RUTHFULLY YOURS

The stabbing intifada may only just recently have come to America, but over in Israel, it’s now practically a daily occurrence.

A civilian security guard on Sunday shot a female Palestinian assailant who stabbed and lightly wounded him, as he stood at his post, just outside the Betar Illit settlement, which is located a short distance away from Jerusalem.

The incident was caught on the municipalities security cameras. An emergency dispatcher saw a Palestinian woman on one of the cameras who she believed looked suspicious. The woman, 22-year-old Halva Aliyan, was dressed from head to toe in traditional black garb, with only her face showing. She carried a purse and walked toward the gate of the city, which has a population of 47,000.

The dispatcher alerted the security guard who then stopped her and asked to see her identification card, which showed that she was born in the nearby Palestinian city of Bethlehem. As the guard focused on checking her card, Aliyan slowly reached into her purse and pulled out a knife. She then lunged at the guard and quickly tried to stab him.

Trigger warning — this will make your blood boil.

At the very heart of our troubles as a country is the degeneration of our educational system.
For many, the SAT is a hurdle long since cleared. For those who are parents, there is still the specter of having to relive the experience vicariously. Those parents, as well as the rest of the population, need to consider yet another instance of forced conformity and a closing of our collective American mind: the format of the new SAT essay. The original SAT did not feature an essay section, the revamped SAT of ten years ago did, and next year there will be yet another version of the test, with an essay section, but one that has a noticeably different format. Traditionally, on virtually every scholastic essay assignment the student is asked to evaluate and respond. As a tutor, I am quite familiar with the rolled eyes and deep sighs at the prospect of writing an essay. However, at its core, the traditional essay format affords each student the opportunity that far too many people on this planet never get: a chance to speak his mind. Whether it is a twenty-minute assignment, or one a kid mulls over several days, the opportunity for self expression is still there. But that opportunity is lost on the new SAT essay. Instead of having the liberty to speak his mind, the student is forced merely to evaluate an essay. The poor student must read an argument, often offensive and deeply flawed, and simply determine how the author made his argument — did he use persuasive language, or appeal to logic or to authority? As an educator, independent thinker, and free-born citizen, I find this change in format to be alarming and wrong.

Sheldon Whitehouse got his man. The Rhode Island Senator has been lobbying for prosecutions of oil and gas companies over climate change, and New York Attorney General and progressive activist Eric Schneiderman has now obliged by opening a subpoena assault on Exxon Mobil. This marks a dangerous new escalation of the left’s attempt to stamp out all disagreement on global-warming science and policy.

Progressives have been losing the political debate over climate change, failing to pass cap and trade even when Democrats had a supermajority in Congress. So they have turned to the force of the state through President Obama’s executive diktats and now with the threat of prosecution. This assault won’t stop with Exxon. Climate change is the new religion on the left, and progressives are going to treat heretics like Cromwell did Catholics.
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We mention Mr. Whitehouse because he has been the lead Cromwell in calling for the use of the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statute, a law created to prosecute the mafia, to bring civil cases against companies that fund climate research of which he disapproves. After we called him out in a recent editorial, Mr. Whitehouse denounced us on the Senate floor and compared everyone who disagrees with him to tobacco companies.

Of all bogus politically correct phrases, I think “people of color” is the most reliably emetic. What, after all, does it mean? Who gets to be a “person of color”? Not me, apparently, though I like to think of myself as a pleasing pinkish hue (I’m not talking about political complexion, merely my Crayola designation). To me, “people of color” is a bit like “native American,” only worse. I always identify myself as “native American” because (or so I have been reliably assured) I first came into this world just outside of Cleveland, Ohio, than which no more American place can be imagined. Why do American Indians get to be “native Americans” while I, whose natality was smack dab in the middle of America, must be content who some less privileged rubric? And why do blacks and other assorted ethnicities get to be “people of color,” with all the spurious rights and privileges pertaining thereto, while I, who most certainly possess a color, am left out of the great politically correct grievance-mongering sweepstakes?

I thought about this yesterday I was in New Haven participating in a conference on “The Future of Free Speech” sponsored by the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale. [1] No sooner had I and my colleagues arrived in Elm City than we discovered, courtesy the Yale Daily News, that the delicate snowflakes at one of the richest and most coddled institutions in the world were angry, outraged, tearful, absolutely beside themselves with rage and horror. “Students Demand Admin Response to Racial Controversies [2],” screamed the front-page headline. The story went on to describe a 3-hour confrontation between 200 students and Jonathan Holloway, dean of Yale College. “Surrounded by a sea of upturned faces and fighting back tears,” the story began, Dean Holloway “stood on the Women’s Table [nice touch!]. . . to break the administration’s silence on allegations of racial discrimination that shook [shook!] campus this week.” [UPDATE: Why hasn’t this girl [3] been expelled?]

Image Courtesy of Oxford University

If you plan to work in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, you’d better get used to being hugged and kissed, and doing the same in return. It’s a touchy-feely business, even among acquaintances, but this sort of tactile familiarity isn’t the norm everywhere.

People are very particular about where they do and don’t like to be touched, and who’s allowed to put a hand on what. Now, Oxford University has released the findings from the largest study ever conducted on physical contact, creating maps that show what parts of men’s and women’s bodies are acceptable for contact to lovers, friends, relatives and strangers.

As explained in an Oct. 26 article in the U.K. Telegraph, the map shows that the hands are the only part of the body that both men and women don’t mind sharing to some degree with everyone, even strangers. Although men are somewhat less protective of their genitals than women — not listing them as taboo with female friends, acquaintances and even strangers — when it gets to male strangers, both men and women list almost the whole body as off-limits, especially the part between the chest and the ankles (men want male strangers to stay away from their heads as well).

A Pakistani woman, Sonia Bibi, 20, died on October 23, 2015, after she rejected a marriage proposal from Latif Ahmed and after telling the police that Ahmed had doused her with gas and then set her on fire.

Questions are being asked as to why the liberal media refuses to cover such stories of murder and honor killings of women in the Muslim world.

Jamie Glazov, who was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR), founder of the The Glazov Gang, and managing editor of FrontPage Magazine, is questioning as to why the leftists are ignoring such murderous actions done by Muslims, and of what resides in the heart of leftists to deny why Sonia Bibi was set ablaze for refusing a marriage proposal in the Muslim world.

Green misinformation and doctored stats are bad enough. Now, the doomsayers argue that world population will make us all famished. Garbage. The real problem is that there won’t be enough of us and we’ll all be fat.

Now that the Green balloon of exaggeration, misinformation and doctored statistics has been popped, it is time to turn the bodkin in the direction of another bunch of misleading wowsers: the population doomsayers who predict that an explosion in world population means that we will not be able to feed ourselves.

Armageddon faces our descendants, they warn us. Except that it is all tosh.

If the world is facing a population problem it is one of ‘less’, not ‘more’.

In 60 years the Total Fertility Rate has fallen from 4.95 to 2.36. The rate needed for a stable population is 2.1. so the world is scarcely reproducing itself at all, never mind burgeoning to starvation levels.

Leora Hyman moved to Israel nine years ago and never looked back. Like all Israeli Jews, she is coping with a relentless wave of violent attacks by Muslims, as Jews are stabbed, stoned, run over by cars, maimed, and murdered.

So Hyman wrote a piece about it and a reader asked in the comments section: “Why are you still there?!?!?!?!?!”

The question haunts her and in a beautiful piece published at Israellycool Hymans shares her answer. And it is deeply moving.

I live in Gush Etzion, part of the land liberated in 1967. The Hills of Judea. The usual rhetoric says I am an occupier. Jews living in our ancestral heartland are occupiers? Go figure. In fact the ENTIRE Middle East is on fire, because I might someday build a porch in Gush Etzion.

I’ll let you in a little secret. The Arab Israeli conflict is not about the “disputed territories.” They were trying to kill us before 1967, when interestingly enough, there were no Palestinians. It’s about Jews living, breathing, existing. (snip)

Since the day I landed and my feet touched the ground at Ben Gurion Airport, an invisible, but no less substantial, umbilical cord connected me to this land. When I leave Israel, the cord stretches, keeping me connected and nourished, though I may be far away. From the four corners of the earth, the Jews have come home. Read about the ingathering of the exiles in the Book of Prophets, it’s all there and my family is living it.

We reported previously how Saudi Sheikh Yahya Al-Jana’ depicted the Islamist paradise as a celestial Mustang Ranch in which Allah is the chief Mack Daddy. Now Palestinian-Jordanian cleric Sheikh Mashhoor bin Hasan Al-Salman has added an eternal supply of Viagra to the offer. Note, however, that for a female Muslim to enjoy the sexual companionship of the one Chippendales model she gets in Paradise, she must marry him and become his slave. A woman’s place in Islamism is at the end of a chain, even in Paradise.

Here are a few screenshots, with the translation by MEMRI. This material is going to put stand-up comedians out of business, because you can get it for free, and these mullahs and imams say it all with a straight face. A man gets 70 virgins (Sheikh Yahya Al-Jana’ promised a hundred), but here is what a woman gets.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Early warning for secondary cancer. (TY NoCamels) Israel Technion’s Assistant Professor Dr. Daphne Weihs has developed a unique biomechanical method for the early detection of metastatic (secondary) cancer – a cancer that has already spread. It can also identify where the cancer has spread to and enable early treatment.
http://pard.technion.ac.il/2015/10/28/early-warning-of-cancer-metastasis/

New imaging method for gallbladder removal. BioDesign students at Hadassah Medical Center / Hebrew University of Jerusalem, led by Egypt’s Dr. Muhammad Adileh, have developed “CholeVision” – a fiber-optic illumination system to reduce injuries caused during laparoscopic (keyhole) procedures to remove gallbladders.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/28006 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTaqCaPOm7M

Successful trial of foot ulcer treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) Biotech Izun successfully completed a Phase II trial of its Israeli-developed IZN-6D4 to treat diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) in 82 patients at seven centers in Israel. DFU is responsible for 84% of diabetes-related lower-leg amputations. http://izunpharma.com/izun-pharmaceuticals-announces-positive-results-phase-2-randomized-trial-diabetic-foot-ulcers/

How proteins grow. (TY Michelle) A team of Israeli and US researchers has mapped out the fundamental dynamic that explains the production and distribution of proteins in a cell. http://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2015/10/29/researchers-find-universality-in-protein-locality.html

The world’s 6th healthiest country. Israel is the sixth-healthiest country in the world and is the only Middle Eastern country in the top 10, according to recent world health rankings by media outlet Bloomberg. Singapore was first, followed by Italy, Australia, Switzerland and Japan. The UK is 21st and the US 33rd.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=29395

25% of blood donations are from IDF soldiers. A total of 68,500 units of blood – 25 percent of the total donated to Magen David Adom last year – were given by soldiers. Whilst handing out certificates, MDA blood services director Eilat Shinar said “You officers and soldiers are an example for pure and significant giving”.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/IDF-soldiers-account-for-25-percent-of-blood-donated-to-Magen-Adom-Adom-427560

FDA approves focused ultrasound treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) The US FDA has approved the next generation Exablate system from Israel’s InSightec to treat symptomatic uterine fibroids. Exablate uses focused ultrasound plus MRI, which is used to guide the ultrasound waves to the specific target tissue. Also (TY UWI) a video of Israeli doctors using InSightec’s Exablate Neuro ultrasound to cure Essential Tremor.
http://www.insightec.com/news-events/press-releases/fda-approves-insightec-s-next-generation-exablate-fibroid-treatment-system-and-removes-requirement-for-patients-to-be-family-complete/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FzB2FASis