RUTHFULLY YOURS

Former envoy to Israel emailed proposal to then-US secretary of state that Palestinian, Israeli women should spark Tahrir-style protests to push sides into talks.

WASHINGTON — A former top US diplomat suggested Washington foment Arab Spring-style Palestinian protests as a method of pushing the Israeli leadership into making moves, a new batch of emails from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton shows.

On December 18, 2011, Thomas Pickering, a former US ambassador to Israel who also served as undersecretary of state for political affairs under former president Bill Clinton, emailed Clinton a recommendation to spark Palestinian demonstrations, led by female protesters, to push Jerusalem into talks.

Upon receiving the message, Clinton asked an aide to print it out.

Without detailing how the US would spark these protests, Pickering noted that the US could not be seen to have had a hand in fomenting the rallies, instead suggesting that Washington employ non-governmental groups and third parties to “help.”

Pickering’s proposal, which included parallel protests by Israeli Jews and Arabs, called for the rallies to be female-only as a way to keep the demonstrations from becoming too violent.

This was a longer research project for the Capital Research Center on the Red-Green alliance of leftist and Islamist groups supporting Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. It first appeared in print and is now available online.

Summary: Across American campuses, college radicals are fighting hard as they try to harm Israel and celebrate Palestinians. Though they call themselves nonviolent leftists opposed to racism, they actually have no problem with anti-Semites and violent terrorists. This report shines a spotlight on the outrageous deeds and words of numerous leaders in the “Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions” movement.

The deck has long been stacked against Israel on America’s college campuses. The Left’s BDS movement—the subject of this report—aims at Israel and Israel alone. BDS seeks to cripple the Jewish state whose creation gave refuge for the world’s Jews after Nazi Germany’s Holocaust incinerated six million of them. The B, D, and S are the non-military weapons—boycotts, divestments, and sanctions—that Israel-haters use to undermine America’s strongest Middle East ally.

The movement’s activists mostly live on university campuses, dress themselves in moral garments, and self-righteously denounce Israel as racist, even genocidal, because it defends itself vigorously and refuses to die. No other country gets scolded by the nations of the world for protecting itself from aggression or for using “disproportionate” force—itself, a dubious concept—against its enemies. Those who abhor Israel ignore the fact that it is surrounded on all sides by Muslim nations, many of which would drive the Jews “into the sea” if they could.

College students are returning to school after the winter break, and administrators must be bracing for another semester like the tumultuous one just passed. That trivial circumstances like those at Yale University in November could provoke such unrest indicates how fraught race relations remain at schools striving to promote diversity.

Ironically, an incident caught on video at Yale—one that for many Americans seemed to epitomize how badly American higher education has gone off the rails—also offers an explanation for this spasm of protests and points toward a more productive way of addressing students’ concerns.
A demonstration by Yale University students and faculty, Nov. 9. ENLARGE
A demonstration by Yale University students and faculty, Nov. 9. Photo: Arnold Gold/New Haven Register/Associated Press

The incident involved a Yale professor named Nicholas Christakis, who was waylaid on campus by angry students. They were livid about a letter written by his wife, Erika, also a Yale teacher, who had suggested that the university’s recent admonishments about Halloween costumes, cultural appropriation and racial insensitivity perhaps were unnecessary, since young adults are capable of deciding for themselves what to wear for Halloween and might even learn from being “a little bit obnoxious.” Mr. Christakis was caught in an ugly scene, with one student in particular roundly cursing him.

Eventually the campus settled when Yale’s president reassured the students that he understood their feelings and would take measures to protect them from insult. Some distance will be put between the students and the Christakises. The school reports that Ms. Christakis, a lecturer in early-childhood education, has chosen not to teach this spring, and her husband is on what Yale called a “scheduled leave.”

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.