RUTHFULLY YOURS

Three momentous events mark 1979 as the year in which modern jihad, having evolved over the course of the century, emerged as a global movement: the establishment of a theocratic regime in Iran, the siege of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. While the conditions for an Islamist explosion had existed for a long time, these events were the spark.

On April 1, 1979, following the overthrow of the shah and the return of the fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini from exile in France, the Shiite populace of Iran voted in a national referendum to become an Islamic republic. A new constitution outlined the central role of divine revelation in determining Iran’s laws, which would be based on the Koran and the Sunnah, the traditions of Islam. Then on November 4, a crowd of student protesters who were loyal to Khomeini and committed to taking their revolution to the “great Satan,” America, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans hostage. Most of them would remain in captivity until the day Ronald Reagan took Jimmy Carter’s place in the White House. Focused on rescuing their imprisoned countrymen, Americans had a poor understanding of the broader picture in Iran. The elderly Khomeini was not seen as a serious alternative to the royal Pahlavi family, who were friendly to the United States. But the revolutionary cleric and his new guard of religious fanatics were able to exploit the ancient Persian reserves of pride and resilience, quickly imposing a Shia version of theocracy in which Islam and politics were totally reintegrated. The mullahs of Tehran became the center of political as well as religious power in Tehran.
Mideast Two Revolutions

Demonstrators hold up a poster of exiled Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini during an anti-shah demonstration in Tehran in 1978 / AP

The Shia of Iran thus demonstrated to the world—including the Sunnis, many of whom would be envious—that the theocratic caliph- ate was viable in the modern world. It also demonstrated that Muslims not only should but could reject the Western separation of politics and faith. Modernity’s separation of Allah’s writ and governance could be reversed.

Just as important, the success of the Iranian revolution and the embassy attack proved that the United States, and by inference all other great powers, was not invulnerable. The Muslim world did not have to be the powerless victim of Western machinations, such as interference in Iran’s domestic affairs and overarching control of the geopolitics of the Middle East.

Last month, Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified before the Senate that the Department of Justice that she is considering taking legal action against energy industries dubious of the dire role of carbon emissions to change the climate. And Democratic attorneys general from numerous states are in hot pursuit of global warming heretics.

Before more partisan lawyering and congressional testimony clouds the climate change concern, let’s clear up what is known about this issue.

“Everything we know about the world’s climate — past, present, and future — we know through models.” So states professor Paul Edwards, a supporter of the “consensus” view of climate change, in the Introduction to his highly acclaimed book A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010). He also notes that “without models, there are no data.” [italics in original]

Models have become integral to modern scientific practice. In many fields, Edwards says “computer models complement or even replace laboratory experiments; analysis and simulation models have become principal means of data collection, prediction, and decision making.”

Such is the contemporary world of science aided by the powerful tool of modern computers. The three basic components of the scientific method — observation, hypothesis, and testing — still hold, but in many cases the testing portion has been abetted, if not in some cases usurped, by models.

As many challengers of the manmade disastrous global warming hypothesis can attest, the “evidence” for a worldwide climate catastrophe is founded upon the results of atmospheric models. Yet, can such results be trusted enough to direct trillions of dollars in the years ahead to shift the energy sector and redistribute financial resources? After all, as University of Pittsburgh virologist John Mellors asserted in a recent article about HIV treatment in Science (“Researchers claim to find HIV sanctuaries,” January 29, 2016), “You can use a model to support anything you want, but you can prove nothing… You can model that the sun orbits the Earth.”

Atmospheric models have tremendous difficulty simulating key elements of the hydrologic cycle like cloud cover and precipitation patterns. Such components are obviously important to decades-hence projections heavily relied upon for drastic global public policy decisions.

Sylvia goes to Cannes – in a documentary about her life.

My interest in Sylvia Raphael began at the end – her end.

“One day when true peace comes, they will write books about her, name streets after her and make movies of her life,” wrote Eitan Haber, former defense correspondent and close associate and adviser to former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, in Yediot Aharonot in 2005, following the funeral of top Mossad agent, Sylvia Raphael at Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh.

Her “unveiling” at the world premiere on the March 29 at Yad Lebanim in Ra’anana is proof that the day has assuredly dawned.

Interviewed in the movie Sylvia – Tracing Blood following years of personal interest and research, I am proud – as a South African – to introduce the film and its director Saxon Logan, before both departed for Cannes.

MY JOURNEY with Raphael began one morning in 2005 when my eyes zoomed in on a brief report on Page 3 of The Jerusalem Post regarding a funeral that had taken place the previous day, a few kilometers north of my home city of Kfar Saba.

It revealed that the deceased was a South African, that she had been a Mossad agent convicted of a botched assassination in Norway connected with the 1972 Olympics Games Munich Massacre. It also seemed to hint at her not being Jewish. Fed on crumbs, I was hungry for more, and it came in the form of a line that to most would be inconsequential, but for me was alluring and illuminating: “The entire perimeter of the kibbutz had been cordoned off by the police.”

This was a red rag to the journalist’s Gallic bull. The message between the lines was clear – the funeral would be attended by a Who’s Who of Israel’s security community, and the powers- that-be did not want the general public to know too much about it. Why? While her remains were lowered into the earth, it was her life that invited unearthing.

My first question was why would a woman, not Jewish, dedicate the best years of her life, risking life and limb, to a foreign cause – the survival of the Jewish state? Shmuel Goren, a former deputy head of the Mossad, had also expressed after the funeral, “It is a pity that there are not more like her.”

Vassar College, a private, coeducational college in Poughkeepsie, NY, has gone from prestigious to pernicious, by reason of its support for the Islamic invasion of the West (America and Europe) and its biased programs against Israel and Jews. Complicit are eight of the college’s 54 academic departments (including “Jewish” studies) that invite radical speakers, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and others who advocate the BDS movement (boycott, divestment, sanctions), against Israeli products and American companies that conduct business with Israel.

Jashir Puar, Rutger’s infamous professor of women’s and gender study, who is herself conflicted with, among other things, her own gender identity, was a recent guest speaker. She vigorously demonizes Israel, the only Middle Eastern country that would permit her, a homosexual, to live. Without a shred of evidence, she employed the vicious, centuries-old blood libel and accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of harvesting Palestinian organs, adding that Israelis are poisoning Palestinians with elements, such as Uranium, to stunt their growth. Curiously, she did not mention a Michigan State University report in 2014 about two dozen Syrians who ate the hearts of their victims and died of Kuru, a neuro-degenerative disorder associated with cannibalism. Two others were hospitalized for treatment in Germany.

Puar is one of several who present preposterous indictments against Israel to academia’s captive audiences – the unwitting students who listen raptly and the spineless faculty who remain mute during these hate-mongering sessions. Puar, who has been declared a “crackpot” by the NY Daily News, is a dangerous crackpot, who now disallows recordings of her lectures.

Psychologically at odds with her gender and consumed by hatred, Puar favors tyrannical Islam, whose police patrol the streets to enforce Sharia on all and would likely condemn her to 500 – 1,000 lashes and imprisonment, or execution. (The highest number of lashes recorded by Amnesty International was 40,000 for murder.) However, the rich and powerful are explicitly permitted to practice pedophilia, citing supportive versus from the Qur’an and the examples of Muhammed.

If Palestinian growth is indeed stunted, as the professor contends without substantiation, blame may rest with theQur’an, which declares that Allah made marriage with first cousins acceptable and lawful because Mohammed seduced his first cousin and children as young as 9, and endorses other sexual activities with infants.

Further, consanguineous marriages – those between blood relatives – are an integral feature in Islam, accounting for more than half of all marriages in some nations and leading to a higher incidence of offspring with genetic disorders. Perhaps Islam produces these impaired children to be sacrificed to war and suicide, with a double purpose of culling out the defective results of inbreeding and assuaging the revulsion that accompanies incest and rape.

In 2014, Vassar’s Hillel Union, part of 100-year-old network of Jewish students, professionals and leaders dedicated to enriching the Jewish campus experience, chose to re-define itself as “Open Hillel.” This is nothing less than abandoning their rules that protect Israel and Jewish students, and revealing their willingness to host anti-Semitic speakers (including Students for Justice in Palestine – SJP) who advocate to boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) against Israel.

On February 17, 2016, after several years of discriminatory events and adverse publicity, one outspoken alumnus, CAMERA fellow Jason Storch, succeeded in bringing Palestinian Human Rights Activist Bassem Eid to speak in condemnation of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the BDS campaign, and to reveal some truths about Israel. Nevertheless, the Vassar Student Association, motivated by the SJP and forty faculty members, enacted their BDS Resolution 30-x.