RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/12/16/convicted-terror-supporter-attends-congressional-briefing/

A convicted terrorist supporter who is currently under house arrest attended a Capitol Hill briefing hosted by a pro-Muslim Brotherhood group in a congressional office building earlier this month, according to reports.

Sami Al-Arian, a former engineering professor at the University of South Florida, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to aid the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in 2006. He has been under house detention in Northern Virginia since 2008 for refusing to testify in a subsequent terror financing trial.

Al-Arian admitted in the plea agreement to having had worked with the PIJ and other groups from the 1980s to the 1990s. He said he helped assist the PIJ after it was officially designated as a terrorist organization in 1995.

Al-Arian showed up at the briefing at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 5, the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported. A group called the Egypt Freedom Foundation hosted the event.

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/12/17/its-about-the-settlements-stupid/

Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, the misnamed occupied territories, are not the obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. They are the acid test of peace. To argue that peace is conceivable unless the bulk of the settlements remain in place constitutes stupidity or hypocrisy. Leave aside the issue of whether Jews have the right to live in the historic homeland of the Jewish people. Ignore the fact that the settlers live overwhelmingly on what was waste land and turned into gardens, vineyards, and industries which have uplifted the lives of Palestinian Arabs more than all the aid that has passed through (or rather stuck to) the fingers of the kleptocrats of the PA. Leave aside also Israel’s requirement for defensible borders: that is a critical issue but not identical to the continued presence of settlements.

Accepting the settlements is the sine qua non of any viable peace agreement. It does Israel no good to defend Israel’s right to exist but to condemn the settlers, as does Alan Dershowitz, not to mention the leaders of liberal Jewish denominations.

I believe in land for peace. That is a tautology: In territorial disputes the two main variables always are land and peace. But that implies more land for more peace and less land for less peace. The Palestinian Arabs had an opportunity to accept an Israeli state on just 5,500 square miles of land in 1947, and refused to do so. The armistice lines of 1948 left Israel with 8,550 square miles, and the Arab side refused to accept that. In 1967 Israel took an additional 5,628 square miles of land in dispute under international law; Jordan does not claim it, and no legal Arab authority exists to claim it. It is not “illegally occupied.” It has never been adjudicated by a competent authority.

To demand the 1948 armistice lines (the so-called 1967 borders) is to refuse any penalty for refusing to make peace in the past. That is the same as refusing any peace at all. Wars end when one side accepts defeat, and abandons the hope of restoring the status quo ante by force of arms. 1947 was a catastrophe (“Nakba”) for the Palestinian Arabs, to be sure, but it was a catastrophe of their own making; until they accept at least some degree of responsibility for the catastrophe, they will not be reconciled to any peace agreement. That is precisely what Palestine’s negotiator Saeb Erekatmeant when he eschewed any recognition of Israel as a Jewish nation-state because “I cannot change my narrative.” The “narrative” is that the Jews are an alien intrusion into the Muslim Middle East and eventually must be eliminated by one means or another.

http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/fostering-a-culture-of-philanthropic-giving-in-israel/?utm_source=Tue+Dec+17&utm_campaign=Tue+Dec+17&utm_medium=email

[This is the second article in a series on Israeli philanthropy. This segment of the series includes two parts. Part one focuses on organizations and initiatives that promote organized and strategic giving by Israeli philanthropists. Part two features organizations and initiatives that encourage micro-donations from the Israeli public.]

Part I: Promoting Strategic Philanthropy
by Frayda Leibtag

Tzedakah, charity, is a core Jewish value and a significant amount of giving takes place in Israel every day. The food donation boxes in Israeli supermarkets are always overflowing with products. Free-loan funds, for money as well as household items, clothing, books, equipment and services, abound in the ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel. Israeli passersby frequently give their small change to beggars on the street. According to a May 2013 Fact Sheet produced by the Myers-Brookdale Institute, 68% of Israelis age 20 or older donate, and in an international comparative survey conducted by the 2012 World Giving Index, Israel ranked in the 19th place among 146 countries included in the index (U.K. is ranked 4 and the U.S. 13). Israelis give, but not in the organized and controlled fashion that is formally termed philanthropy. Organizations and initiatives such as Committed to Give, Sheatufim, Jewish Funders Network (JFN) Israel, Keren Baktana and Takdim are working to promote and support a culture of philanthropy and giving in Israel.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4463/pope_says_he_knows_good_people_who_are_marxists_i_don_t

Pope Francis has run into hot water over some recent remarks about Marxism. Hard-hitting, Conservative U.S. talk show host Rush Limbaugh had accused the Pope of making some comments that went “beyond Catholicism” and were “pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope”.
USSR — 20 million

China — 65 million

Vietnam — 1 million

North Korea — 2 million

Cambodia — 2 million

Eastern Europe — 1 million

Latin America — 150,000

Africa — 1.7 million

Afghanistan — 1.5 million

Communist movements, parties not in power — 10,000

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/mandela-and-double-standards-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Ann-Marie Murrell, Monty Morton and Dwight Schultz.

The Gang gathered to discuss Does a $17 Trillion Debt Really Matter? The dialogue occurred in Part II (starting at the 2:30 mark) and examined the disturbing truth about what our national debt really means.

In Part I, the Gang shed light on Mandela and Double Standards (see Daniel Greenfield’s article The Mandela Myth).

The episode also focused on “Elian Gonzalez Leaves Cuba For First Time,” “Obama’s Handshake with Raul Castro,” “The Direction of Health Care if ObamaCare Persists,” and much, much more.

See both parts of the two-part series below:

Part I:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/asa-boycott-of-israel-provides-supportive-testimony-from-angela-davis-1/print/

Nothing like testimony from a racist Communist terrorist to endorse a racist left-wing boycott. It’s no coincidence that most of the supportive statements seem to come from University of California faculty. The UC system has been repeatedly criticized for its anti-semitism problem.

The endorsements begin with a cynical act of Jewashing by listing the call for boycotting Israel by a professor who declares “I am a Jew.”

Then we move on to…

Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, UC Santa Cruz
Office: 831-459-5332, 831-459-1924
Email: aydavis@ucsc.edu

The similarities between historical Jim Crow practices and contemporary regimes of segregation in Occupied Palestine make this resolution an ethical imperative for the ASA. If we have learned the most important lesson promulgated by Dr. Martin Luther King—that justice is always indivisible—it should be clear that a mass movement in solidarity with Palestinian freedom is long overdue

Yes, that Angela Davis.

The Communist terrorist had circulated a petition calling for a boycott of Israel back in 2011. She served on the bigoted Russel Tribunal and this kind of ugly rhetoric and activism against the Jewish State is nothing new for the Black Panthers she was associated with.

Now 16 percent of the American Studies Association’s members have backed an Angela Davis petition against the Jewish State.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/vladimir-tismaneanu/empire-of-madness-caligula-in-pyongyang/ North Korea is Stalin’s ultimate dream come true. It is a most dangerous actor in world politics and a despicable tyranny where reason and moderation are treated as mortal enemies. Blind obedience is mandatory and so is infinite subservience to the Supreme Leader, the administrator of truth, memory, and universal poverty. It is the […]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-muslim-brotherhoods-syrian-scam-is-over/ The Free Syrian Army had one purpose. To fool America. Now the con is over. In the deserts of the Middle East, political mirages appear easily and disappear just as easily. There are countries and armies that exist only on paper. And there are invisible tribal nations that have no flag and never appear […]

http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamacare-a-law-or-a-shakedown/ Late last week, the Obama administration made a series of “requests” to insurance companies that are participating in the new exchanges, federal or state, as well as those companies processing renewal requests for individual insurance policies that were initially cancelled and may now be renewed in those states where the state insurance commissioner has […]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304403804579262804145084652?mod=Opinion_newsreel_4

The political corruption of the American academy is by now an old story, but every so often it reveals itself in a new and shocking way. The latest example comes from the professors of the American Studies Association, which on Monday announced that two-thirds of its members had voted in favor of boycotting Israel.

Jonathan Marks reports nearby on the association’s internal politics, and readers won’t be surprised at the bullying tactics employed to pass the boycott resolution. This is how the modern academic and media left operate.

Yet it’s still worth pondering what must go through the mind of a professoriate, presumably dedicated to free political speech, that would choose to boycott the most democratic country in the Middle East. The country in which Arabs are treated far better and have far more rights than they do in most Arab lands. And the country that is America’s most reliable ally. We can only imagine what these same professors must teach their students about the supposed crimes of America.