RUTHFULLY YOURS

The “advent of a new generation” of Arabs was the overly optimistic theme for University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole’s recent lecture at the George Washington University Elliot School of International Relations. Cole’s discussion of his new book, The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East, to an audience of about fifty, mostly Elliot School students, failed to substantiate his ongoing hopes for the so-called Arab Spring.

Elliot School professor Edward W. (Skip) Gnehm introduced Cole as a Middle East expert who is popular on television, a supposedly confidence inspiring credential. Cole focused on Tunisia, noting that this comparatively small North African country with no oil resources had received “insufficient press.” His main concern was “youth revolutionaries,” as the Arab press termed Arab Spring regime opponents in Libya, Tunisia, and elsewhere.

Cole began by claiming that a “relatively successful . . . transition away from authoritarianism” under the “Ben Ali clique,” who were “basically bank robbers,” had marked Tunisia’s Arab Spring. Nonetheless, Tunisia is still “on a tightrope,” he added, as some Tunisian regions are prone to violence and Tunisia’s neighbor Libya also presents dangers. The “Mad Max-like scenes of post-apocalyptic horror” previously described in Cole’s writings “have . . . dashed” the Arab Spring’s “bright hopes” in Libya and elsewhere. Elliot School professor William Lawrence noted in a post-lecture conversation that Libya’s parliament has now fled the capital Tripoli for a Greek car ferry moored in Tobruk. However, in December 2011, Cole stated erroneously that the “Libyan Revolution has largely succeeded, and this is a moment of celebration.”

Cole contrasted Libya with Tunisia, calling the new 2014 Tunisian constitution “very good on paper” and “very nicely worded.” The “secularists won” in defeating attempts to codify sharia, which Cole dubiously compared to Catholic canon law, as well as a gender “complementarity” clause. “The feminists in the room know what that means,” Cole said of the latter, before equating the “party of the Muslim religious right,” Tunisia’s Islamist, pro-jihadist Ennahda Party, initial supporter of both measures, with American conservatives.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/searching-for-the-islamic-war-against-isis-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Nonie Darwish, the author of The Devil We Don’t Know.

Nonie came on the show to discuss Searching for the Islamic War Against ISIS, analyzing what’s really behind the “moderate” Muslim world’s failure to take out the Islamic State (starts at 14 minute mark). The dialogue was preceded by Nonie focusing on Tricking and Dividing the Muslim World, shedding light on the best strategies to confront and outsmart our enemy in the terror war.

The media starts hysterical panics the way that Burger King makes burgers, but now it’s bemoaning “hysteria” and “panic” over Ebola. It’s silly for Americans to be worried about a lethal virus that has killed thousands, the self-proclaimed experts insist. It’s time to get over our irrational Ebolaphobic fear of a deadly epidemic.

Being concerned about Ebola is almost as silly as the other target of the media’s lectures about “hysteria” and “panic”… Islamic terrorism. Ebolaphobia and Islamophobia are the real threats.

Both Ebola and Jihad are transnational crises that can be stopped at the airport. That’s why the media swarm is breeding articles shrieking that you can’t stop Ebola from coming to America by preventing people with Ebola from coming to America. They tell us that it has to be stopped in Africa at the source.

Considering that Africa has hundreds of millions of Malaria cases, accounts for around half the cholera cases in the world and has seen the return of the Bubonic Plague; it’s safe to say that no disease can be stopped at the source in Africa. The White House claims that we shouldn’t protect America if we can’t save Africa. If we follow that transnational logic, how long until we’re starving ourselves to feed Africa?

It’s leftwing hysteria that is the major problem when it comes to Ebola. Instead of having a rational conversation about a travel ban, we’re forced to cope with shrieking leftists insisting that it can’t possibly work because it wouldn’t be perfect and therefore we shouldn’t do it at all.

And, they insist hysterically, we’re being hysterical by even worrying about Ebola.

The same diseased logic dictates their opposition to the War on Terror. We can either prevent Muslims from being radicalized or fight terrorism, they insist. If we fight terrorism, we’ll radicalize Muslims. The only thing to do is to stop fighting terrorism and hope that Muslims stop killing us.

The Obama administration is facing long odds for the president’s party to ‎retain control of the U.S. Senate in the elections this Nov. 4. If the Republicans win control of the Senate to ‎add to their House majority, foreign policy issues may become far more ‎contentious in the next two years.‎

Two of the issues on which the two sides may bang heads concern Israel. The ‎more pressing item concerns the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. ‎The current talks between the P5+1 and Iran have already been extended once, ‎and if no deal is reached by Nov. 24, may be extended again. That would ‎avoid an admission of defeat by an administration that has been loath to ever ‎admit defeat about any policy or programmatic failure, of which there have been ‎many.

On the other hand, there are also fears that in order to avoid another ‎extension of the negotiations, the administration and its partners will humble ‎themselves before the mullahs by offering much more of what the Iranians are ‎demanding to close the deal. This would include concessions on the ‎number of spinning centrifuges, inspections, weapons systems, and elimination or ‎reduction of sanctions against the regime in the five weeks remaining before the ‎deadline. This may still not be enough to avoid the Iranians pulling the rug out, ‎since they have learned that delay never hurts them, so long as a few more ‎concessions are pocketed while they agree to continue to talk. In other words, if ‎the Iranians are unhappy with America’s best offer today, they know it is not our ‎final offer, and that the next offer after this one, which may come near the ‎deadline of the next extension will probably be even better for them. But expect ‎any extension to be accompanied by some sanctions relief and concessions on ‎centrifuges by the P5+1. ‎

Unfortunately, the Obama administration may feel the need for a deal this ‎November, especially if it receives a stinging rebuke from voters in a few days, ‎and wants to change the political momentum with a “victory” of some sorts. So there ‎may be added incentive for it to get this done in the two months between the ‎elections and the swearing in of the new Congress in January, which is likely to be ‎less friendly.

This raises the issue of exactly what it is that gets done, if something ‎is done. The administration, through its loyal mouthpiece, The New York Times, has ‎made it clear that it will not sign a treaty with Iran, but rather a multi‎partyagreement. What this means is that ‎the Senate will not get a shot at approving a “treaty,” which requires two-thirds of those ‎voting to pass, and the president will do what he chooses to do without the ‎consent of the Senate. This will not go down well in a Republican-controlled ‎Senate.‎

When the Islamic jihadists struck on 9-11, it was clear that one of their main aims was to destroy the economic success that characterized American exceptionalism. To that end, the airline industry was very adversely affected. Thus:

… directly after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the federal government closed airports, canceling thousands of flights at a direct cost to airlines. However, even when the airports reopened, passengers were wary of air travel, and airlines experienced at least a 30 percent reduction in demand during the initial shock period immediately following the reopening. In addition, business travel accounts for one of the most profitable segments in the airline business, and after the attacks, a significant number of businesses temporarily suspended non-essential travel for their employees.

Now fast-forward to 2014, and once again the airline industry will be financially damaged, thanks directly to Obama’s executive orders and obdurate stance on not keeping deadly diseases at bay.

With the busiest travel season a mere month away, one could hazard a guess that many Americans are rethinking their travel plans and will not wish to travel over Thanksgiving. How ironic that the holiday of thanks has been put at risk from our socialist president. Listen to this YouTube 2011 interview of Allen West, particularly at point 6:15, where West calls Obama out on his never-ending harmful economic policies. Yet it is apparent that Obama never swerves off his course to hurt the country.

The Centers for Disease Control directives change daily. The idea that one is safe if three feet away from an infected individual ignores the fact that seats on airplanes are not three feet away from one another. If someone is harboring the Ebola virus, it is not hard to fathom why people would shy away from using airplanes or, for that matter, any form of public transportation.

Thus, with commonsense recommendations being thwarted, we have a slowly emerging risk of enormous consequences. John Hayward writes:

[W]hile city and federal authorities assure us the system is working, it very obviously is not, because the ‘enhanced screening’ for travelers arriving from West Africa involves testing body temperatures at the airport, and [Dr.] Spencer passed that test with flying colors. Trusting him to self-isolate didn’t work, either. Nothing worked. Now we’re just hoping that either his latest screening returned a false positive, or if not, we get lucky and Ebola finds no purchase in a densely-populated city that isn’t exactly the most inhospitable environment for a virus.

Using the theory of ‘intersectionality’ first pioneered 25 years ago, Israel is condemned at universities amid a rise in anti-Semitism for imposing an ‘interlocking matrix of oppression’
Anti-Israel activities on campuses up 50% this fall

Read more: Bastardization of black feminist theory propels Israel-bashing on campus | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/bastardization-of-black-feminist-theory-propels-israel-bashing-on-campus/#ixzz3HQu5vVVc
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BOSTON – Two national student organizations’ gatherings were held on Boston university campuses this month to expose what they call the “intersectionality” of Zionism with other forms of oppression.

During both early October’s Open Hillel conference at Harvard University, and the just-concluded Students for Justice in Palestine gathering at Tufts University, Israel was condemned for imposing an “interlocking matrix of oppression” onto Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, women, children, gays, the disabled, and others.

Coined in 1989, the feminist sociological theory of intersectionality has often been applied to studies of black women, who – so goes the theory – derive their most potent sense of identity from the intersection of being female and black, as opposed to one characteristic over the other.

More recently, anti-Israel groups have adopted intersectionality to denounce Zionism’s alleged subjugation and silencing of its many critics, including Jews.

“Our very bodies disrupt Zionist narratives,” said Sa’ed Atshan, a Tufts lecturer in peace and justice studies, who also advises the campus SJP chapter.

Identifying himself to conference participants as a gay Palestinian, Atshan demanded Israel be “decolonized” for its racist policies. He also condemned Israel for creating a Palestinian society rife with honor killings and the persecution of gays – all caused by the intersection of Zionism with misogyny and homophobia, he said.

Ebola arrived in New York last week, as officials announced Thursday night that Craig Spencer, a physician who’d recently returned from a Doctors Without Borders volunteer mission in Guinea, had developed symptoms after returning to the city. Spencer is receiving treatment at Bellevue Hospital; his fiancee, who is thus far asymptomatic, is under quarantine at the couple’s Harlem apartment.
At the press conference, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said of Spencer: “He was familiar with the possibility and the circumstances, so he handled himself accordingly.” The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber, in a Friday piece, disagreed: “This is clearly not true. Despite the fact that Dr. Spencer presented a miniscule [sic] risk to anyone around him when he decided to ride the subway, go bowling, and frolic at the High Line Park on Wednesday, he obviously should not have been out and about.”

Scheiber thinks the falsehood was deliberate. Yet “having said all that,” he writes, “I kinda think Cuomo et al were right to lie last night”:

The big problem these officials faced in the aftermath of the Spencer news was massive public anxiety. . . . In this context, publicly calling out Dr. Spencer for his failure to self-quarantine could have turned into its own minor disaster. . . . Had they taken the additional step of criticizing Spencer for not isolating himself beforehand, you can imagine that dominating the headlines, drowning out most of what they said, and generally contributing to the very panic they were trying to defuse. . . . Far better to play it cool while, behind the scenes, making sure any health worker who’s recently returned from the affected African countries has a month’s supply of Stouffer’s in his freezer and a complimentary Netflix subscription.

So one cheer for lying, Mr. and Mrs. Public Official.

My family was from Poland and I speak Polish rather fluently…..This sentence is dead wrong and ridiculous “It was the Poles alone who armed the Jewish underground during the war and did more than any other nation in Europe to try to save European Jewry. ”

Calling the relationship “desperately complicated” is putting lipstick on a pig. It is a dreadful history of Polish complicity in the murder of two thirds of world Jewry. But, and here is a big but….Polish youth is astonishing….having overthrown the shackles of Communism they revel in capitalist freedom; while they eschew too much talk about their role in the Holocaust, it is amazing how many boast of having had a Jew in the family- many going as far as wearing Jewish stars; they respect and admire Israel; some even bemoan the “Jewish brain drain” that has left Poland without great advances in science, medicine and technology. Unlike Hungary there is no seriously anti-Semitic political party in Poland. The media is generally very pro-Israel….History is clear but the present is “complicated .” rsk

Capturing a ‘desperately complicated’ history in a new museum, one that is also a warning to Europe.

Warsaw

The translucent green building lights up the working-class neighborhood of Muranów. Its glass exterior reflects the trees from a park and shabby Communist-era apartment blocks nearby. A memorial to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising stands outside. The architectural boldness of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews is matched by its intentions.

The opening of the museum’s core exhibition on Tuesday, coming 10 days ahead of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, is a fitting tribute to the possibilities of freedom in Europe.

What is most remarkable is that this institution ever came to be. To utter the phrase “Polish-Jewish relations” is a provocation. Poland is the world’s largest Jewish graveyard. Before Hitler perpetrated the Holocaust mostly on its soil, for half a millennium Poland was Europe’s largest Jewish sanctuary. Four in five American Jews and nine in 14 world-wide trace their roots back to Poland. Everything else is debatable, and these debates inevitably bring out the passions and misunderstandings of the worst family quarrels.

The relationship between the Obama administration and the government of Israel is beginning to look like one of those longtime marriages you encounter all the time. Maybe you’re in one yourself. He feels, Rodney Dangerfield-like, that he gets no respect. She’d be happy to offer some—if only she could find something to respect.

The solution is a trial separation. Give this couple time apart to figure out what, if anything, still draws them together.

The latest eruption of pettiness—when marriages are in trouble, it’s always the petty things that tell—was the very public refusal of John Kerry and Joe Biden to meet with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon during his visit to Washington last week. Mr. Yaalon was quoted earlier this year saying some impolitic things about the U.S. secretary of state, including that he was “obsessive and messianic” and that “the only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us alone.”

The comments were made privately but were leaked to the press. Mr. Yaalon apologized for them. His meeting with Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon last week was all smiles. Asked by the Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth about the Kerry kerfuffle, he replied, “We overcame that.”

Or not.

It would be interesting to know which Arab leaders are telling US Secretary of State John Kerry that the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is “a cause of recruitment” to Islamic State.

Is that something he is hearing from Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani? The Qatari leader, whose kingdom has been cited by the US Treasury Department as a major funder of Islamic State (IS), is certainly one of Kerry’s favorite regional leaders.

If Thani did blame Israel for the rise of IS, then his statement would constitute yet another instance of the double game Qatar has been playing with the Americans. On the one hand, the regime is financing jihad, and other the other hand, it pretends to side with the West against the jihad that it is funding.

This is certainly the case in Jerusalem.

According to an investigative report published Friday in Yisrael Hayom , Qatar is financing the violence in the capital. Veteran Jerusalem affairs reporter Nadav Shragai wrote that the Islamic rioters who daily attack Jewish visitors and police forces on the Temple Mount are paid by Qatar through the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement.

The Qatari government and other Islamic funds are transferring vast sums of money to the Islamic Movement’s radical northern branch headed by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah. The Islamic Movement in turn is paying thousands of shekels every month to hundreds of women and men, mainly Muslim Israeli citizens, who call themselves the Murbitat.

The Murbitat presents itself as an Islamic prayer group, but according to Shragai, the group’s job is to harass Jews and police on the Temple Mount. They scream and curse at Jewish visitors and in recent months have escalated their violence against them, and their police escorts. These violent attacks include assaults with rocks, firebombs and firecrackers.