RUTHFULLY YOURS

A new year is generally a time to assess the past and consider the future. The year 5775 (in the Jewish calendar) is no different. A look back at this past year, with the grim reality of the Islamic State’s (IS) cruel terror, the general instability in the Middle East, and the recent 50-day war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist terror group Hamas, could easily lead one to despair. This mayhem and bloodshed has also obscured the dynamism and progress the marks Israel’s society.

A comparison between Israel, circa 1984, with Israel of 2014 reveals the country’s incredible growth and its maturity as a developed nation – a nation now commonly referred to as the “Start-Up Nation.” A few statistical facts convey the nation’s dramatic growth. Israel’s population in 1984 stood at 4.1 million, doubling in 30 years to 8.2 million. This means more security for the nation by virtue of a larger standing army and reserves, and less impact on the economy during military mobilization.

While Israel is faced with an existential threat from a nuclear Iran, terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, IS and al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front in Syria, and Hamas in Gaza, the disintegration of Iraq and Syria with their substantial armies and armament, have lessened the overall strategic threat facing the Jewish state. Egypt, under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the largest and most powerful Arab state, and Saudi Arabia, the primary Sunni Arab state, have found common cause with Israel. They share a concern over Iran’s quest for regional hegemony, and its drive for nuclear arms, as well as Israel’s opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood, and other radical Islamist movements.

A nation’s strength is not measured by the size of its military, and its ability to deter its enemies alone. National strength is also a function of its economic, social, and cultural achievements. Since 1984 Israel has experienced dramatic improvements in its economy. The inflation rate has declined from 447% to 1.5%, and the interest banks charge declined from 771% to 5%; national debt as a percentage of the GNP has declined from 17% to 2.5%. Likewise, the defense expenditures as a percentage of the GNP went down from 20% to 5.6% (2013), still a bit higher than the U.S. military expenditure of 3.8%. Foreign exchange reserves in dollars grew from $3.3 billion to $90 billion. Exports in 1984 were $10 billion and by 2013 had reached $291.36 billion, while per capita income in 1984 was $7000, and in 2013 it was $34,120. Women in Israel’s labor force amounted to 30% in 1984; it now stands at 53%. And while the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the U.S. (2013) grew by 1.9%, in the U.K. 1.7%, France’s 0.2%, Israel’s GDP growth was 3.3%.

Naturally, Israel has economic and social problems. To reach its full potential Israel needs to increase the number of ultra-orthodox Jews and Arabs in the labor market. The high cost of apartments (due to shortage in supply) has been especially difficult for young couples seeking their first home and is a factor in the emigration of bright young people. There are not enough rental apartments for the post-military young. Defense expenditures are still high, but unavoidable. However, when compared with the rest of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) states, Israel’s situation is improving yearly, which is not the case elsewhere in Western countries.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/the-nightmare-of-a-nuclear-iran-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Conservative Entrepreneur Monty Morton, who came on the show to warn us about The Nightmare of a Nuclear Iran – and everything
Obama isn’t doing about it [starts at 8:20 mark].

The discussion occurred within the context of Two Lethal Threats to America, in which Monty stressed two dire dangers facing the U.S., the other one being focused on in the first half of the episode:

Joe Biden is making his latest round of apologies for that rarest of gaffes, especially coming from him: the truth. Biden’s crime was stating that ISIS had been empowered by the backing of Sunni states, including Turkey and the UAE, for the Syrian opposition.

“They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad — except that the people who were being supplied were al Nusra and al Qaeda,” Biden said.

Biden, who insulted plenty of people over the years, has been forced to apologize, making private phone calls to the Islamist thug ruling Turkey and to a UAE prince. It’s a humiliating performance for a man who is only a heartbeat away from becoming the President of the United States to be forced to apologize to some tinpot despots for telling the truth about them.

When Biden decided to throw a temper tantrum in Israel, it was the Israelis who were forced to apologize to him. Biden recently boasted of insulting Putin to his face (though it probably never actually happened) without being forced to make any apologetic phone calls to Moscow. It’s telling that only Muslim countries appear to be able to compel apologies from the Vice President of the United States.

But the one time that Biden did apologize for something he said was also the one time that he should not have apologized because it was the one time that he was telling the truth.

Biden didn’t tell the whole truth. He left out any mention of Qatar and the blank check its weapons smuggling had received from his administration. He also neglected to mention that the roots of the Syrian Civil War had come out of Obama’s Libyan War and the Arab Spring. Still there’s only so much truth that you can expect from a top Democrat who also happens to be a notoriously compulsive liar.

Truth may be the rarest quality in this conflict.

From Low Probability to the Yom Kippur War: Telegrams from Golda’s Bureau to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, 5-7 October 1973

On 12 October 1973 Prime Minister Golda Meir said during a discussion in her bureau: “I say this with full awareness of its significance – we never faced so grave a danger in 1948”. Her words show the difference between the Yom Kippur War and Israel’s previous wars, which is still felt today. Even 41 years later, the war still arouses public interest and controversy in Israel.

Today, on the 41st anniversary of its outbreak on 6 October 1973, the Israel State Archives publishes a selection of 14 telegrams exchanged between Golda’s bureau in Tel Aviv and the Israeli embassy in Washington between 5–7 October. Some of them were declassified especially for this publication, and they focus on the central diplomatic aspect of the war – the contacts between the Israeli government and the US Administration, especially with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. This story has been told many times from the American point of view: for the first time the ISA is revealing the Israeli side in order to help to complete the puzzle. Two of the telegrams are in English, and the rest are in in Hebrew. They can be seen on the Hebrew version of this post.

The publication is accompanied by summaries of the minutes of the consultations of the war cabinet on 6-7 October published by the ISA in 2010. The telegrams and the minutes show the reversals of fortune suffered by the Israeli leadership during these fateful days – from attempts to prevent the outbreak of war on 5 October, to confidence on the first day of the fighting that the war would soon end with a decisive victory by Israel, followed by the catastrophe of the second day, when the leadership found itself at war for the heartland of Israel.

5 October – “Low Probability”

On Friday, 5 October, the Yom Kippur fast, the holiest day of the year, when Israel generally comes to a standstill, was about to begin. However, during the preceding few days, intelligence reports were piling up about a high alert in the Syrian and Egyptian armies and massive deployment of their forces on Israel’s borders. Nevertheless, IDF Military Intelligence maintained its assessment that there was a “low probability’ of the outbreak of war. During the night, disquieting reports had arrived of a major evacuation of the families of the Soviet advisors in Egypt and Syria, with the help of a fleet of planes sent by the USSR to Damascus and Cairo. In view of the reports, a general alert of the highest order was declared in the regular forces of the IDF, but still without calling up the reserves. Meanwhile the head of Israel’s overseas intelligence agency, Mossad, Zvi Zamir, had been called to London for an urgent meeting with Egyptian agent Ashraf Marwan.

In the consultations held that day in the prime minister’s bureau in Tel Aviv, the head of Military Intelligence, Eli Zeira, continued to claim that the probability of war was low. However the participants, including Minister of Defence Moshe Dayan, Chief of Staff David Elazar and Zeira himself were less convinced about their assessment. They had begun to think that an outbreak of hostilities was possible: perhaps there would be a war and perhaps it would even start on Yom Kippur. However they were confident in the ability of the IDF regular forces in their current dispositions to deal with any threat or military activity which might develop until the reserves could be called up. In the meantime there was no need to call up the reserves.

André Carson, Islamists’ Choice for the House of Representatives
Leading Islamist groups are contributing more to Democrats than to Republicans by a ratio of 17 to 1.
ANDRE CARSON (D- INDIANA DISTRICT 7) is rated with a 5+ by the Arab American Institute indicating markedly pro Arab policy opinions

In politics, the adage goes, follow the money. And so, data abound for contributions from trial lawyers, insurance brokers, and even optometrists.

But what about Islamists, those Muslims who seek to replace the Constitution with the Koran and apply Islamic law in its entirety and severity — who, in other words, seek not just to tweak the tax code but to change the nature of the United States?

Until now, their campaign contributions have been unknown. A new initiative of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch provides a first look at the dimensions of this lobby, using a sortable database. The Islamist Money in Politics (IMIP) project finds that, over the past 15 years, prominent figures associated with six leading American Islamist organizations have donated almost $700,000 to federal U.S. candidates.

Those six are the

The state’s new “affirmative consent” law shows who the real aggressors in the culture war are.

I have a slightly different take on California’s recent decision to regulate college sex. Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s beyond idiotic, unworkable, even borderline Orwellian. We’ll get to all that.

But I also think it’s incredibly useful. You see, for years I’ve been railing and ranting about the ridiculous myth that liberalism is socially libertarian; that liberals are “live and let live” types simply defending themselves against judgmental conservatives, the real aggressors in the culture war.

That thinking runs counter to most everything liberals justifiably take pride in as liberals. You can’t be “agents for change,” “forces for progress,” or whatever the current phrase is, and simultaneously deny that you’re the aggressors in the culture war. For instance, just in the last decade, liberals have redefined a millennia-old understanding of marriage while talking as if it were conservatives who wanted to “impose” their values on the nation.

Most libertarians are surely against racial discrimination, sexism, poor eating habits, homophobia, and so on. But their proposed remedies don’t look anything like a liberal’s. Libertarians, for the most part, do not favor racial or gender quotas. They’re against banning big sodas, campus speech codes, or forcing elderly nuns to pay for birth-control coverage, among other things.

Liberals, meanwhile, are quite open about their desire to use the state to impose their morality on others. Many conservatives want to do likewise, of course. The difference is that when conservatives try to do it, liberals are quick to charge “theocracy!” and decry the Orwellian horror.

Enter California governor Jerry Brown, whose answer to the alleged “rape epidemic” on campuses was to sign the new “affirmative consent” law. It will require a verbal “yes” at every stage of amorous activity on college campuses.

The Republican Party has played Marley’s Ghost for the past half-dozen years, dragging behind it the sins of the foreign-policy utopians who persuaded George W. Bush to bet the farm on nation-building in the Middle East. Bush’s 2004 Second Inaugural, written with the help of the Weekly Standard‘s Bill Kristol and the Washington Post‘s Charles Krauthammer, was the high-water mark of foreign-policy overreach and the cusp of Republican fortunes. By the 2006 congressional elections, the electorate had had enough, and the public’s disgust with the pointless sacrifice of blood and treasure helped propel the junior senator from Illinois into the White House. The Bushies who blundered so badly–occupying Iraq, pushing for the West Bank elections won by Hamas, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt against the Egyptian military–are still fighting for what is left of their reputations. And their greatest fear is that a Republican leader will come along untainted by their mistakes, and able to admit what we Republicans should have admitted years ago: the Bush administration made some big mistakes.

That leader is Sen. Ted Cruz, who said Sept. 24,

I think we stayed too long, and we got far too involved in nation-building…. We should not be trying to turn Iraq into Switzerland.

Cruz is a foreign policy hard-liner, not an isolationist, but he is a tough-minded realist in a party contaminated by the ideological impulse to export America’s political system to the Middle East. His way of looking at things is close to that of the original Reagan foreign policy team, for example, Prof. Angelo Codevilla, whose new book I reviewed recently. Codevilla argued that “U.S. viceroys spent most of a decade fruitlessly trying to negate the Shias’, Sunnis’, and Kurds’ democratically expressed mutual antagonism.” The much-lauded “surge” “consisted of turning over to Sunni insurgents the tribal areas into which the Shia were pushing them. Rather than defeating them, the U.S. government began arming them.” And the result: “After a bloody decade, Iraq ended up divided along ancient ethno-religious fault lines but more mutually bitter.”

Codevilla was one of the architects of the Strategic Defense Initiative that helped win the Cold War, and his views are shared by other key members of the Reagan team, for example, my old mentor at the Reagan National Security Council, Dr. Norman A. Bailey. When Sen. Cruz calls his foreign policy “Reaganite,” he can claim agreement with key Reagan aides.

That explains why the neo-conservatives are throwing mud at him. If Cruz is right, the Republican Party doesn’t need them any more. As Eliana Johnson points out at National Review, Kristol et. al. have signed on with Marco Rubio. The neo-cons detest Cruz, Johnson reports:

PJ Media has put together a new publication about voter fraud called Crimes Against the Republic.

When it comes to voter fraud, there are several myths and several truths of note — enough to leave everyone unhappy. Here are five:

1. Myth: President Obama won reelection because of voter fraud. Nonsense. The margins in key swing states such as Ohio and Virginia were too vast to be driven by voter fraud. No voter fraud scheme can move tens of thousands of votes. That’s impossible and would be detected. The machinery of elections simply doesn’t allow for the possibility of organizing and procuring tens of thousands of votes. If you are desperate for a singular explanation for Obama’s reelection, you should get to know Catalist. This massive database and how the modern left uses it to drive turnout among the base are behind Obama’s releection, not voter fraud. That Republicans and conservatives have absolutely no effective counterpart makes it even more so.

2. Fact: Voter fraud has altered the outcome of elections. Senator Al Franken (D-Lino Lakes), the Saturday Night Live clown, is in the United States Senate because of voter fraud. Franken won his election because Minnesota has same-day voter registration, where a person can register to vote and cast a ballot simultaneously. Felons were ineligible to vote but did so anyhow — by the thousands (1099 of them to be exact). This means that Franken owes his Senate seats to graduates of Faribault and Lino Lakes. Remember, Franken won by only 312 votes. News media in Minnesota contacted many of the felons and they admitted they were proud of their votes for Franken. Not a one voted for Norm Coleman. But it’s worse. Al Franken was the 60th vote to pass Obamacare over a filibuster. Because of voter fraud, Obamacare passed.

3. Myth: Paper ballots are the safest. Paper ballots actually facilitate voter fraud. Electronic voting machines cannot be hacked from outer space. The machines are not connected and manipulated by the Illuminati. The worst form of elections are paper ballots because they are subject to human interpretation. When paper ballots are counted, partisans on each side get to interpret stray marks the way they want to. Xs stray from boxes, and — magically — votes move. Electronic machine counting is the best way to eliminate voter fraud. The single best election system is the optical scan ballot where you make selections inside ovals and the paper is fed through an electronic counting scanner. People who waste time on electronic voting machines are overlooking the many other ways the system is manipulated.

With the publication of Crimes Against the Republic: How the Democratic Party’s Voter Fraud is Fundamentally Transforming America [2], PJ Media has launched its new ebook program. And what a tome to start with! This chronological collection of PJ Media Legal Editor J. Christian Adams’ Rule of Law blog posts details how the American Left and the Holder Justice Department have undermined efforts to improve the integrity of the election process and deter voter fraud.

Adams believes that “the Republic is at risk from a corrupt wing of the Democratic Party that is willing to sacrifice the rule of law, and – for the sake of reaching its goals – is just as focused on exploiting the process of the franchise as it is on political persuasion.” He then proceeds to make his case. His reporting should alarm all Americans who believe in the sanctity of the ballot box.

Adams, my former colleague in the Civil Rights Division and co-writer for the PJ Media “Every Single One” series [3] on biased hiring at the division, left the Voting Section in protest after Eric Holder and other political subordinates ordered the dismissal of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party for its outrageous misbehavior in Philadelphia in 2008. The Justice Department’s loss was our gain, since it freed Adams to write about not only voter fraud cases occurring around the country, but about the malfeasance of the Holder Justice Department and its war on election integrity, all of which is covered in this new book.

Adams has a bold, distinctive writing style that is easy to read, yet very informative. In addition to his extensive coverage of the inside workings of the Civil Rights Division where he used to work, Adams has no hesitation in naming those in academia and the media — like Rick Hasen and Simon van Zuylen-Wood — who are “in the tank” with the administration in attacking election integrity efforts and denying that voter fraud exists.

Adams points out how the New Republic attacked the passage, by popular referendum, of Mississippi’s voter ID law without mentioning the evidence of voter fraud in the Ike Brown case — a Mississippi prosecution that Adams handled when he was still at Justice. That evidence included “rampant absentee ballot fraud, in-person impersonation fraud, ballot forgery, ineligible voters voting, cooperation with illegalities by law enforcement officials … and on and on and on.”

The protesters know that what’s hailed in the West as ‘the China dream’ is a hoax.

Whatever comes next with the demonstrations in Hong Kong, they’ve already performed a historic service. To wit, they remind us of the silliness of the China infatuation so prevalent among pundits and intellectuals who don’t live in China.

That’s the central lesson of “Occupy Central With Love and Peace”—a movement that, morally speaking, is to its Wall Street namesake roughly what Václav Havel was to Abbie Hoffman. The student-led protests, which have demanded that Beijing honor its promises to allow democratic elections for Hong Kong’s chief executive, represent the ideal future of modern China: principled and well-educated, pragmatic and worldly. And what this potential Chinese future has been saying emphatically for the past week is that it wants no part of China’s dismal present.

That might come as news to the legion of China boosters who have been insisting for years that the 21st century belongs to the Middle Kingdom, and that the sooner we get used to it the better off we all will be. These are the people for whom a visit to Shanghai’s skyscraper-rich Pudong district, or a glance at official Chinese economic statistics, or a ride on one of China’s bullet trains, is enough to convince them that the West has had its day.

If only we could be “China for one day,” so that democratic partisanship didn’t stand in the way of enlightened governance— wouldn’t that solve everything?

Don’t tell that to the people of Hong Kong, who have learned the hard way that, except when pressured, Beijing honors no promises, countenances no dissent and contemplates no future in which the Communist Party’s grip on power can be loosened even slightly. Hong Kong became rich on the small government, laissez-faire, rule-of-law-not-men principles of its late colonial administrators. It has remained rich because, by comparison to mainland China, it remains relatively free and uncorrupt. Hong Kong is what China could be if it weren’t, well, China—if state intervention were minimal; if government weren’t a vehicle for self-enrichment; if people could worship, write, exercise and associate just as they please.