RUTHFULLY YOURS

It is no secret that the U.S.-Israel alliance has been under a severe strain for the last eight years, principally due to the non-friendly and often hostile positions of the Obama administration. The United States and Israel have had their differences under previous administrations and, at times, there were sharp disagreements but they rarely made it to the front pages. This is because leaders of both nations understood that disagreements, to the extent that they existed, were best addressed behind closed doors and away from prying eyes.

Obama changed all that during his first year in office with his infamous apology tour when he went to the Mideast to visit various Muslim countries to apologize for contrived wrongs and deliberately skipped over Israel despite the fact that he was a mere 20-minute plane ride away. It was a spiteful snub designed to show the Israelis and Arabs that Obama intended to fundamentally change the nature and dynamic of the U.S.-Israel alliance. The snub was followed by additional indignities including shabby treatment by the Obama White House of visiting Israeli dignitaries and guttural name-calling by anonymous White House aides. The person (likely Ben Rhodes) responsible for hurling the “Chicken-sh*t” vulgarity was never disciplined.

Obama’s plan to realign America’s alliances backfired miserably. He expected Israel to grovel but under the steady stewardship of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel did not cave into the pressure. Instead, Israel sought new alliances forging strong bonds with India, Africa, the Balkan countries and various eastern European countries. Relations also warmed between nations harboring traditional enmity toward Israel, like Russia and China.

By contrast, the Muslim world spiraled further into medieval backwardness. Arab nations that were spared the chaos brought upon by the so-called “Arab Spring” sought new alliances. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf nations watched as a feckless Obama appeased the Islamic Republic and allowed the mullahs to run amok and have their way. They too moved closer to Israel as a result.

The next president will be presented with daunting Mideast challenges. ISIS, the catastrophic Iran deal, Iran’s regional meddling and the Muslim migrant crisis. The list seems endless but there is one thing the next president can and must address upon assuming office and that is to reset the U.S.-Israel alliance. These two great democracies share ethical values and strategic interests, and the alliance must be strengthened for the sake of regional stability and moral clarity.

Here are some excerpts from The Black Stone, a detective novel set in 1929 San Francisco, in which the hero, Cyrus Skeen, discovers the bizarre, brutal, and murderous nature of Islam. The volume of information available to us today about Islam did not exist in 1930. But what he was able to find caused him, his wife, Dilys, and Mickey Kane, a top rank newspaper reporter, to make disbelieving, defamatory, and wonderfully blasphemous remarks about Islam. Skeen is investigating the horrendous murders of a young Jewish girl and a newspaper reporter who had stolen the “Black Stone” of the Kaaba. He is pursued and murdered by members of The Muslim Brotherhood. Skeen encounters an agent of the Brotherhood, and deals with him in his typical no-nonsense style. He discovers another murder in his own office building. Enjoy the excerpts.

Cover Illustration: Leader of Ikhwan Sultan bin bajad Al-Otaibi, who allied himself and his tribe with the Sauds to conquer the Arabian Peninsula. The Sauds did not wage war against the Ottomans, but sat out WWI sipping tea with the British. The Sauds are erroneously depicted in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia as following Lawrence to attack and slaughter a Turkish column.

“You go ahead,” said Skeen when they returned two hours later. They stood outside their bedroom door. “I want to look up something. It’s something Professor Lerner mentioned. It won’t take a moment.”

“Don’t be long, Cyrus. You look tired in spite of your energy.

“In his study, he consulted his several sets of encyclopedias for information on Islam.

None was to be found in the Funk & Wagnall’s, nor in the Collier’s. There was some information on mosques and something called the Kaaba in Mecca in the twenty-volumeNew International Encyclopedia. All the articles he was able to find referred to Moslems as “Mohammedans.”

He was up until two o’clock. He closed the last volume, yawned and stretched his arms. He had acquired some basic information about Islam from the articles, but not nearly enough to satisfy his appetite or his curiosity. He would be taking the roaster back out tomorrow after all, to the library and some book shops. He switched off the desk lamp and went to the bedroom…..

“Did you know,” Skeen asked casually over breakfast the next morning, “that Mohammedans, when they go on a pilgrimage to Mecca, must walk counter-clockwise around the Kaaba seven times, and run between some hills looking for water, and perform a schedule of other rituals, all designed to make them feel like silly, worthless asses?”

“Kaaba?” asked Dilys, who was paying only half attention to her husband. “Sounds like a Greek dish, smothered in the finest feta cheese sauce, and best served with ouzo.” She was reading the morning Observer-World. She had fixed a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. Skeen had just poured himself a second coffee and was on his first cigarette of the day. He was reading from notes he had made last night in his study and had passed the newspaper over to Dilys.”

The Kaaba,” read Skeen, “is a cube-like structure smack in the middle of an open-air mosque about the size of Kezar Stadium, about forty-four feet high and fifty in length. Other scholars reverse the dimensions. It is built of granite on the outside, marble on the inside. It sits on a spot, according to Mohammedan lore, that Allah designated that Adam and Eve should build a temple, or an altar.” Skeen paused. “Of course, that story must have been concocted after the Kaaba had been a pagan shrine for an undetermined number of centuries, housing scores of other deities. Allah’s own genealogical antecedents seem to be rooted in a moon god of fecundity.”

Barack Obama’s fantasy Islam made a new appearance Monday, when he issued a statement congratulating and praising Muslims on the occasion of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha:

Michelle and I extend our warmest wishes to Muslims across our country and around the world who are celebrating Eid al-Adha. This special holiday is a time to honor the sacrifice, resolve, and commitment to God demonstrated by Abraham.

In speaking of Abraham, it is important to remember that there is no parallel in the Qur’an to Genesis 22:15-18, in which Abraham is rewarded for his faith and told he will become a blessing to the nations: “by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.” The Muslim audiences Obama was addressing don’t read Genesis. They read the Qur’an.

In the Qur’an, Allah says that Abraham is an “excellent example” (uswa hasana, أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ, a term applied also to Muhammad in 33:21) for the believers when he tells his pagan family and people that “there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred for ever, unless ye believe in Allah and Him alone” (60:4). The same verse goes on to say that Abraham is not an excellent example when he tells his father, “I will pray for forgiveness for you.” Hatred is held up as exemplary; forgiveness is explicitly declared to be not exemplary.

Obama was thus reinforcing a worldview that takes for granted the legitimacy of everlasting enmity and hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims — and was doing so precisely in the context of trying to build bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims.

…It is also a celebration of the ways faith can transcend any differences or boundaries and unite us under the banners of fellowship and love….

Yes, indeed. Just look at Fort Hood, and Boston, and Chattanooga, Garland, San Bernardino, Orlando, as well as Paris, Brussels, Nice, and all the rest united us under the banners of fellowship and love. Of course, Obama would insist that these had nothing to do with Islam: all the evidence that refutes his politically correct fantasies is waved away. The national conversation that needs to be had about how jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism is once again kicked down the road.

As we mark Eid al-Adha this year, we are reminded of the millions of refugees around the globe who are spending this sacred holiday separated from their families, unsure of their future, but still hoping for a brighter tomorrow. And as a Nation, we remain committed to welcoming the stranger with empathy and an open heart—from the refugee who flees war-torn lands to the immigrant who leaves home in search of a better life.

Ahmad al-Mohammed and one other of the jihadis who murdered 130 people in Paris in November 2015 had just entered Europe as refugees.

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.