RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4103

The BBC’s news challenge

There’s no reason to envy James Harding, the man recently chosen to head the BBC’s news department. Harding is going to fill the most senior position at the most important channel in Great Britain, and perhaps in the world. You can’t overstate BBC’s status and power. The company has enjoyed long-lasting prestige throughout the decades (for the sake of full disclosure: I am a former BBC employee in London and learned to appreciate Harding’s broadcasting culture).

The man with the new job, who was selected to shape the channel’s news policies, is a Jewish supporter of Israel. Over the past six years, Harding has also held the coveted position of editor in chief of The Times of London.

And why doesn’t Harding deserve our envy, despite the prestigious appointment? Because after taking office he is going to be put immediately under not only the U.K. Jewish community’s watchful eye, but the entire country’s as well. Polls have shown that the BBC is the main source of news for most of Britain’s Jews. It is no surprise, therefore, that this appointment has raised a great deal of interest.

There are already voices calling on Harding to abandon his “pro-Israel” views at a time when Israel is most often associated with terms like “boycott,” and when the BBC has been regularly blamed for taking a blatant anti-Israel stance. But if the company’s chief executives decided to leave this senior, highly sensitive position in Harding’s hands of all people, it’s a sign that he has been blessed, among other attributes, with a great deal of integrity as well as exceptional journalistic talents.

http://freebeacon.com/unsatisfactory-response/ Former special operations officers say that a much-anticipated congressional report investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya leaves vital questions unanswered and proves that the Obama administration abandoned its responsibility to protect those who were under siege. The House released on Tuesday what lawmakers claimed is a comprehensive report detailing the […]

http://freebeacon.com/an-insight-into-the-bombers-tsarnaev/

An al Qaeda magazine containing bomb-making instructions helped the Boston Marathon bombers construct the deadly explosive devices that killed three people and wounded more than 180, according to a U.S. official close to the ongoing investigation.

The official confirmed that the disclosure about how the pressure cooker bombs were built came during hospital room exchanges between investigators and wounded bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The link between the bombers and the magazine is the main clue to emerge so far identifying the bombers as Islamist extremists seeking to wage jihad against the United States.

Tsarnaev said the English-language terrorist magazine Inspire provided details on the pressure cooker bombs, according to the official. The official commented after NBC News and Fox News Channel reported the detail.

Tsarnaev, who is recovering from multiple gunshot wounds in a Boston hospital, also said opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the bombers viewed as a U.S. war against Islam, were a main motivation behind the Boston Marathon attack.

Officials continued to search for clues to any foreign affiliations between the two ethnic Chechens and terrorist groups in Russia and elsewhere.

U.S. officials told the Washington Free Beacon shortly after the April 15 bombing that there were indications Inspire helped the bombers, specifically instructions contained in the first issue directing terrorists to use kitchen materials to make bombs.

Europe Has a Serious Hezbollah Problem The legendary World War I British intelligence officer T.E. Lawrence—now forever known as Lawrence of Arabia—once described his commander, Brigadier-General Gilbert Clayton, as being “like water, or permeating oil, soaking silently and insistently through everything.” Lawrence’s words offer a remarkably apt description of the Iranian-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah. Since […]

Obama’s Flawed Advice To Israel (First of Two Parts) It’s farewell to the drawing-room’s civilized cry, the professor’s sensible whereto and why, The frock-coated diplomat’s social aplomb, Now matters are settled with gas and with bomb. W.H. Auden, Danse Macabre One must presume that President Obama’s most recent calls for Israeli cooperation in the Middle […]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13192#.UXh2s8u9KK0 The headlines blare “Syria calls on UN to recognize Rebels’ al-Qaeda Links.” The sub-headline pronounces “Syria has urged the United Nations Security Council to class the al-Nusra Front as a group linked to al-Qaeda.” The problem is the group most “linked to al-Qaeda” boomerangs directly back to Syrian “President” Bashar al-Assad himself. For it […]

http://www.danielpipes.org/12781/boston-terrorism

N.B.: Text differs slightly from the Washington Times

What will be the long-term impact of the Apr. 15-19 Boston Marathon attack and the ensuing action-movie-style chase, killing a total of four and wounding 265?

Let’s start with what its impact will not be. It will not bring American opinion together; if the “United We Stand” slogan lasted brief months after 9/11, consensus after Boston will be even more elusive. The violence will not lead to Israeli-like security measures in the United States. Nor will it lead to a greater preparedness to handle deadly sudden jihad syndrome violence. It will not end the dispute over the motives behind indiscriminate Muslim violence against non-Muslims. And it certainly will not help resolve current debates over immigration or guns.

What it will do is very important: it will prompt some Westerners to conclude that Islamism is a threat to their way of life. Indeed, every act of Muslim aggression against non-Muslims, be it violent or cultural, recruits more activists to the anti-jihad cause, more voters to insurgent parties, more demonstrators to anti-immigrant street efforts, and more donors to anti-Islamist causes.

Education by murder is the name I gave this process in 2002; we who live in democracies learn best about Islamism when blood flows in the streets. Muslims began with an enormous stock of good will because the Western DNA includes sympathy for foreigners, minorities, the poor, and people of color. Islamists then dissipate this good will by engaging in atrocities or displaying supremacist attitudes. High profile terrorism in the West – 9/11, Bali, Madrid, Beslan, London – moves opinion more than anything else.

Op-ed: In light of its dark past, Britain’s involvement in building of PA’s army very problematic
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4371351,00.html

British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould is doing all he can for the Palestinian army, which he claims plays a crucial role in the establishment of a Palestinian state. He is urging Israel to transfer authority to the Palestinian army in areas B and C and reveals that the UK “invests in training the Palestinian security forces…We have senior and experienced officers embedded in Palestinian training academies.” But this reminds the Jews of other “experienced” British officers, such as Glubb Pasha and the other British commanders who built the Jordanian army and commanded over it during its invasion of the Land of Israel with the goal of thwarting the UN’s partition plan. These forces destroyed Gush Etzion and the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem and killed thousands of soldiers and civilians.

The Jews also remember the words of anti-Semitic general Evelyn Barker, commander of the British forces in the Land of Israel: “(We) will be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them.” Before Barker, during the pogrom of 1920, Col. Waters Taylor, financial adviser to the Military Administration in Palestine, explained to Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini that if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem during Easter, both General Bols (chief administrator in Palestine, 1919-20) and General Allenby (commander of the Egyptian force, 1917-19, then High Commissioner of Egypt) would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2013/04/viscount-samuel-meet-secretary-hagel   Emerging from intense controversy, the British politician Herbert Samuel (1870-1963) was appointed the first High Commissioner of Palestine, where he served 1920-25. A Jew and an influential Zionist, Samuel bent over backwards not to favor the Yishuv, to the point that he forwarded the interests of the Palestinians most hostile to the Jewish […]

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/25/tamerlan-tsarnaev-vowed-to-die-for-islam-judge-prematurely-stopped-brother/#ixzz2RT0QLsq0

EXCLUSIVE: Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev sent text messages to his mother as early as 2011 suggesting he was willing to die for Islam, the FBI told lawmakers this week according to two officials with knowledge of the Capitol Hill briefing.

Tsarnaev, who was killed days after the April 15 bombing in a shootout with police, is said to have embraced radical Islam in recent years and recruited his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to carry out the attack that killed three and wounded more than 180 near the finish line of the world’s most prestigious road race.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was caught alive but wounded on Friday and charged with use of a weapon of mass destruction, for which he could get the death penalty.

The FBI filed a federal criminal complaint against the 19-year-old on Sunday, and federal District Court Judge Marianne Bowler arrived at the hospital where he is being treated to preside over his initial hearing Monday, when she read him his Miranda rights.

But Fox News’ sources say there was confusion about Bowler’s timing, with some voicing concerns that investigators were not given enough time to question Dzhokhar under the “public safety exception” invoked by the Justice Department.