RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12/a_conversation_with_mike_lee.html

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) is the new maverick of the Republican Party. He is a straight talker who was elected in the 2010 wave of the Republican comeback. Senator Lee has distinguished himself in speaking out on issues such as ObamaCare, using his experience as a Constitutional lawyer to explain this disastrous law. American Thinker had the pleasure of interviewing this up and coming Republican.

American Thinker: Recently Congressman Peter King (R-NY) has formed an anti-Tea Party PAC targeting Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Is this an example of Republicans shooting themselves in the foot?

Senator Mike Lee: No political party can win elections without a base; yet, at the same time Conservatives must understand that we cannot move the country in the right direction until we win elections. I would advise anyone who wants to attack our base that if most of us cannot get on the same page the country will continue to lurch towards the left. Those who attack our base are impairing the ability of their own party to win elections.

AT: Playing the devil’s advocate, those in the Republican Party like Congressman King have accused the Tea Party of being too Conservative and too uncompromising. Do you agree?

ML: I think those Republicans should explain what they mean when they attack people like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and myself. What does that mean? Does that mean we are too Conservative with the principles of the Republican Party? After all, we are a Conservative Party. Do they want this party driven more by the lobbyists and the media’s whims of the day? I fundamentally disagree with them. Compromise is not a substantive outcome but is inevitability in a legislative system that involves more than one person. The question is not whether you are going to compromise, but how and where. That is where principles come into play, something very important to voters.

AT: Paul Ryan defends his budget deal by explaining that Republicans in Congress are only one-third of a whole, that elections have consequences. Do you agree?

ML: I have some significant concerns with it. We are putting off those spending cuts for a decade or so while increasing the cost of government. This is based on a promise that we will cut more in a decade or so from now. Experience has taught us that kind of promise is very unlikely to be honored. Some of my other concerns are related to public land in states like my own. Because of all my concerns I will be voting against the deal.

“Doing justice to the story of modern Israel requires the moral confidence to distinguish between a civilization dedicated to building and one dedicated to destroying what others build. Is it really necessary to reaffirm that the Jewish state rests on a foundation of moral and political legitimacy stronger than that of any other modern nation, or that Jews maintained their indigenous rights to the land of Israel both when they resided in Zion and whenever and wherever they lived outside it? In modern times, and in modern terms, those rights were affirmed repeatedly, both in international law and through the gigantic efforts of Jews themselves, who purchased great tracts of the land, won back expanses of swamp and desert, built industries and cities, and repopulated the country in an unparalleled process of ingathering and resettlement of refugees.”

http://mosaicmagazine.com/supplemental/2013/12/their-tragic-land/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=24977e61fa-Mosaic_2013_12_19&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-24977e61fa-41165129

The story of the Jews was told so effectively in the Hebrew Bible that it shaped and sustained them as a people from that time to this. But what happens now?

We live in an era in which the Jewish people, having suffered a catastrophic national defeat greater even than the one recorded in the book of Lamentations, went on to write a chapter of its history at least as remarkable as any in its sacred canon. In a single decade, bereft of one third of their number, and without the obvious aid of divine intervention, Jews redefined “miracle” as something that could be enacted through human effort. Over the past six decades, the vitality and civilizing restraint of the Jewish way of life, honed in almost 2,000 years of exile, have been made manifest in the regained conditions of a thriving Jewish polity—one that simultaneously has been under relentless and, lately, spiraling pressure from all sides.

Will authors rise to this occasion as ably as the biblical authors did to theirs? Two recent and well-timed accounts of modern Israel offer a useful framework for examining how the challenge is being met. At over 450 pages apiece, each book required years of research and gestation: ten in the case of Yossi Klein Halevi’s Like Dreamers, five in Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land. So there is no question about the gravity of these authors’ intentions, or the definitiveness of their aims and ambitions. Those ambitions, moreover, have already been rewarded in the form of unfailingly warm, respectful, and serious attention in the American press—and in Shavit’s case by a place on the bestseller lists.

What, then, have they wrought?

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304561004579135422872505460?mod=Opinion_newsreel_9

The pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his lawyer brother-in-law worked together to resist the Nazis and help Jews escape Germany.

Though the Nazis never won an outright majority in the parliament of the decaying Weimar Republic, they received nearly 44% of the vote in the critical election of March 1933—a mandate that enabled Adolf Hitler’s anointment as supreme leader. To some, however, the evil character of the Nazi regime was visible from the start. Among them were the young Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, the subjects of Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern’s “No Ordinary Men.” In this concise, engaging account, Ms. Sifton, an eminent book editor, and Mr. Stern, a distinguished historian of Germany, trace Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi’s evolution from partaking in small acts of opposition to playing leading roles in the anti-Hitler resistance.

Bonhoeffer, a pastor, fought Nazi efforts to meld Protestant churches into a single “Reich Church.” Dohnanyi, a lawyer in the military intelligence service, used his position to document Nazi crimes and save Jews while joining several plots to kill Hitler. Their paths of resistance intertwined when Dohnanyi recruited Bonhoeffer to the anti-Hitler conspiracy.

Born in 1906, Bonhoeffer received a strong moral and intellectual upbringing from his father, Karl, an eminent Berlin psychiatrist, and his devout mother, Paula. The family had a notable independent streak; Paula chose to home-school their eight children in their early years. (“Germans,” she observed, “have their backbones broken twice in life: first in the schools, secondly in the military.”) One morning in 1922, Dietrich was in school when he heard “a strange crackling” from the street. It was the assassination of Germany’s Jewish foreign minister, Walter Rathenau, a crime the Bonhoeffers recognized as an omen. “Only think of the trouble we shall have later with these people,” Bonhoeffer’s brother Klaus wrote.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304367204579266243160319588#printMode

Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah, the state’s only Democratic member of Congress, announced Tuesday that he won’t seek re-election next year.

“I’ve always assumed there were going to be different chapters to my career,” said Mr. Matheson, who was first elected in 2000. “Fourteen years is a substantial amount of time to serve in the House. I believe it’s time now to look for the next chapter. That’s really what the motivation is.”

Republicans have long coveted the seat but were never able to claim it, even after a recent redistricting that favored GOP candidates. Last year, Republican Mia Love lost to Mr. Matheson by fewer than 800 votes and was planning another challenge in 2014. The Love campaign called Mr. Matheson’s retirement a “nice Christmas present.”

Mr. Matheson, a conservative Democrat who opposed ObamaCare’s original passage, is only 53 years old and likely not done with politics. His father served as governor of the state from 1977 to 1985, and the congressman remains popular. “Matheson has been touted in the past as a candidate for governor and U.S. Senate,” reports the Deseret News. “Both Republican Gov. Gary Herbert and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, are up for re-election in 2016.”

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2730/The-Really-Special-Relationship-of-the-20th-Century.aspx Michael Goodwin of the New York Post, a former colleague on the old Lou Dobbs shows at CNN, has a column out interpreting Obama’s unseemly behavior at Mandela’s funeral. He writes: But the “selfie” episode also symbolizes the greater global calamity of Western decline. With British prime minister David Cameron playing the role of […]

http://www.romirowsky.com/14167/romirowsky-joffe-new-book-palestinian-refugees

To purchase Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief directly from Palgrave Macmillan at a 20% discount, visit here then enter the code XP356ED

PHILADELPHIA – Released today by Palgrave Macmillan, Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief documents the history of Palestinian refugee relief from its inception. The refugee problem is what fuels the Arab-Israeli conflict and the leading obstacle to peace. Romirowsky and Joffe illustrate how the problem began, the international community’s first responses, the successes and failures, and offer concrete recommendations on how to deal with the issue going forward.

Efraim Karsh, Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies, King’s College London, UK, author of Palestine Betrayed endorsed the book and states,

“Drawing on a wealth of recently declassified documents, this groundbreaking book tells the little-known story of the creation of the United Nations Relief and Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). A must read for anyone seeking to understand how the international community helped transform a secondary post-World War II humanitarian predicament into the world’s most enduring refugee problem and the foremost obstacle to Arab-Israeli peace.”
About the book

This book examines the leading role of the Quaker American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in the United Nations relief program for Palestine Arab refugees in 1948-1950 in the Gaza Strip. It situates the operation within the context of the AFSC’s attempts to exercise new influence on the separate issues of pacifism and disarmament at a time marked by US efforts to construct a Cold War security regime in the Middle East and British efforts to retain influence and bases in Arab countries.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4100/israelophobia While vows are always made to fight anti-Semitism, its existence is not even admitted where it is found in its most frequent and obvious forms: among media and university “intellectuals;” among certain NGOs; in international institutions, such as the United Nations and its offshoots; within the European Union; in “liberal’ organizations ostensibly promoting human […]

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/156687/brandeis-withdraws-from-american-studies-association Brandeis University has become the second institution to withdraw from the American Studies Association, following the organization’s decision to boycott Israel. “We view the recent vote by the membership to affirm an academic boycott of Israel as a politicization of the discipline and a rebuke to the kind of open inquiry that a scholarly […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4090/europe-anti-semitism It is inexplicable that the EU Fundamental Rights Agency has removed its very own “Working definition of anti-Semitism” from its website, while more than half of OSCE Member States continue to be in breach of EU laws to monitor anti-Semitic incidents. Serious questions must be asked of the EU about its resolve to tackle […]

http://politicalmavens.com/

The NYTimes of Dec 17 reported the following in its front page article about the American Studies Association (ASA) vote to boycott Israeli academics:

“Members of the American Studies Association voted by a ratio of more than two to one to endorse the boycott in online balloting that concluded Sunday night….With fewer than 5000 members, the group is not one of the larger scholarly associations. But its vote is a milestone for a Palestinian movement known as B.D.S. for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions, which for the past decade had found little traction in the United States.”

What the Times purposely withheld is that only 1252 of the 5,000 academicians bothered to vote and only 60% of those approved the resolution. In other words, 751 people out of a total membership of 5000 agreed with the decision to boycott, a far cry from the ratio of 2 to 1. Jodi Rudoren, the Times Bureau Chief in the Middle East has proven to be a reporter with an obvious anti-Israel bias so her participation in fudging these numbers is no surprise. What is inexcusable is that the Times issued a correction about another inaccuracy in this article on Dec 18th but failed to mention the enormous discrepancy in the reporters’ tally.

Readers who have remained blinded to the Times’ yellow journalism when it comes to Israel should need no further proof than this outlandish distortion. Figures don’t lie but liars can figure.