RUTHFULLY YOURS

The World Happiness Report 2016 Update ranks Israel (Jews and Arabs) 11th of 158 countries evaluated for the United Nations. Israel also shines as No. 5 of the 36 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries on the OECD’s Life Satisfaction Index—ahead of the U.S., the U.K. and France.

How can this be so? Israelis live in a hostile and volatile neighborhood, engaged in an endless conflict with the Palestinians and under the threat of nuclear annihilation by Iran. If you crunch the different components of these indexes, Israel falls much further down the lists. It ranks only 24th in GDP per capita, and comes in at No. 30 of the 36 OECD countries on security and personal safety. Israel has only the 17th-highest per capita income in the world.

But Israelis do not rank as stupid on any index. Israel was the fifth-most innovative country in the 2015 Bloomberg Innovation Index, and a 2014 OECD study ranked it fourth in the percentage of adults with a higher education.

So what explains the Israeli paradox? Do Israelis only become stupid when thinking about their own happiness?

The explanation probably lies in indicators not considered in standard surveys. For instance, a new study by my organization, the Jewish People Policy Institute, looked at pluralism in Israel and found that 83% of Israel’s Jewish citizens consider their nationality “significant” to their identity. Eighty percent mention that Jewish culture is also “significant.” More than two-thirds (69%) mention Jewish tradition as important. Strong families and long friendships stretching back to army service as young adults, or even to childhood, also foster a sense of well-being. All of these factors bolster the Jewish state’s raison d’être.

This year, May 12 will mark the 68th anniversary of Israel’s founding, when a nation was created against all odds. The enormous challenges never eroded Israelis’ energy, or hope. CONTINUE AT SITE

Who the Hell is Fethullah Gulen?
Fethullah Gulen is a proponent of stealth jihad. In one of his sermons, the fiery imam said that in order to reach the ideal Muslim society “every method and path is acceptable, [including] lying to people.”

In another he instructed his followers: “You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere.”

His instructions have been well-heeded.

Gulen’s tentacles now extend into “all the power centers” of the U. S. government, including the Oval Office.

Dalia Mogahed, President Obama’s Muslim advisor, has endorsed the Gulen movement which critics believe seeks to restore the Ottoman Empire and to establish a universal caliphate.

Recently Ms. Mogahed, the first woman to wear a veil in the White House, said: “I think the Gülen movement offers people a model of what is possible if a dedicated group of people work together for the good of the society. I also think that it is an inspiration for other people and Muslims for what they can accomplish.”

Asked about the movement’s hidden agenda, Ms. Mogahed told Sunday’s Zaman, a Turkish newspaper owned by Gulen, that she usually does not attach any importance to such allegations.

Gulen and his millions of minions have helped to topple Turkey’s secular government, establish thousands of madrassahs (Muslim religious schools) throughout Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, and form a new country known as East Turkistan, a radical Islamic state.

This new special edition of the Glazov Gang was joined by Nonie Darwish, the author of The Devil We Don’t Know.

Nonie discussed Islamic Blasphemy Laws Upheld by U.S. Campuses,
sharing how Wingate University tried to silence her when she tried to talk about Jihad and Sharia.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Nonie discuss Islamic Prayer as Intimidation, analyzing why a Muslim would scream “Allahu Akbar” on an airplane:

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel and to Jamie Glazov http://jamieglazov.com/2016/05/09/islamic-blasphemy-laws-upheld-by-us-campuses-on-the-glazov-gang/

The League of Nations and the UN did not create Israel ex nihilo, they simply recognized the pre-existing right of the people who were sovereign in the land for over a thousand years.

The question of whether Israel should demand that Palestinian Arabs formally recognize her right to exist as “the” Jewish state has been the subject of discussion and debate within Israel for many years. As former Israeli ambassador Dore Gold observed, in the last century, Israel is the only state established whose legitimacy was officially acknowledged by the League of Nations and the U.N.

The League of Nations Mandate did not grant the Jewish people the rights to establish a national home in Palestine, it simply recognized the pre-existing right that had never been surrendered or forgotten. The Jewish people had been sovereign in their own land for a thousand years before many were forced into exile. The establishment of the State of Israel did not represent a creation ex nihilo.

These rights were upheld by the U.N. under Article 80 of the UN Charter after the U.N. replaced the League of Nations. (Dore Gold and Jeff Helmreich, Jerusalem Viewpoints Number 507 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, November 16, 2003).

The Arab Response

When addressing the international community, the Palestinian Arabs insist that recognition of Israel as a Jewish state will annul their right to establish their own state, compromise the rights of the non-Jewish minority in Israel and preclude resolving the question of the Palestinian refugees. These excuses are unfounded. They have never accepted the right of Israel to exist, which is why the two-state solution has never been a realistic solution.
They have never accepted the right of Israel to exist, which is why the two-state solution has never been a realistic solution.

In the past few years, the American Studies Association (ASA) has been diverted from its scholarly mission—promoting the study of American culture—to a political one, by leaders seeking to turn the ASA into an organization that advocates for social change far beyond American borders, and with an unwavering focus on delegitimizing Israel. This effort culminated in a resolution for an academic boycott of Israel in December 2013.

The Israel boycott was put together by a small group that has commandeered the ASA, and is opposed by a substantial number of ASA members. It has torn the group asunder. It has sullied the name of the ASA. And, we contend, it violates the law.

This week, the four of us filed a lawsuit against the ASA to return the group to its core scholarly mission. We are lifelong academics in the field of American studies.
All of us care deeply about the study of American civilization. We have given our professional lives to the study of this rich field, and through our teaching, we seek to pass along our passion to our students. Combined, we have been teaching American studies for approximately 150 years. One of us is the editor of the ASA’s Encyclopedia of American Studies and an ab officio officer of the ASA, and another is a former editor of the annual Bibliography Issue of the American Quarterly, the official journal of the ASA. Two of us are winners of the Marie Turpie Prize, the ASA’s award for outstanding teaching, advising and program development in American studies.

We now fear what will happen to academic programming in American studies. We see how the ASA’s anti-Israel boycott has alienated our students. Few of our students and fellow faculty members attend ASA meetings any longer.

If you haven’t yet heard of Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s justice minister, you will soon. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with all her policies, some of which are undeniably hardline. She is quite simply the most charismatic, formidable and ambitious female political leader to have emerged in Israel (or anywhere else, for that matter) for a long time. She hails from the high-tech industries that have transformed the Israeli economy, she is articulate (in English as well as Hebrew), energetic and ruthless. As she’s just 39, she has a long career ahead of her and, barring accidents, will sooner or later be prime minister. Israel hasn’t had a woman in that job since Golda Meir and many people think it’s about time.

So who is Shaked (pronounced “shah-ked”)? Her background is typical for a third-generation Israeli, combining Ashkenazi and Sephardi (her mother’s family came from Russia in the 1880s, her father’s from Iran in the 1950s), liberal and conservative, secular and religious elements. Growing up in Tel Aviv, the most sophisticated and progressive city in the Middle East, she served in the army and — like so many conscripts — moved seamlessly into computer engineering. Promoted to marketing manager for Texas Instruments, she might easily have made a career among the entrepreneurial yet left-leaning Tel Aviv elite. But she had already made Judaism and Zionism the core of her outlook and, while still secular, gravitated to centre-right politics. By the age of 30 she was running the office of Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu, the prime minister, and seemed poised for a stellar career in Likud, the dominant party of the Right.

The first sign that this might not happen came in 2010 when, with Netanyahu’s former chief of staff Naftali Bennett, she launched a new Zionist ginger group, My Israel. Then, in 2012, Shaked demonstrated the boldness that would become her trademark. She left Likud and joined Bennett, who had become leader of Jewish Home. A year later Shaked was elected to the Knesset, where she made a dynamic impression as the only secular woman in a religious party. During the Gaza war in 2014, she caused outrage by sharing an article on Facebook that referred to Palestinian children as “little snakes”. By last year’s general election, Jewish Home had become a key part of the ruling coalition and Netanyahu appointed Shaked to the key portfolio of justice.

Dire climate change, predicted by atmospheric models but not substantiated by reality, has become the coinage of statists. Wealth transfer executors never had it so good. No wonder free-market thinkers and scientists whose currency is reality are targeted by the climate police.

But what if climate model output is not good enough to justify the transfer of trillions of middle-class tax dollars to politically-favorable machinates, let alone send someone to jail under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act? What if promoters of doom are somewhat biased in their thinking and even have some incentive for hoping for the worst where the atmosphere is concerned?

As hard as this may be to accept, it is possible that climate model results may be in serious error and doomsayers may be biased and incentivized somehow. After all, some of the most vociferous champions of climate chaos are not scientists but political types–Democratic presidential candidates, Democratic attorneys general, Democratic president, vice president, cabinet members, and former Democratic vice president. And, among those most likely to gain in power and profit are political types–Democratic presidential candidates, Democratic attorneys general, Democratic president, vice president, cabinet members, and former Democratic vice president.

Endorsement by politicians, along with the establishment of “settled science,” doesn’t particularly help science, rather it’s more likely to harm it. Examples of negative impact of politics and magisteriums on science abound–from Aristotle’s geocentrism to eugenics and Lysenko’s practice of science in the service of the Soviet state.

Secretary of State John Kerry and other Western policy-makers – joined by the “elite” Western media – contend that 68 year-old Israel is increasingly isolated due to its defiance of global pressure to evacuate the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, which tower over Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and 80% of Israel’s population, transportation, technological and business infrastructure.

Since 1948, global pressure on Israel to commit itself to dramatic concessions has been a fixture of Israel’s foreign policy and public diplomacy, accompanied by warnings that Israel was dooming itself to painful isolation. An examination of Israel’s global position – economically, militarily and diplomatically – documents that irrespective of Israel’s uphill diplomatic challenges, these warnings crashed on the rocks of reality, and resoundingly refuted by an unprecedented integration of Israel with the global street.

Thus, side-by-side with the rough diplomatic talk which has always pounded Israel, there has been an increasingly mutually-beneficial, geo-strategic walk. This is highlighted by Israel’s unprecedented civilian and military integration with the international community, in response to growing international demand for Israel’s military, economic, technological, scientific, medical, pharmaceutical and agricultural cutting-edge innovations.

Israel’s increasingly global integration is reflected by a series of developments in the last few weeks, which are consistent with Israel’s well-documented 68-year-old track record on the global scene.

For example, notwithstanding Europe’s support of the Palestinian Authority and harsh criticism of Israel, NATO does not subscribe to the “isolate Israel” theory, follows its own order of geo-strategic priorities, and therefore refuses to cut off its nose to spite its face. Hence, on May 3, 2016, NATO significantly upgraded its ties with Israel, inviting Jerusalem to establish a permanent mission at their Brussels headquarters. This upgrade will expand the surging, mutually-beneficial Israel-NATO cooperation in the areas of counter-terrorism, intelligence, battle tactics, non-conventional warfare, science, cyber and space technologies and defense industries, where Israel possesses a unique competitive edge.

McGraw Hill’s decision to trash copies of its textbook Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World has been subjected to intense criticism on web sites propagating the “Palestinian Narrative” of the 100 years old Arab-Jewish conflict. The “Palestinian Narrative” is a concoction of lies and half-truths based on the 1964 PLO National Charter – as amended in 1968 – and the 1988 Hamas Covenant.

Catherine Mathis – a spokeswoman for McGraw-Hill – explained the Company’s reasons for destroying the textbook – which contained four misleading and inaccurate maps of “Palestine”:

“As soon as we learned about the concerns with it, we placed sales of the book on hold and immediately initiated an academic review. The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards. We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book.”

McGraw-Hill’s action follows similar criticism of MSNBC which aired the same series of maps last year on “MSNBC Live”.

Although climate change ranks at or near the bottom of issues most important to the American people, the Obama administration continues to push it like its agenda on radical wealth redistribution depends on it. Because in many ways, it does.

The latest move is the climate agreement reached in Paris last December, which will become effective on Earth Day, April 22, with a ceremony at the United Nations headquarters in New York involving at least 162 countries.

The deal set a target of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. In order to achieve that, the signatory nations will have to undertake the massive and expensive switch to clean energy and low-carbon infrastructure. The Obama administration intends to enforce the agreement by imposing the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) and other mandates.

The agreement’s cheerleaders reveal its true objective — global wealth redistribution — when they argue that it’s about reducing worldwide poverty.

“It’s a simple relation: More carbon equals more poverty,” says Christiana Figueres, the United Nations’ climate chief. “Net zero emissions is the only way to make poverty eradication possible.”

Climate change mandates aren’t really mostly about climate; they’re really mostly about coercing wealth from the industrialized world and transferring it to the underdeveloped one. The rich irony is that contrary to the agreement’s proponents that it will “eradicate poverty,” green energy mandates actually hurt the poor the most.