RUTHFULLY YOURS

But a number of working-class French Jews don’t care

A few weeks before this summer’s eruption of violence in Israel and against the Jews of Paris, I attended a dinner of mostly secular young Jews at a private home in a well-to-do Parisian suburb. Graduates of the country’s elite educational institutions, they were now, in their late twenties or early thirties, well launched on sterling careers in industry, politics, and the French civil service. The mood was jovial, the food and wine superb, the air thick with insider political gossip. Cultivated and public-service minded, the group seemed to personify the opportunities open to individual Jews in France’s national life today.

And yet, as this was a private event where Jews met other Jews, conversation inevitably turned without prompting to the “situation.” While this entailed oblique acknowledgements of “difficulties” for Jews in particular, the company tended to submerge these in the wider national malaise. “Over the last decades our institutions have eroded, and people have really very little in which to believe,” one defense-ministry official suggested. “These young men, immigrants or not, isolated in their small apartments—looking out, they see the Jews, surrounded by family and friends on the High Holy Days, and they get jealous and enraged.”

The implication? Strengthen the economy, revive French political life, and the problem of anti-Semitism will be solved or at least attenuated. A young economist went further. Referring to Jews by the absurd 19th-century designation “français de confession israélite” (as if one’s Judaism were reducible to where one said “confession”), he averred that France was “not at all anti-Semitic, no matter how many times Americans say so. We have problems of integration, of growth. But aside from a small minority, no one pays attention to your religion. It poses no obstacles.”

I do wonder whether the ensuing events of this past summer, so ably and grimly described by Robert Wistrich in “Summer in Paris,” have shaken the complacency of this economist. But despite the almost unbelievable myopia displayed by him and others that evening on the issue of anti-Semitism, one can at least partially sympathize with their diagnosis of the overall French condition. As Michel Gurfinkiel notes in “The Ferment that Feeds Anti-Semitism in France,” his response to Wistrich, the violence against Jews that erupted over the summer is a product not only or not simply of Muslim immigrant rage but of broader and deeper failures.

4 Reasons Jews Shouldn’t Fear Moving to Israel

Israel is becoming a more and more popular place for Jews to live. When I made aliyah (a word that means “ascent” or “Jewish immigration to Israel”) from the U.S. in 1984, the Jewish population stood at around three million; today it has doubled to over six million and is the largest Jewish community in the world. The huge rise comes from both natural growth and immigration. Jews who are already here vote “yes” by having the Western world’s highest fertility rates; many Jews who were living elsewhere have been coming here.

And now it turns out that the rate of yerida (a word that means “descent” or “Jewish emigration from Israel”) is at an all-time low—yes, even in this era of globalization, and with some Israelis loudly complaining about high prices here. The Jerusalem Post reports:

In 2012…the number of émigrés—people who left Israel and stayed abroad for over a year—went down to 15,900, the lowest since the establishment of the state….

Nearly a quarter of them had returned to the country or reported a planned return date as of April 2014.

Most of those who left the country were not born in Israel, and 25 percent of them are not Jewish. Many had moved to Israel from the former Soviet Union since 1990.

And the New York Times adds that

Sergio DellaPergola, a leading [Israeli] demographer, said emigration was actually lower now than at any time in Israel’s 66-year history, and also lower than in comparably developed countries. Far more people left Israel in the 1970s and 1980s, when inflation skyrocketed….

She is already lawyered up and planning a suit….The Sandra Fluke of the Ebola crisis…she will probably be invited to the next Democratic Convention….rsk

READ:http://online.wsj.com/articles/nurse-detained-in-new-jersey-for-ebola-calls-conditions-really-inhumane-1414352575?KEYWORDS=kaci+ebola+nurse

Norman Siegel, a prominent civil rights attorney in New York City, said he planned to file a lawsuit to lift the order keeping Kaci Hickox, a 33-year-old Doctors Without Borders nurse, under quarantine.

I read this account of Kaci Hickox, a nurse for Doctors without Borders who returned from West Africa and was placed in quarantine as a result of the new policy adopted by New Jersey, with a growing sense of outrage and disgust.

She says there’s “disorganization” and “fear.” She says people treated her “like a criminal.” She says she worries that other health workers returning from Africa will also be put upon.

The fact that all four cases of Ebola in America are directly connected to returning health care workers from Africa doesn’t seem to penetrate; that the routine screening done at the airport didn’t detect Ebola in either Thomas Duncan or Dr. Spencer. Hickox seems perfectly willing to take a chance that health care workers returning from Africa don’t have the disease and should be able to walk around freely while “self-monitoring” their condition.

What a brave woman — who takes chances with other people’s lives. I don’t care how small the chance of contagion is — it is the responsibility of authorities to bring the chance of anyone else getting sick as close to zero as humanly possible.

I arrived at the Newark Liberty International Airport around 1 p.m. on Friday, after a grueling two-day journey from Sierra Leone. I walked up to the immigration official at the airport and was greeted with a big smile and a “hello.”

I told him that I have traveled from Sierra Leone and he replied, a little less enthusiastically: “No problem. They are probably going to ask you a few questions.”

The trump card of suffering might be politically useful, but using it is a dishonest tactic that inhibits informed deliberation and debate. Relying on emotion and sentiment, no matter how understandable they are as a response to suffering, have since ancient Athens been the agents of bad policies and dangerous political decisions, and tactics for pursuing political advantage at the expense of the public good. They have no place in our already conflicted and divisive public political discourse.

Gabby Giffords, the former Democratic Congressman from Arizona who was shot in the head at a campaign rally in 2010, has come under fire recently for exploiting her horrific experience for political gain. Using her celebrity as a famous victim of gun violence, Giffords has created a Super PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, focused on gun control legislation. Her group has produced political ads for Democratic candidates that feature other victims of gun violence, and that suggest the candidate’s opponent supports policies that contribute to such violence.

Even supporters of Giffords’ own party are uncomfortable with this electoral tactic. At Politico, Alex Isenstadt wrote recently that Giffords “has unleashed some of the nastiest ads of the campaign season, going after GOP candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire with attacks even some longtime supporters say go too far. And Republicans on the receiving end are largely helpless to hit back, knowing a fight with the much-admired survivor is not one they’re likely to win.”

Exploiting one’s personal experiences is, of course, nothing new in politics. Ancient Roman candidates were expected to show off their scars earned in fighting for Rome. Marc Antony fired up the Roman people after the assassination of Julius Caesar by brandishing his bloodstained and torn toga. During Reconstruction in the United States, “waving the bloody shirt” became common among radical Republicans who used the casualties and suffering of the Civil War as a weapon against Southern Democrats.

In those cases, however, it was service and sacrifice in war that were used for political advantage. Today, any sort of suffering from any cause, especially on the part of those considered victims of historical oppression, is used to obscure rational discussion and debate with clouds of pathos and emotion.

At a campaign rally in Massachusetts, Hillary Clinton did her best to prove that she could out-Warren Warren by declaring, “Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”

If the organizations that actually hire and pay workers don’t create jobs, who does?

Some leftists say that if you leave a glass of milk and a plate of cookies out on the table overnight along with a neatly spaced resume on recycled paper, elves will sneak in and create a job for you.

“You know that old theory, ‘trickle-down economics,’” Hillary smirked. “That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.”

Speaking of things that have failed rather spectacularly, aside from Hillary’s time as Secretary of State, her latest memoir or Martha Coakley whose rally was the platform for Hillary’s tripe, there’s the old theory that government central planning creates jobs.

That theory has been tried in the last six years and it has failed rather spectacularly.

It has failed so spectacularly that Martha Coakley once again can’t beat a Republican in Massachusetts. Coakley is claiming that it’s a dead heat when polls show that she’s losing by 9 points. But while Hillary insisted that her husband “brought arithmetic” to Washington (someone had to count rental costs on the Lincoln Bedroom and presidential pardons for international fugitives), leftists are really bad at math.

Their theory failed so miserably that Hillary’s party is about to lose the Senate and no Democratic candidate wants to be seen with her old boss out of fear that his stench of failure will cling to them.

Hillary Clinton is attacking Reagan while campaigning for Carter. She’s having Mondale acid flashbacks. But despite Marx, Obama and Warren, businesses actually do create jobs. Lefty politicians who have never worked for a living while claiming that businesses don’t create jobs… don’t create jobs.

The fact that we still can’t explain Kim Jong Un’s recent absence should be unsettling.

Although North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has allegedly reappeared after disappearing from public view for six weeks, we still can’t explain his absence. Was he gravely ill, facing a possible coup or enmeshed in something far more exotic? One theory is as good as the next for assessing what actually happens inside North Korea. But the real issue for the U.S., South Korea and Japan is what Kim’s absence (or a future one) portends for Pyongyang’s steadily progressing nuclear-weapons program.

Right now the U.S. does not seem to be paying attention. North Korea has conducted two of its three nuclear tests during the Barack Obama presidency. Rumors of a fourth circulate constantly. Yet the White House has no apparent strategy, diplomatic or otherwise, to restrain Pyongyang’s continuing enrichment and weaponization activities. Nor is there a plan for dealing with its menacing ballistic-missile program, intended to provide delivery vehicles to reach targets world-wide, most notably in the U.S.

To be fair, President Obama correctly dropped the George W. Bush State Department’s approach of constant attention to North Korea, believing it signaled erroneously that we valued a deal no matter what its terms. But six years of inattention isn’t an effective alternative. If Mr. Obama didn’t want to pursue diplomacy, he should have devised another way to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear efforts. He did neither. Inaction inevitably meant that both the North’s nuclear arsenal and its ballistic-missile capabilities continued to grow.

The contrast between Mr. Obama’s obsession with negotiating with Iran and his indifference toward North Korea could hardly be greater. Despite his famous “pivot” from the Middle East to Asia, Iran has constantly eclipsed North Korea in the president’s priorities. Explanations for the disparity are hard to come by.

This is especially troubling because Tehran and Pyongyang have worked together for more than 15 years on long-range ballistic missiles. Their nuclear cooperation is nearly certain. Focusing on one threat while ignoring the other makes no sense, especially since Mr. Obama’s greater attention to Iran has produced no positive results. Both rogue states continue advancing toward possessing deliverable nuclear weapons.

The White House pushed back against the governors of New York, New Jersey, Illinois and other states that instituted procedures to forcibly quarantine medical workers returning from West Africa, deepening an emotional debate brought on by recent Ebola cases in the U.S.

A senior administration official said Sunday that new federal guidelines under development would protect Americans from imported cases of the disease but not interfere with the flow of U.S. health workers to and from West Africa to fight the epidemic there.

“We have let the governors of New York, New Jersey and other states know that we have concerns with the unintended consequences… [that quarantine] policies not grounded in science may have on efforts to combat Ebola at its source,” the official said.

It wasn’t clear what action the Obama administration could take to end the quarantines.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday night gave the first new details about how his state’s quarantine would work, noting that individuals would be allowed to stay in their homes for 21 days. State and local health-care workers would check on quarantined people twice a day to monitor for Ebola symptoms. Those with symptoms would be taken to a hospital. People whose jobs won’t compensate them during their quarantine would be paid by the state.

Travelers who have had no direct contact with Ebola patients wouldn’t be subject to confinement at home, but they would be consulted twice-daily by health officials over the three-week period.

New York officials said the new protocols still went further than those recommended by the federal government.

More problematic is that it reaches a point where discussion or debate is impossible because the questions themselves become a crime.

Such laws not only run counter to the basic principles of democracy; they are, in many instances, representative of a duplicitous selective application of the law. Why are the prosecutors not going after Yasmina Haifi, who tweeted that ISIS is a Zionist plot? Is the criminalization of hate speech now dependent only on whom you hate?

The people are entitled to a country in which they can voice their frustration and be heard.

Last March, Geert Wilders, the controversial right-wing Dutch Parliamentarian best known for his stance against Muslims and Muslim immigration, stood before supporters at a campaign rally and asked a simple question: “Do you want more Moroccans, or fewer?”

He expected the question to raise enthusiasm among the crowd, and drive his party to greater Parliamentary success. It has also possibly landed him before the courts, to be tried for “hate speech” — a crime in the Netherlands, which, despite its claims of “freedom of speech,” still criminalizes speech that “offends” on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, or even personal convictions and ideology.

Wilders, however, didn’t make a statement: he simply asked others what they wanted. It was the Dutch people themselves who, in response, cried out, “Fewer! Fewer!”

As in every dictatorship, the government’s only fear is of its own people.

Today, China’s authorities are going back on their promise of maintaining Hong Kong’s special political status, inherited from Britain. Hong Kong, however, is moving the Arab way: it is choosing democracy.

Such movements do not die; they just take shelter to let the storm pass. The Arab Spring will arrive in these lands with the sweetness of democracy, equal opportunity, and the promise of freedom for everyone.

In 2010, the tiny North African nation of Tunisia rejected patriarchy, nepotism and tribalism and opted for Arab democracy. Soon its call for overthrowing absolutism engulfed the Arab world and ushered in a new beginning — only soon to find itself undermined and overwhelmed, like Egypt, by organized, well-funded autocracies.

The democrats’ movement was often swamped by blood and atrocities, but still the hope for democracy and freedom is alive and waiting for the next wave of uprisings — sooner rather than later; no one can resist the call for democracy, freedom and human rights.

The Arab Spring Tsunami Goes Global

For the first time ever, an Arab-born movement reverberated in democratic countries such as Spain, with the Outraged Movement 2011-2012 (Indignados or Moviemente 15-M). It kicked off on May 15, 2011 in Madrid and 58 other Spanish cities, and called for more democracy and more youths represented in politics.

In America, there are also calls for more economic freedom and the opportunity for all Americans to make choices free of government incompetence, interference and control.

It’s only a matter of time before the Islamic State tries to attack Americans here at home. That’s according to James Chaparro, a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security who spoke at length with National Review Online about the country’s vulnerabilities to the terrorist group, from the visa system to homegrown sympathizers.

Chaparro spent more than two and a half decades working in the federal law-enforcement and intelligence communities, where his duties included managing intelligence efforts across DHS. He left his position as the assistant director of intelligence at Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the summer of 2013.

“I think that we were caught flat-footed with ISIS,” Chaparro says. “I don’t think that we were nimble enough to organize ourselves in a way that would have allowed us to put together that sort of comprehensive plan of attack — and not just military attack, but with all the instruments of national power.” He says a plan could have included using the Treasury Department, intelligence community, immigration and customs authorities, and the military to strike back at the Islamic State.

Because the rapid ascension of the Islamic State caught the federal government off-guard, American intelligence agencies don’t know enough about the group, Chaparro says. The lack of intelligence has many ramifications, but chief among them, it has made it difficult for officials to effectively update the terrorist watch list to prevent terrorists from exploiting the visa-waiver program or applying for non-immigrant visas.

He’s not the first to sound the alarm about loopholes in the visa system. Ronald Colburn, a former director of law enforcement on the White House Homeland Security Council, told NRO in August that members of the Islamic State could use visa waivers to enter the U.S. “Members of Hamas, Hezbollah, and potentially in the near future, if not already, ISIS, [could come] over on visa waivers from places like Great Britain,” Colburn said. Many intelligence sources believe that the terrorist who beheaded American journalist James Foley has roots in Great Britain and, as a result, could enter the U.S. without a visa.