RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.mandateforpalestine.org/

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/07/24/mandate-for-palestine-still-matters-90-years-later

Today marks the 90th anniversary of the “Mandate for Palestine” – A legally binding document published by League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations.

Until the United Nations remembers and accepts its obligation under the Mandate for Palestine, a genuine peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors is likely to remain elusive.
Israelis and friends of the Jewish State alike are accustomed to the never-ending scorn the United Nations heaps on the Middle East’s only free democracy, never mind its desire for peace with all of its Arab neighbors. It may seem unfathomable that the very same institution was ultimately responsible for the creation of Israel nearly 65 years ago.

Today marks the 90th anniversary that the League of Nations, the forerunner of the UN, published the legally binding document “Mandate for Palestine.” The Mandate’s roots can be traced to the founding of modern Zionism in August 1897 and the Balfour Declaration of November 1917.

After witnessing the spread of anti-Semitism around the world, Theodor Herzl felt compelled to create a political movement with the goal of establishing a Jewish National Home in historic Palestine, and he assembled the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. During World War I, Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour simply expressed Great Britain’s view with favor for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

In contrast, the Mandate is the multilateral binding agreement which laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in the geographical area called Palestine, the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law.

The Mandate was not a naive vision briefly embraced by the international community. The entire League of Nations – 51 countries – unanimously declared on that July 24th, 1922: “Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

Washington went a step further: in September of that year, President Warren Harding signed the Lodge-Fish Joint Resolution, which had passed both Houses of Congress without dissent, which read, “Favors the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people.”

The Mandate clearly differentiates between political rights referring to Jewish self-determination as an emerging polity—and civil and religious rights, referring to guarantees of equal personal freedoms to non-Jewish residents as individuals and within select communities. Not once are Arabs as a people mentioned in the Mandate for Palestine. Nowhere in the document is there any granting of political rights to Arabs.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11947

“Daniel, why do you repeat the canard that without Israeli concessions, the “Palestinian problem” will never be resolved and the Arab-Israel conflict will continue ad infinitum? It’s like Hitler Big Lie. For the Islamic world everything Jewish is “illegal”. Everything is “stolen land”.”

Daniel Gordis of the Shalem Center signed the US “Jewish leaders” letter to the Prime Minister asking him not to act on the Levy Report which said that Israel is not an occupying power in Judea and Samaria. Meotti fis shocked and disappointed.
The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary.

Dear Daniel,

I felt the need to write you because we had a warm chat a while ago, I enjoyed your book “Saving Israel” and you reviewed my book, “A New Shoah”, positively.

But I read with deep sadness your open letter to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, published in Haaretz newspaper and asking him to reject Justice Levy’s Report recommending Israel to legalize the Judea and Samaria outposts (the report’s revolution is in stating that the Jewish State is not an occupying power).

Unfortunately, the settler public has been marked with the scarlet letter of murder and expulsion and now, their ethnic cleansing has also received the imprimatur of influential Jewish rabbis and Israeli personalities like you.

“Settlers” are not only the Jews whom avant guarde, “enlightened” Westerners love to hate and the first target of the Palestinian Jihad. They are also the sacrifical lamb of Jewish suicidal temptations.

You know that the real issue in the Arab-Israel conflict is and always has been the ownership of the land.

That’s why Rome, in its effort to erase the Jews and their title to the holy land, renamed it “Palestine”. The Treaty of Sevres codified into international law the San Remo award of 98% of Turkey’s empire to Arab nations-to-be; the 2 percent called “Palestine” went, in Balfour terms, for the Jews.

Vandals threw religious objects and shattered windows at the synagogue of Noisy-le-Grand of the Seine-Saint-Denis district

http://www.timesofisrael.com/

A synagogue in Paris was vandalized for the third time in 10 days.

Vandals threw prayer books and tallis shawls to the floor and shattered windows at the synagogue of Noisy-le-Grand of the Seine-Saint-Denis district, according to The Algemeiner. The only items stolen were two vacuum cleaners, synagogue caretaker Maurice Zana told Anach Infos, a French-language Jewish news website, according to The Algemeiner.

“They must have been upset that there was nothing else to take,” he reportedly said.

After the incident, the French anti-Semitism watchdog group, the Bureau National de Vigilance Contr L’Antisemtisme (BNVCA), called for additional security measures to be implemented.

“Despite the measures taken, things persist, and I think that we need additional legislation, because the Jewish community is angered,” BNVCA president Sammy Ghozlan told The Algemeiner.

Rumble Over ObamaCare — on The Glazov Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
Leftist activist Brandelynn Turner confronts Dwight Schultz and Rob Nelson on the U.S. health care system — and mayhem breaks out.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/war-breaks-out-over-scott-walker-on-the-glazov-gang-1/

Administration approves controversial export license allowing sensitive space technology transfer to China http://freebeacon.com/obamas-lost-in-space/ The Obama administration recently notified Congress that it has agreed to license exports of sensitive U.S. space technology to China from a U.S. company that was fined in the past for illegally supplying space support that improved Chinese ballistic missiles.The State Department’s […]

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/07/13/lawrence-solomon-the-lost-tribe-of-obama/
Rants against the rich, anti-Israeli ideology turn off funds

Jews provide an estimated 50% to 60% of the entire funding of the Democratic Party, making them vital to President Barack Obama’s prospects for re-election. But many Jews are now questioning their commitment to Obama, not least when it comes to pulling out their chequebooks. Some Jews are disappointed with Obama, others angry at him, still others downright fearful, leading to dry holes in Obama’s prospecting for funds and gushers of cash for Republican challenger Mitt Romney. According to a poll published last fall, only 64% of Jews who had donated to Obama’s 2008 campaign planned to support him again.

How could Obama have lost so many of his Jewish supporters, a group that gave him almost 80% of their vote in 2008? Obama blames Republicans for spreading bigotry, such as the claim Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim, and counters that he’s as good as it gets for Jews. Obama reportedly told a group of rabbis visiting the White House in May that all of his Chicago friends were Jewish, that he’s well read on Judaism, and that he “probably knows about Judaism more than any other president.” Burnishing this image of himself, Obama doubtless appreciates a New York magazine cover story, titled The First Jewish President, that illustrated Obama in a skull cap.

But the estrangement of Jewish Democrats from Obama has nothing to do with his Muslim name and everything to do with how Jews now perceive him and his policies. This “Jewish president,” so confident of his knowledge of Jews, badly misread the Jewish community. His misreading could cost him the money he needs to win re-election.

Obama certainly is steeped in a Jewish milieu. The men most responsible for engineering his political strategies and running his campaigns — David Plouffe and David Axelrod — are both savvy Jews, as are most of his top economic advisors and his current and former chief of staff. J Street, the George Soros funded “pro-Israel” advocacy group, has Obama’s ear, having visited the White House numerous times since he became president, as has Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union. But Obama’s familiarity with Jews extends well beyond this contemporary crew.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3186/syria-christians “Christians are being ethnically cleansed throughout the Middle East.” — Ken Blackwell, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. A mass exodus of Christians, including a group evacuated from the besieged city of Homs, have been fleeing Syrian cities for safety. Caught in the middle of a showdown between opposition forces and the Syrian army, many […]

The Call for July 22, 2012: “Russian Ambitions in the Middle East’

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/the-gate

The Gate conducts regular conference calls with a group of journalists and invited experts. An edited transcript of a July 22 roundtable is below

1. Russia will maintain its presence in Syria at all costs in order to prevent a repeat of the NATO Libya intervention last year—even if this is unlikely in an election year.
2. The Free Syrian Army is a tribal and confessional patchwork not presently capable of ruling.
3. Assad is likely to survive, possibly by creating an Alawite enclave surrounded by a chaotic tribal region in which various Sunni factions contend for power; Russia would back this.
4. Russia is additionally concerned about Islamist elements in Syria igniting trouble in its own Muslim regions, and is worried that Syrian chemical weapons might end up in the hands of terrorists.

Participating:

David Samuels, literary editor, Tablet and contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine

Pepe Escobar, Roving Correspondent, the Asia Times

David P. Goldman, “Spengler” columnist at Asia Times and PJ Media and president of Macrostrategy LLC

Guests:

Jim Davis, President, South Shore Consultants

Tony Badran: Across the Bay blog, Fellow at Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

http://www.dianamuirappelbaum.com/?p=766

It is hard to make a living telling stories about yourself. Since one lifetime will contain only so many good stories, it is pretty easy to see what would tempt someone like Mike Daisey to just make stuff up – it sells.

Ahmed Mahmoud apparently thought so, too. By his own description he is a “Palestinian writer, director and academic based in the UK”. He is working on a novel, but last year he published an essay about his family. Problem is, he appears to have greatly enhanced the drama of his childhood by making stuff up.

I imagine that Masoud or his supporters will use the Mike Daisey defense, “If you think this story is bigger than that story, something is wrong with your priorities.” Lying is fine as long as it’s for a good cause, the ends justify the means. But I hope he doesn’t. I hope that he simply apologizes, and pledges to stick to the truth going forward. I don’t have a lot of hope that he will, since he has already failed to respond to the evidence of fabulism.

http://www.dianamuirappelbaum.com/?p=792#.UA2jZujYBHg.email

A French-born, Muslim Berber filmmaker helps us understand why Morroco was the world’s most complex Jewish community, and perhaps the most paradigmatic.

How old is the community? We don’t really know, although a Moroccan archaeological museum preserves an oil lamb impressed with a menorah discovered in the Roman city of Volubilis. The Jews may have stayed after the Romans left, living among the Berber people who lived in Morocco before and after the Romans, speaking languages whose Berber descendent tongues are still spoken in the mountains of southern Morocco.

Kamal Hachkar, the young French high school teacher who brought his first film to the New York Sephardic Film Festival this spring, grew up speaking Arabic, French and Berber, especially on visits to his grandparents in Tinghir, a Berber oasis city east of the Atlas Mountains. As a young adult, he was surprised to learn that his grandparent’s Berber Muslim town once had a substantial Jewish community.