RUTHFULLY YOURS

A majority of Americans of all Christian traditions typically tell pollsters they support Israel, with Evangelicals leading the way. A recent Pew survey shows 60 percent of white Evangelicals sympathizing “a lot” with Israel versus 9 percent with Palestinians.Strong Evangelical support for Israel is politically and strategically significant. Israeli leaders for decades have understandably sought friendship with Evangelical leaders and constituencies. More recently, critics of Israel, including leftist foundations, have sought to neutralize Evangelical support for Israel, with some success among Evangelical elites.

A Washington, D.C., group called Telos, headed by a former GOP congressional staffer and funded by George Soros, routinely takes elite Evangelicals to the West Bank for the pro-Palestinian perspective. To that end, a conference every two years in the Holy Land called “Christ at the Checkpoint” hosts hundreds of Evangelicals.

A professor at Wheaton College, Evangelicalism’s most prestigious school, takes students to “Christ at the Checkpoint” and is himself a prominent critic of pro-Israel Evangelicals. He was prominently featured in a film for Evangelicals several years ago called With God on Our Side, which lampooned pro-Israel theology.

It’s a manifesto smackdown, a fight among the members of the green Left for the intellectual and moral high ground. It’s also a fight that reflects the growing schism within American environmentalism. On one side are the pro-energy, pro-density humanists. They call themselves ecomodernists and are led by the Breakthrough Institute, a centrist, Oakland-based environmental group. On Wednesday, it released what it describes as an “ecomodernist manifesto,” a document that, at root, states the obvious: Economic development is essential for environmental protection. On the opposite side are the anti-energy, pro-sprawl absolutists. Their views are evident in the ongoing protests this week in Harvard Yard. A group called Divest Harvard is pushing the Harvard Corporation, the school’s governing body, to divest the school’s $36 billion endowment of any investments in companies that provide coal, oil, and natural gas to consumers. This group’s manifesto, issued in February, demonizes energy use.

The party of the future rallies behind an elderly suburban WASP lawyer whose father was a conservative businessman. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s immigrant grandparents turn out not to have been immigrants, just as Elizabeth Warren’s Indian ancestors turn out not to have been Indians, though Mrs. Clinton was one-quarter truthful about her ancestry, which is a hell of a lot more than Senator Warren can say. That’s too bad, really: If the imaginary Rodhams of old arrived on these shores and tricked the imaginary ur-Warrens into trading their land for a handful of shiny trinkets, that would have been a much better story than the burning question of whether Herself tipped at Chipotle.

It would also be a pretty good metaphor for the upcoming election. But back to the big news: Of course Mrs. Clinton didn’t tip. Herself has a date with destiny, and cash-handling is for the little people. John F. Kennedy Jr.’s colleagues at George (remember George?) used to shake their heads about the fact that the vastly wealthy young man was forever cadging coffee money off underlings — $100 million in the trust fund, but no latte money in his pocket. It’s weird being a super-rich person who has never had a real job. Ask Herself.

What he said, what they said, and what America is now saying to the world about exterminationist anti-Semitism
Imagine if at the height of Apartheid madness in South Africa, the president of the United States had decided to partner with the racist white regime in Pretoria, lift sanctions, and put that country’s illegal nuclear program on a glide path toward obtaining a nuclear bomb. Would South Africa have free and open democratic elections? Would the African continent be a better, safer place today? And what would America look like at home? Would we be a more equal country with an African-American president, or would we be something meaner and uglier? Who knows. But it seems safe to say that instead of honoring Nelson Mandela, Americans would probably be hearing a lot more of David Duke, or worse.

For 36 years now, Iranian officials have threatened to annihilate Israel. As Basij commander Mohammad Reza Naqdi said recently, “Destroying Israel is non-negotiable.” There may be different centers of power throughout the regime, as Iran experts posit, but everyone agrees with the Supreme Leader that Israel—the “Zionist cancer”—has got to go. Middle East experts and experienced Iran watchers in the West typically dismiss such threats as instrumental rhetoric intended to thrill local bigots and separate the Arab and Persian masses from their rulers. So why take such rhetoric seriously? The Iranians wouldn’t ever really use the bomb. In fact, they’re very clever, rational people.

The assertion that US foreign policy and national security are shaped by presidential omnipotence is refuted by recent precedents and the US Constitution. The latter was created by the Founding Fathers, who were determined to limit the power of government and preclude the possibility of executive dictatorship. They were apprehensive of potential presidential excesses and encroachment, and therefore assigned the formulation of domestic and foreign policy and national security policy to both Congress and the president. Obviously, the coalescing of congressional policy among 535 legislators constitutes a severe disadvantage for the legislature.

CONTENTS
1. “Next 9/11 will be caused by hackers, not suicide bombers”
2. Alleged sexual assault on Iranian teens leads to anti-Saudi protests
3. Five “Save the Children” aid workers murdered by Islamists; 100 students hospitalized
4. ISIS starts issuing ID cards for those living under its control
5. “On the skylines of Africa, Arabia, and Asia”
6. “ISIS is losing. Watch how and why it’s happening.”
7. Many in Bosnian village pledge allegiance to the Islamic State
8. Jewish bookshop in Barcelona targeted for bombing by Islamists
9. Hundreds turn out for funeral of childless victim of Mengele’s experiments
10. “Auschwitz,” a new 15-minute documentary by Steven Spielberg
11. “Screaming Silence”
12. Russian-Jewish liberator of Auschwitz warns of another Holocaust
13. New figures show anti-Semitic attacks continuing to rise
14. Man killed, young woman seriously injured in possible terror attack
15. Roman Abramovich buys luxury Tel Aviv home
16. Something more fun: Find your Number 1

The terrorist attack (February 14-15 2015 against a free speech even an a Jewish school) has helped to expose the existence of a fierce anger against Israel and Jews among groups of refugees and immigrants in Denmark. For the Queen, it has been painful to follow the harassment and persecution of the Danish Jews, and she is shocked that Jews again – in a completely unacceptable way – are threatened.

“That the Jews are so disliked, feel pressured and feel threatened, is shocking – because they are threatened. They take it with great dignity, as they have always done, but it is shocking to witness.”

Seen with the queen’s eyes is an important part of the reaction to the terror that we stand firmly by the key freedoms that Denmark is founded on – including freedom of expression – which makes it possible to speak, write and express ones opinion freely.

Ilana Mercer asks, where is ‘Victims of Communism Day’?

April the 15th marked Holocaust Memorial Day. Nearly everyone knows about the industrial killing of 6 million Jews, for no other reason than that they were Jews. “Serious historiography” of the subject has ensured that The Shoah, Holocaust in Hebrew, is “consigned to posterity,” its lessons remembered and commemorated throughout the civilized world.

Although she failed to dignify the Armenian genocide of 1915, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour certainly covered the Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, Bosnia, northern Iraq, Rwanda and Darfur, for a 2008 documentary about genocide. In the interest of pacifying its Turkish allies, American officialdom has generally aped Amanpour, refusing to implicate the Ottomans in the mass murder of up to 1.5 million Armenians, 100 years ago.

April 15th this year was not just the day to pay our taxes to an all-powerful and intrusive government.

No, this year April 15th marked Holocaust Remembrance Day which should remind us of the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its European allies against the stateless and hapless Jews a mere 70 years ago. It is no accident to reflect upon the name of the largest Jewish cemetery in the world: It is called: Europe.

Before the Second World War, there were some 18 million Jews. After the war, and the defeat of Germany, there were only 12 million remaining. The six million who perished soaked the benighted soil of Europe with their blood and filled the skies with their ashes.

But these were the Jewish victims of the 20th century. For nearly two millennia – before that bloodiest of all centuries unleashed its barbarism and infernal hate upon the Jewish people – millions more had died and suffered cruel martyrdom at the hands of the medieval Church and the European temporal powers.

For the first time in over 15 years, Israel may soon form a coalition government that is composed solely of right-wing factions. This could have major implications for settlement expansion. After all, both of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s previous governments (2009–2013 and 2013–2015) included center-left parties that opposed settlement expansion outside areas that—according to past negotiations and in any realistic future peace accord—would end up as part of Israel. That is, his governments allowed population growth to expand freely in the major settlement blocs that Israel is expected to keep, but they constrained growth in the smaller settlements beyond Israel’s security barrier, which would likely be part of any future Palestinian state.

In the years to come, though, the United States might have to contend with a new policy. During Netanyahu’s past six years as prime minister, his settlement policy has been the subject of great controversy and contradiction. On the one hand, the United States and Europe frequently criticized the policy as expanding Israeli presence in the West Bank. On the other, right-wing constituencies in Israel lashed out at Netanyahu for doing the exact opposite—implementing a “quiet freeze” policy that effectively halted Israeli construction outside of Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs.