RUTHFULLY YOURS

United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon has jetted into Jerusalem on a fool’s errand – with tensions continuing to escalate between Arabs and Jews as their conflict spanning almost 100 years remains unresolved.

The Secretary-General observed:

“Beyond the immediate tensions, what is missing is the resolve to restore a political horizon for talks, and a political process that delivers real results and hope … We must, for the future of our children, turn back from this dangerous abyss, safeguard the two-state solution and lead people back onto the road towards peace”

Safeguarding this “two-state solution” – code words for creating a second Arab State in Mandatory Palestine in addition to Jordan – is a lost cause. Restoring talks on this failed political process after twenty years of fruitless negotiations is meaningless United Nations babble speak.

This story is almost unbelievable.

The elite and pricey Williams College has a speaker series called “Uncomfortable Learning.” The idea is to bring to campus people whose thinking is unconventional and who will spark thought and debate. One speaker who was invited is Suzanne Venker. She dissents from most of the feminist orthodoxy and sent in the text of her talk ahead of time. As she explains in this piece, she wanted the students to hear her view that feminism fails “because it denies the existence of biology and teaches that equality means sameness, which is a losing proposition when it comes to planning a life….”

You can guess the rest. When students found out that a speaker who’d make them THAT uncomfortable was going to be on campus, they did just what so many of our brilliant young minds enrolled at elite colleges do — they demanded that Venker be kept from speaking.

What is the endgame of the contemporary green movement? It’s a critical question since environmentalism arguably has become the leading ideological influence in both California government and within the Obama administration. In their public pronouncements, environmental activists have been adept at portraying the green movement as reasonable, science-based and even welcoming of economic growth, often citing the much-exaggerated promise of green jobs.

The green movement’s real agenda, however, is far more radical than generally presumed, and one that former Sierra Club President Adam Werbach said is defined by a form of “misanthropic nostalgia.” This notion extends to an essential dislike for mankind and its creations. In his book “Enough,” green icon Bill McKibben claims that “meaning has been in decline for a long time, almost since the start of civilization.”

And you may have thought the Romans and ancient Chinese were onto something!

How is Israel supposed to negotiate when its very existence is considered unacceptable?
Some hard realities need to be faced about the Middle East “peace process.” The US, EU, UN and others have said the “settlements” are an obstacle to peace. The Arabs point to the “occupation.”

However, neither of these are the core issue…. and frankly, they never have been. Why? Keep in mind there was no “occupation” or “settlements” in 1948 when the surrounding Arab nations attacked the fledgling Jewish nation one day after declaring independence.

Moreover, where were settlements or occupation in 1967?

So if it isn’t the “occupation,” or “settlements,” what is the real issue? While many consider these to be legitimate issues, the Arabs are using them as a deliberate smokescreen.

The core issue is the Muslim’s rejection of Israel’s right to exist. It’s as simple as that. This is the main reason why the first attempt at a two-state solution (the 1947 UN partition plan) was not successful. The Muslims would not allow a Jewish state on land which they consider theirs. Its size or borders didn’t matter. It was, and remains, its mere existence.

Remember when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor predicted in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) that universities would no longer need race-preferential admissions policies in 25 years? By the end of this year, that period will be half over. Yet the level of preferential treatment given to minority students has, if anything, increased.

Meanwhile, numerous studies—as I explain in a recent report for the Heritage Foundation—show that the supposed beneficiaries of affirmative action are less likely to go on to high-prestige careers than otherwise-identical students who attend schools where their entering academic credentials put them in the middle of the class or higher. In other words, encouraging black students to attend schools where their entering credentials place them near the bottom of the class has resulted in fewer black physicians, engineers, scientists, lawyers and professors than would otherwise be the case.

But university administrators don’t want to hear that their support for affirmative action has left many intended beneficiaries worse off, and they refuse to take the evidence seriously.

The mainstream media support them on this. The Washington Post, for instance, recently featured a story lamenting that black students are less likely to major in science and engineering than their Asian or white counterparts. Left unstated was why. As my report shows, while black students tend to be a little more interested in majoring in science and engineering than whites when they first enter college, they transfer into softer majors in much larger numbers and so end up with fewer science or engineering degrees.

It is painful to hear the phrase “lone wolves” applied to the handful
— and perhaps tomorrow the dozens and then the hundreds — of killers
of Jews “liked” by thousands of “friends,” followed by tens of
thousands of “Tweeters,” and connected to a constellation of sites
(such as the Al-Aqsa Media Center and its page dedicated to “the third
Jerusalem intifada”) that are orchestrating, at least in part, this
bloody ballet.

It is equally painful to listen to the refrain about “Palestinian
youth no longer subject to any control,” after seeing the series of
sermons published by the Middle East Media Research Institute, in
which preachers from Gaza, facing the camera, dagger in hand, call
upon followers to take to the streets to maim as many Jews as they
can, to inflict as much pain as possible and to spill the maximum
amount of blood; doubly painful to hear that refrain from Mahmoud
Abbas himself, at the outset of this tragic chain of events a few
weeks back, describing as “heroic” the murder of the Henkins in the
presence of their children, and then expressing indignation at seeing
the “dirty feet” of Jews “defiling” the Al-Aqsa Mosque and declaring
“each drop of blood” shed by “each martyr” who dies for Jerusalem
“pure.”

Why did Professor Yvonne Haddad call Naim Ateek and Jonathan Kuttab “two Palestinian Christians writing eloquently about Palestine?” Why – as he welcomed them to Georgetown University on Sept. 25 – did he say that he has been following these anti-Israel propagandists for years? The pair’s background and biases also appeared to not bother the “Christians in the Holy Land” event’s audience members, which included a Catholic priest and Haddad’s colleague, Jonathan Brown.

Although largely unstated at the panel, Ateek (an Anglican priest) and Kuttab (a University of Virginia Law School graduate) both have longstanding anti-Israel backgrounds. The pair was among the 1989 founders of the Sabeel Ecumenical Theology Liberation Center in Jerusalem, a Palestinian Christian organization noted for its anti-Semitism and condemnation of Israeli “apartheid.” With Kuttab’s approval, Ateek subsequently helped draft the 2009 Kairos Palestine document with its praise of terrorism and replacement theology.

Brendan O’Neill, is Editor of Spiked-Online.com
It’s been clear for years that the left has been losing the moral plot. But I never thought I would see it apologise for, even defend, the stabbing to death of Jews. The silver lining for the left is that it’s impossible for it to sink any lower. This is as low as it gets.

The response in the West to the spate of foul murders by car, knife and meat cleaver in Israel has been almost as shocking as the killings themselves. Many have stayed silent, a global version of “bystander culture”, where people look awkwardly at the ground as someone is battered in front of them. The Western media is currently a shameless shuffling bystander to murders in Israel.

Others have asked, “Well, what do Israelis expect?” The crashing of cars into rabbis waiting for a bus and the hacking at Israeli citizens doing their weekly shop is treated as a normal response by Palestinians to their woes.

Anyone who believes Voltaire’s familiar adage that history never repeats itself invariably confronts Karl Marx’s challenge that history does exactly that: “first as tragedy, then as farce.” There can be no doubt where Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his acolytes stand on this philosophical disagreement. They are true-believing Marxists who faithfully reiterate hoary lies about the imagined murder of innocent Palestinian boys by evil Israelis.

Fifteen years ago, a France 2 broadcast ostensibly revealed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy dying from Israeli gunfire in his father’s arms. Filmed in Gaza only days after Ariel Sharon’s controversial visit to the Temple Mount had sparked Palestinian rioting in Jerusalem that launched the second intifada, the poignant image of terrified Muhammad al-Dura moments before his (presumed) death went viral. Israeli cruelty, vividly documented and endlessly transmitted, became a mantra that inspired, among others, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who slit the throat of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl) and Osama bin Laden.

Months after the al-Dura incident, an IDF investigation concluded that if the boy was indeed killed it could not have been by Israeli bullets. By then, however, Muhmmad al-Dura’s martyrdom had become an inspirational mantra for the second intifada. But an Israeli government inquiry launched 12 years later revealed the mendacity of Palestinian allegations (and likely French complicity). In scenes not shown by France 2, al-Dura was seen alive raising his arm and turning his head toward the cameraman — after his presumed death.

Recent reports have indicated that hundreds of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps troops entered Syria in early September. Moreover, the accord on intelligence among Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria suggests Russian troops will be assisting the Iranians in the war against ISIS. That may not be all.

Israeli officials are appropriately concerned that Russian troops will be operating in the Golan Heights along with Hezbollah and Assad-led Syrian forces. Israel is faced with the additional challenge of the expanded Russian presence in Syria, especially in the Latakia region, where in the past IDF forces destroyed arms convoys intended for Hezbollah.

When Israeli forces returned fire on two Syrian positions near Quneitra, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded: “We respect Israel’s interests related to the Syrian civil war but we are concerned about its attacks on Syria.” Clearly this statement is mutually contradictory; if you are concerned about Israel’s interests than it must be protected by defensive military action. Nonetheless, this response stands as a warning signal. Certain attacks may be justified as long as they do not jeopardize the position and security of Syria’s President Bashar al Assad.