RUTHFULLY YOURS

The plant is expected to produce 627,000 cubic meters of water daily when at full capacity. It currently provides 20% of the country’s water needs, and it is expected to provide more.

Desalination is a process that is expected to take on more of the world’s ever increasing water demand. In fact, more and more research is going into finding ways to refine the procedure of turning salt water into drinkable water. However, some have doubted the practicality of large-scale desalination.

But it turns out, it may very well be practical.
Reverse osmosis desalination plant in Barcelona, Spain. James Grellie/WikiMedia

Case in point, the world’s largest desalination project, the Sorek in Israel, is ramping up to full capacity. The plant is already providing 20% of the water consumed in the country, and it is expected to produce 627,000 cubic meters of water daily when at full capacity.

The plant was built for around $500 million and uses a conventional desalination technology called reverse osmosis (RO).

In a commencement speech at Rutgers, President Obama took an indirect shot at Donald Trump and the Republicans:

Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science: These are good things. These are qualities you want in people making policy . . . We traditionally have valued those things, but if you’re listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from.

Obama here indulges one of the hoariest progressive clichés: that they are the party of enlightenment, reason, and fact, while conservatives are ignorant obscurantists, “bitter clingers” to the superstitions of religion and tradition. This prejudice is false about both conservatives and progressives. Most of what many progressives think is science is, in fact, scientism: the application of the methods, techniques, and jargon of genuine science to subjects for which they are inappropriate.

Indeed, leftism was born in scientism. Karl Marx believed that his ideas about the historical development, economics, and human nature comprised “scientific socialism,” as true as the laws of natural science. As Friedrich Engels said at Marx’s funeral, “Just as Darwin had discovered the law of development of organic nature, so did Marx discover the laws of human history.” Of course Marxism is no such thing. It is a reductive view of human nature and action, based on selective evidence, unexamined assumptions, and jargon modeled on real science.

As we now know, Marxism is in fact a political religion based on faith more than reason. It identifies the good (the proletariat and the intellectual left) and the evil (capitalists and petty bourgeois); promises an earthly paradise (a society of equality and justice without private property); and provides a totalizing narrative that explains everything (historical progress driven by the struggle for control of the means of production). And despite its bloody failure, a Marxism dressed up as “democratic socialism” still attracts leftists like Bernie Sanders who fancy themselves thinkers of cool reason and empirical evidence.

Ofir Winter, a researcher at Israel’s top-tier Institute for National Security Studies, reports on some unprecedentedly positive messages about Israel in a ninth-grade Egyptian textbook. (Winter’s article is included here in the May 2016 issue of Strategic Assessment.)

Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979. Before that—specifically from 1948 to 1973—the two countries fought five wars (in three of them Egypt was joined by other Arab states). Since the peace treaty, with Egypt out of the picture, wars between Israel and Arab states have come to a stop, though Israel has had to cope with a great deal of terror.

The Israeli-Egyptian peace, however, has remained “cold.” While the treaty spoke of “foster[ing] mutual understanding and tolerance,” a 2011 Pew survey found 98% of Egyptians holding antisemitic sentiments. When Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood regime took power in Egypt in 2012, it appeared to many that the peace had collapsed for good and war was imminent.

Morsi, though, was deposed a year later by his then defense minister, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Under President el-Sisi’s government, Egypt has taken a notable turn toward moderation. Regarding Israel, that has meant tight cooperation in fighting ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula and Hamas in Gaza, the return of the Egyptian ambassador to Tel Aviv, and plans for Egypt to start importing Israeli natural gas.

As Ofir Winter notes, the textbook in question, which is called The Geography of the Arab World and the History of Modern Egypt,

blends old and new messages…. As in the older textbooks, Mandate-era [i.e., pre-statehood] Israel is cast historically and ethically as land that was stolen from the Arab residents of Palestine. Zionism is described as a threatening colonialist movement born in sin rather than as a movement expressing legitimate national aspirations.

So much for the old. But when it comes to the new, the textbook has features that reflect the moderating trend under el-Sisi and haven’t been seen so far in Egyptian education.

First, the new textbook is much more supportive of the peace with Israel than previous textbooks. It stresses the economic value of peace “as a necessary precondition for Egypt’s stability, development, and material prosperity.” At the end of the class discussion on the subject, pupils are asked to “memorize the ‘provisions of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel,’ and enumerate the ‘advantages of peace for Egypt and the Arab states’”—no less. CONTINUE AT SITE

It appears that several major Palestinian terror groups have begun to prepare for mega-terror attacks on Israel.

The authoritative rules of war do not equate “proportionality” with how many people die in each side of a conflict. In war, no side is ever required to respond to aggression with only the equivalent measure of force. Rather, the obligations of proportionality require that no side employ any level of force that is greater than what is needed to achieve a legitimate political and operational objective.

Under pertinent international law, the use of one’s own people as “human shields” — because such firing from populated areas is intended to deter Israeli reprisals, or to elicit injuries to Palestinian civilians — represents a codified war crime. More specifically, this crime is known as “perfidy.” This is plainly an attempt to make the IDF appear murderous when it is compelled to retaliate, but it is simply a Palestinian manipulation of legal responsibility. Under law, those Arab residents who suffer from Israeli retaliations are incurring the consequences of their own government’s war crimes.

International law is not a suicide pact. Instead, it offers a universally binding body of rules and procedures that allows all states to act on behalf of their “inherent right of self-defense.”

Already, calls from various directions have begun to condemn Israel for its recent retaliatory strikes in self-defense at Gaza.[1] The carefully-rehearsed refrain is all-too familiar. Gazan terrorists fire rockets and mortars at Israel; then, the world calls upon the Israel Air Force (IAF) not to respond.

Although Israel is plainly the victim in these ritualistic cycles of Arab terror and required Israeli retaliations, the “civilized world” usually comes to the defense of the victimizers. Inexplicably, in the European Union, and even sometimes with the current U.S. president, the Israeli response is reflexively, without thought, described as “excessive” or “disproportionate.”

If Alice were an 18 year old American college freshman, she would be protected by Title IX from any hint of sexual harassment or molestation. Even if she consented to climb into bed with a guy she had already had sex with many times, voluntarily peeled off all her clothes and had a black belt in karate, if she changed her mind at any time in her romantic encounter, the government would defend her as if she were a hothouse flower outdoors in a hurricane. If she spent her evening getting drunk with her partner, he alone would be held responsible for any advances while she would remain a helpless victim with no agency. Under the same rubric of Title IX, if Alice were a younger girl in elementary or high school, she would be expected to change in a locker room or shower in a communal facility with bi-gender members of the opposite sex. The government now demands that young Alice be cool with seeing boys on hormone therapy with both breasts and penises. How odd that so much more is expected of Alice as a child than when she is actually old enough to be responsible for her own behavior as well as enlist in the army and be killed for her country.

The media coverage of transgender bathrooms usually leaves out the locker room and focuses instead on debunking the likelihood of bathroom rape. That contingency is not the most salient argument for segregating sexes according to their biology. The interjection of civil rights and equality into this LGBT campaign is a canard since physically disabled children have never been defended by the government against the so-called “stigma” of using separate wheelchair-accessible bathrooms. Why should unisex bathrooms be considered more discriminatory than that? Considering the likelihood that there are more disabled youngsters in the population than the tiny percentage of transgender children, why wouldn’t the government be more interested in protecting their civil rights first?

“Before I get started, I just wanted to say that we are meeting on stolen indigenous people’s land. That’s really important to acknowledge.” So declared San Francisco State University race and resistance studies professor Rabab Abdulhadi, at the University of California, Berkeley’s Seventh Annual International Islamophobia Conference in April.

Abdulhadi’s seemingly disjointed declaration was typical of the post-colonial, “intersectionality”-driven jargon of the entire conference, which sought to link the mythical plight of America’s prosperous, content Muslim population, with the struggles of every oppressed minority known to man. It was also an opportunity for two academic centers at opposite ends of the country to join forces and promote what was euphemistically referred to at the 2015 UC Berkeley conference as “Islamophobia studies.”

While UC Berkeley Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP) director and conference convener Hatem Bazian gave the opening remarks, John Esposito, founding director of Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) and project director of ACMCU’s Bridge Initiative, “a multi-year research project that connects the academic study of Islamophobia with the public square,” was the undisputed star.

Esposito was introduced by Munir Jiwa, director of the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, who, after noting that one of the scheduled speakers on the same panel was unable to attend, added with a smile, “I’m sure Dr. Esposito will be happy to take up the time.” Esposito did not disappoint, delivering a long, rambling talk filled with humorous asides and one-liners to which the audience responded with hearty laughter. He clearly reveled in being the center of attention and joked at the outset about his family, “They think I’m a humble person; my wife will tell you that I’m faking it.”

FROM MIDEAST OUTPOST FEBRUARY 2014

Editor’s Note: This is excerpted from Begin’s address on Israel’s independence day on the Irgun’s radio station. His words are worth remembering in this time of unprecedented challenges to Israel’s right to exist.

Citizens of the Hebrew Homeland, Soldiers of Israel, Hebrew Youth, Sisters and Brothers in Zion! Today is truly a holiday, a Holy Day, and a new fruit is visible before our very eyes. The Hebrew Revolt of 1944-1948 has been blessed with success — the first Hebrew revolt since the Hasmonean insurrection that has ended in victory. The State of Israel has arisen in bloody battle. The highway for the mass return to Zion has been cast up. The foundation has been laid — but only the foundation — for true independence.

One phase of the battle for freedom, for the return of the entire People of Israel to its homeland, for the restoration of the whole Land of Israel to its God-covenanted owners, has ended. But only one phase. We should recall that this event has occurred after 70 generations of dispersion and unending wandering of an unarmed people and after a period of almost total destruction of the Jew as Jew. Thus, although our suffering is not yet over, it is our right and our obligation to proffer thanks to the Rock of Israel and His Redeemer for all the miracles that have been done this day, as in those times. We therefore can say with full heart and soul on this first day of our liberation from the British occupier: Blessed is He who has sustained us and enabled us to have reached this time. The State of Israel has arisen. And it has risen “Only Thus”: through blood, through fire, with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm, with sufferings and with sacrifices. It could not have been otherwise.

And yet, even before our state is able to establish its normal governing institutions, it is compelled to fight, or rather, to continue to fight satanic enemies and blood-thirsty mercenaries, on land, in the air and on the sea. In these circumstances, the warning sounded by the Philosopher-President Thomas Masaryk to the Czechoslovak nation when it attained its freedom after three hundred years of slavery has a special significance for us. In 1918, when Masaryk stepped out on to the Wilson railway station in Prague, he warned his cheering countrymen: “It is difficult to set up a state; it is even more difficult to keep it going.”

We are surrounded by enemies who long for our destruction. Our one-day old state is set up in the midst of the flames of battle. And the very first pillar of our state must therefore be victory, total victory, in the war which is raging all over the country. For this victory, without which we shall have neither freedom nor life, we need arms; weapons of all sorts, in order to strike the enemies, in order to disperse the invaders, in order to free the entire length and breadth of the country from its would-be destroyers. But in addition to these arms, each and every one of us has need of another weapon, a spiritual weapon, the weapon of unflinching endurance in face of attacks from the air; in face of grievous casualties; in face of local disasters and temporary defeats; unflinching resistance to threats and cajolery.

But even after emerging victorious from this campaign — and victorious we shall be — we shall still have to exert superhuman efforts in order to remain independent, in order to free our country. First of all, it will be necessary to increase and strengthen the fighting arm of Israel, without which there can be no freedom and no survival for our Homeland. Our Jewish army should be, and must be, one of the best trained and equipped of the world’s military forces. In modern warfare, it is not quantity that counts but brainpower and spirit are the determining factors. All of our youth proved that they possess this spirit – those of the Hagana, the Lehi, the Irgun, youth that no other nation has merited. Indeed, no generation since Bar-Kochba and until the Bilu pioneers has seen such spirit.

Students at California State University–Los Angeles have set up a “healing” space to deal with pain they were caused by having Ben Shapiro speak on campus — even though that speech was three months ago and most of them didn’t even go.

“On February 25th, our campus experienced immense hurt and trauma,” states the description for the event, which will take place on Tuesday night.

“Almost two months later, students are still feeling the emotional, mental, and physical effects that this event posed, and nothing has been done to facilitate our healing,” it continues. “How can we help each other heal and move forward? How were you affected emotionally, physically, psychologically?”

Here’s the real kicker: According to Young Americans for Freedom program officer Amy Lutz, who attended the event, most — maybe even all — of the kids involved in this event didn’t even go to the damn speech.

I mean, really, kids? You’re suffering “immense hurt and trauma” and dealing with “emotional, mental, and physical effects” from a speech that happened sort of near you two months ago that you didn’t even attend? You need “healing” from that?

Oh boy. I’ve got to say, good luck. If you are suffering from “trauma” from that, then there is no way you are going to handle the real world.

In the Washington Post, Petraeus complained about the “inflammatory political discourse that has become far too common both at home and abroad against Muslims and Islam.” The former general warned that restricting Muslim immigration would “undermine our ability to defeat Islamist extremists by alienating and undermining the allies whose help we most need to win this fight: namely, Muslims.”

At Rutgers, Obama claimed that restricting Muslim immigration “would alienate the very communities at home and abroad who are our most important partners in the fight against violent extremism.”

If we alienate Muslims, who is going to help us fight Muslim terrorism?

You can see why Obama doesn’t mention Islamic terrorism in any way, shape or form. Once you drop the “I” word, then the argument is that you need Islam to fight Islam. And Muslims to fight Muslims.

This is bad enough in the Muslim world where we are told that we have to ally with the “moderate” Muslim governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to fight the Muslim terrorists whom they sponsor.

Petraeus has troublingly close ties to the Saudis. He defended their oil dumping program, praised the role of Islamic law in fighting Islamic terrorism and endorsed their Syria plans. While defending the Saudis as allies, he blamed Israel for America’s problems with the Muslim world. The narrative he was using there was the traditional Saudi one in which Israel, not Islam, is the source of the friction.

He defended Pakistan as an ally and claimed to believe the Pakistani excuses that they did not know Osama bin Laden was living right in their military center and that they really wanted to fight the Taliban.

The Jewish state has grown dramatically over the last seven decades. But it enjoyed greater freedom of action in its earliest years, when it wasn’t so closely tied to the United States. http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2016/05/how-independent-is-israel/

This article is based on remarks delivered at a conference on “U.S.-Israel Relations” held on May 6 at the Center for International Security Studies, Princeton University.

On Israel’s Independence Day, it is customary for the Central Bureau of Statistics to summarize some of the basic facts about the transformation of Israeli demography and living standards since the state’s founding in 1948. This is always an encouraging read. Israel’s Jewish population, for instance, has grown nearly tenfold in the intervening years, from 700,000 to almost 6.4 million. When independence was declared in 1948, Israel’s Jews constituted a mere 6 percent of the world Jewish population; today they are at 43 percent. Moreover, 75 percent of Israel’s Jewish population is native-born, more than twice the percentage in 1948. Back then, there were only 34,000 vehicles on the roads; today there are three million. And so forth.

Israel has indeed grown dramatically—in population, wealth, and military prowess. These are all grounds for celebration. But has Israel seen a comparable growth in its independence? That is, has there been a comparable expansion of its ability to take the independent action it must take if it is to protect its interests and survive as a Jewish state? Or is it possible that in these respects Israel was actually more independent in its early years and that it has grown less so over time, especially with the deepening of its relationship with its principal ally the United States?

Let me explore this latter possibility with a quick trip through history. Israel’s security and sovereignty as a Jewish state rest on three events to which precise dates may be assigned: 1948, 1958, and 1967.

In 1948, Israel declared independence. Just as important, the way it waged war, and the way the Arabs waged war, resulted in the flight of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs and determined that the new state would have a decisive Jewish majority. 1948 gave birth not only to a legally but also to a demographically Jewish state.
In 1958, still subject to Arab threats to eliminate it, Israel commenced construction of a nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev. Subsequent progress secured Israel’s existence against any conceivable threat of destruction by Arab states.
Finally, in 1967 Israel broke through the narrow borders in which the Jewish state had found itself after the 1948 war, giving it exclusive military control of the land mass from the Mediterranean to the Jordan valley—a control Israel is determined to preserve in any peace scenario. Israel’s victory also finally persuaded many Arabs that they would never defeat it outright, thus creating the incentive for later peace treaties.

These three actions laid the foundation of Israel’s secure existence as a sovereign Jewish state—demographically, militarily, geographically, and politically. But here is an often-overlooked fact: the United States vigorously warned Israel against all three of these actions, and threatened that taking them would leave Israel on its own and “alone.”

Let’s begin again with 1948. Britain had turned over its mandate for Palestine to the United Nations, which in November 1947 voted to partition the territory into two states, one Jewish and one Palestinian. Initially the Truman administration supported partition, but then began to backtrack in favor of a UN trusteeship over the whole. As Palestinian Jews contemplated whether to declare independence, Secretary of State George Marshall issued the first U.S. “alone” warning to Moshe Shertok (later Sharett), the foreign-minister-in-waiting. “I told Mr. Shertok,” Marshall reportedto President Harry Truman,

that they were taking a gamble. If the tide [of Arab hostility] did turn adversely and they came running to us for help they should be placed clearly on notice now that there was no warrant to expect help from the United States, which had warned them of the grave risk which they were running.

This admonition so shook Sharett’s confidence that David Ben-Gurion practically had to quarantine him on his return.