RUTHFULLY YOURS

Barack Obama devoted two short paragraphs in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday to the crisis in Ukraine. “We’re upholding the principle that bigger nations can’t bully the small,” the President said, “by opposing Russian aggression, and supporting Ukraine’s democracy, and reassuring our NATO allies.” Thanks to American and European sanctions, he added, “Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters.”

Vladimir Putin begs to differ. Russian forces on the same day opened fire on Ukrainian positions in the rebel-controlled Luhansk region, not far from the Russian border, according to a Ukrainian military spokesman. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko cut short his trip to Davos to deal with the “worsening situation” on the home front.

Move to ‘Avoid Appearance’ of Influencing Israeli Election, White House Says

WASHINGTON—Citing the need to remain neutral in the upcoming Israeli elections, the White House said President Barack Obama won’t meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits in March.

“As a matter of long-standing practice and principle, we do not see heads of state or candidates in close proximity to their elections, so as to avoid the appearance of influencing a democratic election in a foreign country,” said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.

Islamic organizations and the Western media and politicians help to spread the Islamic disease.

The Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris on January 7th of twelve of the publication’s staff members, and also of the murder of four Jews in a Paris kosher shop by one of the terrorists, is having some curious but not all that surprising reverberations. The New York Times published an article about a week afterward originally soliciting from Muslim settlers accounts of their horrendous experiences of living in countries whose cultures they detest anyway (and in which they refuse to assimilate, while the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), according to Arab News, wants to take the satirical magazine to court and massacre its staff with legal expenses and noisome litigation.

Oh my they are so outraged and shocked and even a hardened harridan like Samantha Power sees a “global problem”, and Ban Ki is mildly against it and Bernard Henri Levy covers his hypocritical derriere with the following drivel:”“Even if the Palestinians had a state, as is their right – even then, alas, this enigmatic and old hatred would not dissipate one iota,” Levy said.”

The first ever meeting of the UN General Assembly devoted solely to the question of antisemitism was the occasion for a powerful keynote address from Bernard-Henri Levy, arguably France’s leading intellectual, in which he denounced the “delirium of anti-Zionism.”

In his speech to today’s meeting, convened by UNGA President Sam Kutesa after 37 countries signed onto an October 1 letter decrying the “alarming outbreak of antisemitism worldwide,” Levy lamented “the renewed advance of this radical inhumanity that is antisemitism.”

There are several reasons the British government may be publishing only the “principal findings” of the report. First, some of the information gathered will have been done so by the intelligence services, so there are assets and agreements to protect. Another is the possibility that by revealing the scope of the Muslim Brotherhood network in full, the government would be revealing its own partnerships with Brotherhood organizations, and providing insights into the vast amount of public funds that has filled the coffers of Brotherhood charities.

The British government will publish only the “principal findings” of an inquiry commissioned by the British government into the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain, according to a report in the Financial Times.

Although the former head of the MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, has described the Brotherhood as being, “at heart, a terrorist organization,” Brotherhood organizations in the UK have, nevertheless, long enjoyed the support of government ministers and taxpayers’ money.

According to Israeli security forces, dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members in the West Bank have defected to the Islamic State in recent months. Their main goal, according to sources, is to topple the Palestinian Authority and launch terror attacks on Israel.

Some 200 supporters of the Islamic State, who held up Islamic State flags, took to the streets of Gaza City to protest the latest cartoons published by the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. They also chanted slogans that called for slaughtering French nationals, and burned French flags. Attempts by Hamas to impose a news blackout on the protest failed, as photos and videos found their way to social media.

I’ve never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems, but when I read that the Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars won’t go to pay for this?

When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions of violence against civilians (most of them Muslims) by Boko Haram in Nigeria, by the Taliban in Pakistan, by Al Qaeda in Paris and by jihadists in Yemen and Iraq. We’ve entered the theater of the absurd.

Last week the conservative columnist Rich Lowry wrote an essay in Politico Magazine that contained quotes from White House spokesman Josh Earnest that I could not believe. I was sure they were made up. But I checked the transcript: 100 percent correct. I can’t say it better than Lowry did:

“Defensive warfare does not consist of waiting idly for things to happen. We must wait only if it brings us visible and decisive advantages. That calm before the storm, when the aggressor is gathering new forces for a great blow, is most dangerous for the defender.”
–Carl von Clausewitz, Principles of War (1812)

For Israel, long beleaguered on many fronts, Iranian nuclear weapons and Palestinian statehood are progressing at approximately the same pace. Although this simultaneous emergence is proceeding without any coordinated intent, the combined security impact on Israel will still be considerable. Indeed, this synergistic impact could quickly become intolerable, but only if the Jewish State insists upon maintaining its current form of “defensive warfare.”

The day after a brutal stabbing terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, social media users glorify the weapon used, with #JeSuisCouteau hashtag.

On Wednesday, Jan. 21, an Arab terrorist from Tulkarem, boarded a public bus during the morning rush hour and viciously stabbed a dozen Israelis. Several people remain in critical condition.

The bus driver, Herzl Biton, was stabbed multiple times as he bravely fought back against the attacker. He was in a medically-induced coma, as was another victim, but Biton today regained consciousness.

n his brief treatment of international affairs in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama offered essentially two assertions about his foreign policy: It is not reactive, nor is it one-dimensional. Yet this was more of an unwitting self-critique than the defense he intended. Both principles are undeniably sound, but the Obama administration has not practiced them; paradoxically, they are two of the major flaws in how the U.S. has recently conducted foreign affairs.

There is no clearer sign of the reactive nature of U.S. foreign policy than the near-absence from the speech of the “rebalancing” to Asia–the intended centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy–or of other early-term priorities such as Israeli-Palestinian peace or improved relations with Russia.