RUTHFULLY YOURS

The recent nuclear deal with Iran. The ongoing threat of terrorism in the Middle East. The still-unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Issues involving Israel appear in the news almost daily. And the country’s political actions continue to spark strong opinions inside and outside its borders.

But often lost in public perceptions of Israel is what this tiny country of a mere 8 million people — founded only 67 years ago, possessing few natural resources, and facing constant security threats from its neighbors — has achieved from an economic and business standpoint. Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, recently spoke at Wharton on this subject and promised to reveal “the secret of Israel’s success.”

The second-youngest ever Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Dermer was born and raised in Miami Beach, Fla. He earned degrees from both Wharton and Oxford. He graduated from Wharton in 1993 where, he noted, he arrived “a supporter of capitalism,” and left “a champion of it.” In 2004, Dermer co-authored, with Israeli human rights activist Natan Sharansky, the bestseller The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, which has been translated into 10 languages.

The Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority at Dartmouth College has canceled its annual Kentucky Derby–themed party after people complained that the theme was racist.

The invite-only party will now be Woodstock-themed instead.

According to an article in the Daily Caller, the Kentucky Derby theme had created controversy on campus last year — even causing some students to protest outside of it on the grounds that it was apparently a racist and elitist theme.

Sorority vice president Nikol Oydanich told the school’s official newspaper, the Dartmouth, that these protesters had convinced the sorority members to change the theme.

“[It is] related to pre-war southern culture,” she said. “Derby was a party that had the power to upset a lot of our classmates.”

Students in a Tampa middle school were instructed to fill out a form designed to measure how much privilege they have.

The children were given a form in their Spanish class at Monroe Middle School by teacher Yoselis Ramos titled “How much privilege do you have?”

The different categories included, “Race”, “Skin Color”, “Religion”, “Sex”, “Gender”, Sexual Orientation”, and “Disability.”

Parents were not happy about the assignment.

Regina Stiles has a daughter who revealed she had ADHD on the “privilege” form.

“She has ADHD and apparently the teacher said there are some kids in this class that have ADHD, and ADHD is a mental illness, and that’s why she circled that. To me ADHD is not a mental disability. It’s something she has,” said Stiles.

MonroePrivilegeForm

Other questions on the survey broached controversial subjects for middle-schoolers. Children were asked to identify if they were “Cisgender,” “Transgender” or “GenderQueer.”

“She’s 12. Some of these things should be taught at home,” said Stiles.

Stiles along with other angry parents approached the school principal, who began an investigation. It turns out the “privilege” form was not part of any official curricula or authorized by the principal.

“This is not a district form, this is a teacher-generated form and it was without principal consent and at the district level we do not collect that information,” said Hillsborough County School Spokesperson Tanya Arja. She also pointed out that students were not required to turn in the form.

According to Arja, the teacher said the goal was to teach the students about inequality through literature they had been reading.

The violent Islamic intolerance of the “infidel” was reflected by the highly-ignored and misrepresented persecution and expulsion of 820,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands, which exceeded the scope of the Palestinian Arab refugees, occurred well before the 1948-49 Arab war on Israel, and persisted following the war.

On November 14, 1947, before the war, Egypt’s representative to the UN, Heykal Pasha warned: “The partitioning of Palestine shall be responsible for the massacre of a large number Jews…. It might endanger a million Jews living in Moslem countries… create an anti-Semitism more difficult to root out than the anti-Semitism which the allies were trying to eradicate in Germany….”

On February 19, 1947, before the war, Syria’s UN representative, Faris al-Khuri told the NY Times: “Unless the Palestine problem is settled [with no Jewish State], we shall have difficulty in protecting Jews in the Arab world.”

Before the November 1947 UN vote on the Partition Plan, Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nuri Said shared with Alec Kirkbride, the British Ambassador to Jordan, his plan to expel Jews from Iraq and threatened: “severe measures would be taken against all Jews in Arab countries.” On November 28, 1947, Iraq’s Foreign Minister told the UN General Assembly: “The partitioning of Palestine will cause the uprising of the Arabs of Palestine, and the masses in the Arab world will not be restrained.”

On March 1, 1944, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the top Palestinian Arab leader, incited in an Arabic broadcast from Nazi Germany: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. It would please God, history and religion.” Jamal Al-Husseini, the acting Chairman of the Palestinian Arab Higher Command, threatened: “Palestine shall be consumed with fire and blood if the Jews get any part of it.”

Last Oct. 13, a few weeks into the current “knife intifada,” a 22-year-old Palestinian named Baha Alyan boarded a Jerusalem bus with an accomplice — Hamas terrorist Bilal Ghanem, who had served time in an Israeli prison — and went on a stabbing and shooting spree whose purpose was to kill Jews.

The two monsters were pretty successful in their endeavor that day, managing to wound more than a dozen passengers and slaughter three: Haim Haviv, 78, Alon Govberg, 51, and Richard Lakin, 76, who suffered multiple gunshot and stab wounds and died two weeks later. Alyan was killed by Israeli security forces; Ghanem was arrested.

While Lakin, an immigrant to Israel from the United States, was lying critically wounded in the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon paid a visit to his hospital bedside. It was the least Ban could do, while calling on “both sides” to ease tensions and exercise restraint — especially since Lakin had been a lifelong promoter of peace and social justice.

Upon Lakin’s death, Ban even stressed this fact in a condolence letter to Lakin’s widow, which he ended by assuring her that the U.N. would “continue its efforts to promote a return to negotiations aimed at resolving this bitter conflict once and for all.”

Four months later, in February, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas invited 11 families of “martyrs” to his compound in Ramallah to honor them for having sons who were killed while committing terror attacks against Israelis. Alyan’s parents were among these distinguished guests.

Two months before their upcoming conference at Sydney University (13-15 May), entitled “Socialism for the 21st century,” Aussie far leftists, who include Green Left activists and members of the Socialist Alliance, have just announced the line-up for their inevitable session bashing Israel.

Meanwhile, another Israel-undermining initiative, altogether smarter and more subtle, which has infiltrated the school system in the Aussie state of Victoria, appears to have gone relatively unnoticed.

I refer to the fact that the play City by the Sea, by poet, writer and activist Samah Sabawi, a Gaza-born (1967) Australian/Canadian, is now on the 2016 playlist for school students taking the Victorian Certificate of Education. It means that students in years 11 and 12 will be attending performances of the play at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne in May.

An official document listing the plays selected for study in 2016 states, inter alia:

‘Students will undertake an assessment task based on the performance of a play on the Playlist. Question/s will also be set on the performances of the plays in the end-of-year Drama written examination.

While the VCAA [Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority] considers all plays on this list suitable for study, teachers should be aware that in some instances sensitivity might be needed where particular issues or themes that are explored may be challenging for students. Teachers are advised to familiarise themselves with the treatment of these issues and themes within the context and world of the play prior to students viewing the play and/or studying the playscript. This might involve reading the playscript, talking with the theatre company, researching the playscript, the work of the playwright, director and/or company, attending a preview performance and/or discussing the matter with the school administration. Information provided in this notice about themes and/or language used in specific plays is a guide only. In some plays, suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. This language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community’ [Emphasis added]

On a nightly show following the Wisconsin primary, science celebrity Bill Nye (“the science guy”) argued that the Republican Party will need young people to win in November, and that the vast majority of millennials believe in climate alarmism. As a conservative millennial, I deny his sweeping generalization, and the data back me up.

Nye lamented that the Republican candidates for president are all “deniers,” and argued that the campaign has yet to pivot to real issues. Then he made the ridiculous claim, saying the gap between alarmists and “deniers” is almost entirely generational.

I don’t think the party can quite get enough votes without millennials. Climate denial is almost entirely generational. Only now and then do you meet a young person — nobody your age is a climate denier. very few. It’s all old people.

To his credit, the show’s host, Larry Wilmore, was a bit skeptical. “I don’t know,” Wilmore replied. “I may have to disagree with you a little bit. I think a lot of it is ideological.”

The numbers back Wilmore on this one. In a Harvard Institute of Politics poll released in April of last year, millennials ended up largely agreeing with their older Americans in being skeptical about climate alarmism.

While 55 percent agreed with the statement that “global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by emissions from cars and industrial facilities such as power plants and factories,” a full 43 percent disagreed with this alarmist statement. Twenty percent held to a more moderate view: “Global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by natural changes that have nothing to do with emissions from cars and industrial facilities.”

Money is certainly tight in the post-secondary system nowadays, which raises the question of why a Canadian university in the province of British Columbia is going to spend $110,000 in up-front costs to construct a solar road that will provide enough electricity to power only 40 personal computers.

As reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

A decorative compass that students and others at Thompson Rivers University [TRU] walk over to enter the campus’ Arts and Education Building will soon start generating solar energy as a “solar roadway.” …

[According to Michael Mehta, a geography and environmental studies professor at TRU,] “People will be able to walk on it, vehicles will be able to drive on it and it will — in the same way as these other rooftops systems — capture the energy from the sun and produce electricity to operate the Arts and Education building.” …

“It’s expected to produce about 10,000 kilowatt-hours a year of power, which we estimate is the equivalent of running all the computer labs in the building, about 40 computers, for eight hours a day on an annual basis.”

Mehta said he hopes the project will inspire others to make use of the technology, which is already being used in other places around the world. He said the Netherlands already has a 70-metre bicycle path made from solar panels, and France is planning to build long stretches of “solar roads”.

The project’s proposal states that “this array will produce on average 9700 kWh/year of electricity over its planned 25-30 year lifetime.”

Dictionary.com defines junk science as: “faulty scientific information or research, especially when used to advance special interests.” Junk science is going strong. Many junk science enterprises are deeply embedded in universities, the federal government and the public consciousness.

Some junk science is very bad science that is just wrong and can be easily dismissed. For example, the theories that vaccines cause autism or that power lines cause cancer. Some junk science lacks scientific support but catches the public imagination and is used by special interests to make money. An example is organic food. Organic food is food grown by methods popular prior to 1930. The theory is that the old ways were somehow more pure and noble than modern methods. This is only carried so far. The shoppers at Whole Foods aren’t wearing homespun clothes. The government has generated regulations defining organic food and thus has bestowed legitimacy on a fad with little scientific basis. Next our representatives may be licensing psychics and promulgating standards for snake oil. If you want to have a laugh, or get some natural herbs to supposedly improve your sex life, browse the quack medicine aisle at any Whole Foods market.

Often junk science is based on distorting real science. Global warming is an example of junk science where there is a kernel of scientific truth that has been abused and beaten into a junk science edifice supporting huge money flows. There are good reasons for supposing that adding CO2 to the atmosphere might warm the Earth. The evidence is that the warming effect of CO2 is slight and not necessarily bad. (The Earth has failed to warm for over 18 years.) It is clear that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a massive positive effect on agriculture because plants have to work hard to absorb CO2. Increased CO2 concentrations enable plants to grow faster, an incontrovertible scientific fact proved by many experiments. Global warming is promoted by entrenched scientific bureaucracies and by the huge alternative energy industry. Scientific organizations vigorously attack anyone who criticizes global warming junk science and thus threatens their members’ paychecks.

The preachers, who belong to the Hamas-controlled Wakf (Islamic trust) Ministry in the Gaza Strip, enter schools and ensure, through the exorcism rite, that the children are repentant and faithful to Islam.

These are the children who are later recruited as “warriors” in the jihad against Israel and the “infidels.”

The Gaza City school video captures on camera the Palestinian leaders’ brainwashing and abuse of their own children.

Now the peace process in the Middle East awaits an exorcism of its own.

Hamas has spent years poisoning the hearts and minds of Palestinian children. The Islamist movement is now trying a new brainwashing tactic: exorcism.

The practice, which aims to cast out “demons” that might have wormed their way into the children’s souls, has shocked many Palestinians.

This newest Hamas-perpetrated child abuse was exposed in a video that was leaked to Palestinian social media. The cruelty of the behavior has caused an uproar among Palestinians.