RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/uc-irvine-students-vote-for-israel-divestment-but-have-no-investments-to-divest/2012/11/14/

The Resolution was introduced by Sabreen Shalabi, and seconded by Shadi Jafari, with support from Ali Abunimeh and Noam Chomsky.Late last night, November 13, there was a unanimous vote at a California school for divestment from certain companies that do business with Israel. Unanimous, 16 -0.

There are, however, several points militating against an uptick in alarm.

For one thing, the school at which this took place was the University of California at Irvine. Yes, the school that allowed students to repeatedly disrupt Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, in 2010. Eleven of those hooligans were charged and convicted of conspiracy and disrupting a public meeting. Those convictions were obtained despite the efforts of many UCIrvine faculty members, including a large number of Jewish Studies department faculty.

But more importantly, the vote was taken by the UC Irvine Student Government, which, in all likelihood, does not have any investments in the targeted companies, or any other companies, for that matter.

The student government also called on the UC Irvine administration to divest from the named companies, but a student group’s call on its university to take the students’ investment advice is not exactly like money in (or, in this case, out of) the bank.

While the vote was really the equivalent of a small group of children shouting at those acting in loco parentis to take its investment advice, last night’s effort by anti-Israel student leadership at UCI is noteworthy for a small shift in tactic.

Although the Resolution repeatedly compared Israeli activity to Apartheid South Africa, the student government Resolution only sought divestment from those companies it deemed to provide support for the Security Fence, the demolition of “Palestinian” homes, and the building or maintenance of the “illegal Israeli settlements” on “occupied Palestinian territory.” In the past, calls for divestment from Israel typically called for divestment from any company doing business in Israel, which was the South Africa Apartheid divestment model.

The nitty gritty details, that is, that it was a student group that voted to divest its own (non-existent) financial holdings from certain companies – and was not the vote by a university to divest its holdings from companies doing business in Israel – was completely lost on most other media reporting on the vote. Professional Israel haters such as Ali Abunimeh and Noam Chomsky were quick to add their support, as were Muslim Student Associations and other anti-Israel groups across the country. To see the misguided glee, check on twitter #IrvineDivest.

Resisting War, Terrorism, And Genocide (Second of Three Parts) Israel, with an understandable desperation, still seeks to discover some discernible correctness and reassuring clarity in the theatre of world politics. However, the polite diplomatic meanings with which it is pressed to “make peace” remain squalid and elusive. Ominously, these meanings continue to seethe menacingly. A […]

http://nsroundtable.org/as-we-see-it/operation-not-taking-it-anymore/

In response to hundreds of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip by Hamas and Islamic Jihad into southern Israel, Israel has begun a military campaign named “Operation Pillar of Defense.”

You can read about it below, but here are some things to keep in mind:

The Israeli government “instructed the Foreign Ministry to begin a diplomatic public relations campaign to explain that Israel was acting in self-defense against military targets, because the continued rocket barrage had become intolerable.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/wap/Item.aspx?type=0&item=162074

WE AT AFSI THINK THEY NEVER WERE ANYTHING MORE THAN WHAT THE ARABS CALL A “HUDNA”…. A TEMPORARY CEASE FIRE SO THAT THE ENEMY ARMIES CAN REGROUP TO STRIKE AGAIN…..RSK

The Foreign Ministry says that since Abbas has destroyed the Oslo Accords by going to the UN, it will officially declare them canceled.

The Foreign Ministry has told its ambassadors to explain that the Palestinian Authority’s plan to ask for United Nations recognition is a violation of the Oslo Accords and may cause Israel to officially announce that it is “canceling them partially or completely.” The agreement commits the PA to negotiate with Israel for the establishment of an independent PA entity.
“You are asked immediately at the beginning of the work week to contact the foreign ministry, prime minister”s office, national security adviser or president”s office and request to do all possible to halt the Palestinian initiative because of its far-reaching consequences,” the ambassadors were instructed in a cable from Aharon Leshno-Yaar, director of the Foreign Ministry”s department for international organizations. Haaretz published the cable”s contents Wednesday morning.
“The Palestinian resolution is a clear violation of the fundamental principle of negotiations and is a violation of the agreements between Israel and the PLO,” the cable stated. “The adoption of the resolution will give Israel the right to re-evaluate previous agreements with the PLO and consider canceling them partially or completely, and would make progress in the peace process more difficult in the future.”
A position paper obtained by AFP states that if the UN General Assembly approves the Palestinian Authority’s request, “Toppling Abu Mazen’s (Abbas’) regime would be the only option. Any other option… would mean waving a white flag and admitting the failure of the Israeli leadership to deal with the challenge.”

International law is not a suicide pact. Relentless Hamas rocket attacks upon Israel from Gaza now leave Prime Minister Netanyahu little choice but to respond. This is not, however, a symmetrical “cycle of violence.” Rather, it is a classic case of criminality and anti-criminality, of terrorism and counter-terrorism. Ritually, Hamas alleges that it is merely […]

http://www.melaniephillips.com/israel-defends-itself-against-hundreds-of-rocket-attacks.-tut-tut

So here we go again. In the four days from Saturday until yesterday, Islamic terrorists under the Hamas umbrella fired more than 120 rockets from Gaza at Israeli civilians, along with a number of mortar shells. Some hit civilian homes and factories; some civilians were lightly wounded and others treated for shock. Some million or so inhabitants of southern Israel have been under siege from such attacks for years, with air raid sirens giving people just a few seconds to find shelter. If there weren’t so many shelters, there would be more casualties.

None of this has caused the slightest concern in Britain or the west. The rocket attacks have barely been reported. But today, Israel finally took action. In a targeted drone strike on Gaza it killed Ahmed Jabari, the leader of Hamas’s military wing and second-in-command of the Iranian proxy al-Qassam Brigades, a man who was linked to hundreds of terror operations and human bomb attacks over several decades, and his second-in-command, Raed Al Attar.

If you look at the video footage of the strike, you can see the care the Israelis took to avoid other casualties, waiting until the terror commanders’ car had passed other traffic before striking it.

Rocket attacks on Israelis are not news; Israeli military action to defend Israel against such attacks is. Suddenly, media indifference has been transformed into media hyperactivity. And in the eyes of the British media and foreign office Israel is at fault; astoundingly, it is apparently Israel which is responsible for inflaming the situation, not the Palestinians. Never mind the 120 rockets in four days or the 50 further rockets this evening, including 17 Grads fired at the city of Beersheva; or that since the beginning of 2011, 1,100 rocket have been fired on Israeli targets, 797 since the beginning of this year; or that a staggering 5274 rockets have been fired from Gaza at southern Israel since 2006 (what’s that – you had absolutely no idea about the scale of these attacks? Of course not – the British media haven’t bothered to report them. Didn’t you know? Israeli victims don’t count – especially when not enough of them actually die to meet the British definition of ‘proportionality’).

Revisionist History: Haifa University honors an admirer of a WWII war criminal On November 4th in Toronto, Haifa University conferred an honorary doctorate degree in philosophy on Jason Kenney, Canada’s immigration minister. Pro-Israel people certainly have reason to be fans of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government and specifically of Mr. Kenney, who in March condemned […]

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2314/Douglas-MacGregor-on-David-Petraeus.aspx

Time magazine:

“Petraeus is a remarkable piece of fiction created and promoted by neocons in government, the media and academia,” argues Douglas Macgregor, a retired and outspoken Army colonel and innovator, known for Breaking the Phalanx, his book taking the Army to task for the way it organizes and uses its ground forces.

Macgregor elaborates:

“How does an officer with no personal experience of direct fire combat in Panama or Desert Storm become a division CDR in 2003, man who for 35 years shamelessly reinforced whatever dumb idea his superior advanced regardless of its impact on soldiers, let alone the nation, a man who served repeatedly as a sycophantic aide-de-camp, military assistant and executive officer to four stars get so far? How does the same man who balked at closing with and destroying the enemy in 2003 in front of Baghdad agree to sacrifice more than a thousand American lives and destroy thousands of others installing Iranian national power in Baghdad with a surge that many in and out of uniform warned against? Then, how does this same man repeat the self-defeating tactics one more time in Afghanistan? The answer is simple: Petraeus was always a useful fool in the Leninist sense for his political superiors — Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Gates. And that is precisely how history will judge him.”

As noted, Macgregor can be outspoken.

Macgregor on Afghanistan here.

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2312/Finally-the-Clinton-Legacy-via-Saudi-Arabia.aspx= Finally, the Clinton Legacy (via Saudi Arabia) Nov 14 Written by: Diana West Wednesday, November 14, 2012 8:28 AM Saudi Arabia’s Turki al Faisal addressing Bill Clinton at Clinton Global Initiative shindig, September 25, 2012: “Muslims will never forget your deliverance of Bosnia-Herzogovenia and Kosovo, and near-deliverance, within 100 meters, of Palestine from occupation.”

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/11/14/time-to-move-on-from-the-gop/

Today is a monumentally important day that is being treated as a fait accompli by the Beltway ruling class and its partners, the legacy media. This morning, the Congress is scheduled to select its leaders for the coming session. If all goes according to plan, Republicans will double down on stupid – ignoring the conservatives who gave them control of the House and reappointing the same leadership team that turned the triumph of 2010 into the disaster of 2012.

In the historic 2010 midterm elections, conservatives gave Republicans a chance to prove that they’d repented of their huge-spending nanny-state ways. It was not that conservatives were won over by a Republican establishment that, during the Bush years, had run up an astounding $5 trillion of debt while creating new entitlements and launching an ill-conceived experiment in sharia-democracy building. Instead, it was that we needed to stop Obama’s doubly expensive gallop to the left, to a post-American rejection of our liberty culture. In the short term, Republicans were the only game in town.

Over the long haul, however, there were two alternatives: Either (a) the Republican party would prove that it had become an effective vehicle for advocating and using its power to begin putting into effect the dramatic change necessary to reverse – not just halt, reverse – the debt abyss and the metastasis of the central government; or (b) the Republican party would prove that it was not up to this challenge, would substitute lame excuses (“We only control one-half of one-third of the government”) for steely spines, and would therefore demonstrate that conservatives would be better off abandoning the GOP and establishing a new vehicle.

We’ve now seen enough to draw a conclusion: the Republican party says what it believes must be said to entice conservative votes at election time, but it is not remotely serious about implementing limited government policies or dealing with the two central challenges of our age, existentially threatening deficit spending and Islamic supremacism.

Under the leadership of progressive-lite House Speaker John Boehner and his fellow professional Washington moderates in the GOP Senate leadership, congressional Republicans agreed to budgeting that internalized into its baselines Obama’s exorbitant stimulus spending. They signed off on a reckless extension of the government’s line of credit to an astounding $16.4 trillion, then cynically insulted our intelligence by attempting to obscure and deny their approval of it – and presently, they are laying the groundwork to raise this “debt ceiling” it to a mind-boggling $19 trillion, the next stop on the road to $22 trillion and beyond. As Mark Steyn observes, the federal government now borrows a staggering $188 billion per hour, adding $1 trillion to the debt every nine months. Contrary to what the GOP tells you, none of this could happen without the approval of the Republican-controlled House.