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December 2015

Let’s Elect Hillary Now We want a president we can loathe all of the time—not support some of the time. Bret Stephens

Dear fellow conservatives:

Let us now pledge to elect Hillary Clinton as the 45th president of the United States.

Let’s skip the petty dramas of primaries and caucuses, the debate histrionics, the sour spectacle of the convention in Cleveland. Let’s fast-forward past that sinking October feeling when we belatedly realize we’re going to lose—and lose badly.

Let’s move straight to that first Tuesday in November, when we grimly pull the lever for the candidate who has passed all the Conservative Purity Tests (CPTs), meaning we’ve upheld the honor of our politically hopeless cause. Let’s stop pretending we want to be governed by someone we agree with much of the time, when we can have the easy and total satisfaction of a president we can loathe and revile all the time.

Let’s do this because it’s what we want. Maybe secretly, maybe unconsciously, but desperately. We want four—and probably eight—more years of cable-news neuralgia. We want to drive ourselves to work as Mark Levin or Laura Ingraham scratch our ideological itches until they bleed a little. We want the refiner’s fire that is our righteous indignation at a country we claim no longer to recognize—ruled by impostors and overrun by foreigners.

We also want to turn the Republican Party into a gated community. So much nicer that way. If the lesson of Mitt Romney’s predictable loss in 2012 was that it’s bad politics to tell America’s fastest-growing ethnic group that some of their relatives should self-deport, or to castigate 47% of the country as a bunch of moochers—well, so what? Abraham Lincoln once said “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.” What. Ever. Now the party of Lincoln has as its front-runner an insult machine whose political business is to tell Mexicans, Muslims, physically impaired journalists, astute Jewish negotiators and others who cross his sullen gaze that he has no use for them or their political correctness.

The Risks of Inaction in the Face of Iranian Misbehavior By Michael Singh

The Obama administration has emphasized that the nuclear deal with Iran was narrowly focused and was not intended to address concerns such as Iran’s support for terrorism or its regional activities. Yet while the U.S. and its allies got a narrow deal, Iran effectively received a far more comprehensive one.

Iran’s actions have made clear that it can be expected, at most, to abide by the letter of the text. As Sen. Bob Corker has noted, since the agreement was signed in July, Iran has sentenced Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian–who has been in jail for more than a year–and imprisoned another Iranian-American. It has defied United Nations sanctions by exporting arms to Yemen and Syria; by dispatching Gen. Qasem Soleimani, chief of Iran’s elite military Qods Force, and other sanctioned officials to Russia, Iraq, and elsewhere; and by conducting two ballistic missile launches. Iranian hackers have reportedly engaged in cyber attacks on the State Department. Tehran also refused to fully cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency investigation into its nuclear weapons research.

How have the U.S. and its negotiating partners responded to Iran’s actions? Rote condemnation.

Jews and Other Poles: By Ruth Wisse

Poland offered Jews some of the best conditions they ever experienced in exile—until it didn’t. How are Poles dealing with that history today?

Poland! It’s one of those words capable of causing a rift between otherwise perfectly compatible Jewish minds. When I mention an upcoming trip to Warsaw, a friend says: “How can you be going there?! I would never set foot in that place!” On my return, reporting on the country’s warming attitudes toward Jews to another friend who was born and spent her childhood there, she stops me: “I don’t want to hear any more.” I had forgotten for a moment that Polish neighbors had killed her father.

There is no way of simplifying or ironing out the relation of Jews to Poland, Poland to Jews, each to their common history. It is a fact that Poland offered Jews some of the best conditions they ever experienced in exile. Even if one discounts the saying, “Poland was heaven for the nobles, hell for the peasants, and paradise for the Jews,” it is plain that the last-named did enjoy unusual opportunities in the country—until they didn’t. A Failed Brotherhood is how the scholars Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal titled their book on Poles’and Jews’ perceptions of each other, leaving open the question of which of the two words deserves greater emphasis.

EFFECTIVE INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT OF IMMIGRATION LAW VITAL TO NAT’L SECURITY MICHAEL CUTLER

For decades, discussions about the failures of the immigration system focused almost exclusively on securing our southwest border but ignored not only the legal entry system, but the solution to the failures of both the legal and illegal means by which aliens – including terrorists and transnational criminals – enter the United States: the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the U.S.

Let’s be blunt. There is no way to prevent all illegal entries of aliens. Our nation’s southwest border is 1,900 miles long, and the border that separates the U.S. from Canada is more than 5,000 miles long. Our coastline runs approximately 95,000 miles.
border

The vetting process conducted by consular officials who issue visas will always suffer failures. The Visa Waiver Program further erodes the ability to vet aliens who enter the U.S.

Finally, politicians and journalists now are acknowledging that failures of the immigration system are not limited to the millions of illegal aliens in the U.S. but that there is a threat posed by aliens who were admitted through the legal process, but not adequately vetted. In fact, the 9/11 Commission noted that the great majority of terrorists entered the U.S. through international airports.

Catastrophic Failure: A Review, Part II Edward Cline

Rather than prosecute a genuine War on Terror, our leadership would rather wear a blindfold and play “Pin the tail on the donkey,” the donkey being anything but Islam.

“The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…”
Page 7, Explanatory Memorandum, 1991, Muslim Brotherhood

I noted in Part I of this review that the “Islamophobia” of Americans is more the enemy recognized by our “defenders” than is the actual enemy, Islam, the enemy that cannot be named. Within that purgatory of purposeless analytical bean-counting and sand-sifting is a startling and craven ignorance of the actual enemy, enforced by post-modern, left-wing politically correct thought and speech, while the Muslim Brotherhood and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) stymie any meaningful investigation and intelligence analysis by determining definitions and “red lines” and the language employed in the War on Terror.

Why Belief and Foreign Policy Matter By Herbert London

In his magnificent book, The Roots of American Order, Russell Kirk cites five cities which have given us our rich heritage and from which we have created an exceptional civilization: Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, London and Philadelphia. Kirk offers a philosophically panoramic view. From Jerusalem came the order of the soul and leading a purposeful life. From Athens emerged the order of mind and how one ought to live. From Rome came an understanding of personal virtue. From London, our concepts of common law, private property and constitutional order were formulated. And from Philadelphia emerged the protection of individual rights and the understanding of liberty within a framework of law.

Each of these spheres of understanding built on the previous era culminating in a culture called the West. Truths were not invented but discovered over the course of time. And if we are to flourish, we must tend to the roots of these powerful ideas and replenish them.

Germans Stock Up on Weapons for Self-Defense by Soeren Kern

The scramble to acquire weapons comes amid an indisputable nationwide spike in migrant-driven crime, including rapes of German women and girls on a shocking scale, as well as physical assaults, stabbings, home invasions, robberies and burglaries — in cities and towns throughout the country.

German authorities, however, are going to great lengths to argue that the German citizenry’s sudden interest in self-defense has nothing whatsoever to do with mass migration into the country, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

The spike in violent crimes committed by migrants has been corroborated by a leaked confidential police report, which reveals that a record-breaking 38,000 asylum seekers were accused of committing crimes in the country in 2014. Analysts believe this figure — which works out to more than 100 crimes a day — is only a fragment: many crimes are not reported.

“Anyone who asks for the reasons for the surge in weapons purchases encounters silence.” — Süddeutsche Zeitung

Germans, facing an influx of more than one million asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, are rushing to arm themselves.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Success in trials of arthritis treatment. Israeli biotech Kitov has announced that its KIT-302 treatment for osteoarthritis successfully reduced arthritic pain in UK trials on 152 patients, without risk of heart problems. In fact KIT-302 is the only treatment for both osteoarthritis and hypertension (high blood pressure).
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/12/16/kitov-pharmas-arthritis-drug-meets-main-goal-in-late-stage-study/

Functional human liver cells grown in the Lab. More news of the work of Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Yaakov Nahmias (see here, here, here and here). Now he has been able to use the chemical Oncostatin to double the speed of liver cell production outside the body. http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/28143

Japan turns to Israeli tech to treat radiation disease. Japan’s Fukushima Medical University and Israel’s Pluristem Therapeutics are to develop Pluristem’s PLX-R18 cells to treat acute radiation syndrome (ARS). Radiation continues to spread following the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/japan-turns-to-israeli-tech-to-treat-radiation-disease/

Prize-winning voice technology. Israel’s VoiceITT (see Mar 2014 newsletter) won the 2015 Medica medical app competition in Dusseldorf with its Talkitt platform that translates the speech of people with communication disabilities. Medica is the world’s largest medical trade fair, attracting nearly 5,000 exhibitors from 70 nations.
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/12/10/4-israeli-startups-sweep-international-medical-app-contest/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwHYKmxwN4w

First implantation of groundbreaking heart device. Israel’s Enopace (see Mar 2013 newsletter) has seen the first operation to implant its new catheter-based neuro-stimulator to treat patients with congestive heart failure. The procedure was performed by Professor Davor Milicic, head of Cardiology at Zagreb Medical University.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/worlds-first-endovascular-neuromodulation-device-implanted-in-man-for-the-treatment-of-congestive-heart-failure-540696751.html

Breakthrough status for Tardive Dyskinesia treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) The US FDA has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation status to Israel’s Teva for its SD-809 (deutetrabenazine) treatment of patients with tardive dyskinesia, a hyperkinetic movement disorder affecting about 500,000 people in the USA.
http://www.tevapharm.com/news/teva_announces_breakthrough_therapy_designation_for_sd_809_granted_by_fda_for_the_treatment_of_tardive_dyskinesia_11_15.aspx

Weizmann in joint research for brain therapies. Israel’s Weizmann Institute has entered into a research agreement with India’s Sun Pharma and Spain’s Health Research Institute of Santiago to develop products for treating neurological diseases such as brain stroke and brain cancer. (See also Apr 2015 newsletter)
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/sun-pharma-inks-pact-for-brain-therapies/article7971997.ece

Micro-pancreas can cure diabetes. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Betalin has significantly increased the lifetime of pancreatic beta cells transplanted into diabetics in order to produce insulin. This has been achieved by simultaneously transplanting an Engineered Micro Pancreas (EMP) to sustain the cells.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-startup-aims-to-end-insulin-injections-1001086686
http://www.betalintherapeutics.com/

CAIR’s ‘Deputy Hamas’ Teaches Radical Mosque to Use Guns Will the next San Bernardino be in Florida? Joe Kaufman

Nezar Hamze is a leader in the Hamas-related Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). He is also a Deputy Sheriff in the Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO), in Broward County, Florida. This background has given him the opportunity to exploit his position in law enforcement to assist his Islamist friends in their desire for weapons training. This month, he did so at a Tampa Bay, Florida mosque that partners with designated terrorist organizations.

CAIR was established in June 1994 as part of the American Palestine Committee, a terrorist umbrella group headed by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. Marzook is currently residing in Egypt as second in command of Hamas. In 2007 and 2008, CAIR was named by the US Justice Department a co-conspirator for two federal trials dealing with the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas. Since its founding, a number of CAIR representatives have served jail time and/or have been deported from the US for terrorist-related crimes.

Nezar Hamze is the CEO and Regional Operations Director for the Florida chapter of CAIR or CAIR-Florida. In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in Downtown Miami, where rally goers shouted, “We are Hamas” and “Let’s go Hamas.” Following the rally, the event organizer, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, wrote, “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!” In August 2014, CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly wrote, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of G-d…”

No, We Don’t Need to Defeat ISIS on the Internet Keyboard warriors won’t stop Muslim beheaders. Daniel Greenfield

The Democrats have a plan to crush ISIS. All you have to do is tweet #CrushISIS, make it a trending topic and then ISIS will be crushed. If not, we can always bring back #BringBackOurGirls.

A party that is hesitant to fight ISIS in real life has become a movement of keyboard warriors convinced that the key to defeating the Jihadists lies somewhere in cyberspace.

It doesn’t. The internet is a medium. Dead men can’t tweet. Corpses can’t create hashtags.

But the Democrats are convinced that they can’t defeat ISIS in real life, only on the internet. And they’re probably half-right. They can’t defeat ISIS in real life or on the internet.

Obama told the Pentagon, “In order for us to defeat terrorist groups like ISIL and al-Qaeda, we must discredit their ideology. This broader challenge of countering violent extremism. Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas. We will never be at war with Islam.”

When the USSR wanted excuses for allying with the Nazis, it claimed that an ideology couldn’t be defeated militarily, even though its entire existence was proof otherwise.

As Stalin’s Foreign Minister Molotov put it, “One may accept or reject the ideology of Hitlerism as well as any other ideological system; that is a matter of political views. But everybody should understand that an ideology cannot be destroyed by force, that it cannot be eliminated by war.”