RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.jewishledger.com/2013/01/israel-election-2013-inside-the-vote/

LAST WEEK, ISRAELIS WENT TO THE POLLS – with some surprising results. Instead of walking away with the election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, which had joined forces with the Yisrael Beitenu Party led by Avigdor Lieberman, won with a much narrower margin than anticipated. Perhaps even more surprising, the newly-formed Yesh Atid party, led by Yair Lapid, surged ahead to take second place in the vote.

What does it all mean? At press time, the process of forming a coalition government had only just begun to take shape with Netanyahu and Lapid reportedly meeting for about two and a half hours the night of Jan. 24 to discuss their potential coalition. To find out what the vote signified – and what might lie ahead — we spoke with two well-respected experts in Middle East politics and culture: Dr. Donna Divine and Dr. Fred Lazin.
Dr. Donna Divine

Dr. Donna Divine

Dr. Donna Divine is Morningstar Family Professor in Jewish Studies and Professor of Government at Smith College, as well as associate faculty member at the University of Haifa and Bar Ilan University in Israel.
A resident of West Hartford, Divine spent the month of June co-facilitating a study and internship experience in Jerusalem, part of Smith’s Global Engagement Seminar program. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University and her PhD from Columbia University. Fluent in three of the major languages of the Middle East, Arabic, Hebrew, and Turkish, she has written on Zionist immigration to Palestine during the British Mandate.
Dr.Fred Lazin

Dr.Fred Lazin

Dr. Fred Lazin is professor emeritus of local government at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Lazin graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and received his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. He has written and edited 10 books dealing with public policy in the U.S., Israel, and developing countries; Israeli politics and society; and Jews in American politics.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=301568 From biblical sources to modern times; a brief history of the Golan Heights. Referred to as “Bashan” in the Bible, the Golan Heights was considered part of the Land of Israel. Its main city, “Golan in Bashan,” (Deuteronomy 4:43, Joshua 21:27) was designated a “City of Refuge” (for those who had committed involuntary manslaughter). […]

UN Plan for ‘Palestine’: the Palestinian View Louis Rene Beres Intentionally or unwittingly, by allowing the Palestinian Authority’s recent end-run around authoritative international law, the U.N. General Assembly set the stage for Israel’s incremental dismemberment. The same must be said about the world organization’s now ritualistic condemnations of Jewish settlements in Jerusalem. What must Israel’s […]

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/jan/30/women-combat-dont-girls-just-wanna-have-fun/ WASHINGTON, DC, January 30, 2013 – Now that we’ve skipped over “an orgasm in every bed,” to “a woman in every foxhole,” it’s time for some serious thinking. There is still a generation out there that thinks of women as “sweethearts,” that is to say, girlfriends, wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. Asking us to […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3551/czech-republic-israel-arab-world Czechoslovakia was the only democratic country in Central Europe in the 1930’s, as Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East today. By its vote in United Nations, the Czechs have made it clear that the Arab world should not be appeased; that the appalling Western mistake in 1938 – of trying […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3556/anti-semitism-europe Jews who can do so, leave Europe. Those who do not have the means to leave know they must be extremely careful: it is dangerous again to be a Jew in Europe. It is even more dangerous to be a Jew who supports Israel. In 2012, the number of anti-Semitic crimes in France sharply […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/339254/are-we-really-back-relying-egyptian-military-save-day-andrew-c-mccarthy Back when Mubarak was clinging to power and the Tahrir Square rioting was intensifying, I cautioned that it would be foolish for the West to assume that the Egyptian military — principal recipient of tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars over the last 40 years — would step in and stop the country […]

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/29/obama-vs-fox-news-behind-white-house-strategy-to-delegitimize-news-organization/#ixzz2JT6LvLGP

There is no war on terror for the Obama White House, but there is one on Fox News.

In a recent interview with The New Republic, President Obama was back to his grousing about the one television news outlet in America that won’t fall in line and treat him as emperor. Discussing breaking Washington’s partisan gridlock, the president told TNR,”If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News…for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”

Alas, the president loves to whine about the media meanies at Fox News. To him, these are not people trying to do their jobs. No, they are out to get him. What other motive could a journalist have in holding a president accountable? Why oh why do Ed Henry and Chris Wallace insist on asking hard questions? Make them stop!

Alas, the president loves to whine about the media meanies at Fox News. To him, these are not people trying to do their jobs. No, they are out to get him.

The president seems more comfortable talking to “real journalists” such as Chris Hughes, who asked the question in the TNR interview that elicited Obama’s reflexive Fox hatred. Hughes is the new owner of TNR and is a former major Obama campaign donor and organizer who was featured on the cover of Fast Company, with the headline, “The Kid Who Made Obama President.” You can’t make this stuff up.

This latest volley from the president is just one in a long line of comments from his White House as part of their campaign to silence any dissent they detect in the press corps.

Recently, the White House has kept Fox News off of conference calls dealing with the Benghazi attack, despite Fox News being the only outlet that was regularly reporting on it and despite Fox having top notch foreign policy reporters.

They have left Chris Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday” out of a round of interviews that included CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS for not being part of a “legitimate” news network. In October 2009, as part of an Obama administration onslaught against Fox News,White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on ABC’s “This Week” that the Fox News Channel is “not really a news station” and that much of the programming is “not really news.”

Whether you are liberal or conservative, libertarian, moderate or politically agnostic, everyone should be concerned when leaders of our government believe they can intentionally try to delegitimize a news organization they don’t like.

http://www.jinsa.org/publications/jinsa-visiting-fellows/about-jinsa-visiting-fellows-program Synopsis: While it is relatively easy to find the right rhetoric for disengagement from Egypt, the fact of the matter is that the Obama administration has put all of its eggs in Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s basket. If the authority of the Morsi government were to fail, American planners would have to consider urgent […]

http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/from-the-editor-see-note-please.html

Why is anyone surprised by President Obama’s choices of Chuck Hagel and John Kerry and John Brennan? Where have they been during the past four years?

President Obama, in his first speech to the United Nations in 2009 made his sentiments very clear.

He ignored, as he always has, the terrorism and barbaric human rights violation in the Moslem world, stating that “Extremists sowing terror in pockets of the world….protracted conflicts that grind on and on; genocide, mass atrocities, more nations with nuclear weapons; melting ice caps and ravaged populations; persistent poverty and pandemic disease.”

Well, some of those very deep pockets of the world are in Saudi Arabia where the President of the United Nations bowed to the tyrant who promotes and funds and enables genocide and terror.

And, let’s face it there are no “melting ice caps” in Saudi Arabia or those Moslem nations he is so eager to avoid dissing.

Then after platitudes upon platitudes he segued into the Middle East and mentioned his “special Czar for Middle East Peace- George Mitchell, a Chuck Hagel In John Kerry clothing.

And what did he promise his Czar would do to end the Israel/Arab conflict? He evoked a Mitchell engineered settlement based on “….security for Israelis and Palestinians….two states living side by side in peace and security- a Jewish Stqte of Israel…..and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. “

Contiguous territory? I hereby offer a free lifetime subscription to OUTPOST to anyone who can figure out how to make Gaza and the West Bank contiguous without strangling Israel.

Then the man who has Israel’s back added “ The United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate
claims and rights of the Palestinians.”

There are four people who share those thoughts….Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Brennan and Chuck Hagel.

Where was the outrage in 2009? 2010? 2011? And 2012?