RUTHFULLY YOURS

Amsterdam Jewish schools get military police protection

Several Jewish schools in Amsterdam’s Buitenveldert district are being guarded by military police officers and have been for the past month, the Parool said on Thursday.

Four police officers in full uniform are on duty at the entrance of the orthodox Cheider school, while Maimonides and Rosj Pina have similar protection, the paper says. The street also has a mobile police post which has fitted with cameras.

The protection is at the instigation of the mayor, council officials and justice ministry, the paper says.

‘We do not want to sow panic and there have not been any concrete threats,’ one officer told the paper. ‘The guards are a consequence of developments in society. They are part of the policy of discouragement.

Common sense and love of country dictate that air travel to the United States from the West African Ebola hot-zone nations of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone be suspended until the highly contagious, highly lethal Ebola outbreak is over. That’s obvious. Thousands of travel visas issued by the U.S. to nationals in these same countries should be canceled. That’s obvious, too.

But President Obama isn’t taking such obvious measures to safeguard the American people. On the contrary, the administration is doing nothing to prevent Ebola from entering this country, even after the first case erupted on American soil in a Liberian tourist named Thomas Eric Duncan. Last month, Duncan, knowingly exposed to Ebola himself, traveled to Dallas from Monrovia, Liberia, with layovers in Brussels and Washington, D.C. Now, he is in an isolation ward in a Dallas hospital as health officials scramble to monitor 100 people Duncan came into contact with for signs of the killer virus.

The White House response? The Daily Caller’s headline says it all: “White House: We Won’t Stop People from the Ebola-Stricken Countries from Coming to the U.S.”

What explains this presidential cop-out? So far, the left side of the media seems to be taking heart from the unlikelihood that any – or, rather, very many – Americans will become infected with Ebola. They dutifully repeat the official mantra of multinational organizations such as the United Nations, the African Union and the World Health Organization that isolating Ebola-ravaged nations would only make the epidemic worse.

I understand that suspending commercial flights to the region makes it harder for U.N. officials to jet about, and yes, I’m sure it does take a chunk out of African tourism, but such concerns seem a tad secondary at this moment of crisis. Also, as National Review’s Jim Gerachty has pointed out, the U.S. and others weren’t so coy when it came to enforcing a de facto travel ban to Israel during the summer’s Gaza war. Meanwhile, isn’t it possible to halt commercial travel to these stricken countries without also prohibiting all humanitarian aid?

That sounds like a more sensible approach – worth trying, at least, to prevent the disease from spreading to unaffected nations. But I don’t think protecting unaffected nations is the guiding goal of the globalist organizations opposing measures to isolate the ravaged areas – and that includes the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden stated on Twitter: “the impulse to isolate countries may make #Ebola epidemic worse. Must use tried & true public health means to stop it.”

The “skills gap” has been blamed for both the persistent high unemployment and the sluggish economic growth we have experienced. Our schools, which have received the bulk of the blame, are only in part culpable. Responsibility must be shared with government immigration policies that have admitted insufficient high-skilled immigrants, and with employers who, for expediency’s sake, have bypassed the training process. But, perhaps even more important has been the decline in cultural lessons and values. We live so much in the present, while focusing on the future, that we have too often ignored the great literature of the past, with their tales of human behavior under myriad conditions and the moral lessons that were integral to the stories.

A consequence of our concern regarding the preparedness of our youth has been a renewed effort to ensure that high school and college students are well versed in STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math). Since a major purpose of a high school and college education is to get a job, such courses make sense. The practical application of theory is how we build better computers, hospitals, automobiles, bridges, insurance companies and fighter jets.

Our young people face a far more complex world than simply finding and honing a skill for today’s needs. The skills that today seem adequate may not fit needs ten or twenty years hence. Ray Kurzweil, in The Singularity is Near, argued that humans will transcend the limitations of our biology – that the distinction between man and machine will blur more than they have. He writes about this disruptive transformation: “The nonbiological intelligence created in that year (2045) will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today (2005).”

While Mr. Kurzweil’s predictions stretch even the most futuristic imagination, there is no question that the amount of knowledge is growing exponentially. In 1982, with the publication of Critical Path, Buckminster Fuller wrote of the “Knowledge Doubling Curve.” He noted that until about 1900, knowledge doubled roughly every 100 years. Then growth, which had been linear, became exponential. Today, knowledge is doubling every one to two years. There are some who believe we are on track to a doubling every twelve hours. Whatever the real speed, the amount of information available to our children and grandchildren is far vaster than what we had to learn. That fact alone explains, in part, why we are so often surprised by the lack of familiarity the young have with literature, history and geography that we took for granted. It complicates the education process. With so much material available, what should be taught?

Our young do need the skills embedded in STEM courses, or should at least be exposed to them. For no matter our curiosity or the desire to learn, without jobs we cannot survive. Like it or not, we will increasingly become specialized in relatively narrow fields.

The Islamic State, Islamic quasi-state that has conquered parts of Iraq and Syria, has threatened America with terrorist attacks and drawn us back into an Iraq war. It has done a lot more than that.

For each of the major players in the Middle East, The Islamic State, or ISIS, has presented them with a wild card they can play to better their hand. For Iran, Russia, Syria and Turkey, the Islamic State has — so far — been the means of leveraging other nations in pursuit of larger goals. In Iraq, though no longer a major player, the Islamic State has maneuvered so successfully as to become an existential threat.

The only nation that hasn’t managed to take advantage of the Islamic State’s conquests has been the United States. Though President Obama has managed to form a coalition of sorts to assist in airstrikes, ground troops are obviously necessary to retake the ground the Islamic State has conquered, and no coalition member has offered any. The airstrikes haven’t prevented further ISIS advances near the Syrian-Turkish border and probably in other areas. Iraq is left to its attempt to re-recruit deserters who had previously fled the terrorist organization’s advance.

Less obvious, but of equal or greater importance, is Mr. Obama’s failure to use the leverage provided by the Islamic State-created mess to better America’s position in the Middle East as many other nations have done to improve theirs.

Turkey is probably the most pragmatic user of the Islamic State and — from the U.S. standpoint — the least trustworthy. Before the Islamic State openly took over about one-third of Iraq, Turkey had provided a mostly open border for terrorist fighters to pass through into Syria and Iraq. Turks have been opposing the Kurds for decades and seeking to overthrow Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria for almost as long. By allowing ISIS forces into both Iraq and Syria, Turkey’s interests were furthered. Now, as the Islamic State threatens Turkey as well, the Turks have reportedly reversed course to assist U.S. and European governments lessen the flow of terrorist recruits into the region.

Iran has probably made the best use of the leverage it has gained in the crisis. Iran’s principal national goal is to achieve nuclear weapons with which they can seek domination throughout the Middle East and beyond. After failing to draw Iran into lower level talks about the Iraq crisis, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the Obama administration was open to talks with Iran. His statement came hard on the heels of an angry and sarcastic statement by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejecting the idea.

Some say he was the man on whom the fictional character of James Bond was based.
But he was better than Bond.
Much, much better.
No gadgets, no gizmos, not a very Hollywood or glamorous existence.
Just risking his life for half a century – always in the shadows, protecting his beloved people.
Israel’s super-spy Mike Harari passed away in Tel-Aviv at the age of 87-just a few days before Rosh Hashanah.
He was among the last of the greatest spies in Israel’s rich history of early intelligence work: Isser Harel, Meir Amit, and Zvi Malchin. With the exception of Rafi Eitan who is turning 88 next month and Zvi Zamir, who is 89, the generation of great intelligence officers has now passed on. But their extraordinary work will never be forgotten by the Jewish people.
Mike Harari, the legendary Mossad operative, passed quietly, the way he lived his turbulent and always dangerous, eventful life.
His death was announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who described Harari as “one of the great warriors for Israel’s security.”

During Gaza war, The Lancet published a 1,600-word “Open letter for the people in Gaza” that aroused a wave of protest among advocates of Israeli around the world. The Lancet editor Prof. Richard Horton – who has been accused for many years by pro-Israeli groups of being unfair to Israel and even “anti-Semitic” for the politics he has allowed to appear in the medical journal – seems to have repented.

At the end of his three-day visit with senior researchers and physicians at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center, Horton said his visit to Israel was “a turning point for me and my relationship with this region.”

Horton promised to write positively in the next edition of the British journal next week.

The outcome of his visit thus holds a promise for new academic and medical collaborations that Horton has promised to support.

“I am proud and humbled to be here… I’ve learned a great deal: Rambam as a model of the partnership between Jews and Arabs; Rambam as a center offering an open hand to the people of Palestine; and Rambam as a place with a unique vision for a peaceful, productive, and diverse future among peoples,” Horton said.

Horton, who delivered a lecture to the Haifa doctors on Thursday, said he visits the Middle East yearly and sometimes several times a year because of his concern for the region. His three days of seminars and meetings with senior researchers and physicians at Rambam and the Technion’s Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine was initiated by Prof. Karl Skorecki, Rambam’s director of medical research, and director-general Prof. Rafi Beyar, a world-famous interventional cardiologist.

Horton’s visit included tours of some of Rambam’s medical units, a series of medical and ethical lectures, discussions, debates, and visits to Isifiya and Acre. He also spent an intensive day that included a discussion on science and medicine as a catalyst for peaceful coexistence, which was coordinated by Prof. Zaher Azzam, head of Rambam’s internal medicne B and vice dean of the Technion’s medical faculty. Prof. Asa Kasher, a renowned ethics philosopher, spoke on the ethics of armed conflict and responsible scholarly journalism.

Horton and The Lancet – one of the world’s leading general medical journals – published during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza a 1,600- word “Open letter for the people in Gaza” that aroused a wave of protest among advocates of Israel around the world. It had been written by Drs. Paola Manduca, Iain Chalmers, Derek Summerfield, Mads Gilbert, and Swee Ang on behalf of 24 signatories.

“On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel. We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression. We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called defensive aggression. In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity,” the letter went.

The journal article made no mention of the incessant rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists, the placing of rocket launchers in schools and hospitals to magnify the damage of defensive attacks or the bloodbath in Syria and other parts of the world.

It took weeks of protest by pro-Israeli letter writers until Horton’s journal published some of their reactions, which covered much less space than the original letter.

The emergence of ultra-violent groups in the Middle East has allowed non-violent extremist groups in the West to claim an undeserved moral credibility. ISIS is the ideal fig-leaf. Even al-Qaeda, by comparison, now looks “moderate.”

Many of those Muslim groups that condemned ISIS have a long history of promoting extremism themselves. It turns out, for example, that senior officials at Al Muntada Trust — which recently published a statement condemning ISIS, signed by nine other Islamic organizations — have worked closely with Nabil al-Awadi, a “key financier” of ISIS.

The recent videotaped beheadings of Western hostages by ISIS have provided fundamentalists in the West with the opportunity to express shock and outrage at such barbarism — and implicitly to claim their own Islamist narrative as good.

It is difficult to find an Islamic charity or lobby group in Britain that has not publicly voiced its disgust at ISIS. On the face of it, this is welcome news. After all, if Muslim community organizations were releasing statements in support of ISIS, Britain’s prospects would look fragile indeed.

Many of those Muslim groups that have condemned ISIS, however, have a long history of promoting extremism themselves. It turns out, for example, that senior officials at Al Muntada Trust — which recently published a statement condemning ISIS, signed by nine other Islamic organizations — have worked closely with Nabil al-Awadi, a “key financier” of ISIS.

In 2012, the Al-Muntada Trust invited al-Awadi and another jihadi cleric, Muhammad al-Arifi, to speak. Al-Arifi has been linked to the radicalization of Muslim youth in Cardiff. He was recently banned from entering the UK, then went to fight for ISIS. Further, the Nigerian media have accused Al Muntada of funding al-Qaeda affiliate Boko Haram.

Although media commentators overlooked it, the Obama administration did it again. They blindsided Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the eve of his trip to Washington.

The last time it happened was in May 2011 when US President Barack Obama set out his policy toward Israel and the Palestinians as Netanyahu was in flight, en route to Washington to meet with him.

In that speech Obama announced his support for an essentially full Israeli withdrawal to the entirely indefensible 1949 armistice lines in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. Obama adopted this position despite the fact that Netanyahu and the Israeli public rejected it and viewed it as a threat to Israel’s survival.

This time the Obama administration didn’t blindside Israel on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit with another hostile pronouncement in relation to the Palestinians. This time they did so in relation to Iran.

In an address on Saturday night before the National Iranian-American Council, Phillip Gordon, the White House’s coordinator for the Middle East, said that if US-Iranian talks on Iran’s nuclear weapons program lead to an agreement, they can pave the way for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. In his words, “A nuclear agreement could begin a multi-generational process that could lead to a new relationship between our countries.”

Gordon’s statement was a blunt departure from the White House’s previous position that the only gain Iran would make by obeying binding UN Security Council resolutions that prohibit the Islamic theocracy from enriching uranium would be the abrogation of economic sanctions that were adopted to force Iran to end its illicit nuclear activities.

In accordance with US law, diplomatic relations with Iran are contingent on Iran’s cessation of support for terrorist organizations and other unlawful activities.

In his remarks to NIAC – a group that the vast majority of Iranian-Americans view as the unofficial lobby of the Iranian regime – Gordon said that due to the importance of the nuclear issue, to make progress in nuclear talks, the US is willing to ignore Iran’s support for terrorism and other crimes.

The real danger here is not the boycott but the fact that these are the folks that teach college students about Mideast History. They are all members of MESA (Middle East Studies Association) and the glitch is that you can’t teach unless you belong to MESA and you can’t be a member unless you adhere to the Said/Khalidi anti Israel line. This is a gross academic fraud…..rsk

In excess of 500 Middle East studies scholars and librarians signed a petition boycotting Israeli academic institutions and submitted it for publication to the Jadaliyya website.

“We, the undersigned scholars and librarians working on the Middle East, hold that silence about the latest humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s new military assault on the Gaza Strip – the third and most devastating in six years – constitutes complicity,” read the letter.

“World governments and mainstream media do not hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law. We, however, as a community of scholars engaged with the Middle East, have a moral responsibility to do so,” it said.

“The ongoing Israeli massacres in Gaza have been ghastly reminders of the complicity of Israeli academic institutions in the occupation and oppression of Palestinians. Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bar- Ilan University, Haifa University, Technion, and Ben-Gurion University have publicly declared their unconditional support for the Israeli military.”

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is posted as a logo along with the letter, which is signed by scholars from some of America’s most prestigious academies.

The scholars come from some of the following world universities: Princeton University, Yale, Harvard, University of Michigan, Duke University, Dartmouth College, University of Cambridge, Georgetown University, Columbia University, American University in Cairo, University of California- Berkeley, University of Tokyo, University of Oxford and the University of Toronto.

The tiny, gas-rich emirate has pumped tens of millions of dollars through obscure funding networks to hard-line Syrian rebels and extremist Salafists, building a foreign policy that punches above its weight. After years of acquiescing — even taking advantage of its ally’s meddling — Washington may finally be punching back.

ABU DHABI and DOHA — Behind a glittering mall near Doha’s city center sits the quiet restaurant where Hossam used to run his Syrian rebel brigade. At the battalion’s peak in 2012 and 2013, he had 13,000 men under his control near the eastern city of Deir Ezzor. “Part of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), they are loyal to me,” he said over sweet tea and sugary pastries this spring. “I had a good team to fight.”

Hossam, a middle-aged Syrian expat, owns several restaurants throughout Doha, Qatar, catering mostly to the country’s upper crust. The food is excellent, and at night the tables are packed with well-dressed Qataris, Westerners, and Arabs. Some of his revenue still goes toward supporting brigades and civilians with humanitarian goods — blankets, food, even cigarettes.

He insists that he has stopped sending money to the battle, for now. His brigade’s funds came, at least in part, from Qatar, he says, under the discretion of then Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khalid bin Mohammed Al Attiyah. But the injection of cash was ad hoc: Dozens of other brigades like his received initial start-up funding, and only some continued to receive Qatari support as the months wore on. When the funds ran out in mid-2013, his fighters sought support elsewhere. “Money plays a big role in the FSA, and on that front, we didn’t have,” he explained.

Hossam is a peripheral figure in a vast Qatari network of Islamist-leaning proxies that spans former Syrian generals, Taliban insurgents, Somali Islamists, and Sudanese rebels. He left home in 1996 after more than a decade under pressure from the Syrian regime for his sympathy with the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of his friends were killed in a massacre of the group in Hama province in 1982 by then President Hafez al-Assad. He finally found refuge here in Qatar and built his business and contacts slowly. Mostly, he laid low; Doha used to be quite welcoming to the young President Bashar al-Assad and his elegant wife, who were often spotted in the high-end fashion boutiques before the revolt broke out in 2011.