RUTHFULLY YOURS

Israel’s prime minister has indicated it might shelve the two-state solution. How would the world react, and how much would it matter?

Why do people cling so passionately to political opinions, even when a preponderance of facts suggests their views might be wrong or incomplete? To the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind (2012), the arguments and narratives we present in defense of our positions are, in fact, “mostly post-hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.” As such, those constructions are often impervious to new information or alternative narratives. “Intuitions come first,” Haidt writes; “strategic reasoning second.”

So far as I know, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon do not have any special training in the fields of psychology or social theory. Yet these two politicians, who stand at the apex of Israel’s foreign and defense establishment, seem to have internalized Haidt’s conclusions years ago. Having done so, both have regarded with equanimity—some would say with disdain—the cacophony of righteous indignation and overweening certainty with which many pundits at home and abroad pronounce the coming fall of the Jewish state, the irreversible alienation of American Jewry, and the steady collapse of Israeli democracy.

In conversations with diplomats and journalists from abroad, someone in my business quickly learns how unassailable these narratives have become. It isn’t just that they are accepted universally and completely; they are accepted by many who lack the means or the will to summon the knowledge necessary to support such sweeping assurances.

How, then, are we to assess these prevailing theologies, which drive so much of the world’s perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? According to researchers like Haidt who study the human mind, all of us are at least partly lying our way through our politics. Should we then treat these warnings, however unexamined, with at least enough humility to consider whether they might be at least partly true?

In the war with ISIS, the U.S. needs genuine presidential leadership, not a utility infielder playing everyone else’s position.

Let us note briefly the commanding irony of Barack Obama delivering—hours before 9/11—the anti-terrorism speech that history required of his predecessor after September 11, 2001. There is one thing to say: If we are lucky, President Obama will hand off to his successor a terrorist enemy as diminished as the one George Bush, David Petraeus and many others left him.

If we’re lucky.

There is a story about Mr. Obama relevant to the war, battle or whatever he declared Wednesday evening against the Islamic State, aka ISIS. It is found in his former campaign manager David Plouffe’s account of the 2008 election, “The Audacity to Win.”

Mr. Plouffe writes that during an earlier election race, Mr. Obama had a “hard time allowing his campaign staff to take more responsibility.” To which Barack Obama answered: “I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it.” Audacity indeed.

In a 2008 New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza, Mr. Obama is quoted telling another aide: “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.” Also, “I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters.”

And here we are.

In the days before Mr. Obama’s ISIS address to the nation, news accounts cataloged his now-embarrassing statements about terrorism’s decline on his watch—the terrorists are JV teams, the tide of war is receding and all that.

Set aside that Mr. Obama outputted this viewpoint even as Nigeria’s homicidal Boko Haram kidnapped 275 schoolgirls, an act that appalled and galvanized the world into “Bring Back Our Girls.” No matter. Boko Haram slaughtered on, unabated.

Book Review: ’13 Hours in Benghazi’ by Mitchell Zuckoff with the Annex Security Team
The CIA contractors describe arming for battle, only to be told to ‘wait’ by their base chief as Americans were under assault half a mile away.

In a polarized time, in a polarized country, very little has been more polarizing than the national debate over the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

For critics of Barack Obama’s handling of national security, Benghazi is representative of his many failings. The administration failed to heed dire warnings before the attacks, failed to respond adequately as they unfolded and lied to cover up its mistakes afterward. For defenders of the White House, Benghazi has come to represent the excesses of Mr. Obama’s critics. Mitt Romney hastily condemned the president’s handling of Benghazi just hours after the attacks, before the facts were known. Republicans have been doing the same ever since. Or so the argument goes.

What’s most remarkable about the millions of words spoken and written during three years of debate is that none of them have come from the small group of American officials who were there. This finally changes with the publication of “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi,” written by Mitchell Zuckoff with five members of the team of six CIA contractors who fought in Libya that night. (One of them, Tyrone Woods, died during the attack on the CIA annex.) “13 Hours” is a crisply written, gripping narrative of the events of the battle in Benghazi that adds considerable detail to the public record of what happened there.

The authors acknowledge the rancorous debate upfront and announce that they don’t intend to join it. Their account “is not about what officials in the United States government knew, said or did after the attack, or about the ongoing controversy over talking points, electoral politics, and alleged conspiracies and cover-ups.”

Instead, it is about what happened that terrible night. The contractors—three ex-Marines, a former Army Ranger and two former Navy SEALs—were in Libya to provide protection for CIA case officers, and they sought to defend U.S. facilities and diplomats during the attacks. What the five survivors have to say is at once compelling and enthralling, infuriating and heartbreaking.

The BBC has been so busy with Israel that it has had no time to protect its own daughters. This is the crux of journalistic malpractice.

Journalism’s main role is to keep us informed. When it departs from that duty, there is chaos. Rotherham, for example.

That’s where more than 1,400 English girls were repeatedly raped over a period of 16 years. The girls were mostly Christian and white. The rapists were mostly Pakistanis living in or around the same northern England town, population 250,000, and since these crimes were committed by Muslims, or “Asian men” – hence, your cover-up.

Polite Society can’t handle the truth.

I learned about all this not from The New York Times (of course not), but it was Rich Lowry in the New York Post who opened my eyes.

I share this one paragraph as follows:

“An independent report released last week says, ‘It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated.’”

Former violinist with tremor regains ability to play while undergoing brain surgery

Naomi Elishuv, a former violinist at Lithuania’s national philharmonic orchestra, had to give up her beloved instrument 20 years ago when she was diagnosed in Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center with essential tremor. When she came on aliya, she performed at the chamber orchestra and conservatory of Givatayim. After the symptoms began, she learned that there was no medical intervention then that could have reversed it.

But on Wednesday, she returned to violin playing while being awake during brain surgery that treated her shaking.

“It’s a shame that I didn’t know about this operation before,” said Elishuv, as she manipulated her bow and touched the strings to produce a normal melody. “Now I’m going to live again.”

A video on YouTube shows the musician playing Mozart as behind a plastic curtain, Sourasky surgeons are painlessly fiddling with her brain to locate the spot that needed to be repaired with deep-brain stimulation.

“My great love is playing the violin, but for many years, I have had to make do with only teaching. The tremor didn’t allow me to play professionally, and this was very hard for a woman who was used to performing all her life,” she said before being wheeled into surgery.

Prof. Itzhak Fried, head of functional neurosurgery at the hospital who performed the operation, explained that he and his team installed a pacemaker with an electrode in the brain region that was damaged. Sterotactic technology was used to reach the area within a few millimeters. Only a local anesthetic was needed, as the brain itself does not feel pain. To find the exact region, Elishuv’s cooperation was needed to stop the tremor. As she played the violin – at first with very shaky notes and finally with a normal sound, the surgeons located the affected area. The electrode was inserted through a small hole made in her skull.

In a televised address this evening, President Barack Obama outlined his ideas on how to defeat the Islamic State. Along the way, he declared the organization variously known as ISIS or ISIL to be “not Islamic.”

In making this preposterous claim, Obama joins his two immediate predecessors in pronouncing on what is not Islamic. Bill Clinton called the Taliban treatment of women and children “a terrible perversion of Islam.” George W. Bush deemed that 9/11 and other acts of violence against innocents “violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith.”

None of the three has any basis for such assertions. To state the obvious: as non-Muslims and politicians, rather than Muslims and scholars, they are in no position to declare what is Islamic and what is not. As Bernard Lewis, a leading American authority of Islam, notes: “it is surely presumptuous for those who are not Muslims to say what is orthodox and what is heretical in Islam.” (That Obama was born and raised a Muslim has no relevance here, for he left the faith and cannot pronounce on it.)

Indeed, Obama compounds his predecessors’ errors and goes further: Clinton and Bush merely described certain actions (treatment of women and children, acts of violence against innocents) as un-Islamic, but Obama has dared to declare an entire organization (and quasi-state) to be “not Islamic.”

The only good thing about this idiocy? At least it’s better than the formulation by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (known as CAIR) which has the nerve to call ISIS “anti-Islamic.”

In the end, though, neither U.S. presidents nor Islamist apologists fool people. Anyone with eyes and ears realizes that ISIS, like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda before it, is 100 percent Islamic. And most Westerners, as indicated by detailed polling in Europe, do have eyes and ears. Over time, they are increasingly relying on common sense to conclude that ISIS is indeed profoundly Islamic. (September 10, 2014)

TED CRUZ: HATRED, BIGOTRY, OPPOSITION TO ISRAEL LED TO ME LEAVING EVENT
Reports surfaced Wednesday night that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was “booed off the stage” at an event hosted by a purportedly Christian organization.
Cruz, the keynote speaker at the new “In Defense Of Christians” organization’s dinner in Washington DC, had offered the crowd–a number of whom were Christians from the Middle East, including Palestinian Christians–public support for Israel. After doing so, some members of the crowd booed at Cruz, and they persisted until he left the stage, noting their hatred and saying he can’t stand with them if they don’t stand with Israel.
“Tonight, in Washington, should have been a night of unity as we came together for the inaugural event for a group that calls itself ‘In Defense of Christians.’ Instead, it unfortunately deteriorated into a shameful display of bigotry and hatred,” Cruz said in a statement provided to Breitbart News. “When I spoke in strong support of Israel and the Jewish people, who are being persecuted and murdered by the same vicious terrorists who are also slaughtering Christians, many Christians in the audience applauded. But, sadly, a vocal and angry minority of attendees at the conference tried to shout down my expression of solidarity with Israel.”

President Barack Obama has announced a plan for fighting the Islamic State (IS) militants.In an interview that preceded his speech Obama tried to sound confident: “Keep in mind that this is something that we know how to do. We’ve been dealing with terrorist threats for quite some time.”

The claim is unsettling. As it happens, “they” don’t know how to do it. “They” have been dealing with terrorist threats, hesitantly and with disastrous results. The rise of the IS in itself provides conclusive evidence of “their” overall ineptitude, and in particular “their” inability to collect reliable intelligence, anticipate events, and develop coherent strategies to protect American security interests in a volatile region.

“I want people to understand, though, is that over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of ISIL. We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We’re going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately we’re going to defeat ‘em,” Obama went on. There will be no American troops on the ground, but “because of American leadership, we have, I believe, a broad-based coalition internationally and regionally to be able to deal with the problem.”

Obama was alluding to a “coalition” that is strictly regional: his attempts at the recent NATO summit in Wales to obtain backing for a more “internationally based” coalition were an abject failure. Even Britain proved squeamish. He is now left with a would-be “coalition” of Sunni Muslim countries – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates – which have been aiding and abetting ISIS for years, and which have neither the will nor the resources to fight it. Obama will announce on Wednesday that he will rely on those countries to work together – with American air support and ill-defined overall “leadership” – in fighting the IS.

Those countries’ military forces are unable to confront an enemy which consists of highly motivated light infantry, knows the terrain, enjoys considerable popular support, and operates in small motorized formations. On the basis of its poor showing in Yemen it is clear that the Saudis in particular are no better than the Iraqi army which performed so miserably last June. Even when united in their overall strategic objectives, Arab armies are notoriously unable to develop integrated command and control systems – as was manifested in 1947-48, in the Seven-Day War of 1967, and in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Their junior officers are discouraged from making independent tactical decisions by their inept superiors who hate delegating authority. Both are, inevitably, products of a culture steeped in strictly hierarchical modes of thought and action. Furthermore, their expensive hardware integrated into hard to maneuver brigade-sized units is likely to be useless against an elusive enemy who will avoid pitched battles.

Last week here at PJ Media, I reported on the ongoing relations between the U.S.-backed “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army and ISIS. I also noted that, at this time last year, the received wisdom of the Washington, D.C. foreign policy establishment was that the Syrian rebels were largely moderate.

Now, a report in this past Sunday’s L.A. Times from the frontlines in Syria finds that another “vetted moderate” rebel group, Harakat Hazm – which has received anti-tank missiles from the U.S. — has been working with al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra: a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. (HT: Tim Furnish and Tom Joscelyn.)

As Al-Akhbar reported back in May, in addition to having U.S. backing, Harakat Hazm is also backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey, and Qatar.

As the L.A. Times reporter rides with two U.S.-backed and armed Harakat Hazm fighters, the topic of conversation turns to Jabhat al-Nusra:

Harakat Hazm, for example, has struggled with being regarded as a U.S. pawn and labeled as secular in the midst of an opposition movement that has grown increasingly Islamist.

“Inside Syria we became labeled as secularists and feared Nusra Front was going to battle us,” Zeidan said, referring to an Al Qaeda-linked rebel group that has been designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. Then he smiled and added, “But Nusra doesn’t fight us, we actually fight alongside them. We like Nusra.”

But the L.A. Times reporter then immediately adds:

In July, eight West-backed rebel brigades — all recipients of military aid — released a statement of “rejection of all forms of cooperation and coordination” with Al Nusra Front.

But at the same time Harakat Hazm was supposedly releasing a statement of “rejection of all forms of cooperation and coordination” with Nusra, it signed a statement of alliance with Nusra to prevent the Assad regime from advancing into Aleppo. The alliance statement was published on Twitter:

Shame of fake EU climate change “aid” to Third World

It is quite staggering that the EU is “helping” poverty stricken countries in Africa by pumping taxpayers’ money into, wait for it, “green energy”. The figures have to be seen to be believed

Last week the European Union announced it was giving €499 million in aid to one of Africa’s poorest countries, the Republic of Benin. With 40 percent of the population living below the poverty line, 65 percent lacking access to clean drinking water, and one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, there are few countries more deserving of our help.

Unfortunately for Benin, the EU is ignoring these issues completely and spending the overwhelming majority of the grant on green energy.

Of the €499 million, €450 million will be spent on “promoting renewable energies and energy efficiency” over the next seven years. Despite the staggeringly short supply of clean drinking water in Benin, a mere €19 million is being spent on improving drinking water. Clearly the bureaucrats of Brussels are more concerned with fighting climate change than they are ending poverty.

This is by no means the only example of the EU wasting foreign aid. In July Get Britain Out exposed the Eurocrats’ pocketing £340 million from the European Development fund. Only a week ago the EU pledged to spend €339 million on 21 developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Again a stunning €129 million is earmarked for promoting sustainable and renewable energy and dealing with climate change.

This brings the total amount of money pledged for foreign aid last week to €838 million – with €579 million being spent on energy and climate change. As Britain contributes 13 percent to EU funds, 87.5 million punds (€109 million) of the €838 million will come directly from the British taxpayer.

With the EU lavishing such a colossal sum on promoting renewable energy, whilst dressing it up as foreign aid, it is becoming increasingly clear Brussels cannot be trusted with member states’ aid budgets.

The EU would rather the poverty-stricken of the Third World die of thirst than well-off citizens use the ‘wrong’ light bulb. If we want to ensure the funds levied off the backs of the British taxpayer is going to the people who need it most, we must Get Britain Out of the EU.