RUTHFULLY YOURS

David Singer is an attorney and international affairs expert and writer based in Sydney, Australia
The European Union (EU) runs the risk of being labelled “Jew-hater” – should it proceed with its plans requiring supermarkets and other retailers to label products made by Jews in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) differently from those made by Jews in Israel.

No matter what spin the EU uses to justify any such discriminatory labelling – the EU will be seen to be actively supporting the 2005 Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel – whose manifesto states:

“We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel … We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel …”

“These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”

The US Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, finding in the Fourteenth Amendment an opportunity to ‘enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.’ In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia lacerates his colleagues’ arrogant and elitist eagerness to subvert democracy.
Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best. Individuals on both sides of the issue passionately, but respectfully, attempted to persuade their fellow citizens to accept their views. Americans considered the arguments and put the question to a vote. The electorates of 11 States, either directly or through their representatives, chose to expand the traditional definition of marriage. Many more decided not to.

Win or lose, advocates for both sides continued pressing their cases, secure in the knowledge that an electoral loss can be negated by a later electoral win. That is exactly how our system of government is supposed to work.

Hurrah for gay marriage. But why do supporters save their vitriol for its foes instead of the barbarians at our gates?

On Friday my phone was blowing up with messages, asking if I’d seen the news. Some expressed disbelief at the headlines. Many said they were crying.
None of them were talking about the dozens of people gunned down in Sousse, Tunisia, by a man who, dressed as a tourist, had hidden his Kalashnikov inside a beach umbrella. Not one was crying over the beheading in a terrorist attack at a chemical factory near Lyon, France. The victim’s head was found on a pike near the factory, his body covered with Arabic inscriptions. And no Facebook friends mentioned the first suicide bombing in Kuwait in more than two decades, in which 27 people were murdered in one of the oldest Shiite mosques in the country.

They were talking about the only news that mattered: gay marriage.

This article is adapted from Fault Lines, a memoir to be published by Criterion Books in October. David Pryce-Jones is a novelist and historian, whose most recent book is Treason of the Heart: From Thomas Paine to Kim Philby. He is a senior editor of National Review.
The belief that their primary identity was French had put their lives at risk for no purpose. They couldn’t imagine that the Germans and a good many French made no such distinctions about Jews and were determined to kill off the lot.

On December 1, 1939, an official with the title of Head of State Collections wrote to the Gestapo to draw attention to what he called the “rich inventory” and “outstanding things” to be found at Meidling, my grandmother Mitzi’s house in Vienna. In his opening paragraph he made the all-important point that she was a “Jewess with English citizenship”. The sheet of paper bore the stamp of the Nazi eagle. Below the typewritten greeting “Heil Hitler” was an illegible signature.

Six weeks later, on January 14, 1940, the Gestapo duly drove up to Meidling and expropriated everything in it, all the furniture, linen, silver. The full list of stolen pictures comes to fifty-seven, carefully inventoried by the Gestapo. A further selection of twenty-two was made on behalf of the State Collections. One of the paintings listed is a Van Dyck of Saint John, a favourite subject of that artist. The Head of State Collections had his eye on this picture, and he was particularly disappointed that it had gone missing. Within twenty-four hours of moving into Meidling, he was already recommending an investigation into its whereabouts. To this day, it is still unaccounted for, and the only plausible explanation is that one of these Nazis had been quick enough to lay hands on it for himself.

While American liberals were celebrating SCOTUS’ illegal decision forcing gay marriage upon all 50 states – and thereby nullifying the 10th Amendment – ISIS threw 4 gays from the roof of a building.

As always, a crowd had gathered to watch the brutal mass murder:

#Syria #ISIS Executed a gay man in #DirZour by throwing him from High building in front of the people #LoveWins #IS pic.twitter.com/dHvj7Jmku4

— الرقة تذبح بصمت (@Raqqa_Sl) June 26, 2015

Now, I’ve got a question for my liberal friends: why is it that you pretend that gays are persecuted in the United States (which isn’t and wasn’t true at all, they’re able to live together, have relationships, and do whatever they please), while you – at the same time – ignore what’s going on in ISIS’ self-declared radical-Islamic caliphate where homosexuals are literally thrown from buildings?

Ah, never mind, I know the answer: because that would be “intolerant.” Right. Sorry, I forgot for a moment that killing gays is perfectly fine if you’re a Muslim extremist, but refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding is discriminatory if you’re Christian.

At a small dinner party last night, our host glided lightly over the activities of the Supreme Court this past week in order to canvass the table’s thoughts about who the candidates might be for the 2016 presidential election. The usual names percolated through the sands of our discussion. My suggestion that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy was by no means a sure thing was met with friendly disbelief. The Democrats do not have another plausible candidate, ergo, the Hillary is it. I still have my doubts. The aging activist clearly has health issues and is so festooned with scandal—not to mention her utter lack of accomplishment as a senator or secretary of State—that even James Carville must be worried. “No, no,” it was explained to me. “The Hillary is it. It doesn’t matter what she’s done. Someone could turn up a video of her selling Libyan women and children into slavery and she would still get the nomination. It’s not her against the other chap (or, as it may be, the other lass), it’s their team against ours, blue against red. American politics are increasingly polarized, which means they are increasingly nasty. What matters is power, not principle.”

Fresh off a victory lap in the Rose Garden where the #LOVEWINS president narcissistically defined agreeing with him as “love,” President Obama segued from LGBTQ rights into racial rancor and Biblical misrepresentation during a eulogy where he also defined “God’s grace” as agreeing with him.

Taking to the pulpit at slain Charleston Emanuel A.M.E. Church’s pastor and state Senator Clementa Pinckney’s going-home celebration, Barack ‘Can you say Amen’ Obama assumed a black-preacher cadence and began the eulogy by “Giving all praise and honor to [a] God” whose Word the president normally revises with as much liberality as he does the U.S. Constitution.

Wily, crafty, and well done, the president’s torturous twisting of Scripture was rivaled only by Chief Justice John Robert’s opinion on Obamacare.

After a perfunctory acknowledgement of the slain pastor’s wife, daughters, and church family, the president cracked a few self-deprecating jokes before diving headlong into a discourse on racial and progressive politics.

During the 1920s, ‘30s, ‘40s, most people who followed the politics and events dealing with Palestine and the Jewish Homeland or Israel well understood that the land across the Jordan River (south of Syria) was the eastern portion of the Palestine Mandate. Might the discussion of establishing an additional state or two in what was western Palestine (now Israel, plus Judea-Samaria/West Bank, and Gaza) be expanded to consider an additional state in eastern Palestine?

The overall Palestine Mandate was allocated to Great Britain by the League of Nations in the early 1920s. It was to be homeland of the Jews (during biblical and Second Temple times) and a home to Arabs. Virtually immediately the Brits broke up the Palestine Mandate area into two zones (east and west) divided by the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and the Arava – the dry deep rift that ran south from the Dead Sea to the sea.

The top suspect in the beheading of a businessman that French authorities are calling a terrorist attack took a “selfie” photo with the slain victim and sent the image via WhatsApp to a Canadian mobile phone number, officials said Saturday.

French investigators were working to determine the recipient’s identity, but weren’t able to immediately confirm media reports that it was an unspecified person now in Syria, where the radical Islamic State group has seized territory, the security officials said.

The revelation added a macabre twist to an investigation that has not turned up a solid link to radical or foreign groups, but has revived concerns about terrorism in France less than six months after deadly attacks in the Paris area.

Top suspect Yassine Salhi, a truck driver with a history of radical Islamic ties, as well as his sister and wife remained in police custody in the city of Lyon, a day after he allegedly crashed a truck into a U.S.-owned chemical warehouse and hung his employer’s severed head on a factory gate, officials said.

One of the officials said the selfie was forwarded via WhatsApp, the globally popular instant messaging system owned by Facebook, to a phone number in Canada. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

No group immediately claimed responsibility. The severed head appeared to mimic Islamic State’s practice of beheading prisoners and displaying their heads for all to see, and came days after the militants urged attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. French authorities say Salhi had links to radical Salafists in the past.

Sinirlioglu, a career diplomat, happens to be one of President Erdogan’s most senior confidantes — a smart diplomat with no Islamist sentiments.

If the terribly destroyed fences between Ankara and Jerusalem are to be mended, this is a good time to start the work.

For Turkey’s Islamist government, breaking up with Israel, a credible regional ally until 2009, was a calculated move. Then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s famous Davos tirade against Israel’s then President Shimon Peres was the beginning of Turkey’s willing road accident with the Jewish state: a systematic campaign based on anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic rhetoric and action that would capture votes at home and help Turkey powerfully emerge with its neo-Ottoman ambitions on the Arab Street. It did, leaving no appetite in Ankara for détente — at least, until June 7, 2015.