RUTHFULLY YOURS

When feminists fought to de-segregate all-male schools and allow women entry to the privileged world of the Ivy League, the argument was that girls were just as bright and ambitious as boys and deserved the opportunity to compete fairly in the most elite arenas. This was an argument based on women’s strength. Now we have colleges and universities acceding to feminist demands that women need special protection. Even though they have freedom to engage in sex, to visit boys’ rooms, to spend the night – they must be protected against the trauma (and alleged stigma) of facing the person they are accusing of forced sex. So the American right of the accused to challenge his accuser is subsumed under the rubric of shielding “victims of rape.” It will be interesting to see whether this rule applies in accusations of same-sex rape as well.

In the current case of Jack Montague, expelled from Yale during his senior year, the woman in question whose privacy is protected, had sex with him several times consensually but claims that on their fourth go-round, she did not give consent. After leaving his room subsequent to this “rape,” she returned and spent the night with him in his bed. A year later, she decided to report this non-consensual episode to the Title IX committee at Yale and the wheels of academic investigation and adjudication were set in motion. Each person was interrogated separately by the Yale Committee and a decision was reached based on the “preponderance of evidence,” which differs from the evidence needed for criminal convictions. A strong argument could be made that by expelling Jack Montague, he received a life sentence, losing both his place as captain of the Yale Basketball Team and his diploma from a university whose tuition now amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars without a graduation degree.

Furthermore, Jack Montague’s name is plastered all over the media while his consenting sex partner for 3 out of 4 encounters is treated by archaic standards – as if her reputation would be ruined by divulgence of her name, her complicity or her non-consent. Or equally old-fashioned in the age of social media, that she would be further traumatized by the public gaze added to her non-consensual rape. We know of course that there have been other instances of accusations by women that have turned out to be false – the most famous being the Duke Lacrosse team affair. What does a woman have to lose by lying if her name and background are never revealed? And if the committee had found Jack Montague’s story more believable than hers, would she have been expelled for lying and/or false accusation? Or is expulsion only the burden to be borne by male students on their wider shoulders. How easily and conveniently we slip back into stereotypes of the damsel in distress when a political agenda is at stake.

The stabbing spree in Israel by Palestinian terrorists continues unabated. Even when an American citizen visiting Israel is killed “What me worry? President Obama” is unfazed. At this point in his presidency Obama has only one goal: burnishing his legacy.

To augment the chapters of a future history I believe he intends to accomplish what none of his predecessors could – a Middle East settlement. And he intends to achieve this lofty goal through imposition. This president will not wander through the tall weeds of negotiation and give and take. Nor is he obliged to adhere to 242, the international law that requires an exchange between Israel and the Palestinian Authority before any settlement. He intends to propose a “two state solution” to the U.N. Security Council, a body already predisposed to accept the idea.

President Obama is not likely to call on his Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate before he engages in this initiative. This is his call, yet another example of his imperial presidency. He is also likely to face almost no resistance in the United Nations where many Arab states have recognized the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a legitimate state. The irony, of course, is that the PA is to a state what a meal is to a morsel of food.

Were it not for Israeli largess, international aid and U.S. support the PA could not exist. The West Bank’s so called leader, Abu Abbas, has been serving as president for 12 years after a four year term. Corruption is rampant in every area controlled by Arab leadership. The police function – to maintain a semblance of order – is underwritten by the United States. Hamas and ISIS have penetrated underground cells in Ramallah and other areas. While a tenuous relationship exists between Jews and Arabs in the region, Israeli businesses provide many of the job opportunities for Arabs, even the most disenchanted.

Into this morass enters President Obama, or so I believe. Recognizing the futility of attempting to secure Congressional support, the president is a lone ranger using the agency of the United Nations for his agenda. Since the P5+1 deal over the Iranian nuclear program, it is clear the president has channeled foreign policy through the United Nations. It is also clear he assumes his status as commander and chief gives him, ipso facto, authority for unilateral foreign policy decisions.

Since he has already alienated Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and, considering his lame duck status, cannot experience any further political fall-out from his UN posturing, this action will be widely admired in the Arab world, perhaps even altering a widely shared negative opinion of the president. And who knows, maybe it results in deals and post-presidential speaking fees ala Bill Clinton.

Last week, the deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Hossein Salami boasted that Iran has ten times as many missiles as its Hezbollah proxy and threatened that those missiles “are ready to hit enemies and targets from different parts of the country.” By conservative estimates, Hezbollah has accumulated a stockpile of roughly 100,000 missiles. If Salami’s boasts are to be believed, that means that the Iranians have accumulated a staggering missile arsenal of 1,000,000 or roughly one missile for every 8.5 Israelis.

The antagonistic comments followed two Iranian missile launches fired from Iran’s eastern Alborz mountain range. The missiles are said to have a range of 2,000 kilometers and are believed to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Written in both Hebrew and Farsi and emblazoned on the missiles was the phrase, “Israel must be wiped out from the face of the earth.”

If the threats written on the missiles were not clear enough, the head of the IRGC’s aerospace division, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, emphasized that the missile tests were designed to demonstrate that Israel was well within range of Iran’s missiles. He noted that the missiles were intended to “confront the Zionist regime” and that “Israel is surrounded by Islamic countries and it will not last long in a war. It will collapse even before being hit by these missiles.” Not to be outdone, other Iranian political and military officials weighed in with similar threats and bombast.

It appears that the launches were timed to coincide with Vice President Joe Biden’s recent trip to Israel. In response to the launches, Biden stated that “A nuclear-armed Iran is an absolutely unacceptable threat to Israel, to the region and the United States. And I want to reiterate which I know people still doubt here: If in fact they break the deal, we will act.” Biden however, qualified his remarks by stating, “And all their conventional activity outside of the deal is still beyond the deal, and we will and are attempting to act wherever we can find it.” The latter comment was deliberately designed to provide the administration with some wiggle room to argue that the Iranian missile launches constitute conventional weapons tests and therefore fall beyond the scope of the provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.