RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.jidaily.com/d4f9e?utm_source=Jewish+Ideas+Daily+Insider&utm_campaign=28ff584279-Insider&utm_medium=email

While Roosevelt was resisting calls to admit child refugees from Germany (and badmouthing Jews in private), his predecessor was out campaigning on behalf of European Jewry.

Herbert Hoover and the Jews: The Origins of the “Jewish Vote” and Bipartisan Support for Israel, by Sonja Schoepf Wentling and Rafael Medoff (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 238 pp., $15)

As a Jewish liberal-turned-conservative, I am asked the question with mind-numbing regularity: how can Jewish voters remain so attached to a Democratic Party seemingly so often hostile to their interests? Given Barack Obama’s stance toward an Israel facing the threat of Iranian nuclear annihilation, needless to say, that question has been posed with particular urgency and confusion during the 2012 campaign.

Generally, I offer a variation of the answer Norman Podhoretz put forth in his 2010 book on the subject, Why Are Jews Liberals?: that for a great many secular Jews, liberalism itself constitutes a kind of religion; that since Jews were historically subject to unending violence and oppression, fighting injustice and championing the powerless is at the heart of our ethical and moral tradition; and that, indeed, for all its occasional shortcomings, the Democratic Party fundamentally embraces that tradition, while Republicans, representing the interests of the cosseted rich and powerful, are inimical to it. In innumerable Jewish homes, these assumptions are beyond question; or, more precisely, to question them is nothing less than to question a communal faith in which a handful of magic phrases—“tolerance,” “human rights,” “social justice”—are apt to be invoked with outraged certainty that puts an end to any contrary argument.

That said, there is necessarily another factor at play: the striking ability of such voters to deny, or willfully misinterpret, the evidence before their eyes. That this has been the case for generations is the unhappy but inescapable conclusion of a recently published book that examines Jewish political behavior during the crucial years from the end of World War I through the achievement of Israeli independence in 1948: Herbert Hoover and the Jews, by historian Sonja Schoepf Wentling and Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. Its intriguing title aside, the book’s principal character is Hoover’s successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, still revered in many Jewish homes as the ultimate champion of the little guy and the most devoted friend of the Jewish people ever to hold the nation’s highest office.

http://jcpa.org/article/hizbullahs-unspoken-war-in-syria/

Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, a special analyst for the Middle East at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was formerly Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Deputy Head for Assessment of Israeli Military Intelligence.

The fighting in Syria has already spilled over the border into Lebanon, threatening the fragile sectarian balance holding that country together. Cross-border attacks have become customary, with the Syrian Army shelling and shooting into Lebanese villages that it says are harboring Syrian rebels.

Across from El Hermel in northeastern Lebanon and inside Syrian territory, a string of villages inhabited by Shiites has been clashing with majority-Sunni villages that back the Syrian opposition forces in the countryside of Qusayr, on the outskirts of Homs. Hizbullah is interfering directly and militarily in Qusayr under the pretext of protecting the Shiite villages in the area. It currently claims control of 18 villages along the widest part of the Orontes River Basin.

The French Mandatory authorities delineated the Lebanon-Syria border in the years following the creation of Greater Lebanon in 1920, but the border was never finalized. What is happening on the ground could be called de facto demarcation since Hizbullah has a presence in the string of Shiite villages (annexing them de facto to Lebanon), while the Free Syrian Army is present in most Sunni villages, thus annexing them to Syria.

Hizbullah appears to be carving out a 20-kilometer (12-mile) border corridor to the Syrian Alawite enclave on the coast. Hizbullah appears to be seeking to control strategic access to the Orontes River Basin in Syria and Lebanon to form a contiguous Alawite-Shiite mini-state. Yet the Shiite belt would likely face a major challenge from Sunnis on both sides of the border.

For the first time, Hizbullah is “exporting” its military know-how and might for use against Arab neighbors, in order to respond to Tehran’s strategic scheme to protect the Assad regime from falling. But by doing so, Hizbullah has alienated the Sunni majority in Syria and also in Lebanon. It would be fair to assess that in case Assad’s regime falls, Hizbullah will also have to fight for its life in the Lebanese context.

Hizbullah has been fighting for years to prove its “Lebanese” credentials. Fighting alongside the Alawite regime has turned Hizbullah back into what it really is: just another Lebanese armed militia, a Shiite army at the service of its patrons, sponsors, and protectors in Tehran.

The Syrian Conflict Spills into Lebanon

As the fighting in Syria intensifies, the conflict has already spilled over the border into Lebanon, threatening the fragile sectarian balance holding that country together and sparking yet another blood-spattered internal conflict. Although the clashes are still limited to the ill-defined border areas between the two countries and in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli, still, the latest car bombing in Beirut on October 19 (the first since 2008) which targeted senior Lebanese intelligence official Wissam al-Hassan, who led the investigation that implicated Syria and Hizbullah in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was most probably the result of Syrian–Hizbullah cooperation and could herald an expansion of the domestic Lebanese conflict between supporters and opponents of the Assad regime. Hassan was the brains behind the uncovering of a bomb plot that led to the arrest and indictment in August 2012 of former Lebanese minister Michel Samaha, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, in a setback for Damascus and its Lebanese allies including Hizbullah.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203897404578076841543944634.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

A revealing interview about his priorities in 2009—and 2013.

President Obama doesn’t give many interviews these days outside Comedy Central, so it caused a stir Wednesday when editors at the Des Moines Register managed to pin him down and even elicit some news. Specifically, Mr. Obama said he wants to pursue immigration reform in a second term, as well as a budget “grand bargain” with Republicans that includes tax reform.

This will come as a surprise to voters reading the President’s just-released 20-page brochure on his second-term agenda, which makes little or no mention of these priorities. Perhaps that’s why the White House first demanded that the interview be off the record, making the transcript public only after the Register editor objected in a public blog post.

But the larger reason to be skeptical concerns Mr. Obama’s answer to another Register question: Whether he regrets pursuing ObamaCare and other liberal social priorities in his first two years rather than focusing on the economy.

“Absolutely not,” Mr. Obama told the Iowa journalists. “Remember the context. First of all, Mitch McConnell has imposed an ironclad filibuster from the first day I was in office. And that’s not speculation.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/10/obamas_epa_plans_for_2013.html The November elections will determine the direction of US climate policy — and therefore also energy policy and the pace of economic growth: jobs, standards of living, budget deficits and inflation. Obama has already promised to make climate change the centerpiece of his concern — with all that implies: “Green” energy policy, linked to […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/331580 Why is Mitt Romney rising? Americans who watched the GOP nominee debate President Obama never met the cold, greedy, sexist, racist, carcinogenic tax cheat that Team Obama promised would appear. The calm, steady, and reasonable gentleman who opposed Obama was no Gordon Gekko. Americans might like Romney even more if they understood his random […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331566/us-should-withdraw-unesco-brett-d-schaefer Last fall, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) granted membership to the Palestinian Authority. President Obama then stopped all U.S. financial contributions to UNESCO, as required by U.S. law. This didn’t sit well with UNESCO director general Irina Bokova. Earlier this month, she ramped up her campaign to get the U.S. […]

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/10/24/secretary-of-state-clinton-grins-laughs-while-answering-question-about-benghazi-white-house-downplays-emails/
Minutes ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answered a singular question about the new emails showing that the Obama administration knew that the Benghazi assault was a terrorist attack two hours after it began. Clinton once again said that “No one wants to get to the bottom of what happened more than I do,” before touting her “independent review board” and its progress in investigating the attack. That board will not report any of its findings prior to the election, and it is operating under the secretary’s control. The State Department has not even released the names of the board members. As Clinton described the board’s work, she said that it is reviewing every piece of evidence, and not “cherry picking” pieces here and there. As she said the words “cherry picking,” Clinton nervously grinned and chuckled.

The White House, meanwhile, is downplaying the import of the emails that Reuters and other media outlets obtained late Tuesday. Despite the fact that the emails show clearly that knowledge of Ansar al-Sharia’s claim to have launched the attack reached the highest levels of the government, the White House is insisting that that was but one piece of information obtained that night.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamacore-radical-education-bill-set-to-take-effect-after-election/ Barack Obama, having little else in his arsenal, began his first debate by touting his signature education program [1] “Race to the Top.” Joe Biden also cited “education” in his debate with Paul Ryan. Last Tuesday, Obama even turned a question about gun control into an opportunity to boast about [2] his education policies. […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/treating-islam-with-special-reverence-is-cultural-suicide-and-just-plain-wrong?f=puball

My brilliant niece Freya was talking to my brother the other day about the religious education curriculum at her predominately white, middle-class state school in a pretty English cathedral city. She happened to mention ‘Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him.’ ‘Eh?’ said my brother. ‘It’s what we’re taught at school. After we mention “Mohammed” we have to say “Peace be upon him”.’

Now I know what you’re thinking: that Freya must surely have got the wrong end of the stick. ‘If this were a madrassa in Bradford, well maybe,’ you’ll be thinking. ‘But at a white, middle-class state school in a pretty English cathedral city? No way. Things aren’t that bad. At least not yet, anyway…’

But Freya is not stupid. That’s why, at the beginning, I referred to her as my ‘brilliant’ niece as opposed to my ‘incredibly thick’ one. Apparently, she assures me, they’ve been taught to use the ‘peace be upon him’ formula since Year 7 and though they’re allowed to shorten it to PBUH, they’re definitely not supposed to call him just Mohammed. ‘There’s sometimes the odd snigger when the phrase comes up but we’ve been conditioned pretty much to accept it as normal,’ says Freya. ‘It’s a bit weird, given that there’s only two Muslim kids in my year of 100.’

I find this scary for at least two reasons. The first is what it says about the death of our national identity. When Freya’s father and I were at school, we had to go to ‘chapel’ once a day, and twice on Sundays. In our scripture classes we were taught all the key bible stories, even to the point of having to learn the names of all the apostles. It didn’t turn us into religious freaks – anything but. What it did instil in us, however, was a sense of history and tradition. Like generations before us we were members of the Anglican Church, familiar with the same tales, the same liturgy, the same hymns and psalms, the same rituals, the same boredom.

Before the 1980s, I suspect, this was the experience of most British children, regardless of their race or religious background. It wasn’t a question of forcing Christianity down anyone’s throat – merely an accepted part of the fabric of British life. You went to church (at least occasionally – Christmas at any rate) in the same way you watched Top of the Pops and Morecambe and Wise, or you had roast beef and Yorkshire pud for Sunday lunch. It just was what you did.

Not any more. Sure, the old religion is still covered in RE classes, but at state schools like Freya’s only as an equally valid and certainly by no means preferable alternative to Judaism, Sikhism, Islam and the rest. ‘Jesus was the son of God! Do you agree?’ asks a sample Key Stage 3 question from Freya’s school website. Well, what a bloody stupid question to ask an 11-year-old. How are they possibly going to be intellectually equipped to produce any kind of meaningful answer?

A teacher at my old school, Malvern, told me that when new kids arrive he can no longer rely on their being familiar with even the most basic prayers and bible stories. No doubt the progressives who devised the new God-free curriculum will congratulate themselves on having finally freed young minds from the shackles of organised religion. (Probably they read somewhere that religion has caused more wars than, like, anything, man). But what they’ve really done is impoverished and deracinated and dumbed down a generation. They’ve denied Freya and her contemporaries the key that might one day have helped them unlock everything from ‘The Dream of the Rood’ to ‘The Whitsun Weddings’. They’ve vandalised 1,400 years of the history, literature and traditions which bound us as a nation.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-balkanization-of-america-part-iii-alone-together-the-failure-of-assimilation

Part I can be found here.

Part II can be found here.

As discussed in previous installments, the process of Balkanization is the breaking-down or disintegration of the bonds that constitute a united nation and people, such that a formerly unified whole fragments into parts. Just as shared experiences, aspirations, historical memory, traditions and customs can foster trust and unite a people – the absence of these things can disunite them. What we call civil society is built upon an intricate network of reciprocal relationships and social norms. It is also built upon shared culture and language. Although the rule of law is a critical part of civil society, the law alone is insufficient to create a functioning civic order.

Trust is the real coin of the realm. It is difficult to maintain a free and open civil society in the absence of trust, and it is difficult to establish trust among people who do not know one another. A genuine sense of community is probably impossible among people who are disinclined to know one another and who are unwilling to do the work of building relationships with their neighbors. Conversely, people who know one another and share at least some values, expectations, and experiences in common are more likely to trust one another and form a viable community.

Not so many decades ago, Americans possessed a strong sense of shared identity. The typical man or woman on the street knew – and could explain in simple terms – what it meant to be a citizen of the United States. He or she could summarize the rights common to all Americans, and also the responsibilities and duties of citizenship. Thanks to widespread primary and secondary-school instruction in civics and American history, most adults had at least a fundamental knowledge of our founding documents and traditions. The well-informed citizen knew important passages from the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and from famous speeches and orations. That citizen was also well-versed in U.S. history, and knew the structure and function of the various branches of government.

Although a given American may have been born in another country, or raised in a home where English was not spoken, he was expected to learn the language of his country – and usually did so without complaint. Likewise, his teachers expected him to work hard to master English as soon as possible. Knowing the language was rightly seen as a gateway to economic opportunity and upward social mobility.