RUTHFULLY YOURS

Returning after another hiatus, during which I finished the ninth Cyrus Skeen detective novel (The Circles of Odin), I decided not to try and recap all the bad news about Islam, Obama, Europe, and the decrepit state of the economy and of the government that came our way over the last two months, but instead to pen a spate of TV/movie reviews. These, too, however, are mostly bad news.

Keeper of the Flame

The only semi-bright spot in the reviews is one about Keeper of the Flame, a film I had for years wanted to see. I was intrigued by the title. I finally made the time to watch it on Amazon Instant Video. The Amazon Books entry on the novel by I.A.R. Wylie on which the film was based, features a book cover and a still from the movie, with stars Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. But because that listing does not allow one to “open the book to look inside,” I had no idea at the time if the cover hid the original novel, or if the book was a novelization of the film.

An Internet search for Wylie and the book turned up this explanation by an anonymous enthusiast on the Neglected Books site. It answered my question:

This Popular Library edition of I. A. R. Wylie’s 1942 novel, Keeper of the Flame , dates from the early 1960s. There are some remarkable titles to be found among the best-sellers, bodice-rippers, and dreck that Popular Library released in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I wrote about a few of them about a year ago in the post, Digging into the Popular Library at the Montana Valley Book Store.”

This is a particularly odd example. MGM purchased the film rights to Keeper of the Flame when the book was still unpublished. It was then published by Random House before the film was released, but subsequent runs featured a dust jacket with a still shot from the movie.

At least 100 Islamist teachers and teaching assistants implicated in last year’s “Trojan Horse” teaching scandal in Birmingham, England may face lifetime teaching bans.
Last June, the U.K.’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) found evidence that hardline Islamists had attempted to take control of some state schools. The report found that staff and headteachers felt “intimidated,” “undermined” or bullied into making changes they opposed.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=24671

WATCH: Mixing Passover traditions
Israel Hayom Insider host Steve Ganot speaks to Voice of Israel editor Ruthie Blum and MADEinISRAEL’s Elyssa Frank about the different ways in which Passover is celebrated in Israel and abroad • What does the celebration of freedom mean to you?

Why is this night different from all other nights?

This a question we ask aloud on the Seder night, a ritual meal celebrated by a whopping 85 percent of Jewish Israelis, secular and religious alike.

Israel Hayom editor Steve Ganot, Voice of Israel editor Ruthie Blum and MADEinISRAEL’s Elyssa Frank discuss the differences between Passover traditions in Israel and in the Diaspora, where two Seder nights are observed.

In his lengthy interview with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, President Obama makes many statements about Israel’s security and how the proposed deal with Iran enhances it. These words from the interview are key:

I have to respect the fears that the Israeli people have,” he added, “and I understand that Prime Minister Netanyahu is expressing the deep-rooted concerns that a lot of the Israeli population feel about this, but what I can say to them is: Number one, this is our best bet by far to make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon, and number two, what we will be doing even as we enter into this deal is sending a very clear message to the Iranians and to the entire region that if anybody messes with Israel, America will be there.

What does “messes with Israel” mean? No one has the slightest idea. The President unfortunately uses this kind of diction too often, dumbing down his rhetoric for some reason and leaving listeners confused.

“Both in America and in Israel, the liberal faith of too many Jews has imperiled the Jewish future. Needed is a serious, thoughtful, and authentically Jewish alternative.”In the end, for all Jews—religious and secular—the will to survive likely rests upon a belief that Jewish civilization is not only “my” civilization but a great civilization; that the Jewish people is not only my people but a special people, whose heritage, teachings, story, and achievements matter on a scale greater than what census numbers and square miles alone could ever rationally suggest. Jewish continuity is thus connected to an idea of Jewish exceptionalism: moral, political, intellectual, and, for some, divinely elected and divinely commanded. To be a Jew is to be a defender of a transcendent idea and a unique people, with the odds stacked against it but with history, faith, courage, pride, heroism, and sheer perseverance on its side: a purpose like no other.”

Compared with the bleaker moments in Jewish history—and woefully there are many—the present age of Jewish life offers many grounds for celebration and gratitude.

In America, Jews are free to build communities and educate their children, free to study and worship without fear, free to pursue the good life without discrimination or disadvantage. In Israel, Jews are sovereign: keepers of their own land, speakers of their own language, shapers of their own national destiny. In these two great centers of modern Jewish life, Jews have the dignity of liberty, and in Israel they enjoy the dignity of Jewish self-government. The old-world problems of the Jews—living in segregated conditions, burdened by humiliating legal restrictions, often impoverished and dispirited—are no longer Jewish problems on any mass scale. Most American Jews have means, and many are wealthy; the Jewish state is strong; and despite the faith-shaking trauma of the Holocaust and the faith-challenging seductions of modernity, many still believe that Jews have a unique purpose in the world.

But it would be misguided to indulge in heedless good feeling. The threats that Jews now face are real and possibly deadly

The president and his surrogates are working hard to sell whatever you want to call what came out of Lausanne, Switzerland last week between the P5+1 and Iran. The major media outlets seem to have settled on calling it a “framework agreement,” which may be somewhat overstating the reality, since the Iranian version of what has so far been agreed to contains only modest overlap with the four pages the Obama administration has released to tout their achievement in the negotiations.

This difference in the presentation of the deal’s points has been described as something that should not be surprising, since each side needs to convince skeptics or hardliners in their own country that they did not surrender but in fact won key concessions from the other side. The biggest difference between what is going on among the Iranians and what is now transpiring in the United States, however, is that our side has relatively little clue as to the degree of coordination that occurred during the negotiating process between the ostensibly hard-line clerics and the presumably more reform-minded negotiators and the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

A 2009 NCIS investigation into Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s activities while in Afghanistan reveal that there is clear evidence Bergdahl was “going over to the other side with a deliberate plan,” Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday night.

Shaffer, a former military intelligence officer and Fox News contributor, said two senior sources told him that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation included a forensic review of his computer, which show Bergdahl’s apparent intent to travel to Uzbekistan.

“He was going to go off to Uzbekistan,” Shaffer told Fox News’ Bill O’

I confess to binge watching on the tube. My latest all nighter is Netflix’s “House of Cards” all about a venal and ruthless presidential couple….played by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. In season 3, the Prez’s wife is the Ambassador to the United Nations….and is consumed with brokering a deal with America, Russia, Israel and “Palestine” participating.

Imagine that! Netflix recognizes an independent Arab state- something that Presidents, Prime Ministers, American administrations since the “Rogers Plan” of 1972 and its clones Camp David Agreement, Oslo, Road Maps- have failed to do and which continued Arab terrorism and the present nuclear threats from Iran have thrust into the back burner if not the dust bin of history.

How ridiculous. Shame on them.

President Obama Monday dismissed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran recognize the state of Israel as a condition of a nuclear arms control pact, arguing Iran’s regime will not change that drastically, even if Tehran’s nuclear activities do.

The president’s remarks to National Public Radio, during an interview to air in its entirety Tuesday, offered another look at the simultaneous global and domestic pressures the United States is juggling just days after clearing interim hurdles in pursuit of a lasting agreement with Iran.

The Iranian threats to Israel are likely to remain, Obama said. The United States is committed to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon via tough commitments, intrusive inspections and scientific oversight. By the same token, the United States remains committed to defending Israel, he added.

President Obama gives an exclusive interview to Thomas (“Meet the Flintstones”) Friedman, in-house thinker of The New York Times. It’s dispiriting stuff:

“What we will be doing even as we enter into this deal is sending a very clear message to the Iranians and to the entire region that if anybody messes with Israel, America will be there.”

Ask the Libyan and Yemeni governments how that worked out. Scott Johnson looks on the bright side:

At least he didn’t say that the destruction of Israel is a red line for him.

The most forlorn part of the Friedman/Obama encounter is this:

“Who knows?” he added. “Iran may change.” But if not, he said, the United States retains “the most firepower” to address any contingencies.