RUTHFULLY YOURS

CHICAGO—A professor’s effort to express solidarity with Muslims by wearing a head scarf and saying that Christians and Muslims worship the same God is dividing a small private Christian school as her tenured position hangs in the balance.

Professor Larycia Hawkins, placed on administrative leave and awaiting a hearing before nine faculty members at Wheaton College in suburban Chicago, told reporters last week she “is flummoxed and flabbergasted” by the school’s response but won’t cower “in fear of the enemy of the month” as defined by “fundamentalists of every stripe.”

Ms. Hawkins, a 43-year-old associate professor of political science, announced on Facebook she was donning the hijab during the pre-Christmas season of Advent. She said her aim was to show support for Muslims amid a rise in anti-Islamic sentiment after the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif.

School officials said they had no problem with the hijab or her support for Muslims, but took offense at comments in her Facebook post in which she said Muslims and Christians worship the same God. That conflicts with the school’s statement of faith, which holds that God consists of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. Muslims don’t believe in the Trinity.

The Two State solution is dead but rather than bury it, the US and the EU want to embalm it, in the off chance that it can be brought to life in a decade or two. In the meantime they are doing their utmost to prevent Israel from building Jewish homes east of the armistice lines, including in Jerusalem. They do this in knowing violation of Israel’s rights.

Moshe Arens, a former Israel Ambassador to the US, Israel Defense Minister and Minister of Defense, noted in Haaretz, Israel’s version of the New York Times:

These critics (of settlement construction) should be required to reread Article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which states: “the Administration of Palestine … shall encourage … close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.” The “Palestine” referred to here is the entire area west of the Jordan River, including Judea and Samaria.

Those who prefer to believe that this provision has lost relevance since the establishment of the United Nations and the termination of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate should refer to Article 80 of Chapter XII of the UN Charter. It states that the rights shall not be altered “of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.” The United States chose not to join the League of Nations, but the U.S. Senate ratified the Palestine Mandate in 1925.

The EU and the US justify these actions on the alleged basis that settlements are illegal or illegitimate, respectively, pursuant to the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC), which prohibits forced transfers of populations.

That I was a part of her, and she protected me”

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001581.html

Tom Gross writes:

Six-month-old baby Shani Winter (above) lost her mother, Anat Winter-Rosen, in the terrorist attack on Café Apropo in Tel Aviv 18 years ago, on March 21, 1997. She survived only because her mother shielded her with her body.
Last January Shani joined the IDF. She asked the policewoman (Ziona Bushri) who carried Shani from the wreckage of the terror attack, and with whom she has remained friends, to accompany her as she joined the army. (Picture below.)
“Mom simply covered me with her body. It was more important to her to protect me than herself,” Shani told Yediot Ahronot. “I’m jealous of my friends who have mothers. I don’t know what it’s like to have a mother. On the other hand, I find comfort in the fact that my mother saved me. That I was a part of her, and she protected me.”

“Ziona has been there for me throughout my life. She visits me regularly and never forgets my birthday and is there for all the important occasions.”
Shani still has scars on her leg and hand, as a result of the terror attack.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Prostate cancer therapy completes successful trials. Prostate cancer therapy (laser plus TOOKAD Soluble) invented at Israel’s Weizmann Institute completed Phase 3 trials on 480 patients in Latin America and Europe and was approved by Mexico’s health authority. Minimal side-effects were associated with the high cure rates.
http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/press-releases/tookad-soluble

Pain therapy has 100% success. Israeli and US trials of Israeli-developed Hyperbaric (high-pressure) Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) reported relief for all 48 sufferers of the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia. Dr. Shai Efrati, lead author of the study at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center noted his own mother suffers from the syndrome.
(See previous newsletters here) http://news.rice.edu/2015/06/02/hyperbaric-hope-for-fibromyalgia-sufferers-2/

A treatment for pancreatic cancer. Israeli biotech Silenseed has completed a Phase 1/2a clinical study of its siG12D LODER treatment in 15 patients with Locally Advanced Pancreatic Cancer (LAPC). The treatment combined with chemotherapy was well tolerated and demonstrated promising efficacy with durable responses.
http://silenseed.com/?page_id=2539

Your virtual personal nutritionist. Israeli app Nutrino (with a little help from IBM Haifa’s Watson supercomputer) promotes healthy eating. Enter your details, goals and tastes and Nutrino gives you meal plans and more. http://www.timesofisrael.com/coffee-during-pregnancy-app-tells-you-pros-and-cons-of-morning-java/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr89Bnh9ISk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df8CYPD90fM
http://nutrino.co/

Training Chinese doctors. (TY Hazel) The MASHAV organization of Israel’s Foreign Ministry is to train medics from the underdeveloped southwestern regions of China. Doctors from Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces will study medicine in Israel in 2016.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-12/05/c_134888285.htm

Enabling paraplegic US veterans to walk. (TY Dan) The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) has issued a national policy for the evaluation, training and procurement of Israel’s ReWalk Personal exoskeleton systems for all qualifying veterans across the United States who have suffered spinal cord injury.
http://rewalk.com/u-s-department-veterans-affairs-issues-national-coverage-policy-rewalk-robotics-exoskeleton-systems-qualifying-veterans-spinal-cord-injury/

We are told by experts that this or that is not “true Islam” and “it has nothing to do with Islam”. So I ask experts like President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and the mayor of Philadelphia, “What is true Islam?” What do they know that we don’t? What do they know that Muslims don’t?

There are 73 sects of Islam. Here are 4 major ones. Which ones are true Muslims and which are not?

Sunni

Shia

Alawite

Salafi

What do Muslims in each of the 73 groups say? Do the Sunni think that Shia are real Muslims? Do the Shia think that the Sunni are real Muslims?

Which of these groups are true Muslims and which are fake Muslims who falsely identify themselves as Muslims? Which aren’t Muslim at all?

IS/ISIS/ISIL/Da’esh/Islamic State

Al Qaeda

Hamas

Hezbollah

Islamic Jihad

Boko Haram

Abu Sayyaf

Kurdistan Workers Party

While reading Stephen Coughlin’s seminal and all-important Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad, I frequently encountered quotations the author used to stress his many points that in terms of defending this country from Islamic incursions, or, rather, failing to defend it, the language of the defenders has been corrupted and rendered meaningless. The quotations came from Josef Pieper’s Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power (Mißbrauch der Sprache, Machtmißbrauch), first published in 1974. The quotations were so intriguing that I ordered the book, which is actually a 54-page pamphlet featuring two essays by Pieper, “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power,” and “Knowledge and Freedom.” Coughlin remarked that Pieper’s book “underlies much in what I do.”

Josef Pieper (1904-1997) was a German philosopher and a key figure in the Thomist revival. In his teens, he was initially drawn to the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, but after being recommended a work by Aquinas, Commentary to the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel, he became a lifelong devotee to Aquinas. Ignatius Press’s Insight reveals that:

Pieper went to the University of Münster in 1923, and later on he went to Berlin. The plan of his first book – which he ultimately submitted to the university in order to obtain his doctorate in philosophy – was born during a lecture on Goethe and Thomas Aquinas, given by Msgr. Romano Guardini at the Jugendburg Rothenfels on the Main in 1924; the lecture was entitled “About Classical Spirit.” Pieper’s first book, Die Wirklichkeit und das Gute (Reality and the Good; contained in Living the Truth [Ignatius Press, 1989]) based on St. Thomas’ works, tries to show that the good is nothing else but what is in accordance with the reality of things.

Ah, parental love for children and the reciprocal, deep love the children have for their parents. And for many of the children of the Islamic State, IS not just a government, but their devoted parent, more important than the biological parents who bore them, raised them. This was gruesomely proven when an ISIS member turned against his mother and cemented his bloody bond to IS by publicly killing her at their command.

And what of those “hundreds of people who witnessed the event?

Communist dictator Joseph Stalin reputedly stated that “a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” That might explain why so many have become indifferent to this ongoing bloodletting by so many or shockingly why President Barack Hussein Obama (D) initially labelled them “”jv”, junior varsity and led the BBC to note

It’s the macabre twist of having Lena al-Qasem’s son kill her that’s captured the world’s attention.

The University of Missouri has been the location of several anti-Semitic acts that the president, Tim Wolfe, appeared reluctant to address. The final vile act, which included the formation of a swastika, was enough to encourage thirty-six Jewish and civil rights organizations to demand the president’s resignation. Concurrently, Black graduate student, Jonathan Butler, heroically began a hunger strike, and within days, both the president and Chancellor Loftin stepped down from their positions.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who usually gets it right, this time said that Jewish students will likely find themselves facing an even more hostile, threatening and unsafe environment because administrators are either too busy or too scared to address anti-Semitism, thereby leaving Jewish students more vulnerable and unprotected. So, should the inmates continue running the asylum? Acts of bigotry are occurring throughout America’s campuses and worldwide, whether or not the students are outspoken. Anything can trigger another “moderate” to becoming an active aggressor, whether the bully is motivated by others’ acts of intolerance and violence or by the relatively unobtrusive prey. Being busy or scared is hardly an excuse for the head of a university to shirk his responsibilities.

Rossman-Benjamin suggested that a president may fear appearing to favor Jewish students. Does she think it’s wrong to favor any victimized students or just the Jewish students? What if there were a second group of victims? Would the administration feel more comfortable and legitimized if a non-Jewish group were imperiled along with the Jewish? In fact, is it not moral to protect and care for the students who are attacked? An administrator must display the attributes of both ethics and courage to govern such an institution, and use the event as a teaching strategy and warning.

During the course of last fall’s semester, swastikas were found at the posh Fieldston School in Riverdale and a sixth grade student drew one in art class, seemingly unaware of its significance. Additionally, a notebook appeared with the cover exclamation “Hitler Rocks.” In response to the protests of Jewish parents, the school convened a special meeting for the sixth grade to discuss these events but apparently stressed the original use of the swastika as a symbol of peace, stating it could also be a symbol of hate but failing to even mention the word Holocaust. To make a second round of amends after this egregious “oversight,” the school made arrangements for the Simon Wiesenthal Center to send its regional director, along with a Holocaust survivor to tell her story to the entire middle school.

Michael Cohen, the Wiesenthal representative, goes into great detail in an article in The Jewish Week (Jan about what short and long term goals the combined organizations developed to enlighten both students and faculty about the Holocaust and tolerance education. At a school whose tuition is $45,000/yr, one would expect this to be part of the regular curriculum in any class of World History, particularly in a city with the largest share of survivors and their descendants, in a school heavily populated with Jewish students. Surely it doesn’t require a visit from the NAACP for Fieldston students to learn about slavery and the Civil war..

Throughout Mr. Cohen’s account, whenever he mentions the Holocaust, he adds tolerance education, as though the phenomenon of the extermination of Europe’s Jews were not a sufficiently large topic in itself. When Black Lives Matter holds a protest, they don’t include qualifiers extending to other groups suffering from intolerance of persecution. When LGBT holds rallies, they similarly don’t include anti-Semitism or racism. Only Jews are forever minimizing their own causes and still trying to prove to mainstream society that what happened to them is important because it can also affect other groups. Intolerance and bullying are school-yard words that have no place in the same sentence as Holocaust. Once you’ve paired intolerance with lactose, it’s forever inappropriate for the industry of mass starvation, torture, medical atrocities, freezing, rape, shooting people into the pit they’ve had to dig or making them watch their babies’ heads bashed against a wall or thrown into the air as target practice.

On January 4, Iran’s Shiite Lebanese mercenary force, Hezbollah, detonated a large explosive device on the Lebanon-Israel border in the Mount Dov region. Their target was a pair of Israeli D-9 armored bulldozers clearing the area of brush and other obstructions. There were no Israeli casualties.

Israel had anticipated an attack from Hezbollah following its liquidation of Samir Kuntar – the notorious child-killer turned Hezbollah commander – and other senior pro-Assad mercenaries in a Damascus suburb on December 19, 2015. Israel’s Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot warned Hezbollah of “harsh” consequences if the group decided to initiate a terror attack to avenge Kuntar.

The attack itself accomplished nothing. The heavily armored D-9 bulldozers were able to withstand the blast. In an effort to bolster its image and play to a demoralized constituency, Hezbollah claimed that the attack targeted a senior Mossad official and wounded some Israelis. The claim of course was false but demonstrates Hezbollah’s desperation.

In July and August of 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought a 33-day war. Hezbollah propagandists tried to spin the war as a Hezbollah victory but the reality on the ground was quite different and the war in fact, represented a major strategic victory for Israel. Hezbollah lost between 600 to 1,000 fighters and much of its infrastructure, painstakingly constructed with Iranian and North Korean assistance, was destroyed. Most importantly, the war established Israeli deterrence and imposed new rules on Hezbollah. The group could no longer rely on a predictable, measured Israeli response to border provocations. Instead, the new rules meant that Israel could and would respond with overwhelming force to any provocation.

The most telling account of the conflict came from none other than Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, who noted that he would have never initiated the terror attack that preceded the conflict had he known of the Israeli response beforehand. Indeed, since 2006 Israel’s Lebanon border experienced a quiet not witnessed since the early 1960s.