RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hailing the new 10-year, $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Israel on U.S. security aid, President Barack Obama couldn’t pass up the opportunity to chastise the Jewish state for failing to secure a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The U.S. commitment to Israel’s security, Obama said in a prepared statement as officials from both countries signed the agreement last week, “has been unwavering and is based on a genuine and abiding concern for the welfare of the Israeli people and the future of the State of Israel. It is because of this same commitment to Israel and its long-term security that we will also continue to press for a two-state solution … despite the deeply troubling trends on the ground that undermine this goal.”

Obama’s statement, and some of the terms of the memorandum, reflect everything that Israel’s supporters find so irritating about the administration – its condescension toward Israel, its confusion about the region and its ill-advised efforts to reshape U.S. relations with regional allies and adversaries.

Any new 10-year security agreement between the United States and its closest ally in that turbulent region should herald warm feelings and a hearty sense of accomplishment in both capitals, but the atmospherics around this agreement are fueling lots of resignation, bitterness and second guessing.

At first blush, the memorandum reflects the close ties between Washington and Jerusalem that long predate Obama. At $38 billion, or $3.8 billion a year for 10 years starting in 2018, it surpasses the $31 billion of its expiring predecessor and represents the single largest U.S. security package ever proffered for any nation.

But dig below the top-line numbers, and you find terms and restrictions that belie the boasts of Obama and other top U.S. officials about “unwavering” commitments and “genuine and abiding” concerns.

For starters, the new agreement includes $500 million a year for missile defense, which Washington has been providing outside its current package, not as part of it. If you add the $500 million to the current $3.1 billion annual payment, total annual U.S. security aid to Israel is $3.6 billion. Thus, the $3.8 billion annual payment under the new agreement represents only about a 5 percent increase – and that doesn’t account for inflation.

A handout given to students in a Gonzaga University gender studies class warns that “asking an Asian person to help with a math and science problem” is a “microaggression.”

According to the handout, asking that question is a problem because the “message” of it is that “all Asians are intelligent and good at math/science.”

Um#..#no it isn’t. Asking an Asian student for help with math and science is saying that you think that that particular Asian student is good at math and science, which could obviously be for reasons other than his or her race. Doesn’t Gonzaga consider the possibility that perhaps one student might want to ask an Asian classmate for help because that classmate always knows the answers to the questions in class? Should other students not ask that person for help just because that person also happens to be Asian? Sorry, but that’s absurd.

A picture of the handout was posted on Twitter on Tuesday by freshman Ben McDonald. In an email to National Review, McDonald said that one of his classmates had shown it to him after receiving it in his feminist-theory class.

Other no-nos listed on the document include asking an Asian or Latino American person, “Where are you from?” (because that’s really saying, “You are not American”), telling a “person of color” that he or she is “so articulate” (because that’s really saying, “It is unusual for someone of your race to be intelligent”), “asking an Asian American to teach them words in their native language” (because that’s really saying, “You are a foreigner”) and saying that “everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough” (because that’s really saying, “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder”).

Obviously, this is ridiculous. Sure, there are times when saying, “You are so articulate” to a person of color could be a sort of passive-aggressive slight, which is insulting and obviously something you should avoid. But I’ve described particular people of all different races for being particularly “articulate.” I’ve said it about white people; does this handout mean that it’s something I should only say to white people? That “articulate” is a compliment that cannot be given to people of other races? Because that doesn’t seem all that fair.

Context makes all the difference in these situations, and context is exactly what lists like this ignore. In fact, without considering the role of context, such a list actually runs the risk of inhibiting communication — it can freak people out about saying things that they really don’t have to be freaked out about saying. Discussions about sensitivity are one thing, but making definitive claims that a particular phrase always has a particular meaning is not the way to deal with something as nuanced as language.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.

This morning I took a look at this video, Israeli settlements, explained in 8 minutes by Johnny Harris. I found it to be a very dangerous mix of truth and fiction.

Colors show Areas A, B and C

First of all, it begins its narrative rather late in History, 1948, crediting the United Nations with trying to help Great Britain to solve the problem between the Jews and the Arabs. It totally leaves out the very necessary/important/crucial fact that Britain was mandated/instructed/given the areas by the League of Nations in 1922, on the condition that they, the British, facilitate the establishment of a Jewish State there, Transjordan- the area on both sides of the Jordan River. No surprise, but no mention is made of that fact and the British invention of Jordan* which was stage one of how the Brits sabotaged the assignment.

Another term/fact left out is that the Jordanians illegally occupied the so-called west bank after the 1949 ceasefire. It was only recognized by two countries, Britain and Pakistan.

Also, Johnny Harris skips the crucial fact that the 1967 Six Days War was a result of coordinated Arab threats and aggression against Israel by an alliance of four Arab countries, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, with the cooperation of the United Nations. He gives the impression that it was initiated by Israel. And of course he leaves out the background of constant terror against Jews by Arab even before the establishment of the State of Israel. According to International Law and historical precedent, border changes due to a defensive war are legal, and that is how the 1967 ceasefire lines should be seen.

In addition, the various villages, towns and cities where Jews live in Judea, Samaria, also the Golan and Jordan Valley (which Harris does not mention by name–another example of how he simplifies) were approved and/or established by the State of Israel.

Harris does mention that Arabs can drive on the new modern roads, but he leaves out that Jews are forbidden to drive on “Arab” roads. Also, he gives the distinct impression that only Arabs have to go through “checkpoints,” when all vehicles are stopped/checked, Jewish, too. We wait on the same lines. And those checks are to prevent terrorism and uninspected agricultural products from entering. Remember that if going into the USA, you can’t bring even an apple from abroad.

I do not have the time to go over every single false or misleading statement in these eight misleading minutes Harris has produced. I invite you to add more in the comments here. So, please do, thanks.

*British invention of Jordan- rule of this new invented country called Jordan was given to the Hashemites from Mecca, Saudi Arabia. There was no history of such a country/people until Britain created them to block Jewish settlement of the area.

“It is essential to talk about Israel/Palestine, considering that Israel is the world’s largest recipient of US aid…

I dream of a binational secular democratic state in Israel/Palestine that provides equal rights to all citizens and inhabitants of the Holy Land (Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians and Muslims) regardless of ethno-religious affiliation.

I believe that we can and will realize this within our lifetime.”
[Emphasis added, here and below]

The words are those of Swarthmore College visiting professor in Peace and Conflict Studies (and class of ’06 graduate) Sa’ed Atshan [pictured], quoted in the Summer 2016 Swarthmore College [alumni] Bulletin that I finally got around to reading today, having flicked through the class notes a fortnight or so ago.

It’s on a profile of Atshan on page 8 by one Michael Agresta, demonstrating how Atshan, an Arab Quaker who attended Ramallah Friends School, “balances scholarship and peace activism”.

Inter alia:

“Atshan’s most recent foray beyond the ivory tower is the inaugural Swarthmore College Israel/Palestine Study Trip, but he has long worked to build bridges from academia to the front lines of social justice and peace activism. As a graduate student at Harvard, he organized a similar spring break study trip to Israel/Palestine; the program has endured and is in its eighth year. He has also partnered in projects with Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees….’

On page 15 is a cross-referenced report by one Carrie Compton headed “Trip of a Lifetime”. Illustrated, as you can see here, by, respectively, “Rainbow in Jericho; Palestinian potter; Lunch in Hebron; Dome of the Rock”, it tells us:

‘Over winter break, 19 students from Sa’ed Atshan ’06’s Israeli-Palestinian Conflict class spent 10 days in that region of the Middle East, meeting with top humanitarian figures on all sides of the conflict. The journey was free for the entire class, thanks primarily to funding from an anonymous donor.

Though the trip occurred during a break in the academic year, the students found it as demanding as any other Swarthmore experience.

Moshav Hagor is located in the center of the country.

Successive IDF chiefs of General Staff, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Dan Halutz and Lt. Gen. (ret.) Gabi Ashkenazy hail from the farming community established in 1949 by veterans of the Palmach.

Along with their neighbors in Moshav Yarchiv, for the past decade, the farmers of Hagor have been subjected to the continuous desecration of their communal cemetery by their Muslim neighbors from Jaljulia, a Muslim town of ten thousand located between the two moshavim.

Adjacent to a school in Jaljulia, Hagor’s cemetery has been subjected to abuse of all kinds. Residents regularly find animal carcasses at the entrance to the cemetery. Garbage is routinely dumped on graves.

Human and other feces are frequently smeared across headstones.

One night, all the headstones on all the graves at the cemetery were broken.

Residents mourning their dead are harassed.

After a decade of constant abuse, Hagor’s residents despaired of ever restoring the security to their cemetery and decided to take matters into the own hands. With the halachic approval of then chief rabbi Shlomo Amar, they built an alternative cemetery in another area of their moshav. Families paid thousands of shekels to reinter their loved ones at the new site. Today the only bodies remaining in their original graves are the ones with no living relatives to pay to move them.

Several years ago, Moshav Yarchiv’s cemetery was rezoned to become a new neighborhood in Jaljulia.

An attempt by Yarchiv’s residents to fence off the cemetery failed.

The day after they installed the fence it was stolen.

The rabbinate has refused on halachic grounds to permit Yarchiv’s residents to exhume and reinter their dead. But even if they had rabbinic permission, they have nowhere else to bury them. Due to bureaucratic hurdles, Yarchiv hasn’t been able to find an alternative burial ground.

Jaljulya once had good relations with its Jewish neighbors. But over the past decade, the town has become a hotbed for Islamic radicalism. Residents built a new massive mosque in the town. Despite repeated complaints from their Jewish neighbors, the mosque’s loudspeakers, which face Hagor, deliberately blast the call to prayer in the middle of the night.

Last October, Nedal Salah of Jaljulia paraglided into Syria from the Golan Heights and joined Islamic State. Following Salah’s action, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) discovered a cell of six more town residents who had transferred their loyalties to Islamic State, which they intended to travel to Syria to join.

This article is excerpted from a longer piece in the Tower.

When Arielle Mokhtarzadeh arrived at University of California, Berkeley, to attend the annual Students of Color Conference, she had no way of knowing that she would be leaving as a victim of anti-Semitism.

The conference has maintained a reputation for 27 years as being a “safe space” where students of color, as well as white progressive allies, can discuss issues of structural and cultural inequality on college campuses.

For Mokhtarzadeh, an Iranian Jew at UCLA, her freshman year was punctuated by incidents of anti-Semitism that were both personal and met with national controversy. She was shocked during her first quarter in school, when students entered the Bruin Cafe to see the phrase “Hitler did nothing wrong” etched into a table. Months later, Mokhtarzadeh’s friend Rachel Beyda was temporarily denied a student government leadership position based solely on her Jewish identity, an event that made news nationwide.

The campus was supposed to be her new home, her new safe space — so why didn’t she feel that way? She went to the conference hoping for some answers.

[So you’re a Jew and you’re starting college? Prepare for anti-Zionism.]

But on the first day there, she was horrified when the discussion became an attack on Israel — and soon devolved into attacks on the Jews.

“Over the course of what was probably no longer than an hour, my history was denied, the murder of my people was justified, and a movement whose sole purpose is the destruction of the Jewish homeland was glorified. Statements were made justifying the ruthless murder of innocent Israeli civilians, blatantly denying Jewish indigeneity in the land, and denying the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered,” she said. “Why anyone in their right mind would accept these slanders as truths baffles me. But they did. These statements, and others, were met with endless snaps and cheers. I was taken aback.”

Mokhtarzadeh walked out on the verge of tears. “It was in that moment, during that conference, that I realized that every identity and every intersection of identity was to be welcomed and championed in progressive spaces — except mine.”

President Obama and his defenders are trumpeting the new aid agreement with Israel as proof that he is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. In fact, it’s a bad deal and should be treated the same way Obama treated prior agreements he didn’t like: It should be forgotten by the next president. The White House may be saying this is the greatest deal ever, but in Israel many observers are saying that Obama did no favors for the Jewish state. That’s the conclusion Israeli journalists have all reached. They’re right.

The current aid agreement is for $3.1 billion a year. The new one is for $3.8 billion, but the increase is almost entirely illusory. Congress already appropriates hundreds of millions of dollars beyond the base $3.1 billion level for Israel’s missile defense, so the current aid level is actually about $3.5 billion. That means the total increase is roughly $300 million a year. But given inflation in the costs of military items, and the greater threat to Israel due to Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, the net result is at best continuation of the current aid agreement.

But Obama imposed two additional conditions that had never existed before and are absent in the aid agreement George W. Bush made with Israel in 2007. First, Israel must spend every dime in the United States after a phase-in period, meaning it cannot use the funds to purchase any military equipment made in Israel. Second, Israel has agreed that it will not go to Congress to seek additional funding under any circumstances.

The latter condition is a big deal and is why Sen. Lindsey Graham is so opposed to what Obama has wrought. It’s “not binding on the Congress,” he said this week. “I’m offended that the administration would try to take over the appropriations process. If they don’t like what I’m doing, they can veto the bill. We can’t have the executive branch dictating what the legislative branch will do for a decade based on an agreement we are not a party to.” And Speaker Paul Ryan’s spokeswoman said, “We will continue to appropriate the funds that we determine are necessary to meet the needs of our shared security interests in the Middle East.”

There is another condition in this agreement that is more absurd, and belies Obama’s claims of deepest friendship for the Jewish state. As the price for concluding the deal, Obama forced Israel to agree that if Congress appropriates additional funds in 2017 or 2018, Israel will not accept the aid and will return the money. This is a first in American history and constitutes a deliberate undermining of the constitutional power of Congress to determine foreign aid levels.

“To use the term ‘honor killing’ when describing the murder of a family member — overwhelmingly females — due to the perpetrators’ belief that they have brought ‘shame’ on a family normalizes murder for cultural reasons and sets it apart from other killings when there should be no distinction.” — Jane Collins, MEP, UK Independence Party.

Voter fraud has been deliberately overlooked in Muslim communities because of “political correctness,” according to Sir Eric Pickles, author of a government report on voter fraud.

“Not only should we raise the flag, but everybody in the Muslim community should have to pledge loyalty to Britain in schools. There is no conflict between being a Muslim and a Briton.” — Khalil Yousuf, spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.

Only a tiny proportion — between five and ten percent — of the people whose asylum applications are denied are actually deported, according to a British asylum judge, quoted in the Daily Mail.

Police in Telford — dubbed the child sex capital of Britain — were accused of covering up allegations that hundreds of children in the town were sexually exploited by Pakistani sex gangs.

August 1. Nearly 900 Syrians in Britain were arrested in 2015 for crimes including rape and child abuse, police statistics revealed. The British government has pledged to resettle up to 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK by the end of 2020. “The government seems not to have vetted those it has invited into the country,” said MEP Ray Finch. The disclosure came after Northumbria Police and the BBC were accused of covering up allegations that a gang of Syrians sexually assaulted two teenage girls in a park in Newcastle.

August 1. Male refugees settling in Britain must receive formal training on how to treat women, a senior Labour MP said. Thangam Debbonaire, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees, called for a “refugee integration strategy” so that men “understand what is expected of them.” She said it could help prevent sexual harassment and issues “including genital mutilation.”

August 2. Jane Collins, MEP for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), launched a petition calling for the BBC to stop using the term “honor killing.” The petition says the term “cultural murder” should be used instead. It states:

“To use the term ‘honor killing’ when describing the murder of a family member — overwhelmingly females — due to the perpetrators’ belief that they have brought ‘shame’ on a family normalizes murder for cultural reasons and sets it apart from other killings when there should be no distinction.

“Murder is murder, whether it be for cultural excuses or others. The term ‘honor killing’ is a euphemism for a brutal murder based on cultural beliefs which have no place in Britain or anywhere else in the world.”

August 3. Zakaria Bulhan, a 19-year-old Norwegian man of Somali descent, stabbed to death an American woman in London’s Russell Square. He also wounded five others. Police dismissed terror as a possible motive for the attack, which they blamed on mental health problems. But HeatStreet, a news and opinion website, revealed that Bulhan had uploaded books advocating violent jihad on social media sites.

August 4. A public swimming pool in Luton announced gender-segregated sessions for “cultural reasons.” The move will give men exclusive access to the larger 50-meter pool, while women will have to use the smaller 20-meter pool. The gender-segregated sessions are named ‘Alhamdulillahswimming,’ an Arabic phrase which means “Praise be to Allah.” UKIP MEP Jane Collins said the decision to have segregated times for swimming was “a step backwards for community relations and gender equality.” She added:

“The leisure center said this is for cultural reasons and I think we all know that means for the Muslim community. This kind of behavior, pandering to one group, harms community relations and creates tension. Under English law we have equality between men and women. This is not the same in cultures that believe in Sharia Law.”

August 5. Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood may be allowed to seek asylum in Britain, according to new guidance from the Home Office. The document states that high profile or politically active members

“may be able to show that they are at risk of persecution, including of being held in detention, where they may be at risk of ill-treatment, trial also without due process and disproportionate punishment…. In such cases, a grant of asylum will be appropriate.”

The new guidance contradicts previous government policy. In December 2015, then Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain would “refuse visas to members and associates of the Muslim Brotherhood who are on record as having made extremist comments.”

August 5. Stephen Bennett, a 39-year-old father of seven from Manchester, was sentenced to 180 hours of community service for posting “grossly offensive” anti-Muslim comments on Facebook. One of the offending comments: “Don’t come over to this country and treat it like your own. Britain first.” He was arrested under the Malicious Communications Act. The judge said Bennett, whose mother-in-law and sister-in-law are Muslims, was guilty of “running the risk of stirring up racial hatred.” He described it as “conduct capable of playing into the hands of the enemies of this country.”

August 6. British MPs face a six-year alcohol ban when the Palace of Westminster, which has dozens of bars and restaurants, undergoes a multi-billion-pound refurbishment beginning in 2020. They will move to an office building operating under Islamic Sharia law. Their new home, Richmond House, is one of three government buildings which switched ownership from British taxpayers to Middle Eastern investors in 2014 to finance a £200 million Islamic bond scheme — as part of an effort to make the UK a global hub for Islamic finance. Critics say the scheme effectively imposes Sharia law onto government premises.

President Obama recently set a goal to double renewable power generation in the U.S. by 2020. At the same time, he suggested ending oil company tax breaks and using them, instead, to bolster solar and wind industries. The U.S. government is investing more than $1 trillion in green energy, the so-called “clean” energy alternative, while choking off coal and natural gas production with increasingly onerous regulations.

In their book, Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, authors Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White argue against the shift to renewables. Using energy-production statistics and the historic contributions of fossil fuels, they explode the myths promulgated by renewables cheerleaders. They expose the extensive misinformation on clean energy resources to effectively argue against what they believe would be a disastrous, energy production shift that would have serious lifestyle and geopolitical consequences for Americans.

Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy

By Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White

Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2016

256 pp., $18.94

Promoters of renewable energy sources — the supposed “low environmental impact” alternative to fossil fuels — are putting forth a false narrative, Moore and White assert.

Rather than worrying that carbon energy resources are destroying the planet and looking to renewable energy as an alternative, the authors suggest we should celebrate the vast contributions fossil fuels made during the past century, advancing mankind and making our lives safer, more productive and economically and politically secure. The U.S. has more recoverable energy supplies than any nation on earth, the authors posit. With fairly recent shale oil and natural gas discoveries and newer technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, we are in no danger of running out any time soon. It should be welcome news, they urge, that the U.S. can be energy independent within the next few years and be the world’s dominant energy producer. Freedom from OPEC manipulations and the potential for millions of jobs that would substantially add to our gross domestic product, benefits our national security and would be a welcome boon to our relatively stagnant economy.

Moore and White explain how the Industrial Revolution, fueled by carbon energy usage, broke through decades of static human existence and brought significant and historic, upward trends for the average person, including a tripling of life expectancy and a 10- to 30-fold increase in per-capita, real income. Coal and petroleum transformed into energy for mechanical power was the most important energy conversion in industrial civilization. With coal-powered machines, man was suddenly liberated from the physical limitations of muscle and beasts of burden. When electricity became available, heat, power and countless household appliances, industrial motors and electronics were developed, generating a second, energy revolution.

Carbon-resource usage (and the invention of the internal combustion engine) brought liberty, mobility and choice, enabling sustained productivity and economic growth, the authors maintain. Additionally, it revolutionized the science and practice of metallurgy and dramatically transformed textile production. Previously expensive and tedious to produce, clothing became more affordable and warmer; winter clothing became available. Today, 60% of global fibers come from fossil fuels. In addition, fossil fuels played and continue to play an important role in reducing food supply loss by refrigeration, packaging and containers.

The authors marvel at the transformation that took place in a newly industrialized society. Until coal was harnessed on a massive scale, humans were dependent on energy from plants, wood, animals and human muscle, as well as wind and water flows. The dramatic shift from diffuse and variable flows of energy — wind and water — to massive stores of hydrocarbon minerals was a turning point for human progress. Energy became transportable, controllable, affordable, dense, reliable and versatile.

The other day Lisa Erskine, of Barnegat, New Jersey, alerted me to a bizarre story involving Islamic cleaning rituals and a second-grade class at Cecil S. Collins School.

Yes, Islamic cleaning rituals.

The Asbury Park Press reports that a second-grader came home with a health and hygiene worksheet that included references to hijabs and thawbs – clothing worn by religious Muslims.

The worksheet also included a reference from the Koran: “Allah loves those who make themselves clean and pure.”

Journalist Amanda Oglesby first exposed this peculiar incident – interviewing parent Chris Sharpe.

“Everybody was up in arms,” he told the reporter.

So why is a public school in New Jersey teaching children about Islamic cleaning rituals?

Well, the Barnegat Township School District tells me it was all a great big mistake. A whopper of a mistake.

“This worksheet – which was neither carefully reviewed by the teacher nor approved by an administrator – contained a religious reference, in clear violation of district policy,” Supt. Karen Wood told me in a statement.

She blamed the incident on a “novice instructor” who “downloaded a worksheet from the online sharing site Pinterest and utilized it during a lesson.”

So the kids are being taught how to clean the hijabs by a novice?

“We recognize the significance of this error,” she added. “Our parents have been extremely supportive as we take measures necessary to ensure that this remains an isolated incident.”

As you might imagine, folks around Barnegat are a bit upset over what happened.

“If this had the name of Jesus on it, there would be an even bigger outrage,” Mrs. Erskine told me.

That’s a good point. The Good Book does tell us that we can be washed whiter than snow.

“I hope that proper precautions are made to prevent further indoctrination of Islam,” she added.

Rob Russo has a child enrolled in the same school district and he is equally disturbed. He said “zero accountability” is simply unacceptable.