RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mucahid Cihad Han is a Muslim televangelist of sorts. On Turkey’s 2000 TV Sunday, he sat there with his laptop answering questions about what’s haram or halal, and received one question that, based on the uproarious Twitter reaction, may have just been thrown out at the cleric as bait.

The concerned viewer told the “self-styled” cleric, as described by Hurriyet Daily News, that he can’t help himself — he’s married but masturbates all the time, even while on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Han mulled the concern and figured he could, indeed, help the Mecca masturbator:

After repeating the question a few times, Han claimed that Islam strictly prohibits masturbation as a “haram” (forbidden) act. “Moreover, one hadith states that those who have sexual intercourse with their hands will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife, complaining against them to God over its rights,” he said, referring to what he claimed to be a saying of Prophet Muhammad.

As an image for countering anti-Semitism, I once used to keep tacked over my desk the Polish proverb, “It’s lousy to swim upstream in a filthy river.” Happily, upstream swimmers who now overtake me seem better shielded from the pollution. I’m enormously grateful to Ben Cohen, Douglas Murray, and Bari Weiss for essays that make it feel as though we are within sight of the open sea.

Ben Cohen enlarges the historical context by reminding us that ours is not a new story. Hitler’s attempt to establish the Third Reich in 1930s Europe gained legitimacy when leaders in Western democracies excused the Nazi assault on democratic institutions as long as it aimed at Jews alone. Prominent among such leaders were presidents and faculty of American universities who extended a welcome to Nazi alumni and officials, and maintained cordial relations with anti-Semitic institutions. The universities’ appeal to academic decorum as a reason for tolerating German anti-Semites finds its equivalent in today’s invocation of “free speech” as the excuse for sanctioning Arab and Muslim anti-Israel incitement.

But comparing the 1930s with today also reveals how the shift of anti-Semitism from the right to the left of the political spectrum has allowed Arab and Muslim grievance to penetrate deeper into the American academy than Nazi racialism ever did. Key to this change are the Palestinians who were relegated by their fellow Arabs to permanent refugee status so that they might serve as eternal proof of Jewish “usurpation” and guarantors of Israel’s eventual destruction. It is well known that even as Israel strove to integrate the Jews who were driven from Arab lands, the Arab world refused to accept the partition of Palestine, prevented the resettlement of those Arabs who fled Israel, and with unspeakable cruelty consigned generations to refugee camps so that Jews could be blamed for it.

Amid all the Islamic State’s atrocities — its massacres of civilians, its beheading of hostages, its pillaging of antiquities — the systematic violence the jihadists have carried out against countless enslaved women and girls never fails to shock. For months now, we’ve heard appalling testimony from women who escaped the Islamic State’s clutches, many of whom endured rape and other hideous acts of violence.

Zainab Bangura, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, recently conducted a tour of refugee camps in the shadow of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, war-ravaged countries where the Islamic State commands swaths of territory. She heard a host of horror stories from victims and their families and recounted them in an interview earlier this week with the Middle East Eye, an independent regional news site.

Even by the standards of arms deals between the United States and Saudi Arabia, this one was enormous. A consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to the United States’ oil-rich ally in the Middle East.

Israeli officials were agitated, reportedly complaining to the Obama administration that this substantial enhancement to Saudi air power risked disrupting the region’s fragile balance of power. The deal appeared to collide with the State Department’s documented concerns about the repressive policies of the Saudi royal family.

But now, in late 2011, Hillary Clinton’s State Department was formally clearing the sale, asserting that it was in the national interest. At a press conference in Washington to announce the department’s approval, an assistant secretary of state, Andrew Shapiro, declared that the deal had been “a top priority” for Clinton personally. Shapiro, a longtime aide to Clinton since her Senate days, added that the “U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army have excellent relationships in Saudi Arabia.”

These were not the only relationships bridging leaders of the two nations. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic enterprise she has overseen with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing — the defense contractor that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to acquire, the F-15 — contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release.

The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire, an International Business Times investigation has found.

While presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was America’s top diplomat the Department of State that she oversaw approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments forked over millions of dollars to the now-embattled Clinton Foundation.

According to an International Business Times [2] report by David Sirota and Andrew Perez, “at least seven foreign governments that received State Department clearance for American arms did donate to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary.” The article identified the seven nations as Algeria, Australia, Kuwait, Norway, Oman, Qatar, and Thailand.

Mainstream media’s surprisingly probing coverage of the unfolding Clinton Foundation donations-for-favors scandal suggests that reporters have turned on the Clintons in the age of Obama.

America’s business and labor leaders agree: President Obama and Congress can do more to modernize the permitting process for infrastructure projects—airports, factories, power plants and pipelines—which at the moment is burdensome, slow and inconsistent.

Gaining approval to build a new bridge or factory typically involves review by multiple federal agencies—such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Interior Department, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Land Management—with overlapping jurisdictions and no real deadlines. Often, no single federal entity is responsible for managing the process. Even after a project is granted permits, lawsuits can hold things up for years—or, worse, halt a half-completed construction project.

Consider the $3 billion TransWest Express, a multistate power-line that would bring upward of 3,000 megawatts of wind-generated electricity from Wyoming to about 1.8 million homes and businesses from Las Vegas to San Diego. The project delivers on two of President Obama’s priorities, renewable power and job creation, so the administration in October 2011 named the TransWest Express one of seven transmission projects to “quickly advance” through federal permitting.

Offering vistas previously limited to photographs from helicopters.

The first time I visit—propelled upward a quarter of a mile in an elevator to One World Observatory—it is clear that something momentous is being promised. The observatory, which opens on May 29 at One World Trade Center, calls these five elevators “Sky Pods.” They are enclosed with three walls lined with floor-to-ceiling LED screens so bright and crisp, they could be windows on lower Manhattan. But as we whoosh from the bedrock to the 102nd floor in 47 seconds, instead of seeing the cityscape receding below, we see time-lapse images representing 500 years of history. Lenape wigwams and longhouses give way to early Dutch settlements, and onward: the growth of Wall Street, the evolution of the Battery, the proliferation of skyscrapers and the sounds of contemporary life. For a few seconds, as decades of the 20th century race by, one of the World Trade Center towers fills the eastward screen, then suddenly disappears.

The Koch Foundation gives money to encourage debate on campus. Activists want to silence that debate.

College should be a place where students encounter a diversity of ideas—just ask many of the more than 1.8 million students who are graduating this year. That diversity often relies on charitable foundations, which support countless educational programs across the country. For example, the Charles Koch Foundation, where I work, has responded to hundreds of grant requests from colleges and universities. These requests have led us to support educational initiatives in economics, philosophy, entrepreneurship, criminal justice and other disciplines at more than 250 institutions of higher learning.

A federal appeals court rebukes his immigration order.America’s most powerful former law professor is getting a re-education in the Constitution, and on present course President Obama might flunk out. Witness Tuesday’s federal appeals-court rebuke of his 2014 immigration order, including language that suggests the Administration will also lose on the legal and policy merits.

Mr. Obama caused a furor in November when he suddenly claimed powers he had previously said he didn’t have to award legal status and work permits to millions of illegal immigrants. Texas and 25 other states sued, claiming injury and a violation of their sovereign powers under the Constitution. Federal Judge Andrew Hanen issued a preliminary injunction for the states in February, and on Tuesday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals shot down the Administration’s request to lift the injunction.

The 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel found that the Administration had failed to make its case that Texas and the other states suffered no injury if Mr. Obama’s rule was implemented. Texas cited the fact that it would have to issue driver’s licenses to the newly legal immigrants, and the court agreed this was a cost. Even if Texas raised its license fees to cover the costs, the fact that it had to change its law to accommodate the federal rule was also an injury.

Op-Ed: Does the Jewish Federation of Orange County Aid Pro-Israel Advocacy?

Far from encouraging potent and effective activities to counter the barrage of anti-Semitic attacks on Jews and Israel at UCI, the JFOC has added to the problem.

In defense of recent criticism for attacking Jewish activists on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus, the leadership of the JewishFederation of Orange County (JFOC – ed. note: Irvine is in Orange County, California) attempted to vindicate themselves and affirm their “pro-Israel bona fides” in the media. Certainly, many of JFOC’s actions, past and present, are indefensible and run contrary to those expected of an organization embracing Israel support as a core mission.