RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Obama Administration has used various means to usurp Congress’s power of the purse, but twisting the arm of an ally is a new low. That’s what the President in effect did this week by requiring Israel to accept his spending limits in return for a modest boost in military aid.

As diplomats rolled into the U.S. for the U.N. General Assembly this week, the White House rolled out a deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would provide $38 billion in military assistance to Israel over the next decade. The previous agreement, which ends in 2018, included $3.1 billion in annual aid. While the Administration is advertising its “unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security,” its real feelings are betrayed by the fine print.

Start with the fact that Congress typically tacked onto the $3.1 billion an additional $500 million each year for missile defense. Thus the new agreement represents a mere 5% increase amid growing Middle East threats, which will likely proliferate over the next decade thanks to the Administration’s retreat from the region and nuclear deal with Iran.

The aid is also less than the $4 billion annually that Mr. Netanyahu sought and the Senate wanted to provide. After Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Senate appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, refused to sign off on the deal, the Administration impelled Israel to agree not to lobby for more aid and to return any funds Congress appropriates in the future that exceed the agreement’s terms.

In other words, the Administration has pressured Israel to cut out Congress. While the deal isn’t binding on Congress, Israel would be accused of bargaining in bad faith if it doesn’t keep its word. It’s unclear why Mr. Netanyahu would agree to such self-abnegation, but he might be hedging his political bets.

In March Donald Trump professed that he would make Israel repay U.S. military assistance. The chance that Mr. Trump might win and keep that promise might have convinced Mr. Netanyahu to lock in the Administration’s spending caps. On the other hand, if Democrats take the Senate and House in a rout this November, they might also want to pare back aid to Israel to pad domestic spending.CONTINUE AT SITE

United Nations member States need to examine their own consciences and policies following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu castigating them for promoting a Jew-free Palestinian Arab State in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem. In a video presentation last week Netanyahu declared:

“Israel’s diversity shows its openness and readiness for peace.

Yet the Palestinian leadership actually demands a Palestinian state with one pre-condition: No Jews.

There’s a phrase for that: It’s called ethnic cleansing.

And this demand is outrageous. It’s even more outrageous that the world doesn’t find this outrageous.

Some otherwise enlightened countries even promote this outrage”

The Oxford Dictionary defines “enlightened” to mean “having or showing a rational, modern, and well-informed outlook”

Enlightened United Nations member States lost their moral and humanitarian compasses when supporting United Nations Resolution A/67/L.28 passed on 29 November 2012 (“the Resolution”) which reaffirmed:

“the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967”

Among the 138 countries voting for the Resolution were enlightened States such as:
Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Uruguay and Venezuela

Canada, the Czech Republic, Israel, and the United States voted against the Resolution, whilst 41 others – including Australia – abstained.

800,000 Jews currently live in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem under rights vested in them by:

* Article 6 of the 1922 Mandate for Palestine,

* Article 80 of the 1945 United Nations Charter, * Israel’s 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem

* The 1993 Oslo Accords.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared in 2010:

“We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it,”

Like Hitler – Abbas made no secret of his racist plan to create a Jew-free State.

Member States of the United Nations remained silent. In voting for the Resolution they chose to march to the same tune.

The new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) plans to change a fundamental part of the U.S.-Israel security relationship — missile defense.

President Obama is tying Israel’s hands for the future by extracting a promise that it will not approach Congress for funds in excess of those in the MOU “unless it is at war.”

What does that mean? Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria still maintain a state of war with Israel, as does Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and sometimes the Palestinian Authority. Did the Obama Administration leave Israel a loophole for Congressional assistance? Or is it denying that Israel lives in a perpetual and evolving state of threat and often fights “wars” that are essential to the protection of its population, but are not formally declared?

“Over the next decade, [Israel] is going to need to spend more on domestic defense, research and development, because the IDF is going to be under more threat, not less. This MOU sends the wrong signal to the Ayatollahs. I am appalled that the administration would (give) the largest state sponsor of terrorism access to $150 billion in sanctions relief without any requirement that they change their behavior. Instead, it is nickeling and diming Israel.” – Senator Lindsay Graham.

Yes. It is a lot of money.

Yes. A ten-year deal provides a stable base for Israeli planning.

Yes. With the unsettled American political situation and the unsettled military situation in Israel’s neighborhood, stability counts.

No. Israel’s military industries will not collapse without the use of 25% of its American aid internally.

Yes. Israel remains a close and respected ally of the American military establishment.

So why does the new U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) feel oddly coercive on the part of President Obama? True, the current U.S. president finds the current prime minister of Israel to be a strategic liability regarding his plans for Iran as well as a general pain in the neck. So there is the “punishment” angle. But at least as important is the ongoing power play between the president and Congress. This encompasses missile defense, an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMA) for Iraq and Syria, climate change, the Iran deal, “no first use” nuclear policy, Israel, and more.

Vanderbilt University is asking faculty to tell everyone they meet on campus which pronouns they prefer and to ask other people to tell them theirs, even when dealing with “familiar colleagues and students.”

“When introducing yourself, offer your name and pronouns — even to familiar colleagues and students,” asks a poster created by the school’s Faculty Senate Gender Inclusivity Task Force. “Offer your name and pronoun in faculty meetings, committees, and other spaces where students may not be present.”

The poster also gives faculty several examples of how to do this:

“I’m Steve and I use he/him/his pronouns. What should I call you?” and “My pronouns are they/them/theirs. What should I call you?”

Now, personally, I consider it showing basic respect to call people by the pronouns that they choose to use, and I believe that people who choose to use pronouns that might be different from what people might expect should feel comfortable sharing that with others.

This policy, though, makes no sense for one glaring reason: Why the hell would people who are already “familiar” with each other have to share and ask their pronouns when making introductions? After all, at least in most cases, I’m sure that being “familiar” with someone would mean you already know this kind of basic information about them. Certainly, anyone even remotely “familiar” with me would already know that I’m a cisgender woman who uses the pronouns “she/her/hers.” What on earth could be the benefit of pressuring a person to have to ask “What should I call you?” if that person already knows?

What’s more, the poster also advises faculty to include their pronouns in their email signatures, and MRCTV reports that it has also started listing preferred pronouns on faculty member’s nameplates — and knowing about these two suggestions makes the suggestion for an automatic, without-exception pronoun discussion upon meeting even more ridiculous. After all, an email exchange or walking past a person’s office and seeing the nameplate are excellent examples of how people might already be “familiar” with each other before actually having made “introductions.” If two people on Vanderbilt’s campus — people who were following all of the school’s pronoun-related suggestions — found themselves in this situation, they would already know that person’s pronouns before meeting. In order to continue to follow the guidelines, however, they would still have to ask — because it specifies that being “familiar” is no excuse.

Joy Karega, an assistant professor who teaches rhetoric and composition at Oberlin College in Ohio, is a passionate, proud, committed Jew-hater. So profound is this hatred, and so deep is Karega’s need to broadcast it to the world, that she has been unable to restrain herself from littering her own Facebook page with all sorts of anti-Semitic scrawlings.

In December 2014, for example, Karega posted a photograph of the Jewish billionaire banker Jacob Rothschild, with accompanying text that read: “We [Jews] own nearly every central bank in the world. We financed both sides of every war since Napoleon. We own your news, the media, your oil and your government.”

The following month, Karega quoted a conspiracy-theory blog that blamed Israel for the July 2014 downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet, an incident that killed 298 people. The text which Karega excerpted from the blog cited “the Rothschild-led banksters” who, having been “exposed and hated and out of economic options to stave off the coming global deflationary depression,” were now “implementing the World War III option.” “It seems obvious,” added Karega, “that the same people behind the massacre in Gaza are behind the shooting down” of the Malaysian plane. Contrary to Karega’s delusions, however, a subsequent investigation concluded that the aircraft had probably been struck by a Russian-made missile.

But hey, Professor Karega still had lots of other things she could blame on the Jews. On January 13, 2015—a mere six days after two masked jihadists armed with AK-47s and shouting “Allahu Akbar” had murdered twelve people in the Paris headquarters of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo—Karega posted an image of an ISIL/ISIS terrorist removing, from his own head, a mask resembling the face of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The terrorist’s forearm bore a tattoo of the Star of David and the words “JSIL Israel”—an acronym for “Jewish State In the Levant,” meant to convey the notion that Israel is the moral equivalent of the bloodthirsty barbarians of ISIL (Islamic State In the Levant). The text superimposed on the image read, “France wants to free Palestine? Time for a false flag …” In other words, the Paris massacre was an Israeli operation designed to turn public opinion against Muslims in the Palestinian Territories. “Folks who turn off the indoctrinated media and do their homework,” Karega wrote, know where Charlie Hebdo receives its support and backing.”

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2835908

Abstract:
This Article provides the first comprehensive, global examination of state and international practice bearing on Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides that an “Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” This provision is a staple of legal and diplomatic international discussions of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and serves as the basis for criticism of Israeli settlement policy.

Despite its frequent invocation in the Israeli context, scholars have never examined – or even considered – how the norm has been interpreted and applied in any other occupation context in the post-WWII era. For example, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) influential Study on Customary International Humanitarian Law lists 107 instances of national practice and UN practice applying or interpreting the prohibition, and all but two relate to Israel. Many questions exist about the scope and application of Art. 49(6)’s prohibition on “transfer,” but they have generally been answered on purely theoretically.

To better understand what Art. 49(6) does in fact demand, this Article closely examines its application in all other cases in which it could apply. Many of the settlement enterprises studied in this Article have never been discussed or documented. All of these situations involved the movement of settlers into the occupied territory, in numbers ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands. Indeed, perhaps every prolonged occupation of contiguous habitable territory has resulted in significant settlement activity.

Clear patterns emerge from this systematic study of state practice. Strikingly, the state practice paints a picture that is significantly inconsistent with the prior conventional wisdom concerning Art. 49(6). First, the migration of people into occupied territory is a near-ubiquitous feature of extended belligerent occupations. Second, no occupying power has ever taken any measures to discourage or prevent such settlement activity, nor has any occupying power ever expressed opinio juris suggesting that it is bound to do so. Third, and perhaps most strikingly, in none of these situations have the international community or international organizations described the migration of persons into the occupied territory as a violation of Art. 49(6). Even in the rare cases in which such policies have met with international criticism, it has not been in legal terms. This suggests that the level of direct state involvement in “transfer” required to constitute an Art. 49(6) violation may be significantly greater than previously thought. Finally, neither international political bodies nor the new governments of previously occupied territories have ever embraced the removal of illegally transferred civilian settlers as an appropriate remedy.

The deeper understanding – based on a systematic survey of all available state practice – of the prohibition on settlements should inform legal discussions of the Arab-Israeli- conflict, including potential investigations into such activity by the International Criminal Court. More broadly, the new understanding of Art. 49(6) developed here can also shed significant light on the proper treatment of several ongoing occupations, from Western Sahara and Northern Cyprus, to the Russian occupations of Ukraine and Georgia, whose settlement policies this Article is the first to document.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.

Sometimes, nothing is more infuriating than the truth.

On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu infuriated the Obama administration when he told the truth about the nature of the internationally supported Palestinian demand that Israel must transfer control over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians Jew-free.

In a video address posted to his Facebook page at around dawn Washington time, Netanyahu said, “The Palestinian leadership… demands a Palestinians state with one precondition: No Jews.

“There’s a phrase for that. It’s called ‘ethnic cleansing.’ And this demand is outrageous.”

Netanyahu then turned his fire on the so-called international community that supports this bigoted demand.

“It’s even more outrageous that the world doesn’t find this outrageous,” he said, adding, “Some otherwise enlightened countries even promote this outrage.”

Later that day, Associated Press correspondent Matt Lee asked US State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau what the administration thought of Netanyahu’s statement.

Apparently turning to a prepared text, Trudeau declaimed robotically and emphatically, “We obviously strongly disagree with the characterization that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank.

“We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful….

We share the view of every past US administration and the strong consensus of the international community that ongoing settlement activity is an obstacle to peace. We continue to call on both sides to demonstrate with actions and policies a genuine commitment to the two-state solution.”

The only thing missing from Trudeau’s response was an explanation of why Netanyahu was wrong. She didn’t explain, nor was she asked, how the US’s opposition to Israel’s respect for Jewish Israelis’ property rights in these areas squares with her denial that its policy supports ethnic cleansing.

To make this point a bit more clearly, here are a few questions that Trudeau was neither asked nor explained on her own, but whose answers are self-evident from the administration’s apoplectic response to every move by Israel to permit Jews to lawfully build homes in Judea, Samaria and unified Jerusalem.

• In the US government’s view, does Israel have the right to pass laws or ordinances for land use in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria? If not, why not? • And if you do respect Israel’s right to issue rules on land use, why do you oppose the destruction of illegally built structures in Susiya? Why do you oppose the legal purchase of land by Jews in the so-called outposts? • Under what circumstances is it legal for Jews to buy land beyond the 1949 armistice lines in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria? • Under what circumstances is it legal for Jews to build homes for themselves in these areas? Through its consistently stated and deliberately applied policy of totally rejecting all rights of Jewish Israelis to live and build in these areas, from its first days in office, the Obama administration has made clear that it rejects the civil rights of Jews as Jews in these areas and seeks the complete negation of their rights through mass expulsion, property seizure and destruction, that is, through ethnic cleansing.

Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same. Presidents of leftist colleges across the nation are creating segregated dorms for blacks students in response to the Black Lives Matter mafia. You can’t make this stuff up.

In 1964, Democrats fought tooth and nail to preserve segregation. Racist southern Democrat Dixiecrats like Alabama Governor George Wallace refused to follow the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision, the law, and even resorted to sanctioning police brutality against blacks to keep his state “separate and unequal.”

It’s more than curious that California State University of Los Angeles proudly announced segregated housing for blacks only. It’s also grotesque that black students praised the move because they feel threatened living with whites at an integrated school. I wonder if any of these students realize that their forefathers fought and died for integration during the Civil Rights Movement and this housing arrangement is a step backwards.

No, you’re not misreading anything, leftists are harkening back to the pre-Civil Rights glory days of segregation.

The newly debuted Halisi Scholars Black Living-Learning Community “focuses on academic excellence and learning experiences that are inclusive and non-discriminatory,” Cal State LA spokesman Robert Lopez told The College Fix via email.”

Does Lopez understand the definition of the word “inclusive”? Never mind, insert the laugh track run here. But Cal State isn’t alone in their backwards-leftist thinking. University of Connecticut, University of California Davis and Berkeley all offer housing for blacks only. It’s like it’s 1954 pre-Brown vs. Board of Education all over again.

Congress is scheduled to host what insiders described as the first-ever forum in favor of boycotting Israel, according to congressional sources and an invitation for the event being circulated by an anti-Israel organization.

The briefing is scheduled to take place Friday on Capitol Hill and will feature several speakers known for their criticism of Israel and support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which has been cited by Jewish organizations as an anti-Semitic movement.

The event is being sponsored by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a pro-BDS organization that recently came under fire when it hosted a Democratic member of Congress who referred to Israeli settlers as “termites.”

Senior congressional sources with knowledge of the event told the Washington Free Beacon that the Capitol Hill office in charge of reserving the event room would not disclose the name of the lawmaker sponsoring the event.

The event is being billed by BDS supporters as the “First Pro-BDS Capitol Hill Briefing” in history, according to an invitation to the event obtained by the Free Beacon.

“This briefing will offer Capitol Hill its first opportunity to hear directly from Americans who support BDS and organize BDS campaigns,” the invitation states.

The pro-BDS hearing is being held as Congress considers several pieces of legislation aimed at defunding the BDS movement and isolating its supporters in the United States.

One senior congressional aide familiar with the forum and its supporters told the Free Beacon that the member or members of Congress who sponsored the event should publicly admit it.

“The member of Congress who sponsored this offensive event should step forward and claim credit,” the source said. “Who is responsible for using taxpayer dollars to fund such virulently anti-Semitic propaganda? Maybe they should host a briefing on how Hamas spends $40 million annually on building tunnels to carry out terrorist attacks on innocent Israelis.”

In May, student protesters at Seattle University’s Matteo Ricci College bared their psychic wounds. The college had “traumatized, othered, tokenized, and pathologized” them, assaulting their “mental and emotional well-being.” That is, Matteo Ricci had maintained its signature humanities core, with its focus on classics of Western civilization. It had thereby “erased” the “personal and ancestral voices” of some students and neglected their “pain.” The protesters demanded that this “psychologically abusive” behavior end. They demanded a curriculum that “decentralizes Whiteness” and focuses on “systems of oppression,” such as “capitalism.” And they demanded the head of the college’s dean, Jodi Kelly.

Rather than question any premise of the protesters, Ms. Kelly promised a “comprehensive review” of the curriculum “in response to [their] concerns and requests.” Faculty and staff would undergo “racial and cultural literacy training.” Consultants would be hired. Seattle University’s president, Stephen Sundborg, hastened to add that he, too, wished to sit at the protesters’ feet, that he could not “pretend to know how deep their pain goes, the amount of harm it has caused or the extent of our own shortcomings.” Ms. Kelly, placed on administrative leave, has escaped into retirement.

If we resist the urge to pronounce the protesters insane and the administrators craven, we might ask whether student activists are right that even the most liberal campuses in America are bastions of prejudice. In “Campus Politics,” a valuable attempt to understand the protests that have swept American universities, Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, explains why this question is rarely even posed within those universities.Matteo Ricci’s protesters are typical in using the language of psychology to justify their demands. Other generations of protesters, Mr. Zimmerman says, certainly invoked “the language of psychological health and illness,” but today’s protesters use it “as never before.” When students speak of being “triggered” by Mark Twain, for example, they are appropriating—to borrow one of their terms—language formerly applied to victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. This “increased psychologizing of campus politics” makes it hard to challenge activists. “How can you argue with someone who feels pained or traumatized?” At Scripps College, protesters said that even a rather mild, moderated discussion program risked “retraumatizing minority participants” who could expect no “public intervention” when “white participants invalidate[d] the experiences that students of color generously share[d].” The program has been suspended.

Matteo Ricci’s administrators are typical in rolling over. University leaders in the 1960s sometimes considered protesters “an existential threat to the university itself,” Mr. Zimmerman says. Today’s university leaders greet protesters “with explicitly open arms and avowedly open hearts,” as well as apologies and cash. President Peter Salovey of Yale, having already committed $50 million to increasing faculty diversity, handled his protesters by acknowledging their pain, admitting that Yale had failed them and pledging to commit additional resources to their preferred causes.