RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/israel_and_academic_freedom.html

Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), one of the most prominent organizations supporting college and university professors, has forcefully and inappropriately spoken out in support of uncivil discourse. In an ironic twist, this development stands in stark contradiction to what organizations such as the American Association of Universities have stated:

In order to fulfill their responsibilities to academic freedom and intellectual development, universities must provide a forum in which individuals and groups can advocate their views, the Association of American Universities wrote in January. In a statement on the “responsibility of universities at a time of international tension and domestic protest,” the organization of research universities said that such institutions must ensure an environment for civil discourse that is free of violence and intimidation; protect the rights of all members of campus communities to pursue learning, teaching, scholarship, and research; and actively promote informed dialogue and analytical thought.

Recently, we witnessed an incident at Kent State University of uncivil discourse in which Professor Julio Pino made an outburst against Israeli Bedouin diplomat Ishmael Khaldi, shouting “death to Israel.” Consequently, Nelson, on behalf of the AAUP, stated:

Calling out a political slogan during a question period falls well within the speech rights of any member of a university community[.] Expressive outbursts do not substitute for rational analysis, but they have long played a role in our national political life. More surprising, to be sure, is President Lefton’s invention of an absurd form of hospitality: you must not question the moral legitimacy or the right to exist of a guest’s home country. Awareness of history would suggest such challenges are routine elements of international life.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Sprightly Ahmadinejad tours nuclear facilities, having stolen an election he marches on as his police batter and protesters. And everywhere he goes, he smiles his trademark loopy smile. The smile of a psychopath or a saint.

Why is Ahmadinejad smiling? The answer is not a terribly complicated one. With every step he takes and every day that he remains in power, he discredits the most deeply held ideas of Western liberals about the power of diplomacy to resolve conflicts and internal civil disobedience to achieve peaceful regime change. Despite years of diplomatic and hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets– Ahmadinejad’s grip on power remains as secure as ever.

Walking over the bodies of student protesters, of political dissidents, of the thousands killed by the wars he has touched off, he continues to taunt the rest of the world to do anything about it. And the rest of the world has done nothing except talk. And as Ahmadinejad has demonstrated, talk counts for nothing at all.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/11/13/in_sc_debate_perry_breaks_new_ground_on_foreign_aid _112054.html SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Rick Perry forcefully reasserted himself in the GOP presidential contest Saturday night during a foreign policy debate here, an event that came on the heels of a string of sloppy — and even embarrassing — debate performances by the onetime front-runner. The eight candidates on stage for the 90-minute CBS/National […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/no_one_is_stealing_palestinian_land.html

In response to a recent essay I had written, the following letter was sent to me by one of my readers. This is a common theme amongst two sets of people supporting the Palestinian cause: those with unmistakable animus toward Israel and Jews and others just misinformed by consistent, unremitting propaganda (a category I place this writer in).

“I am 100 percent in favor of freezing settlements. What settlers are doing there is the same as what my European ancestors did to my Native American ancestors. Stealing land. It should stop. My inclination is to want Israel to go back to the 1967 borders, but I admit that I do not have the historical knowledge to understand the wars that increased the boundaries. So I’m not firm on that. But the further expansion of borders is very wrong, in my opinion.

So you might want to stop e-mailing me. Or tell me what right settlers have to take Palestinians’ land. ‘Cause I just don’t get it?”

My reply:

Hi — thanks for giving me the opportunity to explain to you why this is not Palestinian land and never was. If you approach what I will reveal with an open mind, you’ll recognize that the Palestinian argument is at best disingenuous and at worst an outright lie.

From an historical standpoint, Jews have lived in the land of Israel for nearly 4,000 years, going back to the period of the biblical patriarchs (c. 1900 BCE). The story of the Jewish people; Israel; its capital, Jerusalem; and the Jewish Temple has been one of exile, destruction, and rebirth. In its 3,000 years of history, Jerusalem has been destroyed seventeen times and eighteen times reborn. During these periods of disbursement, there has always remained a constant Jewish presence in the land of Israel and in Jerusalem. For those Jews forced into exile throughout the world, one theme has remained constant: the dream of returning to their homeland, Eretz Yisrael, to rebuild and restore her to the glory of old. Throughout the millennia, Diaspora Jews to this day face towards Jerusalem during prayers.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/11/anti-defamation_league_has_strayed_from_its_charter.html

THE ADL HAS STRAYED FOR A LONG TIME….ATTACKING EVANGELICALS WHO REPRESENT THE STRONGEST SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL AND JEWS OF ANY LARGE VOTING BLOC IN AMERICA….THEIR OCCASIONAL BURPS OF INDIGNATION ABOUT ANTI-JEWISH GRAFFITI ON BATHROOM DOORS ARE A JOKE WHEN COMPARED TO THE HARM THEY CONTINUE TO DO…..RSK

The Anti-Defamation League’s original charter is simple, straightforward, and honorable:

The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.

Nowhere does this call for the ADL to shield Barack Obama from the consequences of his policies toward Israel and other allies of the United States. The “National Pledge for Unity on Israel,” which the ADL cosponsored with the American Jewish Committee, is but the most recent example of how this organization has lost touch with the very reason for its existence.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/the_case_for_banning_sharia_law_in_america.html

The incompatibility of Islamic sharia law with secular courts stems from the underpinning of Islamism — the unyielding union of the laws and punishments of the Qu’ran and Hadiths with the country’s legal and political system. Sharia law is the legislation of these religious and criminal rules, which rejects America’s constitutional secularism and legal penalties.

The Qu’ran commands Muslims to change secular laws to conform to sharia, eventually establishing Islamic law worldwide. Islamic courts want their fatwas to supersede the civil and criminal laws, untying Muslims from civil secular courts.

The facts reveal that in 2008, when the first sharia court was recognized in the U.K., within one year, over 85 recognized sharia courts were established within the U.K.’s Tribunal Court system. The problem with this rapidly spreading dogma is that several of these courts have issued some fatwas that are completely incompatible with British and European law.

As Islam is a male-dominated ideology, the laws of the Qu’ran make half of its devotees, its female population, second-class citizens. This inequality has drawn recent attention to the need for additional British legislation to rein in these courts so they abide by British law.

It appears that once any legal system opens its doors to Islamic law, that door will be hard to close…and eventually, the only thing missing will be a parallel Islamic government.

But even with this reality in front of Americans, there are still many who insist that our laws will prevent such circumstances from ever occurring in the U.S. And because of this nonchalant attitude, there are numbers of people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, who believe that sharia law is not a threat to non-Muslim Americans or to the Western liberal democratic rule of law.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/631/the_europe_debate_is_finally_moving_in_the_right_direction_it_s_the_democracy_stupid The Europe debate is finally moving in the right direction: It’s the democracy stupid The British press is growing up from the sterile debate about sceptics and enthusiasts and waking up to what the discussion on the European Union should really be about. You can usually tell that something seismic is happening in politics […]

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/11/12/scoring-the-cbsnjdebate/?print=1 CBS wins the epic fail of the week award for first choosing to broadcast only an hour of the debate nationally, and then botching the live video feed of the CBS/National Journal debate on the Internet. Most viewers, myself included, only got to see the first 60 minutes of a 90 minute debate. We […]

http://pjmedia.com/blog/somalia-palestine-and-france-ghost-countries-for-ghost-countries/ Ex-state Somalia gets to vote for non-state Palestine at UNESCO. So does declining state France. On October 31, Somalia supported Palestine’s accession to full member of UNESCO. In other words, a state that vanished from the map twenty years ago and survives only as a diplomatic fiction was allowed to cast a vote for […]

Failing to Deal, Dealing to FailUS Response to Iran Aggression Fumbling, Tepid Co-authored by K.D.M. Jensen http://bigpeace.com/rehrenfeld/2011/11/12/failing-to-deal-dealing-to-fail-us-response-to-iran-aggression-fumbling-tepid/#more-177008 The past few days have seen yet another round in the “last straw” dithering about Iran.  This time the huffing seems heavier. The IAEA  has suddenly woken up and finds that Stuxnet wasn’t much of a setback to […]