RUTHFULLY YOURS

40-years have elapsed since the fateful day of July 4th, 1976, when Israeli commandos rescued over a hundred Israeli hostages in one of the most daring operations in recent history. On Monday, July 4th, 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on an East African official tour, visited the Entebbe Airport in Uganda for a special ceremony to commemorate the event in which his older brother Jonathan (Yoni), the commander of the rescue operation, lost his life. PM Netanyahu, addressing his host, the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, said, “Right here, I am standing in the place where my brother, Yoni, was killed, when he led the commando soldiers to release the hostages.” Netanyahu added, “There are few like him in history, and Entebbe is always with me. It is deep in my heart.” In making the contrast between then and now, PM Netanyahu said, “Forty years ago, Israeli commandos landed here in the dark of night to fight against a cruel dictator who worked with terrorists,” referring to Idi Amin, “But today we came in the daylight, and we were welcomed by a leader who works to fight terrorism.”

For many Israelis, the experience of a week in captivity brought a flashback to the dark days of the Holocaust. An Air France flight 139 from Tel-Aviv to Paris, was high jacked during a stopover in Athens, then diverted to Entebbe (near the Ugandan capital of Kampala) by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the German Revolutionary Cells, a spin-off of the Baader-Meinhof gang, a German radical left-wing group. Before reaching Entebbe, the hijacked plane landed in Libya, receiving the blessing of its dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, before heading further to Entebbe.

Once at the final destination, the terrorists released the non-Jewish passengers in a selection process conducted by the Germans, which was reminiscent of the Nazi selections during the Holocaust. To the Holocaust survivors among the Jewish passengers, it revisited the trauma they had tried hard to forget. For many Israelis without a Holocaust connection, it served to change their view of the Six Million Jewish martyrs who went to their death like supposed “sheep to the slaughter.” They recognized the reality that when a gun is pointed at your child’s head, it is hard to resist.

This reporter asked Benny Davidson, a 13-old at the time who was a passenger on this fateful Air France flight, about the feelings he had. He was with his family on what was supposed to be his Bar-Mitzvah gift, a tour of the U.S. “We tried to keep a regular daily routine” Davidson (53), a native of Tel Aviv said. “When the terrorists collected our documents, my dad made the critical decision to destroy his since he was an officer in the Israeli air-force.” He added, “Luckily it was made of paper and not plastic like today.” They stuck the shredded documents in a Coca- Cola can. When questioned about the “Nazi like selection” Davidson replied, “As a 13-year-old, it was clear that they were calling names and looking for Israelis and Jews. But at 13, it didn’t bring up thoughts of the Holocaust.”

As Barack Obama’s tenure comes to a close, political analysts are already drawing comparisons between the current administration and that of Jimmy Carter’s. Both proved to be exceedingly inept at dealing with emerging foreign crises, both were harshly and unfairly critical of Israel and both betrayed loyal allies, utilizing all methods available to undermine friends while propping up hostile foes. The personification of this doctrine is best illustrated by that manner in which both administrations empowered and emboldened the mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Islamic fundamentalist takeover of Iran in 1979 was a disastrous occurrence that was avoidable but made possible by the Carter administration. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, also known as the Shah of Iran, was a powerful and reliable U.S. ally in a volatile region plagued by the forces of extremism. His government served as a bulwark against Communist expansion and Islamic fundamentalism. He modernized Iran, improved infrastructure, increased living standards and wages, improved literacy, lowered infant mortality and tellingly, in a region where misogyny was pervasive, provided equal rights for women.

Nonetheless, the Shah’s human rights record proved to be inadequate for the Carter administration, which began a concerted campaign to undermine his government. Recently declassified government records reveal the shocking extent which Carter and his lackeys betrayed a long-time U.S. ally. But not only did Carter help depose the Shah, he facilitated the ascendancy of an Islamic fundamentalist regime that would give the United States headaches for the next 35 years and beyond.

Toward the latter part of 1978 and early 1979, Iran was wracked by violence and chaos. Demonstrations and clashes with the security forces were a daily occurrence and labor strikes ground business to a halt. But those seeking to overthrow the regime were not necessarily fundamentalist Islamists. Many were secular oriented and had no desire to see the monarchy replaced by an even more tyrannical theocracy.

Hudson Institute scholar Nibras Kazimi, a native-born Iraqi, gave an illuminating talk at the Westminster Institute on strategies to disarm Islamic history’s ideologically dangers. I critique.

“If the jihadists have weaponized history, we can counter by weaponizing historiography.”

Although Iraqi-born Hudson Institute jihadism expert Nibras Kazimi’s remarks at a Westminster Institute lecture in McLean, Va. (available in written form online) offered an intriguing thesis to undermine canonical Islamic historical narratives guiding various jihadists, the extent of the critical inquiry Islam can withstand still remains questionable.

Kazimi discussed the secular nationalist movements and regimes among Turks, Arabs, and Iranians under the Shah that had historically sought legitimacy. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, for example, rebuilt the ruins of Babylon south of Baghdad and, like the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar, had his name inscribed on the bricks. Hussein dubbed his 1980-1988 war with Iran the “Second Qadisiya,” an nod to the 636 Battle of Qadisiya in which Muslim Arab armies defeated the Persians, opening what is now Iran to Islamic conquest.

Yet, for jihadists, the “past is not a tool of mere inspiration or for marking enemies,” Kazimi said, arguing that “history books are recipe books” giving instructions on how to “reclaim that greatness of Islam.” Since its origins in 2006 Iraq, the Islamic State in particular saw itself emulating Islam’s founding followers from seventh-century Arabia under the prophet Muhammad, a community that ultimately conquered empires. The 2014 caliphate declaration of ISIS, a group perhaps even stronger than the initial followers of Islam’s prophet, reflected how Muhammad’s “calling compelled him to strike out boldly, against incredible odds.”

According to Kazimi, both Sunni and Shiite extremists often manage to exude an “aura of certainty” by wrapping themselves in the cloak of history, allowing them to withstand defeats like the 2007-2008 American surge campaign. He explained that these jihadists “can explain away setbacks. They can tell themselves that they got the recipe wrong somewhere, and all they need to do it to go back to the basics to try and try again until it gets going.” This cycle makes Islamic history the “springboard – the solid ground – used by the extremists to leap forward into their ambitious doctrinal ventures.”

The head of a Jerusalem-and Washington, DC-based research organization revealed specifics on Tuesday of the “significant sums” allocated by the Palestinian Authority to incarcerated and dead terrorists and their families.

Yigal Carmon, president and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), revealed the shocking details during testimony he submitted to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. In his statement, Carmon demonstrated the ways in which the PA supports those deemed to be “martyrs.”

He also said that $137.8 million of the PA’s 2016 budget will be used for “underwriting the expenses of the prisoners and their families.” Some $173 million has been set aside to provide what the PA says is “a dignified life to the families of all those martyred and wounded as a result of being participants or bystanders in the revolution.”

According to Carmon, payments for imprisoned terrorists, and the families of suicide bombers are anchored in a set of laws in the Palestinian legal system.

“The prisoners are described as ‘a fighting sector and an integral part of the weave of Arab Palestinian society’ and it is stated that ‘the financial rights of the prisoner and his family’ must be assured. It is also stated that the PA will provide the allowance to ‘every prisoner, without discrimination,’” Carmon explained.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6W9C5u44Fs
Hundreds of pro-Israeli activists, including Berlin senator Frank Henkel, participated in a counter-protest against Al-Quds Day in Berlin, Saturday.

Washington, D.C.: A new poll suggests that large majorities of Americans agree with the common sense proposition that we should stop importing jihadists. A murderous attack in Orlando heightened concern that we already have too many here.

A public opinion survey conducted this month by Opinion Savvy found that 71% of respondents support “identifying foreign supporters of Sharia law prior to their admission to the United States.” Of those favoring such identification, 80% believe Sharia-supremacists should not be admitted into the country.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump put this issue on the political map last year by calling for a temporary pause in admissions of Muslims until a way can be found to determine whether they are potential terrorists. He cited troubling findings of a 2015 poll of U.S. Muslims conducted for the Center for Security Policy. Twenty-five percent of respondents believed “violence against Americans here in the United States could be justified as part of the global jihad” and fifty-one percent believed “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed by [Islam’s totalitarian] Sharia” code, rather than the Constitution.

In recent days, Mr. Trump has mused publicly about how to differentiate between would-be Muslim immigrants who pose a threat and those who do not. He has suggested applying his proposed restriction to all would-be immigrants from certain countries tied to terrorism.

One of Mr. Trump’s top advisors, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, however, argues that defining test should instead be adherence to Sharia. On Fox News Sunday, Speaker Gingrich said: “I would apply a test for Sharia and a test for loyalty to ISIS rather than geographic test, because we’re fighting people all over the world who are dangerous to us. So, it’s hard to say which countries really are the Islamic terrorist countries.”

Bill Buckley was one of the first to suggest there was trouble brewing on campus when he published God and Man at Yale in 1951. He argued that Yale University was doing more to strengthen students’ belief in godlessness and Communism than in Christianity and capitalism. It was an early warning.

That became clear in the 1960s and 1970s, when universities were the churning center of the anti-war movement, with students rioting against campus police and occupying administrative buildings. Those struggles, which focused in part on accusations of American oppression in the Third World, fed directly into the conflicts of the ’80s and ’90s over the proper role of the Western canon in undergraduate education. It was in 1987 that Jesse Jackson led Stanford students in a protest of a then-required course in the literature and philosophy of the West, chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture’s got to go.”

Throughout these battles, Yale has been both the breeding ground for and the adjudicator of higher education’s challenges — from the Buckley-instigated debate over whether universities should hire Communists to Yale’s heavy-handed attempts to maintain order in the Vietnam era to the debate in the ’90s over a $20 million donation for a course in the study of Western civilization that was ultimately rejected by the university. All these episodes were subjects of national headlines — and all reflected larger national struggles.

In the debates over free speech that raged in the 1960s and 1970s, however, Yale bucked the national trend, issuing a report that stated unequivocally the centrality of free expression to the purpose of the university. The Woodward report — as it was called after C. Vann Woodward, the eminent historian who chaired the committee that wrote it — came in response to a series of events in which speech had been stifled. The report concluded that while certain speech might cause “shock, hurt, and anger” — consequences not to be dismissed — the right to free expression was more important. If the university was to serve its central purpose — to foster “free access of knowledge” — nothing could supersede that right.

With campus activism warming up once more, events at Yale are again providing a window onto the national scene. Last fall, the school was engulfed in a months-long scandal over an e-mail about Halloween costumes that ended with the resignation of two liberal professors, Nicholas and Erika Christakis, from their administrative posts. At root was the collision between the Christakises’ deeply held belief in free speech — for which they have a long record of advocacy — and the university’s devotion to cultural diversity, particularly when student protesters are armed with their emotions.

Abrahamic monotheism as represented in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, precedes and stands apart from politics as an ethical vision that transcends history. It was a vision which invited people to embrace their common humanity as created and gifted by one omnipotent deity, and to follow a revealed code of ethics for righteous living, holding the promise of peace with an end to interminable conflicts that divided people into warring tribes.

Thoughtful Muslims, for nearly a century before the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate, had been writing about the need for an Islamic reform. Europe’s cultural advancement following the Reformation and Enlightenment held up a mirror for the Islamic world to follow in similar direction to similar ends. There was a consensus among Muslims that Islam was not intrinsically opposed to the modern world, and a readiness to follow in the footsteps of the West.

This is the “other” Islam. This is submission to truth, whose most righteous exemplar was Abraham when his faith was tested by his Deity, according to the Hebrew Bible, to sacrifice his son. And this is the faith of Sufis who took Muhammad’s message to people in places far removed from the desert confines of Arabia. It is simply, as the Qur’an reminds (30:30), deen al-fitrah, the natural religion, or inclination, of man to know his Creator. There is no return of this “other” Islam; it never went missing.

The cover of the January 1976 issue of Commentary magazine announced its main story, “The Return of Islam,” by Bernard Lewis. The year of publication coincided with the coming end of the fourteenth century of Islam, and the anticipation of a new Islamic century beginning in 1979. Forty years later this essay by Lewis, widely recognized and respected as the most eminent scholar on the Middle East and Islam alive today, came to be celebrated as the first warning of the coming upheaval inside the world of Islam.

Lewis’s essay was a corrective to viewing the Middle East and its people, Arabs and Muslims, in terms of Western values. “Modern Western man,” wrote Lewis, “being unable for the most part to assign a dominant and central place to religion in his own affairs, found himself unable to conceive that any other peoples in any other place could have done so… [or to] admit that an entire civilization can have religion as its primary loyalty.” This meant, Lewis continued, the “inability, political, journalistic, and scholarly alike, to recognize the importance of the factor of religion in the current affairs of the Muslim world”.

It was on July 4, 1976, that Yonatan Netanyahu was killed while rescuing hostages in Uganda. I did not know it then, but the bold Israeli mission would serve as a sharp turning point in my own personal history.

The Entebbe raid, as Operation Thunderbolt came to be called, not only had the entire world in awe of Israeli daring; it caused me to put the Israeli officer I met while he was visiting New York that summer on a pedestal. Exactly one year later, I was on a plane to the Jewish state with fantasies of raising lots of gorgeous babies who would grow into super-heroes whom I and everybody else would view with amazement, if not worship.

Ironically, the news of the Hollywood-like commando raid upstaged the bicentennial celebrations in the United States. Indeed, it was as though the extravagant fireworks set off in honor of America’s 200th birthday were sharing the limelight with Israel, the state that had been in existence for a mere 28 years.

The Entebbe story began exactly a week before that, on June 27, when an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris via a stopover in Greece was hijacked just after takeoff from Athens by four terrorists, two Palestinian and two German. The hijackers diverted the flight, with more than 300 passengers and 12 crew members on board, to Benghazi, Libya, and then to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, where they were joined by members of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s military forces.

The hostages were taken into an area of the terminal, where the Jews were separated from the others — a process reminiscent of Nazi “selection.” The hijackers demanded $5 million and the release of 53 Palestinian and pro-Palestinian terrorists, the bulk of whom were being held in Israeli jails. If their demands were not met, they said, they would begin killing hostages on July 1.

On June 30, the hijackers released 48 non-Israeli, non-Jewish hostages.

Brexit proponent Nigel Farage has been branded a liar by the European Parliament (EUP) – but PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas can lie compulsively without the slightest EUP remonstration or rebuke.

Such hypocrisy and double standards surfaced during addresses by Abbas and Farage to the EUP within the last week. Farage told those assembled:

“The biggest problem you’ve got and the main reason the UK voted the way it did is because you have by stealth and deception, and without telling the truth to the rest of the peoples of Europe, you have imposed upon them a political union. When the people in 2005 in the Netherlands and France voted against that political union and rejected the constitution you simply ignored them and brought the Lisbon treaty in through the back door.

What happened last Thursday was a remarkable result – it was a seismic result. Not just for British politics, for European politics, but perhaps even for global politics too.”

Farage taunted the EUP Parliamentarians:

“What I’d like to see is a grownup and sensible attitude to how we negotiate a different relationship. I know that virtually none of you have never done a proper job in your lives, or worked in business, or worked in trade, or indeed ever created a job. But listen, just listen.”

Amid shouts of protest, the President of the EUP, Martin Schulz, interrupted Farage in full-flight with this rebuke:

“Mr Farage – I would say one thing to you. The fact that you’re claiming that no one has done a decent job in their life – you can’t really say that”.

Jean-Claude Juncker – President of the European Commission – put the boot into Farage amidst thunderous applause:

“You lied. You didn’t tell the truth. You fabricated reality.”