RUTHFULLY YOURS

The recent revelation that New York City mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio supported Nicaragua’s Sandinista military government in the 1980s is a reminder of the high cost Latin America pays for being the playground of the American left. It should also further enlighten New Yorkers as to the politics of the man who is the front runner in the race.

The ideas of the hard left don’t sell very well in the U.S., so collectivists take them south of the Rio Grande where they believe the ground is more fertile. Their arrogant paternalism ignores the rights of the people they pretend to redeem.

By 1988, when Mr. de Blasio went to Nicaragua to do social work in support of the Marxist revolutionary cause, the Sandinistas had been running the country for almost a decade. Their brutality was well-documented. Mr. de Blasio, who also did fundraising for supporters of the military government, either didn’t know about Sandinista repression or he didn’t care.

It’s hard to believe it was the former. My requests for comment from his campaign went unanswered. In an interview with a New York radio station last month, however, some hints emerged when he was asked about his decision to honeymoon in Cuba in 1994. Mr. de Blasio said that he doesn’t excuse the “undemocratic” regime, but he also argued that it has accomplished “some good things” like “in health care.”

Let’s pretend that’s not generations-old Castro propaganda—even though every independent report from the island describes a health-care system that has completely collapsed and cannot even provide basics like bandages and aspirin. The larger problem is that Mr. de Blasio’s remarks suggest that there is a trade-off between freedom and doctor visits. Should jailing and torturing dissidents, stealing property and terrorizing generations of Cubans be considered less horrific because they have annual physicals? Apparently.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304626104579119123262765740.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
The Path to Defeating the al-Shabaab Terrorists
The jihadists who struck my country should be fought militarily but also financially. Let’s work together.

The weekend brought encouraging news in the international fight against Islamic terrorism, news that was particularly welcome in Kenya, the country I lead. American commandos in Libya seized Abu Anas, a suspect in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In Somalia, U.S. Navy SEALs targeted a senior leader of al-Shabaab, the al Qaeda-affiliated group responsible for the horrific recent attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi. The raid in Somalia was reportedly abandoned, to avoid harming civilians, before the al-Shabaab leader could be captured. Some al-Shabaab members were killed, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether the targeted senior leader was among the casualties.

All of us who strive to fight Islamic militancy should applaud these efforts. In particular, it is clear after the Westgate attack that the world must unite as never before in the fight against the spread of violence by al-Shabaab outside Somalia.

Before the Islamist militants’ attack in Nairobi, the Kenyan military along with our partners in an African Union force last year successfully removed al-Shabaab from Kismayo, a coastal town in Somalia, allowing the democratically elected Somali government to take control. This port was a crucial source of money for the terrorists, who extorted legitimate traders. Yet al-Shabaab was still able to strike Nairobi, the business heart of East Africa, where Africans, Americans, Europeans and Asians live side by side. Al-Shabaab appears to be shifting from a strategy of insurgency to sporadic terrorist attacks both within and beyond Somalia’s borders.

As I vowed last week in the wake of the attack, Kenyan troops will remain in Somalia to defend the government until al-Shabaab no longer poses a threat to its future and to regional security. But countries in Africa and beyond who might be targeted by al-Shabaab’s exported terrorism must consider what else should be done to combat the group. Why do young men and women join al-Shabaab and its wider networks? How can we cut off funding for this terror organization?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304906704579113830197914224.html?mod=opinion_newsreel The Supreme Court re-opens for business this week, and one of its first cases is a splendid opportunity to restore the First Amendment as a bulwark of free political speech. The result in McCutcheon v. FEC will likely hang on whether Chief Justice John Roberts has the courage of his constitutional convictions and is […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324110404578630561814823892.html?mod=opinion_newsreel THE SUPREME COURT WILL RULE: On Oct. 16, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a claim brought by husband and wife Brian and Kerri Kaley. The Kaleys are asking the high court to answer a serious and hotly contested question in the federal criminal justice system: Does the Constitution allow federal prosecutors […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304171804579119671937747900.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop The tide of war against al Qaeda is expanding, as two weekend raids by U.S. commandos illustrate. The raids show the skill and reach of American special forces, but also the enduring nature of this conflict with Islamists and the need to counter its African expansion. Special forces and U.S. intelligence scored a major […]

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Breakthrough in understanding leukemia. A mutated gene RUNX1 inherited from one parent is responsible for producing leukemia stem cells. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have discovered that the healthy copy of the gene from the other parent is also required otherwise the leukemia cells die.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Controls/SendFriend.ashx?print=1&type=0&item=172304

Brain cancer breakthrough. The media is reporting the discovery by Dr Regina Golan-Gerstl, of Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical School, of hnRNP A2/B1. The protein gene is key to the most common and aggressive adult brain cancer – glioblastoma. Great news, as reported it in my 14th Aug 2011 newsletter.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/172349#.Uk0MvVO_hOQ
http://markets.financialcontent.com/nydailynews/news/read?GUID=19085951

Laquinimod reduces brain damage in MS patients. In Phase III trials, Israel’s Teva reported that its Laquinimod oral treatment for multiple sclerosis reduced neuro-degeneration, slowing the progression of locomotor disability in multiple sclerosis patients. Laquinimod might also help treat Crohn’s disease, lupus nephritis, Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000882391&fid=1725

Americans look to Israel for Parkinson’s treatment. 1.5 million Americans, including many Jews, suffer from Parkinson’s disease. The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle highlights some of the many Israeli treatments.
http://thejewishchronicle.net/view/full_story/23697711/article-Jews-grapple-with-Parkinson-s–look-to-Israel–local-sources-for-help

DIY medical sensor. (Thanks to NoCamels.com) Israel’s Elfi Tech monitors your pulse rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, blood flow and much more, non-invasively at any time with the help of a sensor smaller than a dime. It has just been selected as a finalist of the Nokia Sensing XChallenge.
http://nocamels.com/2013/09/do-your-own-medical-checkups-with-elfi-techs-monitoring-sensor/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUJwpMKLbhE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5em7GcJkYV8

Israel hosts international conference on proteins. 160 leading biomedical scientists from Israel, Europe and the US attended the ninth Jakub K. Parnas Conference entitled “Proteins – from Birth to Death” at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is co-sponsored by the Biochemical societies of Israel, Poland and the Ukraine.
http://www.as.huji.ac.il/conferences/proteins

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/360460/obamacares-unconstitutional-origins-andrew-c-mccarthy

Tax legislation has to originate in the House; the health-care law didn’t.

Of all the fraud perpetrated in the passage of Obamacare — and the fraud has been epic — the lowest is President Obama’s latest talking point that the Supreme Court has endorsed socialized medicine as constitutional. To the contrary, the justices held the “Affordable” Care Act unconstitutional as Obama presented it to the American people: namely, as a legitimate exercise of Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.

To sustain this monstrosity, Chief Justice John Roberts had to shed his robes and put on his legislator cap. He rewrote Obamacare as a tax — the thing the president most indignantly promised Americans that Obamacare was not. And it is here that our recent debate over the Constitution’s Origination Clause — the debate in which Matt Franck, Ramesh Ponnuru, Mark Steyn, and yours truly have probed the historical boundaries of the “power of the purse” reposed by the Framers in the House of Representatives — descends from the airy realm of abstraction and homes in on a concrete violation of law.

It is not just that the intensely unpopular Obamacare was unconstitutional as fraudulently portrayed by the president and congressional Democrats who strong-armed and pot-sweetened its way to passage. It is that Obamacare is unconstitutional as rewritten by Roberts. It is a violation of the Origination Clause — not only as I have expansively construed it, but even under Matt’s narrow interpretation of the Clause.

It is worth pausing here briefly to rehearse an argument often made in these pages before the Supreme Court ruling two summers ago. The justices’ resolution, whatever it was to be, would in no way be an endorsement of Obamacare; it would merely reflect the fact that our Constitution, designed for a free people, permits all manner of foolishness. “Constitutional” does not necessarily mean “good.” What Obamacare always needed was a political reversal in Congress. Thus, it was unwise for Republicans to become passive while hoping the justices would do their heavy lifting for them — both because it was unlikely that this Supreme Court would invalidate Obamacare and because a ruling upholding it would inevitably be used by the most demagogic administration in history as a judicial stamp of approval for socialized medicine.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-Fray-How-urban-legends-become-universal-truths-327839

Oslo brought virtually no benefit to Israel and inflicted massive and lasting – or at least, long-term – damage. Even in areas where benefits did allegedly accrue, closer examination will show that these were largely illusionary or, at best, transitory.
The nightmare tales of the Likud are well-known. They promised us rockets from Gaza. For a year already the Gaza Strip is for the most part under the Palestinian Authority; there hasn’t been a rocket, and there won’t be a single one… All this [empty] talk. The Likud is scared to death of peace. Cowards afraid of peace. That is the Likud of today.

– Yitzhak Rabin, June 25, 1995

I spent several previous columns discussing how control of the political discourse by left-wing elites determines political realities in Israel. I argued that this discourse determines decision-makers’ perceptions of constraints acting on them and possibilities available to them – and hence has a defining influence on the parameters of their policy choices.

Fortuitous happenstance

As it happens, by “happy” circumstance, I recently came across a starkly graphic example of how this process is conducted; how the media accepts unquestioningly wildly fictitious claims to support and sustain the myths of Left-leaning elites as to the inevitability/desirability of their political perspectives – thus aiding and abetting their propagation; and how vulnerable even potentially unsympathetic publics are to these machinations.

This was provided by an interview in The Times of Israel, conducted by its editor David Horovitz, with Eitan Haber.

Haber was billed as “Yitzhak Rabin’s closest aide” and can be indisputably categorized as belonging to the Oslophilic elites.

After all, he is a longstanding apologist for that ill-conceived process – which he frequently defends in his regular column in the widely read Hebrew daily, Yediot Aharanot, and in his numerous appearances in the mainstream media, to which he has ready access.

In the interview, titled “When they become PM, they realize how utterly dependent Israel is on the US,” Haber provided his assessment of “the 20 years since that White House handshake…”

Fabric of fabrications

Virtually everything Haber conveyed throughout the interview was – demonstrably – either illogical or inaccurate.

Even more regrettably, he was not challenged, even once, on any of his not infrequent non sequiturs and misrepresentations – leaving readers with the impression that they were being provided with a reasonably accurate account of events by an authoritative, well-connected individual.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The major points Haber attempts to make is that not only was the Oslo process enormously beneficial to Israel, it was made inevitable by US pressure on Rabin, something that Binyamin Netanyahu did not grasp when he castigated him for adopting it.

According to Haber, no one really understands the pressures on Israel until he/she becomes prime minister, and Israeli prime ministers actually have no freedom of choice to make independent policy.

Even though he acknowledges that “the accords had holes, that is true… and even though it did not lead to the hoped-for end-of-conflict…” Haber alleges that “Israel benefited immensely from the Oslo process,” asserting that “… the accords brought the State of Israel a considerable benefit.”

He continues, “Netanyahu opposed Rabin when he didn’t know anything…and what is it that the Likud leader didn’t know 20 years ago, that he does know as prime minister today? That only when you make it to the Prime Minister’s Office… do you understand the extent to which Israel ‘is dependent on America…We are in America’s little pocket.’”

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4007/israel-warning-iran With no military threat, Iran has no incentive to stop its nuclear progress. Iran might well conclude that the sanctions could disappear in the course of endless rounds of diplomacy. No one in Israel seeks war, but a central tenet of its own defense doctrine is that Israel cannot depend on any external power […]

Robert W. Nicholson, a researcher in the areas of law, religion, and Jewish-Christian relations, holds degrees in Hebrew studies and history as well as a JD from Syracuse University. A former U.S. Marine and a 2012-2013 Tikvah Fellow, he has published in, among other places, Jewish Ideas Daily, the Jerusalem Post, and the Times of Israel.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2013/10/evangelicals-and-israel/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm

At a time when the state of Israel lies under existential threat from jihadist Islam, and under ideological and diplomatic assault in foreign ministries, international organizations, churches, universities, editorial offices, and other circles of advanced Western opinion—and when even some Jews in the Diaspora seem to be growing disenchanted with the Zionist cause—millions of evangelical Christians unabashedly continue their outspoken, wholehearted, stalwart defense of both the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

By all rights, this rather stunning fact—the fact of a vibrant Christian Zionism—should encourage a welcoming response from beleaguered Jewish supporters of Israel. Instead, it has caused palpable discomfort, especially among Jewish liberals. Wary of ulterior religious motives, and viewing evangelicals as overly conservative in their general outlook on the world, such Jews either accept the proffered support with a notable lack of enthusiasm or actively caution their fellow Jews against accepting it at all. To many, the prospect of an alignment with evangelicals, even one based on purely tactical considerations, seems positively distasteful. Very few have attempted to penetrate the evangelical world or to understand it in any substantive way.

This is a pity, for many reasons. It is also a serious strategic error. For the reality is that today’s Christian Zionism cannot be taken for granted. For one thing, not all evangelicals do support Israel. For another, more alarming thing, a growing minority inside the evangelical world views the Jewish state as at best tolerable and at worst positively immoral, a country that, instead of being supported on biblical grounds, should be opposed on those same grounds.