RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/shushed-and-booed-podhoretz-walks-out-on-92nd-st-y-panel/2013/12/18/

John Podhoretz (seen here on The Daily Show) was booed by the 92nd Street Y audience and shushed by the moderator, Forward editor Jane Eisner, when he defended Israel from claims that Israel was responsible for a recent academic boycott
There have already been several reports of the ruckus that occurred during a talk entitled, “What Does it Mean to be Pro-Israel in America Today?” which was held at the 92nd St Y in Manhattan Monday night, Dec. 16.

But no accounts thus far examine the role of the audience in inciting a panelist to get up and walk out of the event. There were first hand accounts by John Podhoretz , the editor of Commentary and the panelist who walked out of the event, and another by Jane Eisner , the editor of the Daily Forward, who was the moderator of the event.

The other two panelists were Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, and David Harris, president of the American Jewish Committee.

The JTA ‘s original account can be found on this website. Haaretz and the New York Times weighed in with their own versions, based, loosely, on the earlier accounts.
The rabidly anti-Israel blog Mondoweiss headlined the story “Podhoretz leaves 92nd St Y stage after saying Swarthmore Hillel deserves to be ‘spat on.'”
Over on planet Mondoweiss, the editor was so eager to prove his true lefty street creds he expressed outrage that the event was held without a single Palestinian Arab on the panel. He mused: “I wonder what liberal Jewish forum would have staged a debate on Jim Crow back in the ’60s without black leaders…” Earth to Mondoweiss: the topic for the evening was “What Does it Mean to be Pro-Israel in America Today?”

http://nsroundtable.org/as-we-see-it/meet-major-m./

Meet Major M., an immigrant from Tehran who’s been helping the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) understand the Islamist regime in Iran. Today he serves as deputy commander of a unit in the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, after having escaped Iran as a child and spent most of his military service combating Israel’s top security threat, Iran (see below).

Major M.’s story and the role he fulfills in IDF Military Intelligence (which can only be sketched in faint detail), illustrate a small part of a “large and still-ongoing pivot that has helped Israel in its diplomatic struggle with Iran, its alleged operations on Iranian soil, its roiling shadow war abroad, and its larger understanding of the changing Middle East.”

It’s a FASCINATING story and although somewhat long, well worth the read.

The Times of Israel | December 17, 2013

The Israeli Intelligence Officer Who Really Knows What The Iranians Are Talking About

The Times of Israel meets Major M., an immigrant from Tehran who has been helping the army understand the Islamist regime, and still hopes to return

By Mitch Ginsburg

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth, an uproar ensued. Had the Iranian president called for genocide — foreshadowing future characterizations of Israel as a germ and a cancer — or had this, as some translators suggested, merely been a poor government rendering of a rather nuanced metaphor, which called more gently for the “occupation regime” to vanish, ever so passively, from the pages of time?

A Talmudic-level discourse ensued. The Guardian’s Jonathan Steele, siding with the co-founder of the Mossadegh Foundation, called the genocidal interpretation “propaganda distortion” that enabled Western hawks to “bracket the Iranian president with Hitler as though he wants to exterminate Jews.” Ethan Bronner of The New York Times, after speaking with translation experts in the US and Iran, ruled that the passive “vanish” was wrong and that, while the word “map” had never been spoken — the quote referred to the pages of time or history — the phrase, in the original Persian, “certainly seems” to contain a similarly destructive intent.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

ON THIS ISSUE PLEASE ALSO READ THE THREE PART REPORT CARD ON “COMMON CORE CURRICULUM” BY GAMALIEL ISAAC:http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obamacore-the-travesty-called-the-common-core-standards-part-i?f=common%20core….RSK

Everyone knows that America’s education system is broken. It’s the one thing that Republicans and Democrats can agree on. Committees are convened, grants are dispensed and new studies are rolled off the educational assembly line every few months that purport to change everything by showing that the entire process of educating children from medieval to modern times was wrong.

Education has come to be a science of its own with a jargon full of nebulous pseudo-scientific
terminology impenetrable to the ordinary person. The majority of public school teachers now have master’s degrees because it takes more than some ignorant BA to tell little Johnny to shut the hell up and pay attention in class or he’ll never amount to anything in life.

Unfortunately the majority of teachers were also so busy getting their graduate degrees that they didn’t actually put in any classroom time. The students of tomorrow are being taught by other students who have an MA and papers on educational unleveling through cognitive disequilibrium across multiple modalities but very little actual experience with students.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-16/some-lessons-in-effective-scapegoating.html/

“Is it a coincidence that these academics are singling out the world’s only Jewish-majority country for boycott? Only to those who know nothing of the history of anti-Semitic scapegoating….

The American Studies Association is an unimportant American group; larger academic organizations have come out … against the idea of academic boycotts. The ASA is also facing an unlikely opponent in its anti-Israel campaign: Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, supports the boycott of settlement-made goods, but he has come out against broad anti-Israel boycotts. The ASA is more Palestinian, in other words, than the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Still, this vote by the ASA marks something of a turning point — this is the second time this year that a U.S. academic organization has called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. I assume the ASA won’t be the last group to do so. And I believe that we will one day see groups such as the ASA call for the boycott of American institutions and individuals who support Israel. Such a campaign would represent a logical extension of the boycott ratified this weekend. Yes, a boycott of businesses owned by pro-Israel American Jews would have a special odor about it, but really, doesn’t the ASA boycott have something of the same smell?” [Emphasis added]

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

This makes it the third academic organisation in the United States to award pariah status to the world’s only Jewish State.
Here’s its statement:

“The council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) declares its support for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

A broad coalition of Palestinian non-governmental organizations, acting in concert to represent the Palestinian people, formed the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Their call was taken up in the United States by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. A NAISA member-initiated petition brought this issue to NAISA Council. After extensive deliberation on the merits of the petition, the NAISA Council decided by unanimous vote to encourage members of NAISA and all who support its mission to honor the boycott.

NAISA is dedicated to free academic inquiry about, with, and by Indigenous communities. The NAISA Council protests the infringement of the academic freedom of Indigenous Palestinian academics and intellectuals in the Occupied Territories and Israel who are denied fundamental freedoms of movement, expression, and assembly, which we uphold.

As the elected council of an international community of Indigenous and allied non-Indigenous scholars, students, and public intellectuals who have studied and resisted the colonization and domination of Indigenous lands via settler state structures throughout the world, we strongly protest the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the legal structures of the Israeli state that systematically discriminate against Palestinians and other Indigenous peoples.

NAISA is committed to the robust intellectual and ethical engagement of difficult and often highly charged issues of land, identity, and belonging. Our members will have varying opinions on the issue of the boycott, and we encourage generous dialogue that affirms respectful disagreement as a vital scholarly principle. We reject shaming or personal attacks as counter to humane understanding and the greater goals of justice, peace, and decolonization.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/us-government-purges-of-law-enforcement-training-material-deemed-offensive-to-muslims#ixzz2npB08Q3i

“Documentation and Analysis of Islamist Active Measures and Influence Operations Targeting Anti-terrorism Training” includes detailed chronology, identifies specific propaganda organizations, names top Obama administration “Islamist influence operators”

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released a “Special Report: U.S. Government Purges of Law Enforcement Training Material Deemed ‘Offensive’ to Muslims: Documentation and Analysis of Islamist Active Measures and Influence Operations Targeting Anti-terrorism Training.”

The 26-page Special Report includes a detailed chronology, identifies specific Islamic propaganda organizations, and identifies five top “Islamist influence operators” associated with the Obama administration. More than 12 years of Judicial Watch work on national security issues is featured in the Special Report, highlighting information from government documents exclusively obtained by the organization.
If you would like to receive weekly emails updating you about all of our efforts to fight corruption, please sign up here.

The heavily footnoted Report centers on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) purge of anti-terrorism training material and curricula deemed “offensive” to Muslims. The curricula purge – documented through a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in June 2013 – occurred following a February 8, 2012, meeting between FBI Director Robert Mueller and various Islamic organizations. According to the Report, the purge was part of a “broader Islamist influence operation” designed to “influence the opinions and actions of persons, institutions, governments and the public at-large.” The Report also documents incidents of “Islamic influence operations” at the Departments of Justice and State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Obama White House.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4466/the_roots_of_our_western_angst There is nothing so paralysing as a fear borne of fatalism. When our power, as at all our greatest moments, is generated primarily by a confidence in our values, then the failure any longer to believe in those values is capable of shutting us down Do we know what we want? Can we get […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/366569/obamacares-silent-insurers-jonah-goldberg When will the insurers revolt? It’s a question that’s popping up more and more. On the surface, the question answers itself. We’re talking about pinstriped insurance-company executives, not Hells Angels. One doesn’t want to paint with too broad a brush, but if you were going to guess which vocations lend themselves least to revolutionary […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/366599/inequality-does-not-matter-kevin-d-williamson

The poor and the middle class are falling behind, and it has nothing to do with the 1 percent.

President Barack Obama gave a very silly speech in which he affirmed that economic inequality is to be the centerpiece of his remaining time in office. He has made similar suggestions about other issues — global warming and gun control, notably — and, President Obama being President Obama, it is very likely the case that his laser-like focus will consist of a series of speeches and very little else. The politics of the moment will determine which issue actually gets his attention, though he could go with his admirers at Washington Monthly, who contend that some of them are the same issue: Mass shootings, Daniel Luzer argues in a particularly batty piece of connect-the-imaginary-dots, has “everything to do with the distribution of wealth in America.”

It is difficult to take President Obama seriously on these issues, but it is difficult to not take seriously Josh Barro and Paul Krugman, both of whom have offered what seem to me to be inconclusive arguments, Mr. Barro under the headline “Sorry, Libertarians, Inequality Does Matter,” Professor Krugman under “Why Inequality Matters.” Strangely, neither of these erudite gentlemen quite manages to establish that inequality matters.

Mr. Barro writes: “Economic growth is not the same thing as well-being. The point of economic growth is that it leads to improvements in standards of living. If the gains from economic growth are not broadly shared, but instead accrue disproportionately to people already at the top of the income distribution, then a lot of economic growth will only generate a little improvement in living standards for most people. For this reason, rising inequality is a problem even if it does not hold back GDP.” This is true in a sense, but it reverses cause and effect: Incomes among the bottom half of earners are not stagnating because of increasing inequality; inequality is increasing because incomes among the bottom half of earners is stagnating. It could have been the case that incomes among the bottom half of earners were stagnating while incomes for the top half were absolutely crashing, in which case you would have a situation in which there was less inequality but everybody was worse off, or at least no better off. Conversely, we could have an economy in which the poor and the middle class see strong gains in their income and their wealth, but the very well off experience twice those gains, which would mean a society of increasing inequality in which everybody is better off. I have encountered progressives who state their preference for the outcome in which we are all poorer but more equal over the outcome in which we are all richer but less equal, which puzzles me.