RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.hudson.org/events/1292-what-does-the-latest-wave-of-violence-in-israel-portend-a-conversation-with-george-deek102015

The latest eruption of violence in Israel has left many worried observers wondering whether a third intifada will soon get underway. Mass shootings, random stabbings, and other deadly attacks on Jewish civilians have again become commonplace—and are being celebrated not just by extremist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but by senior officials of the mainstream, U.S.-allied Fatah movement. Worse yet, some of the perpetrators have been Arab citizens of Israel. And not all the victims have been Jews—as this month’s “mistaken identity” mob-reprisal attack on an Eritrean asylum seeker made clear.

Can the violence be contained? Does a two-state solution with the Palestinians remain possible in its wake—and can Israel preserve its political and social coherence as a nation in which Jews and Arabs live together peacefully?

On October 29, Hudson Senior Fellow Lee Smith and his special guest, George Deek—a man uniquely positioned to address the current situation from a multi-layered point of view, discussed these and other aspects of the conflict. Attorney George Deek is a Palestinian Arab from a Christian Orthodox family; a native of Jaffa and Israeli citizen; and a veteran diplomat, having served his country throughout the world, with postings as Israel’s Chargé d’Affaires in Norway and Deputy Chief of Mission in Nigeria, among others. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs named Deek its outstanding diplomat of the year in 2014, and he has since become a frequent and celebrated public speaker—and a postgraduate Fulbright Scholar in international law at Georgetown University.

Dale Carpenter is the Distinguished University Teaching Professor and Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. He teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law; the freedoms of speech, association, and religion; and sexual orientation and the law.

On Tuesday afternoon an Israeli academic was shouted down by two dozen protesters as he tried to begin a lecture before about 100 students and faculty at the University of Minnesota. The speaker was Moshe Halbertal, a professor at NYU Law School and a professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Hebrew University. He was invited to deliver the Dewey Lecture in the Philosophy of Law, which is organized annually by the law school. That the freedom to present a lecture is threatened in this way at a public university is appalling, calling not only for punishment of violations but for a clear statement by university officials defending the free exchange of ideas.

The lecture, which I attended, was delayed half an hour as one by one the protesters stood up to shout denunciations of Israel and were escorted from the hall by university police. One young woman came screaming back into the lecture after having been ejected. Outside the hall, the protesters chanted so loudly that it was difficult to hear Halbertal, much less to concentrate on what he was saying, until 45 minutes after the lecture was to have begun.

Palestinian leaders, including the Palestinian Authority, have done a lot to whip up this violence and little to stop it. They may refer to peace and co-existence on some diplomatic occasions, but they preach and practice non-stop hatred and violence against Israel and the Jews.

It would have been more helpful if President Mukherjee had stressed his gospel of peace in the Palestinian territories, not Israel. Ever since its creation in 1948, Israel has believed in peaceful co-existence with Palestine. The successive offers of peace from Jerusalem have always supported this policy.

In contrast, not only has the Palestinian leadership never believed in peaceful co-existence, but it has constantly indulged in racist incitement, and often violence, to try to eliminate Israel.

After a reception at the presidential palace in Israel in Mid-October, India’s President, Pranab Mukherjee, said: “We are distressed at the recent violence [in the region]. India condemns all forms of terrorism. We have always advocated a peaceful resolution of all disputes.” Later, the President told Israel’s Leader of the Opposition, Isaac Herzog, “Violence is not a solution to any crisis. Violence achieves nothing but more violence. We in India believe in a principle of live and let live.” What great new ideas!

Catherine Chatterley
Historian of Modern Europe; Founding Director, Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA)

Antisemitism presents a serious challenge for the global community today. The last decade has seen a shocking growth in antisemitic rhetoric and agitation, and routine acts of violence against Jews have returned to European cities 70 years after the Holocaust.

The battle between Israel and the Palestinians has become intractable, and the idea of a “peace process” that might finally resolve the issues is not taken as seriously as it was years ago. This fact does not bode well for Israelis or Palestinians, and given the obsessive focus on this conflict by the media and by both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel activist organizations, the lack of resolution and mounting frustration is an ongoing concern for all of us.

“When people stand before the complete collapse of what they believe in, they enter a state of denial,” wrote Yigal Carmon, in a Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) article titled “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”

Carmon, MEMRI’s president, was referring to the response of politicians and journalists to the nuclear deal with Iran, which he claims was never approved by the Islamic Republic.

“What is mistakenly perceived as an agreement under the title of ‘Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’ (JCPOA), that was concluded on July 14 in Vienna, and celebrated by the White House as an ‘historic agreement,’ is neither a contract nor even a real agreement between Iran and the P5+1,” he wrote. “It is a set of understandings and disputes compiled into a single document.”

“For example, regarding the sanctions, it stipulates that there will be a snap-back in case of Iranian violations, yet the next sentence says that Iran will regard such a snap-back as a violation of the agreement by the West,” Carmon told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.

A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.

The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.” Zwally added that his team “measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas.”

What an unpalatable irony. The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War and created the United States. The 2015 Treaty of Paris could end what’s left of our democratic USA – and complete the “fundamental transformation” that the Obama Administration intends to impose by executive fiat.

Meanwhile, as a prelude to Paris, October 24 marked a full ten years since a category 3-5 hurricane last hit the United States. (Hurricane Wilma in 2005; Sandy hit as a Category 2.) That’s a record dating back at least to 1900. It’s also the first time since 1914 that no hurricanes formed anywhere in the Western Atlantic, Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico through September 22 of any calendar year.

Global temperatures haven’t risen in 18 years and are more out of sync with computer model predictions with every passing year. Seas are rising at barely seven inches a century. Droughts and other “extreme weather events” are less frequent, severe and long-lasting than during the twentieth century. “Vanishing” Arctic and Greenland ice is freezing at historical rates, and growing at a record pace in Antarctica.

But President Obama still insists that dangerous climate change is happening now, and it is a “dereliction of duty” for military officers to deny that climate change “is an immediate risk to our national security.”

Monday night’s Paul Murray Live on the Sky News channel treated viewers to footage of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s latest celebration of the endless injustices and indignities visited upon innocent Muslims, a presumptive expectation that they might like to sing the National Anthem the latest amongst them. At that same Muslims-as-victims powwow in Bankstown women were consigned to the purdah of seats at the rear of the auditorium, which prompted Murray to wonder at the lack of outrage from the sorts who cannot spot a sausage in the butcher’s window without being overcome by the urge to rail against the patriarchal phallocracy.

Murray might also have noted other of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s sins against progressive orthodoxy. After all, the Hizbees’ guest list was decidedly short on homosexuals, transsexuals and same-sex marriage activists. It is not as if their invitations were lost in the mail, as the organisation makes no bones about its disdain for anything other than carnality the way Allah prefers it.

Had the screed at the link above been penned by a Christian, much screaming and hissing would have ensued. Why the distinction?

Here’s a clue. Like the left, Hizb ut-Tahrir is none too keen on capitalism:

The Environmental Problem: Its Causes & Islam’s Solutions – Hizb ut-Tahrir Denmark (In English
This booklet has been issued by Hizb ut-Tahrir – Denmark
The Reality and Problem …………………………………………………………13

The Solution according to Capitalism

From the Kyoto Agreement to COP15……………………………………….15

Part One…………………………………………………………………………….15

The Issue turned into a question of Supply and Demand …………15

Exaggeration in the Assessment of Quotas…………………………….18

Part Two…………………………………………………………………………….19

”Clean Development”………………………………………………………….19

Constraints imposed on the developing countries…………………..21

Capitalism causes environmental crisis……………………………………..22

The Islamic view …………………………………………………………………….26

Islam’s view on the environment ……………………………………………..29

Islam prohibits harm and that which leads to the forbidden………..38

Preservation of the Environment in the Islamic State………………….41

Qadi al-Hisbah (Supervisory Judge) ……………………………………….42

The doomsday cult known as environmentalism may have already surpassed the Judeo-Christian tradition as the most powerful religion in the advanced countries of the West. Almost certainly, its followers are the most politically powerful – witness the trillions of dollars devoted to the “paused” global warming Armageddon supposedly soon to threaten human survival. And these followers are also the most fanatical, reaching Islamic levels of fury when their orthodoxy is challenged.

Dr. Jay Cullen might as well have caricatured Mohammed, for all the organized religious hate he is receiving You see, Cullen is a Canadian researcher who set about the measure the impact of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown on the Northwest coast of North America. Mark Hume reports in the Globe and Mail:

Dr. Cullen started a radionuclide-monitoring program in 2014.

The Integrated Fukushima Ocean Radionuclide Monitoring project (or InFORM, as he optimistically called it) worked with a broad network of scientists to gather the latest research and distribute it to the public.