RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304561004579135422872505460?mod=Opinion_newsreel_9

The pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his lawyer brother-in-law worked together to resist the Nazis and help Jews escape Germany.

Though the Nazis never won an outright majority in the parliament of the decaying Weimar Republic, they received nearly 44% of the vote in the critical election of March 1933—a mandate that enabled Adolf Hitler’s anointment as supreme leader. To some, however, the evil character of the Nazi regime was visible from the start. Among them were the young Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, the subjects of Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern’s “No Ordinary Men.” In this concise, engaging account, Ms. Sifton, an eminent book editor, and Mr. Stern, a distinguished historian of Germany, trace Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi’s evolution from partaking in small acts of opposition to playing leading roles in the anti-Hitler resistance.

Bonhoeffer, a pastor, fought Nazi efforts to meld Protestant churches into a single “Reich Church.” Dohnanyi, a lawyer in the military intelligence service, used his position to document Nazi crimes and save Jews while joining several plots to kill Hitler. Their paths of resistance intertwined when Dohnanyi recruited Bonhoeffer to the anti-Hitler conspiracy.

Born in 1906, Bonhoeffer received a strong moral and intellectual upbringing from his father, Karl, an eminent Berlin psychiatrist, and his devout mother, Paula. The family had a notable independent streak; Paula chose to home-school their eight children in their early years. (“Germans,” she observed, “have their backbones broken twice in life: first in the schools, secondly in the military.”) One morning in 1922, Dietrich was in school when he heard “a strange crackling” from the street. It was the assassination of Germany’s Jewish foreign minister, Walter Rathenau, a crime the Bonhoeffers recognized as an omen. “Only think of the trouble we shall have later with these people,” Bonhoeffer’s brother Klaus wrote.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304367204579266243160319588#printMode

Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah, the state’s only Democratic member of Congress, announced Tuesday that he won’t seek re-election next year.

“I’ve always assumed there were going to be different chapters to my career,” said Mr. Matheson, who was first elected in 2000. “Fourteen years is a substantial amount of time to serve in the House. I believe it’s time now to look for the next chapter. That’s really what the motivation is.”

Republicans have long coveted the seat but were never able to claim it, even after a recent redistricting that favored GOP candidates. Last year, Republican Mia Love lost to Mr. Matheson by fewer than 800 votes and was planning another challenge in 2014. The Love campaign called Mr. Matheson’s retirement a “nice Christmas present.”

Mr. Matheson, a conservative Democrat who opposed ObamaCare’s original passage, is only 53 years old and likely not done with politics. His father served as governor of the state from 1977 to 1985, and the congressman remains popular. “Matheson has been touted in the past as a candidate for governor and U.S. Senate,” reports the Deseret News. “Both Republican Gov. Gary Herbert and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, are up for re-election in 2016.”

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2730/The-Really-Special-Relationship-of-the-20th-Century.aspx Michael Goodwin of the New York Post, a former colleague on the old Lou Dobbs shows at CNN, has a column out interpreting Obama’s unseemly behavior at Mandela’s funeral. He writes: But the “selfie” episode also symbolizes the greater global calamity of Western decline. With British prime minister David Cameron playing the role of […]

http://www.romirowsky.com/14167/romirowsky-joffe-new-book-palestinian-refugees

To purchase Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief directly from Palgrave Macmillan at a 20% discount, visit here then enter the code XP356ED

PHILADELPHIA – Released today by Palgrave Macmillan, Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief documents the history of Palestinian refugee relief from its inception. The refugee problem is what fuels the Arab-Israeli conflict and the leading obstacle to peace. Romirowsky and Joffe illustrate how the problem began, the international community’s first responses, the successes and failures, and offer concrete recommendations on how to deal with the issue going forward.

Efraim Karsh, Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies, King’s College London, UK, author of Palestine Betrayed endorsed the book and states,

“Drawing on a wealth of recently declassified documents, this groundbreaking book tells the little-known story of the creation of the United Nations Relief and Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). A must read for anyone seeking to understand how the international community helped transform a secondary post-World War II humanitarian predicament into the world’s most enduring refugee problem and the foremost obstacle to Arab-Israeli peace.”
About the book

This book examines the leading role of the Quaker American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in the United Nations relief program for Palestine Arab refugees in 1948-1950 in the Gaza Strip. It situates the operation within the context of the AFSC’s attempts to exercise new influence on the separate issues of pacifism and disarmament at a time marked by US efforts to construct a Cold War security regime in the Middle East and British efforts to retain influence and bases in Arab countries.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4100/israelophobia While vows are always made to fight anti-Semitism, its existence is not even admitted where it is found in its most frequent and obvious forms: among media and university “intellectuals;” among certain NGOs; in international institutions, such as the United Nations and its offshoots; within the European Union; in “liberal’ organizations ostensibly promoting human […]

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/156687/brandeis-withdraws-from-american-studies-association Brandeis University has become the second institution to withdraw from the American Studies Association, following the organization’s decision to boycott Israel. “We view the recent vote by the membership to affirm an academic boycott of Israel as a politicization of the discipline and a rebuke to the kind of open inquiry that a scholarly […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4090/europe-anti-semitism It is inexplicable that the EU Fundamental Rights Agency has removed its very own “Working definition of anti-Semitism” from its website, while more than half of OSCE Member States continue to be in breach of EU laws to monitor anti-Semitic incidents. Serious questions must be asked of the EU about its resolve to tackle […]

http://politicalmavens.com/

The NYTimes of Dec 17 reported the following in its front page article about the American Studies Association (ASA) vote to boycott Israeli academics:

“Members of the American Studies Association voted by a ratio of more than two to one to endorse the boycott in online balloting that concluded Sunday night….With fewer than 5000 members, the group is not one of the larger scholarly associations. But its vote is a milestone for a Palestinian movement known as B.D.S. for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions, which for the past decade had found little traction in the United States.”

What the Times purposely withheld is that only 1252 of the 5,000 academicians bothered to vote and only 60% of those approved the resolution. In other words, 751 people out of a total membership of 5000 agreed with the decision to boycott, a far cry from the ratio of 2 to 1. Jodi Rudoren, the Times Bureau Chief in the Middle East has proven to be a reporter with an obvious anti-Israel bias so her participation in fudging these numbers is no surprise. What is inexcusable is that the Times issued a correction about another inaccuracy in this article on Dec 18th but failed to mention the enormous discrepancy in the reporters’ tally.

Readers who have remained blinded to the Times’ yellow journalism when it comes to Israel should need no further proof than this outlandish distortion. Figures don’t lie but liars can figure.

http://politicalmavens.com/ The conceit of HER, Spike Jonze’s highly praised film is that as humans become more and more dependent on the increasingly sophisticated programs in their tech devices, the programs become more dependent on the humans as well.  It’s a clever concept and would have made an amazing shorter film with its elegiac mood set […]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/12/16/a-bad-night-on-92nd-street/

DPS Note: Has it really come to this? Have the enemies of the Jewish State really succeeded in turning so many of us against Israel? Have we so easily forgotten history’s lessons? Is it the Y with its penchant for left-wing, anti-Israel speakers which draws a self-selected audience or is this truly indicative of where far too many – apparently “progressive” American Jews have migrated in their views of the dangers the State of the Jewish people faces. This is beyond troubling.

Ever had a bad night? I just had one. Ever lost your cool? I just did.

I was on a panel at the 92nd Street Y in New York about what it means to be pro-Israel. The panelists were Jeremy Ben-Ami of JStreet, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, and I; the moderator was Jane Eisner of the Forward. In the middle of the panel, I chose to walk off the stage rather than continue.

Eisner has written an account of the event, almost comic in its level of detail, in which she calls me a “rude, angry man.” So let me offer some notes on what may be the least significant tempest-in-a-teapot in the history of world Jewry.

In the course of her account, she claims that “mystifyingly,” I “encouraged” the audience to boo and hiss me. In fact, after a prolonged bout of booing, I responded by suggesting—in a manner that was intended, for what I would have thought were obvious reasons, to be ironic—that the crowd might try hissing too. Which they did. Maybe they didn’t pick up on the irony; Eisner apparently didn’t, given her level of mystification.