RUTHFULLY YOURS

I am a Zionist.

I believe that the Jewish people established itself in the Land of Israel, albeit somewhat late. Had it listened to the alarm clock, there would have been no Holocaust, and my dead grandfather – the one I was named after – would have been able to dance a last waltz with grandma on the shores of the Yarkon River.

I am a Zionist.

Hebrew is the language I use to thank the Creator, and also to swear on the road. The Bible does not only contain my history, but also my geography. King Saul went to look for mules on what is today Highway 443, Jonah the Prophet boarded his ship not too far from what is today a Jaffa restaurant, and the balcony where David peeped on Bathsheba must have been bought by some oligarch by now.

I am a Zionist.

The first time I saw my son wearing an IDF uniform I burst into tears, I haven’t missed the Independence Day torch-lighting ceremony for 20 years now, and my television was made in Korea, but I taught it to cheer for our national soccer team.

I am a Zionist.

I believe in our right for this land. The people who were persecuted for no reason throughout history have a right to a state of their own plus a free F-16 from the manufacturer. Every display of antisemitism from London to Mumbai hurts me, yet deep inside I’m thinking that Jews who choose to live abroad fail to understand something very basic about this world. The State of Israel was not established so that the antisemites will disappear, but rather, so we can tell them to get lost.

The Goldstone Report, and a generally biased press aside, Israel has, by all standards, the most humane army the world has ever known. What other army makes calls, sends e-mails and text messages, and drops flyers to warn civilians to evacuate when launching a counter-attack?

Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan said the following about the Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F.:” Although not quite a lone voice, mine was certainly a very lonely voice among the many dozens of speeches endorsing the Goldstone Report and repudiating Israel that were made over the two days of the UN Human Rights Council hearing after Operation Cast Lead. This is what I said to the Council: “During its operation in Gaza, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

This reporter caught up with Lieutenant Elad in Philadelphia. Elad, a handsome 27-year old, has recently completed his military service, and is on a tour of Northeastern United States sponsored by Stand With Us, an Israel Education and Advocacy organization operating worldwide.

Elad articulated the attitudes and opinions regarding Israel he has found on campuses: “I got to hear a wide variety of opinions, thoughts, and perspectives about Israel. The pro -Israel students, are fighting the difficult war against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on campus. Young men and women who could have four calm years of college or university, partying and having fun, decided instead to dedicate their time and effort to defend the state of Israel. Standing up for the Jewish nation, defending values such as minority rights, LGTB groups, women rights, and more, is not a simple task for these enthusiasts. I also encountered strong anti-Israel voices. Student groups calling themselves ”pro- Palestinian” when in fact, all they care about is bashing the state of Israel. These groups are full of hate and anger, instead of seeking dialogue and peace. These students were not interested in a productive dialogue; instead, they were interested in shouting out their message. I came here with a mission to educate about Israel and to have a dialogue, which in my mind is the only way that our region will realize peace. It was dismaying to discover that some of the worst anti-Israel activists that we faced were Jewish and Israeli.”

Why are so many people gushing over President El Sisi while these atrocities continue? rsk

In a 25-minute interview [2] on Arabic satellite TV with Dr. Mona Roman, Coptic Christian Bishop Agathon fully exposed the plight of his Christian flock in Minya, Egypt—a region that has a large Coptic minority that is steadily under attack.

While several important points were made, most notable was that the Egyptian State itself is often behind the persecution of and discrimination against Christians.

According to the frustrated-sounding bishop, local governmental authorities—including the State Security apparatus—are not just ignoring the attacks on Copts, but are often the very ones behind them. For example, when the Copts were having a serious council meeting with government officials about the possibility of building a church, one of the authorities actually contacted the Islamic sheikhs of the village asking whether they “stand with the Coptic church or with the State?” If the latter, each Muslim household was instructed to send one family member to protest against the proposed building of a church—so that security can then point to the mob and, as usual, just tell the Copts, “Sorry, no can do.”

A few years ago it was the Muslim Brotherhood. These days it’s Iran. Next week it may be ISIS or Al Qaeda. Obama stands with the worst elements in the Middle East. That’s always been his philosophy.

If the left had a foreign policy, it would be, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” But the wheel is a sword and it’s lubricated with blood. The squeakiest wheels and the bloodiest swords get the most grease from the State Department because they hate us the most. And hating us the most means that somewhere along the way we must have hurt them the worst. They hate us, therefore we’re guilty.

The squeaky wheel runs on blood and on American guilt. The worse they are, the guiltier we must be. Instead of reinforcing the moderates, whose shortage of ravening hatred suggests that they don’t have any legitimate complaints about us worth listening to, the left seeks out the extremes of extremists.

I have never understood why West Philadelphia became a slum. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the real estate: Right in the middle of West Philadelphia is an Ivy League university; go eight-tenths of a mile east from the University of Pennsylvania down Walnut Street and you’re in one of the nicest city centers in the Northeast; go four miles northwest down Lancaster Avenue and you’re in Lower Merion, the fifth-highest-income municipality in the country (sandwiched between San Ramon, Calif., and Brookline, Mass.), where you can catch a polo match or a steeplechase race. There is terrific residential architecture, from the Victorian rowhouses on Spruce Street to the stately 19th-century homes spread out on broad lawns as you approach the city limit.

But in between is a lot of blight and some very bad blocks, though less blight and fewer bad blocks than there were 30 years ago.

West Philadelphia has experienced a modest urban renaissance — thanks to the “invaders” and in spite of the people who were living there.

“On this record, there is no cause to question that Complainant—who was assigned the sex of male at birth but identifies as female—is female.” (Emphasis in original.)

Never mind that the record in question indicates that the complainant, who recently changed his legal name from Todd Lusardi to Tamara Lusardi, wasn’t arbitrarily “assigned the sex of male at birth” but is in fact genetically male and, yes, even retains (or, at least at the time of the events in question, retained) male genitalia. Anyone who thinks that “there is no cause to question” that Lusardi “is female” is an idiot or a lunatic.

Alas, it turns out that three members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—Jenny R. Yang, Chai R. Feldblum, and Charlotte A. Burrows—are idiots or lunatics, for the passage I quote is from a recent EEOC decision, adopted by a 3-2 vote on, fittingly, April Fool’s Day. That decision, rendered against the Department of the Army, holds that Lusardi was “subjected to disparate treatment on the basis of sex” when he (the decision uses female pronouns for him) “was denied equal access to the common female restroom facilities.” It also holds that he was subjected to a hostile work environment “based on sex.” Part of the evidence in support of that holding was that a supervisor used male pronouns to refer to him (and “Sir” to address him).

How do you explain the efforts of liberated Western women to see less fortunate sisters consigned to spend their lives inside head-to-toe sacks? Incurious and unoriginal journalism, the sort that accepts without question the orthodoxy of political correctness, just might have something to do with it.

In the unlikely event that recent Afghan refugee Mrs Ziarata Zia is overcome by the urge to join Melbourne’s men-only Athenaeum Club she will know the lawyer to contact for help in smashing another of those patriarchal bastions of sexist discrimination and oppression that stop women living full and equal lives. And if Age reporter Miki Perkins feels like taking it easy, eschewing curiosity and journalistic diligence for cutting and pasting a press release that she can present as original work under her picture byline, she will know who to call as well.

Yes, Melanie Schleiger’s phone will be ringing off the hook that day. Indeed, she can expect to be almost as busy as the medicos and schedulers at the Monash Women’s Clinic, who as a consequence of the Victoria Legal Aid lawyer’s latest crusade must now amend their protocols and office procedures to avoid offending and disconcerting Muslims. Especially pleased will be those husbands who insist on keeping fearful, brainwashed and terminally submissive wives in head-to-toe sacks.

The opt-out movement against taking the tests is growing, and so is the Obama administration’s ire.

The term “soccer mom”—political shorthand for the upscale suburban women President Clinton courted so successfully in the 1990s—may have fallen out of use with the Beltway set in more recent years, but this swing voting bloc is still around. Just ask Arne Duncan.

As President Obama’s education secretary and the administration’s head cheerleader for the new Common Core academic standards, Mr. Duncan has spent four years trying to convince the country that the biggest problem with K-12 schooling is insufficient federal intervention. His problem is that the more parents learn about this federal effort to impose uniform math and reading standards across state lines, the less they like the idea. And women, who are more likely than men to rank education as “very important” in political surveys, seem to harbor a special disdain for Common Core.

In an historic announcement, all-women Smith College has announced it will admit men pretending to be women to its school. All a man has to do is say on his application that he “feels like” a woman, and he is eligible. However, women who “feel like” they are men are no longer invited to apply to Smith. It all depends on what you say you feel like the day you fill out your college application.

Other schools like Mount Holyoke and Wellesley are also accepting disguised men. I suppose the men from Harvard and Yale who go on road trips to pick up women from these schools will have to be extra-careful now!

Rather than criticizing this move, I applaud it! I think this is great, but just the first step. If Smith can admit men disguised as women, it can go the next logical step and admit…normal men.

From my own experience in college, here is what I have observed that women are able to do in schools that have men:

Hibernian Anti-Semitism By G. Murphy Donovan
Ireland is no stranger to religious or racial hatred. Part of the trouble is geography. Nurtured by religion and isolation, island monocultures often breed narrow minds and asocial practice. Clerical pedophilia and chronic alcoholism might be two Irish markers. Vendetta and honor killings would be examples from other island cultures such as Sicily and Corsica. Ireland’s antipathy for English Protestants is surely a legacy of colonial repression and a Reformation that never came to the Emerald Isle. Absence of religious reform is something that Irish and Muslim worlds have in common. Irish cultural attitudes were surely influenced by English imperial overlords too who were for centuries the gold standard for presumptions of sectarian, class, and racial superiority. Not much of that history was lost on the Irish.

British influence may have been formative, yet a monolithic Catholic Church was dominant in Ireland for over a thousand years. Many Irishmen like to think of Eire as the land of “saints and scholars,” the most Catholic country in Europe. Many an Irish anecdote reveals, however, a darker side of Gaelic tribalism. The civilized way was thought to be, “Don’t get angry, get even.”

Indeed, another aphorism suggests the Irish make good soldiers because they will take any side of an argument as long as it ends in a fight. Brouhaha, blarney, boycott, donnybrook, Finnian, hooligan, kybosh, shillelagh, smithereens, paddy wagon, Irish wake, and whiskey are all Irish contributions to Anglo-American rhetoric, as is the word “phony.” The meme that binds linguistically might charitably be described as pugnacious chauvinism.

The latest fight in Ireland is about Jews, although the run-of-the-mill Finnian socialist is quick to claim that real issues are human rights, the so-called “occupation” of Palestine, or the oppressive policies of a “Zionist” Israel. Nonetheless, just as the Continent is plagued again by anti-Jewish hate, tiny Catholic Ireland is now thought to be the most anti-Semitic nation in the European Union. The evidence for Irish bigotry is overwhelming.