RUTHFULLY YOURS

Apparently the White House switchboard still can’t get a line to Israel, but Obama’s not the only one with hang-ups on election calls. The media are also taking Netanyahu’s re-election badly. Who said this?

Harper Backs Netanyahu’s Controversial Israel Victory

And who said this?

“Over a million Arabs take part in Middle East’s most democratic elections today”; “The Arabs in Israel are the only Middle East Arab group that practices true democracy”…”Israel is the world’s most vibrant democracy.”

The first is the reaction of The Globe And Mail, Canada’s newspaper of record. The second is Ghanem Nuseibeh, a Palestinian supporter of the Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog. It comes to something when the Palestinians sound less unhinged about Netanyahu’s victory than the western media do.

What’s “controversial” about the Israeli election result other than that it’s not the one The Globe And Mail wanted?

Isn’t there anything a wee bit “controversial” about the Palestinian election? Oh, that’s right: They haven’t held any for a decade or so – Abbas and his fellow Fatah kleptocrats in the West Bank because they want to continue bulking up their Swiss bank accounts with generous Euro-American subsidies, and Hamas in Gaza because they regard democracy as Erdogan in Turkey put it, merely a train you ride until it gets you to where you want to go. Which it did back in 2006.

“The growing wave of anti-Semitism in Holland forces Jews to be careful and hide any symbol that would give away their identity.”

“I don’t think anti-Semitism is growing in the Netherlands. It is just getting more visible now on a daily basis. Twenty or forty years ago it never happened that people call me ‘a dirty Jew,’ but today it’s normal, it happens frequently. It’s not safe for me to take the train, especially in the evening,” says Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, in this exclusive interview.
“It’s too easy to put the blame on Muslim immigrants only, but I believe that native Dutch people are also susceptible to anti-Semitism.”

The Rabbi noted that people from the region surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, such as Moroccans and Tunisians are more spontaneous in their behavior and expressions, he said. “And it is quite risky to wear a yarmulke and walk in neighborhoods where lots of Muslims are living.” The Rabbi pointed out, “Arabs can walk around freely in Israel, and that’s great, of course! But if would put one step in Gaza, I can guarantee you that they will kill me instantly.”

Following their enthusiastic support for the replacement of Common Law by Sharia, the geniuses at the State Department’s “Think Again, Turn Away” social media campaign have now issued another brilliant Tweet:

“People worldwide promise online to vacation in Tunisia in defiance of deadly terrorist attack”

Beneath it are the usual selfies of persons holding up bits of cardboard, which these days seems to be the only form of resistance fin de civilisation westerners know. I expect we’ll all be standing around selfie-sticking our #UnitedAgainstNukes hashtags when the mullahs drop the big one.

But that’s just standard-issue witlessness. What takes it to the next level is that, at the same time the US State Department is urging everyone to defy the terrorists and support Tunisian tourism, it’s urging State Department employees to steer well clear of Tunisian tourism. Here’s State Department honchette Jen Pskai just one hour before the above Tweet:

The Embassy remains open and is located 10 miles from the museum. All – excuse me – employees have been accounted for, informed of the situation, and urged to avoid the museum and surrounding vicinity.

That would be the tourist area.

Gotcha. The State Department says Tunisian tourist sites are far too dangerous for State Department employees to go anywhere near, but you and your gran’ma should book your tickets today.

This is the most lavishly funded and entirely moronic foreign ministry on the planet.

The leading Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee told Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken this morning that “there really can’t be any marginalization of Congress” on Iran nuclear negotiations.

“Any attempts to sidestep Congress will be resisted on both sides of the aisle,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

Engel also announced that lawmakers have crafted another Iran letter and are ready to send it to the president — signed by 360 members. It began circulating around Congress earlier this month.

He and chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) are hoping to get “a prompt response from the White House.”

The letter to Obama notes that “of the 12 sets of questions that the International Atomic Energy Agency has been seeking, Tehran has answered just part of one. Just last week, the IAEA reported that it is still concerned about signs of Iran’s military related activities, including designing a nuclear payload for a missile.”

In the Israeli elections on Tuesday, an Arab party whose voters were primarily Arab Israelis won 13 parliamentary seats out of 120. The other 107 seats were divided among primarily Jewish Israeli voters.

Of those 107 seats, 24 went to Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni’s left-wing Zionist Camp, five to the far-left Meretz, and 11 to Future (Yesh Atid), a center-left party—for a total of 40 votes for the left-wing camp.

The other 67 votes all went to right-wing and center-right parties, with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud far ahead of the pack at 30 seats.

In other words, among the predominantly Jewish voters, the right beat the left 67-40. This is known as a landslide.

It’s a particularly dramatic landslide for a couple of reasons. One is that Netanyahu had already served two consecutive terms, as well as a term in the late 1990s. The conventional wisdom was that Israelis were “tired of him” and looking for a change.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/03/19/marco-rubio-shreds-obamas-treatment-of-israel-video/?print=1 Whatever misgivings some have about him, Rubio’s foreign policy chops are strong and getting stronger. Article printed from The PJ Tatler: http://pjmedia.com/tatler URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/03/19/marco-rubio-shreds-obamas-treatment-of-israel-video/

Perhaps the biggest, most persistent and successful lie about Barack Obama is that he’s a nice guy who cares.

He isn’t.

He doesn’t.

But the last place one expects to hear this myth eviscerated is the New York Times.

Mr. Obama’s strained association with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, who has clashed with other American presidents as well, has been difficult from the start. But the absence of any real connection between them underscores the rule, not the exception, for Mr. Obama, who has only occasionally invested time in cultivating foreign leaders.

Even his opponent in the last presidential race bought into the lie, choosing to label Obama as nice, but incompetent. Mitt Romney apparently convinced many. Among voters who most valued a candidate who “cares about people like me,” 8-in-10 picked Obama in 2012. Majorities of people who prioritized a candidate who “shares my values,” “is a strong leader,” or “has a vision for the future” all voted for Romney.

If there’s one area of the president’s job where being a “nice guy who cares” matters most, and holds the greatest consequences for failure, it’s international diplomacy. Building trusting relationships with allies requires personal engagement, concern about the needs of others, and genuine warmth. The mythical Obama that we were sold embodies all of these qualities.

On Sunday, March 15, as Christian churches around the world were celebrating morning mass, two churches in Pakistan were attacked [1] by Islamic suicide bombers. At least 17 people were killed and over 70 were wounded.

The two churches (located in Youhanabad, Lahore’s Christian quarter) were St. John’s Catholic Church and Christ Church (Protestant). The Taliban claimed responsibility. It is believed that the group had hoped for much greater death tolls, as there were almost 2,000 people in both churches at the time of the explosions.

According to eyewitnesses, two suicide bombers approached the gates of the two churches and tried to enter them. When they were stopped — including by a 15-year-old Christian who blocked them with his body — they self-detonated. Witnesses saw [2] “body parts flying through the air.”

Imagine if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in 2016. What would it actually be like?

Roughly forty percent of the country will consider the incoming first-term president an extreme serial liar with a sense of entitlement the size of Australia. Another forty percent will think, yes, she may be dishonest, but all politicians are and we support her anyway. The middle twenty percent will be some muddle of the previous two views.

And this is before she is even inaugurated. And unlike with Obama, she will not ride the crest of being the first black (or mixed race) president. The whole “first woman” thing reeks of moral narcissism and grandiosity. Israel had its first woman prime minister decades ago (Golda Meir, 1969) as did the UK (Margaret Thatcher, 1979). Even benighted Pakistan elected Benazir Bhutto in 1988. It’s no big thing. In fact, the idea of electing Clinton because she is a woman is both sexist and insulting.

By Nicholas Casey andCarol E. Lee Israel’s Netanyahu Reverses Position on Palestinian State Again Conditions for one today are not achievable, prime minister says

No surprise here….there are many pressures but,…..Netanyahu succumbed to the considerable charms of Madeleine Halfbright when he surrendered Hebron, the cradle of the Jewish faith, at the Wye Plantation. Proves that calling him Israel’s Churchill is really fatuous…..rsk

TEL AVIV—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed himself for the second time in a week on support for a Palestinian state and said he would back it under the right conditions, a turnaround that the U.S. and Palestinians dismissed as unconvincing.

On Monday, the day before parliamentary elections, the Israeli leader said he was in danger of losing and made a hard shift to the right—abruptly reversing his 2009 declaration of support for a two-state solution to the decades old conflict with the Palestinians. His victory on election day, which defied pre-election polls, was widely attributed to the late shift in strategy.

The U.S. responded Wednesday by upending decades of American policy when it left open the possibility that it might stop using its veto to shield Israel in the United Nations.

U.S. officials said Thursday that Mr. Netanyahu’s sharp departure on Monday from his long-held public position on the two-state plan made it difficult for President Barack Obama’s administration to accept his clarification on Thursday.