RUTHFULLY YOURS

Aaron David Miller is a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars and most recently the author of “The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President.”

Miller was one of the great proponents of the Bush “road map” for Israel another clone of the endless policies promoting Israeli territorial concessions in exchange for blather….He wrote this in May 2005 in the Washpo…which give a good indication of his proclivities with respect to Israel:

“I’m not a lawyer by training,” Miller wrote. “But I know one when I see one. For far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel’s attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations.” ….“With the best of motives and intentions, we listened to and followed Israel’s lead without critically examining what that would mean for our own interests, for those on the Arab side and for the overall success of the negotiations.” so his opinions of Lieberman are tainted by bias….rsk

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Replacing Moshe Ya’alon, who announced his resignation Friday as Mr. Netanyahu publicly negotiated his replacement, would do a lot for Mr. Netanyahu: He stands to broaden his thin governing majority and to reinforce himself against right-wing pressure at home as well as U.S. efforts to press him on the peace process and settlements. He could better secure his position until 2018, when he would surpass David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest-governing prime minister. The exit of Mr. Ya’alon, a longtime Israeli military figure, also sends a powerful signal that the Israel Defense Forces should be careful about challenging his government. Senior military officials, and Mr. Ya’alon, have been critical on several points, including the government’s defense of an Israeli soldier who shot a wounded Palestinian lying on the ground in March after the Palestinian stabbed another Israeli soldier.

In the short term, Mr. Netanyahu’s actions may bring peace to his governing coalition. But the price will be continued and possibly greater tensions with the Palestinians, the U.S. and others. Notably, though, Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t much care. This move illustrates his decision to look beyond the Obama administration toward what he hopes will be a friendlier face in Washington.

Mr. Lieberman’s party joining the Netanyahu government would add precious seats to Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition. But Mr. Lieberman is a problematic partner. He represents a secular party that has had its share of tensions with Mr. Netanyahu’s ultra-orthodox coalition partners over national service. Mr. Lieberman resigned last year as foreign minister to protest what he considered Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to wipe out Hamas in Gaza and to build more settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank. He also wanted more support for legislation to remove Arabic as an official language, strengthen the influence of Jewish law, reduce the Israeli Supreme Court’s powers, and, according to the New York Times, “entrench the automatic citizenship of Jews worldwide and Jewish symbols of the state.” Mr. Lieberman, who is known for provocative statements and lives in an Israeli settlement south of Bethlehem, has threatened to bomb the Aswan dam in the event of war with Egypt and has proposed transferring some Arab-Israeli towns to the Palestinian Authority to help preserve the Jewish Israeli majority in the north. CONTINUE AT SITE

Good riddings….to “Bogie”Ya’alon- his nickname is short for “bogus”- a political chameleon in hawk’s clothing….rsk

TEL AVIV—Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon resigned Friday from what is widely considered Israel’s second-most powerful position, amid maneuvering by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to shore up his coalition.

Mr. Ya’alon, a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party, said in a Facebook post Friday that he decided to step down after the prime minister moved this past week to negotiate with the ultranationalist lawmaker Avigdor Lieberman, reportedly offering him the defense ministry.

Mr. Ya’alon said he was resigning his seat in the Knesset, or parliament, as well and would be “taking a timeout from political life.”

The prime minister expressed his regret and said he had offered Mr. Ya’alon the position of foreign minister, which Mr. Netanyahu currently also holds. Mr. Netanyahu denied there was any “crisis of confidence” between the two of them, but said he needed to “expand the government, in order to bring stability to Israel.”

Mr. Netanyahu, who has a one-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, has been seeking to shore up his political base by negotiating to bring Mr. Lieberman’s ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party into his conservative coalition.

Talks began on Wednesday, according to a senior Israeli official. The official wouldn’t comment on whether Mr. Lieberman had been offered the defense ministry portfolio, saying talks were ongoing.

As head of an underground Jewish resistance group, David Raziel had been pursued by the British. Come WWII, he would offer his help.
On May 20, 1941, David Raziel, commander of the Etzel – the Jewish underground militia in Palestine affiliated with Revisionist Zionism – was killed while leading a commando mission in Iraq for the British army.

In its early years, the Etzel, the acronomyn of Irgun Tzvai Leumi – literally “national military organization” –treated the British Mandatory government in Palestine as an enemy. But after World War II started, Etzel made common cause with the British, which is how it was that Raziel was asked to assemble a team to travel to Iraq. Its mission was to destroy the oil refineries west of the capital, which were supplying the Germans with fuel critical for their war effort.

He was born David Rozenson, on December 19, 1910, in Smorgon, in modern-day Belarus. His father was Mordecai Rozenson, a Hebrew teacher, and his mother the former Bluma Gordin. The family, which also included a sister, Esther, were Zionists, and spoke Hebrew in their home. When Mordecai was offered a position teaching at the Tachkemoni School, in Tel Aviv, in 1914, they immigrated there, if not for long.

During World War I, the Turkish rulers of the Land of Israel exiled Russian-born residents, whom they considered enemy aliens, to Egypt. This happened to the Rozensons too, and they went back to Russia, only to return to Israel in 1923.

David studied at his father’s school, graduating in 1928, when he moved to Jerusalem to attend the Merkaz Harav yeshiva, where his hevruta (study partner) was Zvi Yehuda Kook, son of chief rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. At the same time, he was a student at the Hebrew University.

A school board in North Carolina has unanimously given initial approval to a policy that would stop allowing its high schools to name valedictorians and salutatorians of its graduating classes because that kind of “competition” is apparently hazardous to students’ health.

“We have heard from many, many schools that the competition has become very unhealthy,” Wake County School Board Chairman Tom Benton said, according to an article in the News & Observer.

According to the News & Observer, a final decision on the policy won’t be made until June 7. Given the fact that it was unanimously supported in that initial vote, however, I’ve got to say it sounds pretty doggone likely that it will be approved.

Under the new policy, the schools would use the Latin honors system that’s used in colleges, giving a “cum laude” designation to students with a 3.75 GPA or higher, a “magna cum laude” designation to students with a 4.0 to a 4.249 GPA and a “summa cum laude” to students with a 4.25 GPA or higher.

Benton said he thinks this change will also stop students from being tempted to fill their schedules with easier classes to pad their GPAs in pursuit of a “valedictorian” or “salutatorian” title.

“Students were not collaborating with each other the way that we would like them to,” he said. “Their choice of courses was being guided by their GPA and not their future education plans.”

Um, Tom? How the hell would the elimination of those titles stop that? After all, those GPA numbers are still going to mean the same thing. Any kids who were going to have their “choice of courses” be “guided by their GPA” is probably still going to have them guided that way because — stay with me here — they’ll still have GPAs!

Why do liberals hate science?

The Left has long claimed that it has something of a monopoly on scientific expertise. For instance, long before Al Gore started making millions by claiming that anyone who disagreed with his apocalyptic prophecies was “anti-science,” there were the “scientific socialists.” “Social engineer” is now rightly seen as a term of scorn and derision, but it was once a label that progressive eggheads eagerly accepted.

Masking opinions in a white smock is a brilliant, albeit infuriating and shabby, rhetorical tactic. As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Science is the language of facts, and when people pretend to be speaking it, they’re not only claiming that their preferences are more than mere opinions, they’re also insinuating that anyone who disagrees is a fool or a zealot for objecting to “settled science.”

Put aside the fact that there is no such thing as settled science. Scientists are constantly questioning their understanding of things; that is what science does. All the great scientists of history are justly famous for overturning the assumptions of their fields. The real problem is that in politics, invocations of science are very often marketing techniques masquerading as appeals to irrefutable authority. In an increasingly secular society, having science on your side is better than having God on your side – at least in an argument.

I’m not saying that you can’t have science in your corner, or that lawmakers shouldn’t look to science when making policy. (Legislation that rejects the existence of gravity makes for very silly laws indeed.) But the real intent behind so many claims to “settled science” is to avoid having to make your case. It’s an undemocratic technique for delegitimizing opposing views and saying “shut up” to dissenters.

For example, even if the existence of global warming is “settled,” the policies for how to best respond to it are not. But in the political debates about climate change, activists say that their climatological claims are irrefutable and so are their preferred remedies.

If climate change is the threat they claim, I’d rather spend billions on geoengineering to fix it than trillions on impoverishing economic policies that at best slightly delay it. It doesn’t matter; I’m the Luddite buffoon for thinking ethanol subsidies and windmills are boondoggles.

This month, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) will be sponsoring a panel discussion about Islamophobia. Islamophobia is a modern-day term used mainly by Islamists to describe an unwarranted fear or hatred of Islam and/or Muslims and a term also used by the like to, more appropriately, shut down any conversation about the radical element found within the Muslim community. Not surprisingly, the majority of the event’s panel is made up of those linked to terrorism and bigotry, themselves.

The title of the forum, which is scheduled to take place at FAU in Boca Raton, on May 23rd, is ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA, Voices from the Muslim Community.’ The flyer for the event displays the photos of five panelists, at least three of which have known ties to terrorism. They are Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, the imam of the Darul Uloom mosque, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida; Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, the legal counsel for the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); and Bassem Abdo Alhalabi (al-Halabi), an Associate Professor at FAU.

Shafayat Mohamed is the imam at Darul Uloom. He founded it in October 1994. Since then, it has become a haven for al-Qaeda associates. “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla was a student at Darul Uloom. Now-deceased al-Qaeda Global Operations Chief Adnan el-Shukrijumah was a prayer leader there. And Darul Uloom Arabic teacher Imran Mandhai, Hakki Aksoy and Shueyb Mossa Jokhan hatched an operation at the mosque to blow up different structures, including area power stations, Jewish businesses, and a National Guard armory.

Shafayat Mohamed, himself, has been thrown off a number of boards in Broward County due to his outspokenness against homosexuals. In February 2005, an article written by him was published on the Darul Uloom website, entitled ‘Tsunami: Wrath of God.’ In it, he claims that gay sex caused the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. Shafayat Mohamed’s article doesn’t just target homosexuals. It also attacks Jews and Christians. In the piece, he claims that most Jews and Christians, whom he refers to as “People of the Book,” are “perverted transgressors.”

Another of the Islamophobia forum participants is Wilfredo Ruiz. Ruiz is the attorney for CAIR-Florida.

150 years ago, Mark Twain visited Muslim-occupied Israel and wrote of “unpeopled deserts” and “mounds of barrenness,” of “forlorn” and “untenanted” cities.

Palestine is “desolate,” he concluded. “One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings.”

The same is true of the Palestinian Museum which opened with much fanfare and one slight problem. While admission is free, there’s nothing inside for any of the visitors to see except the bare walls.

The Palestinian Museum had been in the works since 1998, but has no exhibits. The museum cost $24 million. All it has to show for it are a few low sloping sandy buildings indistinguishable from the dirt and a “garden” of scraggly bushes and shrubs. The Palestinian Museum is open, but there’s nothing inside.

It’s hard to think of a better metaphor for Palestine than a bunch of empty buildings designed by Irish and Chinese architects whose non-existent exhibits were the brainchild of its former Armenian-American director. It’s as Palestinian as bagels and cream cheese. Or skiing, hot cocoa and fjords.

Over the Palestinian Museum flies the proud flag of Palestine, which was originally the flag of the Iraqi-Jordanian Federation before the PLO “borrowed” it, and visitors might be greeted by the Palestinian anthem composed by Greek Communist Mikis Theodorakis. If it sounds anything like the soundtrack from Zorba the Greek, that’s because they both share the same composer.

All of Palestine is so authentically Palestinian that it might as well be made in China. At least that’s where the stained Keffiyahs worn by the stone throwers hurling rocks at passing Jewish families while posing heroically for Norwegian, Canadian and Chilean photojournalists are made.

Yesterday, May 15th, is associated with what the palestinians call Nakba Day – “Day of the Catastrophe” – the day after the Gregorian calendar date for Israeli Independence Day. But was has perhaps been lost with all of the noise, seething and protests is the other association between the palestinians and May 15th.

On May 15th, 1974, some courageous PFLP lions perpetrated one of the worst school massacres in history.

maalot massacreMa’alot-Tarshiha is a quiet Jewish-Arab city in the Galilee within walking distance of Israel’s border with Lebanon. But [42] years ago, it was the scene of a horrific attack by Palestinian terrorists who took more than 100 students hostage in a school building, killing 22 and gravely wounding 68.

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In the early-morning hours of May 15, 1974, three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical anti-Israel group, snuck across the border from Lebanon. Dressed as Israeli soldiers, they made their way to Ma’alot, where they killed three members of the Cohen family — apparently chosen at random — before entering an elementary school that was hosting more than 100 teenagers and teachers from a religious school in Safed for the night.

The terrorists held 115 hostages, including 105 students, and threatened to kill them if Israel did not release 23 prisoners being held on terror charges. For more than 12 grueling hours the young Israelis huddled in a booby-trapped classroom, abandoned by their teachers, until the terrorists turned on them with guns and grenades during a bloody rescue effort by the military.

The world reacted in horror to the targeting of children in the name of politics.

Yep, the world reacted in horror. And then 6 months later, on Nov 22nd 1974, UN General Assembly Resolution 3237 (XXIX) granted observer status to the PLO. So the world habit of rewarding palestinian terror has not really changed.

Senator Lee Rhiannon – a member of the Greens Party holding a pivotal position in Australian politics – authorised and printed a deceptive and misleading pamphlet which was distributed at a protest rally addressed by her last Sunday in Sydney “against Israeli Apartheid and commemorating Al Nakba 68 years on.”

Image credit: J-Wire.com

The pamphlet purported to quote a statement by Israel’s then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan in 1969:

“We came to a region of land that was inhabited by Arabs and we set up a Jewish State … Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages“

What Dayan actually said – which Senator Rhiannon was apparently not prepared to disclose – was:

“We came to a region that was inhabited by Arabs, and we set up a Jewish state. In many places, we purchased the land from Arabs and set up Jewish villages where there had once been Arab villages.”

God forbid that those present should learn that Jews had actually purchased land from its Arab owners. Better to maintain the canard repeated in Palestinian text books and media that

“the Zionist gangs stole Palestine”

When journalists arrive in Israel, they are already convinced that Palestinian Arabs are involved in a moral struggle for independence and that Israelis exploit their power and military prowess to thwart this “noble” goal.
There was a period in the Middle East, when American journalists and editorial writers favored Israel over the Arab states because Israel is an open society. Once reassessing Israel’s policies became in vogue, many editors and correspondents adopted a “neutral” and an “even handed” approach in their reporting. Israel no longer enjoyed “the benefit of the doubt.”

Those with “little or no ideological bent” relished in debunking “myths” about the Jewish state. In their quest for a new slant on the conflict, they found one. “Arabs biting Jews had long ceased to be news; but Jews biting Arabs—that was a story.” [1]

The New York Times’ “most important reporter in Gaza [Fares Akram] ….used the late Yasser Arafat as his profile photo on Facebook…
A number of years later The New York Times News Editor William Borders explained: “The whole point is that torture by Israel, a democratic ally of the United States, which gets huge support from this country, is news. Torture by Palestinians seems less surprising. Surely you don’t consider the two authorities morally equivalent.” [2]

Joyce Karam, the Washington bureau chief of Al-Hayat, one of the major daily pan-Arab newspapers, observed that there were no protests in Pakistan against the slaughter of 700 people in Syria on week-end, although there were anti-Israel protests in Pakistan against the Gaza war of 2014. “Syria is essentially Gaza x320 death toll, x30 number of refugees….” she said. When asked why this double standard, she answered, “Only reason I can think of is Muslim killing Muslim or Arab killing Arab seems more acceptable than Israel killing Arabs.” [3]

This change in attitude lead to Israel to being accused of “intransigence” for not giving up Judea and Samaria in the name of peace. “In abandoning the old policy of evenhandedness and embarking instead on a course of one-sided pressures on Israel, the United States is negotiating over the survival of Israel,’” warned Norman Podhoretz, an American neoconservative pundit and former editor of Commentary magazine. “For if the change in American policy is dictated by the need to assure an uninterrupted flow of oil from the Middle East to the United States and the other advanced industrial nations, there are no grounds for believing that it can succeed on the diplomatic channels. Given the intransigent determination of the Arabs to do away with a sovereign Jewish state in their midst, and given their belated discovery that the oil weapon is so potent an instrument for accomplishing this purpose, why would they stop using it after the first victory (the return of Israel to the 1967 boundaries) or even the second (the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank) were won?” [4]

This anti-Zionist mentality that has “taken root” in the West is based on the false and unproven assumption that Israelis and Palestinian Arabs are dissimilar people. Israelis “have agency, responsibility and choice, Palestinian [Arabs] do not.” The Palestinian Arabs are viewed as children and are rarely, if ever, held accountable for behaving immorally. [5]

New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis openly acknowledged that Israel is being held to a higher standard, “Yes, there is a double standard. From its birth Israel asked to be judged as a light among the nations.” [6] This means that Israel is universally expected to conduct herself “differently (and better)” than her Arab neighbors,