RUTHFULLY YOURS

Jewish history spanning 3000 years is set to trump the European Union’s (EU) unprecedented action requiring the way goods are labelled originating from four areas of territory disputed between Arabs and Jews – the West Bank, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Similar labelling requirements have not been stipulated by the EU for products emanating from 150 other disputed territories around the world – inviting the charge of Jew-hatred against the EU for introducing this territory-specific policy smacking of double standards and blatant racial discrimination. The aims of the new labelling requirements as set out in the European Commission’s Interpretative Notice (the Notice) – indicate they are not limited to consumer protection – as America’s State Department falsely claims – but also extend to advancing the EU political stance adopted on these four territories following their loss to Israel by Jordan, Egypt and Syria in the 1967 Six Day War:

“There is indeed a demand for clarity from consumers, economic operators and national authorities about existing Union legislation on origin information of products from Israeli-occupied territories. The aim is also to ensure the respect of Union positions and commitments in conformity with international law on the non-recognition by the Union of Israel’s sovereignty over the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967.”

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Islamic extremism, as it kills “infidels” and destroys Western culture, needs to be countered by a concerted and concentrated effort to remove what is a scourge on the civilized world. Despite Mr. Obama’s protestations, destroying ISIS will mean troops on the ground. Unfortunately, we cannot rid this evil from 30,000 feet, with a Drone operated by a soldier in Nevada. But first it necessitates the West abandon the notion that the terrorism we have experienced over the past two and more decades is somehow divorced from its Islamic roots. The terrorists are not Christians; they are not Jews. They are radicalized Muslims. Most Muslims are peaceful, but those that have embarked on terror use Islamism as justification. Peaceful Muslims must rise up against those who have perverted their religion.

Nor are politics immune from Newton’s Law. Mr. Obama’s unbending ideology refuses to acknowledge the risks we face. This is a man genetically opposed to compromise. He is adamant, prideful and, consequently, invidious. His “political correctness” – in this case, a fear of offending Muslims – has meant not calling the enemy by name. We should not abandon the principle of accepting refugees, but we should vet them, especially against the use of Trojan horses to sneak Jihadists into the country. A pendulum that swings to the left will arc back an equal distance to the right – and the further it swings in one direction the greater will be the distance of its return.

Brown University is finally coming out and admitting that despite its delightfully multicultural name, it is a deeply racist institution.

Expressing gratitude to students of color for calling attention “to actions needed to address racism and injustice on our campus,” Brown President Christina H. Paxson has developed a plan and asked students, faculty and staff to comment on it.

Brown’s own president is admitting there is racism on campus. What is it about liberal universities that make them hotbeds of racism? Why do liberals hate blacks and other minorities so much?

But at least they are offering reparations:

The university plans to invest $100 million over the next 10 years on achieving the goals outlined in the plan, Paxson said in her introduction.

Called “Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion: An Action Plan for Brown University,” the 19-page plan outlines steps for “creating a just and inclusive campus community,” increasing the university’s racial and ethnic diversity and adding issues of race, ethnicity and identity to teaching and research on such topics as environment, health, technology and global affairs.

So you have a school that claims to be one of the top in the country, Brown University, and yet it teaches environment, health, and technology, all from a white perspective. Can you imagine being forced to learn only the white version of physics? The white version of anatomy? The white version of oceanography? It’s like we’re still stuck in racist Woodrow Wilson’s early 20th century worldview!

Race-related protests on American college campuses are spreading faster than head lice at a daycare center (for an update, see here). Though each disturbance has its own idiosyncrasies, all include demands that the university recruit more black faculty and students, forcefully “re-educate” all students and faculty to expel lingering anti-black racism and then do whatever is necessary to make the campus a warm, caring and, most of all, a safe space for communities of color.

Far more is involved here than howling for school president’s head or cancelling a mid-term exam to permit traumatized students time to heal. The ruckus is entirely about pushing the university leftward, and these immature campus social justice warriors are what Lenin called useful idiots. All the nattering about diversity and dialogue is a subterfuge; these hypersensitive snowflakes and fellow traveler thugs are just the ground troops in a much larger ideological war.

This week, in response to calls for the United States government to stop taking in Syrian refugees following last week’s horrific terrorist attack in Paris, Senator Elizabeth Warren uttered words that must now seem terribly ironic to her constituents.

“These events test us. It is easy to proclaim that we are tough and brave and good-hearted when threats feel far away — but when those threats loom large and close by, our actions will strip away our tough talk and reveal who we really are.

Not two days after Ms. Warren made those impassioned remarks on the Senate floor, one of Ms. Warren’s own constituents, eighteen-year-old Ezra Schwartz from Sharon, Massachusetts, was gunned down by a Palestinian terrorist in Israel, together with two other innocent civilians. In response, the sanctimonious senator said nothing.

And that is not because Ms. Warren has a difficult time speaking. On November 18th, the day before Ezra Schwartz was murdered, Ms. Warren’s official Twitter account sent out more tweets than a sparrow in mating season — 11– about lobbyists, tax reform and the Economic Policy’s Women’s Economic Agenda. The day before that, Ms. Warren went to the Senate floor to deliver her remarks about Syrian refugees. And, lest anyone doubt Ms. Warren’s ability to multitask, she sent out tweets both before her speech (“Heading to the Senate floor now…”) and after her speech (“…Today I spoke about what I saw”). Yet she could not spare even a character for the beautiful young boy with the sweet smile from her home state.

The Wall Street Journal of November 14-15 carried an astute article by Roger Kimball (editor of the New Criterion) entitled “The Rise of the College Crybullies.” The lethal mixture of trembling sensitivity and mob ruthlessness in these student insurrectionaries has turned the country’s universities into a vast bedlam with a thousand wards. He tells how “the crybully…has weaponized his coveted status as a victim” with two calling cards: race and gender. He uses these to exploit to the fullest extent what Joseph Epstein has called “the unassailable virtue of victims.”

The past month alone has seen the humiliation and forced resignation of assorted faculty members, deans, and even university presidents. Some schools have run up the white flag of surrender even before they were invaded, or tried what might be called preemptive action to ward off the wrath of the new brownshirts by appointing presidents and provosts who proclaim their unswerving devotion to diversity training; or to appointing (more) deans of equity; or to fighting “minoritization” and “marginalization”; or to celebrating gay marriage and transgenderism; or to requiring “trigger warnings” about dangerous books; or to implementing race quotas; or to realizing all the other countless desiderata of campus radicals.

At NYU, for example, “Students of Color” currently list no fewer than 28 “demands” but encouraged the submission of still more. Their counterparts at Brandeis (as of this writing) lag behind with only 13, but are more peremptory and menacing about deadlines by which their demands must be met. Yale’s revolutionaries complain that their uprising against the school’s administration has come “at great expense to our health and grades,” and expect to be compensated accordingly. UC Berkeley’s Black Student Union and its satellites want allocations of money, black faculty, and black psychologists to bring them up to the achievement levels of Asian students at that noble institution. So far Mitch Daniels of Purdue University seems to be the sole exception in the entire country to the rule of presidential surrender to these campus insurrectionaries.

By now you’ve heard that the insurrections at Yale University and the University of Missouri have spread to campuses from California to New Hampshire. The grievances and student demands for safe spaces vary, but the disease is the same: Faculty and administrators who elevate racial and gender diversity above all other values, including free speech.

The road trip begins at Yale, which erupted a few weeks ago after a faculty member suggested that the administration shouldn’t dictate what is an appropriate Halloween costume. In a better era she’d have won free beer at every party on campus, but this time the resulting ruckus featured a student cursing out a Yale sociologist on a lawn for being “insensitive.”

Last week’s response? “I have never been as simultaneously moved, challenged and encouraged by our community,” Yale President Peter Salovey said in a campus-wide letter. He promised a center exploring “race, ethnicity and other aspects of social identity”; more faculty digging into those topics; more training on spotting racism at what must surely be one of the most racially sensitive places on Earth. Mr. Salovey talked up Yale’s $50 million commitment to diversifying the faculty, and you can bet he doesn’t mean intellectual diversity.

Lots of people have been asking why the world mourns French victims of ISIS terrorists but not Israeli victims of Palestinians terrorists, and why on days like today (when Palestinian terrorists massacred several Israelis in different attacks) not a single main stream news channels even reports on the attacks. Well the following chart explains very clearly why. You see ISIS and the Palestinian terrorists have absolutely nothing in common!!!!

About 50 Israeli Arabs have joined Islamic State in the past few years, but the number who support the radical group’s violent ideology is considerably bigger • Is the Islamic State monster gaining a foothold in Israel, too?

One day, Othman Abdul Kiyan disappeared from his home. His neighbors in the Negev Bedouin town of Hura said he had gone to Turkey for a vacation after successfully finishing his grueling medical training in Jordan.

But in May 2014, when Othman failed to show up for work as a resident at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, everyone was amazed to discover that Othman had given up his dream of medicine and joined Islamic State. The news was hard on his family; a few even went to the hotel room where he had stayed in Turkey. There they found a few of his personal items. Members of the hotel staff told them their son had rented a car and not returned. A few months later, his family received the news that Othman had been killed in the fighting in Syria.

Moussa Khalil Abu Kush from the Negev village of Arara also completed medical school in Jordan. Like Othman, he was exposed to jihadist ideology there and wrote Facebook posts supporting Islamic State. He was arrested by the Shin Bet security agency, expressed remorse, and was ordered to pay a fine and perform community service.

Khalil, a resident of east Jerusalem, disappeared from his home, too. His worried relatives told Israeli security forces that their son worked as an orderly at the Eitanim psychiatric hospital and had a membership to the fitness center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before he disappeared, Khalil told his family and his bosses that he was taking a few weeks off to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. But he actually bought a one-way ticket to Greece. From there he flew to Istanbul, and with the help of an Islamic State operative he reached the Syrian border and joined the organization. The mystery of his disappearance was solved only when and his comrades were arrested by the Shin Bet when they returned from Syria.

The cutthroats of ISIS, Al-Queda, the Taliban, Boko Haram and any other Islamic terrorist gang at large in our time also have the same religious incentive – and are afflicted with the same psychotic obsession.

It is also fortuitous happenstance that two accomplished students of the subject of Islam, thousands of miles apart and within days of each other, published columns about what drives Islam’s penchant for homicide, torture, rape, mutilation, conquest, and destruction. They are Daniel Greenfield, writing as Sultan Knish, in his November 11th column, “Why Islam is a Religion of War,” and the mysterious Norwegian writer Fjordman, in his November 17th piece, “Islam: A Permanent World War,” on Gates of Vienna. Their common theme is why Islam makes war on the West. Their themes intersect at certain points, and then go off in different directions.

Greenfield led off with:

Islamic violence is a religious problem. Islam derives meaning from physical supremacy, so war becomes an act of faith. To believe in Islam, is to have faith that it will conquer the entire world. And to be a true Muslim, is to feel called to aid in that global conquest, whether by providing money to the Jihadists or to become a Jihadist.

This means that a jihadist is much like a schoolyard bully, who must triumph over his opponents and strike fear in and compel submission by the other kids. It is an absolute necessity. It is important that others witness this triumph. It is even better if he triumphs in cooperation with other bullies, or with their encouragement. It is proof of his faith. His being the “last man standing” over his vanquished and bloodied foe is taken as proof for him of the metaphysical supremacy and superiority of his faith, and of the efficacy of physical force in the name of Islam. He has faith in that fallacy. It must be true. It’s the only thing he’s sure of.