RUTHFULLY YOURS

Israel is a greater threat to America than anything emanating from the Muslim world, according to participants in an October 15 panel titled “The Future of Bipartisanship on Israel.” One of the nation’s largest Democratic Party campaign contributors, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), provided an appropriately partisan setting in their Washington, DC, headquarters for this biased panel. Columbia University professor and former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi moderated before an audience of around seventy, including Jerusalem Fund director Zeina Azzam.

Former CIA analyst and Georgetown University security studies researcher Paul Pillar (“one of the wisest people” on the Middle East, according to Khalidi) began the panel by dredging up the well-worn assertion that the U.S. suffers from its alliance with Israel. Downplaying broader jihadist motives, he claimed that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a “highly exploitable issue” that exacerbates “extremism and specifically, terrorist threats to the U.S.” American support for Israel is a “major drain on U.S. political and diplomatic capital,” he added.

I still believe in the ideal of a liberal arts education—even if, in practice, I’ve become more than a bit disenchanted.

As an undergraduate some 20 years ago majoring in religion and philosophy at Wingate University—a small, Southern Baptist institution in North Carolina—I was fortunate to have been taught by genuinely dedicated teachers who saw to it that their students received the classical education in the liberal arts for which they signed up.

To put this point another way, my professors resisted the temptation—a temptation that’s all too common among the professoriate in the contemporary academy—to abuse their vocational privileges by preaching to, rather than teaching, their students. The classroom, my instructors seemed to realize, was not the proper venue in which to air their political and ideological predilections.

In pursuing my master’s degree in philosophy from Baylor University, I became increasingly aware of some of my instructors’ political views, but there existed a reasonable degree of intellectual diversity in the department. This latter fact, coupled with my professors’ unquestionable commitment to the welfare of their students, made my time at Baylor one of the most enjoyable periods of my life.

“Not many people make national news by bringing a homemade clock to school,” gushed Time as it named Ahmed Mohamed to its list of “The 30 Most Influential Teens of 2015.” “But the ninth grader’s arrest, after teachers and authorities mistook said clock for a bomb, kicked off a national debate over racial profiling—and a outpouring of support for Mohamed, who was personally invited to the White House by President Obama (who called his clock ‘cool’). In October, he accepted a full scholarship to a prestigious school in Qatar.”

Racial profiling? Really? What race is jihad terror again? What race is carrying what could be a bomb to a school? I keep forgetting.

In any case, Time’s selection was perfectly fitting. Ahmed Mohamed probably deserves to be on the list more than any of the other 29 teens. As he hobnobbed with world leaders and was hailed as a hero by the international media, his influence was undeniable; the only question was whether it was a positive or a negative influence.

For Time and its mainstream media colleagues, of course, there was no question that Ahmed was a positive influence. He was a symbol of everything the media wants us to believe about Muslims and Islam: that Muslims are inventive, hard-working, industrious, and unjustly harassed by an out-of-control, racist and “Islamophobic” law enforcement establishment.

Before the Muslim terror stabbing spree, Netanyahu had made repeated efforts to meet with the leader of the PLO. And for once, Abbas, the PLO leader, had not been averse to a meeting.

Instead it was Secretary of State John Kerry who told Abbas not to meet with Netanyahu.

Abbas went to the UN and disavowed the Oslo Accords. The first Muslim stabbings of Jews, with the encouragement of the PLO, began a few days later.

It is unlikely that Kerry had directly told Abbas to escalate the violence, but he had sent him the same effective message by coordinating with the PLO boss at the expense of Netanyahu. The top terrorist came away with the understanding that the administration favored him and was hostile to Netanyahu.

And he was right.

So Abbas decided to see what another outburst of violence would net him.

Mark Tapson, a Hollywood-based writer and screenwriter, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the editor of TruthRevolt.com.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center has officially launched a campaign called “Stop the Jihad on Campus.” During the coming fall term, from October 26- November 6, 2015, the Freedom Center will be holding a series of “teach-ins” to raise student awareness about Islamic jihad, and to combat the pro-terrorist propaganda of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood which has become such a familiar presence on American campuses.

The campaign invites students who believe in our Constitution and who are opposed to the genocides taking place in the Middle East against Christians Jews, and Muslims who don’t support jihad to participate by holding a teach-in on your campus to tell the truth about what is happening in the Middle East and to expose the threat to Americans here at home.