RUTHFULLY YOURS

Tel Aviv
Here is what bias against Israel looks like. Three Israeli teenagers are abducted by the terrorist group Hamas, and after a desperate weeks-long search for the boys, they are finally found—dead in shallow graves near the site of the abduction. While all this is happening, Hamas instigates a new round of missile attacks from Gaza, firing 56 rockets at southern Israeli communities. The Obama administration’s response? Express sympathy but call on Israel to refrain from responding.

Moments after the news broke today that the bodies of the teenagers had been found, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. was “urging restraint”—that is, urging Israel not to respond to the murder of its citizens.

Likewise the president’s condolence statement concluded with an admonition that “all parties refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation.” Make no mistake—this is not a call on “all parties.” It is a call directly to Israel, as Hamas already acted to “destabilize the situation” by abducting and murdering three teenagers and it continues to “destabilize the situation” by launching dozens of rockets a day at Israel, including 16 this morning. Throughout this rocket campaign Obama issued no statements calling on Hamas to stop “destabilizing the situation.” Hamas is prosecuting a multifaceted terror offensive—and Obama’s position is to call on Israel not to respond, on the grounds that that would be “destabilizing.”

The murder of the teens and the rocket fire from Gaza are, of course, entirely the fault of Hamas. But it would be taking too narrow a view of the situation not to consider the way over the past five years the Obama administration has shaped the environment in which these events are unfolding.

A few examples: Israeli intelligence believes the Hamas cell that carried out the abduction was run by a Hamas leader who lives openly in Turkey. The Erdogan regime has, of course, made Turkey a comfortable haven for anti-Israel terrorists, allowing weapons smuggling to Hezbollah, staging the terror flotilla to Gaza in 2010, hosting (and feting) Hamas leaders, and so on. Obama’s protest? None. In fact, a few years ago Obama said that Erdogan was his favorite Middle East leader, and Obama over the years has offered nothing but lavish public praise for Erdogan.

Hillary Clinton needs a conscience transplant, and she needs it now. Her book tour is in a shambles, the fate of her $14 million advance from her publisher is marooned somewhere in limbo. She’s under 50 percent approval for the first time in the presidential polling for 2016, and, scariest of all, she’s having to call on Bubba for help. She knows better than to become merely “a wife of,” but 2014 is beginning to smell like 2008, and she’s Miss Inevitability once more. This is dj vu all over again.

Some of the learned pundits, who only yesterday were writing about “the five reasons why Hillary is a lock for the White House,” are writing now about “five reasons why Hillary won’t run.” The budding consensus is that (1) she’s just not very good at politics; (2) there’s no “fire in the tummy”; (3) who wants to clean up after Barack Obama, any way; (4) the country wants real change; and (5) another round of “Clinton, Bush, Clinton” with children of both families waiting in the wings, is thrilling nobody.

The pollsters, consultants and campaign wizards who are paid to know all the answers are puzzled by Hillary’s flopping around like a hen suddenly beheaded by events she was expected to control. “Even more than her dwindling leads over Republican contenders is that while she is pretty much running against herself, in a very high-profile book tour, she is losing ground,” says pollster John Zogby. “Her biggest problem is the inevitably factor. It helped do her in in 2007-2008, and right now it looks to be her major nemesis. She has this whole playing field to herself and is declining in the polls.” That’s definitely not good.

“….You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You’ve got to be carefully taught.” (rodgers and hammerstein, South Pacific)
It takes a consistently perverse education to produce young people willing and eager to smash the windshield of an ambulance carrying the murdered bodies of three teenage boys. You’ve got to be very brainwashed to want your child to self-immolate as long as he takes out some of those damned Jews in a holy war against the infidels. And the cult of death is not limited to people who have nothing to lose and nothing to live for – it thrives among the young and educated as well – people who believe that their martyrdom and subsequent rewards in the afterlife will be far superior to the joys of peace, love, family and personal achievement.

In 1948, after the establishment of the state of Israel was approved by the United Nations, the population of the infant state was 650,000. Since then, Israel has absorbed more than 3 million immigrants from all over the world, including the 900,000 expelled from Arab countries without any property, possessions or subsequent reparations. No special UN agency was established to deal with any of this yet all these people who spoke languages from every corner of the globe managed to learn Hebrew thanks to the government sponsored Ulpan program which immersed them in their new language and made them functionally conversational in less than a year. Though these immigrants were initially housed in temporary shelters, the government built housing for them as expeditiously as possible and succeeded in integrating them into the new country.

By contrast, the 729,000 Palestinians (UN number) who left or were ousted from their homes during the first Arab war against Israel were placed in refugee camps in various Arab countries after Israel miraculously vanquished their enemies. They were never given citizenship by the hosting countries, never offered permanent housing and in fact, purposely kept in a state of subjugation and poverty while their leadership skimmed the tills of American and European subsidized support. After the six-day war, when Israel regained control of areas in the west bank, they created neighborhoods for Palestinians who had been living in refugee camps and sought to do for them what they had done for their own immigrant population. Goaded by Arab opposition, this was condemned by the UN as a violation of the refugees’ “inalienable right of return” and the program was promptly suspended.

Are they dancing in Gaza? Are they giving out candy in Ramallah as they usually do when Jewish people grieve?

Who are these savages that rejoice at the misfortunes of their neighbors – and who are these savages that commit these atrocities?

We all know where we were when we first heard it: “The Three Abducted Israeli Teens Found Murdered.”

Their names are important: Eyal Yifrah, Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar. They should be remembered for all time because whatever children they were destined to produce, thousands into eternity, are now stillborn. So it is our duty to offer them and their families the gift and comfort of blessed remembrance.

These kids – they were the light of Israel. They were the best. This is a terrible loss.

What was the purpose of this? What the hell was the purpose? These Palestinian Arab monsters, Hamas or otherwise, they cannot be human.

We walk the same streets and yet we live a universe apart. We celebrate life. They celebrate death.

There can be a thousand peace processes but never can there be conciliation with such people.

All people, Jews or gentiles, who dare not defend themselves when they know they are in the right, who submit to punishment not because of what they have done but because of who they are, are already dead by their own decision; and whether or not they survive physically depends on chance. If circumstances are not favorable, they end up in gas chambers. (Bruno Bettelheim, Freud’s Vienna and Other Essays)

Bettelheim, like the Greek poet Homer, understands that the force that does not kill, that does not kill just yet, can turn a human being into stone, into a thing, even while it is still alive. Merely hanging ominously over the head of the vulnerable creature it can choose to kill at any moment, poised lasciviously to destroy breath in what it has somehow “graciously” allowed, if only for a few more moments, to breathe, this force indelicately mocks the fragile life it intends to consume.

As for the pitiable human being that stands helplessly before this force, he or she has already become a corpse.

Israel, in some respects, is becoming this “pitiable human being,” in macrocosm. Yes, of course, the country’s frustrated leaders will exact some sort of revenge, or perhaps even “justice,” for the most recent Palestinian murders of its children. Still, they will likely continue with the lethal pantomime of a purported “peace process.”

Even now, Mr. Netanyahu stands by his agreement to accept certain presumably de-fanged forms of Palestinian statehood. Even now, still feeling bound to comply with unwavering expectations from Washington, the Israeli Prime Minister has somehow managed to discover adequate reassurance in certain vain hopes for Palestinian “demilitarization.”

Researchers find major clue toward Alzheimer’s cure

Brain hyperactivity caused by protein binding may be important factor
in disease’s development: Israeli team

Researchers at Tel Aviv University believe they have tracked down one
of the main reasons for the seizures, memory loss and cognitive
impairment that Alzheimer’s patients suffer. Following up on the
finding may show the way toward a cure for the debilitating disease
that hobbles millions of seniors.

The research shows how a molecular mechanism involving proteins
interferes with brain neuron function and shifts them into dangerous
overdrive. The discovery gives researchers a clue towards solving the
Alzheimer’s puzzle, according to Dr. Inna Slutsky of TAU’s Sackler
Faculty of Medicine and Sagol School of Neuroscience.

“We have now identified the molecular players in hyperactivity,” said
Slutsky, adding that the discovery “may help to restore memory and
protect the brain.”

The Daily Iowan Editorial Board appears to have fallen prey to some very dangerous rhetoric – as though influenced by an un-American entity. Rather than provide an overview or opinion, their editorial presents a plethora of deceitful statements in defense of Islamic sharia law – preaching that it is compatible with religious liberty.

The Board began with an objection to a statement by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R), which was, “America did not create religious liberty, religious liberty created America.” Iowans, it is because of our Founding Fathers’ understanding about our sacrosanct, inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that they left their oppressive homeland and established a republic, America, in which to enjoy those rights – so it is their religious liberty that created America.

Their second brainstorm suggested that sharia be included with international law! International law is legal rules, regulations, and guidelines by which countries will interact with each other to solve international disputes. It does NOT mean that every country should cede its individuality and its citizens’ rights to a body – the United Nations, no less – that will impose its decisions and edicts over the entire world.

The UN is most often a biased, tyrannical assemblage whose Islamic voting block frequently overlooks the truths in the Middle East. The Organization of Islamic Conference of the UN pressures the rest of the countries to impose worldwide limits on free speech, limits demanded by sharia. Islamic countries are home to harshly dominated, long suffering citizens who live with poverty, illiteracy, severe restrictions, enslavement, and the most sadistically brutal, barbaric behavior of any classification of creatures. Their sharia must never be imposed on others.

The Board submitted that opposition to sharia law is opposition to religious freedom; this is blatant propaganda. Under sharia, there is no freedom of religion, speech, thought, artistic expression, press, equality of people or equal justice for different classes. Sharia is the antithesis of democracy and its purpose is to ban laws that conflict with dictatorial Islam. Sharia would destroy our American Constitution.

Because of Islamic sharia, traditional invocations at Friday night high school football games were banned in Santa Fe, Texas; a science teacher in Ohio was fired for having a classroom Bible; a New Jersey high school coach was banned from praying before a football game; prayer around a school flagpole was banned in Clay County, Florida; the Ten Commandments were removed from schools in Muldrow, Oklahoma; some Texans were told that flying their American flags was offensive – in America! Some schools are yielding to removing lunchroom foods that Muslims find offensive.

Sharia succeeds when Americans do not speak out. Islamized textbooks are used to indoctrinate students; jihad is being taught in California; schoolgirls were forced to wear full burqas in some states; some students were required to “become Muslims for two weeks and learn prayers; and Ohio students were taken, sans parental permission, on a field trip to pray in a mosque.

While there are people who mass-murder, one factor especially matters: whether around them are individuals, or a circle of individuals, who encourage them to mass murder.

The young men leaving Britain to go fight in Syria are not going in spite of the teachings of certain religious leaders, but because of them.

When Christians, Jews or even other Muslims and others are targeted around the world by Islamists, we even hope that this urge has nothing to do with any of the texts or books or preachings or encouragements in the milieu from which the perpetrators come.

Today in America, Britain and most other Western countries we are still governed by politicians and bureaucrats who refuse to identify the principal form of fanaticism that threatens us. We are governed by elites who hesitate to say — if they ever say — what distinguishes the current threat of our time, radical Islam, as the latest group of jihadists, ISIS, establishes beachheads in Syria and Iraq and plants its flag at the border of Jordan and Turkey. In the blancmange of political correctness, which this refusal entails, we hear of the threat of “extremism” and “radicalism” in general. This season there is even talk of “violent extremism” in particular, as though violent extremism is an event like the weather, which could affect almost any sufferer at any time.

Of course in some ways it is understandable that this pretence should have come about. Rightly, nobody should claim to be targeting all Muslims; so there is a nervousness about singling out what is different — namely, violence — in one especially prominent ideology at the moment. Sometimes this nervousness, and the resultant spreading of blame, appear to be a justification. It did a few years ago when Anders Breivik in Norway appeared to some to have just demonstrated that anybody might be persuaded to plant car bombs in a city center or gun down innocent people in a youth camp. This horror, perhaps more than any other recent event, is wheeled out to assist those who wish to avoid the main issue. Our countries at the time were filled with claims that anybody who had ever been critical of radical Islam had in some way contributed to Breivik’s non-Islamic atrocity. These claims often came from the same people who refuse to blame any wider circle of influence for the outrages of the jihadists. What was, and is, strangest here is that it fails to notice the two most important differences between mass-murderers, such as Breivik or Timothy McVeigh, and the rest of us — and the difference between them and the sort of Islamists who have just killed three Israeli teenagers and threaten countries around the globe.

A delegation of American Jews was expelled last week from the African Union Summit, to which it had been invited. This happened because the delegates from Egypt, Iran and South Africa could not stand seeing the American Jews wearing the traditional Jewish skullcap. Did any of our leaders, including the president of the Spanish government, make the slightest venture of disgust or disapproval? No.

Never has any country had to fight its enemies simultaneously on so many fronts. The Jewish people have the right to live in peace everywhere and Israel has the right to self-defense to achieve peace.

First, sincerest condolences to the families of the three Israeli teenagers brutally kidnapped and killed by Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank on June 12, and whose lifeless bodies were found Monday near Hebron. Naftali Frankel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach were killed for being three Jewish boys in a land where the enemies of Israel only aspire to generate terror, where they only dream of destroying the Jewish state by force. In the enemies’ twisted minds, killing Jews is a way to finish, if only a little, the State of Israel.

Israel knows all too well what suffering is all about. The anti-Jewish pogroms began almost a hundred years ago, well before the State of Israel was established, and before settlements, so hotly debated today, had begun to develop. If Jewish communities in Haifa or Hebron were under the threat of extinction in 1929, or in 1936 through 1939, it was because the Arabs have never accepted what the Bible and history teaches us: The Jewish people have roots in Palestine since time immemorial — thousands of years before Yasser Arafat invented the term “Palestinian people” in 1967. It is the same reason that the Arabs would not accept the 1947 UN partition plan to have two states, one for Arabs and the other for the Jewish people – precisely because one of them was for the Jewish people. And it is the same reason that they have suffered so many wars, intifadas, terror attacks, immoral delegitimization campaigns against Israel’s right to exist and repeated Iranian threats to “wipe Israel off the map.”

Unfortunately these three new murders have taken place in an increasingly problematic context for Israel and many Jewish communities in the world. Israel is an island of freedom and prosperity in an increasingly menacing and turbulent region. ISIS black flags are present at Gaza funerals; the Syrian war is destabilizing Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq; Fatah and Hamas have formed a new Palestinian coalition government, and there is no firm or coherent world reaction against a Palestinian Authority that has allied with terrorism. Further, the agreement with Iran that President Obama is cooking up does not guarantee that Tehran will renounce its current capability to make a nuclear bomb.

Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Frankel were abducted and murdered on the way home from a hike. There are no words to console the parents. For some, music is a balm.This is from one of the most beautiful series of songs by Mahler.
From Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) Poems by Friedrich Ruckert, Music by Gustav Mahler

“I often think: they have only just gone out”
I often think: they have only just gone out,

and now they will be coming back home.

The day is fine, don’t be dismayed,

They have just gone for a long walk.

Yes indeed, they have just gone out,

and now they are making their way home.

Don’t be dismayed, the day is fine,

they have simply made a journey to yonder heights.

They have just gone out ahead of us,

and will not be thinking of coming home.

We go to meet them on yonder heights

In the sunlight, the day is fine

On yonder heights.