RUTHFULLY YOURS

To prevent an even more brutal and extreme successor from taking over, Gaza must be dismantled and the non-belligerent population relocated.

Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.

– Golda Meir, cited in The New York Times, December 9, 1978

We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

– Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons, March 1, 1848

If only Israeli strategic policy were founded on the enduring, down-to-earth wisdom embodied in the two preceding quotations. They convey the essence of Israel’s international and regional environments – the cynical self-interest that characterizes the former, and the unbridled brutality that characterizes the latter.

In recent decades, any understanding of these basic precepts seems starkly absent from the formulation – and certainly, the implementation – of Israeli strategic plans.

Politics as moralistic self-recrimination

As The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens recently pointed out, the conduct of Israel’s international politics, which ought to be an exercise in power and preservation of self-interest, has degenerated into moralistic self-reflection and self-recrimination.

In an international environment characterized by cynical self-interest and a regional environment characterized by unbridled brutality, such behavior is wildly inappropriate, and unless reined in and reversed, self-destructive.

As Operation Protective Edge drags on, needlessly and inexplicably, into its fourth week, one thing is becoming excruciatingly clear: Israel has lost all sense of strategic direction.

They come from every corner of the country – investment bankers, farmers, computer geeks, jazz drummers, botany professors, car mechanics – leaving their jobs and their families. They put on uniforms that are invariably too tight or too baggy, sign out their gear and guns. Then, scrambling onto military vehicles, 70,000 reservists – women and men – join the young conscripts of what is proportionally the world’s largest citizen army. They all know that some of them will return maimed or not at all. And yet, without hesitation or (for the most part) complaint, proudly responding to the call-up, Israelis stand ready to defend their nation. They risk their lives for an idea.

The idea is Zionism. It is the belief that the Jewish people should have their own sovereign state in the Land of Israel. Though founded less than 150 years ago, the Zionist movement sprung from a 4,000-year-long bond between the Jewish people and its historic homeland, an attachment sustained throughout 20 centuries of exile. This is why Zionism achieved its goals and remains relevant and rigorous today. It is why citizens of Israel – the state that Zionism created – willingly take up arms. They believe their idea is worth fighting for.

Yet Zionism, arguably more than any other contemporary ideology, is demonized. “All Zionists are legitimate targets everywhere in the world!” declared a banner recently paraded by anti-Israel protesters in Denmark. “Dogs are allowed in this establishment but Zionists are not under any circumstances,” warned a sign in the window of a Belgian cafe. A Jewish demonstrator in Iceland was accosted and told, “You Zionist pig, I’m going to behead you.”

In certain academic and media circles, Zionism is synonymous with colonialism and imperialism. Critics on the radical right and left have likened it to racism or, worse, Nazism. And that is in the West. In the Middle East, Zionism is the ultimate abomination – the product of a Holocaust that many in the region deny ever happened while maintaining nevertheless that the Zionists deserved it.

What is it about Zionism that elicits such loathing? After all, the longing of a dispersed people for a state of their own cannot possibly be so repugnant, especially after that people endured centuries of massacres and expulsions, culminating in history’s largest mass murder. Perhaps revulsion toward Zionism stems from its unusual blend of national identity, religion and loyalty to a land. Japan offers the closest parallel, but despite its rapacious past, Japanese nationalism doesn’t evoke the abhorrence aroused by Zionism.

I realize that one is supposed to grieve incessantly over the loss of civilian life in Gaza, over the deaths of innocent women and children, or over the mourning of mothers for their sons and wives for the husbands. All of them have been robbed of their lives by a cruel world, or just the nefarious Jews who wantonly fire into civilian areas just to kill people.

Israel has certainly publicly embraced this outpouring of anguish, saying all the right things, as in “we deeply regret the loss of civilian life…” or “we do everything to avoid civilian casualties…” or PM Netanyahu’s now-famous sound bite that “we use our missiles to protect our civilians, while they use their civilians to protect their missiles” (it is a good line). And Israel is sincere in these protestations.

Count me among those who found it hard to muster any sympathy for these Gazans, who routinely rejoice over Jewish deaths and would applaud the massacre and slaughter of any Jews. Let’s face a few facts and debunk the canard of the sacred civilian of the Gaza Strip.

First, even their combatants are “civilians,” and intentionally so. In blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, Hamas terrorists (the same applies to Islamic terrorists across the world) do not wear uniforms and intentionally try to blend in to the “civilian” population. Thus, when they are killed, the familiar scenes of sorrow can appear on the television screen, of the bereaved Arab crying, “look, they killed the teacher…the preacher…the butcher…the baker…the bomb- (rather, the candlestick-) maker.” Israel has to habitually identify – even by name! – these alleged civilians in order to refute the accusation that they are killing civilians. To the Arab way of thinking, no one is ever a soldier; they are all civilians.

Second, as is now well known, Hamas conceals its weapons and launches its rockets from the very heart of its civilian population. They have made their civilians the targets, and official Israel has done an outstanding job in underscoring this point. Homes and hospitals, mosques and schools, are used as both weapons storage sites as well as launching pads for rockets and missiles. That is a war crime, and Israel would do well to ignore all the hollow complaints and continue its offensive until Gaza is rid of Hamas. It would dramatically improve the lives of the civilians in Gaza, however many remain alive.

Of course, Israel’s sensitivity to this issue is such that it undermines the military success of this mission – while certainly acting in a humanitarian way – by warning the Arab inhabitants of targeted areas to leave, and to leave quickly, before a raid. This saves civilian lives, but it also allows Hamas-niks to escape their day of reckoning. In the end, buildings are destroyed, but the enemy, who can soon rebuild those buildings and those weapons sites, lives to terrorize another day

While Israelis are fighting and dying, families huddling in bomb shelters and soldiers going off to face death, the men and women in suits and power suits moving through the great halls of diplomacy are using them as pawns in a larger game.

During the Cold War, Israel was a pawn in a larger struggle between the US and the USSR. Now it is back to being a counter in a larger game.

Israel’s function within the great halls of diplomacy was always as a lever on the Arab states. It was not an end, but a means of moving them one way or another. When the Arab states drifted into the Soviet orbit, the “Special Relationship” was born. The relationship accomplished its goal once Egypt was pried out of the Soviet orbit. It has lingered on because of the emotional and cultural ties of Israel and the US.

Now Obama is using Israel as a lever to push Egypt back into the Islamist camp. Egypt’s rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood broke the Arab Spring. Political Islam, which seemed to be on the ascendance, is back to being a freak show represented by terrorists and Turkey’s mad mustachioed dictator.

Egypt was where Obama went to begin the Arab Spring. Egypt is still his target. Israel is just the lever.

The reason Israel was never allowed to truly win any wars was because it was being used as a lever. By being a “good lever” during the Cold War, it could damage Egypt enough that the latter would come to the negotiating table overseen by the US and move back into the Western sphere of influence.

Israel couldn’t be allowed to win a big enough victory because then there would nothing to negotiate. Likewise, Israel wouldn’t be allowed to keep what it won because then there would be no reason for Egypt to come to the negotiating table. Sometimes Israel would even be expected to lose, as in the Yom Kippur War, to force it to come to the negotiating table.

Swap Egypt for the PLO and that’s how the disastrous peace process happened. Then swap the PLO for Hamas and that is where we are now.

Obama’s initial support for Israel’s war on Hamas was only to the extent necessary to bring the terrorist group to the negotiating table. And then once Hamas comes to the negotiating table, the White House will back its demands against Israel in exchange for getting the Brotherhood on board with its agenda.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/vermont-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=puball

Primary: August 26, 2014

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).

U.S. Senate

Pat Leahy (D) Next Election in 2016.
Bernie Sanders (I) Next Election in 2018.

Not sure of your district? Click here to find out

US HOUSE OF REP LOGO

At Large:
Peter Welch (D) Incumbent

http://www.welchforcongress.com/ http://www.welch.house.gov/#dialog

http://www.ontheissues.org/house/peter_welch.htm**

Rated +2 by AAI, indicating pro-Arab pro-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE “Access to quality, affordable health care for every American is long overdue. The Affordable Care Act will bring peace of mind to millions of working Americans and their families, take decisions about health care coverage out of the hands of insurance companies, expand cost effective preventive services, and improve health care coverage for seniors.” Congressman Welch:

Expanded nationwide a pioneering Vermont health care model that rewards health care providers for improved patient outcomes rather than the number of procedures performed;
Introduced legislation to save taxpayers and seniors $160 billion through the negotiation of lower prescription drug prices for Medicare recipients;
Strongly supports a woman’s right to choose and access to preventive health care services for women; and
Founded the bipartisan Affordable Medicines Caucus, a coalition of House members working to lower prescription drug prices.

ENERGY Voted against construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline without limiting amendments. Congressman Welch:

Is the nationally recognized champion in Congress of energy efficiency investments that create good manufacturing jobs, cut energy bills and improve the environment;
Supports federal investments and incentives to create a 21st century green energy economy; and
Opposes taxpayer subsidies for the oil, nuclear and ethanol industries.

Mark Donka (R) Challenger

http://www.markdonkaforvt.com/

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE From the second President Obama forced through a 2,300 page law that no one read with back room deals and not a single Republican vote, ObamaCare became partisan government at its worst – intrusive, expensive and ineffective. Mark will fight to repeal this disastrous piece of legislation and put patients back in control of their own healthcare. To boot, Congress was given an exception from participating. Peter Welch does not have Obamacare, why should you?

BORDER SECURITY AND IMMIGRATION The latest assault on our southern border is another clear sign that this administration is incapable of dealing with or anticipating problems that are a direct threat to our national security. Every scandal or situation appears to surprise them. In Congress, he’ll fight to lock down our borders and will continue to oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants. We encourage all who want the promise of the American dream to come to the United State, but there is a legal manner in which to do so. Congress tried amnesty once in 1986!! We need better solutions not empty promises and do-overs at the taxpayers’ expense.

ENERGY It’s time for an all-of-the-above energy policy which embraces our domestic resources, peels back the overreach of the EPA and approves the Keystone XL pipeline. We need to continue to experiment with the aid of technology.

MILITARY In Congress, supporting our soldiers in the field and veterans at home will continue to be one of his top priorities. The top priority of the Constitution is to protect the United States of America. President Obama continues vacant promises. He knew about the VA issues in 2007, acknowledging his intentions to take care of our vets. He did nothing. It’s time to remove the do-nothing crowd from Washington. His bizarre West Point speech was given an appropriate chilling response from the core of our next generation heroes. Another guidepost indicating how out of touch this administration is.

SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL Amidst the turmoil in the Middle East stands Israel as a true friend to America and our best ally in the region. The recent nuclear “treaty” President Obama and John Kerry negotiated with Iran highlights the erosion of our once unbreakable alliance with Israel. In Congress, Mark will call for a renewed American commitment to our trusted ally. President Obama’s abysmal Foreign Policy has the world mocking the US and utterly confused in its global role.
Don Nolte (R) Challenger

http://www.nolte-for-us-house-vt-2014.com/
Donald Russell (R) Challenger

https://www.donaldrussellforuscongress.com/

NRA life member since 1997

Also a member of: ​gun owners of Vermont, gun owners of America

Les Feldick ministries, international fellowship of Christians and Jews,

The veterans of foreign wars, the American legion

Disabled American veterans ,paralyzed vets of America

The Heritage foundation, Marine Toys For Tots

Vermont sheriffs’ assoc. The Humane Society

English As Official Language

Matthew Andrews (Liberty Union) Challenger

https://www.facebook.com/peopleunite
Cris Ericson (I) Challenger

http://vermontnews.livejournal.com/
Randall Meyer (I) Challenger

No website
Jerry Trudell (I) Challenger

No website

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/vermont-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=puball#ixzz392jaFOu6
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Two months ago during a regular visit to PJ Media I viewed a very short piece about a scientific study on a species of fish from vastly different locations having an identical complex mechanism that the scientist concluded was yet another proof of Darwinian evolution. The PJ Media author (couldn’t find – only remember the point) countered that the scientist’s evidence, rather than pointing to evolution, logically undercut such a conclusion and in fact was supportive of intelligent design, a theory holding that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process. My light bulb went off. Twenty years ago I read a short book on ID. The logic of the theory and examples were so overwhelming for me that I abruptly switched from agnostic to deist. Then, satisfied I could continue to avoid organized religion without guilt, I went on with my life, until that visit to PJ Media. Why was a political site making snarky with a scientific dispute? To quote Vince Lombardi, I thought “what the hell is going out here?” Well let me tell you….

The scientific community overwhelming views humanity as materialist happenstance, attributing nothing exceptional to humans. The universe, galaxy, solar system, earth and everything on it came into existence by an undirected random process they say. These materialists fancy themselves as slowly but surely answering all the origins of universe and life questions. Believers in the super natural can’t get on their bus. Not only are their gods false, but dangerous to scientific progress.

According to a 2013 survey of National Academy of Science members, 93% were self-described atheists. The Academy is the most prestigious American scientific body with 2,200 elected members. That 7% are not atheists is alarming to Neil de Grasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, popular for hosting PBS’s Cosmos and the public face of science in America. He is a very frequent guest on many pop-culture programs (especially Bill Maher), taking delight in mocking religion and making clear the harm religious belief has on science. The March 2014 reboot of Cosmos had an introduction by Obama that featured Carl Sagan’s “the cosmos is all that is, or ever will be” – materialism through-and-through.

As I delved into the ID story it became apparent that science,the systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and reliably applied, is no longer an accurate explanation. It has become a powerful force in the progressive movement, based on dogma and intolerance to marginalize and mock anything that may be edging toward different conclusions when viewing the same scientific evidence, especially ID theory.

The old story about the deadly scorpion and the frog has been adapted to the current situation in the Middle East.

In the original fable, the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across a river, but the frog is afraid of being stung. The scorpion manages to convince the frog by arguing that, if he were to sting the frog while being carried across water, both would sink and drown. Convinced by the scorpion’s logic, the frog embarks across the river with the scorpion on his back — only to be stung halfway across.

As both scorpion and frog descend to their deaths, the frog asks the scorpion why he stung him.

“Because that’s my nature — and this is the Middle East,” replies the scorpion in the new iteration of the story.

Sadly, the most recent war between Hamas and Israel reflects the moral of the story.

Hamas persists in its incessant rocket war against Israel, even firing a missile at the precise moment a hard-negotiated five-hour ceasefire came to an end. Hamas must certainly realize that it cannot win this war. It is outmatched and alone, virtually isolated from its Arab allies. Egypt, in fact, may be more inclined to see Hamas decimated than to lift a finger in support.

Yet it is the nature of Hamas to commit these senseless acts of terror — and after all, this is the Middle East.

The leadership of Hamas has lost its already tenuous connection to reality, forcing upon Israel and the rest of the civilized world a question that looms like a dark cloud over the horizon: how to cope with a nation-state that has given itself over to its own suicide?

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/blog/detail/israeli-woman-recounts-harrowing-experiences-living-on-the-gaza-border

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqonroORsSA

On Friday, writing about the four-hour detention by US Customs & Border Protection of a troop of Iowa boy scouts, I put it this way:

American life is bifurcating into the undocumented and the overdocumented. On the southern border, the bazillions of US laws are meaningless – proof of identity, medical tests, none of it matters. And the less it matters on the Rio Grande the more the zealots on the 49th Parallel will take apart your car if they think you’ve got a Kinder egg in there. Anyone who thinks that attitude can be confined to the border and not work its way deep into the rest of American life is deluded.

Thirteen years ago, I opposed the creation of the “Department of Homeland Security” – on the classic Thatcherite ground that if you create a bureaucracy to deal with a problem you’ll never be rid of it. I had expected the usual “mission creep” but that term barely covers what’s happened in the last decade. There is no “homeland security”: At the southern border, the homeland is wide open, and ICE and the Border Patrol, which (like CBP) are both part of DHS, are actively colluding in homeland insecurity.

Meanwhile, Homeland Security “agents” busy themselves raiding the Foxy Lady strip club in Brockton, Massachusetts, because the foxy ladies were giving away knock-off Red Sox or Patriots merchandise with every two lap dances, and dispatching six vehicles to a home in Statesville, North Carolina to seize an imported Land Rover that doesn’t meet EPA emissions standards.

In September 2001, the then Attorney-General, John Ashcroft, rationalized the new Homeland Security apparatus as follows: “There is absolutely no guarantee that these safeguards would have avoided the September 11th occurrence,” he said. “We do know that, without them, the occurrence took place.” And so, without Homeland Security “agents” whiling away their work days checking out exotic dancers or climbing into the full Robocop to terrorize a couple of suburban car collectors, another occurrence could easily occur, couldn’t it?

On the other hand, whatever’s occurring at that wide-open southern border doesn’t pose any risk of additional occurrences occurring, does it? So don’t worry about it.

There is a pattern here. As I wrote here three months ago:

In the Second World War, when the Japanese took Singapore and inflicted what Churchill called the most ignominious defeat in British military history, it was famously said of the colony’s ill-prepared defenses that the guns were pointing the wrong way. In America today, the guns seem to be pointing the wrong way.

House Republicans have released a Lois Lerner email exchange from November 2012 that “clearly demonstrates why Ms. Lerner not only targeted conservatives, but denied such groups their rights to due process and equal protection under the law,” wrote House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp (R-MI) in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. The emails were part of additional evidence the Committee turned over to the Justice Department (DOJ) to support a thorough investigation of the IRS’s criminal behavior. “While the Committee has not seen an evidence of a serious investigation by your Department, it is my sincere hope that in light of this new strong evidence that you immediately begin aggressively investigating this matter or appoint a special counsel. The failure to do so will only further erode public trust in not only the IRS, but the Department as well,” Camp warned.

The emails are indeed damning, and they were sent by Blackberry while Lerner was apparently traveling in Great Britain. Lerner begins an exchange with a personal associate who did not work at the IRS, during which the former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit makes no effort to hide her contempt.

Lerner begins this part of the exchange by saying she overheard some women say America was bankrupt and “going down the tubes.” The friend replies, “You should hear the whacko wing of the GOP. The US is through; too many foreigners sucking the teat; time to hunker down buy ammo and food, and prepare for the end. The right wing radio shows are scary to listen to.” Lerner responds, “Great. Maybe we are through if there are that many assholes.” The friend replies, “And I’m talking about the hosts of the show. The callers are rabid.” Lerner responds, “So we don’t have to worry about aliens terRorists (sic). It’s our own crazies that will take us down.”

Camp is using this information to make the case that Lerner’s bias is self-apparent, and that the DOJ should get more involved in reviewing her, along with the IRS. He also reiterated his contention that Holder has yet to make a determined effort to do so. “Despite the serious investigation and evidence this Committee has undertaken into the IRS’s targeting of individuals for their beliefs, there is no indication that DOJ is taking this matter seriously,” he said in a statement. “In light of this new information, I hope DOJ will aggressively pursue this case and finally appoint a special counsel, so the full truth can be revealed and justice is served.”

In his letter to Holder, Camp reveals that the Committee also discovered that Lerner used her personal email account for official business “including confidential return information” and noted that the DOJ could use its resources to discover “whether there was unauthorized disclosure of taxpayer information in violation of the law.” Camp further refers to an email dated February 22, 2012, in which Lerner contacted an IT professional about a “Virus on Home PC,’” further indicating she kept work info on her home computer, “some of which may have been lost.” Lerner speculates that her computer may have been hacked “because my password was too simple,” raising additional concerns that taxpayer information may have been leaked.