RUTHFULLY YOURS

David Harris is the executive director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC)

When the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was announced in
Vienna on July 14, AJC issued a press release indicating that we would
first study the full text and its implications, and then take a
position on the deal, as the U.S. Congress launched into its 60-day
review period.

Over the past three weeks, AJC engaged in a very intensive,
open-minded, and thorough process of external consultations and
internal deliberations, involving many lay and staff leaders.

Obama attacks his critics (guess who) as ignorant, deceptive and trying to pull a fast one on the American people.

This critical period during which Congress is mulling over the nuclear deal made by U.S. negotiators and their P5+1 partners with Iran has turned into a hotly contested debate between those committed to preventing the deal from being approved and those who are desperate to ensure that it will be approved.
Yesterday, Aug. 4, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke to thousands of Americans and explained why he believes the deal is a bad one. It boiled down to “Keep or Cheat.” However Iran decides to act under this agreement, it will attain nuclear threshold status.
Today President Barack Obama gave a midday televised speech from American University in Washington, D.C.. During the speech he ridiculed those who criticize the deal, and explained why, according to him, the choice is either the deal or war.

President warns US Jews that without nuclear pact, America will have to attack Iran — and Israel will bear the brunt of the response.

WASHINGTON — If the US Congress shoots down the Iranian nuclear deal, America will eventually be pressured into a military strike against Tehran’s nuclear facilities, which will in turn increase terror against Israel, US President Barack Obama told Jewish leaders Tuesday, a source who was present at the meeting said.

During the two-hour meeting, Obama said it was legitimate for opponents of the deal to lobby lawmakers to reject it, but added that a discussion focused on personal attacks, rather than the merits of the deal, could jeopardize the coherence of the American Jewish community and ultimately the resilience of US-Israel relations, according to Greg Rosenbaum, the chair of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

The FBI has begun looking into the security of Hillary Clinton’s private email setup, contacting in the past week a Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the unusual system, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing two government officials.
The FBI last week also contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, with questions about the security of a thumb drive in his possession that contains copies of work emails Clinton sent during her time as secretary of state, the Post said.

The Republican candidates for president will gather on a stage in Cleveland, Ohio, tomorrow evening for the first official debates of the 2016 campaign — the main event at 9 p.m. Eastern time for the ten candidates with the highest standing in the polls, and an earlier debate, at 5:30 p.m., for the others. Even with not all the candidates on the stage at one time, each candidate can expect no more than ten to twelve minutes to make his or her case. During that time, we can expect the moderators to cover the usual ground: ISIL and the War on Terror, immigration, taxes, gay marriage, Obamacare. In response, most of the candidates will regurgitate their talking points and stump speeches. The outcome will likely be decided on the basis of who makes the best quip or the biggest gaffe.

But there are some other, more basic questions that I wish someone would ask.

Sara Harberson, former associate dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania and dean of admissions and financial aid at Franklin & Marshall, tells “The Truth About ‘Holistic’ College Admissions” in a Los Angeles Times op-ed last month that I would have missed but for the ever-watchful eyes of Roger Clegg.

But not to worry if you missed it, too. She doesn’t say anything that you don’t already know. For example:

Nowadays nobody on an admissions committee would dare use the term racial “quotas,” but racial stereotyping is alive and well. And although colleges would never admit students based on “quotas,” they fearlessly will “sculpt” the class with race and gender percentages in mind.

With Hillary Clinton’s multiple misdeeds coming to light and causing her political problems, reflected in her declining support in the polls, both she and the Democratic party have reason to be concerned. But both of them may yet be rescued by “The Donald,” who can turn out to be their Trump card.

Donald Trump has virtually no chance of becoming even the Republican party’s candidate in 2016, much less being elected President of the United States.

The reason is not hard to understand: Republican voters simply do not trust him, as the polls show. Nor is there any reason why they should trust him, given his chameleon-like changes in the past.

Why then is he the “front-runner” in the polls?

One reason is arithmetic. When there is a small army of Republican candidates, each with a tiny set of supporters, anyone with enough name recognition to get the support of a fifth or a fourth of the Republicans polled stands out, even if twice that many Republicans say they would never vote for him.

When both kinds of Republicans are counted, Donald Trump is both the “front-runner” and the leading pariah. The danger is not that he will get the nomination, but that his irresponsible talk will become the image of the Republican party, and that his bombast will drown out more sober voices that need to be heard, thereby making it harder to select the best candidate.

This week President Obama is hailing his Clean Power Plan as “the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change.” Obama is posing as the environment’s savior, just as he did in 2008, when he promised his presidency would mark “the moment when … the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Seven years later, that messianic legacy is in doubt. Obama’s Clean Power Plan has never had legislative support, even when his own party controlled both houses of Congress. Now he’s trying to impose it without Congress, an audacious ploy his old Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe condemns as “burning the Constitution.”

As his presidency wanes, Obama is desperately burnishing his eco-credentials with environmental zealots like Pope Francis and the leftists at the U.N. and in the European Union. But here at home, his plan would be a disaster economically, which explains its failure in Congress. Hillary Clinton is pledging to support the plan, while Republicans vying for their party’s presidential nomination are vowing to oppose it. The Clean Power Plan will be a fiercely debated issue in coal-consuming swing states like Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania — where the race for the White House is usually decided.

When shouting “Death to America” gets billions of dollars flowing into your coffers.

Iran’s rulers are laughing all the way to the bank as they contemplate the many billions of dollars that will soon begin to flow into their coffers. When not shouting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” they are also laughing at us for being out-maneuvered by Iran’s negotiators on every one of their key demands.

“The structure of the sanctions that the US had built based on the UN Security Council’s resolutions was destroyed,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a meeting of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations in Tehran on August 3rd, according to the “semi-official” Fars news agency. “And like the 1990s, when no other country complied with the US sanctions against Iran, no one will accept the return of the sanctions (in the future).”

Is there a difference? To the perpetrators, no. To the societies from which the murderers came, the difference is a chasm.

When the Israeli government announced it had suspects, one suspect’s mother said, “I will be proud of him until Judgment Day. If… it is true… My boys are all righteous, pious and pure. The goal of my children is the triumph of Islam.”

This weekend in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, thousands of Israelis protested the murder of the baby Ali Saad Dawabshe.

It is almost ghoulish to compare the deaths of children in war. They were not responsible for the situation in which they found themselves, and they did not deserve their fate. In a healthy society, such deaths are mourned without regard for the children’s nationality, or the politics and misdeeds of their parents.