RUTHFULLY YOURS

David Isaac is director and pubisher of Zionism-101- a comprehensive and indispensable series on the history of Jews in Palestine and early Zionism. Zionism 101www.zionism101.org

He received the following note and speech from the grandson of Lt.Colonel John Henry Patterson

Dear Mr. Isaacs:

Perhaps you would be interested in the short attached “speech” that I delivered at the reinternment ceremony of my grandfather last month in Moshav Avichaiyil. By the way, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your Herzl productions. Sincerely, Alan Patterson

“Thank you for that kind introduction. And my thanks to all those who have made today’s event possible – Prime Minister Netanyahu, son of my grandfather’s close colleague, Ben Zion Netanyahu, whose office coordinated things at the national and international level, and Ezequiel Sivak of Moshav Avichayil, who has wonderfully led activities here at the local level.

It would be possible for me to talk extensively about my grandfather, Lt Col John Henry Patterson. Perhaps knowing that, the event organizers have asked me to speak briefly, and to enforce that request they have required me to actually write out my words so that they can be translated. A very effective ploy.

It has been many years since my mother mentioned to me that it had been one of JHP’s wishes that he be buried with his soldiers in Israel. I learned of this some 50 years after his cremation and disposition in a dreary cemetery building in Los Angeles, California. And for quite a few years the idea lingered at the back of my mind without anything to move me to attempt to fulfill that wish. And then when I began to consider how to accomplish it, and all the difficulties and bureacratic steps involved, I felt that his reburial might well be a case of “next year in Avichayil.” Happily we are here together this year in Avichayil and the Colonel, together with my grandmother, Francie, are now resting under the bright sky and fresh air of Israel, freed from their dusty corner of Rosemont Cemetery.

How this came to pass has relied on two people who you probably never have heard of, William Goldman and Jerry Klinger. Jerry is head of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, a US non governmental organization dedicated to helping record and memorialize Jews and their history around the world. In an afterword to a bibliography of JHP, I wrote that one of the tasks ahead of me at that time was the reinternment of my grandparents. Jerry contacted me as soon as he read that and offered his services. At first I was reluctant to accept, feeling that this was something that I needed to do personally. Pondering all the bureaucratic work involved in both Israel and the US, with consideration I decided that Jerry’s offer was too good to turn down. And here we are.

On Friday, the host of a political program on Al Tahrir TV in Egypt delivered an oral editorial on Tzipi Livni, who served as Israel’s justice minister and chief negotiator with the Palestinians until early last month, when the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu collapsed.

Before delving into the content of the editorial, and receiving a dose of sorely needed comic relief from the tragedies around us, let us first review what Livni has been up to these days.

Clearly worried about her future prospects in politics, Livni, the head of the Hatnuah party, joined forces with Labor leader Isaac Herzog. The two reached the conclusion that a merger would give the “peace camp” a better chance of beating Netanyahu in the March elections. So desperate were they not to be left in the dustbin of Israeli history that each agreed to a rotation as prime minister (Herzog for the first two years, and Livni for the remainder of the term), in the event that their “Zionist Camp” bloc garners enough votes to form the next coalition.

CONTENTS

1. Israeli NGO files war crimes charges against Palestinian leaders at ICC
2. Fatah: Netanyahu will hang “soon”
3. Fatah distances itself from latest “genocidal, anti-Semitic” Facebook post
4. Why June 13? Because they kidnapped the teens on June 12
5. “Palestine to join Interpol”
6. Iran claims to “builds world’s first missile-evading drone”
7. Egypt threatened to arrest George Clooney’s wife
8. Saudi Airlines reportedly plans to segregate sexes
9. Ayatollah compares Ferguson, Gaza; 50 women arrested for “un-Islamic” dress
10. Hamas condemns shooting of Gazan teen by Egyptian guards
11. “Female slavery the biggest honor for non-Muslim women, says jihadist”
12. Santa chased out of Turkish town in anti-New Year’s celebration

Number of suicide bombings worldwide doubles in 2014 but none in Israel (& The Guardian hails Israeli president) –

CONTENTS

1. Wide-ranging poll finds both Jews and Arabs “proud to be Israeli”
2. The Guardian chooses Israeli President Rivlin as a “hero” of 2014
3. Despite Gaza war, tourist numbers to Israel fell only 1% in 2014
4. Egypt Chamber of tourism: Hotel occupancy reached only 12% by New Year
5. Number of suicide bombings around world surged 94% in 2014 but none in Israel
6. U.S. academic group votes against further anti-Israel resolutions
7. Norwegian NGO funds exhibit of children’s maps replacing Israel with Palestine
8. Jews flee France in record numbers to escape anti-Semitism
9. Dieudonne’s supporters turn against him
10. Anti-Semitic acts in UK at 30-year high; BDS activist makes Nazi salute
11. Jewish groups condemn pro-Nazi rallies in Croatia, Ukraine
12. Nazis’ vast, secret “nuclear weapons facility” uncovered in Austria

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At least 10 people were killed in a mass shooting at a newspaper in Paris, the Charlie Hebdo, known for taking satirical potshots at Muslim leaders, Reuters reported.

One of the dead was a journalist; three police were also wounded, The Associated Press reported.

Reuters reported it’s the same newspaper that’s been bombed in the past for publishing cartoons about Muslim leaders.

France’s Info radio said police at the scene said another five have been injured.

“About a half an hour ago, two black-hooded men entered the building with Klashnikovs,” Benoit Bringer, a witness to the incident, told the French station. “A few minutes later, we heard lots of shots.”

The attackers escaped and an alert has been sent through the community, said Luc Poignant, an official with the SBP police union, AP reported.

A few pages into “Napoleon: A Life,” historian Andrew Roberts notes that the great general regarded himself as “of the race that founds empires.”

How odd that sounds to modern ears. Of course, in the past, people viewed the world differently. Most of us get that. In the present, not everyone sees the world the same way, but many of us don’t get that.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry responds to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Ukrainian territory by exclaiming, “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.

Within the foreign policy establishment it is widely assumed that those who send suicide bombers to kill us must harbor “legitimate grievances,” and that they, like us, would prefer peace to war, and are eager, as we are, to resolve conflicts diplomatically, with both sides accepting compromises.

These are dangerous illusions. Throughout most of history, war has been the norm, peace the exception. Pursuing victory and conquest, founding empires — these were seen as noble pursuits.

The Republican caravan finally arrives, with a flutter of banners, the banging of pots and pans and dogs barking in the dust at everyone’s feet. Those long-faced spectators relegated to the side of the road are Democrats, unable to hide their surly resentment and disappointment. They’re packing heat disguised as eggs and tomatoes for throwing.

Anticipation, expectation, hope and maybe even a little prospect of change is the order of the day. Disappointment will follow soon enough. Many’s the heart that will be broken, after the gall and venom of debate, insult, argument and eventually even a little compromise. It’s how Congress is supposed to work. The men who designed it wore no lace on their drawers.

The Republican leaders, beginning with Mitch McConnell in the Senate and John Boehner in the House, are determined to show everybody that “the Republicans are not as bad as you think,” that the leaders of the conservatives are not as bad as the newspapers and purveyors of television palaver make them out to be.

2014 was known as the year of the cyber breach. Forty-three percent of companies experienced a breach last year, including highly visible and damaging hacks to Sony, Home Depot, Target, and JP Morgan Chase. Unfortunately, the cyber breaches of 2014 were not an aberration, but a likely trend. Both the public and private sectors received wakeup calls from these breaches and are beginning to respond accordingly by working together.
As for the private sector, investment by the government in cybersecurity is now a high priority. According to federal government budget projections, over $65 billion will be spent in the next five years on cybersecurity. Also, federal CIOs say by a wide margin in polls that cybersecurity is their primary IT spending focus.
An additional factor for government budget planners is that spending now correlates to policy enactments. At the end of the last legislative session, Congress passed four significant pieces of cybersecurity legislation, including The National Cybersecurity Protection Act of 2014 (S. 2519). That legislation, according to the House Homeland Security Committee, “will codify the existing cybersecurity and communications operations center at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), known as the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. The new law will authorize the center’s current activities to share cybersecurity information and analysis with the private sector, provide incident response and technical assistance to companies and federal agencies, and recommend security measures to enhance cybersecurity.”

Gay, Christian-convert son of a Palestinian militant family tells Times of Israel he found compassion where he least expected it, and most needed it.

A Palestinian teenager was arrested in Tel Aviv in late 2006 for illegally entering Israel. It was the third time the 15-year-old from Nablus had crossed into Israel, fleeing his abusive father. Now 24 years old, openly gay, and a convert to Christianity, he is fighting for his life to remain a refugee in Canada.

The boy belonged to an aristocratic family, in Palestinian Islamist terms. His maternal grandfather, Said Bilal, was the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Nablus, who oversaw the activities of its Palestinian branch, Hamas. His uncle, Muaz Bilal, was condemned in 2002 by an Israeli court to 26 life sentences for dispatching suicide bombers into downtown Jerusalem in the late 1990s, killing 21 Israelis and injuring 300 in two separate attacks. Two other uncles, Bakr and Obada Bilal, a military Hamas field commander and an explosives expert, respectively, were released from Israeli prison as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap in October 2011.