RUTHFULLY YOURS

HB MOUNTAINMAN

First of all as an ecumenical gesture, I would suggest to the Presbyterian leaders who have voted to divest from any company dealing with Israel, to use this freed up and untaxed income to invest in cement factories which deal with Hamas. This cement-millions of cubic feet of it- that Hamas has purchased using donations to Gaza has not been used to build schools, hospitals, recreational facilities or factories. Instead, it has been used to construct dozens of tunnels through which Hamas terrorists-some of them dressed as Israeli soldiers- go through into Israel in order to kill civilians.

While they are at it, the Presbyterians and many others who are sympathetic to Hamas might either invest in or make a direct group purchase of Kalshnikovs, rockets and other ammunition that Hamas regularly stores in schools, hospitals and private homes. When you are getting sympathy and money as victims, perhaps you might want to invest that in things that will actually help your people. Since that won’t happen, perhaps Hamas sympathizers could convince some enterprising munitions factory to make grenades in the form of small textbooks and rocket launchers in the form of hospital beds.

The Palestinians are indeed a poor people. First they had a leader like Arafat who had the opportunity to create a state when, in Oslo, Israel agreed to withdraw from a large swath of the West Bank and from East Jerusalem and recognize an independent Palestine. Instead, Arafat incited the intifada, embarked on an unprecedented spree of terror and carnage throughout Israel and promised his people that they would get all of Israel. In retrospect his reasoning was logical. A stateless people would continue to get donations, from which Arafat could and did take hundreds of millions of dollars .

He wisely salted it away in European banks. His photogenic widow now sits on almost a billion dollars which had been intended to help the Palestinians but now helps her live a nice life in Europe.

Hamas uses its money to make perpetual war but then complains about living conditions in Gaza. Fortunately for Hamas, it has rags like The Guardian in England and many publications in the US calling it a “militant” group instead of savage terrorists. At a certain point, “victims” whose only purpose is to victimize others and , in the process, victimize their own people should have lost the confidence and support of their people.

In Gaza, however, hatred trumps self preservation. Instead of being self imposed victims, the people of Gaza would do well to have the leaders of Hamas permanently embedded into their precious cement. Is that a concrete enough proposal?

http://www.israelemb.org/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Contact_Us.aspx

27 July 2014

Embassy of Israel

Washington, DC 20008

Dear Ambassador and People of Israel:

I am writing to apologize for the utterly irrational behavior of our Secretary of State, John Kerry, and President Barack Obama, for their intransigent hostility to Israel. Their actions and words are beyond contempt. Their actions are such that one can only conclude that they wish Israel to perish by the hands of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and every other nihilist Islamic terrorist group in existence. I want to assure you that I did not vote for Obama, and in fact severed ties with long-term friends because they, knowing his hostility to his own country, a hostility demonstrated by his wanting to swamp this country with Third World savages and criminals from Mexico and Central America, should have been able to judge him by the disasters of his first term of office.

Again, my deepest and sincere apologies for these two harpies.

Best regards, and keep wiping out Hamas. Never mind world opinion. It isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. And never mind the Gazan “casualties.” Those manqués cheered on 9/11/2001, and on 7/7, and on the bombings in Madrid, and Bali, and Moscow. Extinguish Hamas permanently. No retreat, no surrender! That ought to be your battle cry.

Edward Cline

We are witnessing Arab and Muslim war crimes in a never ending spiral of horror inflicted upon Israel’s civilian population as endless salvos of missiles fired by the Hamas occupiers of Gaza rein down upon Israeli villages, towns and cities – and the world yawns.
But then, remarkably, it awakens when the Jews have the unmitigated gall, temerity and chutzpah to defend themselves.

It is then that an outpouring of brutish and irrational hatred towards the Jewish state explodes in much of the morally bankrupt mainstream media, and among the thousands of hate filled Muslims who take to the streets of European capitals in violent displays of terminal intolerance.

Tragically, too many duped non-Muslim dhimmis join with them in the anti-Jewish hate fest. For them, just as among the mainstream media mavens of NPR, CNN, the BBC and other media outlets, ignorance is not bliss.

The world also yawned before and during the dark years of World War 2 when Jews were disappearing all over Europe. It was a time of towering intolerance and we have now retreated to those terrible years yet again.

It was then that Nazism targeted the Jews, always the victim of ancient religious calumnies. Far too many of the peoples of Europe aided and abetted the German Nazis’ systematic slaughter of the stateless and hapless Jewish communities. Indeed if you need to know the name of the largest Jewish cemetery in the world; it is Europe.

But once the Nazi hordes were driven back and defeated the cry came: “Never Again.” But it is happening again and the same world, albeit now with the children and grandchildren of that mostly compliant generation that allowed the Nazi horror to grow and metastasize, are again turning against the Jews and against their reconstituted biblical and ancestral Jewish homeland: Israel.

But this time the intolerance that is leading them into a new dark age is that of the 7th century ideology wrapped in a religion: Islam.

In the words of one of the world’s greatest patriots who helped save the world from the Nazi juggernaut of death:

Although an unobservant Jew who considered his religion “an accident
of birth,” Greenberg said at the end of his life (he died in 1986)
that he was startled to find himself “wanting to be remembered not
only as a great ballplayer, but even more as a great Jewish
ballplayer.”

On a central Illinois baseball field in 1931, a 20-year-old minor
leaguer named Hank Greenberg was heckled by the opposing team’s third
baseman with anti-Semitic insults — language that we in 2014 would
call hate speech. When Greenberg could no longer stand the
provocations, which were echoed by an angry, roaring crowd, he
confronted the third baseman and was rushed out of the park by local
police for protection. Greenberg later said the fracas was “scary.”

Born in New York’s Greenwich Village, Greenberg, standing a little
under 6 feet 4 inches, spent most of his major league career as a
first baseman playing for the Detroit Tigers. He hit 58 home runs in
1938, only two short of Babe Ruth’s 1927 record, and he was twice
chosen as the American League’s most valuable player. He achieved this
against a recurrent aural backdrop of “Christ killer!” and other
anti-Jewish taunts.

Inez Weissman, friend, a stalwart member of Americans for a Safe Israel and a warrior for Jewish causes died on July 19, 2014 in Portland,Oregon. Her memory is a blessing, and John and Beth Newman of Portland who carry on her work are a blessing to her memory.

With condolence and regret….rsk

HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher left no doubt on his show Friday about who he thinks is responsible for the violence in Gaza.

“I feel terrible for a Palestinian child who dies,” Mr. Maher said. “But if it’s your father, your brother, your uncle who’s firing those rockets into Israel, whose fault is it really? Do you really expect the Israelis not to retaliate?”

The comment drew applause from his audience and, surprisingly, gave Mr. Maher something he rarely has on his show: agreement with one of his conservative guests.

Jamie Weinstein, an editor of The Daily Caller, said that extremists will always be trying to harm Israel regardless of the country’s actions.

“I don’t think you can understand the conflict without reading Hamas’ charter, upon which they were founded, which clearly calls — and it’s chilling — calls for not only the destruction of Israel but the murder of Jews generally,” Mr. Weinsten said.

“They say the day will come when the trees will call out and say ‘here’s a Jew come kill him.’ This is the mentality of the people that Israel is fighting,” he continued.

Mr. Maher said he believes that Israel has been effective at defending itself in part because of its scientific expertise.

“Jews have, I think, 155 Nobel Prizes. Muslims have two,” he said. “That seems like kind of a big advantage for team Hebrew.”

The host found himself in hot water earlier this week for a tweet he sent out about the conflict.

“Dealing w/ Hamas is like dealing w/ a crazy woman who’s trying to kill u – u can only hold her wrists so long before you have to slap her,” his message wrote.

UNDERSTANDING OBAMA

What both men have in common is a hard left background which has taught them that the only defining principle in politics is Lenin’s “Kto-Kovo”. Kto-Kovo or Who-Whom reduced all interactions to warfare. The Bolsheviks ushered in the end of rules, decency or honor. All that mattered was who would be able to destroy whom. It didn’t matter whether you had justice on your side, but what you would do about it.
Obama and Putin have the same message for America. “Kto-Kovo.” “Sue me.” “So what?” “I won.”
A Kto-Kovo leader, whether in the 7th century or the 21st century, operates by rallying his followers through bold acts that expand their power and humiliate and destroy the morale of their enemies.
Obama and Putin’s Savage World Order

Amnestiers: The Bible Doesn’t Say Strangers, It Says Resident Aliens

IN THE NAME OF ISLAM

The Muslim Brotherhood’s battalion attacked the village of Kfar Darom and forty-five Israeli militia members protected 400 men, women and children. The Brotherhood’s attacks were beaten back with determined resistance until its Jihadists were forced to retreat leaving behind seventy of their dead.
After the village came under attack from Egyptian armor and air power, it had to be abandoned for decades until Israel liberated the territory on which it had stood. Then the diplomats and reporters who hadn’t cared about the tiny village before, suddenly declared that Kfar Darom was a settlement and the Jews who lived there were occupiers for resettling the land that Muslims had conquered in 1948.
When Kfar Darom was ethnically cleansed again in 2005, the media and the diplomats cheered. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar entered the Kfar Darom synagogue and laid claim to it in the name of Islam.
Israel’s War with the Muslim Brotherhood

Washington Post Muslim Reporter: Was Hamas Expected to Turn the Other Cheek?

VANITY UNFAIR

Mark Levin has called Jon Stewart a self-hating Jew. That’s a mostly inaccurate term that needs to be put to bed. Jon Stewart likes himself. It’s us he doesn’t like.
Jon Stewart doesn’t hate himself. His fake neurotic routine is just a hack comic’s mashup of Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld. It allows him to pose as a non-threatening figure while he’s saying nasty things.
Stewart, like many leftists, does hate being Jewish.
The real problem isn’t Stewart, who was doing bit parts in sitcoms until he lucked into the Bush Administration, and would in a better world be desperately hoping to get to play the delivery boy on an episode of Modern Family.
The problem is that far too many American Jews have become so cut off from their culture that they identify a hack comedian with three facial expressions and a watered down version of a Borscht Belt routine as a cultural lodestone…
Jon Stewart Isn’t a Self-Hating Jew, He Just Hates Being Jewish

Amidst news the Israelis have turned down secretary of State Kerry’s latest, apparently Qatar-inspired, ceasefire, not to mention the other day’s nauseatingly familiar anti-Israel fusillade from the mega-Orwellian UN Human Rights Council, comes word that Hamas had been planning a gigantic attack on Israel this September via its dozens of tunnels.

From the Gatestone Institute [1]:

Hamas had apparently been preparing a murderous assault on Israeli civilian targets for the coming Jewish New Year Holiday, Rosh Hashanah, which begins on September 24, according anonymous sources in the Israeli security services, as reported today [2] by the Israeli daily Maariv.

The Hamas plan consisted of what was to be a surprise attack in which 200 fighters would be dispatched through each of dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas under the border from Gaza to Israel, and seize kibbutzim and other communities while killing and kidnapping Israeli civilians.

Assuming this to be true–and Hamas has already used the tunnels for a similar attack last week–questions arise. Why didn’t Israeli and U.S. intelligence know about the extent and dangers of these tunnels earlier — if they didn’t? And if they did, why didn’t they do something about it?

Well, we don’t know. But at least the Israelis are doing something about it now, even with resistance from the Americans.

Meanwhile, another culprit waits in the wings, perhaps the greatest enabler of all of Hamas terror — the United Nations. I strongly suspect the UN has not just been consistently biased and hateful toward Israel, it has also — at the very least — looked the other way as mass murder and kidnappings (sedatives and handcuffs have been found in the tunnels) were being planned against Israel’s citizens.

We already know that Hamas hid missiles in at least two UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools in Gaza. Ban Ki-moon claimed to be shocked, but I predict he will be really shocked if a full investigation were made because there is far worse.

The Washington Post reports that the presiding judge in the military commission prosecution of the 9/11 plotters has severed from the still unscheduled trial one of the five defendants, Ramzi Binalshibh. That means that, if ultimately tried at all, Binalshibh would be tried separately, who knows when.

As related in the report, the ruling seems very strange. The judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, is said to have explained, as the Post puts it, that “the court needs to resolve whether Binalshibh has the mental capacity to participate in the trial.” This is difficult to square with the report’s simultaneous assertion that “neither the government nor Binalshibh’s lawyer argue that he is mentally incompetent.” To be sure, there have been questions for years about the terrorist’s mental state; but one of his civilian lawyers insisted to the Post that Binalshibh wanted to go to trial with his co-defendants. He did not wish to be severed.

There is also said to be a conflict-of-interest issue to sort out, but that claim, too, does not fare well under scrutiny.

Earlier this year the FBI began probing a defense leak of a manifesto written by Binalshibh’s more notorious co-defendant, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The manifesto was among the many documents covered by a court non-disclosure order. As I detailed in a National Review column, the Bureau ended up interviewing a contract “security officer” responsible for giving Binalshibh’s defense team access to sensitive discovery materials. The security officer’s employer alerted the defendant’s lawyers about the investigation, causing them to complain to the court.

Theoretically, if a defense attorney is alerted to the fact (or at least, the likelihood) that the government is investigating him for possible wrongdoing, that could create a conflict of interest with his client. The lawyer could have a motive to curry favor with prosecutors in order to persuade them not to charge him; that, the thinking goes, could induce him to represent his client less zealously. It is difficult, however, to see that happening here. Not only is the potential conflict highly speculative; the Post reports that the FBI closed its investigation more than two months ago without filing charges.

At this point, the commission judge is considering a variety of pretrial motions filed by all five defendants. That process is expected to last until at least the end of the year. Based on what we know at the moment (and admittedly, there are always things we don’t know – things known only to the litigants in a trial), there seems to be no reason why any potential conflict-of-interest question could not easily be resolved in the next five months – in time for Binalshibh to be tried jointly with his co-defendants. Indeed, I’m betting that the judge has at least a few issues more difficult than that one to deal with.

Republicans need to drive home the obvious: Hillary Clinton owns ALL of Barack Obama’s failures.

In June, before the stunning, gaffe-generating disaster of Hillary Clinton’s book tour, Senator Claire McCaskill (D., Missouri) said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state is the “piñata that everyone loves to hit” because she is the “dominant candidate” for president in 2016.

The 2016 Real Clear Politics’ general election match-up polls support McCaskill’s argument. Hillary Clinton leads every Republican presidential hopeful by an average of 10 percentage points.

However McCaskill’s reference to Clinton as the “dominant candidate” reveals what an attractive target for Republicans Clinton, a dominant national figure for more than two decades, presents.

Republicans need to position Clinton as the de facto “incumbent presidential candidate” and hold her accountable for the unpopular, failed policies of President Obama as if they were her very own.

This tactic was successfully employed against Republicans by Obama and the Democrats during the last two presidential elections.

In 2008 Obama’s general election campaign waged war against the policies of President George W. Bush even though Arizona Senator John McCain, not Bush, was on the ticket.

The Democrats didn’t even need to update that playbook in 2012. Obama re-used the Bush card against the hapless Mitt Romney – an easy call when 68 percent of voters still blamed Bush for the continuing economic stagnation that was then in its sixth year.

Two years from now the GOP can win if Republicans have forged a strong campaign message against the record and policies of an Obama/Clinton ticket. In strictly practical terms, this ticket is easier to believe than either the Bush/McCain or Bush/Romney combo, for Clinton actually served a full term in the Obama White House, and neither McCain nor Romney served in the Bush administration.