RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Yom Kippur liturgy, just followed in synagogues around the world, repeats several times references to God as one who rescues captives. The central daily Jewish prayer as well refers to God who “supports the fallen, heals the sick, sets captives free.” And throughout Jewish history, the redemption of captives has been considered an important commandment. This is the background to the repeated decisions by the state of Israel to free a hundred or a thousand Arab prisoners in exchange for one single captive Jew. It is also the background to Israel’s actions to rescue the entire Ethiopian and Yemeni Jewish communities by bringing them to Israel.

The rescue of threatened Jewish communities has been a central public purpose of Jews living in safety. American Jews pressed their government to push back against repression in Morocco in the 19th century and in czarist Russia in the early 20th. They failed to get the doors open for many Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, but they tried​—​despite rampant antisemitism, not least in the State Department. They succeeded in opening the doors of Soviet Russia, whence a million Jews fled to Israel.

Friends, I have a piece about Israel in the current issue of National Review. I thought I’d “blow it out” here in Impromptus. By that I mean, do an expanded version, in bulleted sections. See what you think.

During last month’s presidential debate, many of the candidates mentioned Israel. Jeb Bush, for example, said that we need to reestablish “our commitment to Israel, which has been altered by this administration.” Carly Fiorina said that the first phone call she would make, from the Oval Office, would be to “my good friend Bibi Netanyahu.” Its purpose would be “to reassure him we will stand with the State of Israel.”

Ted Cruz said, “If I’m elected president, our friends and allies across the globe will know that we stand with them. The bust of Winston Churchill will be back in the Oval Office. And the American embassy in Israel will be in Jerusalem.”

From time immemorial, American presidential candidates have pledged to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Then, when they become president, they find it inconvenient. Ted, however, is serious.

(I’d better append my disclosure: here. He is a friend, and I back him.)

After the debate, some observers wondered, “Why so much attention to Israel? Are these people running for president of the United States or president of Israel?”

I myself have received similar questions over the years. People ask, sometimes with scorn, sometimes with sincere curiosity, “Why do you write so much about Israel? Why are you hung up on Israel?” I would think the answer were obvious. But if it were, people would not ask these questions. And honest questions deserve honest answers.

Israel is the only state whose very right to exist is called into question. (Ukraine, however, is beset with problems of its own. And Taiwan has well-founded anxieties.) Ever since it was born in 1948, people have tried to kill Israel. It is a tiny country amid enemies.

Four wars of annihilation have been waged against Israel. There have been smaller conflicts as well, though still serious. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel. The first came in 1979, the second in 1994. Israel is still waiting for the third treaty.

Was ExxonMobil better at climate science than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? This is the bizarre position now being adopted by climate activists such as Harvard’s Naomi Oreskes and 350.org’s Bill McKibben. As early as 1977, Exxon researchers “knew that its main product would heat up the planet disastrously,” McKibben claimed in the New Yorker last month. “Present thinking,” an Exxon researcher wrote in a 1978 summary, “holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”

Ten years later, in 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly established the IPCC and, according to a U.N. General Assembly Resolution, tasked it with preparing “a comprehensive review” of the state of knowledge of the science of climate change. Two years later, the IPCC produced its first assessment report. By the late 1980s, the threat of human-driven climate change had, Oreskes wrote in the New York Times last week, “become an observed fact.”

Father of stabber:”It is not a loss when you are talking about Palestine…My son is an offering to the Al-Aqsa [Mosque]”
Mother of killer of 2:”O mother of Martyr, let out cries of joy”
Father of killer of 2:”He avenged [the women of Al-Aqsa]… against the impure enemies…He made everyone lift his head up high.May he find favor in the eyes of Allah”

Uncle of stabber:”This is a wedding, it is a celebration.We consider him [a Martyr] with Allah”

PA promotes Martyrdom-death

Fatah official about Fatah youth:
“Potential Martyrs for the beloved Palestine”

Fatah official posts music video:
“My blood will be shed for Al-Aqsa”

Children express desire to die for Allah and Al-Aqsa

“Mom, I want to die as a Martyr.
I want to carry out a Martyrdom operation (i.e., terror attack)
in order to kill some Israeli soldiers”

Amid the current Palestinian riots and wave of terror attacks, Palestinian Authority and Fatah officials continue to praise terrorist murderers as “Martyrs” and “heroes.” Some also encourage Shahada – seeking death as Martyrs for Allah. Becoming a Martyr (Shahid) represents the highest religious achievement that can be attained by a Muslim.

You might think that the obstacles to peace are the rockets from Gaza, the brutal murders of Jews and the recent suicide bombing. You might think that it was the Muslims who taunted and beat Adelle Banita-Bennett, suddenly widowed at 22, trying to escape the Muslim terrorist who had murdered her husband. You might think that it’s the fact that a majority of Muslims in ’67 Israel spit on the Two-State Solution and that PLO boss Abbas rejected the Oslo Accords in a speech at the United Nations.

And you would be wrong.

None of those things are obstacles to peace. If they were, surely the media would have told us so.

The real threats are the fig, palm and carrot trees around a hiking path near Jerusalem. The true threat to peace comes from the pine trees that shade the kids playing in the water in a Ma’ale Adumim park.

The pine tree, you see, is a Jewish tree.

HERO: Israeli man who subdued a terrorist with his nunchucks after stabbing and trying to steal weapon of soldier. pic.twitter.com/6qYsEWDvds

— Israel News Feed (@IsraelHatzolah) October 12, 2015

It was another bloody day of attacks on Israelis, but one civilian hero showed just what a handy pair of nunchucks can do against a terrorist.

According to police, a Palestnian man on a Jerusalem bus stabbed an IDF soldier and attempted to steal his gun.

Enter Jerusalem resident Yair Ben Shabat: “I jumped onto the bus and helped them struggle with the terrorist. I took nunchucks out and hit him where I had to for them to be able to pry loose the weapon he held.”

There is a small but undeniable number who are willing to kill and sometimes die in the cause of imposing their idea of blasphemy on non-Muslims around the world.

The editors signalled that they had had enough of the threats and enough of the danger. They censored themselves.

Today there might be thousands of people willing to publish cartoons of Mohammed on their Twitter accounts, but most of them hide behind aliases and complain about the cowardice of others.

Our societies like to think that terrorism and intimidation do not work. They do — or can — but only if we let them.

Ten years ago, one of the editors of a Danish newspaper called Jyllands-Posten had heard that that no cartoonist in Denmark would depict Islam’s prophet for a set of children’s books on the major world religions. Did such self-censorship really exist in modern Denmark? He sought to find out. So he published a spread of twelve cartoons intended to depict the founder of Islam.

Attacks on the newspaper followed — the most outspoken attempt at enforcing censorship since the death threats against Salman Rushdie for his novel, The Satanic Verses, in 1988, and the murder of Theo van Gogh for his film, Submission, in 2004. The knife in van Gogh’s back also went through a note demanding death threats for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch MP at the time, and the Dutch MP, Geert Wilders.

No place is safe from the long arm of Islamic supremacy as Muslims seek to dominate every aspect of our culture. And they do so even when they are in the minority, as when most recently Muslim students at Wichita State University (WSU) managed to apply enough leverage (not that it takes much these days) to turn the university chapel into a Muslim-friendly prayer space (i.e., a mosque).

WSU has a student body of 15,000, the majority of whom are Christian. About 1,000 of the students are Muslim, constituting 6% of the student population. But being a small minority didn’t stop them from taking over the chapel. In fact, they had the backing of university administrators (dhimmis).

A summary of the Fox News report on this story is noted below, with a bit of commentary in parenthesis:

Muslim students pressured the university for a space to pray that would be “faith neutral,” complaining the chapel was a “predominantly Judeo-Christian environment.” (This is how Muslims assert supremacy.)
University administrators catered to their demands, with one administrator stating: “In the spirit of today – there was belief at the time this was discussed that the space was not as flexible for all to feel welcome and included.” (“Spirit of today” = pandering to Muslims. “All” = Muslims. “Welcome and included” = Muslims in, Christians out.)
In the name of inclusivity, faith neutrality, today’s spirit, and ensuring that all feel welcome, the pews, the altar, and Christian religious décor were removed from the chapel. Portable chairs were brought in, making space for Muslim prayer rugs. (This is Islamic supremacy in action. It is not about coexisting in peace, but about supplanting all other religions with their own.)
Some alumni and donors spoke out about the removal of the pews, feeling that went too far, while also expressing confusion as to why they were removed. (If these folks were educated on the core tenets of the Quran, they would not be confused, and they would have been in a better position to speak up sooner and more boldly, perhaps averting this act of Muslim conquest.)
The student body president accused those critical of the renovation of being “Islamophobic.” (Useful idiots are everywhere, but they can be found in particularly high concentrations in colleges and universities. And this was domination, not renovation.)

Israel could not have made the desert bloom without its incredible innovations in water technology. As the world becomes more aware of the importance of conserving water, they are turning to Israel for exports and expertise.
The world is in a water crisis, one that will grow more severe in the coming decade. Water shortages will soon lead to increasing political instability, displacement of populations, and, more likely than not, political unrest and war.

Though this water crisis overlaps with the more widely-discussed problem of climate change, it is different in many ways. It is more acute and more concrete, in that it focuses on a single resource without which humanity cannot live. Its causes are less controversial. Its dimensions are more easily measured. And its catastrophic effects are playing out more clearly and more quickly.

It is also a problem that can be decisively solved without anything remotely resembling the economic restructuring and political acrobatics required to address climate change. Fully effective solutions to the water crisis have already been found. They only need to be implemented.

The world’s water problem is being caused by multiple simultaneous factors: Reduced rainfall, increased population, and the rapid development of impoverished societies have all come together to deplete the amount of water available to humankind. None of these causes are going away. Solutions will come only from changing the way we find and use water.

“…And we should know about Kenda Kesahu and his friends, who chased after the attacker in Petach Tikva, catching and holding him until security forces could arrive. After all, they could have returned home in peace, or taken cover, or fled for their lives. But they understood it was their duty to stop the attacker. Kesahu said, “I really don’t know why they’re calling me a hero. All I wanted was to help save my people.”

The news of another horrific terror attack flickers from the television screen, and out of the darkness emerge stories of people, regular everyday people, who came face to face with a knife or bomb and took action. They fought back. They prevented a larger terrorist attack from happening. They chased, and they caught. Not that it was their job to do so, but they felt a duty. And they were resourceful. And sometimes, in those marvelous moments, all you want to see is the news anchor’s stone face crack just a bit, for her to say with just a bit of pride: Look at us! Look how amazing we are! Just a good word, or two, nothing more.