RUTHFULLY YOURS

In 2007, Abbas lost the Gaza Strip to Hamas. Now he seems to be losing the Gaza Strip to his rivals in Fatah. Many of his former Fatah supporters have turned against him.

The last thing the Palestinians and the international community want is another Syria or Libya or Yemen in the Middle East.

This is not a fight about rebuilding Gaza, or reforms, democracy or building a better future for Palestinians. This is not a fight between good guys and bad guys. Rather, this is a fight between bad guys and bad guys — and it is all over money, ego and power.

The Palestinian Fatah faction, whose leaders are supposed to be working toward preparing Palestinians for an independent Palestinian state, is currently embroiled in a bitter and violent power struggle between Palestinian Authority [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas and his major rival, Mohamed Dahlan.

This is a power struggle, however, that casts doubts on Fatah’s preparedness to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

There is a bit of difference between Iran and U.S. President Barack Obama when it comes to ‎Israel. Iran has never been reticent that its goal is to eliminate the State of Israel, ‎and Israelis too while they are it. Iran’s proxy terror army of Hezbollah ‎contributed their part on Wednesday, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding seven with anti-tank ‎fire from southern Lebanon directed at an Israeli convoy. Obama seems more ‎interested, at least in the next two months, in eliminating one Israeli — namely, Prime ‎Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ‎

It has been a remarkable two weeks in U.S.-Israel relations. The president ‎delivered his State of the Union address, in which he argued for staying the course ‎with negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, overselling what has already ‎been achieved, as well as what might be achieved. He also threatened to veto new ‎sanctions legislation that might be passed by Congress, where some have called for ‎tougher sanctions to be applied to Iran if a satisfactory deal were not struck ‎between the P5+1 and the Iranians by June 30. Obama argued that passing such a ‎measure now would be a sign of bad faith and drive the Iranians from the ‎negotiating table. It was, of course, an odd prediction, since one area in which the ‎Iranians have shown remarkable consistency has been in negotiating with ‎European powers, or the now expanded negotiating group for over 10 years, ‎always without a satisfactory outcome. The Iranians seem to like being seen as ‎negotiating while their nuclear program advances.‎

Many people have already written about the semblance of blaming the victim when we extol the bravery and determination of cancer survivors, thereby implying that those who don’t survive somehow haven’t fought as hard or had the right positive attitude. A recent article about the medical understanding of the quality of random-ness in the formation of most cancers – with the exception of those forms caused or exacerbated by external toxic agents (cigarettes) – is another indicator that individual efforts to stay healthy or recover from an illness may have less to do with sterling character traits than we give ourselves credit for. This thought came to mind while watching Wolf Blitzer’s one hour program focusing on four “Heroes of Auschwitz,” survivors who managed to get to America and create new lives after the war. Though there have been studies showing a correlation between survival and religious belief as well as a purpose in life , it surely is the ultimate chutzpah and dishonor to the millions of victims who were felled to pretend that survival was largely a factor of strong will and therefore within their control.

Gerald Walpin former Inspector General is author of :The Supreme Court vs. The Constitution

Don’t all of these sound applicable to the Gathering Storm of what the western world faces now and in the next few years, if we do not face up to the enemy that has said they want to destroy us? These quotations are from Churchill’s “Gathering Storm” (thanks to the Blaze), and certainly demonstrate the Churchillian lesson of history applicable to current issues and threats.I offer you the following quotations for your consideration: G.W.

Is the world reliving Churchill’s history of the run-up to WWII? These 12 passages suggest we might be.

1. “We are not the same country we used to be …, only twenty years ago.”

As the world watches the rise of an Islamic State Caliphate in the Middle East, and witnesses jihadist attacks launched in ones and twos, more and more leaders are admitting that Western civilization is involved in a war against radical Islam.
Though technology has certainly changed, and Western society has made incredible advancements, the enemy that is radical Islam remains virtually unchanged from today to the 19th century, even back to the 7th century.

Legendary British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote a book in 1899 called The River War detailing the British reconquest of the Sudan. In it, Churchill had some harshly critical, but true, statements regarding the Muslim extremists facing the British soldiers.
Churchill said, “The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.”

Diana West is the author of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character (St. Martin’s Press), from which this essay is adapted.

In his contribution to the famous 1949 collection of essays by ex-Communists titled The God That Failed, Arthur Koestler carefully illustrates how set language binds thought to ideology at the expense of evidence. Koestler, author of the unparalleled novel of Stalin’s show trials, Darkness at Noon, describes a conversation he had early in his Communist career with “Edgar,” his Party contact, in which they discuss the front page of a Communist newspaper.

“But every word on the front page is contradicted by the facts,” I objected. Edgar gave me a tolerant smile. “You still have the mechanistic outlook, he said, and then proceeded to give me the dialectical interpretation of the facts . . .

Gradually, I learned to distrust my mechanistic preoccupation with facts and to regard the world around me in the light of dialectical interpretation. It was a satisfactory and indeed blissful state; once you had assimilated the technique, you were no longer disturbed by the facts [emphasis added].

UNDIPLOMATIC SLUR FROM DIPLOCUR DANIEL C. KURZER…FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL – ”

“Mr. Kurtzer said while it was unlikely the Obama administration would take the extraordinary step of declaring Mr. Dermer “persona non grata” — the official method for a foreign diplomat to be ousted from a country — it could request that Mr. Dermer be reprimanded or removed. “He has soiled his pad; who’s he going to work with?” Mr. Kurtzer said.” RSK

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, after days of mounting tension, signaled on Wednesday how angry it is with Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted Republican leaders’ invitation to address Congress on Iran without consulting the White House.

The outrage the episode has incited within President Obama’s inner circle became clear in unusually sharp criticism by a senior administration official who said that the Israeli ambassador, Ron Dermer, who helped orchestrate the invitation, had repeatedly placed Mr. Netanyahu’s political fortunes above the relationship between Israel and the United States.

The official who made the comments to The New York Times would not be named, and the White House declined to comment. The remarks were the latest fallout after Mr. Dermer, without the White House’s knowledge, worked with House Speaker John A. Boehner to arrange the speech, which is scheduled for March.

Full text of the letter is … available at
http://www.cruz.senate.gov/files/documents/Letters/20150129_Letter_to_Secretary_Kerry.pdf

Sen. Cruz: Has President Obama Launched a Political Campaign Against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu?
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Congressman Lee Zeldin, R-NY-1, today sent
a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking for information regarding
media reports that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used to fund efforts to
influence upcoming elections in Israel. This is from Senator Cruz’s press
release.

Molly White, a Republican state rep, asks Muslim community members to renounce terrorism, swear allegiance

A Texas lawmaker instructed staff to greet Muslim visitors with an Israeli flag.

Molly White, a Republican state representative, said in a Facebook posting that she would be out of the office on Thursday, Muslim Capitol Day, organized by the local Council on American-Islamic Relations chapter.

“I did leave an Israeli flag on the reception desk in my office with instructions to staff to ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws,” she said. “We will see how long they stay in my office.”

The Texas Tribune said about 100 Muslims visited the Capitol, most of them students and children.

Within hours, White’s Facebook posting had drawn hundreds of replies, positive and negative, including one from Martin Woodward, who said he was Jewish, Texan and a supporter of Israel.

“Choosing to display the Israeli flag solely as a reaction to Muslim visitors is not respectful to Israel, her citizens, or her supporters,” he said. “I urge you to reconsider your actions.”

White, who engaged with other commenters, saying she would ban those who are “insulting,” did not reply to Woodward.

From her page, it appears that White backs laws that would ban Muslims from settling differences through Sharia, or Islamic law.

Most Jewish groups oppose such laws, in part because they would likely also lead to restrictions on Jewish religious courts, or batei din.

The civil war in Syria will soon enter its fifth year, with no end in sight. On January 20, Foreign Affairs managing editor Jonathan Tepperman met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus to discuss the conflict in an exclusive interview.

I would like to start by asking you about the war. It has now been going on for almost four years, and you know the statistics: more than 200,000 people have been killed, a million wounded, and more than three million Syrians have fled the country, according to the UN. Your forces have also suffered heavy casualties. The war cannot go on forever. How do you see the war ending?
All wars anywhere in the world have ended with a political solution, because war itself is not the solution; war is one of the instruments of politics. So you end with a political solution. That’s how we see it. That is the headline.

You don’t think that this war will end militarily?
No. Any war ends with a political solution.

Your country is increasingly divided into three ministates: one controlled by the government, one controlled by ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, and one controlled by the more secular Sunni and Kurdish opposition. How will 

you ever put Syria back together again?
First of all, this image is not accurate, because you cannot talk about ministates without talking about the people who live within those states. The Syrian people are still with the unity of Syria; they still support the government. The factions you refer to control some areas, but they move from one place to another—they are not stable, and there are no clear lines of separation between different forces. Sometimes they mingle with each other and they move. But the main issue is about the population. The population still supports the state regardless of whether they support it politically or not; I mean they support the state as the representative of the unity of Syria. So as long as you have the Syrian people believing in unity, any government and any official can unify Syria. If the people are divided into two, three, or four groups, no one can unify this country. That’s how we see it.