RUTHFULLY YOURS

On this 68th anniversary of the independence of the modern Jewish nation-state, my thoughts naturally turn to the question of how long we will be able to keep that independence, purchased at such great cost.

It’s not an issue that occupies citizens of most other states to the same degree. Although the US has major problems in several areas, I don’t hear Americans talking about losing their independence. They settled that back in the 18th century.

For us, it is never settled, despite international law and despite our successful defense of our homeland. Most of the world does not think that the Jewish people should have an independent state, in many cases because they don’t agree that there is a Jewish people (on the other hand, a ‘Palestinian’ people makes sense to them, or at least they pretend it does).

There is more than one way a sovereign nation can lose its independence. It can be conquered in war, as happened to Carthage in the 2nd century BCE, its people killed, enslaved or dispersed, its wealth carried off and its land sown with salt. It can be invaded and then made into a colony or satellite, its people allowed to live but without self-determination, as happened to the Eastern European satellites of the Soviet Union after WWII. And it can allow its decisions to be influenced by a more powerful state or states, little by little giving up its independent volition to economic and political pressure, until it finds itself so dependent on its ‘patron’ that it has lost the ability to control its destiny.

Israel is threatened militarily today primarily by Iran and its proxies. It would be wrong to minimize the direct threat to our existence that they represent, and our government and the IDF do take it seriously and prepare for conflict.http://abuyehuda.com/2016/05/israels-dangerous-addiction/

But we are also at risk of a ‘soft conquest’ by another enemy, this one an alliance of supposedly friendly nations, led by one massively powerful country that is considered our greatest friend and supporter. And our leaders seem blind to this danger.

How does a soft conquest work? Here are some of the tactics:

Create economic dependence by damaging the target’s relationships with rival partners.
Create military dependence either directly by ‘protecting’ the target or indirectly by locking it in to you as a sole supplier of arms, ammunition or spare parts.
Strengthen its enemies and weaken the target’s own self-defense abilities so that it will have to depend upon you when threatened.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Switching off antibiotic resistance. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have found new RNA-control switches (“ribo-switches) for genes encoding antibiotic resistance and discovered that these switches are actually “turned on” by the antibiotics themselves. The switches could be turned off by future treatments.
http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/switching-antibiotic-resistance

Israeli doctors save “no chance” Cyprus baby. (TY Beverly) No newborn with a heart defect like that of Cypriot baby Vassilios had ever survived. But Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center was willing to treat him. After an anxious journey to Israel, Hadassah surgeons achieved the “impossible” and after 10 days Vassilios and his happy parents returned to Cyprus. http://www.hadassah.org/news-stories/cyprus-newborn-saved.html

Hadassah saves Al Quds student with organ failure. (TY Beverly) Palestinian Arab student Sara al Katzroy collapsed whilst jogging. She was brought from Jericho hospital to Jerusalem where Hadassah doctors used a Molecular Adsorbent Recirculation System (MARS) to save her liver. Sara now wants to become a nurse.
http://www.hadassah.org/news-stories/sara-katzroy.html

Doctors save Palestinian Arab boy who fell into boiling jam. (TY Barbara Sofer) One of Barbara Sofer’s 68 reasons to love Israel includes this amazing report of how doctors at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center managed to save the life of Mohamed – a Palestinian Arab toddler who fell into a vat of boiling jam.
http://hadassahinternational.org/supermodel-naomi-campbell-visits-childrens-ward-at-hadassah/

Eye spy. Two people have regained their eyesight after receiving the corneas of the late former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who died March 17 after a long battle with cancer. Avraham Gian, 81, and an unnamed 70-year-old woman received the corneas at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/meir-dagans-corneas-give-sight-back-to-2-israelis/

Heart implant is a success. (TY Atid-EDI) UK medical journal The Lancet reported the first implants of the interatrial shunts from Israel’s V-Wave (see previous newsletters). In less than 1 hour, each of 10 Canadian patients suffering poor left ventricular function received new implants and were discharged home next morning.
http://vwavemedical.com/2016/03/28/first-human-results-v-waves-interatrial-shunt-published-lancet/
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2816%2900585-7/abstract

The Biblical view of the relationship between man and nature is set out clearly in Genesis 1:28:

God blessed them [mankind] and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

The view of the Sierra Club is well described by this:

Humans have evolved as an interdependent part of nature. Humankind has a powerful place in the environment, which may range from steward to destroyer. We must share the Earth’s finite resources with other living things and respect all life-enabling processes. Thus, we must control human population numbers and seek a balance that serves all life forms.

In the Biblical view, mankind rules nature and exploits it. In the Sierra Club view “humankind” must blend in with all the other animals and not burden the natural order. The Sierra Club view represents a step backward from monotheism to nature worship. They cannot admit that they are practicing a religion, because if they did many of the laws passed in response to lobbying by the Sierra Club and similar organizations would be unconstitutional, according to the first amendment, as a “law respecting an establishment of religion…”

John Muir, the founder and first president of the Sierra Club, made clear the religious nature of the club in his protest against the damming of the Hetch Hetchy valley in Yosemite National Park: “Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”

In the preface to the book Dark Green Religion, the green religion is described as:

Dark green religion — religion that considers nature to be sacred, imbued with intrinsic value, and worthy of reverent care — has been spreading rapidly around the world.

Teaching While White (TWW) is becoming an occupational hazard these days. So is being a white student, for that matter. At the “Unofficial Scripps College Survival Guide,” students learn that “white peers and faculty — portray Claremont Consortium as a haven for liberal ideology and acceptance. It’s a rhetoric that has led many white students to believe that racism does not exist on campus.” Thus, “as white students, [they] must identify the ways that [they] are engaging in the perpetuation of white supremacy and work to unlearn [their] racism.”

Of course, “reverse racism does not exist because there are no institutions that were founded with the intention of discriminating against white people on the basis of their skin. Many white people claim to be victims of reverse racism when people of color associate negative characteristics with white people or have a general dislike for them as a group. This is not reverse racism because racism is privilege plus power and people of color do not have racial privilege. Moreover, distrust or anger at white people is a legitimate response to a repetitive history and current state of racist violence.”

And so Rachel, Anna, Emi, and Jasmine, authors of the above, state that “[t]he solution to white privilege is to ‘ask people of color to absolve [white people] of [their] guilt.'” But even that is “not an adequate response… [since] whites must be accountable and hold other white students accountable, too.”

I would like to ask the authors if I decide to be black tomorrow a la Rachel Dolezal, would I still be guilty of white supremacy? After all, an Indian-American student got into medical school by pretending to be black.

Under relevant international law, a true state must always possess the following specific qualifications: (1) a permanent population; (2) a defined territory; (3) a government; and (4) the capacity to enter into relations with other states.
While this contingent condition of prior demilitarization of a Palestinian state may at first sound reassuring, it represents little more than a impotent legal expectation.
For one thing, no new state is ever under any obligation to remain “demilitarized,” whatever else it may have actually agreed to during its particular pre-state incarnation.
“The legality of the presence of Israel’s communities the area (Judea and Samaria) stems from the historic, indigenous, and legal rights of the Jewish people to settle in the area, granted pursuant to valid and binding international legal instruments, recognized and accepted by the international community. These rights cannot be denied or placed in question.” — Ambassador Alan Baker, Israeli legal expert.

International law has one overarching debility. No matter how complex the issues, virtually everyone able to read feels competent to offer an authoritative legal opinion. While, for example, no sane person would ever explain or perform cardio-thoracic surgery without first undergoing rigorous medical training, nearly everyone feels competent to interpret complex meanings of the law.

This debility needs to be countered, at least on a case by case basis. In the enduring controversy over Palestinian statehood, there are significant rules to be considered. For a start, on November 29, 2012, the General Assembly voted to upgrade the Palestinian Authority (PA) to the status of a “Nonmember Observer State.”

Although it is widely believed by many self-defined “experts” that this elevation by United Nations has already represented a formal bestowal of legal personality, that belief is incorrect. Under law, at least, “Palestine” – whatever else one might happen to think of “fairness” – remains outside the community of sovereign states.

This juridical exclusion of “Palestine,” whether welcome or not, on selective political grounds, is evident “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The authoritative criteria of statehood that express this particular exclusion are long-standing and without ambiguity. Under relevant international law, a true state must always possess the following specific qualifications: (1) a permanent population; (2) a defined territory; (3) a government; and (4) the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Moreover, the formal existence of a state is always independent of recognition by other states. According to the 1934 Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (the Montevideo Convention):

“Even before recognition, the state has the right to defend its integrity and independence, to provide for its conservation and prosperity, and consequently to organize itself as it sees fit….”

It follows that even a Palestinian state that would fail to meet codified Montevideo expectations could simply declare otherwise, and then act accordingly, “to defend its integrity and independence….”

More than likely, any such “defending” would subsequently involve incessant war and terror against “Occupied Palestine,” also known as Israel. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964, three years before there supposedly were any “Israeli Occupied Territories.” What, then, exactly, was the PLO trying to “liberate?”

On Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, lessons for our world from theirs
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/202040/americans-the-almost-chosen-people

When we speak of culture in general, we typically think of fixed roots in the form of memory, custom, and habit. Yet the salient characteristic of the American character is restlessness, as Tocqueville observed. We are journeyers rather than settlers. We are risk-takers, entrepreneurs, and innovators. How then should we think about ourculture?

One approach is to steer clear of the problem and define America as a “propositional nation,” as John Courtney Murray contended. A proposition is something one assents to rationally. Culture, by contrast, is the context in which we perceive things, which we receive from our ancestors and pass down to our descendants. It is pre-rational, instinctive rather than intellectual, a manifestation of who we are rather than what we think. It is the way in which we cannot help but understand the world.

It is one thing to assert that a proposition is true and quite another thing to pledge one’s life, fortune, and sacred honor. The American Revolution is in some ways the strangest conflict in history: There is no other example of prosperous, property-owning people who were free to publish their thoughts and practice their religion taking up arms against the world’s most powerful empire. Four generations later, half a million Northerners died to end slavery.

If America is merely a propositional nation, moreover, then this proposition can be taught to any other nation, like a proof in logic. From Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush, our attempts to instruct the rest of the world in the American proposition have had baleful consequences, and it behooves us to consider the side of being American that cannot be learned but rather must be lived—what we call culture.

American culture is so singular that the general concept of culture we inherit from the Old World does not suffice to cover it. Critic Russell Kirk refers us to T.S. Eliot, who wrote:

[T]he term culture … includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the 12th of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th century Gothic churches, and the music of Elgar.

These are the sorts of quaint things American tourists used to look for in England, that is, when England still had them. If we Americans had things like that, we would put them in a theme park. I do not mean to deprecate Eliot. His is the common-sense way to think about culture, and to deviate from it takes us into deep water. Nonetheless, Eliot’s definition does not well suit the American example.

For Martin Heidegger, our Being-in-the-World, or Dasein, always occupies a particular space in a particular temporality. “Heritage” for Heidegger refers back to something like an autochthonous peasant archetype. In his later years Heidegger withdrew to a cabin in the Black Forest to write dithyrambs to the German Heimatendangered by the encroachment of technology. Americans do not stay in any one place long enough to accrete the Bodenständigkeit, or rootedness, that Heidegger sought at the core of our Being. No wonder Heidegger hated America.

Recently Alexander Gauland, the deputy chair of the ultra-right Allianz für Deutschland, called Americans “a people thrown together by chance without an authentic culture.” It is true that we do not have a high culture to compare to Europe’s, for all the good that did them. We cannot claim a national poet with the stature of a Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe. Not until the 1920s did we discoverMoby-Dick when critics in search of an American classic rescued Melville’s work from 70 years of obscurity. We have Walt Whitman, the butt of innumerable parodies, and Hemingway, the subject of a famous imitation contest.

America nonetheless has a distinct national culture, with a national epic, a national poem, and a national place.

It is instructive to start in medias res, with the most original and influential work of American fiction, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, whence “all modern American literature comes,” as Hemingway said. Its flaws shed light on our problem as much as do its virtues. Twain devised the most arresting image in American literature: the runaway boy Huck and the escaped slave Jim, fragile and free on the great river. The evocative opening of the novel, though, eventually fades into a disappointing sequel to Tom Sawyer. “The book ends so lamely,” Harold Bloom rightly observes. Nonetheless, we forgive Mark Twain his sin of literary construction and love the work. Our critics, I think, misunderstand why. Lionel Trilling thinks Huck is a “servant of the river-god,” while Bloom cannot decide whether Huck is a “wholly secular being” or an “American Orphic.” This seems far-fetched. What fascinates us in Huckleberry Finn is not the plot but the image of the journey itself. Twain gives us the most poignant picture of a journey ever imagined by an American: the vulnerability of the two fugitives against the backdrop of the great current that bisects the American heartland.

“What kind of talk is this, ‘punishing Israel?’ Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we 14-year-olds who, if we misbehave, get our wrists slapped? Let me tell you whom this Cabinet comprises. It is composed of people whose lives were marked by resistance, fighting and suffering.”

These were the words of Prime Minister Menachem Begin delivered to the U.S. President Ronald Reagan in December 1981. Begin, one of the greatest leaders and fighters of our times, knew the meaning of true independence.

He knew that it was not about firecrackers, dancing in the streets or lighting flames. It was about standing up for yourself and submitting to no man. Declaring to the world, “this is where we stand.”

Israel’s independence was bought at a high price in Jewish blood, fighting first against the might of the British Empire and then against five powerful Arab armies which sought its destruction.

For 68 years Israelis have fought again and again to defend their independence against enemies who would subjugate their country. No other nation has struggled so long and so hard, surrounded by such unyielding hostility.

But in making their stand, Israelis have never had to stand alone. From the beginning, Jews from the U.K., the U.S., Europe, Australia, South Africa and around the world rallied to the fight for independence under the glorious banner of the Mahal. Among them were non-Jews, including a Christian soldier from my own regiment.

In the years since, and even today, the courage of their young successors, the “lone soldiers”’ of the diaspora, travelling thousands of miles from the safety of their homes to stand and fight here to preserve Israel’s independence, inspires awe and humility. As Begin said: “This is the land of their forefathers, and they have a right and a duty to support it.”

Oxford University’s undergraduate law professors are providing “trigger warnings” before lessons about rape or violent crime so that students who might be made uncomfortable by such material can leave.

“Before the lectures on sexual offences — which included issues such as rape and sexual assault — we were warned that the content could be distressing, and were then given the opportunity to leave if we needed to,” one student said, according to an article in the Daily Mail.

This is, obviously, insane. Students are in law classes, presumably, because they have an interest in potentially pursuing a career in law. And the people in these fields — prosecutors, judges, attorneys, etc. — certainly cannot just up and leave the courtroom any time they feel uncomfortable.

After all, law jobs, by their very nature, in large part deal with things that are illegal — things which, by nature, are often uncomfortable or even downright disturbing. If you can’t handle talking about it in class, then you can’t handle those careers.

Now, this sounds like it should be obvious, but Oxford is far from the first place we’ve seen this idiotic logic at play. In fact, Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk wrote a piece in The New Yorker back in 2014 explaining that “student organizations representing women’s interests” have been so successful in pushing the idea that students “should not feel pressured to attend or participate in class sessions that focus on the law of sexual violence” that “even seasoned teachers of criminal law, at law schools across the country, have confided that they are seriously considering dropping rape law and other topics related to sex and gender violence . . . because they are afraid of injuring others or being injured themselves.”

This isn’t just annoying or stupid — it’s actually dangerous. After all, rape law’s being too “triggering” to teach will result in fewer people knowing how to prosecute rapists. It’s putting the misguided, abstract idea of achieving an emotional “safe space” above actual safety in a real, tangible way. Clearly, it’s time to wake up and take a look at our priorities — fast.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review.

This past week, a group of young right-wing activists, including myself, met for a discussion with former MK Moshe Feiglin, in which he spoke about his goals when creating his new political party, Zehut.

Feiglin described the reality the way he saw it, as he often does, by describing the “horrible” state of affairs and claiming that the State of Israel was in very bad shape. He, of course, then promised that he was the only person who could change things.

“Is this the State of Israel that we dreamed of for 2,000 years?” he said.In the time leading up to Independence Day, I could not help but cringe when hearing such a description of reality.

I also could not help but answer with a resounding yes! This is indeed the state we dreamed of for 2,000 years, for in the past 68, Israel has grown into nothing less than a miracle.

ISRAEL’S POPULATION grew from a mere 800,000 in 1948 to an impressive eight million by 2013. This growth was caused by two things that were, by themselves, miraculous.

For a western country, Israel has a high birthrate, with 3.04 per woman in 2012, compared to 1.88 in America, 2.0 in France and 1.38 in Germany.

Since birthrates are usually a reflection of hope for the future, the fact that people living in war-torn Israel are still investing in birth is great testament that a nation whose national anthem is called “The Hope” is still living by this important principle.

The second factor leading to this population growth was Israel’s impressive ability to integrate hundreds of thousands of Jews who immigrated from all around the world.

From Australia to North America, through Brazil, Morocco, Europe, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Asia, Israel has successfully been fulfilling the biblical prophecy of the ingathering of the exiles: “The Lord, your God, will bring back your exiles, and He will have mercy upon you. He will once again gather you from all the nations, where the Lord, your God, had dispersed you.”

From its very beginning, this young and small nation with a fragile economy has been able to bring together people from very different backgrounds into one nation and an impressive, thriving democracy.

Israel is also the only nation in history that has been able to revive a dead language. It is hard to believe that at the beginning of the previous century, Hebrew was used as a language only for prayer and religious study. Today, it is thriving. People speak in Hebrew, sing in Hebrew, joke in Hebrew and even curse in Hebrew. Hebrew is once again a living language.

From 1950 to 2007, the per-capita GDP in Israel grew six-fold. The country’s now-thriving economy is at the center of international innovation, which abounds in Israel not only in hitech, the heart of the so-called start-up nation, but also in academia and defense industries.

As for international relations, things have never been better. Just recently, Israel opened an office at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels. It joined the OECD a few years ago. While relations with the European Union are at times tense, bilateral relations between Israel and European states remain strong: Germany, France, England and the Czech Republic are all led by people who proudly call themselves friends of Israel. Australia and Canada have constantly deepened their ties with Israel, and even a very hostile Obama administration has not been able to hurt the strong bond between the Israeli people and the American people.

ISRAEL IS far from perfect. Its shortcomings span all its sectors. However, one must realize that this is true of every single nation in this world.

There are no nations that are perfect, no states without shortcomings. It is easy for a politician like Feiglin to distort reality by focusing only there and ignoring the incredible advancements of our society. It is also easy for politicians who have never been in a position of power – where they need to compromise on their principles, the way every leader rightfully needs to do in a democracy – to criticize ruling politicians for “not going the whole way.”

One can easily list the problems with our lack of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, ignoring the silent steps undertaken in order to protect the rights of the Jews living in these areas. One can easily list the problems we have on the Temple Mount, where Jews are robbed of their right to the free practice of religion when they are not allowed to pray.

Yes, there are still many shortcomings.

However, when we come to understand that perfection exists only in utopian fantasies, we quickly realize that when looking at the accomplishments of a government or state, we must judge not the way things are, but the trends that are present. Anyone claiming that Israel’s history has been anything but blessed with positive trends is living in a parallel reality.

There is still a long way to go, but Israel is on the right path.

A person can start working with the system to try and influence change, incremental as it might be, instead of having a “my way or the highway” approach like Feiglin has had ever since entering politics, where he announced he was running for prime minister before he even entered the Knesset as a regular parliamentarian.

Yes, compromise is less appealing, but it is the way things get done. This is how we see slow change happening. A lack of compromise means no change will happen.

Feiglin’s discourse is not very different from the discourse of the Left. People there are also imbued with utopian dreams instead of realistic policies. They like to blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for everything bad in this world, as if he were responsible even for the weather. Yet a worse aspect of this discourse is that it shows a great deal of ungratefulness for what we have accomplished as a nation in such a short time.

ONE WEEK ago, we celebrated Holocaust Remembrance Day. This week, we marked Remembrance Day, in which we remembered and thanked the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for us to achieve these great accomplishments, and celebrated Independence Day. The contrast between the two days shows how far our nation has moved forward in only a few decades.

By ignoring our accomplishments, by always asking for more without recognizing what we already have, people are showing a great deal of ungratefulness to all those who sacrificed so much to bring us to where we are today.

Asking for us to keep moving forward is a great thing. Ignoring our accomplishments turns us into incredibly ungrateful beings. ■

The writer is an attorney and a former legislative adviser to the Knesset’s coalition chairman. He previously served in a legal capacity at the Foreign Ministry. He is a graduate of McGill University Law School and Hebrew University’s master’s program in public policy.
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In a week or two, Israel will again be the focus of a well-dressed international lynch mob. According to news reports, US President Barack Obama intends to use the so-called Middle East Quartet, comprised of the US, the UN, Russia and the EU, as a tool to ratchet up Western condemnations of the Jewish state.

The report is expected to include even more expansive assaults on Israel for refusing to deny Jews our civil rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

It will likely ratchet up the false claims that have already been made to the effect that Jewish cities, towns, neighborhoods and homes beyond the 1949 armistice lines are illegal and a threat to world peace.

The Quartet statement will also brutalize Israel for lawfully destroying illegal construction projects undertaken by the EU in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. The EU engages in illegal building in order to subvert Israel’s rule of law and enfeeble the IDF.

Around the same time that Obama has scheduled his newest assault on Israel, France is expected to convene a so-called peace conference. The stated purpose of the conference is to restart the fraudulent peace process which the Palestinians killed nearly 16 years ago and have never agreed to resuscitate.

The novel aspect of the French conference, which neither Israeli nor Palestinian diplomats will attend, is that other than the misleading headlines referring to their powwow as a peace conference, the French are making no effort to hide that the sole purpose of their initiative is to condemn Israel.

The purpose of the conference is to provide diplomatic cover for the French government to recognize a state called Palestine. When then French foreign minister Laurent Fabius announced the conference in January, he said that whether or not the conference leads to peace, France will recognize “Palestine.” And just to be clear, the “Palestine” France intends to recognize will be located in land controlled by Israel and to which Israel has a valid claim of sovereignty.

In the face of the approaching international onslaught, thought leaders and politicians on the Left insist that Israel must act. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they argue, must participate in the Paris conference, and he must announce an initiative now to vacate Judea and Samaria, or to stop allowing Jews to exercise their legal right to build homes in these areas and in Jerusalem.