RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s early March, and that means that the Jewish holiday of Purim is fast approaching. Non-Jews may know it by way of the Hebrew Bible’s (“OldTestament”) Book of Esther, the story of how a young Jewess helped to save her people from those who would have destroyed them in ancient Iran some twenty-five centuries ago.

Unfortunately, besides Purim, there are additional holidays which also commemorate the Jews’ near misses or actual calamities at the hands of others as well. Tisha B’Av (the 9th of the month of Av–the date of the destruction of the two Temples), Chanukah, and Passover come to mind.

To be more specific, as I begin to write this, today is March 5, 2012, and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu recently appeared on television along with President Obama discussing the Jews’ modern Iranian threat. Iran’s current, would-be nuclear rulers refer to Israel as being, among other things, a “one bomb” country. I don’t believe I have to explain that any further, do I ?

So, in some ways, some things change while others do not. Instead of an Iranian emperor’s wicked prime minister (Haman) plotting their demise some twenty-five centuries ago, Jews now face attack and extermination by Arabized Iranian Islamists.

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/3/7/main-feature/1/cyrus-ahmadinejad-and-the-politics-of-purim

At this week’s pre-Purim meeting in Washington between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss Iran’s nuclear threat to Israel, Netanyahu gave Obama a present: the book (or m’gilah, scroll) of Esther, which tells how the Jewish heroine foiled Haman’s plot to kill the Jews of ancient Persia. Ancient Persia was also in the news last Purim—because of the “Cyrus Cylinder,” a historic artifact whose loan to Iran by Great Britain was used by President Ahmadinejad as an occasion to recast the great Persian emperor Cyrus as a symbol of Islamist anti-Zionism. Alex Joffe’s explanation of last year’s drama helps us understand this year’s crisis. — The Editors
Anyone who deplores the politicization of the past should have been apoplectic in September 2010 at the sight of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad receiving the loan of the “Cyrus Cylinder” from officials of the British Museum. Often touted as the “world’s oldest human-rights charter,” this clay object, about nine inches long and shaped like a cork, contains in tiny cuneiform writing a royal inscription of the great Persian king. It dates to about 530 B.C.E.

The Iranian press had long demanded that the Cyrus Cylinder be returned “home” from London, and the Tehran regime had gone so far as to threaten to sever all cultural relations with Britain if a loan were not forthcoming. So the British officials who finally agreed to relinquish the object had ample reason to be nervous about the transaction, and Ahmadinejad’s behavior at the solemn handing-over ceremony in Tehran could only have added to their anxiety. There, making his own connection between past and present, the Iranian president ostentatiously draped a Palestinian keffiyeh on an actor dressed as Cyrus. By December, Iran was requesting that the loan be extended for three months.

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/

With some 1,000 books currently in print on the subject, does the world desperately need another tome on anti-Semitism? What difference will it make, when anti-Israelism provides only the latest justification for Europe’s persistent prejudice against Jews and anti-Semitic views are shared by 15 percent of Americans and 90 percent of Muslims worldwide?

Phyllis Goldstein’s A Convenient Hatred: A Short History of Antisemitism, published by the liberal-minded “Facing History and Ourselves” foundation, is nevertheless timely, because she writes not primarily as a historian or polemicist but as a teacher of tolerance. Though Harold Evans’ foreword acknowledges that anti-Semitism is a “mental condition conducive to paranoia” and “impervious to truth,” the hope seems to be that this book can inoculate high-school and college students against incipient anti-Semitism. Assuming that human beings are capable of moral choice, there is every incentive to continue this battle, no matter the odds of victory.

http://www.nysun.com/foreign/nephew-of-yasser-arafat-surfaces-as-aide-to-kofi/87733/
Nephew of Yasser Arafat Surfaces as Aide to Kofi Annan on Road to Damascus

UNITED NATIONS — Yasser Arafat’s nephew, Nasser Al-Kidwa, will accompany former Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is scheduled to visit Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus this weekend. Mr. Al-Kidwa’s visit will renew a complex history of relationship between two infamous Middle Eastern families that have dominated the region’s politics for much of the last century.

The president of the Arab League, Nabil el-Arabi, today announced the appointment of Mr. Al-Kidwa as a deputy to Mr. Annan, who was recently named special envoy to Syria of both the United Nations and the Arab League.

Mr. Al-Kidwa served as ambassador in the Palestinian observer mission here before returning to Ramallah in 2005. After ending his high profile, 18-year Turtle Bay stint, the Arafat scion played a minor, mostly behind the scenes role in Palestinian Arab politics. He was said by several observers to be waiting for the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahoud Abbas, to vacate the top post before entering local politics in earnest.

Today’s announcement surprised some here at the United Nations, where two officials who spoke to the Sun last week said that Mr. Annan had initially rejected the candidacy of the Palestinian scion and was looking elsewhere for an Arabic-speaking deputy. But the former secretary-general’s spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, said today that Mr. Al-Kidwa “has been appointed by the League of Arab States” AND denied that Mr. Annan had “rejected” the candidacy.

Mr. Annan represents Secretary General Ban and the Arab League, although Mr. Ban was said by several U.N. officials to have “swallowed” the appointment unhappily after conducting an icy relationship with his predecessor. Mr. Ban, according to western diplomats, agreed only after one or more major U.N. powers promoted Mr. Annan’s candidacy, pitched initially by Arab League officials.

It remains to be seen how the beleaguered Damascus strongman, who took power at Syria in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez Al-Assad, will approach the renewal of a long history of rollercoaster relations between the Assads and the Arafats.

After Mr. Al-Kidwa’s uncle was chased out of Jordan in September 1970, Arafat arrived in Lebanon, which even then was under heavy Syrian influence. Assad’s troops started conducting raids into camps controlled by the Arafat-led Palestinian Liberation Organization, which was perceived as competition and threat to the Damascus Allawite clan. The raids culminated in a Syrian-backed massacre at the Palestinian camp of Tel al Zaater…..READ IT ALL AT THE SITE

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2051/Karzai-and-the-Mullahs-Flexing-Their-Sharia-Compliance.aspx

FROM THE FOUNDING MULLAHS…..RSK

“We the People of Islam, in Order to form a more perfect Caliphate, establish Sharia, insure domestic Obedience, provide for the common devotion to Allah, promote the general Dhimmitude of the Infidel, and secure the Blessings of the Prophet to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish the Qu’ran as absolute law.”

The articles of the Afghanistan constitution open as follows:

Article One
Ch. 1. Art. 1

Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary and indivisible state.

Article Two
Ch. 1, Art. 2

The religion of the state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam.

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com
ELLIOTT ABRAMS, SHOSHANA BRYEN, JACK DAVID, CAROLINE GLICK, MONA CHAREN, CLIFFORD MAY,DANIEL PIPES, MICHAEL RUBIN, BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
With Washington, D.C., talking Israeli politics, National Review Online asked experts: “Going into a presidential-election year, what’s a sane, responsible Israel policy?”

winston@winstonglobal.org

President Barack Obama’s biggest claim to support of Israel is: “When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.” Sorry, Mr. Obama, that’s not what America needs to “have”. We don’t need you at our Backs, pushing us. We are not human shields which you can hide in “back” of. We need America to stand side-by-side with Israel – and our other Western allies – to defend all Western Civilization from Nuclear Holocaust.

Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the UN says: “We remain determined not to rest until a democratic and peaceful state (sic) of Israel lives side-by-side with a viable and secure Palestinian state.” All their maps show their “Palestine” with the Terror flag over, on top of, eliminating the Jewish State of Israel. Their letterheads, army uniforms, big pictures on the wall in front of where they host their guests for Television photo Ops…all show their map wiping Israel away.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shimon-Peres/240142419406136

BE MY FRIEND….SHARE PEACE….(AND TAKE ANOTHER PIECE OF ISRAEL)

IS THERE ANOTHER WORLD LEADER WHO IS AS DUMB? RSK

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishFeatures/Article.aspx?id=260676

PM hands Obama a Megila: Persian plot against Jews
NURIT GREENGER EXPLAINS:
“Netanyahu presented Obama with a gift, a Scroll of Esther. This is the Megillah — that tells the story of the anti-Semite plot of Haman, in Persia, in the Fifth Century BCE, to annihilate the Jewish people, and the way in which Esther foiled the plot, enabling the people to rise up and destroy their enemies: Where Persia once stood Iran stands today.
“And the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and with slaughter and destruction, and did what they would unto them that hated them,” one of the verses says.”

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/41054#CurDomainURL#/blog.cfm
‘Dhimmicrat’ Rep. Marcy Kaptur Wins Redrawn Ohio 9th C.D. Primary Beating Fellow Progressive, Rep. Dennis Kucinichby Jerry Gordon

….THE MOSLEMS HAVE KAPTURED HER IMAGINATION IT SEEMS…..IN HER WORDS…..
“One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown”

The narrow victory of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney over challenger, former US Senator Rick Santorum in the early hours of March 7th in the GOP primary may have overshadowed the victory of Rep. Marcy Kaptur over veteran progressive Rep. Dennis Kucinich in the redrawn Ohio 9th Congressional District, Democratic primary. The National Journal reported on her victory over Kunich in a brief note,”Kaptur Defeats Kucinich in Ohio’s 9th District Primary”:
The Cleveland Plain Dealer called the race for Kaptur near midnight. With 84 percent of precincts reporting, Kaptur led Kucinich 60 percent to 36 percent.
Kaptur and Kucinich were drawn into the same district after slow population growth forced Ohio to contract two seats in congressional redistricting last year. Kucinich ran strong in his Cuyahoga County base outside Cleveland, but Kaptur more than made up the difference around her home in Toledo and the sliver of territory between the two cities that was new to both representatives.
Kaptur’s victory puts her in pole position for the top Democratic slot on the powerful House Appropriations Committee next year. She is the second-ranking Democrat on the committee now, but ranking member Norm Dicks, D-Wash., announced last week that he will retire at the end of this Congress.