RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to an Associated Press report, the Iranian nuke negotiations have engendered an agreement—to continue taking in hopes of reaching a final agreement by the end of June. As an unnamed senior U.S. official put it, talks between Iran and the P5+1 powers (the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany) would continue past yesterday’s deadline for the outline of an agreement if enough progress was made to justify that extension. By late yesterday that contention was confirmed: talks will continue through today.

As talks wound down in Lausanne, Switzerland, the words “framework agreement” had been softened to “framework of understanding,” reflecting the reality that major issues remain unresolved. They include differences regarding the allowable scope of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, where stockpiles of enriched uranium should be located, what limits on Iran’s nuclear research and development should be imposed, and the timing and range of sanctions relief that would be granted in return.

March madness, which we in America associate with basketball and which became popularized around the world by Lewis Carroll’s character the March Hare in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” is derived from the observed mating habits of the Hare. Like most of the world’s species, mating seasons are known for emotion replacing reason. Among the human variety, December babies are often the consequence.

There was much during the past month beyond basketball that would qualify as madness: Vladimir Putin disappeared for a week, perhaps to be with his girlfriend who allegedly was giving birth? Andreas Lubitz, co-pilot of a Germanwings Airbus A320 jetliner, deliberately crashed the plane he was flying into the French Alps, killing all 150 aboard, taking murder-suicide to a new level. The U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was slashed with a razor by an assailant known to be a political extremist. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliano questioned President Obama’s love for America. Harrison Ford was hospitalized after he crash-landed his vintage World War II plane on the Penmar Golf Course outside of Los Angeles. And Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz began and ended a campaign to improve race relations by having the company’s coffee cups read, “Race Together.” With a majority of the servers being African-American, while most of the patrons are Caucasian the idea, while noble, was doomed.

Long ago, before 9/11, the Lindt siege, the rise of ISIS and so many other outrages against civilisation, G.K. Chesterton, Conan Doyle and Albert Camus warned not only of Islam’s predatory ambitions, but the complicity of the West’s eager fools and main-chancers.

In 1910, with Prussian militarism apparently the greatest looming threat to the British Empire and Western civilization, G. K. Chesterton published a novel, The Flying Inn, in which he argued the longest-lasting threat was Islam, and its attractiveness to a certain type of liberal mind. In the story, the jaded British upper-class and smart set are captivated by a fashionable, nuanced variety of Islam, headed by the urbane, silver-tongued Nietzschean nihilist Lord Ivywood (“I see the breaking of barriers; beyond that I see nothing”) and a strange little Turk, Misyra Ammon.

Hillary Clinton’s latest misadventures are not just so typically Clintonian, but more to the point, they reveal a fatal flaw in the woman’s makeup — she has absolutely no judgment! Now you can write off the three current scandals (her private email account use while serving as secretary of state; the foreign donations to the Clinton foundation while also serving in that capacity; and, most recently, her brother Tony and her campaign advisor Terry McAuliffe receiving preferential visa treatment for their friends or clients by the Department of Homeland Security) as just another manifestation of Clinton arrogance. But that would barely scratch the surface as to what it reveals about Hillary.

The woman knows that she is going to run for president in 2016; knows that she is carrying a ton of baggage from her first lady years in the White House that she would like to put behind her; knows that the Republicans (as inept as they are) are going to dig out all these skeletons in her closet; yet engages in this form of clearly inappropriate conduct that she has to know is going to come out in the course of her quest for her own stint in the White House. This is much more than Clintonian arrogance and/or duplicity; this puts in relief Hillary’s greatest failing – lack of judgment.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2015/04/arabs-bomb-an-arab-refugee-camp-and-the-world-shrugs/

The Saudi-led Arab coalition recently conducted airstrikes against a refugee camp in Yemen, from which Houthi forces had purportedly fired on them—killing dozens of civilians and injuring many more. If Israel had carried out the attacks, Elliott Abrams notes, it would face global condemnation. For Arab states, however, there is none:

http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2015/03/31/yemen-and-gaza-why-the-different-reactions/

The Washington Post reported this today:

An airstrike killed dozens of people Monday at a camp for displaced people in northern Yemen, in what appeared to be the single deadliest attack since a Saudi ­Arabia-led coalition sent warplanes to target Shiite insurgents advancing across the country.

As many as 40 people died and about 200 were wounded in the attack on the Mazraq camp in Hajjah province, said Joel Millman, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, which runs aid programs at the facility.

The Yemeni Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, accused the Saudi-led coalition of hitting the camp, located in an area under the control of the insurgents. Saudi officials did not confirm that. But, asked about the bombing, Saudi Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri, a coalition spokesman, asserted that the rebels were setting up positions in civilian areas and said that coalition warplanes had taken fire Monday from a residential area, forcing a “decisive response,” according to the official Saudi Press Agency.

When the polls closed in Israel on March 17, 2015 for election of a new government, Israel’s Parliament, the Obama White House was poised for a result far different from the stunning victory of Prime Minister Netanyahu. His Likud Party list won a plurality of 30 seats, far ahead of his nearest rival, the Zionist Union, which secured only 24 seats. Although Israel’s second leading party, led by Labor MK Yitzhak Herzog, had been in a tight lead in the exit polls, they failed to achieve the victory over Likud.

The election results turned up another surprise as the party that finished third in the polling was the Joint Arab List (JAL), which claimed 14 seats. JAL is led by charismatic Haifa lawyer and City Council member, Ayman Oded of Hadash, a far left party that includes the Israeli Communist Party and drew votes from leftist Jewish extremists groups like B’Tselem and Peace Now.

While exit polls showed the Zionist Union with a narrow one seat lead, the polls proved to be dead wrong. Many Israeli voters were angered by both the yellow journalism tactics of the major opposition Israeli media, Yediot Ahronoth and Israeli TV channels 2 and 10, and the leaks about the blatant interference by foreign groups allied with President Obama and leftist EU NGOs. Just weeks before the election, it was reported that these groups had spent huge amounts of money to defeat Netanyahu’s party. But the large get-out-the-vote effort in the Israeli Arab community, which had been orchestrated by Obama’s campaign organizers, failed to unseat the beleaguered Likud party. Centrist voters cast their votes for Netanyahu’s party, and even the Israeli Bedouin communities voted overwhelmingly for Likud.

In the increasingly bitter battle between religious liberty and the liberal political agenda, religion is losing. Witness the media and political wrath raining down upon Indiana because the state dared to pass an allegedly anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The question fair-minded Americans should ask before casting the first stone is who is really being intolerant.

The Indiana law is a version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that passed 97-3 in the Senate and that Bill Clinton signed in 1993. Both the federal and Indiana laws require courts to administer a balancing test when reviewing cases that implicate the free exercise of religion.

If the House panel investigating Benghazi really wants to get a look at Hillary Clinton’s emails, perhaps it should subpoena the Chinese military. Beijing—which may have hacked the private server she used to send official email as Secretary of State—is likely to be more cooperative than are Mrs. Clinton and her stonewall specialists now reprising their roles from the 1990s.

On Friday Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, disclosed that he couldn’t cooperate with the Benghazi committee’s request that she turn over her private server to an independent third party for examination. Why not? Well, the former first diplomat had already wiped the computer clean.

A radical imam threatened me with death—and was later hired to preach in U.S. prisons. I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been.

Less than a year after I moved to the United States in 2006, I was asked to speak at the University of Pittsburgh. Among those who objected to my appearance was a local imam, Fouad El Bayly, of the Johnstown Islamic Center. Mr. Bayly was born in Egypt but has lived in the U.S. since 1976. In his own words, I had “been identified as one who has defamed the faith.” As he explained at the time: “If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death.”

After a local newspaper reported Mr. Bayly’s comments, he was forced to resign from the Islamic Center. That was the last I would hear of him—or so I thought.

Imagine my surprise when I learned recently that the man who threatened me with death for apostasy is being paid by the U.S. Justice Department to teach Islam in American jails.

It would be unfair to say that few Jews have résumés as impressive as that of Eric Greitens — because there are few people in the world who have a comparable track record.

Greitens, 40, is a former Navy SEAL, the recipient of seven military awards (including a bronze star and a purple heart), a former Rhodes Scholar and the founder of The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that helps veterans integrate themselves back into their communities through volunteer work. He served in Iraq from 2003 to 2007. His second book, “Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life,” published earlier this month, is a collection of inspirational letters to a fellow Navy SEAL struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. (His first book, “Strength and Compassion,” is a collection of essays and photographs.)

Greitens, who was raised in the Maryland Heights suburb of St. Louis and attended the city’s B’nai El synagogue, which is Reform, talked to JTA about his Jewish upbringing, his new book and his potential run for governor of Missouri in 2016. The interview has been condensed and edited.

There probably aren’t many Jews in the Navy SEALs. Is that true?

There was one other Jewish Navy SEAL that I knew when I was going through BUD/S, or Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training. The guy was actually in my class of all things. I actually don’t know the exact statistics, but I suspect that there is Jewish representation in the military consistent with our representation in the American population. Part of the reason I joined the military was because of the Jewish education I received.