RUTHFULLY YOURS

“America I find is not the America I wished to find. It is racist, it is hateful and its citizens are bound to destroy themselves.” This is Tuvia Tenenbom’s cringe-worthy conclusion in The Lies They Tell, a chronicle of his wanderings through America to find out what makes it tick. But Tenenbom doesn’t appear to know a thing about America—despite living in New York for 15 years—and seems unable to learn.

What makes this more astonishing is that Tenenbom’s Catch the Jew!, his previous book, was as insightful as his latest is muddled. That book, a gutsy exposé of European funding of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Israel, with the complicity of some Jewish groups, was the first hands-on, direct-contact revelation of what these NGOs were up to, i.e. undermining Israel’s legitimacy. Israel’s government seems to have awoken to the danger. Recently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to meet with Germany’s foreign minister after he conferred with anti-Israel NGOs.

Tenenbom understood what he was talking about in part thanks to his unusual background. Groomed to be a rabbi in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Israel, he broke away to pursue secular studies, formed the Jewish Theater in New York, wrote numerous plays, and became a columnist for the Jewish daily The Forward. Fluent in German, he also writes for the German paper Die Zeit. Unfortunately, none of this gives him special insight into America. Tenenbom admits that the rest of the country is to him a blank. “Like many New Yorkers, I don’t know much about the other forty-nine states that make up America,” he writes.

Catch the Jew! had the added benefit of being Tenenbom’s idea, something that can’t be said of his latest effort. As he notes in his introduction, “Following the success of the two books, [I Sleep in Hitler’s Room, on Germany, and Catch the Jew!] my devoted editor, Winfried Horning, asked me to add another book to the series. . . . Winfried thought that the time had come to have a book about America as well.”

Tenenbom decided the best way to “portray the character of the country and its people” was to go out and meet people. He tours the states, but without a reason (apart from a book contract) or theme his wanderings appear aimless, even to himself. While in Cleveland, he writes, “I ate. I walked. Time to rest. Tomorrow I drive. Where to? Detroit. Why? Because there’s nothing more American than Detroit. How do I know? I just made it up.” The book is filled with this sort of empty trivia.

Tenenbom travels for six months, chatting with a racially diverse cast of Americans. He pesters them with questions about politics, religion, and race. Not surprisingly, they’re reluctant to answer. Maybe in Germany and Israel strangers love arguing about politics with strangers, but in this country, starting in on politics with someone you’ve just met is considered rude. Author Robert D. Kaplan, who made a similar trip, writes in his Earning the Rockies, “If you ask people straight out about such things as politics and foreign policy, they will often as not adopt a pose: after all, they don’t know you, and they may be uncomfortable about being quoted in public.” Tenenbom doesn’t entertain the possibility that the people he buttonholes don’t want to open up to him; instead, he decides they’re frightened. Americans, he concludes, are “afraid to share their political and religious views with strangers. In the Land of the Free, the Brave are quiet.” This peculiar idea becomes a major pillar of his book.

Nonie Darwish’s 2017 Regnery Faith book, Wholly Different: Why I Chose Biblical Values over Islamic Values, is a wide-ranging, reader-friendly view into the thinking of an Egyptian, Muslim woman who immigrated to America at age 30 and began to compare and contrast the values she was steeped in to those found in Judeo-Christian-influenced, Western culture.

Darwish was born in 1949 in Cairo, Egypt. She grew up in Egypt and Gaza. Her father, Mustafa Hafez, created and oversaw an anti-Israel terror group. When Darwish was eight, her father was assassinated by Israel. Egyptian President Nasser praised Darwish’s father as a shahid, or martyr. Darwish immigrated to the US in 1978, and she has lived here ever since. She converted to Christianity.

Wholly Different is part memoir, part sociological observation, and part prophetic clarion. Darwish’s style is cozy and conversational. Her sentences are short and easy to read. Darwish paints a vast, impressionistic landscape comparing the Muslim world to the West. She makes a series of thought-provoking points in a rapid style. She quotes relevant passages from Islamic scripture and shows how that scripture plays out in modern societies. In contrast, she quotes important Biblical passages and demonstrates how those have influenced the West.

Darwish combines the maternal love one might find in a wise grandmother, the kind who bakes cookies and contains a storehouse of folkloric wisdom, with the stripped-to-the-bone truth-telling and no-time-to-waste urgency of an Old Testament prophet. With every sentence, Darwish conveys the deep care she feels for every reader with an insistence on being heard, and heard for every last syllable.

As is often the case, this book by a former Muslim is more fearlessly blunt than many a counter-jihad statement by someone who has never been a Muslim. “Islamic values versus Biblical values is a bloody collision waiting to happen. The West must be warned,” she writes. Darwish has seen jihad up close and personal. She knows what is at stake, she has taken the measure of the wolf at the door, and her call bursts forth like a trumpet. Just one example of the kind of unique insights she can offer: in thirty years of living as a Muslim in the most populous Arab state, she never heard anyone question why Mohammed, at over fifty years old, took a six-year-old as his wife.

“A fish doesn’t know it is in water,” goes the old saying. Perhaps nothing dramatizes this point so vividly as Western women who marry Muslim men, travel with those men to their natal countries, and are shocked to discover that rights they took for granted as universal ceased to exist once they stepped across a border and put their Western homeland at their back. One can see one such woman, Stephanie, sobbing in a 2016 EXMNA video. “I was certain that I was going to find a way to bring my daughters back, so I bought them a bunch of clothes, but they haven’t had a chance to wear them yet,” Stephanie says, with unbearable poignancy. The camera shows Stephanie’s slender fingers fondling princess dresses she had purchased for her daughters, dresses that her daughters will never wear.

Stephanie was born in Canada and married a Muslim man. She had two children by him. She convinced herself that she and her Libyan husband could create a Canadian version of Islam. She could prevent her husband from forcing hijab on her daughters, allow the girls to listen to music, and take gymnastics. “We can mix both and be happy,” she thought. Islam, though, she said, demanded that her husband “protect” his children from Stephanie; indeed, to protect Stephanie from herself. Her husband, over the course of eighteen months, hatched a plot to convince Stephanie to put her daughters on a plane so that he could attend grad school in Europe. This was a lie. He had no plans for a European PhD. He lured Stephanie into Libya, at which point she had no rights whatsoever. Stephanie says that in Islamic terms, her husband was kind – because he had the right to kill her, and he did not. It’s five years later, and Stephanie has not seen her children since. She may never see them again.

EXCERPT:It’s death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch as some refer to it, and most Americans have no idea that this battle is being waged every day across America . By not fighting back, by allowing groups to obfuscate what is really happening, and not insisting that the Islamists adapt to our own culture, the United States is cutting its own throat with a politically correct knife, and helping to further the Islamists agenda.
Sadly, it appears that today America’s leaders would rather be politically correct than victorious.

by Michael B. Oren
When Thomas Jefferson saw there was no negotiating with Muslims, he formed what is the now the Marines (sea going soldiers). These Marines were attached to U. S. Merchant vessels. When the Muslims attacked U.S. merchant vessels, they were repulsed by armed soldiers, but there is more.The Marines followed the Muslims back to their villages and killed every man, woman, and child in the village. It didn’t take long for the Muslims to leave U.S. Merchant vessels alone. English and French merchant vessels started running up our flag when entering the Mediterranean to secure safe travel.

Why the Marine Hymn Contains the Verse “… to the shores of Tripoli .” This is very interesting and a must read piece of our history. It points out where we may be heading. Most Americans are unaware of the fact that over two hundred years ago,the United States had declared war on Islam and Thomas Jefferson led the charge!

At the height of the 18th century, Muslim pirates (the “Barbary Pirates”) were the terror of the Mediterranean and a large area of the North Atlantic . They attacked every ship in sight and held the crews for exorbitant ransoms. Those taken hostage were subjected to barbaric treatment and wrote heart-breaking letters home, begging their government and family members to pay whatever their Mohammedan captors demanded.

These extortionists of the high seas represented the North African Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco and Algiers – collectively referred to as the Barbary Coast – and presented a dangerous and unprovoked threat to the new American Republic.

Before the Revolutionary War, U.S. merchant ships had been under the protection of Great Britain. When the U.S. declared its independence and entered into war, the ships of the United States were protected by France. However, once the war was won, America had to protect its own fleets.

In June 2007, at a seminar at the U.S. Military Academy, I spent a pleasant evening speaking with a young Army captain who was completing his Ph.D. in history at Duke University, working on a topic of great interest to me: the Root reforms of the U.S. Army in the early 20th century, which “professionalized” the service by institutionalizing professional military education and creating a general staff.

That officer was J. P. Clark, and his research has culminated in this magnificent new book, Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815–1917. In this work, Clark shows us how history ought to be written — not only illuminating the past but providing a useful way to think about the future.

Clark set out to address this question: What were the main drivers of the Root reforms, “arguably the most far-reaching in the history of the U.S. Army”? The scholarship of military transformation offers three broad theories of change: 1) Some external impetus overcomes recalcitrant military conservatism; 2) internal forces, e.g., competition for resources, create change from within; and 3) external shocks, such as defeat or the emergence of new technology, compel change.

Clark argues that although elements of each cause were present during the late 19th century, none by itself can explain the transformation of the U.S. Army during this period. Superficially, the Root case seems to suggest an external cause. A civilian outsider (Secretary of War Elihu Root) took the ideas of an unconventional military thinker (Emory Upton) regarding such issues as professional military education and a general staff and imposed them on a recalcitrant military (embodied by the commanding general, Nelson Miles). But, as Clark shows, the situation was much more complex.

When Clark started to examine the factors underpinning the Root reforms, he attempted to shoehorn the small, pivotal group of reformist officers at the time into the traditional binary taxonomy of “conservatives vs. reformers.” However, he soon came to understand that the real divisions within the officer corps were generational, resulting in confusing cross-currents that could not fit adequately into that binary.

The attitudes of the Root-era reformers were the result of forces at work when they were commissioned. Too young to have served in the Civil War, they were nonetheless profoundly influenced by that conflict:

This generation had not led corps or divisions in pitched battles but companies and batteries patrolling the frontier or guarding the coasts. Torn between dreams of grand campaigns and the reality of leading small, dusty detachments, that generation was further buffeted by the social, cultural, and technological dislocations that marked the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. Like others of the Gilded Age, they were on the cusp of great change but not ready to abandon old notions.

In 1948, as Israel was heading into its first war, an IDF general sent a letter to David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s new prime minister, politely declining his offer to become chief of staff because he had learned the Jewish State only had six million bullets. “We will need 1 million bullets a day in a war and I am not willing to be chief of staff for just six days,” he wrote.

The Weapon Wizards, an engaging look at Israel’s weapons industry, is replete with such anecdotes. (Another that’s hard to resist is how Jewish forces in Jerusalem held off Arab rioters with one gun and 11 bullets. Afterward, the commander criticized the “gratuitous use of ammo.”) Such stories drive home how little Israel had militarily in its early years. Israel’s humble beginnings make it even more remarkable that it has become a military power. The goal of the authors, Israeli journalists Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot, is to explain how that transformation came about. As they write, 60 years ago Israel’s biggest exports were oranges and false teeth. Today, weapons make up 10 percent of Israel’s exports.

Like Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Katz and Bohbot identify national characteristics that have led to a “culture of innovation.” Leading the list is a creativity born of necessity. “With barely any resources beyond the human capital that had immigrated to the new state, Israelis had to make the most of the little they had,” the authors write. Israel has even created a subunit of autistic soldiers to analyze satellite pictures.

The Weapon Wizards is at its best showing these characteristics in action, from amusing episodes to in-depth stories focusing on the development of certain weapons systems. For instance, when illustrating the advantages of the IDF’s flexible hierarchy, the authors describe a visit by the U.S. Air Force’s F-16 program director. During a tour of IDF squadrons, one of the participants started lecturing his commander on everything that was wrong with the plane. The U.S. representative, a lieutenant general, asked the person to identify himself. He was shocked to learn the critic was a lowly mechanic. In America, the authors write, it’s unheard of to talk out of turn and argue with your commander, especially in front of a foreign officer. “In Israel, though, no one thinks in those terms. What the mechanic was doing was exactly what he had been trained to do and what he thought was expected of him—to speak his mind,” the authors write.

In a similar vein, Israel nurtures its best and brightest. A fascinating example of this characteristic is a program called Talpiot. Created in 1979, it pulls together some of Israel’s most promising young people, who sign on for nine years of service in return for degrees in fields like physics, math, and computer science. Thousands apply each year; only 30 are accepted. Talpiot graduates, called Talpions, are seeded throughout the army where they have an impact far beyond their numbers. In 40 years, the program has produced roughly 1,000 graduates, but a single one can revolutionize a unit, the authors say. Although the program met resistance early on, within a few years generals were demanding to know: “Where is my Talpion?” The prime minister was forced to hold a special meeting to resolve the issue.

Although Katz and Bohbot don’t come right out and say it, it’s evident that for all the encouragement of innovation, there remains resistance within the military one would expect from any large establishment. Talpiot had to overcome naysayers before it was embraced, and so did many of the programs the authors discuss, from satellites to the Iron Dome. This suggests the IDF fosters innovation only after a fight. What appears to distinguish the IDF from other militaries is that innovative individuals don’t quit. They also have an admirably dismissive attitude toward army regulations. The premier example is Brigadier General Danny Gold, who developed the Iron Dome.

May 4-5 was Holocaust Remembrance Day, also known as Yom HaShoah. The day honors the victims of the Holocaust, and marked the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The overwhelming theme on this day is recalling the victims of this catastrophe, and insuring that such a tragedy never happens again.

President Trump said in a speech observing this day, “We know that in the end good will triumphs over evil and that as long as we refuse to close our eyes or to silence our voices, we know that justice will ultimately prevail. We will never, ever be silent in the face of evil again. It only takes one light to illuminate even the darkest space, just like it takes only truth to crush a thousand lies and one hero to change the course of history.”

A recent novel is based on the factual story of one hero who did change the course of history, fighting against the tyranny of the Nazis. Although Beneath A Scarlet Sky is a work of fiction, based upon true facts, it will make readers think about how many other extraordinary stories of heroism are untold and in the shadows, especially since this generation is dying out? Mark Sullivan chronicles the life of Pino Lella, a seventeen-year-old boy who grew into a man during the last years of World War II. Sullivan told American Thinker “I wrote it as a novel because some minor details could not be verified, but the overall heroism of Pino is true, including his survival of an avalanche while helping Jews escape. I contacted the daughter of the Nazi General who brutally used slave labors as well as his spiritual advisor. Regarding Pino, he is still living today and I was able to verify that he did indeed work as a spy and save Jewish refuges. I did the research and verification over the course of ten years and lived in Italy spending three weeks with Pino and finding other witnesses to what he told me. His name was given to a researcher by the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem.”

This inspiring story is a lesson on courage. Americans today should read it to realize that their current difficulties are nothing compared to what those suffered through the Nazi regime. Sullivan tells Lella’s story, showing man’s inhumanity to man in Italy, the forgotten front, where the Nazi war machine made the citizenship suffer and struggle.

The book begins in the summer of 1943, as the allies started bombing Milan. As in England, Italian families sent their children to the countryside to save them from possible death. But Pino was not content to lead a normal teenage life; instead, deciding to join the underground railroad of the Catholic Church and the Italian resistance to save Jewish lives. Unfortunately, despite heroic efforts nearly 20% of the Italian Jewish population was killed in the Holocaust. Readers will learn how the German SS found a list of Jews, rounded them up, put them on trains, and transported them to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Many others were machine gunned down or thrown into the lake, forced to freeze to death.

Yet, throughout the last years of World War II Pino risked his own life to save Jews. A very compelling scene tells how he led Jewish refugees across the dangerously snowy Alps to the Swiss border, having endured an avalanche that almost buried him and his rescues alive. Many of those trying to escape the grips of the Nazis did not have the physical strength; yet some how found the perseverance. Pino made the demanding climb up the mountain near Casa Alpina, many times with the refugees on his back, as he skied them to safety in icy weather.

The author noted, “I read accounts of what the Nazis actually did and confirmed a lot of what Pino told me. We cannot forget they had a long-range vision of genocide and atrocities, including hanging young boys’ head on barbed wire posts. I actually did the climb he did and made a video. After getting to the top, you cannot believe what these people went through to escape. It was a very dangerous and unforgiving setting.”

In addition to helping Jews escape, he also became a spy while the driver for General Hans Leyer, a commander in the Nazi engineering and construction group, Organization Todt. Pino’s parents, who insisted he sign up with Todt to avoid being conscripted by the Germans to fight on the Russian front, put him in this situation.

Unfortunately, very little is known about the general, until Pino came forward, because Leyer destroyed many of the documents.