RUTHFULLY YOURS

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the darling of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing, touted as a possible 2016 presidential candidate, told a Tufts University audience last week that she found it “fair” when a questioner compared Israel’s actions to those of Nazi Germany. The exchange distilled a question that is likely to be consequential both for Israel and for American liberalism: how much will liberals allow their stance toward Israel to be influenced by the Israel-hating radical Left?

When The Weekly Standard’s Daniel Halper broke the Tuft’s story last week, the liberal blog, TalkingPointsMemo, accused Halper of “distort[ing]” the Senator’s remarks and quoted her press spokesman’s claim that Halper had “grossly mischaracterized Senator Warren’s response.”

It is true that Warren had voted for aid to Israel during the Gaza war and had, at a Cape Cod forum a few weeks earlier, justified her vote by citing Israel’s “right to defend itself” even though Hamas “puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools.” But Halper had neither distorted nor mischaracterized what the Senator said at Tufts. The most that could be argued in extenuation was that the phrasing of the question to which she responded left a slim margin for interpretation.

Identifying herself as a “Holocaust refugee,” an audience member said, “I’m extremely concerned that Jews don’t do to another people what was done to them.” To this, Warren replied, “I think that’s fair.” The questioner then added, “You’ve recently said that…Israel has a right to self-defense. Do you also believe the Palestinians have a right to self-defense?” To this Warren replied, “Of course. The answer is yes. The direction we need to be moving is not to more war…I believe in a two-state solution.”

Conceivably, defenders could argue that by her first reply Warren only meant to agree that Jews should not perpetrate a Holocaust rather than that they had done so already, and that by her second she meant only that the Palestinians had a theoretical right to self-defense not that Hamas’s rocket-fire amounted to self-defense. But these would be lawyerly constructions, begging the question why Warren had refrained from refuting head-on the Israel/Nazi parallel or the implication that Hamas was acting in “self-defense.” Indeed, offstage immediately after, a television reporter prompted the Senator to say anything at all pro-Israel, “So if people feel you are favoring Israel in any way, that is wrong?” But Warren refused this bait, replying simply: “I think that peace favors both peoples, and that’s what we really need.”

I met Leonard Cohen in 1954 when I was a student in “Great Writings of European literature,” the only undergraduate course at McGill University that satisfied my idea of the intellectual life. Satisfied it, though, to satiety. Whether our teacher, Louis Dudek, wanted to share his enthusiasm for every work he admired, or knew how slight were our chances of being educated by anyone else, he drove us through the modern classics like sheep before a storm. October 7: Candide; October 12: Zadig; October 21: Rameau’s Nephew; October 26: Rousseau’s Confessions; November 2: La Nouvelle Heloise;. . . I stopped attending some of my other classes.

Dudek’s class met in the Arts Building on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 5 to 6 P.M., an hour when the regular university day was ending to make way for the apprentice accountants and other extension-school students. About 50 of us filled all the seats, making the tall room, with our coats and books piled along the aisles and walls, almost homey. By late autumn, darkness fell like a blind over the windows, so that if you tried to look out, you saw only your flushed reflection in the glass. I was anyway what you might call intense, and those classes stoked me to great excitement.

The late hour meant that on Fridays the Jewish majority of the class would not make it home in time to greet the Sabbath. Back then our Montreal Jewish homes were sufficiently lax to sustain this irregularity, and any conflicts between home and school were expected to be resolved democratically, that is, on the side of the Christian majority whose school McGill was deemed to be. My own immigrant parents were far too busy putting bread on the table and mourning their dead in Europe to notice infractions of Jewish law, and they worried more about how we impressed our teachers than about how we obeyed our God. McGill’s discriminatory admissions policy, which required of Jews a higher academic standing and severely limited their access to certain faculties, had begun to change in 1950, only a few years before we arrived. This made us eager to prove worthy of the tolerance we were being shown, and a touch disdainful, too, of the bigots who had tried to keep us out. In truth, we felt fortunate to be nudged by our parents into a society that was still a little reluctant to welcome us. Growing up between these two sets of adults, both of which had either lost or were rapidly losing their cultural confidence, we felt we would almost inevitably improve on their ways of running things.

Dudek invited us to train for this prospect. Jews and Catholics and Protestants—the last, uncharacteristically, in the minority here—were to study together our common European past, and, leaving particularisms at the door, to experience as cosmopolitans our common Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, Modernity. Not until 30 years later did I realize how our teacher figured in this scheme. He was the child of Polish Catholics, hence almost as provisional as we were in that bastion of Protestant Canada, in an English department most of whose professors had been imported from Great Britain.

Out of the Anglo-Jewish Past
Richard Carwardine is the president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, and the author of “Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power” (2003), for which he won the 2004 Lincoln Prize.

Historians are rarely satisfied with their evidence: They want more. When writing my political life of Abraham Lincoln, I lamented that the Civil War president didn’t keep a private journal. Now, as the head of one of Oxford University’s historic colleges, I have another fancy: to identify the anonymous 12th-century Jewish traveler whose Hebrew prayer book, quite possibly the oldest extant in Europe, is one of the many treasures in my college’s library. Although this particular jewel has been in our possession for centuries, it has only now become the subject of scholarly scrutiny and excitement.

The outer leaves of the Ashkenazic prayer book, originally blank, contain a list in a Sephardic script of the names of the debtors to whom the owner had lent money on his travels—written in Arabic but in Hebrew letters. Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Corpus Christi College, which will reach its 500th birthday in 2017, is celebrated as Oxford’s first Renaissance institution. The bishop-statesman Richard Fox, right-hand man to the Tudor monarchs Henry VII and Henry VIII, founded the college to instruct students in the sciences and the languages of the Bible: Hebrew and Greek. From the first, Corpus took a lead in Jewish learning and built an acclaimed library. Among the scores of manuscripts the college used for teaching its young men were Hebrew texts, several donated by the first president and noted collector, John Claymond. How and when he acquired them we don’t know—and this is only a part of their mystery. They are the jewels of a small but spectacular collection of medieval Anglo-Jewish books.

The Keystone Pipeline is a very hot partisan issue….almost all the Republican Congressional incumbents have voted in support of the Keystone Pipeline without any limiting amendments and only about 30 Democrats supported it…..rsk
Environmentalists say the new pipeline will be a disaster. We lived through these scare tactics before.

Earlier this year the Obama administration again delayed a decision about the Keystone XL pipeline. The 1,200 mile, $5.2 billion pipeline could increase North American energy security and create more than 15,000 jobs. But behind the White House’s unwillingness to move forward are environmental groups that vehemently oppose the project. Groups like the Sierra Club warn that Keystone “poses a health risk to our communities” and is a “climate disaster in the making.”

We’ve lived through these scare tactics before. Exhibit A is the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Since its completion in 1977, this technological marvel has conveyed more than 17 billion barrels of oil, worth more than $1.5 trillion in today’s dollars, from Alaska’s North Slope to the Port of Valdez for shipment to the lower 48 states. Yet the pipeline was almost not built, thanks to a propaganda campaign by environmental groups beginning in 1969. Most of their dire warnings have proved inaccurate.

The Wilderness Society, for example, issued a resolution warning that the pipeline threatened “imminent, grave and irreparable damage to the ecology, wilderness values, natural resources, recreational potential, and total environment of Alaska.” James Moorman, counsel to the Environmental Defense Fund, predicted that “disastrous massive oil spills along literally thousands of miles of the Pacific Coast” were “inevitable.” David Bower, then president of Friends of the Earth, said that, “If, as many scientists fear, we are approaching the point of no return in a race to oblivion, then we urge that all the checks and balances of Government be used, not superficially, to ensure a tenable future for us all.”

In March 1970 the Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth and the Environmental Defense Fund sued to block the pipeline. The lawsuit claimed the pipeline would “have a substantial adverse environmental impact on a significant portion of the Alaska wilderness.” The complaint also warned it would “interfere with the natural and migratory movements of wildlife, primarily caribou and moose.”

The resulting court injunction and other legal hurdles delayed the project until Congress passed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act in November 19

America’s economy has not worked for average families since the Clinton administration ended.

If they were judging the economy by the monthly jobs report, working Americans would be popping champagne corks. Total employment has risen every month for more than four years. According to the Current Population Survey, more than eight million jobs have been created since the trough, while the number of unemployed has been cut by nearly six million. The unemployment rate has declined to 6.1% from 10%, and the number of Americans enduring long-term unemployment (27 weeks or more) has fallen to three million from 4.3 million in the past 12 months.

Yet average Americans remain gloomy about the current economy and anxious about its future. According to a Pew Research Center report released this month, only 21% rate current conditions as excellent or good, versus 79% fair or poor. Only 33% say that jobs are readily available in their communities; when asked about good jobs, that figure falls to 26%. Only 22% believe the economy will be better a year from now; 22% think it will be worse, while fully 54% think it will be the same.

More than five years after the official end of the recession, the Public Religion Research Institute finds, only 21% of Americans believe the recession has ended.

Two recent reports help explain the disconnect between the official jobs numbers and the economic experience of most Americans. Every fall, the U.S. Commerce Department issues a detailed analysis of trends in income, poverty and health insurance. Although economists have some technical quibbles with the Commerce data, the broad trends are unmistakable

Last night, with great fanfare, it was announced that U.S. airstrikes on the Islamic State, focusing on the city of Raqqah, Syria were “joined” by five regional “moderate Sunni Arab allies,” namely the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrein, and Qatar. The UAE was singled out, perhaps because of its recently reported air strikes on jihadist militias in Libya.

London Telegraph analyst David Blair, however, provided this note of caution about the potential extent of UAE involvement:

But the UAE shares the traditional Arab reluctance to join Western-led military offensives. Whether its air force is carrying out combat sorties in Syria is unclear. If not, the UAE’s role may be confined to opening its air space and allowing the US to use al-Minhad military air base near Dubai.

While we withhold our collective breathless anticipation to learn which significant IS (or other “un-Islamic” jihad terrorist) targets the crack UAE pilots have destroyed—or “allowed” our own brave U.S. pilots to destroy—assessing the authentic “moderate” Islamic Weltanschauung of our Emirati allies, is a sobering experience.

Fortunately, the combined efforts (largely) of our own U.S. Department of State (USDOS, here, here), and Congressional Research Service, render clear understanding of the UAE’s Sharia-based worldview a straightforward task. What these reports reveal, in summary, is that the UAE is a Sharia-supremacist Muslim state, and a thoroughly anti-democratic despotism, even beyond the application of Islamic law, per se.

Briefly, here are salient examples of the UAE’s unmollified Sharia supremacism—and its predictable consequences for women and non-Muslims—derived (mostly verbatim) from the USDOS (here, here) reports.

The constitution declares that Islam is the official religion of all seven of the constituent emirates of the federal union and defines all citizens as Muslims.

Thousands of people converged outside of the Metropolitan Opera in NYC on Monday, Sept. 22 to denounce the staging of a wildly anti-Semitic opera, the “Death of Klinghoffer.”

Thousands of protesters showed up to tell the Metropolitan Opera patrons, arriving Monday night, Sept. 22, for the year’s black tie gala, that staging the opera named the “Death of Klinghoffer” was a vile act of anti-Semitism.

Politicians, such as former New York Governor Pataki, and U.S. Congressman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), an Israeli knesset member, local politicians, rabbis, activists, heads of Jewish Zionist organizations and Evangelical Zionist organizations, former U.S. Attorney General Judge Michael Mukasey, victims of terrorism and Jewish high school students came to voice their protest against the “Death of Klinghoffer” opera.Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey spoke out strongly against the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, Peter Gelb, insisting on staging the “Death of Klinghoffer” at the Metropolitan Opera. Mukasey was scathing in his denunciation of Gelb and his wrongheaded decision.

Several American presidents have had quarrels with their generals, sometimes for reluctance to take the fight to the enemy, occasionally for wanting to take too much fight to the foe. Generals have to be careful in these quarrels.

Abraham Lincoln despaired of the sloth and timidity of George B. McClellan, a dandy in medals and ribbons who was a punching bag for Robert E. Lee and was forever begging for more men. “Sending more men to McClellan,” Lincoln said, “is like shoveling flies across a barn.”

Douglas MacArthur, a genius at squeezing success from meager resources in trying to save the Phillippines, begged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to distraction with pleas to get some of the troops FDR was sending to Europe. A decade later MacArthur pushed President Harry S Truman an impertinence too far, demanding to be allowed to bomb Chinese concentrations of troops and supplies north of the Yalu River, and was sacked for it.

The generals — MacArthur excepted — always know when to stop, salute and figure out another route to what they want. Sometimes they depend on old friends and colleagues safely in retirement to continue to make their arguments.

President Obama is nobody’s idea of a soldier or strategist, and suspicion grows nearly everywhere that he’s in water far over his head and has no idea of how to dog-paddle out of danger. Everything he touches turns to mud — Syria, Benghazi, Libya and now the Islamic State, or ISIS as most people call it. The generals, taught by law, tradition and instinct to hold their tongues, nevertheless see another train wreck coming and are making noises, carefully.

Mr. Obama, now that he has promised to destroy ISIS, thinks he can do it with allies who hardly know the business end of a gun and can’t shoot straight when they do. He tries to inspire his soldiers with promises that no matter what, they won’t be called on to fight, that they have “no combat mission.” (This was his strategy at Benghazi.)

I’m temporary between road trips, so some quick thoughts on the newly launched U.S. bombing campaign against jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

1. As significant as the strikes on IS/ISIS are the attacks against al-Qaeda franchises that have not broken away from original al-Qaeda. I’ve been arguing for a few weeks (e.g., here) that IS/ISIS is not even half of the equation — that al-Qaeda is also more powerful than it was prior to 9/11/01. Shortly after that, we got congressional testimony from Obama’s national-security team and other administration statements to the effect that al-Qaeda could be a more imminent threat to attack the US (even if IS/ISIS is currently the more powerful of the two networks in Iraq/Syria).

2. If the administration is accurately stating that the al-Qaeda threat is imminent, the strategic importance of hitting al-Qaeda targets is obvious. But it is also worth considering the significant legal considerations.

The administration has been arguing that military action against IS/ISIS does not require congressional approval because it is covered by the 2001 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) that applied to the 9/11 attacks and the 2002 AUMF that applied to Iraq. This argument may technically be correct (John Yoo makes a strong case for it, here and here), but it is debatable. IS/ISIS did not exist as such in 2001–02. It is, however, an al-Qaeda spin-off and the 2001 AUMF has been broadly construed to include other al-Qaeda franchises that exist now but did not on 9/11. The Iraq AUMF has also been very broadly construed . . . not to mention that the franchise IS/ISIS grew out of is al-Qaeda in Iraq (also known as AQI and AQIM — as in al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia).

But now, let’s add the al-Qaeda franchises into the mix (notwithstanding that they are in an on-again, off-again intramural jihad with IS/ISIS). There is no question that they are covered by the existing military force authorizations as those have been construed for the past 13 years (as I have long contended, this interpretation is a strained reading of the text, which has long needed overhauling). Equally significantly, consider the repeated recent statements by executive branch officials that the al-Qaeda franchises in Syria/Iraq pose “an imminent threat” to the United States. It is a longstanding doctrine, affirmed by the Supreme Court since the Civil War, that when there is an imminent threat the president has not only the authority but the duty to respond with any necessary force — it is an inherent power of the presidency under Article II of the Constitution and does not require a congressional green light.

The unleashing of the campaign of U.S. air strikes on terrorist targets throughout Syria last night may be the beginning of an offensive that will, as President Obama claimed this morning, “take the fight” to ISIS. If so, the bombings must be judged to be a commendable, if belated instance of presidential leadership. But as even the president’s cheering section at MSNBC and other liberal strongholds suddenly take on the appearance of being “war lovers,” it’s fair to wonder about one question that was uppermost on the minds of most of the media this past summer when other terrorists were being pounded from the air: what about the civilian casualties and infrastructure damage?

Accounts of the attacks on ISIS targets as well as those on the Khorasan group speak of strikes on bases, training camps, and checkpoints as well as command-and-control centers in four provinces and having been in the vicinity of several Syrian cities. Many terrorists may have been killed and severe damage done to the ability of both ISIS and the Khorasan group to conduct operations. The first videos of the aftermath of the bombings show members of the groups digging out the rubble and seeking survivors of the attacks. The surrounding area appears to be one of built-up structures. While some of these bases and command-and-control centers may well have been in isolated places, it is likely that many, if not most, were in the vicinity of civilian residences. All of which leads to the question that almost no one, at least in the American media, is asking today: what about civilian casualties or damage to infrastructure facilities that might severely impact the quality of life of those who live in these areas?

If we are being honest, the answer to such queries is clear: we don’t know. American forces conduct such operations under rules of engagement that seek to limit if not totally eliminate non-military casualties. But even under the strictest limits, civilians are killed in war. It is also to be hoped that all of the strikes were conducted with perfect accuracy, but that is the sort of thing that generally only happens in movies. In real life, war is conducted in an environment in which a host of factors make perfection as unattainable as it is in every other aspect of life. Which means it is almost certain that at least some Syrian civilians (a population that may include supporters of the terrorists and some who are essentially their hostages) were killed and wounded last night.