RUTHFULLY YOURS

As a zamler, or book collector, I have been invited into the homes of people who, though they may not understand Yiddish, do not want to discard the Yiddish books that their grandparents used to read and cherish. I collect the books and send them to the National Yiddish Book Center, whose rescue efforts are nothing short of miraculous.

In one of my journeys into an elderly woman’s attic, I discovered Saul Raskin’s artistic rendition of Tehillim, or the Book of Psalms. As if directed by providential intervention, the book opened to an arresting picture of Hitler the beast, sword in hand, while a feminine figure rises above him. Soldiers with swords lord it over their prostrate victims.

Published in 1942, this collection of drawings is Raskin’s artistic interpretations of the Psalms. This particular etching not only describes the evil of the 20th century but actually presages the ongoing malevolence of the 21st century. The black and white etching is accompanied by Psalm 14 and reads, “The fool hath said in his heart. There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” And on the lapel of Hitler is the Hebrew for “there is no God.”

With all due respect to Gilbert and Sullivan, the current charade on display among Democratic U.S. Senators with regard to their announcements of support for the Iran deal presents the very model of a modern pro-Israel Democrat.
In short, the senator announces his or her support for the agreement, but admits it was a very close call and a difficult decision. The senator concedes that the deal is imperfect and less than was hoped for in many areas. The senator indicates unhappiness with the relaxation of sanctions on weapons and ballistic missiles and admits to being unhappy about Iran’s calls for death to Israel and the United States, its support for terrorist groups, and what Iran might do with all the frozen funds (perhaps as much as $150 billion) once the money is released. The senator then restates firm support for Israel, and indicates that he or she is prepared to introduce or at least vote for new measures providing weapons and aid to Israel. Of course, the senator never explains why, if the deal is good for the U.S., Israel and our Arab allies, Israel and the Arab states would need new security guarantees and offensive or defensive weapons from the U.S. as a result of the agreement.
But, in the end, the senator lets everyone know why, despite these many concerns, he or she is prepared to support the deal. Here is the argument: The senator believes the deal will shut off Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon for a few years and that alternatives short of war are not promising (renegotiating the agreement, or keeping American sanctions in place, while other countries eliminate their own). Virtually no Senate Democrat, however, will be heard mouthing some of the administration’s logic behind the deal — that Iran should have its place as a regional power, and that this kind of agreement may lead to a change in Iran’s aggressive behavior.

http://counterjihadcoalition.org/2015/09/new-glazov-gang-isis-terrorists-coming-to-a-neighborhood-near-you/

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was hosted by Ari David, the host of the Ari David Show Podcast, and joined by Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center who writes the blog The Point at Frontpagemag.com.

Daniel discussed ISIS Terrorists Coming To a Neighborhood Near You, unveiling how Obama is flooding America with fake Syrian refugees.

Don’t miss it!

In the year 628, Muhammad, now ruling in Medina, signed the ten-year Treaty of Hudaybiyyah with his long-time enemies, the tribal confederacy of Quraysh, who ruled Mecca. Twenty-two months later, under the pretext that a clan from a tribe allied with the Quraysh had squabbled with a tribe allied to the Muslims, Muhammad broke the treaty and attacked Mecca, conquering it. It is as certain as day follows night, that the Iranian regime will find a pretext to break the deal. Already, on September 3, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene’i made it clear that he would back out of the deal if sanctions were not completely removed at once.

The Iranian regime not only despises democracy; it considers all Western law, including international law, invalid.

The Shi’a consider themselves underdogs, who are willing to sacrifice all to establish the rights of their imams and their successors. That was what the 1979 revolution was all about, and it is what present the Iranian regime still insists on as the justification for its opposition to Western intrusion, democracy, women’s rights and all the rest, which are deemed by Iran’s leadership as part of a plot to undermine and control the expansion of the Shi’i faith on the global stage. These are not Anglican vicars.

The Iranian Army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “have responsibility… for a religious mission, which is Holy War (Jihad) in the path of God and the struggle to extend the supremacy of God’s law in the world.” — Iran’s Constitution, Article “The Religious Army”.

The AAUP—the American Association of University Professors—held its annual Conference on the State of Higher Education at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. June 10-14. A few subway stops away, the Heartland Institute held its tenth International Conference on Climate Change at the Washington Court Hotel, June 11-12. I suspect that I am the only person to attend both.

Both events dealt with the issues of academic and intellectual freedom. Both focused on current threats to such freedoms. Both pictured a world in which politically-motivated foes of free expression are using their wealth and power to silence legitimate dissent.

But, of course, these events were polar opposites. The AAUP was gearing up to pass a resolution to censure the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign for rescinding its offer of an academic appointment to Steven Salaita. The Heartland Institute was championing the work of Dr. Willie Soon, the solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who came under attack by Greenpeace and the New York Times after he published an important article in Science Bulletin.

Both controversies have received ample coverage, though I think it is quite possible, even likely, that people who know a lot about one may not know a lot about the other. A primer:

Steven Salaita. He was a tenured associate professor of English at Virginia Tech who in October 2013 received an offer for a tenured position in the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, contingent on the board of trustees’ approval. On August 1, 2014, the university’s vice president of academic affairs and its chancellor wrote to Salaita informing him that they were not proceeding with the appointment. Salaita appealed to the trustees who on September 10, 2014, voted 8 to 1 not to reconsider his appointment. Salaita soon after filed a lawsuit which is on-going.

Trompe l’oeil is defined as a style of painting in which things are painted in a way that makes them look like real objects. Another more apposite definition is : something that misleads or deceives the senses. That defines Donald Trump. Read this column by Rich Lowry about a real conservative alternative for those who seek a “political outsider.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/423539/print
Ben Carson, A Superior Outsider By Rich Lowry

While Jeb Bush feuds with Donald Trump and others kowtow to him, only one candidate is seriously gaining on him.
Ben Carson is now tied with Trump in one Iowa poll and is close in others. His rise suggests that it’s possible to catch the populist wave roiling Republican politics and yet not be an obnoxious braggart. Ben Carson is a superior outsider to Donald Trump.
He is more gentlemanly and more conservative, with a more compelling life story. He is a man of faith who, despite his manifest accomplishments, has a quiet dignity and winsome modesty about him. Ben Carson is a throwback, whereas Donald Trump is a boldfaced name straight out of our swinish celebrity culture.
What they have in common is that they are political neophytes who are memorable communicators precisely because they speak and carry themselves so differently from other candidates. Although the similarities stop there — Carson is what Trump calls “low energy.” And yet Carson makes it work.
Few politicians have ever wielded soft-spokenness to such rhetorical effect. Carson aced the Fox debate when in his closing statement he didn’t puff himself up and attempt to soar like candidates always do but gently said a few nice things about his background as a surgeon, with a touch of humor. It was a hit.
If you like your outsider not to favor higher taxes, not to have once opposed the ban of partial-birth abortion, not to speak favorably of socialized medicine, and not to have been an erstwhile booster of Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, Ben Carson (or Carly Fiorina) is a much better bet than Donald Trump.
And Carson is altogether a more sympathetic figure. He rose from nothing; Trump took over the family real-estate business. Carson’s mom was one of 24 kids, had a third-grade education, and worked as a domestic; Trump’s father amassed a fortune of about $300 million.

Among “elite” circles Zionism is a dirty word these days. When American Jewish reggae star Matisyahu was barred from performing [1] at a Spanish music festival, it was on grounds that he was a “Zionist.” It was only after the Spanish government condemned this blatant case of discrimination that the festival reinvited [2] the singer.

Blackballing Zionism, though, is not only a European phenomenon. Republican pollster Frank Luntz has been warning Israel that it is rapidly losing support among Democratic “opinion elites.” Almost half of them, he says, consider Israel a racist country. And as The Times of Israel reports [3]:

Still more drastically, Luntz said the word “Zionism” could play no part in messaging designed to repair relations with US Democrats. There has to be an “end to the [use of the] word Zionism,” he said. “You can’t make the case if you use that word. If you are at Berkeley or Brown and start outlining a Zionist vision, you don’t get to make a case for Israel because they’ve already switched off.”

So, Zionism is that bad?

As Congress is on the verge of giving President Obama his Iran Deal, including a payoff of $150 billion dollars to Iran’s terror regime, they might do well to contrast our founding fathers with the current occupant of the White House.

In the Ramadan speech in which he declared his support for the Ground Zero Mosque, Obama returned to a favorite theme of his:

Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America. The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan—making it the first known Iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.

You would think Obama would keep his mouth shut about this particular chapter in American history.

Yes, Mr. President, Islam was part of American history. The brutal, barbarous Islamic states of Tripoli (Tunisia), and Morocco terrorized the Mediterranean with their ‘Barbary Pirates.’ They kidnapped, enslaved and tortured Western seaman. At one time 20,000 seamen were in captivity in Algiers. Those with money bought their freedom. Seaman without money were sold as slaves who were worked to death in mines and galleys.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her family personally paid a State Department staffer to maintain the private e-mail server she used while heading the agency, according to an official from Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The unusual arrangement helped Clinton retain personal control over the system that she used for her public and private duties and that has emerged as an issue for her campaign. But, according to the campaign official, it also ensured that taxpayer dollars were not spent on a private server that was shared by Clinton, her husband and their daughter as well as aides to the former president.

That State Department staffer, Bryan Pagliano, told a congressional committee this week that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination instead of testifying about the setup.

[Clinton: We obviously paid for those services]

The private employment of Pagliano provides a new example of the ways that Clinton — who occupied a unique role as a Cabinet secretary who was also a former and potentially future presidential candidate — hired staff to work simultaneously for her in public and private capacities.

Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, and Huma Abedin, a close confidant who served as deputy chief of staff, both spent time working for the State Department, the Clinton Foundation or the Clintons personally.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

An app to detect ADHD. (TY SDM) Researchers at IBM Israel have developed a prototype app that can detect attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. Subjects trace an imaginary rectangle ten times and the app analyzes the hand movements. ADHD sufferers have difficulty with continuous motor activity. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4694706,00.html

Link between Leukemia and HIV. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have discovered similarities between Leukemia and HIV. Dr. Ran Taube is convinced that his team’s discovery is key to finding a clinical solution that can prevent infection with HIV and destroy the deadly virus.
http://aabgu.org/similarities-between-leukemia-and-aids-discovered/

High-pressure Oxygen to treat fibromyalgia. I reported previously on Israel’s Hyperbaric Oxygen treatment here and here. Now a study by 13 Israeli researchers has proved that the high-pressure Oxygen treatment reduces or eliminates medication needed for sufferers of the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia.
http://www.israel21c.org/high-pressure-oxygen-for-fibromyalgia/
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127012

Calming autistic children. Israel’s Association for Children at Risk has developed an Autism and Resiliency Program aimed at soothing frayed nerves of the 1,000 Israeli children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The program relieved trauma during Operation Protective Edge but is now being adapted to everyday needs.
http://www.israel21c.org/new-approach-to-soothe-autistic-kids/

Two Israelis in prestigious MIT list. Two Israelis have made MIT’s prestigious “35 Innovators Under 35” list for 2015. Cigall Kadoch, 30, holds a doctorate from Stanford where her expertise is cancer research. Gilad Evrony, 33, from Harvard Medical School, made a major discovery advancing research into brain disorders.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=27991

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Israel’s wild wheat can feed the world. Video to accompany my previous article about how Israel’s NRGene mapped out the genome of wild Emmer wheat, with its promise of new hardy and resistant strains. Emmer wheat – the ancestor of modern wheat – was discovered in 1906 by Aaron Aaronsohn in pre-state Israel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iye4YeKwvU8

Skylake – Intel Israel’s next generation chip. The Israeli-developed Intel Skylake is another huge advance in microprocessor technology, with more than double the performance, triple the battery life, and 30 times better graphics than most computers in use today. It consumes just 3 watts of power – current chips use 30-45 watts.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/intels-game-changing-tech-another-haifa-milestone-says-firm/

Doubling students of advanced math. Education Minister Naftali Bennett, former President Shimon Peres and Israeli high-tech companies have launched “Give 5” – a program to double to 18,000 the numbers studying for advanced (5-point) math matriculation exams. It includes more teachers, resources and hi-tech lecturers.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/200083#.VeREGPTn-YA
http://www.timesofisrael.com/skills-panic-prompts-new-government-effort-in-math-education/