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August 2016

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Christian Summer Conferences Offer Israel Blessings and Curses by Susan Warner

By on August 16th, 2016

A segment of Christians is actually trying to delude the world into thinking the absurd: that the ancient Jews of Canaan and Judea are “colonialists” who are “illegally occupying” their own native land.

Seemingly undeterred by their 2016 defeats, the Christian anti-Israel coalitions are regrouping for their next attacks, while pro-Israel Christian Zionist organizations — including Christians United for Israel (CUFI), Friends of Israel (FOI), International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem (ICEJ) and Bridges for Peace, among others, continue to speak out and teach the facts and the truth about Israel to Christians throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Still, the Bible gives us hope and assurance that there is a future day when Israel will be able to bask in the elusive peace it demonstrably continues to offer those who are trying to destroy it.

In breaking news yesterday, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America approved a resolution calling on the U.S. government to end all aid to Israel if Israel does not stop building settlements and “enable an independent Palestinian state.”

Several international Christian policy conferences this summer have produced a mixed bag of both blessings and curses — all aimed at Israel. The United Methodists, The Southern Baptists, The Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Unitarian Universalists are worth noting here.
United Methodists

From the quadrennial United Methodist General Conference (UMGC), the good news is that the four major divestment and boycott proposals were defeated in committee before ever reaching a floor vote. The primary targets of the defeated boycott campaign were Caterpillar and Motorola, the corporate giants alleged — in a totally fictitious plot — to be co-conspirators with Israel supposedly to disable and destroy the Palestinian people.

The General Conference, not surprisingly, also voted to reaffirm (759-24) the United Methodist resolution #60229 — Guiding Principles for Christian-Jewish Relations. This is a resolution that has been reinforced and amended for many years. It reflects the UMC’s interest in establishing and maintaining relationships with the Jewish community.

However, mention of Israel in the UMC resolution is a trailing number nine out of nine points with a hesitant tone that reveals a distinct lack of understanding of the critical role of Israel in worldwide Jewish affairs.

Because of their apparent lack of factual information on the topic of Israel, the resolution appears to have caused some confusion. According to their document, they are “searching, wrestling, and struggling with complexities and painfulness of the controversies surrounding these Middle East issues.” (extrapolated from petition #60229)

The UMC story however, does not end there. There are two nagging unresolved elements: first is the United Methodist Kairos Response Committee, which some people say is openly anti-Semitic, and second is the misguided United Methodist membership in the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

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WSJ and Trump By Jack Hellner

By on August 16th, 2016

Instead of trashing Trump and complaining that he has alienated some Republicans, why doesn’t the WSJ question why Hillary gets almost universal support among Democrats, the media and Hollywood no matter what she says or does? Isn’t supporting a scandal ridden congenital liar more troubling than alienating some Republicans?

We are constantly told by Democrats and the media that Hillary is so smart and the most qualified person to run for president but what they never do is list actual accomplishments because they have trouble thinking of any.

When Trump says something, Republicans and Democrats alike are asked to comment. Yet when Hillary says or does anything the media does not trot out its microphones for comments. Why the discrepancy? For example, when Hillary called Gold Star Mom Samantha Smith a liar, no one went to Reid, Obama, Durbin, Pelosi, Schumer et al and asked: what do you think of Hillary treating a Gold Star Mom like that? The media obviously doesn’t really care about all Gold Star families.

Does the WSJ or the politically entrenched Republicans in DC actually believe if Trump changed his verbiage that the media would love him? The Clinton team called Pence the most extreme VP candidate in the last century so would he be treated respectfully?

The media loved McCain until he was the Presidential candidate and then they trashed him. They also trashed Romney and Bush. They are for the Democrat no matter what they do. Facts do not matter.

Hillary’s economic policy could be summed up in one sentence. The government should tax more, spend more, and regulate more because the fair share for the government vs. the governed is never enough.

Hillary supports continuing Obama’s economic policies which have resulted in a 38-year low on the labor participation rate, the slowest economic recovery in almost 70 years, a 50-year low on home ownership and a 40 year low on productivity. Why would anyone think that continuing and expanding those policies would yield better results?

We know what Hillary has said and done. Could Trump be worse?

It is a shame the WSJ climbed on the bandwagon.

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The Left Refuses to Learn By David Solway

By on August 16th, 2016

Much has been said and written about the deleterious effects of political correctness, which makes it next to impossible to speak truth without meeting volleys of censorship and defamation.

Another cognitive tendency, however, is now reaching massive proportions, namely the pervasive refusal to learn, to ferret out facts from the welter of conflicting claims and competing opinions that obscure or deform the exchange of ideas on which the health of a democracy depends, in short, to seek truth. No less destructive to the existence of an informed public than the scourge of political correctness, the lassitude that afflicts us is no doubt, or at least in part, owing to an increasingly dysfunctional educational system at all levels from primary to post-graduate, and operates in conjunction with a widespread cultural propensity to a sort of epicurean laziness that comes with prolonged affluence and an entitlement mentality.

Three recent instances of willful ignorance got me thinking once again about this noxious contagion from which we suffer.

The first was a personal encounter on a Facebook chain in which I misguidedly sparred with an academic colleague on the subject of Islam. My colleague took exception to an article I had posted, “How to Defeat Terrorism,” in which I put forward a series of severe but sensible measures to reduce the incidence of jihadist attacks. I had set terror squarely in the camp of canonical Islam and provided textual evidence to support my contention. My interlocutor accused me of proposing a Nazi-type “final solution,” of thinking in black hat/white hat terms, and of mischaracterizing Islam, which he asserted was 90% based on the bible and which honored the prophetic figures of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

When I pointed out that he was quite mistaken, that Islam had misconstrued these august personages and substantially perverted the message of the holy scriptures, and that he had little accurate knowledge of either the authoritative sources of Islam or the bible in any detail, he was affronted. My knowledge of these matters, while by no means panoptic, is the fruit of 15 years of study, as my correspondent knew from books and articles I had published; nonetheless, he dismissed my information as amounting to nothing more than “ten minutes on Google.” He offered no counter-argument or substantive engagement. He had obviously gleaned his comfortable point of view from watching TV, reading our liberal newspapers, and conversing with his academic peers — and maybe, from ten minutes on Google. And he wore his ignorance proudly.

But he was not yet finished. He proceeded to contradict himself, stating that the Judeo-Christian tradition, which a genial Islam had duly respected, was responsible for atrocities like the Third Reich. When I responded that one can’t have it both ways — the Western tradition is either benign or culpable — and that Nazism was a pagan incursion into the democratic life of the West, he could only resort to evasion, once again displaying a profound lack of investigative grounding. He then signed off, ending our correspondence with an offhand insult. Why should I have been surprised? After all, the academy has proven to be among the most remiss of our institutions in the pursuit of truth.

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William McGurn:About Those Loser ‘Trumpkins’ What is it that the much-vilified Trump voters are trying to tell us?

By on August 16th, 2016

In the land of NeverTrump, it turns out one American is more reviled than Donald Trump. This would be the Donald Trump voter.

Lincoln famously described government as of, by, and for the people. Even so, the people are now getting a hard lesson about what happens when they reject the advice of their betters and go with a nominee of their own choosing. What happens is an outpouring of condescension and contempt.

This contempt is most naked on the left. No surprise here, for two reasons. First, since at least Woodrow Wilson progressives have always preferred rule by a technocratic elite over democracy. Second, today’s Democratic Party routinely portrays its Republican Party rivals as an assortment of nasty ists (racists, sexists, nativists, etc.) making war on minorities, women, foreigners and innocent goatherds who somehow end up in Guantanamo.

Thus Mr. Trump confirms to many on the left what they have always told themselves about the GOP. A New York Times writer put it this way: “Donald Trump’s supporters know exactly what he stands for: hatred of immigrants, racial superiority, a sneering disregard of the basic civility that binds a society.”

Still, the contempt for the great Republican unwashed does not emanate exclusively from liberals or Democrats. Thanks to Mr. Trump’s run for office, it is now ascendant in conservative and Republican quarters as well.

Start with the fondness for the word “Trumpkin,” meant at once to describe and demean his supporters. Or consider an article from National Review, which describes a “vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles” and whose members find that “Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.” Scarcely a day goes by without a fresh tweet or article taking the same tone, an echo of the old Washington Post slur against evangelicals as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”

We get it: Trump voters are stupid whites who are embittered because they are losing out in the global economy. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Egyptian Olympic Committee Sends Judoka Home Islam El Shehaby had refused to shake the hand of Israeli opponent Or Sasson after losing to him By Benjamin Parkin

By on August 16th, 2016

RIO DE JANEIRO—The Egyptian Olympic Committee has sent judoka Islam El Shehaby home after his refusal to shake an Israeli opponent’s hand following a bout last week, the International Olympic Committee said.

El Shehaby broke with judo and Olympic tradition when he snubbed Israeli opponent Or Sasson’s offer of a handshake after being defeated in a men’s heavyweight bout on Friday. Sasson went on to win a bronze medal.

The IOC’s disciplinary commission investigated the incident and issued a “severe reprimand” to the athlete, as well as warning the Egyptian Olympic Committee to make sure its athletes receive “proper education on the Olympic values.”

El Shehaby also initially refused to bow to Sasson after the bout, but was called back onto the mat to do so. Some Egyptian commentators had suggested he should have refused to compete against an Israeli opponent in the first place.

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Donald Trump Calls for a New War on Terror GOP nominee says limits on immigrants needed to fight groups like Islamic State By Janet Hook and Beth Reinhard

By on August 16th, 2016

Donald Trump, expanding on the provocative immigration ideas that have propelled his presidential candidacy, proposed on Monday a new ideological test that would limit immigrants seeking admission to the U.S. to “those who share our values and respect our people.”

He argued in a speech fleshing out his plans to combat terrorism that tighter immigration standards were needed to fight Islamic State with the same vigor with which the U.S. fought the Cold War. “We will be tough, and we will be even extreme,” he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear what the test—he called it “extreme vetting,” a phrase that didn’t appear in his prepared remarks—would include, but Mr. Trump suggested he would ban not only terrorist sympathizers but those who believe in Shariah law, don’t believe in the U.S. Constitution or “support bigotry and hatred.” Shariah law is the legal system of Islam that governs public and private behavior.

The speech represented a response to Mr. Trump’s critics, including many Republicans, who have expressed doubts that he has the experience and temperament to lead the U.S. in a dangerous world. Last week, 50 Republican foreign policy experts signed a statement saying they wouldn’t vote for Mr. Trump because they question his capacity to serve as commander in chief.

Democrats on Monday sought to rebut Mr. Trump even before he spoke. Appearing with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at a rally in Scranton, Pa., Vice President Joe Biden said Mr. Trump’s comments had been quoted approvingly by the leader of Hezbollah and posed a threat to U.S. troops in the region. “Trump is already making our country less safe,” Mr. Biden said.

“This man is totally, thoroughly unqualified to be president of the United States of America,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump. “On every issue that matters most to our security, Donald Trump has no clue what it takes to lead this great country.”

In his speech at Youngstown State University in Ohio, Mr. Trump unfurled a broad-gauge critique of the antiterrorism policies of President Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton, his former secretary of state.

“The rise of ISIS is the direct result of policy decisions made by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton,” he said. “Our current strategy of nation building and regime change is a proven absolute failure.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Gitmo Detainee Transfer: A Closer Look Who was transferred and why; how many prisoners are left at the detention center By Felicia Schwartz

By on August 16th, 2016

The U.S. announced the transfer of 15 detainees from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Here is a look at the various ramifications of the move.

Who was transferred? Where were they sent, and why?

Fifteen prisoners—12 Yemenis and three Afghans—were transferred from Guantanamo to the United Arab Emirates. The 15 were longtime terrorism suspects, but were never charged with crimes and were part of a group of detainees that the Obama administration has been trying to move to make progress in its efforts to close the facility.
They were sent to the U.A.E. because the Obama administration doesn’t transfer prisoners to Yemen due to the civil war there. The U.S. has no blanket policy against repatriating detainees to Afghanistan, but officials said they defer to the guidance of senior military officials when making decisions about where to transfer them.

Is the administration increasing the tempo of transfers? If so, why?

The rate of transfers out of Guantanamo has picked up, although President Barack Obama’s pledge to shutter the prison has proved elusive, in part because of congressional restrictions against relocating prisoners to the U.S. Meanwhile, officials are trying to whittle the facility’s population by moving out all prisoners eligible for transfer—security conditions permitting—so that the remaining detainee population will make the prison appear too costly to run. The Obama administration also has sped up the parole-like process that is involved in clearing those who have never faced charges for release.

How many detainees are left, and who are they?

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Trump’s Anti-Terror Strategy This is a debate the American public deserves to hear.

By on August 16th, 2016

Donald Trump made another pivot back to the issues on Monday, this time laying out his strategy to fight radical Islam. As usual it included some good ideas and some bad, but if we’re lucky he’ll stick with the subject long enough to force Hillary Clinton to debate something other than his temperament.

The polls show Mr. Trump still has a slight edge over the Democrat in fighting terror, thanks in large part to President Obama’s eight-year record. Islamic State incubated in the vacuum left by American retreat in Iraq and Syria, and its poison has spread throughout the world. Mrs. Clinton is promising to continue Mr. Obama’s strategy, which gives the Republican an opening.

“The failure to establish a new Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq, and the election-driven timetable for withdrawal, surrendered our gains in that country and led directly to the rise of ISIS,” Mr. Trump said as he read from a prepared text in Youngstown, Ohio. That’s exactly right, though he should have added Mr. Obama’s decision to let the Syrian civil war rage out of control.

Then again, Mr. Trump has sometimes said the U.S. should stay out of Syria’s civil war because it amounts to the “nation-building” that Mr. Trump again promised to end. That’s a good applause line on the right and left these days, but setting up safe zones in Syria so millions of refugees won’t flood Turkey, Jordan and Europe is a long way from nation-building. The U.S. did that for the Kurds after the first Gulf War, and the Kurdish territory of Iraq is a rare American success in the Middle East.

If Mr. Obama had kept 10,000 U.S. troops in Iraq after 2011, the critics might have called that nation-building too. But it would have blocked the march of Islamic State and spared us from having to refight the war in Iraq today. Mr. Trump’s caricature of nation-building is closer to Barack Obama’s view than he would like to admit.

The better news is that Mr. Trump seems to be warming to the idea that the U.S. needs coalitions to defeat radical Islam. Most notably, he reversed course on NATO in his speech, praising its role in fighting terrorism. He also called for “an international conference” on fighting radical Islam and he cited Israel, Egypt and Jordan as particular allies in the fight.

Mr. Trump still seems naive in expecting Vladimir Putin’s Russia to assist in this effort, but then so were Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton in 2009. Mr. Trump hasn’t seemed to notice that Mr. Obama recently agreed to share intelligence with Russia in Syria over the vociferous objections of the Pentagon. The Republican nominee would have to learn the hard way that Mr. Putin is a hard man who only responds to the logic of hard geopolitical facts. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Peter Smith: Daze of ‘Swine’ and Posers

By on August 16th, 2016

Donald Trump gives his critics plenty of ammunition, no doubt about it, but the vitriol he inspires, even from fellow Republicans, is out of all proportion with his offences. As with the media’s pile-on of Tony Abbott, he is the pundits’ excuse to signal contempt and virtue in equal measure.
In his excellent recent speech to the Samuel Griffith Society, Tony Abbott regretted the loss of civility in public life. One aspect of this loss of civility that strikes me is the readiness of commentators (those outside of the arena looking in from their armchairs) to hurl gratuitous personal insults at those within the arena with whom they disagree. I think those on the left are especially guilty, but Donald Trump has brought out the worst in commentators across the political spectrum.

The American MSM is running a no-holds-barred campaign to demonise Trump. Admittedly he provides a flow of ammunition, but make no mistake: that simply makes their job easier. They would get it done however sparse the ammunition. That’s America; what of the Australian media?

In March this year, I commented on Tom Switzer calling Donald Trump “a buffoon.” This kind of language to describe someone is regrettable because it replaces reasoned comment and analysis with a cheap shot. Imagine trying to defend yourself against it. What do you say: “I am not a buffoon?” But Switzer’s cheap shot is mild in the scheme of things.

Take the Australian media at face value and Trump is a nightmare incarnate; Freddy Krueger on the loose. SMH readers were recently told that comparing Trump to Hitler “isn’t as farfetched as it sounds.” Go to the polar political opposite of the SMH; to an interview of P J O’Rourke by Andrew Bolt.

Here is a list of the descriptors the putative conservative O’Rourke applied to Trump: horrible, shallow, vulgarian, narcissist, one-dimensional. Bolt himself, a true conservative, used the descriptors scary, coarse, and rude. Wait on! Undoubtedly Trump has said some coarse things. But Bolt didn’t say that. He said that Trump was coarse. This is uncivil. Bolt does not know Trump. Trump’s family appear to respect and love him. I have seen numbers of people who do know him describe him as warm and caring.

But this is mild stuff. Want venom with a vengeance? Nikki Sava supplied the goods.

Here is a ‘selective list’ of the adjectives and adjectival phrases wielded by Sava to describe Trump, all in the space of about 1200 words in The Australian on August 11:

A pig
Nothing suggests he can be civilised, or tamed or controlled
Not a single decent bone in his body
Kim Jong-un seems perfectively normal next to Trump
Unstable
Cruel
Irrational
Amoral
Egotistical
An absolute pig of a man
Ruts deep in mud
Embraces racism, sexism and any other negative ism
Mr Piggy

That is not all. According to Sava, Trump has “glued orange hair”, “a pointy finger and pursed lips”, and reportedly was “the only child who would throw the cake at birthday parties,” What an absolute bounder!

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Obama’s No First Use Proposal By Herbert London

By on August 16th, 2016

When President Obama received his Nobel Prize, he argued that he would regard nuclear proliferation as his primary challenge. This is hardly surprising since even as a Columbia College student he advocated a nuclear free world – a position consistent with the idealism of a student who knew very little about the ambitions of U.S. adversaries. Yet now after eight years in office, the president retains this same arms control illusion.

Since he assumed the oath of office in 2009 the president has pressed for the shrinking and weakening of the U.S. nuclear arsenal armed as evidence by this signing of the New Start Treaty with Russia and avoiding modernization of the aging nuclear platforms.

Japan, Taiwan, among others, reliant on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for security are increasingly uncomfortable with the direction in America policy and are dubious about the reliability of our pledge for nuclear assistance.

To make matters even more confusing for U.S. allies, it appears as if the president is prepared to declare a new policy of “no first use” – a doctrine that contends America would never use nuclear weapons unless an adversary does so first. This seemingly benign gesture undermines decades of intentional ambiguity and the basis of deterrence.

In fact, State Department officials questioned about the matter argue the president’s position is wrongheaded. The fatal weakness in his contention is that it signals to our enemies that they need not fear nuclear retaliation from the U.S. even if they attack us with conventional, chemical, or biological weapons. In any war gaming escalation scenario, our battlefield initiatives end where nuclear weapons might be entertained. No first use suggests to foes that they should act as aggressively as possible short of nuclear war.

Deterrence, which has kept the lid on nuclear weapons since 1945, is undergoing a monumental shift. The Obama Administration 2010 Nuclear Posture Review contended Russia was no longer an adversary, a contention that recent history in Crimea and Syria would challenge. Moreover, it is likely the president will overlook Constitutional restraints on this matter by submitting a proposal to the United Nations Security Council thereby usurping Senate Treaty power as he did with the Iran Nuclear deal.

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