http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_print_link.cfm/blog_id/51647#CurDomainURL#/blog.cfm Our oh so French president, embroiled in a romantic triangle, is using the right to privacy as a fig leaf to cover his wayward masculinity. Having deftly installed the strong-headed Valérie Trierweiller in the First Lady’s passenger seat without lawful matrimony, he turns the tables on us and we’re supposed to pretend we don’t […]
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0114/hanson011614.php3
An obscure academic organization called the American Studies Association not long ago voted to endorse a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli universities. The self-appointed moralists were purportedly outraged over the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.
Given academia’s past obsessions with the Jewish state, the targeting of Israel is not new. Yet why do the professors focus on Israel and not Saudi Arabia, which denies women the right to drive and only recently granted them the right to vote? Why not Russia, which has been accused of suppressing free speech, or India, which has passed retrograde anti-homosexual legislation?
The hip poet Amiri Baraka (aka Everett LeRoi Jones) recently died. He was once poet laureate of New Jersey, held prestigious university posts and was canonized with awards — despite being a hateful anti-Semite.
After 9/11, Baraka wrote a poem that suggested Israel knew about the plan to attack the World Trade Center.
http://sarahhonig.com/2014/01/17/another-tack-pernicious-wishful-thinking/
It was all too easy to engage in wishful thinking and assume that the Germans would stick to the plan they had announced. The Germans had succeeded in dividing the Jews of the ghetto into two groups – those destined for deportation, and those hoping to evade the danger.
Moshe Arens, Flags over the Warsaw Ghetto.
With obvious name changes, the same dichotomy of orientations can be ascribed to the citizens of the sovereign Jewish state, here and now.
There are those among us who serially find it “all too easy to engage in wishful thinking” and assume that the Arabs would honor their announced commitment to peace.
Despite all the ill-will and treachery with which each and every one of our existentially risky concessions had been repaid, the Arabs had succeeded in dividing the Jews of Israel into two groups – those destined to suffer and those trusting that they would evade the danger.
Doubtless, the above analogy is sure to stir up scorn and righteous indignation. The self-appointed guardians of other people’s consciences cannot but be scandalized to the core. The overbearing priests of our political correctness disdain historical parallels, especially those that hark back to the darkest days of the Jewish past – with the glaring exception of parallels they themselves draw in the service of spiteful taunts.
But, as the old adage goes, anyone who doesn’t learn from history is doomed to relive it. Of course, there are no absolute replicas of what was. Circumstances and protagonists inevitably differ. But overall directions, processes and mindsets – as well as their derivatives and consequences – may well be spine-chillingly similar.
In Warsaw of 1942 desperate Jews made concessions in blood. Powerless, they passively sacrificed thousands of lives in hope that they would thereby buy respite. In today’s Israel, hardly desperate Jews clamor to make hazardous territorial concessions in the hope that they’d thereby buy peace or at least a respite.
http://washingtonjewishweek.com/illegitimacy-clouds-kerrys-mideast-effort/
Eric Rozenman is Washington director of CAMERA, the Boston-based 65,000-member Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. CAMERA is a news media watch-dog; it takes no position on negotiated Arab-Israeli agreements. Any opinions expressed above are solely those of the writer.
Illegitimacy hangs like smog over Secretary of State John Kerry’s obsessive-compulsive Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. Even assuming he succeeds in brokering a onelegged peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority administering the West Bank, it will not:
• Affect the Gaza Strip, where half the Palestinian Arabs in the disputed territories live. Gaza is ruled by Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood derivative that violently ousted the Fatah-led P.A. Its charter is genocidal regarding not only Israel but also Jews in general.
• Legally bind successors of P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas’ term expired in 2009. That of the virtually defunct Palestinian Legislative Council also ended. Abbas, 78 and lacking an obvious successor, exercises unfounded authority through decree. A subsequent president or council may discount any agreement of his.
http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/canadas-consummate-support-israel/
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Canada’s weighty backing of Israel is comprehensive, giving expression to moral principles. Ottawa defends Israel, consistently before any other country in the world. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his team undoubtedly will be warmly welcomed in Jerusalem next week as valuable allies and trusted friends.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen J. Harper, who is to visit Israel next week, Canada has emerged as Israel’s staunchest ally in the world. The record shows that Canada’s support for Israel is comprehensive and weighty. It is frequently a step ahead of the rest of the world, setting a principled, pro-Israel example.
The Israeli government deeply respects and appreciates Canada’s backing, and holds Prime Minister Harper in the highest regard.
The First to Defend Israel
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4134/echr-uk
The new president of the ECHR, Judge Dean Spielmann, threatened in June 2013 that if Britain did not adhere to European human rights laws, it could face being ejected from the European Union altogether.
Britain’s Lord Judge told the BBC that Judge Spielmann was claiming too much power for a body of unelected judges whose rulings could not be challenged. “This is a court which is not answerable to anybody,” he said. “My own view is: stop here.”
“The process by which democracies decline is…subtle… What happens is that they are slowly drained of what makes them democratic, by a process of internal decay and mounting indifference….” — Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption
An ever-expanding list of controversial rulings issued by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) are fueling accusations that unelected judges at the pan-European court are usurping the judicial sovereignty of individual European nation states.
The Strasbourg-based ECHR enforces the European Convention on Human Rights and its jurisdiction is compulsory and binding for all 47 member states of the Council of Europe.
WATCH: Israel Hayom Insider on Ariel Sharon’s legacyhttp://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=14761 How will Israelis remember the late former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon? • Was he a war hero or a man of peace? • Moderator Danielle Roth speaks with Israel Hayom editor Steve Ganot and columnist Ruthie Blum about Sharon’s legacy and character. Israelis from all walks of […]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/robert-gates-revelations-confirm-horowitzs-party-of-defeat-on-the-glazov-gang/
On this special episode of The Glazov Gang, Ann-Marie Murrell, the National Director and Editor-in-Chief of PolitiChicks.tv, filled in for Jamie and interviewed Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, Daniel Greenfield, who runs the blog The Point at Frontpagemag.com.Ann-Marie and Daniel discussed How American Soldiers Died For a War Obama Didn’t Believe In. The dialogue occurred in Part I and focused on the shameful deception behind the president’s “good war” in Afghanistan.
Israel’s predicament today is the work of Rabin and Sharon; two generals turned prime ministers who launched ambitious ventures and died leaving them unfinished and their nation in twilight. Rabin’s peace process destroyed Israeli national security and revitalized terrorism as a force in political affairs. Had he lived, he might have turned away from it. The idea had been thrust on him by the fringe left and he had grasped it as a hedge against the political oblivion of a leftist party that had lost credibility in a new Israel no longer dominated by the Socialist vision of cooperatives and bureaucracies.
That door was shut permanently by Rabin’s death and Sharon’s rise to power was made possible by the terrorist fallout from the peace process. Israelis had attempted to make earlier course corrections by voting for Netanyahu over Peres, but Netanyahu, proved unable to change the course of the nation. And so, after Barak’s disastrous retreat from Lebanon, Sharon’s hour came.
There had only been two politically acceptable options in Israel for dealing with terrorism; negotiated appeasement or holding the line. The latter meant making occasional forays after a terrorist atrocity into the territories under Palestinian Authority control, arresting a few wanted terrorists and then pulling back, and hoping the public would be satisfied.
Voters expected Sharon to go further. And he did.
Even though President Obama always said that Afghanistan was the good war that we should fight, his true intention was to withdraw from Afghanistan. This has been confirmed in Robert Gates’ new memoir, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” in which the former Secretary of Defense demonstrates that Obama does not believe in his own strategy regarding the Afghan war and that the president always just wanted to extricate America out of the conflict.
Forcing America out of Afghanistan was what all Arab and Islamic countries have hoped to achieve. Muslims have zero tolerance for infidel foreigners on Muslim land, even if the land is being used as a base by al-Qaeda for terrorism. That is Islamic logic.
Obama appears to be unsettled and torn in his decision-making process; a dangerous characteristic for any leader. That is probably the reason why his Affordable Care Act was a disaster — because, with Obama, there is often a gap between what he wants and what he does. We are told over and over again that Obamacare was the president’s signature legislation, but could it be that Obamacare is just like the president’s Afghan strategy, in which Obama says one thing, but does not really have his heart in his words?
What exactly is Obama’s true passion?
A signature legislation should take the full attention of the president in terms of crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. It is what every president oversees at every step to avoid any embarrassment, especially if such legislation was passed without a single vote from the opposing party. Even though health care has always been central to the agenda of the Democratic Party, it does not appear to be number one on Obama’s mind because he totally relied on others to create and oversee Obamacare. However, he did appear very invested in it and rushed it through Congress by totally relying on Nancy Pelosi, who was the one who appeared to have true passion for it. Obama gave her total authority even to make ridiculous statements like “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Obamacare served to keep Obama’s core supporters happy and hypnotized. Even though Obamacare has turned out to be a disaster, Obama’s supporters have never publicly acknowledged how Obama has failed them with such a defective product.
