RUTHFULLY YOURS

Fueling the Western paralysis in dealing with radical Islam is the late 20th century doctrine of multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism is one of those buzzwords that does not mean what it should. The ancient and generic Western study of many cultures is not multiculturalism. Rather, the trendy term promotes non-Western cultures to a status equal with or superior to Western culture largely to fulfill contemporary political agendas.

On college campuses, multiculturalism not so much manifests itself in the worthy interest in Chinese literature, Persian history, or hieroglyphics, but rather has become more a therapeutic exercise of exaggerating Western sins while ignoring non-Western pathologies to attract those who see themselves in some way as not part of the dominant culture.

Mosaic Magazine opened an important dimension in the old debate about Wagner’s anti-Semitism with Nathan Shields’ January essay, “Wagner and the Jews.” Shields argues that Wagner’s music itself has anti-Jewish implications, an important riposte to the usual excuse that Wagner harbored Jew-hatred despite his great artistry. Shields argues rather that Wagner’s anti-Semitism and his music are of the same ilk. That is a breakthrough, but only that: Shields, whose own music offers the sort of atonality that most modern listeners abhor, knows that something is amiss in Wagner’s music but does not know what it is. Now Edward Rothstein, a New York Times critic, has responded to Shields’ essay with a claim that Wagner’s anti-Semitism is “metaphysical.” That gets rather far afield. Wagner’s anti-Semitism is not “metaphysical” at all. It is musical, and must be understood in musical terms.

According to Vox’s Max Fisher, French celebrity intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy is a bigot who has an intellectual kinship with violent criminals. This columnist is not BHL’s most ardent admirer, but we’d nonetheless like to defend him against Fisher’s calumny.Fisher doesn’t mention Levy by name, but his is a broad indictment that certainly includes the Frenchman in its sweep. Fisher’s headline: “Stop Asking Muslims to Condemn Terrorism. It’s Bigoted and Islamophobic.” In today’s Wall Street Journal, Levy does just that:

Those whose faith is Islam must proclaim very loudly, very often and in great numbers their rejection of this corrupt and abject form of theocratic passion. Too often have we heard that France’s Muslims should be summoned to explain themselves. They don’t need to explain themselves, but they should feel called to express their tangible brotherhood with their massacred fellow citizens. In so doing, they would put to rest once and for all the lie of a spiritual commonality between their faith as they know it and that of the murderers.

They have the responsibility—the opportunity—before history and their own conscience to echo the “Not in our name!” with which Britain’s Muslims dissociated themselves last year from the Islamic State killers of journalist James Foley. But they also have the even more urgent duty to define their identity as sons and daughters of an Islam of tolerance and peace.

Here is Fisher’s objection:

This expectation we place on Muslims, to be absolutely clear, is Islamophobic and bigoted. The denunciation is a form of apology: an apology for Islam and for Muslims. The implication is that every Muslim is under suspicion of being sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise. The implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion.

This sort of thinking—blaming an entire group for the actions of a few individuals, assuming the worst about a person just because of their [sic] identity—is the very definition of bigotry. It is also, by the way, the very same logic that leads French non-Muslims, outraged by the Charlie Hebdo murders, to attack French mosques in hateful and misguided retaliation.

We’d agree that attacks on mosques are hateful and misguided. Apart from that, every word of the quoted passage is wrong.

On the fifth anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti remains a poster child for waste, fraud and corruption in the handling of aid. Nowhere is the bureaucratic ineptitude and greed harder to accept than at the 607-acre Caracol Industrial Park, a project launched by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with U.S. taxpayer money, under the supervision of her husband Bill and his Clinton Foundation.

Between the State Department and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which hands out grants to very poor countries thanks to U.S. generosity, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on this park in an attempt to attract apparel manufacturers. But the park is falling far short of the promises made to provide investors with necessary infrastructure. If things continue this way, frustrated investors will look for greener pastures.

“”Hollande sat through most of the ceremony, but when Netanyahu’s turn at the podium arrived, the French president got up from his seat and made an early exit.”

France asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stay away from a weekend solidarity march in Paris but he ignored the request and attended anyway, Israeli media reported on Monday.

The same message was conveyed to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in a bid to avoid the commemoration of the 17 people killed in Islamist attacks in the French capital last week being clouded by the Middle East conflict, the reports said.

But when Netanyahu rejected the appeals of the French government, Abbas was swiftly invited, Channel Two television and Israeli newspapers reported.

President Francois Hollande had wanted to “focus on solidarity with France, and to avoid anything liable to divert attention to other controversial issues, like Jewish-Muslim relations or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the liberal Haaretz newspaper reported.

There was also concern Netanyahu would use the event to “make speeches” as he prepares for a March 17 general election, in which he is seeking a fourth term.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=22753
WATCH: France under attack

Is France handling the recent terrorist attacks properly? • What do the attacks mean for French society and French Jewry? • Watch as host Lital Shemesh speaks with Israel Hayom editor Steve Ganot and columnist Ruthie Blum about the French terror attacks.
Israel Hayom Staff

On Saturday, I spoke at length with a man named Joseph, a French Jew who had family members and friends inside the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris when it was stormed by Amedy Coulibaly, an Islamic jihadist who ultimately murdered at least four Jews for the cause of Islam. He spoke to the families and some of the survivors and told me some shocking and terrible details about what happened during the attack – revealed here for the very first time.

When I spoke to Joseph, he was grief-stricken: “I lost a good friend and it’s very hard, very hard. You have no idea how difficult it is.” Joseph was close friends with Yohan Cohen, who was murdered in the jihad attack. Coulibaly was threatening to kill a three year-old, and Cohen tried to save the child by grabbing Coulibaly’s gun; the jihadist shot Cohen in the head.

OH LIGHTEN UP…WEARING A SCARF OUT OF RESPECT IS NOT LIKE BEING ASKED TO WEAR A FULL NIQAB IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL….IN NYC DURING ONE OF THOSE “WORLD RELIGIONS” TOURS THE BOYS WERE ASKED TO WEAR YARMULKES WITHIN A HOUSE OF WORSHIP….BIG DEAL….RSK
Where are the liberals calling for separation of church and state when you want them?

Girls attending a taxpayer funded Douglas County, Col., school are going to be forced to wear Muslim head coverings during a field trip to local mosque scheduled for Jan. 13, according to EAGNews.org.
The situation came to light after local radio host Peter Boyles said he got a hold of the permission slip sent to parents for the excursion.

The world religions field trip is next Tuesday, January 13. We will be visiting the Denver Mosque, the Assumption Greek Orthodox Cathedral, and the Rodef Shalom Synagogue. We will then eat lunch at Park Meadows Food Court.

Students must either bring a sack lunch or money to purchase lunch at the food court.

It is in how best to achieve the common goal of lifting the security and well being of all Americans in the most equitable way possible, while preserving the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and embedded in our Constitution, which differentiates the Left from the Right. At their essence, those differences are elemental and clear. The Left wants to use government to give things to people; the Right wants to use government to make it easier for people to fend for themselves. The old Chinese adage about a man and a fish applies.

While you wouldn’t know it from the media and despite the polarization in Washington, the political spectrum in America is less of a barbell and more of a bell curve – a continuum; though we all know that those lumped at opposite ends have recently taken on additional weight. Nevertheless, to argue that only one party is interested in the poor and that the other is only interested in tax cuts for the rich detracts from the fundamental differences between the Left and the Right. Mainstream media, which are largely leftist in their opinions, help perpetuate Democrats’ propaganda that it is the ends not the means that separates the two political parties. If one’s news is limited to sound-bites and political ads, one will find themselves ignorantly drowned in a miasma of disinformation.

Two centuries after the great composer’s birth, his anti-Semitism remains a bitterly contested issue. Perhaps that’s because neither his defenders nor his detractors have come to grips with its, or his, true nature.
Reading Nathan Shields’ powerful essay, “Wagner and the Jews,” reawakened memories from two decades ago when I attended the Bayreuth festival as a music critic. My most potent recollections are not of the performances I heard of Wagner’s music; nor do I recall any great revelations about the mind of the master who designed and built this self-aggrandizing temple. But I was left with three sensory impressions, and they have proved indelible.

First there was the sound of the theater, the venerable Festspielhaus. The music had an almost material presence. It didn’t seem to emerge from the orchestra pit extending under the stage but took shape, instead, in the resonant air of surrounding space, like the sound of an organ in a great cathedral. Wagner was as great an acoustician as he was an orchestrator.