RUTHFULLY YOURS

For the cognoscenti, seeing is believing; what eyes see must be true. But recent events suggest vision is often flawed. In many cases believing is seeing; the mind casts a vision of what it wants to see. Reality becomes what one’s ideology shapes. Clearly events in Ferguson and the University of Virginia reinforce this assessment.

Yet nowhere is it more in evidence than the Obama White House. The president insists his deal with Iran over nuclear weapons restrains that nation from the pursuit of the nuclear goal. He insists negotiation is working, even though details still have to be ironed out. Moreover, he insists on this position despite evidence to the contrary.

Speaking in the Farsi equivalent of the subjunctive the Supreme Leader of Iran, Khamenei uses the word “might,” while President Obama employs the verb “will.” Khamenei notes as well in his assessment of the preliminary accord or framework, “what has been done so far does not guarantee an agreement, not its contents, not even that the negotiations will continue to the end.” What is there about this declarative sentence that President Obama does not understand?

An Iraqi officer planned Islamic State’s takeover in Syria and SPIEGEL has been given exclusive access to his papers. They portray an organization that, while seemingly driven by religious fanaticism, is actually coldly calculating.

Aloof. Polite. Cajoling. Extremely attentive. Restrained. Dishonest. Inscrutable. Malicious. The rebels from northern Syria, remembering encounters with him months later, recall completely different facets of the man. But they agree on one thing: “We never knew exactly who we were sitting across from.”

In fact, not even those who shot and killed him after a brief firefight in the town of Tal Rifaat on a January morning in 2014 knew the true identity of the tall man in his late fifties. They were unaware that they had killed the strategic head of the group calling itself “Islamic State” (IS). The fact that this could have happened at all was the result of a rare but fatal miscalculation by the brilliant planner. The local rebels placed the body into a refrigerator, in which they intended to bury him. Only later, when they realized how important the man was, did they lift his body out again.

Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was the real name of the Iraqi, whose bony features were softened by a white beard. But no one knew him by that name. Even his best-known pseudonym, Haji Bakr, wasn’t widely known. But that was precisely part of the plan. The former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s air defense force had been secretly pulling the strings at IS for years. Former members of the group had repeatedly mentioned him as one of its leading figures. Still, it was never clear what exactly his role was.

CONTENTS
1. ISIS cartoon shows Obama beheaded by Jihadi John
2. Islamic State beheads and shoots 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya
3. Iran accuses U.S. of creating Islamic State, Boko Haram and the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra front
4. Iran marks Army Day with cries of “Death to Israel, Death to America”
5. An innocent abroad who pays $100,000 for a $100 carpet
6. Israeli-Arab leader: Holocaust “unparalleled” event in human “evil”
7. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority again denies Holocaust
8. MK Zoabi continues to promote “Israeli Apartheid” slur internationally despite re-election
9. Israeli-Arab writer: My teenage daughter has Holocaust-denying teacher in Chicago high school
10. FBI Director: “Why I require FBI agents to visit the Holocaust Museum”
11. Participants at London conference “sniggered at the mention of ashes rising from the death camp crematoria”
12. UK Green Party Deputy Leader threatens Jews

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

Benjamin Franklin

On this day of remembrance Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah, when Israelis took time last night and today to honor those who perished during the Holocaust, and to honor those who stood up to the evil in Warsaw who were perpetrating the Jewish genocide, it seems fitting to talk about righteousness, and virtue. To the Left these are arcane, even inconvenient notions. To the Right, they are defining issues upon which a society rises or falls.

Even understanding the far Left, it still boggles the mind that the titular leader of the free world – Barack Obama – continues to be the supporter, errand messenger, and apologist for dictators, especially a Nazi look-a-like Iran, while chastising and undermining Israel whenever he can.

The left with few exceptions typically supports Palestinians, and usually at the expense of Jews. The right, with few exceptions, remains a staunch supporter of Israel; especially conservative Christians and the GOP.

But it is the middle, the independent voice that remains to be engaged, and to them I ask for their consideration as the world gets more dangerous, politics more divided, and the fate of the West increasingly hangs in the balance, when deciding if a choice must be made – whether to align with Israel or her adversaries – that they consider Israel as the righteous cause.

Forget about Israel, doesn’t Brandeis care about Iran’s abysmal human rights record?

All those concerned about the dangers of Iran obtaining the ability to produce nuclear weapons have been closely watching the negotiations between Iran and the U.S. and its partners in the P5+1.

Perhaps no country has been more concerned about that danger than Israel, the nation which the Iranian leaders continue to brazenly threaten with annihilation.

It is reasonable to conclude that those who are urging the negotiators to proceed apace, to succumb to Iranian threats and demands without integrating ironclad precautionary methods are not overly concerned about the safety of Israel.

Given the university’s past “sister” relationship with Al Quds University, perhaps that explains Brandeis’s willingness to offer Ambassador Thomas Pickering – the Iran cheerleader and harsh critic of Israel – an honorary degree as this year’s Commencement featured speaker.

But what about Iran’s human rights record?

Israel’s citizens have to realize their strength.
I’m pretty sure it was Mark Twain who compared Jews to horses – if they knew their own strength we should be afraid to ride them.

That was in the days of Herzl before everything, or rather at the start of everything.

I am no Mark Twain but in my stays and service in Israel I noticed something of an inferiority complex among my brothers and sisters, or call it a grasshopper mentality that remains a legacy from our days in the Wilderness when the Spies misinformed us about “giants” who lived on the other side.

Compared to them, compared to the rest of the world, what are we? Yes, grasshoppers.

For more than a year I have attempted to raise awareness of the urgency of oral testament in order to preserve and disseminate the feats and efforts of all of those who were involved in the Campaign for the Release of Soviet Jewry. The activities which started in the Soviet Union in the late 60’s continued there and throughout the western world until the 90’s when the flood gates opened and the mass of Jews who wanted to emigrate, arrived in Israel.

We all know that the oral testament of survivors of the Holocaust is the most profound vehicle for creating understanding, sympathy and identity with what took place in In Europe during World War Two.

In their wisdom Spielberg and others realized that there can be no more powerful witness than a survivor of the horror. The human being, not the book or the movie is what will have the greatest effect on the listener now and in years to come.

The objective at the end of the day is not just to inform but to exemplify the struggle and courage of those who were involved and to learn from it.

As with the holocaust survivors many who were the leading activists in the Soviet Jewry struggle are no longer with us. Those who still remain will not be here to give testimony in another 10 years or so.

One group of Christian captives is shot, the other beheaded.

Islamic State released a video on Sunday that purports to show militants killing two groups of Ethiopian Christian men in Libya. If confirmed, it would be the second such mass execution of foreign Christians in the tumultuous North African country.

The video, which couldn’t be independently verified, shows one group of at least 15 men being shot and another group of about the same size being beheaded. The number of those killed wasn’t possible to confirm. The Ethiopian government didn’t comment on Sunday.

Ismail Shukri, the head of military intelligence for a militia from the Libyan city Misrata, said the video underscores that the Islamic State presence in Libya is emerging as a major threat to further destabilize the fractured country.

“There’s no way to negotiate with people who commit such acts,” he said. “They are against Islam and humanity.”

Man is the despoiler in the Church of St. Green, but Genesis says we are here to work the earth.

This Wednesday we mark Earth Day. A week from now, the Vatican will add its own contribution to what Pope Francis calls “human ecology” in the form of a summit called “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity.” The summit will in turn be followed by an encyclical some time later this year.

Many find the whole idea unsettling. They fear it means a papal imprimatur for the political and economic orthodoxies of the green movement, confusing the faithful and leading to another series of press conferences that will begin with a Vatican spokesman saying, “What the pope meant to say . . .”

The fears are not without cause. There are many signs that do not augur well, from the muddled section on economics in the pope’s first encyclical to his posing for a photo while holding up an anti-fracking T-shirt, to press coverage anticipating he will be to the fight against greenhouse gases what Pope John Paul II was to the fight against Soviet communism.

Previous quarrels between Washington and Jerusalem were about differing Mideast perceptions. Now the issue is how the U.S. perceives itself.

Recent conversations with senior Israeli officials are shot through with a sense of incredulity. They can’t understand what’s become of U.S. foreign policy.

They don’t know how to square Barack Obama’s promises with his policies. They fail to grasp how a president who pledged to work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons is pushing an accord with Tehran that guarantees their proliferation. They are astonished by the nonchalance with which the administration acquiesces in Iran’s regional power plays, or in al Qaeda’s gains in Yemen, or in the Assad regime’s continued use of chemical weapons, or in the battlefield successes of ISIS, or in Russia’s decision to sell advanced missiles to Tehran. They wonder why the president has so much solicitude for Ali Khamenei’s political needs, and so little for Benjamin Netanyahu’s.