RUTHFULLY YOURS

The author of this splendid article is former Israeli Ambassador to Canada-He is the director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
http://jcpa.org/article/changing-historical-narrative-saeb-erekats-new-spin/

Palestinian leaders are manipulating the history of geographic Palestine/Land of Israel. They have manufactured a curious claim, expressed recently by Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, that they are descended from Canaanites and are therefore the indigenous people of the area, present before the emergence of the Jewish people around the year 1500 BCE.

Saeb Erekat’s family is Bedouin. According to Bedouin genealogy, the family is part of the Huweitat clan which originated in the Hejaz area of Saudi Arabia, arrived in Palestine from the south of Jordan, and settled in the village of Abu Dis in the early twentieth century.

Several leading scholars of Middle Eastern studies and Islamic history have confirmed that the Palestinians do not have ancient roots in the area and are trying to invent origins for themselves that predate the Jewish people’s presence.

They explain that most of the Palestinians arrived as part of the waves of immigration that began in the nineteenth century at the time of the emergence of Zionism, attracted by employment opportunities and economic benefits.

The historical presence of the Jewish people in the “Holy Land” is well-documented, not only in the scriptures of all three monotheistic religions, and visible in extensive archeological remains, but also in historic writings by early Greek, Roman, pagan, and other visitors to the area. The fact that Christianity emanated from Judaism is further proof of the presence of a thriving Jewish community in the area.

Manipulating History for Political Purposes

Aside from the topical and pragmatic issues on the negotiating table between Israel and the Palestinians – borders, settlements, refugees, Jerusalem, water, and security arrangements – there is a far deeper discussion that is not taking place in the negotiating room but in the international arena. This discussion involves the issue of historical narratives and the basic question of historic rights to geographic and historic Palestine.

Palestinian leaders are manipulating their history in the land for political purposes. They have manufactured a curious claim, expressed recently by Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, that they are descended from Canaanites and are therefore the indigenous people of the area, present before the emergence of the Jewish people around the year 1500 BCE.

Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, has already established an international reputation for stretching the truth. Many Israelis recall during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 when Erekat went on CNN to assert that Israel had killed “more than 500 people” in Jenin in a “real massacre,”1 adding that 300 Palestinians were being buried in mass graves. It soon became clear that in combat operations at the time, the Palestinian death toll in Jenin was 52: 34 of whom (65 percent) were known military operatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Fatah-Tanzim. Now Erekat’s wild assertions have moved into the field of history as part of a Palestinian battle over the narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Palestinian leadership relies on the thirst of the international media to seriously take up any wild and baseless Palestinian claim; on the pressures of the ongoing negotiating process with the high-level involvement of senior U.S. and European politicians who are keen to show achievements; and, above all, on the wide and almost automatic inclination of the international community to criticize Israel and to buy into any artificial claim uttered by the Palestinian leadership.

Saeb Erekat’s Curious Claim

While one might assume that as the chief Palestinian negotiator and long-term participant in negotiations with Israel since the Madrid Conference of 1991, Saeb Erekat would, and indeed should, be deeply ensconced in the ongoing negotiating process – a process that needs to be conducted in a confidential, serious, and civil manner – this regrettably does not seem to be the case.

  There is presently about as much confusion as when the U.S. entered The Cold War against the Soviet Union in the late 1940s. But there are fundamental defining differences to what is likely to be an equally long and complex new struggle between the U.S., its allies and Moscow.   The two engagements do […]

http://www.dittoville.com/2014/03/20/obamas-munich-bad-analogy-chamberlain-feared-his-enemies-obama-identifies-with-them

Obama’s Munich? Bad analogy:

Chamberlain feared his enemies. Obama identifies with them.

Lacking any or all allegiance to the country that elected him President, Obama’s identifies entirely with the primitive, barbaric cultures of the Old World. America, to his mind, is the world’s villain. What else makes sense of Obama’s indifference to the squashing of human freedom by Iran and Russia?

P.S.- The prez ignores Jihad, oppressive imposed Sharia, despotic and savage regimes throughout the Arab world and Africa. He does get into a snit, however, if Israelis add a porch to an existing home in one of the “settlements”….rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com  http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS   Genetic disease breakthrough.  Dr. Ohad Birk of Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva has discovered the genetic mutations that cause Progressive Cerebro-Cerebellar Atrophy (PCCA) and its variation PCCA2.  A simple blood test can detect both these mutations in prospective parents. http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2014/3/8/researcher-discovers-genetic-mutation-in-moroccan-jews-that-leads-to-crippling-disease#.Uxw56M6s9-c   New Israeli-German lab for neurological illnesses.  The […]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/american-jewish-congress-vp-hillary-clintons-speech-full-of-lies/

Hillary Clinton is carrying on her victory lap for an election she has yet to win by receiving awards from anyone and everyone. If there’s an award out there for something, whether it’s AIDS, Malaria, the oceans or national defense, from the Queen of Spain or the President of Georgia, she already has it.

Along her award route, Clinton stopped by the American Jewish Congress, defending Obama’s plan to let Iran go nuclear and urged Israel to appease terrorists.

Not everyone was a fan.

AJC vice president Herb London told the Washington Free Beacon that Clinton was a “dissimulator” whose remarks were full of “fabrications.”

“As Mark Twain said, ‘There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.’ I would add in Hillary Clinton’s comments,” said London, who is also chairman of the AJC national governing council and a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.

London said the speech ignored critical gaps in the Obama administration’s sanctions policy.

“She does not mention the fact that 22 nations were given special dispensation so they did not have to abide by sanctions,” London said. “And while there was unquestionably pressure put on Iran, there were a lot of illegal dealings and a lot of nations that were violating the sanctions regimen. She didn’t mention that at all.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/03/20/American-Physical-Society-Sees-The-Light-Will-It-Be-The-First-Major-Scientific-Institution-To-Reject-The-Global-Warming-Consensus

PLEASE NOTE: PROFESSOR LINDZEN WROTE THE FOREWORD TO RAEL JEAN ISAACS BOOK “ROOSTERS OF THE APOCALYPSE”
Product Details
Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming is Bankrupting the Western World (New, Revised… by Rael Jean Isaac (Nov 25, 2013)
The American Physical Society (APS) has signalled a dramatic turnabout in its position on “climate change” by appointing three notorious climate skeptics to its panel on public affairs (POPA).

They are:

Professor Richard Lindzen, formerly Alfred P Sloan Professor of Meteorology at Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a highly regarded physicist who once described climate change alarmism on The Larry King Show as “mainly just like little kids locking themselves in dark closets to see how much they can scare each other and themselves.”

John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who has written: “I’m sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see.”

Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, a former Warmist (and still a self-described “luke warmer”) who has infuriated many of her more extremist colleagues by defending skeptics and by testifying to the US House Subcommittee on the Environment that the uncertainties in forecasting climate science are much greater than the alarmists will admit.

As Anthony Watts has noted, this is news guaranteed to make a Warmist’s head explode.

The reason it’s so significant is that it comes only three years after one of the APS’s most distinguished members – Professor Hal Lewis – resigned in disgust at its endorsement of what he called “the global warming scam.”

Disturbed by an “appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change” which “was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members”, Lewis went public with his letter of resignation to the APS’s then President Curtis G Callan Jr. (Callan’s replacement Malcolm Beasley appears to be of a more skeptical bent. When he wrote earlier this year to President Obama congratulating him on his support for “science”, he studiously avoided any mention of the president’s war on climate change)

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/373964/print ‘Your independence is irreversible, absolutely irreversible.” So declared Vice President Joe Biden, thrilling a parliamentary assembly in Pristina, Kosovo. These were still the early months of the Obama administration, and the vice president was touring the Balkans to take a victory lap in the breakaway Serbian territory whose independence he’d done so much to […]

http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=346054

PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas must have gotten a kick out of it on Monday when he visited the White House and President Barack Obama praised him as “somebody who has consistently renounced violence, has consistently sought a diplomatic and peaceful solution that allows for two states, side by side, in peace and security.”

After all, the same day the men met, Abbas’s regime continued its week-long celebration of the deadliest Palestinian terrorist attack on Israel to date.

On March 11, 1978, PLO terrorists commandeered a passenger bus on the coastal highway and massacred 37 people, including 12 children.

Dalal Mughrabi, a female terrorist, led the raid. Ever since, she has been lionized by the PLO.

While he met with Obama, Abbas’s adviser Sultan Abu al-Einein proclaimed that Mughrabi was the ultimate role model for Palestinian women.

In Einein’s words, (reported by Palestinian Media Watch), “In March, [we mark] Palestinian Women’s Day, in March, Palestinian Mother’s Day also occurs, in March… [we remember Dalal Mughrabi] who would not agree to anything other than to establish her state between Jaffa and Lebanon in her special way.”

Einein urged Palestinian youth to follow Mughrabi’s example of mass murder. “Let the young people hear me: Allah, honor us with Martyrdom, Allah, give us the honor of being part of the procession of Martyrs.”

The Israeli Right didn’t need the Mughrabi festival to understand that Obama’s claim that Abbas wants peace is ridiculous. As Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon explained last Saturday, Abbas is “a partner for taking, not for giving.”

Israeli Leftists, who have slavishly championed Abbas, are finally catching on. Last month, in an op-ed in Haaretz, long-time PLO champion Shlomo Avineri acknowledged the dynamic at work in the two-state policy model and how Abbas uses it to Israel’s disadvantage.

Avineri wrote that it is not that Abbas “is no partner for talks, but that he is an excellent partner for talks — as long as they are talks designed to lead Israel to make more and more concessions, and to put them in writing. Then, on one pretext or another, he is unwilling to sign and brings the negotiations to a halt, so they can be restarted in the future ‘where they left off’: with all the previous Israeli concessions included, and no concessions having been put forward by the Palestinian side.”

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The story of Islam is a murder mystery. It’s not a murder mystery that asks who did it, but when it will end. The detective peering through his magnifying glass at a curly hair caught in the door isn’t wondering who did it. He already knows who the killer is. The great mystery is how to make him stop.

This isn’t a story about right and wrong. In the terrains of tribe and clan that the murderers come out of, whether they are raised in a village with two goats and a well or a mansion overlooking a major city; Right is power and Wrong is not having power.

A man is right because he has power. A woman is wrong because she doesn’t. A Muslim is right because he has power. A Christian is wrong because he doesn’t.

When a woman has power and a man doesn’t, the man has been dishonored. When a Christian has power and a Muslim doesn’t, the Muslim has been dishonored.

There is only one answer for dishonor, death. Kill the one who has dishonored you so that you may feel powerful again. The men with the magnifying glasses will call it extremism, but it’s so much simpler and so much more complicated than that.

The powerful need not compromise. They have honor. Those who have no power but do not compromise also have honor. The extremist does not compromise whether in power or out of it. Therefore he always has honor. The extremist is willing to die for the power and honor of Islam.

Islam is never powerless, but is always compromised in some way short of perfect purity.

Perhaps it fails to drive out all the non-Muslims and doesn’t force women to cover their eyes. Or maybe it tolerates chess and kite flying. Even the crudest Salafist finds some human norm short of total and complete extremism. He compromises and the seed of that compromise gives birth to a movement that will not compromise even on that.

Each Islamic movement carries within it the seeds of its own extremist counter-movement and that movement too will carry its own seeds of death. The Islamic revolution devours its own children forever for honor’s sake.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolute honor is the search for absolute power. A power so pure that it transcends the human means necessary to achieve that glorious end. A purity so total that it will elevate the smuggled cocaine, the rapes and murders, the torture and the broken oaths, to the golden truth that the ends of Islam justify all its mangled means.

The murderer kills because he wants power. He goes on killing for honor’s sake. When the blade slips or the victim pulls a gun, then the murderer skulks off into the night nursing his grudges and pledging that he will return or his children will return or their children, for the sake of his honor, on and on through the ages.

This is what the media calls a cycle of violence, but it would be more accurate to call it the cycle of honor.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“We get what we deserve” is a common phrase that describes everything that happens to us, from the behavior of our children, to the money we make, to the political leaders we elect. The concept comes from Luke, writing in the New Testament, “…for we receive the due reward of our deeds.” That phrase – not the Biblical one, but that which has become common usage – should have special meaning for the 76% of New York City residents who did not bother to go to the polls last November 4th. Recent polls suggest that even the few that did go to the polls may be having second thoughts.

The press declared Bill de Blasio’s victory a “landslide,” in that he won about 72% of the votes cast. The new Mayor took it as a mandate, just as did his fellow populist Democrat in the White House in 2008. The fact is, though, turnout in New York City was a record low, the lowest since “mid-20th Century,” according to the New York Times. His Republican opponent was the competent, but uninspiring Joseph Lhota. A 24% turnout meant that only 17% of New York’s eligible voters actually cast their ballots for him, hardly a mandate; though an early endorsement from President Obama made him comfortable in saying, “I won!”

The problem with ideologues, as we have learned from President Obama, is that their “hope and change” prevents then from focusing on practical problems. In their desire to see things as they wish them to be, they ignore the world as it is. People who walk with their heads in the clouds cannot avoid stepping into puddles. In his first few weeks, Mr. de Blasio has stepped into a lot of puddles. Early on, his SUV was seen speeding and failing to stop at two stop signs, when there was no emergency. A day or so later a NY Post photographer caught him jaywalking across a Brooklyn street. Neither offense was unduly serious, except that just days before he had proposed traffic safety initiatives. His attitude was typically elitist: ‘do as I say, not as I do.’