RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.jewishledger.com/2012/02/hadassah-at-100-one-womans-vision-realized/

THOSE AMAZING WOMEN WENT TO PALESTINE IN 1909 AND BUILT NURSING SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS. AFTER ISRAEL’S LIBERATION IN 1948 THEIR WORK WAS INDISPENSABLE IN THE “INGATHERING”…THAT EPIC RESCUE OF JEWS WHO SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST AND THE DISPERSION FROM ARAB LANDS….THEY PROVIDED COUNSELING, JOB TRAINING, HOMES, EDUCATION. WHAT A RECORD WHICH DWARFS THE WHINING OF THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF WOMEN. TOO BAD THAT IN LATER YEARS THEY JOINED NOW IN LOBBYING FOR ABORTION RIGHTS AND SO MANY OTHER ISSUES…..BUT IN THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL THEY ARE WONDERFUL…..RSK

Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, was founded by Henrietta Szold on Feb. 24, 1912. Like others of her generation, Szold’s existence was shaped — and framed — by war. Born in 1860, she entered the world on the eve of the Civil War. Eighty-five years later, in February of 1945, in the waning days of World War II, she died.

In 1909, Szold and her mother took a trip to pre-state Israel. There they witnessed the starvation and disease that afflicted the people of the region. She returned to the U.S. and soon thereafter founded Hadassah, a volunteer women’s organization whose first mission was to send two nurses to Palestine to provide pasteurized milk to infants and new mothers, and to eradicate trachoma, an easily cured eye disease, that was robbing thousands of sight.
By 1918, Hadassah had sent an entire medical unit, composed of 45 doctors, nurses, dentists and sanitary workers, to bring American-style medical care to serve all, regardless of race, creed, or ethnicity.
By the mid-1930s, it had become clear that Jewish children needed to be saved from a Europe that was rapidly darkening. Joining with a German colleague, Szold helped organize the rescue of thousands of such children, bringing them to safety in Palestine.
Today at 100 years old, with 300,000 members, Hadassah is the largest Jewish organization in America, and one of the largest women’s volunteer organizations in the world. Since its inception, Hadassah has been taken advocacy positions on public health, support of Israel, stem cell research, and a vast array of social concerns.

SAUDI BRIBERY PAYS OFF IN HARVARD SEE THIS FROM 2005

Islamic Studies Gets $20M Gift in 2005
Mayor Giuliani once spurned Saudi prince’s altruism, but Harvard embraces billionaire
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2005/12/13/islamic-studies-gets-20m-gift-the/

http://www.jewishledger.com/2012/02/harvard-plans-one-state-solution-conference/

Harvard plans “One State Solution” conference By Steven Slotsky / JointNews Media Service

BOSTON, Mass. — On March 3-4, Harvard University will host a two-day conference on the “One State Solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Guests include veteran anti-Israel academics, the founder of Electronic Intifada and an ex-Palestinian official. No one sympathetic to Israel is identifiable.
Mar. 3-4 event dominated by anti-Israel academics

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/justice-for-the-founder-of-portugal-s-jewish-community-1.413459

In the 1920s, Captain Artur Barros Basto, a Portuguese war hero, helped found his country’s first Jewish community in 400 years, but was later stripped of his ranks and forced into near penury due to his religion. Now this historical wrong may be set right.

It is a secret that has accompanied me for as long as I can remember: the secret of the Portuguese Dreyfus. But who even dreamed that this secret would now be the subject of a political disagreement in the Lisbon parliament, after 75 years and three generations of campaigns to clear his name.

I was born and raised in Porto, northern Portugal. One of the most significant places in the lives of the local Jews was the neighborhood synagogue, impressive and grand, but nearly empty. This is the Makor Haim Synagogue, one of the most beautiful in Europe. It was built in the 1930s by a man whose name was always mentioned in a lowered voice, to make sure nobody heard. This was Captain Artur Carlos de Barros Basto, also known by his Hebrew name Abraham Israel Ben-Rosh, who had always aroused my curiosity.

Barros Basta

Whenever I would ask about him, I would be told only that he was a man of vision, that he was born in 1887, and that he was descended from Marranos (Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity as a result of the Inquisition, but often secretly maintained Jewish traditions ). Barros Basto was a World War I hero who fought in Belgium. Before that he had belonged to the group that toppled the monarchy in Portugal and founded the republic in 1910, when he himself raised the flag of the new government. The republic was critical of the Church and carefully guarded religious freedom.

In the 1920s Barros Basto learned from his grandfather that he had Jewish roots. In the light of the new religious freedom in Portugal, he decided to return to his forefathers’ faith, and went to Tangier, Morocco, to convert. The rabbis at the local rabbinical court were surprised to learn that there were Marranos living in Portugal, and due to their objection to conversion, they tried to put Barros Basto to the test by suggesting he convert in Algeria. The officer replied that he would not leave without completing the process, which he believed was merely a technicality since he felt like a Jew; indeed, he was eventually converted in Tangier.

When he got back to his homeland he set about establishing a Jewish congregation for the first time in 400 years – the first since the expulsion of Jews from Portugal. He built and founded a yeshiva, a community newspaper called Halapid, and our synagogue, Makor Haim.

Discovery in the basement

In 1972, when I was preparing for my bar mitzvah, I asked for more information about Barros Basto. When all anyone agreed to tell me was that “he met a bitter end and was defamed,” I decided to descend into the basement of the synagogue that he built, where I found piles of old issues of Halapid.

Thus I learned about the community of Marranos who, nearly a century ago, had heard about Barros Basto – nicknamed “the prophet officer” – and began streaming to the place. “We too are Jews, even though our family converted to Christianity following the expulsion from Portugal in 1497,” they told him. Hundreds of people told him how for many years they had practiced their Judaism clandestinely.

http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=47498a2e1ad97dd3d09ae19c5&id=161ef01540&e=ce445aaf82
For years now I have been visiting the US regularly, and usually make my way to Washington DC, where I have had many opportunities to meet with journalists, politicians, lobbyists and other experts who are paying attention to the course Islam in the US. These conversations, and a whole host of reports from a wide variety of sources, including White House official statements, have made it obvious to me that there is increasing trend for US government agencies to align with and empower radical Muslim agendas. At the same time, American elites are being cowed into silence. If anything, they seem less capable of critiquing radical Islam than they were a decade ago. An Orwellian veil of silence through control of public discourse is being pulled over eyes of many in the Land of the Free.

To put it bluntly, the government of the United States has become an ally of the radical Islamic Movement, under the careful guidance of Muslim Brotherhood agents in the US. The first victims of this alliance are secular and liberal activists all across the Middle East, whose bodies are being broken and voices silenced because of official American engagement with and support for the cause of radical Islam.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11445/pub_detail.asp
The cold snap in Europe, which began in late January, has killed hundreds and brought deep snow where it hasn’t been seen in decades,” says this article in the Seattle Times.
This should be front page news. Instead, the article doesn’t appear until page eight. And the title, “At least 3 killed in avalanche in Kosovo,” belies the seriousness of the situation. (The print version carries a different headline: “Cold snap, snow lock down Europe.”)

How about a headline that tells it like it is?

140,000 trapped by snow – Death toll rises past 550.

That headline would give readers a glimpse of what’s really happening in Europe, where snow drifts reaching above the rooftops have kept tens of thousands of villagers prisoners in their own homes.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11440/pub_detail.asp
“I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.”

— Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s current communications director
Reading through David Horowitz’s 51-page pamphlet, Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model*, one is struck almost immediately by the similarities between Saul Alinsky’s “rules for radicals” to more effectively disrupt and bring down “the system,” and the methods employed in the cultural and political jihademployed by such “radical” organizations as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Circle of North America (ISNA), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), among other affiliated Muslim “civic” entities.

I was so amazed by the similarities that I thought this remarkable pamphlet deserved a few words. It is an invaluable primer for understanding not only President Barack Obama and his policies, but also the arsenal of deceit, fraud and misrepresentations with which Muslim organizations are waging a war of sabotage and subornation in this country.

I have often written before on the methodology of Islamic jihad, particularly in “A Nexus of Nihilism,” in August 2010 on Rule of Reason and other blog spots, in which I explore the curious and sometimes startling alliance between Islam and the Left. But I was too close to the subject to see the parallels in tactics, even after having read large portions of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (which I guiltily bought on Amazon, reluctant to reward the Alinsky estate, if one exists, with a few pennies, before I learned I could read it online).

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/291188/tyrants-best-friend-roger-bate

FORMERLY RHODESIA THE BREADBASKET OF AFRICA…IS NOW ZIMBABWE A BASKETCASE OF FAMINE AND POVERTY. TYRANT MUGABE WAS HAILED AS THE POSTER CHILD OF ONE MAN, ONE VOTE MOVEMENT IN AFRICA….RSK

Only Mugabe and his friends benefit from Zimbabwe’s diamond wealth

Stellenbosch, South Africa — Superficially, Zimbabwe is in much better shape than it was just a few years ago. Hotels are full of foreign businessmen, and luxury vehicles seem ubiquitous in the capital, Harare. Henry Ncube, a local street cleaner, has never seen as many new cars. But Mr. Ncube, 33 and married with two children, is not happy: “I only have this job part time, things are only a bit better for my family [since 2008] and I still can’t afford school” (for my children).

Mr. Ncube has reason for pessimism. Zimbabwe’s growth is being fueled almost entirely by the diamond trade, which benefits only the political elite and their friends. Zimbabwe, which has had all sorts of political problems over the past three decades, is now also succumbing to the resource curse too.

It is important to put things into perspective. In 2008, the economy was in tatters, neither rule of law nor stable money existed, and violence was to be found in every politically sensitive constituency. After ruling party ZANU-PF and its leader, Robert Mugabe, had lost and stolen yet another election, the future looked dire. But, in early 2009, ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC party signed a power sharing deal. Inflation was controlled by dollarizing the economy, and, with one of the world’s largest diamond finds in the east of the country, the possibilities looked bright.

Sentencing the Underwear Bomber

Posted By Robert Spencer

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/17/poverty-still-doesn%e2%80%99t-cause-terrorism/print/

On Monday, Former U.S. President Bill Clinton ascribed the recent jihad violence in Nigeria to poverty. Referring obliquely to the attacks that the jihadist group Boko Haram (Western education is Sin) has carried out, Clinton ascribed them to the large disparity between the rich and the poor in Nigeria: “You can’t just have this level of inequality persist. That’s what’s fueling all this stuff.” Then on Thursday, the son of one of Nigeria’s richest men was sentenced to life in prison for an attempt to commit jihad mass murder in a jetliner.

Bravo for life’s little ironies.

The idea that poverty causes terrorism is a familiar assumption on both the Left and the Right; it is, ultimately, the guiding assumption behind the U.S. military’s making itself busy in Afghanistan building roads, schools and hospitals. The fond belief is that a sufficient amount of money will transform Kabul into Kansas City, and then all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Ten years of American blood and treasure squandered in Afghanistan should have put paid to this fantasy long ago, but of course it hasn’t.

Haaretz: Israel’s Anti-Semitic Rag Posted By P. David Hornik

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/17/israel%e2%80%99s-anti-semitic-rag/print/

THANK YOU DAVID HORNIK WHO WRITES FROM ISRAEL….I REFER TO IT AS AL-HA-ARETZ….RSK

Haaretz, Israel’s left-wing daily, used to be Israel’s newspaper of record and comparable to the New York Times, read also by those who differed from its line. Today Haaretz is read by less than 6 percent of Israelis, overwhelmingly composed of the country’s left-wing “elite.” Haaretz comes in far behind successful newcomer, right-of-center Israel Hayom at 38% and left-of-center Yediot Aharonot at 36%.

Haaretz’s English website, however, gets a very high Alexa ranking—around the 3900th most popular website in the world and currently neck-and-neck with the centrist Jerusalem Post’s site. Indeed, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu allegedly called (his office later denied it) Haaretz and the New York Times Israel’s “two main enemies” and said: