RUTHFULLY YOURS

The movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel (BDS), which singles out the Jewish State among all nations to delegitimize and isolate, continues to gather steam.

The American Anthropological Association will vote on a BDS resolution in April. The University of South Florida, Northwestern and Vassar voted to boycott Israel, and a divestment campaign is underway at Columbia. This spring, Israel Apartheid Week, a BDS hate fest, is being held at college campuses around the U.S.

Seeing left-wing universities embrace the anti-Semitic movement is disappointing but not entirely surprising. But why does the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a premier philanthropy based in Manhattan, finance non-governmental organizations intent on annihilating the Jewish state?

BDS demands “the end of Israel’s occupation and colonialization” of all Arab lands, dismantling the security wall that protects Israelis from Palestinian terror and the right of return to Israel of several million descendants of original Arab refugees. In the words of Palestinian BDS leader Omar Barghouti, “A return for refugees would end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”

In 1940, the five sons of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. founded the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as “a private, family foundation helping to advance social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable and peaceful world.”

The liberal media and academic elite deride “Creationists”–those who deny the theory of evolution and believe that the world and all its creatures were created in six calendar days. However, they encourage Mideast “creationism”–namely, a belief that the Arab/Israel conflict occurred as the result of six calendar days in 1967 when a land grab by Israel established an unjust occupation of ancient Arab lands.

The combined attacks on Israel of five Arab states in 1948 are dismissed as ancient history. The Ottoman rule of Palestine, the geography of the Middle East, its divisions following World War 1 and the role of David Lloyd George and the Palestine Mandate are as irrelevant to these ignoramuses as the Peloponnesian wars.

Here are facts from the late Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial:

“In the twelve and a half centuries between the Arab conquest in the seventh century and the beginnings of the Jewish return in the 1880’s, Palestine was laid waste. Its ancient canal and irrigation systems were destroyed and the wondrous fertility of which the Bible spoke vanished into desert and desolation… Under the Ottoman empire of the Turks, the policy of defoliation continued; the hillsides were denuded of trees and the valleys robbed of their topsoil.”

In a “Report of the Commerce of Jerusalem During the Year 1863,” it says the population of the City of Jerusalem is computed at 15,000, of whom about 4,500 are Moslem, 8,000 Jews, and the rest Christians of various denominations.

And here is Mark Twain’s description of the Galilee in Innocents Abroad.

“… these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness, that never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum: this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms…. We reached Tabor safely….We never saw a human being on the whole route.”

This was the state of the land under the Ottomans until its conquest by the British in World War 1 under the leadership of then Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

Schooled as a devout evangelical, Lloyd George was familiar with Jewish history. Indeed in a speech to the Jewish historical society in 1925 he said:

“I was brought up in a school where I was taught far more history of the Jews than about my own land. I could tell you all the kings of Israel. But I doubt if I could have named half a dozen of the Kings of England, and not more of the Kings of Wales….We were thoroughly imbued with the history of your race in the days of its greatest glory.”

At the turn of the century Lloyd George met Theodore Herzl in Manchester, home to a growing Zionist movement. Initially impressed by the British Colonial Office’s offer of a Jewish colony in Uganda, Lloyd George was persuaded by Chaim Weizmann’s argument that Palestine was the only viable home for a reborn Jewish Nation.

Every Anglophone reader, Jew and non-Jew, owes it to him or herself to read Jews against Themselves. And every non-Anglophone country that aspires either to establish or maintain democracy owes itself a good translation. Rarely has a book so thoroughly and eloquently identified, analyzed, and rebuked a form of thinking that endangers the very democracy from which that thinking arose. In this case, one might call the problem “the tyranny of penitence” or “masochistic omnipotence syndrome”—the tendency to blame oneself for everything in the vain hope that in fixing oneself, one can fix everything.[1] Since, in the current world crisis of the early twenty-first century, this problem has struck the (post-) modern West with unusual force, and since the particular variant upon which Edward Alexander, professor of English at the University of Washington, focuses in this book is an especially powerful contributor to the phenomenon, his work deserves close attention. Alexander’s book is a collection of articles and op-eds written over the course of some three decades, from the mid-1980s to the present.

I have read many texts that try to explain why some Jews turn on their own people, from Sander Gillman’s Jewish Self-Hatred to the endless current Jeremiads by assertive Jews about how self-accusing Jews are a bane, not only on their own people, but on those who trust their pseudo-prophetic utterances. Never have I read one with such moral clarity, subtlety of thought, and, above all, such calm but righteous anger. The enormity of the deeds Alexander chronicles does not make him shrill in his indignation, but rather drives him to repeatedly point out, with a certain black humor and as little ad hominem as one could expect any human to muster, the exquisite and corrosive ironies that riddle the world of Jews who publicly attack their own people.

His case is a painful one, and meticulously chronicled. In a series of essays written between 1986 (chapter 1, discussion of Gilman’s book) and the present (essay on moral inversion at The New York Times), Alexander documents a phenomenon that Gilman had delineated as follows: “How Jews see the dominant society seeing them and how they project their anxiety about this manner of being seen onto other Jews as a means of externalizing their own status anxiety.” Unpacked, this sentence means that some Jews, seeing how negatively gentiles view them, turn on their own kind, holding them responsible for that hatred: “If only ‘they’ would behave the way ‘we good Jews’ do,” they tell themselves, “then non-Jews wouldn’t think so badly of us.”

For such Jews, antisemitism is not a gentile disease but rather a Jewish one. As Tuvia Tenenboim put it in his Catch the Jew:

To anyone paying attention it is obvious that the California university system has the dubious distinction of being the epicenter of the campus war against Israel, an unwelcomed situation that has reached such intolerable levels that the UC Regents were forced to take some action. That effort, which resulted in a study entitled the “Final Report of the Regents Working Group on Principles Against Intolerance,” attempts to establish guidelines by which any discrimination against any minority group on campus would be identified and censured, but the report specifically focused on the thorny issue of anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism as a prevalent and ugly reality throughout the California system.

The report examined a range of incidents occurring during the 2014-15 academic year, unfortunate transgressions that “included vandalism targeting property associated with Jewish people or Judaism; challenges to the candidacies of Jewish students seeking to assume representative positions within student government; political, intellectual and social dialogue that is anti-Semitic; and social exclusion and stereotyping.”

In fact, the problem on California campuses, and on campuses across the country, is that pro-Palestinian activists, in their zeal to seek self-affirmation, statehood, and “social justice” for the ever-aggrieved Palestinians, have waged a very caustic cognitive war against Israel and Jews as their tactic in achieving those ends—part of a larger, more invidious intellectual jihad against Israel led by some Western elites and those in the Muslim world who also wish to weaken, and eventually destroy, the Jewish state.

It turns out that being pro-Palestinian on campuses today does not necessarily mean that one is committed to helping the Palestinians productively nation-build or create a civil society with transparent government, a free press, human rights, and a representative government. Being pro-Palestinian on campuses involves very little which actually benefits or makes more likely the birth of a new Palestinian state, living side by side in peace with Israel. What being pro-Palestinian unfortunately has come to mean is continually denigrating and attacking Israel with a false historical narrative and the misused language of human rights.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS (NOT FOR THE BULLY, BASH AND DIVEST BASTARDS RSK)
One in four medical innovations has Israeli roots. (TY Dan & Hazel) Ruti Alon, co-chairman of this year’s IATI-Biomed Conference, highlighted that Israeli research is present in between 25% and 28% of the world’s successful biotech-based solutions. E.g. Exelon for Alzheimer’s, Doxil for cancer and Copaxone for Multiple Sclerosis. http://www.timesofisrael.com/one-in-four-life-science-innovations-has-israeli-roots-says-expert/
Treatment for Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. (TY Dan) Israeli startup SoniVie has a novel system for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension, a progressive and fatal illness with no current cure. SoniVie has just successfully completed the first two procedures for its First In Human (FIH) multi-center clinical trial.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-co-sonivie-completes-first-pah-catheter-procedures-1001108684

US approval for airway ventilation system. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Hospitech Respiration has received US FDA clearance for its AnapnoGuard 100 intubation system. AnapnoGuard is already CE2 cleared. More than 100 million patients annually require manual ventilation – the largest reason for admission into intensive care.
http://www.hospitech.co.il/solutions/ http://www.fdanews.com/articles/175431

Diagnosing Dry Eye syndrome. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s BioLight Life Sciences has completed a successful U.S. clinical study designed to assess the effectiveness of its TeaRx multi-assay test in evaluating tears’ components of patients suffering from dry eye syndrome (DES) as well as those of healthy subjects.
http://www.bio-light.co.il/blog/positive-second-clinical-study-results-for-its-tearx/

Diagnosing thyroid cancer. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Rosetta Genomics has announced that its RosettaGX Reveal diagnostic test for thyroid cancer is now approved for use in all 50 US states.
http://rosettagx.com/files/press-releases/14562724557a5bb93300ad4859286115fb6a48c232.pdf

The potential to save millions of lives. Israel’s MobileODT demonstrated its life-saving smartphone technology to detect cervical cancer at the Innovation Showcase at this year’s AIPAC Conference. Launched only last May it has been used 6000 times in 20 countries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3Cg4snYV6g

How to cope with stress. Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed tests to highlight the different rates people recover from stress. The study can help individuals to train themselves to relax. It also may lead to a blood test that can diagnose undue stress and help with the recovery process.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/is-your-life-too-stressful-there-may-soon-be-a-blood-test-to-find-out/

Preventing hospital readmissions. A study by Israel’s EarlySense has shown that the unresolved respiratory problems of heart patients was the most significant cause of their readmission to hospital. EarlySense’s “under the mattress” device monitors a patient’s breathing amongst many other factors.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/heart-patients-and-hospitals-breathe-easier-with-israeli-sleep-tech/

New life for Gaza boy. (TY Hazel) 13 year-old Mohammed Abu Jazer from Gaza got a new lease on life when surgeons from Israel’s voluntary humanitarian organization Save a Child’s Heart in Holon implanted an Israeli pulmonary valve. The Medronic Melody device will improve blood flow and help him avoid future surgeries.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4768036,00.html

Abigail teaches middle-school history and Latin at a classical school in Alexandria, Virginia. She holds degrees from Hillsdale College (B.A.) and St. John’s College (M.A.).

A new book correctly diagnoses what’s much wrong with America’s progressive education model, but fails to grasp that the solution lies in a proven, classical approach to pedagogy.

“This book is so boring!”

As a middle school teacher, I hear the “b word” used flippantly, and nothing fills me with greater angst. I typically retort back with “only boring people are bored” and then launch into a passionate rant on how boredom is simply the sin of laziness, a failure to express gratitude and wonder towards the world around us.
My student who uttered this sentiment was simply struggling with a challenging book. His literature class is nowhere close to boring. The class engages in energetic discussions and works on creative projects to deepen their understanding of story and character. They all love literature, and as a signal of their enjoyment, frequent laughter can be heard floating down the hallways of our little school.

Still, the general attitude towards school as “boring” is pretty much accepted as the way of life for middle and high school students in America. At some point in their academic career, most kids will nurture low levels of quiet loathing towards schooling. In fact, most of us have been there ourselves.
At some point in their academic career, most kids will nurture low levels of quiet loathing towards schooling. In fact, most of us have been there ourselves.

Next to boredom, the other dominant attitude towards school is profound anxiety. High achieving students, especially in wealthy urban areas, may not admit that “school is boring,” but they are not driven by love for learning, either. What motivates high-achieving students is a deep fear of failure, the need to succeed, and the tyranny of the perfect high school resume.

Even supposedly good schools create numbing boredom and gnawing anxiety in their pupils. Kids are told to achieve. Achieve—to what end? Believe—in what? They sigh and churn on, ever more entrenched as cogs in the educational machine, their mind numbed by years of pointless information ingestion. Schools today are slowly killing the spirit of American youth. The average teenager is bored, apathetic, anxious, depressed, and disillusioned.

If we don’t change how schools educate our kids, American culture will wither away into lifeless dependence. We will be removed even farther from the ideal of a free, self-governing people who fully employ their minds, love life in all its complexity, and work creatively with gusto.
Schools on Trial

Fresh out of high school himself, twenty-year-old Nikhil Goyal explains the causes of boredom and stress in the freshly minted Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice. The book is well-researched and engaging. It will challenge anyone who accepts the status quo of the educational establishment or the mainstream education reform movement.

The United Nations, always fully reliable when it comes to hating Israel, has done it again. On March 14, I wrote at National Review Online about the coming selection at the U.N. Human Rights Council of a new “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” The selection has now been made, and the honor — as it were — goes to a Canadian named Michael Lynk.

Now, in the U.N., these hate-Israel jobs are important. You cannot take the risk that a selectee will be fair or balanced or unbiased. So you go for someone like Lynk.

For example, Lynk is a member of the advisory board of the “Canadian–Palestinian Education Exchange” (CEPAL), which promotes the “Annual Israeli Apartheid Week.” Three days after 9/11, he blamed the attacks on “global inequalities” and “disregard by Western nations for the international rule of law.” He signed a 2009 statement condemning Israel for alleged “war crimes” in Gaza. At the Group of 78’s annual policy conference in 2009, he said, as summarized in the group’s report, that he “used to think the critical date in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict was 1967, the start of the occupation.” Now he thinks that “the solution to the problem must go back to 1948, the date of partition and the start of ethnic cleansing.” In other words, Israel should not exist and its mere existence is a harbinger of ethnic cleansing and other crimes.

If you’re keeping score, freeing Islamic terrorists from Gitmo does not play into the hands of ISIS. Neither does bringing Syrians, many of whom sympathize with Islamic terrorists, into our country. And aiding the Muslim Brotherhood parent organization of ISIS does not play into the Islamic group’s hands.

However if you use the words “Islamic terrorism” or even milder derivatives such as “radical Islamic terrorism”, you are playing into the hands of ISIS. If you call for closer law enforcement scrutiny of Muslim areas before they turn into Molenbeek style no-go zones or suggest ending the stream of new immigrant recruits to ISIS in San Bernardino, Paris or Brussels, you are also playing into the hands of ISIS.

And if you carpet bomb ISIS, destroy its headquarters and training camps, you’re just playing into its hands. According to Obama and his experts, who have wrecked the Middle East, what ISIS fears most is that we’ll ignore it and let it go about its business. And what it wants most is for us to utterly destroy it.

Tens of thousands of Muslim refugees make us safer. But using the words “Muslim terrorism” endangers us. The more Muslims we bring to America, the faster we’ll beat ISIS. As long as we don’t call it the Islamic State or ISIS or ISIL, but follow Secretary of State John Kerry’s lead in calling it Daesh.

Because terrorism has no religion. Even when it’s shouting, “Allahu Akbar”.

The problem on campuses across the country is that pro-Palestinian activists, in their zeal to seek self-affirmation, statehood, and “social justice,” have waged an extremely caustic cognitive war against Israel and Jews.

Being pro-Palestinian on campuses today does not necessarily mean that one is committed to helping Palestinians be productive, live well, build a free and open nation or create a civil society with transparent government, a free press, human rights, and a representative government.

What being pro-Palestinian seems to have come to mean is continually denigrating and attacking Israel with a false historical narrative and the grotesquely misused language of human rights. What is claimed to be anti-Israel sentiment often rises to the level of raw anti-Semitism.

It is enough to make Jewish students, whether or not they care about Israel at all, uncomfortable, unsafe, or even hated on their own campuses.

The California university system seems to have the dubious distinction of being the epicenter of the campus war against Israel. The situation that has apparently reached such intolerable levels that the Board of Regents of the University of California (UC Regents) was forced to take some action. This effort resulted in a study entitled the “Final Report of the Regents Working Group on Principles Against Intolerance.” The study attempts to establish guidelines by which any discrimination against a minority group on campus would be identified and censured. The report, however, specifically focused on the thorny issue of anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism as a prevalent and ugly reality throughout the California university system.

The report examined a range of incidents that occurred during the 2014-15 academic year. It cited unfortunate transgressions that “included vandalism targeting property associated with Jewish people or Judaism; challenges to the candidacies of Jewish students seeking to assume representative positions within student government; political, intellectual and social dialogue that is anti-Semitic; and social exclusion and stereotyping.”

Many Palestinian websites are stifling free speech by refusing to publish comments answering anti-Israel articles published on their sites.The latest example is an article written by Rania Khalek on Electronic Intifada

Responding to the decision by McGraw Hill Education to destroy all copies of its text book Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World – containing the accompanying maps – Khalek claimed:

“The maps, which appear in chronological succession on page 123, show Palestinian land loss from 1946, one year before Zionist militias initiated the displacement of more than 750,000 indigenous Palestinians from historic Palestine, to the year 2000, by which point Palestinian land had been reduced to a handful of tiny non-contiguous enclaves in the occupied West Bank and a sliver of Gaza.”

I endeavoured to post the following comment in response on 21 March pointing out the misleading nature of these maps:

“Map 1:

The heading “Palestinian and Jewish Land 1946“ is misleading for the following reasons:

(i) The map excludes Transjordan which in 1946 still comprised 78% of the territory of the Mandate for Palestine until granted independence by Great Britain in May 1946.

(ii) The land described as “Palestinian land” misleadingly implies legal ownership by the Palestinian Arabs of that land when in fact about 90% of it was State land under British Mandatory control and legal power of disposition.