RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/6473/features/beyond-the-giants/

Over 3,000 years ago, a band of Hebrew scouts left their dusty Sinai outpost and trekked deep into the heart of Canaan to survey it and see what kind of country it was. These 12 men had heard much about a land flowing with milk and honey, but they had never seen it with their own eyes. Forty days later they returned crestfallen and hopeless. The land was indeed a paradise, they told the Israelite congregation, but it was occupied by giants. Despite God’s inflated promises, Israel had no future there. Joshua and Caleb dissented, but the majority carried the day.

Fast forward a few millennia. I’m sitting on a plane at JFK about to embark on my own investigative mission to Canaan. My goal is research, not conquest, and my point of departure is New York, not Sinai. But on this, my very first trip to Israel, I feel just as exhilarated and anxious as those 12 spies must have felt.

I know a great deal about Israel. As a Christian, I have read through the Hebrew scriptures many times; as a student of Middle Eastern history I’ve examined the region extensively from an academic perspective. Yet I have never seen the land in person. As my plane leaves the tarmac, I suddenly wonder if I too will be disappointed by what I find.

The trip goes by in a blur and three weeks later I return. Friends and family immediately bombard me with questions: What is Israel like? How are the people? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? My Israeli friends are especially interested to hear my thoughts. Was Israel what I expected?

Israel is a paradise, I tell them. The immense Jerusalem sky, the ancient hills, and the sun-washed shores of the Mediterranean are beyond breathtaking. I ramble on about the aromatic food, the endearing people, and the surprising array of cultures. I try my best to impart some sense of Israel’s spiritual energy, struggling to convey what it’s like to walk in the cool confines of the Garden Tomb, pray at the Western Wall, and stand before the Golden Gate at twilight listening to the cry of the muezzin inside Al-Aqsa.

My listeners nod and smile, mildly amused. They are probing for something deeper, something more substantial. Based on what I saw, they ask, is there any future in Canaan?

Here my voice softens a bit. I can’t lie—I saw some giants.

David Charter Berlin
Published at 2:57PM, May 9 2013

A German opera company today scrapped its Nazi staging of a Wagner opera after the artistic transposition from the bucolic Middle Ages to the gas chambers of the Third Reich proved a goose step too far.

“Numerous” audience members at the Deutsche Oper Am Rhein’s opening night production of Tannhäuser “suffered psychological and physical stress so intense that they required medical treatment,” the opera company, based in Duesseldorf, said.

The most upsetting scene involved the central character – intended by Wagner to be a medieval travelling minstrel – dressed in SS uniform and carrying out a realistic execution of an entire family by shooting them individually in the neck.

Burkhard Kosminski, the director, who was booed at the premier on Saturday night, refused to compromise his artistic vision by removing individual scenes despite a growing chorus of outrage, the opera said in a statement yesterday.

After four days of internal wrangling, the company decided to ditch his vision altogether and carry on with the four-and-a-half hour opera tonight as a simple concert without staging and costume.

“The management of Deutsche Oper am Rhein was aware in advance of the Tannhäuser production of Burkhard C. Kosminski that its concept and implementation would arouse controversy,” the opera said in a statement on its website this morning.

“Our paramount concern was to respond to some scenes, especially the realistic shooting scene, which caused numerous visitors to suffer psychological and physical stress so intense that they required medical treatment.”

One woman contacted the Rheinische Post newspaper to complain that she had to take her husband to the doctor afterwards “because his blood pressure was significantly raised.”

Another member of the audience from Romania was seen leaving by the newspaper’s critic “bathed in sweat” complaining that the violence brought back terrible memories.

The statement continued: “After considering all the arguments we came to the conclusion that we cannot justify such an extreme impact of our artistic work….In intensive conversation with the director Burkhard C. Kosminski we discussed the possibility of changes to individual scenes. He refused for artistic reasons. As a matter of course, and also for legal reasons, we have to respect the artistic freedom of the director.

“We have therefore decided to perform Tannhäuser in concert from May 9.”

All tickets remained valid but could be exchanged, the opera added, without saying how many pre-booked seats had already been returned following the outcry.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/bds_and_the_intellectuals.html As a graduate student of English literature, I was constantly dismayed to discover that far too many literary luminaries held deeply anti-Semitic beliefs. Mary Ann Evans a.k.a. George Eliot was a notable exception and it was her book Daniel Deronda that gave me hope that intellect coupled with perceptive appreciation and empathy can sometimes […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/mistaking_cause_and_effect_in_syria.html Russia’s President Vladimir Putin called Prime Minister Netanyahu during Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to China, surely a diplomatic oddity.  (Chinese Premier Li Kegiang answers the hotline in Beijing and says, “Oh, sure.  Hey, Bibi, it’s for you.”)  President Obama called him there as well, making Netanyahu appear to be the most important man in the […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347919/monstrous-cover

‘There is no video that justifies an attack on an embassy,” the President of the United States told the United Nations last September 25, one of six “video” references in his speech. A fortnight after the deadly attack on America’s mission in Benghazi, Obama was still insisting that Innocence of Muslims, an obscure, anti-Islamic YouTube video, had fueled the mayhem. Presumably, a spontaneous protest spun out of control and unleashed lethal violence.

But, as he addressed the General Assembly, Obama surely knew that it was an al-Qaeda–propelled assault, not a YouTube video, that had killed U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

As Wednesday’s sworn testimony by three State Department whistleblowers demonstrated, this was just one of many lies deployed by Obama and others high atop the U.S. government. These lies nurtured the myth that “al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat,” as Obama claimed at a Las Vegas campaign rally the evening after the Benghazi onslaught. With the truth kept conveniently obscured up to November 6 and beyond, Obama won reelection as the man who supposedly killed both Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. In fact, only the former is dead.

The truth behind this monstrous cover-up finally is emerging, too late to defeat Obama at the polls, but perhaps in time to speed his early return to Chicago.

In gripping testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, these top diplomats broke their silence and shattered Team Obama’s carefully crafted post-Benghazi narrative.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/the-benghazi-patsy-91101.html Nakoula Basseley Nakoula deserves a place in American history. He is the first person in this country jailed for violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws. You won’t find that anywhere in the charges against him, of course. As a practical matter, though, everyone knows that Nakoula wouldn’t be in jail today if he hadn’t produced a […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347896/obama%E2%80%99s-betrayal-islamic-democracy

A significant point made in riveting testimony by Gregory Hicks, the State Department’s former deputy chief of mission in Libya, has largely been missed in the coverage of Wenesday’s Benghazi hearing. It is worth highlighting, not least because doing so illuminates the depth of the Obama administration’s depravity.

In its assiduous effort to defraud the American people, for 2012-campaign purposes, into believing that the Benghazi massacre was provoked by an anti-Islamic Internet video — rather than having been a coordinated jihadist attack that undermined President Obama’s claim to have decimated al-Qaeda — the administration betrayed its self-proclaimed commitment to establishing democracy in Islamic countries.

It has been widely reported that, during the hearing, Mr. Hicks was asked to respond to the infamously cynical, transparently rehearsed rant — “What difference, at this point, does it make?” — by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her long-delayed congressional testimony about Benghazi back in January. Hicks first observed that the real question was, “What difference did it make?” (his emphasis), then proceeded to explain that the difference was enormous . . . and enormously damaging. The reason has to do with Mohammed Magariaf, the president of Libya’s new, post-Qaddafi General National Congress.

In a pleasant surprise during the dark days after the Benghazi massacre, President Magariaf forcefully condemned the attack as the work of Islamic terrorists. For career State Department officials such as him, Hicks elaborated, this was a major coup. Now, to say Hicks was a compelling witness is an understatement. On this point, though, he did not flesh out what he meant. That is why it has not gotten the attention it deserves.

As readers who follow our discussions here know, I am not a fan of Islamic-democracy promotion — at least, not the way our government has done it for the last 20 years, which is more a matter of forcing “democracy” to accommodate anti-democratic sharia law than of instilling the principles of Western liberty. For present purposes, however, the point is not to rehash this debate.

Like most of our best foreign-service officers, Gregory Hicks is a true believer in helping Islamic countries achieve what he called their “dream of democracy.” This was a goal the Bush and Clinton administration set themselves to. It is, moreover, what the Obama administration claims is its top imperative in the Middle East — the reason why Obama has insisted, for example, on starting an unprovoked war to topple Qaddafi, on giving billions in aid and sophisticated weaponry to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government, and on supporting the “rebels” in Syria despite their ties to the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda.

Despite his anti-Semitic streak, Mel Gibson is a talented actor and director. I really would like to like the guy. Too bad he still sees Jews as the Devil’s spawn.

One movie, in particular, was truly amazing…

“They may take our lives, but they may never take our freedom!”

Thus, allegedly, spoke William Wallace, aka Braveheart.

No doubt, Gibson’s movie was hauntingly spectacular and led me to admire the Scots even more than I did already–at least until recently.

Nevertheless, questions regarding the historicity of Gibson’s account caused quite a commotion.

Ronald Hamowy of the Department of History at the University of Alberta summed it up this way in his June 28, 1995 comments:

“Frankly, this movie has about as much merit historically…as one of the countless dubbed Italian films about Hercules battling the tyrants…”

Regardless, William Wallace was a 13th century Scottish hero, and Gibson’s passion for the freedom of this people and sympathy for their cause shined through.

It is thus with sadness that I heard recent news about the Church of Scotland’s comments regarding the age-old plight and quest for freedom of an even more historically ancient and persecuted people, the Jews.

Both Jewish and non-Jewish historical records link Jews to the land of Israel for most of man’s recorded history–before most other peoples even made their historical debuts.

1. Hawking delivers anti-Israel campaigners a tsunami of worldwide publicity
2. “Stephen Hawking accused of hypocrisy over Israel conference boycott” (By Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian, May 9, 2013)
3. “Hypocrisy and double standard: An open letter to Stephen Hawking” (By Carlo Strenger, Ha’aretz, May 8, 2013)
4. “So why did Stephen Hawking think it was ok to visit Iran and China?” (By James Bloodworth, Left Foot Forward, May 9, 2013)
—————————————————————
HAWKING DELIVERS ANTI-ISRAEL CAMPAIGNERS A TSUNAMI OF WORLDWIDE PUBLICITY
[Note by Tom Gross]
I attach three articles below – all from left-wing publications – concerning Professor Stephen Hawking’s decision to boycott Israeli President Shimon Peres’s 90th birthday conference in Jerusalem next month. Hawking had previously agreed to be one of the keynote speakers.
Hawking’s decision has garnered massive international publicity for those campaigning to single out Israel from among all the nations of the world for boycott.
Today there are articles about Hawking’s decision in almost every major publication and TV network website in the world, from the Tehran Times to the Irish Times to the Huffington Post to Fox News to the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Russia Today and Toronto Star.
A torrent of anti-Semitic readers’ comments have appeared under many of the articles about Hawking, with particularly disgusting ones on the website of newspapers like the (London) Daily Express.
“This is an outrageous and wrong decision,” said Yisrael Maimon, the chairman of Jerusalem conference’s steering committee. “The academic boycott of Israel is outrageous, especially by someone who preaches freedom of thought. Israel is a democracy, where anyone can state his case, whatever it may be.”
Several heads of state and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair are due to attend the Jerusalem conference, along with Barbra Streisand. The conference will host 5,000 participants, including scholars, scientists, entrepreneurs, economists, industrialists and journalists (including myself).
Hawking seems to have given in to the bullying and harassment that anti-Israel activists subjected him to in recent weeks. He has previously visited Israel several times.
For those interested, here is an interview Hawking did in 2006 while in Israel — with Yair Lapid, then a TV host and now Israel’s Finance Minister, in which Hawking admits that “often what you read in the newspapers does not reflect the reality on the ground”:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUaiPw6xuPE
Here is another short video of Hawking when he was in Israel in 2006:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8X2Lfz8loY

http://www.newmediajournal.us/ If there was ever a moment in time when the American people could collectively glean knowledge from a “teachable moment,” the Obama Administration’s handling of the al Qaeda-related attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya is surely one. From the moment the public became aware of what can only be perceived as an […]