RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://daphneanson.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/french-intellectual-in-praise-of-israel.html

Unlike so many members of the “intelligentsia” in his country and elsewhere in the West, French economist and writer Guy Millière, who teaches at the University of Paris, is a staunch public champion of Israel:

“J’aime être en Israël, et j’aime le peuple israélien …. Je rentre en Europe, et en entendant ce que j’entends dire sur Israël, j’entends parler d’un pays où je ne suis jamais allé et où je ne puis me rendre, parce qu’il n’existe que dans la tête malade de ceux qui parlent.”

Perhaps it’s no accident that he’s also a conservative.

What follows are extracts, in translation from the French, of his impressions of Israel following his recent visit there for an academic conference:

“I just spent a week in Israel. It was a very short stay, and it will give me a good reason to come back – but do I need reasons to come back? The answer is no, because I love being in Israel, and I love the Israeli people.

This trip was an opportunity for me to give several lectures and meet hundreds of people. I know many of those who wanted to come hear me talk with me and could not for lack of space. I tell them this: it will only be postponed….

Being in Israel gave me the opportunity to meet friends, many, but also to immerse myself in places full of meaning. I cannot be in Jerusalem without thinking about all the spiritual past with which this town is loaded and without feeling that the harmonious beauty that is its is a much more harmonious beauty: the pervasive and palpable trace of more than two millennia of history.

I cannot take the road from Tel Aviv and not feel embraced by emotion at the thought of those who fought in the valley and the mountains to the rebirth of the country … I can only ponder the immensity of the progress in so little time … [now] one of the most modern, most innovative countries in the world.

…. The proximity of so many hostile countries around could not leave the mind. Near the edge of the Red Sea in Eilat there are three countries: Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The [Israeli] population lives calmly as if there was no threat, and one feels a quiet and determined strength in [Israel], far removed from the foolish and vile talk we can hear about it in France and Europe.

…..At the height of the Dead Sea, the road goes back between the Kingdom of Jordan and the Palestinian West Bank. It crosses Jewish villages and Arab villages. We glimpse, as elsewhere in Israel, very few police and a few soldiers. Again, the reality is far removed from the foolish and ignoble speeches you hear in France and Europe….

Arriving at Lake Tiberias … I decided to go through Nazareth, and I see that the Christian church … is surrounded by speakers spouting verses from the Koran, and placards predict the worst punishment for those who do not join the Muslim faith: traces of proselytism, the spirit of conquest and Islamic intolerance.

Along the road to Haifa, I encounter the signs of various companies, reminders that Israel is not only modern and innovative, but the first country in the world, per capita, in terms of technological innovations in several crucial areas ranging from biotechnology to medical artificial intelligence. One sees that in Israel, as in the Silicon Valley in the United States, there is rich creativity.

On the coast, cities like Netanya and Ashdod evoke in me their equivalents in California … the difference is that California is now bankrupt while Israel was not affected by the economic and financial crisis existing since 2008….

I spend an hour at Yad Vashem: I’ve already been. I come back every time, because it should never be forgotten. Strictly never.

… I go to Ofra, a Jewish town in Judea and Samaria – the first Jewish town in Judea and Samaria to have been rebuilt after Judea and Samaria were liberated from Jordanian occupation. Itamar, where the Fogel family was murdered, is nearby…. The people I meet at Ofra are kind, intelligent, forthcoming, extremely different from what is said about them in foolish and ignoble talk in France and Europe. One of them is a historian and wrote several books on Eretz Israel.

On ascending a hill, one sees throughout the region: there is land to cultivate, to build villages, huge empty spaces. Jewish villages protect themselves. If the Arabs were not impregnated with hatred and fanaticism, they could live in peace and cooperation with the Jewish villages, and they [the latter] would not have to protect themselves. I cross several times the security fence, and I write it here: it is aptly named. It is a barrier erected for safety. Hatred and fanaticism involve barrier and security measures.

I have read and listened to the inadmissible statements by Barack Obama regading “1967 borders”. I am mindful of the news: these statements do not surprise me at all. I know, since the time of the 2008 election campaign, Obama is an enemy of Israel and a friend to Islamists…. Netanyahu’s response and speech seem the least we can do … a legitimate reaction … In France and Europe, Obama is being cheered and Netanyahu booed. This is terrifyingly logic: it is consistent with the logic that I expose in Comme si se préparait une seconde Shoah.

I returned to Europe, and hearing what I hear about Israel, I hear about a country I’ve never been and where I cannot go, because it exists only in the sick head of those who speak of it.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
In his latest article via the antipodean J-Wire service (entitled “Palestine – Semantic Skullduggery Sinks Solutions”) Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer considers the meaning and impact of certain words and phrases.Writes David Singer:

‘The Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Information has now issued a book instructing Palestinian Arabs on the words they should use to replace ” the Israeli and American dissemination of poisoned terms”.

Palestinian Arabs are encouraged to use terms that indicate that Israel is the result of “a racist, colonialist endeavor,” and the book instructs Palestinians never to use the name “Israel” alone but instead to use the term “Israeli colonialism”.

To use “Israel” by itself is damaging, according to the PA, because to do so “describes Israel as a natural state”.

Whilst most of the misleading and deceptive terms to be employed are not new – the book highlights official PA approval and acceptance of the use of such terms in the semantic war that has been ongoing for the last 130 years – alongside the actual conflict that has been played out between Jews and Arabs during that period.

For example – the use of the term “West Bank” was introduced by Jordan in 1950 to replace the biblical names “Judea and Samaria” – names that had been used throughout the centuries and were still being used by the British Mandate authorities in 1948. This change of name has been an effective propaganda tool in trying to erase any Jewish connection with and entitlement to these areas after they were occupied by Jordan in the 1948 War of Independence and subsequently lost by Jordan to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War
Similarly the use of the term “freedom fighter” instead of the term “terrorist” has had an impact on the way the Jewish-Arab conflict has been perceived.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

The Kotel: For UNESCO, just a separation wall

This is how UNESCO in its World Wonders Project describes Jerusalem, the holiest of Judaism’s four holy cities, and the Western Wall, Judaism’s sacred site there, to which throughout the centuries (except when put out of bounds to them) Jews have flocked to pray:

“As a holy city for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Jerusalem has always been of great symbolic importance. Among its 220 historic monuments, the Dome of the Rock stands out: built in the 7th century, it is decorated with beautiful geometric and floral motifs. It is recognized by all three religions as the site of Abraham’s sacrifice. The Wailing Wall delimits the quarters of the different religious communities, while the Resurrection rotunda in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre houses Christ’s tomb.”

Notice the silence regarding the biblical significance of Jerusalem, the City of David.

Notice the use of the old term “Wailing Wall”, which is usually avoided nowadays. No doubt mention of the “Western Wall” would have had to have been followed by something like “which is all that remains of the Second Temple, built about 19 BCE on the site of the very much earlier one built by King Solomon.”

That would have been a reminder of its antiquity, and of the ancient Jewish presence in the Land, and that would never do.

For, needless to say, this terse, inadequate description is hardly an accident, hardly an innocent error by some bumbling, ignorant clerical assistant on UNESCO’s staff.

The entire passage constitutes an exercise in politically motivated historical revisionism, an ignoble and deliberate censorship regarding Jerusalem: its pivotal importance in Jewish history, in Judaism, and in the Jewish psyche.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ A lawless society is a depressing place to live because it’s a place completely without law. And while going lawless might be appealing, we aren’t talking about an end to laws requiring you to wear bicycle helmets or drink small sodas. Not even laws ordering you to pay recycle, pay taxes and join up […]

Just in case you were thinking there’s no way Romney could blow this thing … http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/ Obama issues an executive order that is his most egregious assault yet on the separation-of-powers foundation of our constitutional system, regardless whether the subject matter was immigration or tiddlywinks, and Mitt Romney’s big problem with it is — wait […]

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/ahmadinejad-in-rio/?print=1 It is by now a scene so familiar it’s become routine. At your expense, dear taxpayers of the planet — and especially at the expense of all you colonialist, imperialist, capitalist taxpayers of the United States — the United Nations holds a huge gathering. Eminences and excellencies jet in from around the globe, and […]

William Hazlitt on Barack Obama, Or: Why the Ridiculous Is no Laughing Matter

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/06/23/william-hazlitt-on-barack-obama-or-why-the-ridiculous-is-no-laughing-matter/?singlepage=true

“Those who lack delicacy,” Hazlitt observed, “hold us in their power.” All rumors to the contrary, and despite the principle enunciated by Jorgé Luis Borges that allows us to speak of such prodigies as Wordsworth’s influence on Milton, Hazlitt was not writing about Barack Obama. Yet he might have been, just as he might have been writing about Obama and his administration (calling you, Eric Holder) that “gentlemen are no match for blackguards.” The reason is not far to seek. “The former,” Hazlitt explains, “are on the their honour, act on the square,” while the latter, . . . well, you know.

A gentleman, for example, does not lie under oath. On September 7th, 2011, Eric Holder denied to Darrell Issa’s congressional committee that knowledge of Fast and Furious, the convert gun-walking program that left dozens of Mexican’s and U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry dead, did not reach “into the upper levels of the Justice Department.” “I don’t think,” said the attorney general, that is is “supported by the facts.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/an_iron_curtain_descends_on_islamistan.html “An Iron Curtain has descended over half of Europe” said Winston Churchill’s in his historic Iron Curtain speech of 1946. It was ominous news for the West, but millions of people at that time were adult enough to listen. Unfortunately, we do not live in a time for adults today. We have certifiable ignoramuses […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/reinvigorated_islam.html Trauma, viruses, or bacteria cause the death of a biological entity. Viruses and bacteria are major killers of human beings and present great challenges to medicine. They can be deadly and have the uncanny ability to mutate. Yet they are there for their mission of ending life. Life exists due to balance: body and […]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/iraqi-government-to-the-united-states-return-our-torah-scrolls/

Iraq to the United States: Give us back our Torahs and Talmuds Baghdad officials claim the US took away thousands of ancient Babylonian artifacts in 2006
By Elhanan Miller

The United States has taken hold of 90 percent of Iraq’s national
archives, and is refusing to return thousands of precious Jewish
documents and manuscripts, Iraqi government officials are claiming.

According to Iraq’s Ministry of Culture, in 2006, American authorities
received some 3,000 ancient documents and 1,700 artifacts dating back
to the Babylonian era through an agreement with Iraq’s Antiquities
Authority for the purpose of restoration. However, the officials now
say, the US is still “holding the artifacts prisoner” in what they
term “a cultural Guantanamo.”