RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Middle East is exploding in mayhem and savagery. The region’s system of nation states is disappearing before our eyes, perhaps to be replaced by one or more jihadist movements pledged to the destruction of Western civilization. In the upheavals to come, only one civilizational force, one stable democracy, has the will and the means to fight back and to defend the values of the liberal West. It is the tiny nation state of Israel.

Since this is indisputable, you might think that out of sheer self-interest, if for no other reason, the Western democracies would extend some degree of solidarity to embattled Israel. At the very least, they might defend it against the unrelenting campaign by Arab and third-world powers to vilify and prosecute it at the United Nations and in other international forums. But this the democracies have seemed largely disinclined to do. As a result, not only are we witnessing the near-collapse of Western resolve against the threat of jihadi Islam, but the democratically elected leaders of Israel are the ones being routinely pilloried in enlightened opinion as warmongers, racists, and colonial oppressors.

A key moment in this development occurred at a private dinner party in 2001, when Daniel Bernard, France’s ambassador to England, was overheard remarking that “All the current troubles in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel. Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?” That ugly episode is, in turn, the starting point of a slim ebook by Joshua Muravchik, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, published last January under the title Liberal Oasis: The Truth about Israel. An important contribution in its own right, Liberal Oasis is also an indispensable companion piece to Muravchik’s newly released Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel. Together, the two add up to a powerful indictment of the West’s serial moral failures regarding Israel and the Middle East conflict.

In Liberal Oasis, Muravchik presents a long list of Israel’s extraordinary accomplishments during its 66 years of existence. He begins with a few telling comparisons with the nation whose envoy judged Israel to be a “shitty little country.” As Muravchik reminds us, “big” and “glorious” France had to be bailed out by the United States in World War I, surrendered abjectly to the Nazis in World War II, and then lost brutal colonial wars in Vietnam and Algeria. “Shitty” or not, little Israel, standing alone, defeated numerically superior Arab armies bent on its destruction in 1948, 1967, and 1973.

But that’s far from all. Despite a huge defense burden and the expense of absorbing millions of destitute immigrants from the Middle East, Ethiopia, and the former Soviet Union, Israel is poised to catch up with France in per-capita income, and it has actually pulled ahead in standards of living. “According to the 2012 report of the UN Human Development Program,” Muravchik notes, “France ranks 20th among the world’s nations, behind Israel at 16th.” Though it still thinks of itself as the center of European enlightenment, and though its population is nine times bigger, France trails Israel in Nobel Prize winners, numbers of books published, and numbers of published scientific papers.

Jeff Ludwig is a Harvard University master teacher and has taught at Harvard, Penn State, Boston State College and in urban high schools.

In a remarkable article, “Grand Larceny,” Chloe Valdary powerfully reminds the reader that the Palestinian Arabs have succeeded in reversing the true narrative of Eretz Yisrael.1 They have to a great degree succeeded in convincing people around the world that their land was stolen from them by Israel and the Jews. But Valdary points out that the reverse is closer to the truth. The land that is present-day Israel – including Judea and Samaria – was land that was brutally taken away from the Jewish people after 70 AD, and was only rightfully restored in 1947. The story of Jewish deprivation and suffering for thousands of years is the true story of Middle Eastern “larceny.” Valdary suggests that Israel and the Jewish people need to “re-package” the narrative of the history of Israel to replace the narrative that has gained traction among so many people.

Let us then consider the possible basis for this “new” narrative:

The Romans, Arabs, European Catholics, Seljuks, and other groups persecuted the Jews in their God-given homeland for 2000 years. The Jews remained in the land of their forefathers even though they were officially kicked out by the Romans. A remnant clung to its historical homeland in spite of the so-called diaspora of Jews throughout the world. They endured everything to live and breathe in the homeland of their ancestors assigned as a homeland by Almighty God.2

The ancient Jewish kingdom was dealt a severe blow by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Most of the Jews were taken into exile by the Babylonians. However, the Persians conquered the Babylonians, and recognized that Judea, which included the capital city of Jerusalem, was Jewish land. Under the Persian King Artaxerxes, a large contingent of Jews were allowed to return.3 The Persians in turn were overcome by the Greeks led by Alexander the Great. Alexander recognized that Judea was Jewish land, and showed a lot of respect for the Jewish leadership. Later, other pagan Jew-haters like the Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes wanted to wipe out the Jews and the Jewish religion and steal their land, but he was repulsed miraculously by Judah Maccabee and his brothers. The Romans succeeded to power over Jewish land; however, even though they heavily taxed the Jews and treated them as a conquered people, the Sanhedrin (high level rabbinical court) under the Romans still had some authority. Governors, appointed by the Roman Emperors, along with the Roman military legions, had the ultimate governing control.

The great catastrophe for Jewish civilization was having the Second Temple, the center of Jewish spiritual life, destroyed in 70 AD and having precious Judea and Samaria renamed “Palestina” by the Romans and Jerusalem renamed “Aelia Capitolina.” Despite the Roman carnage, a remnant of Jews remained century-after-century clinging to their hope of restoration, but living as a minority and as second-class citizens in the land of their forefathers. What endurance! They demonstrated the perseverance of the brokenhearted.

It was slightly under a year ago that the not-real peace process, the one driven by the U.S. administration and especially Secretary of State John Kerry, got under way.

In that “process,” Israel and the ostensibly moderate Fatah wing of the Palestinians, led by Mahmoud Abbas, were supposed to negotiate for nine months and reach a conflict-ending two-state solution.

There was a hitch: to reach that pot of gold, Israel would have to release 104 Palestinian prisoners in phased batches. They could not be car thieves and the like; they had to be terrorist murderers. Sometimes the road to peace has strange bumps in it.

That peace process ended with something less than a bang in April. Even though Kerry’s envoy Martin Indyk admitted that Abbas—insufficiently appeased by the prisoner releases—had “shut down” and stopped talking with Israel by December, both Kerry and Indyk managed to blame Israeli building in “settlements,” primarily Jerusalem, for the talks’ failure.

Now, three months since those talks wound down, Israel is at war. It’s been a fierce war, but it offers more hope of peace than Kerry and Indyk’s “process” ever did.

It offers such hope because, after two days, Israel in Operation Protective Edge is displaying even more stunning capabilities than in its previous war against Gaza-based, mainly Hamas terror, the eight-day-long Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012.

As a “senior security official” told the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday evening:

Hamas has been surprised by Israel’s response. We systematically struck operational infrastructure… In the past 36 hours we destroyed more than what was destroyed during all of Operation Pillar of Defense, and many targets were areas where senior Hamas commanders operate….

There’s not a single Hamas brigade commander that has a home to go back to….

So much for offense. On defense, Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile system has been doing even better than in Pillar of Defense, downing over 90% of rockets headed for populated areas.

DO NOT BE FOOLED BE DEVIOUS LEGISLATORS WHO “APPROVE” THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE, BUT WITH “ENVIRONMENTAL? AMENDMENTS THAT ABSOLUTELY DOOM THE PROJECT….RSK
For the sake of American prosperity and security, President Obama needs to approve Keystone.

What do we need to turn our country around? Well, for starters, we need a president who stops getting his energy policies from Hollywood movies — and Hollywood liberals.

Consider President Obama’s dithering when it comes to approving the Keystone XL pipeline. First proposed in 2008, this massive infrastructure project would bring low-cost crude oil from fields in Canada southward to the United States. Despite nearly six years of government reviews — and nearly four dozen oil and gas pipelines already safely operating between the U.S. and Canada — the Obama administration and the State Department still have not approved the pipeline.

The president and liberals in his administration apparently believe in energy policies that are a twisted version of Kevin Costner’s vision in Field of Dreams. While Costner believed that “If you build it, they will come,” the administration apparently believes that if it doesn’t approve Keystone XL, the oil resources in Canada will stay where they are.

But President Obama couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, the Canadian government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently gave preliminary approval to the Northern Gateway pipeline. That project would transport Canadian crude oil from the fields in Alberta westward to British Columbia. From there, it could be shipped by tanker to countries in the Far East.

So the question is not whether or not crude oil will move from Canada into worldwide consumption; that will occur regardless of the State Department’s decision on Keystone XL. The real question is whether the United States will capitalize on the opportunity that Keystone brings to expand our energy supply and reduce prices for consumers — or whether those benefits will go to other countries, including economic and strategic rivals like China.

In addition to generating well-paying jobs — the State Department’s own review concluded that construction would create 40,000 jobs — Keystone XL also represents a key plank in securing the resources America needs to support our economy. The project could reduce the amount of oil America imports from Venezuela, the Middle East, and other unstable regions of the world by up to 40 percent. This will be oil produced in North America, by companies employing thousands of American and Canadian citizens, under governmental frameworks that protect the environment and respect human rights.

But that’s not enough for the radical environmentalist crowd. Hollywood liberals like Robert Redford and Daryl Hannah oppose the pipeline, along with billionaire Tom Steyer — who views Keystone as a political litmus test, and has pledged to spend more than $100 million supporting candidates who share his view. Steyer and others believe that, if Keystone isn’t approved, Canada will “not be able to develop these oil sands.” But their theory just isn’t accurate. The Canadian government’s approval of the Northern Gateway project shows that the oil sands will be developed whether we approve Keystone or not.

When Unions Bark but Don’t Bite Michigan’s unions are discouraged by the success of reform efforts in the Great Lakes region.

On July 7, promises of retribution were kept. As expected, the union establishment struck back against a right-to-work law that had been enacted 18 months earlier in Michigan, the birthplace of the UAW. Taking advantage of their first opportunity, unions submitted substantially more than the 322,609 signatures required to place on the November 2014 ballot a referendum on permanent repeal. Hopes were high in union headquarters, as polls showed a Republican legislative majority and the governor on the ropes: Clearly, a high-profile campaign to make the new law a central issue was having an impact.

Such was the expected story when Governor Rick Snyder signed Michigan’s worker-freedom law in December 2012. After machinations including violent protests outside the capitol and “there will be blood” rhetoric by Democratic state representative Douglas Geiss, most observers expected a major push in 2014 to repeal the law and punish the politicians who enacted it.

The July 7 deadline for petitions to place constitutional amendments on the November ballot has come and gone, as did the May 28 deadline for initiatives to change state laws. On neither date did unions submit the signatures necessary to put right-to-work before Michigan voters.

Furthermore, the (presumably figurative) bloodbath predicted by political allies of the unions for this fall’s elections does not appear to be in the cards. Polls show Governor Snyder with a six-point lead over his Democratic challenger, and Democratic operatives are reportedly pessimistic about their chances to take away Republican majorities of 59–50 in the state house and 26–12 in the state senate.

While Democrats are injecting union issues into the campaign, right-to-work is not central to the effort. Savvy Michigan political consultant Mark Grebner recently told the Washington Examiner, “I’m a Democrat, and I’d say it’s competitive and we’re going to lose.”

This seeming capitulation on right-to-work is certainly a surprise to many. It may be that internal polls show the law isn’t as unpopular as union leaders had hoped, or that financial difficulties are leading some Democrats to face reality. The UAW just increased member dues by 25 percent to shore up its dwindling strike fund, and the Michigan Education Association is more than $122 million in the red, owing to its own internal pension underfunding.

Both unions are most likely mindful that Michigan’s Proposal 2 — which would have prevented right-to-work and given government unions an effective veto over legislation — went down 58–42 in November 2012. It may be that unions in general have learned a lesson from failed efforts elsewhere in the Great Lakes region to roll back recent reforms and un-elect reformers.

No one knows just how many tens of thousands of Central American nationals — most of them desperate, unescorted children and teens — are streaming across America’s southern border. Yet this phenomenon offers us a proverbial teachable moment about the paradoxes and hypocrisies of Latin American immigration to the U.S.

For all the pop romance in Latin America associated with Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, few Latinos prefer to immigrate to such communist utopias or to socialist spin-offs like Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, or Peru.

Instead, hundreds of thousands of poor people continue to risk danger to enter democratic, free-market America, which they have often been taught back home is the source of their misery. They either believe that America’s supposedly inadequate social safety net is far better than the one back home, or that its purportedly cruel free market gives them more opportunities than anywhere in Latin America — or both.

Mexico strictly enforces some of the harshest immigration laws in the world that either summarily deport or jail most who dare to cross Mexican borders illegally, much less attempt to work inside Mexico or become politically active. If America were to emulate Mexico’s immigration policies, millions of Mexican nationals living in the U.S. immediately would be sent home.

How, then, are tens of thousands of Central American children crossing with impunity hundreds of miles of Mexican territory, often sitting atop Mexican trains? Does Mexico believe that the massive influxes will serve to render U.S. immigration law meaningless, and thereby completely shred an already porous border? Is Mexico simply ensuring that the surge of poorer Central Americans doesn’t dare stop in Mexico on its way north?

The media talks of a moral crisis on the border. It is certainly that, but not entirely in the way we are told. What sort of callous parents simply send their children as pawns northward without escort, in selfish hopes of soon winning for themselves either remittances or eventual passage to the U.S? What sort of government allows its vulnerable youth to pack up and leave, without taking any responsibility for such mass flight?

Here in the U.S., how can our government simply choose not to enforce existing laws? In reaction, could U.S. citizens emulate Washington’s ethics and decide not to pay their taxes, or to disregard traffic laws, or to build homes without permits? Who in the pen-and-phone era of Obama gets to decide which law to follow and which to ignore?

Who are the bigots — the rude and unruly protestors who scream and swarm drop-off points and angrily block immigration authority buses to prevent the release of children into their communities, or the shrill counter-protestors who chant back “Viva La Raza” (“Long Live the Race”)? For that matter, how does the racialist term “La Raza” survive as an acceptable title of a national lobby group in this politically correct age of anger at the Washington Redskins football brand?

I heard two explosions, one after the other, indicating that two Kassam rockets had struck my town, Sderot, Israel, at about 1:30 last Thursday morning. Having been through the big fire of last week, when a Kassam ignited a paint factory, I looked out my window for any sign of fire. I saw none. I considered going out to look for the damage, but I knew nobody would be in the streets at that hour. Nobody would be able to direct me in the direction of the bombing. I listened for ambulance or fire-engine sirens, but I heard none. I concluded that it had not been a serious attack. Much of the town seemed dark; it sometimes happens that a Kassam blast knocks out Sderot’s electricity. I returned to bed.

In the morning, the “Breaking News” section of the Jerusalem Post informed me that the blasts I had heard had indeed struck houses in Sderot. I deduced that the fire-engines, ambulances, and other vehicles had not turned their sirens on in the middle of the night, because they did not want to awaken the whole town, and because no traffic would clog the streets at that hour anyway. I set forth to investigate.

Few people were in the streets, because folks stay home on “Kassam days.”

I found helpful citizens who directed me in the general direction of where they had heard the explosions. After several chats, I narrowed my search to Neveh Eshkol, a neighborhood many or most of whose buildings were old “shikunim,” or apartment blocks with small apartments, very often owned by Amigur, which means they are government-owned, highly subsidized flats for families who have little money.

I went into a grocery store to ask exactly where the rockets had fallen. The owner joked, “Do you always come to me with this question?” He referred to the fact that I had indeed asked him about earlier missile attacks on his neighborhood. I pictured them to myself; everybody who lives in Sderot reviews the many bombings he has seen as he passes through the streets where he has seen them. A tree stood near a kindergarten until recently; a Kassam had split it in half on the first day of the school year, and the first Kassam murder in Sderot was that of an elderly immigrant from Bukhara who bled to death after shrapnel hit him as he waited for his granddaughter outside another school.

I knew that hopes of the Muslim terrorists who shoot these missiles at us in order to kill random people of Sderot had not been realized. I was therefore not in the state of agitation and terror with which I approach a home that I know has just been hit, but of whose inhabitants’ fates I do not yet know. I saw various government-types walking around outside the building. We looked up to see the unmistakable hole a Kassam makes in a home’s wall.

Yesterday morning, I reached out to the Brat team to see if they would be making any statement on the situation in Israel today. I forwarded along a link — then hosted at the top of the Drudge Report – to yesterday’s statements by Philip Gordon, the White House’s coordinator for the Middle East, in which Gordon criticized the Israeli government for not currently negotiating with Mahmoud Abbas. (PJ Media’s Ron Radosh criticized Gordon here, and The Times of Israel editor David Horovitz did so here.) I had heard from some — very few, but some — conservatives who were concerned about the loss of Eric Cantor regarding the only issue they trusted Cantor on, and I thought asking for a response to the statements by Philip Gordon might yield a good barometer of Brat’s Middle East intentions.

Moments ago, Brat’s team emailed back with his comments:

Statement of Dave Brat regarding the recent speech at the Israel Conference on Peace in Tel Aviv given by Philip Gordon, the White House coordinator for the Middle East:

“I am deeply troubled by the remarks from the Obama Administration, both for the incompetence in Middle East affairs that the remarks demonstrate and for the narcissism inherent in suggesting that the Obama administration knows how to protect Israeli citizens better than Israel does.

“The White House just rebuked Israel for supposedly ‘not taking advantage’ of the opportunity to negotiate with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas just weeks after Abbas welcomed Hamas — the terrorist organization now attempting to murder Jewish civilians with missile strikes on their cities — back into his ‘unity government.’

“The White House has criticized Israel’s government for not offering concessions to the very terrorists who have driven Israeli citizens into bomb shelters and who choose to operate from residential areas, using innocent bystanders as human shields.

“Most Americans recognize Israel’s right to defend itself from the terrorist regime sworn to its destruction. Unlike the administration, we reject the idea that terrorist missiles are somehow the fault of Israel’s government and that all would be well if only Israel sacrificed even more of its security.”

We’ve all built our Arabic vocabularies a touch since 9-11, but the definition of words can often be problematic. The meaning of concepts like, say, jihad, are notoriously difficult to pin down, even when they shouldn’t be; I think deliberately. One of those elusive terms is hudna, meaning a temporary truce or “quiet.” A permanent truce, i.e., genuine peace, does not seem part of the vocabulary of jihadists whose sworn goal is to make the world Islamic, sooner or later, like it or not. They just take a time out when it looks as if they could be in trouble, like a hockey player with a twisted ankle. As an example, Hamas is known for its hudnas, cooling down (or pretending to) and then heating up again as soon as possible to do what the beginning of its charter always promised it would do — destroy Israel.

For years the bien pensant of the West (Europe, the U.S.) have urged, actually put strong pressure on, Israel to play the hudna game with Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and the rest of the sociopathic Islamofascist crew. The Israelis, from a humanistic tradition and anxious to be thought well of, have acquiesced, even when they have the extreme whip hand. The results have been as one would predict: another war, another hudna and on and on. This has been going on since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, even before that really. In other words, for a long while.

Maybe it’s time for a different approach. How about just…winning?

As I write this, the Jerusalem Post live blog [1] for 6:26 a.m. Israel time is announcing: “A Code Red rocket alert siren was heard a few minutes ago in Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council.” Hamas is evidently still at it.

Yesterday, the terror organization bragged that they had lobbed missiles (missing, thankfully) at the Israeli atomic reactor at Dimona. That’s about as insane as it gets, considering that a hit (were it possible) might generate nuclear fallout all over the Middle East, killing and injuring more Islamic people than Jews, simply because there are so many more of the former, not to mention contaminating the region.

Hamas doesn’t care. And yet I suspect they have been surprised by what has happened to them in the last few days — and so does noted Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, who Wednesday published “Stunned by Israel’s fierce response, Hamas sends distress signals.” [2]

Let’s hope Toameh is right and that the terror organization has been so wounded that it is quietly looking for a way to save face and get out — for now. But let’s further hope that Benjamin Netanyahu will resist that call for a hudna and finish the job.

Many states are having gubernatorial elections in 2014…..New York is one….The present governor Andrew Cuomo occasionally pretends to be a tax reformer but will not approve of fracking which could save the state’s blighted economy. Robert Astorino is his opponenet and deserves to win. Cuomo is also running on the Working Families Party as are many candidates for Congress in the state. Their motto: http://workingfamilies.org/states/new-york/ “Working Families is New York’s progressive political party. The Working Families Party is focused on tackling the political, economic, and educational inequality that deprive working and middle class families of opportunity. Our vision is to build a New York that is fair for all of us, not just the wealthy and well-connected.” Cuomo should be fired by New York’s voters…..rsk

At a recent town hall meeting in Edmond, Oklahoma, local citizens gathered to discuss the possible connection between fracking and increased seismic activity in their area. According to one published report, members of the audience left “disappointed” that no consensus had been reached linking fracking and seismic activity. According to the same report, many in the audience appeared to be “hostile to the oil and gas industry.” Even in this most oil-friendly of states, it seems, there is a rush to judgment linking fracking to every conceivable sort of damage.

Although fracking has been around for fifty years, only recently have technological advances made its widespread use economically feasible. Now fracking is reviving the entire American economy by providing efficient fuel for new industries and slashing energy costs for consumers. By 2015, the U.S. will begin exporting natural gas, most of it produced by fracking.

No wonder the left is furious. Anything that promises to restore American greatness drives leftists crazy. Their dream of global socialism, with America brought down to the bottom of the heap, is at risk, and they have responded by targeting America’s oil and gas industry.

Having tried unsuccessfully to link fracking to groundwater contamination, opponents have turned their attention to the potential link between fracking and earthquake activity. The problem is, even scientists who normally align with the left now admit that hydraulic fracturing itself does not and cannot cause earthquakes. The only unresolved question is whether wastewater injection, a byproduct of current fracking procedures, may contribute to increased seismic activity.

Clearly, the left is engaged in an all-out effort to smear the oil and gas industry by spreading misinformation and fostering confusion – such as ignoring the difference between fracking itself and wastewater injection. The intent of this effort is to cripple the U.S. economy by depriving it of an efficient and reliable source of energy. The ultimate goal, as always, is to strip America of its sovereignty and subject it to the will of a communist world order. The energy industry stands in the way of this agenda, as does every other industry operating within the free market.