RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/romney-and-the-palestinian-culture-of-destruction/

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is under attack for speaking an important truth about the Arab-Israeli conflict. At a fundraiser in Jerusalem on Monday, Romney made the obvious, even banal, point about the economic disparity between nations. Speaking of Israel and the Palestinian-run West Bank, Romney said, “Culture makes all the difference.” Rejecting the geographic determinism that claims geography, climate, and species distribution account for the greater power and wealth of the West, Romney added, “you look at Israel and you say you have a hard time suggesting that all of the natural resources on the land could account for all the accomplishment of the people here.” Romney’s point was part of a larger discussion of global economic disparity that he has brought up previously in numerous speeches and in his book No Apology, and that scholars like David Landes and Thomas Sowell have developed in their work.

When it comes to Israel, however, no comment, no matter how sound its scholarly pedigree, that challenges the orthodox narrative favored by the Arabs and their Western shills will be allowed to pass without attack. Saeb Erekat, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, responded, “It is a racist statement and this man doesn’t realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation.” Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian legislator and official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, claimed the Palestinians “have to build an economy when they have no freedom of movement, no human rights, no fundamental freedoms.” International reporting on the remarks backed up the Palestinian interpretation by citing the “occupation” and “blockade” as the real explanation for why the Palestinians are failing economically.

These reactions are drearily predictable, including the incoherent charge of “racism” against somebody making a cultural argument. More important, once again Palestinian revanchist obsessions, anti-Semitism, and the jihadist death cult are ignored, and the reasons for Israeli defensive measures passed over, while Western materialist obsessions like “racism” “colonialism,” and “national aspirations” are used to explain destructive behavior the origins of which lie in cultural and religious dysfunctions.

Thus if you want to explain Palestinian economic backwardness, start with the Arab rejection of Israel’s legitimacy, one grounded in Islamic doctrine and culture. For all the duplicitous talk of the “two-state solution,” a critical mass of Arabs simply does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. Nor is this rejection a consequence of an “illegal occupation” of an “Arab homeland” by neo-colonialist Jews abetted by Western imperialists. When four Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948, its purpose was not to create a Palestinian nation, something that has no historical reality. Rather, after they destroyed Israel, the aggressor nations planned to carve up among themselves what was left of mandatory Palestine. This rejection of Israel has been a constant over the last 60 years, as historian Efraim Karsh points out: “Had Arafat set the PLO from the start on the path to peace and reconciliation, instead of turning it into one of the most murderous terrorist organizations in modern times, a Palestinian state could have been established in the late 1960s or the early 1970s; in 1979 as a corollary to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty; by May 1999 as part of the Oslo Process; or at the very latest with the Camp David summit of July 2000.”

The fact is, Israel was and is an abomination to Muslims not because there is no Palestinian state, but because it is a country comprising what Muslims consider dhimmi, a conquered inferior people whose lands and lives are forfeit to Muslims by decree of Allah. Nor does it help that Muslims especially loath Jews, hatred based on the authority of the Koran, Hadiths, and 14 centuries of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Hence the rank anti-Semitism rampant among Palestinian Arabs, who routinely and publicly indulge invective and genocidal rhetoric redolent of Der Stürmer. The continuing existence in the Middle East of an economically and militarily powerful Israel, populated by despised dhimmi, is a daily humiliation for the peoples who consider themselves the “best of nations” destined to rule the world. Ending the “occupation” or lifting the defensive blockade of Gaza wouldn’t change this irrational, religiously sanctioned hatred.

This deep-seated hatred, justified by religion, is also manifested in Palestinian culture by the cult of martyrdom, murder, and death that has legitimized terrorist attacks on Israelis for decades. Rather than promoting secular education, the acquisition of entrepreneurial skills, and the creation of a legal system conducive to economic development, too many Palestinians have instead financed, idolized, and reinforced with public honors the “martyrs” who blow up themselves and innocent Israelis on the promise of paradise. A people who dress up preschoolers as suicide bombers and make heroes out of murderers have other priorities than increasing exports, growing new businesses, or increasing GDP. Nor is this sickening death-cult the preoccupation of a fringe. A few years ago, alleged “moderate” Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas named a public square in Ramallah after a terrorist who in 1978 killed 38 Israelis, including 13 children. Such hatred is a cultural dysfunction inimical to the cosmopolitan tolerance necessary in a globalized economy.

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/

THE EDITOR OF VOGUE ANNA WINTOUR MADE A VIDEO FOR OBAMA …..RSK

It’s now 17 months since Vogue published its cover-story paean to the first lady of Syria, “Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert.” Readers were treated to a profile of Asma up close, “the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies,” a dazzling paragon of understated style and philanthropic works, “on a mission to create a beacon of secularism and culture in a powder-keg region — and to put a modern face on her husband’s regime.” Asma, “glamorous, young and very chic” was featured playing with her kids, whipping up home-cooked fondue with her jeans-clad husband, “the off-duty president,” and urging millions of Syrian youth to engage in “active citizenship.”

That was February of 2011. The following month, Syrians began engaging in a lot more active citizenship than the Assad regime evidently had in mind, rising in rebellion against the dynastic tyranny in Damascus. For 16 months now, abetted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Syrian regime has been fighting back — with heavy weapons, arrests, torture and butchery, mutilating and murdering even children. To date, an estimated 19,000 or more Syrians have been slaughtered, and the killing continues.

Now, at long last, comes a recantation of sorts from the author of Vogue’s “Rose in the Desert,” Joan Juliet Buck. To call it a full-throated apology would be inaccurate. Buck appears genuinely appalled by the carnage with which the Assad regime itself so swiftly and utterly discredited her labors to give it a fashion-plate human face. But her deeper sympathies seem reserved for herself, and her woefully bad luck that her Asma profile — which closed with President Bashar al-Assad, surrounded by singing children, ringing a peace bell — came out just before the monstrous character of the Assad regime hove into full view in the international headlines. (After a blitz of criticism last year, Vogue scrubbed the article from its web site, though you can still find a copy here.)

“Joan Juliet Buck: Mrs. Assad Duped Me” is the headline of Buck’s new take on Asma al-Assad, published in the current edition of Newsweek, with an accompanying essay by Tina Brown on “Syria’s First Lady of Hell: The real story behind the notorious interview.”

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obama-canceled-bin-laden-kill-raid-three-times-at-jarretts-urging?f=must_reads http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/29/obama-canceled-bin-laden-kill-raid-three-times-valerie-jarrett/?print=1 At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL mission, according to an explosive new book scheduled for release August 21. The Daily Caller has seen a portion of the chapter in […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/why-is-the-world-different

An enraged madman kills a dozen people and injures many others in a carefully planned mass murder in an Aurora Colorado movie theater. What can one possibly say? So desensitized by stories of brutality on the nightly news, my emotions are muted. It seems to me that on first blush the nation is becoming more coarse, more susceptible to the inner beast, that evil lurking in the hearts of men.

Was there a time of innocence? Perhaps not, but surely there was a time not so long ago when people helped their neighbors, left their doors unlocked and didn’t listen to rap songs that encourage rape and the killing of cops. A dark cloud has moved over the culture that avoids any taboos. It pushes past normative standards so that violence through video games and television programming is in the cultural ambiance.

The world is different with an emotional apocalypse seemingly in our midst each day. Nightly news is filled with horror stories; the more lurid, the more likely it will be aired. Audiences are told “If you are squeamish, you shouldn’t watch the next few scenes.” For many this is cultural catnip. Push that envelope to new and more extreme positions and then contend that the issue is guns. Surely even Mayor Bloomberg, the arch defender of gun control, must realize a gun in the hands of St. Francis is not a weapon. Guns don’t fire on their own; someone must pull that trigger.

The one word that won’t be employed in all the accounts of mass murder is “evil.” We rationalize. The fiend must have had a relational set-back. His parents mistreated him. School officials took his scholarship away. Who knows? The one thing we do know is “evil” will not cross the lips of the talking heads. After all, we are now all psychologists seeking fundamental answers for the inexplicable.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/if-bibi-could-vote-in-november

Recently on FOX News Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adroitly sidestepped host Chris Wallace’s question about Israel’s interest in the upcoming American presidential election. And rightly so. Whatever the outcome of the election here in the United States, the long-standing relationship Israel maintains with this country is of singular importance that has a direct bearing on Israel’s safety and security. And while the values and principles shared by the people of both countries will continue to be all important, it doesn’t mean that Israelis don’t have a preference, but that preference might be better for the sake of the long term relationship remain unstated. The hypothetical question then of how Bibi Netanyahu might vote if he were a US voter is one that’s interesting to ponder for in effect, it is a question that also speaks to how the Israeli polity feels about the United States at this point in time.

I have not talked to the Prime Minister about this, but in my years of serving him as his Chief of Staff, I feel that there are some of the issues that would particularly resonate with him if he were focused on a personal vote instead of being charged with a national mandate. The fact is that Obama Administration policies developed and implemented over the past three years have raised serious doubts about the direction and depth of the this Administration’s commitment to Israel. Here are some which I think are notable, warrant concern and might have a bearing on how Bibi and most Israelis feel about the Presidential campaign here.

* Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Egypt and listened to the new Egyptian Foreign Minister declare his belief that the Camp David Accords of 1978 conferred upon Palestinians something he called a “right to have their own state on the land that was – the pre-June 4, 1967, borders with Jerusalem as its capital”. There is no such provision in those documents and Secretary Clinton, as a party to those agreements, ought not have let those comments stand without comment. It is hard to believe that a Kissinger, or Eagleburger or Shultz or Powell, or Rice would have allowed those assertions stand unremarked.
* The Obama Administration just convened its very own “Global Counterterrorism Forum” and invited 29 nations to meet on this subject, but Israel was not one of them. Bowing to Turkey’s insistence to exclude Israel from the conference, the US further insulted Israel by not even mentioning her as a victim of terrorist violence in her representative’s prepared remarks. U.S. Undersecretary of State, Maria Otero, failed to mention Israel as a country that has experienced terrorism while reading a long list of other nations that did. This was a US sponsored event, not a UN one where behavior of this type is expected as a matter of course.
* The Obama defense budget for Fiscal Year 2013, excludes funding for the promised US-Israeli initiative “Iron Dome”, a jointly built missile defense shield designed to secure Israel from Iranian missiles. This despite the platitudes spoken by both Obama and Clinton in the weeks leading up to the budget submission that the U.S. budget would continue to ensure Israel’s ability to defend herself. This brings into question the long-standing predisposition of the United States to guarantee Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region.

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/312684

At a time when good news is rarer than a mohel in Mecca, few things are as encouraging as 31 teenagers here. Nearly all are low-income blacks and Hispanics in Harlem. Most live in single-parent households. The soft bigotry of low expectations might allow each to surrender, snarl at society, and settle for a life on the dole — or perhaps an even tougher spot on the American periphery.

Instead, 100 percent of these students graduated from local high schools in June (three-quarters of them from government-school campuses). Across America, only 72 percent of high-school seniors graduated, while that number is just 65.5 percent in New York City’s government schools. Among these high-caliber kids, 98 percent will enter college, versus 68.3 percent of U.S. high-school graduates and 71 percent of Big Apple grads. These 31 youths were admitted to 105 different four-year colleges, 25 of which will welcome them soon.

These include, among others, Columbia, Fordham, Haverford, Howard, Middlebury, and Temple. These students collectively scored $2.3 million in merit-based college scholarships, averaging some $74,000 each.

Too good to be true?

Actually, this is routine at the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, a privately financed, non-profit supplemental-learning organization founded in 1989. (For further statistics on how HEAF matches up, click here.) HEAF’s philosophy is: “No excuses. Every child can learn.” It works its magic after school and on weekends, providing enrichment, encouragement, mentoring, and other guidance to some 30 to 50 boys and girls annually, starting in sixth grade. HEAF selects students via grades, test scores, on-site writing exercises, and interviews with children and parents.

HEAF’s extracurricular efforts train students to thrive in the world beyond Harlem.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ Romney has landed in Jerusalem and Obama is threatening to visit Israel in his second term. This seems like good news for Americans, but presidential and pre-presidential visits are often bad news for Israelis. Romney’s trip itinerary covering the UK, Israel and Poland is a clever road map critique of Obama’s foreign policy. Kerry […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/07/new_yorker_writer_fabricated_plagiarized.html

Move over, Jayson Blair and Steven Glass, here comes Jonah Lehrer joining the pantheon of fabulists and plagiarists. The New Yorker magazine published quotes from Bob Dylan he made up, among other problems.

Funny how it is always the most prestigious liberal publications who generate these frauds.

I despise David Remnick, a snob and Israel-hater (who was abusive to Jack Cashill on Milt Rosenberg show). I hope this takes him down a peg. his book on Obama sold very few copies.

In a statement, the editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, said: “This is a terrifically sad situation, but, in the end, what is most important is the integrity of what we publish and what we stand for.”

Once upon a time, The New Yorker was renowned for fact checking.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304388004577533092169060420.html?KEYWORDS=HAVA+NAGILA
At Some Happy Events, ‘Hava Nagila’ Isn’t Invited Standard Tune at Jewish Celebrations Faces a Backlash; Like a Knish?

WHEN I WAS A KID, MY PRANKSTER BROTHER TOLD ME IT WAS A SONG ABOUT CUBA…..RSK

CEDARHURST, N.Y.—When newlyweds Bryan Salamon and Rachel Itzkowitz entered the ballroom of Temple Beth El earlier this month, the band struck up a raucous rendition of the hora, a traditional Jewish folk dance.
‘Hava Nagila’ is a favorite at Jewish weddings, engagement parties, bar mitzvahs and any special occasion where there is dancing and music. But you don’t have to be Jewish to celebrate with the song — in fact it’s one of the most popular party tunes in recorded history. WSJ’s Lucette Lagnado reports.

For 45 minutes, the Neshoma Orchestra—whose slogan is “Your Soul Source for Jewish Music”—performed 15 Hebrew dance hits as hundreds of guests surrounded the couple, hoisting the bride high on a chair and dancing around the two in ecstatic circles.

Noticeably absent from the gleeful medley? The best known Jewish wedding song of them all: “Hava Nagila.”

“‘Hava Nagila’ at a wedding is like pouring sour milk on cereal,” said Naomi Salamon, the groom’s mother. “You won’t hear it in the next set or the set after that,” vowed her husband, Michael.

“Hava Nagila,” Hebrew for “Let Us Rejoice,” has been a staple of Jewish—and some non-Jewish—celebrations for decades. The song often accompanies the hora, a traditional dance-in-the-round that is performed at weddings, bar mitzvahs, engagement parties and other joyful occasions.

As American Jews assimilated, “Hava Nagila,” with its dizzying tune that incorporates major and minor modes, became one of the last cultural touchstones of the past. Even the most secular Jews craved it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444860104577558810814674928.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

IN A NUTSHELL: “Obama is nostalgic for the Jewish state’s socialist past. Romney admires its capitalist future.”

“Mr. Romney’s attitude toward Israel seems to come from a different place. He admires the country as much for where it’s going as for where it has come from. And he’s not prepared to give Palestinians an automatic pass for their failure to do something with the political and economic opportunities they’ve been given. Israeli success, in his mind, is earned—and so is Palestinian failure.”

Mitt Romney infuriated Palestinians during his visit to Israel on the weekend by calling Jerusalem “the capital of Israel.” He then added insult to injury by noting—in the context of a discussion of “culture”—the “dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” between Israelis and Palestinians. A Palestinian official called the remark “racist.”

I’m beginning to warm to Mitt.

We live in a time when being pro-Israel has become a key test of a candidate’s presidential fitness, and rightly so. George W. Bush passed that test on a helicopter ride over Israel with Ariel Sharon in 1999. Barack Obama tried to do the same when he paid homage to the besieged Israeli town of Sderot in 2008.

By contrast, Jimmy Carter thinks Israel is a virtual apartheid state, which is just the sort of thought that makes Carter Carter. To be anti-Israel doesn’t absolutely, positively, make you an anti-Semite. But it does mark you out as something between a moron and a crank.

President Obama has yet to do anything toward Israel that would put him in the Carter league—quite. But give him a second term. Perhaps his performance so far has been only an overture.