing of congressional policy among 535 legislators constitutes a severe disadvantage for the legislature.