RUTHFULLY YOURS

The crisis between the United States and Israel has been manufactured by the Obama administration. Building a crisis up or down is well within the administration’s power, and it has chosen to build it up. Why? Three reasons: to damage and defeat Netanyahu (whom Obama has always disliked simply because he is on the right while Obama is on the left) in his election campaign, to prevent Israel from affecting the Iran policy debate in the United States, and worst of all to diminish Israel’s popularity in the United States and especially among Democrats.

Suppose for a moment that the Netanyahu speech before Congress is a mistake, a breach of protocol, a campaign maneuver, indeed all the bad things the White House is calling it. Grant all of that for a moment for the sake of argument and the behavior of the Obama administration is still inexplicable. Clearly more is behind its conduct than mere pique over the speech.

On June 7, 1981, Prime Minister Begin ordered the destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, shortly before it became operational and on the eve of the June 30 Israeli election. In the short run, Begin was condemned and punished globally, accused of politicking and undermining US-Israel relations. However, in the long run Begin’s defiance dramatically enhanced Israel’s power projection, upgraded US-Israel strategic cooperation and spared the US a nuclear confrontation in 1991.

In 2015, Prime Minister Netanyahu is urged to cancel his address at the March 3 Joint Session of Congress – on the eve of the March 31 deadline for an agreement with Iran and the March 17 Israeli election – lest it undermine US-Israel relations and fuels the rift between him and President Obama. Netanyahu is told that the President – and not Congress – possesses the authority to conclude/reject an agreement with Iran.

However, a February 16, 2015 CNN poll documents a rift between Obama and the American people over foreign policy in general and the attitude toward Netanyahu in particular: 51%:41% disapprove of Obama’s foreign policy; 43%:25% think that it is appropriate for Netanyahu to address the Joint Session of Congress before the March 31 deadline for an agreement with Iran; and 47%:32% oppose Obama’s handling of the Netanyahu’s address. At the same time, the annual February, 2015 Gallup poll, reaffirms vast public support of Israel (70%), in sharp contrast to the lack of support for the Palestinian Authority (17% – similar to Iran, Syria and North Korea).

A REVIEW OF “THE MORAL CASE FOR FOSSIL FUELS” BY ALEX EPSTEIN

In the anti-fracking film Gasland, producer Josh Fox proclaims that the process of extracting previously inaccessible oil and gas from shale pollutes water supplies, increases the incidence of cancer and leads to higher levels of seismic activity, despite ample contrary evidence. This self-proclaimed environmental watchdog and anti-fracking crusader has led extensive efforts to end or prevent fracking throughout the United States by obfuscating the truth and stopping communities from reaping the benefits of America’s shale boom. Josh Fox and others like him are uninterested in looking for improvements in fracking technology and safety. Instead they seek to shut down shale exploration and other fossil fuel extraction altogether.

In his recent book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein challenges the ethical bias of environmentalists who oppose fossil-fuel use and deftly argues that fossil fuels have vastly improved the planet and the lives of its human inhabitants. He contends that a human-centric moral value that supports the well-being and prosperity of human beings ranks on a higher ethical plain than the utopian, environmentalist ideal of a “wild” earth or environment absent little or no human impact. Epstein’s moral position is that man should serve human beings, not nature, and that it is wrong-headed and misguided to view man as a destructive force meriting punishment for cultivating the environment for his benefit. With fossil fuels, limiting their use creates reduced economic prosperity, higher levels of human starvation, lower life expectancies and higher rates of infant mortality.

Beware of Saudi bedfellows

It sounds silly to say this about a regime that engages in egregious human-rights abuses as a matter of course (i.e. treating women as chattel, flogging bloggers, and chopping off the body parts of petty criminals), but Saudi Arabia has got a nerve.

According to a report on Israel’s Channel 2 on Tuesday, an anonymous European official revealed that the “Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran.” So much so, in fact, that they “have declared their readiness for the Israeli Air Force to overfly Saudi airspace en route to attack Iran if an attack is necessary.”

Though Riyadh has yet to confirm or deny this claim, it sounds plausible.

It is hard to get your arms around the stubborn determination of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. For most of the nine years he has served as Israel’s leader, first from 1996 to 1999 and now since 2009, Netanyahu shied away from confrontations or buckled under pressure. He signed deals with the Palestinians he knew the Palestinians would never uphold in the hopes of winning the support of hostile US administrations and a fair shake from the pathologically hateful Israeli media.

In recent years he released terrorist murderers from prison. He abrogated Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. He agreed to support the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. He agreed to keep giving the Palestinians of Gaza free electricity while they waged war against Israel. He did all of these things in a bid to accommodate US President Barack Obama and win over the media, while keeping the leftist parties in his coalitions happy.

The new law, which the Austrian government says could serve as a model for the rest of Europe, seeks to reduce outside meddling by prohibiting foreign funding for mosques, imams and Muslim organizations in Austria. It also stresses that Austrian law must take precedence over Islamic Sharia law for Muslims living in the country.

The Turkish government has expressed outrage at the financing ban, which it says amounts to “Islamophobia.”

“Countries cannot have their own version of Islam. Islam is universal and its sources are clear. … [E]fforts taken by state leaders to create a version of Islam that is particular to their own countries are futile.” — Mehmet Görmez, Head of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate.

Rock, Paper, Scissors of PC Victimology Muslim > gay, black > female, and everybody > the Jews

For all of 15 minutes last weekend, Patricia Arquette was a progressive hero. Arquette, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar Sunday evening for her role in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, used the final few seconds of her acceptance speech to deliver a stirring plea for female equality. “To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights—it’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” Arquette declared, to enthusiastic cries of approval and passionate finger-pointing from fellow celebrities Jennifer Lopez and Meryl Streep.

But in the time it took for Arquette to move from the Academy stage to answer questions from the press, she went from a liberal champion who used her two minutes of fame to speak passionately on behalf of a cause that she believed in to the latest target of the left’s ritualistic Two Minutes of Hate. Her offense: “It’s time,” she said, “for all the women in America and all the men that love women, and all the gay people, and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”

The government of the West Bank, which receives hundreds of millions in U.S. foreign aid, is found liable for financing terrorism in Israel.

For the better part of a decade, Congress has annually allocated $400 million to the Palestinian Authority in foreign aid, ostensibly to build schools, renovate hospitals and repair roads. On Monday in a U.S. federal court, a Manhattan jury found that this same Palestinian government financed and supported six terrorist acts that killed dozens of people in 2002-04 during the Second Intifada against Israel.The verdict held the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization liable for $218.5 million in damages. Under the 1992 Anti-Terrorism Act, the sum automatically triples to $655.5 million, roughly 15% of the Palestinian Authority’s annual budget. The Palestinian groups said they will appeal.

Speeches by foreign leaders to Joint Meetings of Congress are routine events, and often among the more forgettable. So it might have been with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s address to Congress next Tuesday. But leave it to the political wizards of the Obama Administration to turn it into the global diplomatic event of the year.
From the moment House Speaker John Boehner invited Mr. Netanyahu, the Obama Administration has made its displeasure plain, first accusing the Israeli government of breaching diplomatic protocol and leaning on Congressional Democrats to boycott. Then this week the Administration unleashed a withering personal and political attack that is unprecedented against a close ally. National Security Adviser Susan Rice even said the speech is “destructive of the fabric of the relationship” between Washington and Jerusalem.

That’s some claim against one speech, and it’s worth asking why the Administration has gone to such extraordinary lengths to squelch it. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to make the case against President Obama’s looming nuclear deal with Iran, and perhaps the Administration knows how vulnerable it is to such a critique.

‘Threat intelligence’ from the Internet was crucial to arresting three men planning terrorist strikes.

The arrest on Wednesday of three Brooklyn residents of Central Asian descent on charges of trying to join Islamic State and carry out attacks against the Coney Island amusement park and U.S. law-enforcement officers demonstrates the changing nature of the threat from homegrown extremists. It also demonstrates the means that intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have to disrupt this threat.

That two permanent U.S. residents, Abdurasul Juraboev, a citizen of Uzbekistan, and Akhror Saidakhmetov, a citizen of Kazakhstan, along with Uzbek immigrant Abror Habibov were arrested for attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization is unfortunately familiar. However, the way this conspiracy came together, as well as the way it was detected, speaks to the increasing importance of “threat intelligence” harvested from the cyber world.