RUTHFULLY YOURS

Blaming the victim Melanie Phillips

http://phillipsblog.dailymail.co.uk/2011/11/blaming-the-victim.html

One of the most egregious signs of western irrationality and bigotry over the issue of Israel is the way in which its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is routinely scapegoated for causing the breakdown of the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

This charge is based on the widespread fallacy that the ‘peace process’ has stalled because Israel keeps building more Jewish ‘settlements’ on ‘Palestinian land’. This reasoning is not only totally wrong but utterly perverse on the following grounds:

1) The actual reason for the collapse of the ‘peace process’ is that Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly maintains that he will never accept that Israel is entitled to be a Jewish state, hails Palestinian terrorists as heroes for murdering Israelis and does nothing to end the incitement to murder Jews disseminated in schools, mosques and media under his control. In other words, Abbas is not a legitimate interlocutor in any civilised ‘peace process’ since he remains committed to the eradication of Israel. Yet Netanyahu is blamed for the impasse.

2) It is only Israel that has made concessions in this ‘peace process’ (as noted here). The Palestinians not only failed to deliver what was expected of them under the Road Map but now, with their UN gambit, have unilaterally reneged on their previous treaty obligations. Yet Abbas is given a free pass while Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

3) The claim that the ‘settlements’ are the key to resolving the dispute is ridiculous. First, they take up no more than one or two per cent of West Bank territory. Second, even when Netanyahu froze such new building for ten months as a sign of good will, Abbas still refused to negotiate. Yet this is all ignored, and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

4) The claim that the establishment of a Palestine state would end the dispute is also ridiculous. Such a state was on offer in 1948; Israel offered to give up more than 90 per cent of the West Bank for such a state in 2000; and an even more generous offer was subsequently made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The Palestinian response was in every case war and terror. Yet all this is ignored, and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

5) Whatever land Israel may choose to give up in its own interests, under international law Jews are entitled to settle anywhere in the West Bank. There is no such thing as Palestinian land and never was. The West Bank and Gaza never belonged to any sovereign ruler after the British withdrew from Mandatory Palestine; before that it was part of the Ottoman empire. Israel’s ‘borders’ are in fact merely the cease-fire lines from its victory in 1948 against the Arab armies that tried unsuccessfully to exterminate it at birth. It is therefore more correct to call the West Bank and Gaza disputed territory. Yet this history and law are denied and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

6) The Jews alone have the legal – as well as the moral and historical — right to settle within the West Bank and Gaza, a right given to them by the Great Powers after the First World War on account of the unique historical claim by the Jews to the land then called Palestine. This Jewish right to settle anywhere in that land was entrusted to Britain to deliver under the terms of the Mandate for Palestine – an obligation which it proceeded to break. Yet this history and law are denied, and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

In a normal world, THESE would have been devastating to Obama.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2MzWHVEvUE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HPoe1NmbJ4

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

“Islam in short is nothing more than slavery in religious form, relying on the sort of crude punishments you would dispense to a slave, and the sort of crude rewards you would offer to a slave– namely the chance to enslave and abuse others, and sample forbidden luxuries. Islam is a religion of slavery for a religion of slaves.

It is no wonder then that the modern day Jihad in built on slavery, funded by the royal families of the Gulf States, using the oil revenues produced by the oil pumps that they would never sully their own fat fingers with, with the aim of destroying and enslaving the civilized world that stands between them and world power. The Wahhabi mosques rising up across the world, their minarets and crescents, are the banners of a worldwide call to slavery. For mankind to fall to its knees and bow toward Saudi Arabia, to the Masters of Mecca, the paymasters of Al Queda and a thousand other Muslim terrorist groups around the world all clamoring for their own states and territories as part of a new Muslim Empire.

The question is will we dare to resist them?”

Scoring the #CNBCDebate Posted By Bryan Preston

PERRY IS THE ONE WITH PLANS AND A TEN YEAR RECORD OF SUCCESS…..BUT, ALAS, ALSO A RECORD OF FLUBBING DEBATES….I HOPE HE CAN STILL PULL IT OFF…BUT IT SURE LOOKS BLEAK…..RSK

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/11/09/scoring-the-cnbcdebate/?print=1

GOP debate watchers have witnessed a bizarre dynamic over the past few weeks. Herman Cain is fabulous in debates, which causes him to rise in the polls, yet he is terrible in interviews with the press and ends up having to dig himself out of holes he creates in them. Whether the topic is abortion, negotiating with terrorists, the right of return, Cain flubs and then has to spend the next several days recovering.

Rick Perry suffers the exact opposite dynamic. In one-on-one press interviews he is strong, confident and routinely articulates complex policy in fine detail. But get him on the debate stage and Katy bar the door, you know there’s a problem coming. Tonight, it was his forgetting one of the three government departments he would eliminate as president. He recovered and remembered later in the debate, but by then the damage had been done and he had run into the ditch in yet another prime time debate. The moment was on YouTube at warp speed.

Which is a pity, because on policy Perry has offered strong plans and he has a record to match those plans. His energy plan, flat tax, the $10k degree that demands efficiency at universities — all of it makes sense. Based on experience, it’s obvious that the governor of Texas’ job history is the closest match to knowing and having what it takes to meet the demands of the presidency. Yet Don Hewitt’s modern invention, the TV debate, could prevent those plans from getting past the primary stage.

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/10/peace-through-victory-%e2%80%93-give-victory-a-chance/ By now, Israel, at the urging and bullying of the world, has tried pretty much every conceivable idea and option for achieving tranquility and reconciliation with the Hamas, except for one.  Israel removed its army and civilian population from the Gaza Strip.  In what amounted to the first ethnic self-cleansing in history, Israel evicted […]

http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2011/11/09/david_axelrods_pattern_of_sexual_misbehavior

WHY WAS HERMAN CAIN SO SWIFT IN ACCUSING THE PARRY CAMP FOR THE LEAKS…? COULTER’S CONNECTING THE DOTS HERE IS SO CREDIBLE……RSK

Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country — Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. — but never in Chicago.

So it’s curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod.

Suspicions had already fallen on Sheila O’Grady, who is close with David Axelrod and went straight from being former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley’s chief of staff to president of the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), as being the person who dug up Herman Cain’s personnel records from the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

The Daley-controlled IRA works hand-in-glove with the NRA. And strangely enough, Cain’s short, three-year tenure at the NRA is evidently the only period in his decades-long career during which he’s alleged to have been a sexual predator.

After O’Grady’s name surfaced in connection with the miraculous appearance of Cain’s personnel files from the NRA, she issued a Clintonesque denial of any involvement in producing them — by vigorously denying that she knew Cain when he was at the NRA. (Duh.)

http://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2011/11/10/surprise!_iran_has_nukes If ever there was a time when “see, I told you so” was warranted, it is now as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports this week that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon. That so many in the State Department over several administrations could deceive themselves into believing claims by the […]

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2011/11/10/the_real_scandal

The real scandal in the accusations against Herman Cain is the corruption of the law, the media and politics.

Let’s start with the law. Some people may think the fact that the National Restaurant Association reportedly paid $45,000 to settle a claim made by one of its employees against Mr. Cain is incriminating.

Most of us are not going to part with 45 grand without some serious reason. But that is very different from the situation of an organization in the present legal climate.

The figure $45,000 struck a chord with me because, some years ago, my wife — who is an attorney — was fervently congratulated when her client had to pay “only” $45,000 in a jury award when the plaintiff was demanding a million dollars, in a case that was as frivolous a lawsuit as you could find.

“Palestinian Theologian” Trashes “Palestinian Theology”by Malcolm Lowe
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2573/palestinian-theologian-theology

For over two decades, parts of the Christian world have been bemused by the writings of self-styled “Palestinian Christian theologians.” Since their brightest lights are Protestant pastors, they are minor figures among the overwhelmingly Orthodox and Catholic faithful of the Holy Land. But they are strangely popular in Liberal Protestant circles abroad and especially beloved of church bureaucrats.

Now one of them, Lutheran Pastor Mitri Raheb of Bethlehem, has trashed all the efforts of “Palestinian theology” to date as an irrelevant rehash of nineteenth century European theology. And what is his new starting point? Basically, nineteenth century race theory.

For decades, Raheb and his Anglican counterpart Naim Ateek have been touring Protestant churches in Europe and North America and conducting seminars in “Palestinian theology.” That is: purported theological underpinning for Palestinian political aims. Students in Protestant universities have been obliged to swallow down their books and regurgitate them in examinations. Those who questioned this new orthodoxy might face serious obstacles to their academic future.

Ateek in Jerusalem and Raheb in Bethlehem opened educational institutions to which theology students were sent from abroad. Recently, Raheb received authorization from the Palestinian Authority to grant BA and MA degrees. So for Raheb to denounce all that purported theologizing was to drop a big bomb.

Raheb was talking on “Contextual Palestinian Theology as It Deals with Realities on the Ground” at the March 2010 “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference in Bethlehem. He began by promising a “new way of thinking” because “we all, even as Palestinians theologians, we were dancing on the rhythm of European theology of the 19th Century, trying to react here, to react there, to change here and there, but the assumptions, the systems of thinking, was [sic] still 19th Century Europe.”

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2575/german-forced-marriages

A new report shows that thousands of young women and girls in Germany are victims of forced marriages every year.

Most of the victims come from Muslim families; many have been threatened with violence and even death.

The revelations have shocked the German public and will add to the ongoing debate in Germany over the question of Muslim immigration and the establishment of a parallel Islamic society there. The revelations will intensify an ongoing debate in Germany over Muslim immigration and the role of Islam there.

The 160-page report, entitled, “Forced Marriages in Germany: Numbers and Analysis of Counseling Cases,” was commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of the Family, and made public at a news conference in Berlin on November 9.

The problem of forced marriage is evidently far more widespread than previously believed.

The study — the first and most detailed of its kind in Germany — reveals that in 2008, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 3,443 people sought help at counseling and social services centers across the country because they were being, or already had been, forced into marriage.