RUTHFULLY YOURS

Because it’s celebrated during the Christmas season, Hanukah is badly understood. It’s not a Jewish Christmas, or even — strictly speaking — a religious holiday. It was the ancient Israelis’ Fourth of July, and its (true) story was deeply influential in the creation of the United States.

A little background: In the earliest historical (non-biblical) records, the land of Israel — which corresponds to modern Israel, the West Bank, and western Jordan — was divided into two Hebrew kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judea in the south. In 720 b.c., the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria, and its inhabitants were sold into slavery; these are the so-called “ten lost tribes”; of the original twelve Hebrew tribes, ten lived in Israel, and the other two, Judah and Benjamin, in Judea. (Virtually all modern Jews descend from those two tribes.) After conquering Israel, the Assyrians laid siege to the Judean capital, Jerusalem. The siege failed, and peace terms were negotiated. Instead of being annihilated, Judea became a client state of the Assyrian Empire.

When Assyria began its decline in the seventh century b.c., Judea regained its independence. It stayed independent until 586 b.c., when it was conquered by the Babylonian Empire. In 539 b.c., Babylon fell to the Persian Empire, wherein Judea remained until 332 b.c., when it — along with the rest of the world — was conquered by Alexander the Great.

Alexander had a soft spot for the Jews (possibly because his teacher, Aristotle, had studied with a Jew; possibly because a Jewish legend predicted that a Greek would vanquish the Persian Empire). He annihilated Gaza, but passed through Judea in peace, reportedly stopping in Jerusalem to give an offering at the Temple. Judea became part of the Greek Empire, but the Judeans were allowed to maintain their independent legislative-judicial system, and to continue to practice Judaism.

When Alexander died, his empire was split up by his generals. Judea became the northernmost part of the Ptolemaic (Greek–Egyptian) kingdom until 200 b.c., when it was captured by the (Syrian–Greek) Seleucids. At first, the Seleucids granted the Jews permission to continue to “live according to their ancestral customs,” but that decree was revoked in 175 b.c., when Judea was invaded by King Antiochus IV, who was determined to put it under direct Seleucid control. He captured Jerusalem, banned Judaism, and dedicated the Jewish Temple to Zeus. This is where the story of Hanukah begins.

In her response to what appears to be a deadly, ISIS-motivated domestic terror attack, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has offered an almost Onion-level self-parody of liberal pieties.

Per Obama administration protocol, the attorney general was determined to never let a crisis go to waste. There is now a “wonderful opportunity and wonderful moment to really make significant change,” Lynch declared the day after 14 innocent Americans were murdered and 23 injured at the hands of a Muslim couple who’d reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS. And what is this change? New gun-control measures, of course, including stripping the constitutional rights (without due process) of Americans often arbitrarily placed on the vastly over-inclusive terror watch list.

Lynch addressed the Muslim Advocate’s tenth-anniversary dinner and declared that she is concerned about an “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric . . . that fear is my greatest fear.” Her greatest fear is — not terrorism — but a nonexistent Islamophobic backlash? ISIS has demonstrated that it can bring down passenger jets, strike the heart of a great Western capitol with urban assault teams, and inspire horrible carnage in California. We also know that ISIS has pledged to keep attacking the U.S. and possesses chemical weapons. Yet it’s politically incorrect speech that strikes fear into the heart of our attorney general.

D.C.’s delegate to Congress today asked “what can we do about the irrationally negative views of Islam and Muslims that have grown since 9/11” after a prayer service at Northern Virginia mosque Dar Al-Hijrah.

The Falls Church mosque was home to imam Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born al-Qaeda recruiter whose videos continue to inspire jihadists today. Sept. 11 hijackers Hani Hanjour and Nawaf al-Hazmi attended prayer services at the mosque, as noted in the 9/11 Commission report.

Besides D.C.’s Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) attended Friday’s prayer service to show solidarity with the local Muslim community.

At a press conference after prayers, Norton said “one might ask what a small band of members of Congress can do to counter indiscriminate bigotry against Muslim Americans.”

“What can we do when the loudest voices preaching Islamophobia are amplified daily? The three of us would have to concede not much, although we know of many more members who would have joined us today had Congress not adjourned yesterday, and many are attending services at mosques in their home districts,” she said.

The Senate voted 52-47 to gut Obamacare, strengthening a House passed bill that many conservatives – including Ted Cruz and Mike Lee – didn’t think went far enough.

The House vote on the amended version will come in the next few days and is almost certain to pass. This means that for the first time, President Obama will be forced to veto an Obamacare repeal bill – a prospect that many political experts think will benefit Republicans.

Obamacare is slowly melting down as exchanges are shuttered, insurance companies are pulling out, and fewer healthy people are signing up for coverage. The writing is on the wall and Republicans are salivating about running against the unpopular program.

The Hill:

The vote caps weeks of intense and at times acrimonious debate within the Senate GOP conference over how far the repeal should go.

Conservative Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who are running for president, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) threatened to oppose a House-passed repeal bill for not going far enough.

Three moderates, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), balked at it for including language defunding Planned Parenthood.

GOP leaders briefly floated the possibility of dropping the Planned Parenthood language but dropped the idea knowing it could spark a conservative backlash.

Instead, McConnell leaned on Cruz, Rubio and Lee to vote yes and sweetened the prospect by crafting an amendment that dramatically beefed up the Senate package. All three voted yes.

Little appreciated in the current debate on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the dramatic way the TPP will abrogate legislative authority permanently from the U.S. Congress to the president. TPP creates a commission with full power to amend the agreement, and an arbitration mechanism with the strength to enforce such amendments. The House and Senate gave up their rights to amend TPP, but they can still vote it down when it comes up for up-or-down votes in both chambers next year.

Although many people still labor under the delusion that TPP is a free trade agreement, the 5,544 page TPP regulates trade, the environment, immigration, patents, copyrights, and labor laws among the 12 countries that are participants and the additional countries that are expected to join. Consequently, in a post-TPP world, U.S. presidents could force almost any alteration in U.S. law simply by achieving support in the TPP commission for a U.S. specific modification to the TPP. Case in point today, Obama’s climate ambitions.

President Obama entered the White House believing that the “war on terror” was a misguided overreaction driven by political fear, and his government even stopped using the term. Seven years later Mr. Obama is presiding over a global jihadist revival that now threatens the American homeland more than at any time since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

That’s the distressing lesson of the recent spate of terror bombings that this week arrived at a center for the disabled in San Bernardino, California. FBI Director James Comey said Friday that his agency is now investigating Wednesday’s massacre of 14 people as an act of terrorism and that the two Muslim killers showed “indications of radicalization.”

Mr. Comey added that while there is no evidence so far that the killers were part of a larger terror cell or plot, there are some indications of potential foreign terror “inspiration.” The latter would have to mean Islamic State or al Qaeda, perhaps through the Internet.

The FBI director said more than once that the investigation is in the early stages, but he deserves support for speaking frankly about the evidence and dangers. Every instinct of this Administration, starting with the President, has been to minimize the terror risk on U.S. soil—perhaps because it contradicts Mr. Obama’s political belief that all we have to fear is fear of terrorism itself.