RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, the international coalition forces against ISIS succeeded in the past nine months, mainly through the United States air-campaign, to kill more than 10,000 ISIS fighters. In addition, according to Blinken, ISIS lost control over 25 percent of the territory it had captured in Iraq. However, Blinken admited that ISIS appeal to foreign fighters has in fact increased: “They are on the march, they are succeeding, they’re moving forward, and we are not, and in fact it’s just the opposite,” he said. He attributed this to ISIS’s successful recruitment of “young…impressionable people around the world.”

Under growing criticism of handling the war against ISIS, the Obama administration decided to send more weapons to the Iraqi army and has already sent the first shipment of the 2,000 AT4 anti-tank missiles to be used against ISIS driven American tanks and armored vehicles that the withdrawing Iraqi army left behind. How long will it take before these missiles will join the more than an estimated $1 billion worth of mostly American made Iraqi weapons that have been already captured by ISIS? And how would anti-tank missiles stop ISIS’s most popular mass-attack weapon, the car-bomb? That, Blinken did not explain. Nor did he elaborate on what the U.S. and its allies are doing to counter ISIS’s most powerful weapon: radicalization and recruitment of foreign fighters from among Sunnis everywhere. While some new ISIS recruits need training, others who travel to fight in Iraq, Syria, and Libya (such as the Afghan Taliban and the Chechen jihadists) are battle-hardened and eager to die for the caliphate.

What I would have asked Obama

On Tuesday night, Israel’s Channel 2 network aired an interview with U.S. President Barack Obama, conducted by respected Israeli journalist Ilana Dayan. This was yet another tine of Obama’s multi-pronged charm offensive, to make sure the Jews who supported and funded him do not abandon him and the Democratic Party as the 2016 presidential election draws near.

Coming on the heels of a sit-down with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic and an address to the Adas Israel congregation in Washington, it was not the least bit original. On the contrary, it was basically a repeat of everything Obama has been saying to assure Jewish donors that he has Israel’s best interests at heart.

This is among many reasons that Dayan need not be patting herself on the back for scoring the coveted one-on-one at the White House. Indeed, she was merely serving as a pawn in Obama’s transparent maneuver to capitulate to Iran, and to keep Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings about Iran from being taken seriously.

Today is the anniversary of a modern miracle, the Israeli victory of the Six Day War, מלחמת ששת הימים, or Milhemet Sheshet Ha Yamim in Hebrew. It saw an outnumbered Israel beat back an attempt at destruction and genocide, reunite Jerusalem, bring the strategic Golan and the historic Jewish homelands of Judea and Samaria back under Israeli sovereignty. It’s worth recounting 46 years later, when Israel’s mortal enemies once again gather to attempt to destroy her.

Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser had formed a military alliance with Syria, the United Arab Republic (UAR) and with the aid of the Soviet Union, both countries had built up a substantial military force, vastly outnumbering Israel in tanks, planes and manpower.

After the 1956 war,the Israelis had agreed to withdraw from Sinai based on President Eisenhower’s guarantees that provided for a UN peacekeeping force to be stationed there to prevent feydayeen terrorist raids on Israel, the main cause (at least from the Israeli standpoint) of the ’56 war.

Another part of the ceasefire agreement that ended the 1956 war concerned the Straits of Tiran, a waterway connecting the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea and Israel’s sole Red Sea outlet for the port of Eilat.

In six daysIsrael barely 19 years old and 31 years after the end of the Holocaust captured the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. It was a crushing defeat for the Arabs.

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had ordered the United Nations out of the Suez region and had their peace-keeping troops replaced with Egyptian military personnel, enforced a naval blockade which closed off the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, and declared: “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight.”On one occasion, he told listeners of Voice of the Arabs that “every one of the 100 million Arabs has been living for the past 19 years on one hope – to live to die on the day that Israel is liquidated”. He emphasized his threats by massing over 100,000 troops in the Sinai. Syrians massed 75,000 troops, artillery and armor on the Golan Heights. Jordan moved 55,000 troops and 300 tanks to the border.

These unendurable and blood curdling threats were echoed from Jihadist cheerleaders in every single Arab state. On June 5th, 1967 Israel launched pre-emptive strikes, overwhelming their armies and air power, and captured the Golan, the Sinai Peninsula, and liberated Judea and Samaria, and East Jerusalem.

This stunning victory reverberated and inspired Jews in every corner of the world- from Moscow to Argentina- from Uzbekistan to London- from Capetown to Los Angeles.

It is worth revisiting the value of premption and the will to forgo appeasement and worthless negotiations with implacable enemies.

Immediately before the resort to conflict, Israel’s top generals and politicians clashed over how to address the Arab threat, with distrust and disdain bursting into the open, newly released papers show.

Two days before Israel would embark on the Six Day War, army brass and top politicians held a tumultuous meeting in which a group of Israeli-born generals, watching the build-up of Egyptian forces in the Sinai desert, seemed to be accusing prime minister Levi Eshkol of suffering from a perilous, Diaspora-related hesitancy that could have existential repercussions for the state.

The details of the June 3, 1967, meeting between the IDF General Staff and the government of Israel were released for the first time Thursday by the Israeli army and Defense Ministry archive, revealing the width of the gap separating the political and military leadership at the time.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/d-day-invasion-reporter-firsthand-account-1944-article-1.2243803

(Originally published by the Daily News on June 7, 1944. This story was written by Donald MacKenzie.)

A B-26 MARAUDER BASE IN ENGLAND, June 6. – Riding in the van of the American air spearhead which covered the landing of American Rangers on the coast of France, this reporter had a panoramic view this morning of the D-day invasion and saw the first Americans come ashore from smoking landing boats which had ridden through a curtain of German gunfire to reach the beach a few minutes before.

Deep behind the invaded beach, American paratroops and glider-borne Rangers were locked in battle along a wide, irregular front. Airborne units had landed soon after dawn and were engaged with the enemy when warships of the Unite Nations steamed in open order to within a few miles of the coast and commenced to pour in a steady fire.

Low wispy clouds down to 1,500 feet mottled the battlefield and the Marauder crews could discern only fragmentary glimpses of the struggle etched by the flat, splitting fire of mechanized guns and the spurting bursts of tracer bullets.

The inevitability of Hillary Clinton has been a deliberate strategy by supporters of the former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator and First Lady. The idea: perception becomes reality. It may be working. Noah Gordon, writing in the April 12, 2015 issue of The Atlantic, noted: “Since mid-2013, Clinton’s share of Democratic primary voters has averaged 60 percent.” In the build-up to the 2008 election, those same numbers were 40 percent. A question: will it backfire? For example, the number of people who consider her dishonest has reached new highs. And she has attracted some minor competition.

Running a primary without meaningful competition is a risk for a major political Party in a democratic republic. The concept of “inevitability” is present in hereditary monarchies, not amongst people for whom government is a guarantor of personal liberty and property rights, not the perpetuator of one family or one Party. Our government is based on the rule of law – laws that stem from the inalienable rights of the people – not the rule of men. We do not presume preordination. We should not claim entitlement to ensure nomination or election.

Predetermination carries with it a sense of invincibility. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, that does not mean those who support her feel she is unbeatable, but that she should run a cautious campaign – a “listening” tour and avoid controversial positions. Certainly, she believes the nomination is deserved – in fact, feels she is “owed” it. She concludes she is capable of being President. She was with her husband for eight years (alright, not always with him), and she served President Obama for four years. She is intelligent and experienced. Besides she is a woman – a feminist she would have us believe. She would be the first of her gender, and being “first” – especially for those on the Left – counts for more than ideas, policies or character. She has been loyal to her Party and to her husband, neither of whom have always been loyal to her. She has name recognition, which is a positive, but her name is also synonymous with dishonesty, cronyism and obfuscation.

This past Cinco de Mayo, the eagle-eyed Ruth S. King, board member of Family Security Foundation and columnist for Americans for a Safe Israel’s Outpost, alerted me to what she called an “appalling whitewash of Albania in American Thinker.”

Of course, it’s less appalling if one recalls my own bumpy Balkans history with American Thinker, as I’ve had with almost every other publication that had the momentary courage (or blissful naivete) to publish my minority view (a.k.a. the truth) about Kosovo and who the real aggressor was. Publisher Thomas Lifson had followed the familiar pattern wherein an editor is at first thankful that I put the subject on his radar and did the hard research — then feels immediately overburdened by the subject as soon as it causes real controversy and shows how unpopular the actual history is. Often, they turn on a dime when the hyenas of the majority view start screeching about the rare appearance of something other than the monopoly perspective — that only allowable, only existing (as far as you’re supposed to know), recent recorded history of the region.

And so American Thinker, like American Legion, Baltimore Sun and others before it, went from respect and gratitude to resentment, avoidance and annoyance at the name Julia Gorin. After kindly allowing one or two more Gorin pieces on the subject in 2007, Mr. Lifson declared that A.T. would stay away from the Balkans all together. The way the rest already do (except when it’s a rehash or tangent of the permitted narrative).

But then on Christmas 2010 he reprinted a majority-view article titled”A Srebrenica Christmas,” and when he again broached the Balkans in March 2011 with a good piece by Victor Sharpe titled “Hillary’s War” and I thanked him, he said he almost didn’t run it, since “Nobody is ever convinced to change his/her mind on the Balkans, and it is not worth the trouble focusing on it.” To which I replied, “Publishing the occasional piece on the Balkans amid the avalanche of standard-issue stuff isn’t exactly ‘focusing.’ Interesting that it feels that way to you. Sort of underscores my point about the lack of American palate, fortitude and stamina vis-à-vis the Balkans, where world wars and Orwellian societal experimentation by our elites begin. (Coming soon to Americans.)”

Obama introduced himself to the nation as the son of black and white parents. He has gone back and forth between Christianity and Islam like a philanderer in a bar.

Now he has added a third religion and race to complete his identity politics trinity.

At the last White House Chanukah dinner, he claimed to have a Jewish soul. At a synagogue speech last month, he called himself “an honorary member of the tribe”. Now his former senior advisor has quoted him as saying, “I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office.”

Of course Barack Obama has also been Irish. He stated, “I consider myself an honorary Italian, because I love all things Italian”. Newsweek dubbed him “The First Woman President [2]” in 2008 for “bending gender conventions” and promoted him to “The First Gay President” four years later. Cabinet Secretary Lu and Congressman Honda argued [3] that he was “The First Asian American President”.

If you make up an ethnic group or race, by tomorrow Barack Obama will be a member of it. By next week, he will be lecturing it on why it isn’t living up to their shared values.

Obama’s Jewish toadies, like his multicultural frog pond toadies of all races and ethnicities, have been trying to sell Barack Obama as a “Born-Again Jew” for seven years.

His left-wing mentor Abner Mikva claimed during the original campaign, “When this all is over, people are going to say that Barack Obama is the first Jewish president.” But Abner hedged his bets, baptizing Obama in a Mikvah by urging him to study the speaking patterns of Baptist preachers instead.

New York Magazine put Obama on the cover under a photoshopped Kippah as “The First Jewish President” and whined inside that, “Barack Obama is the best thing Israel has going for it right now. Why is that so difficult for Netanyahu and his American Jewish allies to understand?”

Congress should kill the Export-Import Bank, a taxpayer-financed slush fund for crooks, cronies, and corporate flops. Rather than reauthorize this gold-plated boondoggle, Congress simply should do nothing. If so, the Ex-Im Bank will die of terminal inaction on June 30.

And what a well-deserved death that would be. As a new report details, this multibillion-dollar Pandora’s Bank teems with unaffordable horrors.

American Transparency/OpenTheBooks.com (on whose advisory board I serve) scrutinized $172 billion in Ex-Im Bank loans, guarantees, and transactions from Fiscal Year 2007 through FY 2014. Among this watchdog group’s discoveries: