RUTHFULLY YOURS

The tale of two Soviet Jews—one an Israeli politician, the other a disgraced KGB informant—is a sly parable about Zionism.

A few months ago, the Canadian novelist David Bezmozgis wrote an essay about Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Like most observers, he was distressed by the violence in the region and the prospects of military escalation. Yet he also had a somewhat more selfish concern: For four years he had been working on a novel about an Israeli politician who flees to the Crimean city of Yalta after a personal scandal hits the front pages. “I’d wanted to write a novel that, among other things, engaged with current politics,” he wrote; instead, “world events conspired to undermine my designs for the book.”

Mr. Bezmozgis surely had a few dark nights of the soul. Yet “The Betrayers” seems only to benefit from its sudden disconnection from the headlines. Set in a parallel reality in which Israel has voted to withdraw from its West Bank settlements and Crimea is still an uncontested part of Ukraine, the novel takes on contentious questions about Zionism and the fate of post-Soviet Jewry, undistracted by the caprices of the news ticker or the polemics of the moment. It bears out Israeli writer Amos Oz’s claim that “the novelist has no political aim but is concerned with truth, not facts.”

At the heart of “The Betrayers” is the magnetic Baruch Kotler. He is a former refusenik—a Soviet Jew denied permission to emigrate to Israel—who was imprisoned in Russia for 13 years after a show trial found him guilty of treason. Finally released, he arrived in Israel a “dissident champion” and formed a staunchly right-wing Russian immigrant party, which he has led with outspoken pugnacity for more than two decades. He is “famously stubborn” in a “notoriously obstinate country,” and Mr. Bezmozgis brilliantly captures a man who is as flawed as he is principled.

This description will quickly call to mind the former Israeli politician Natan Sharansky, but Kotler has been extensively fictionalized. In particular, Mr. Bezmozgis implicates him in an affair with a headstrong young staffer named Leora (no such scandal has ever been attached to Mr. Sharansky). When Kotler speaks out against the Israeli Parliament’s plan for unilateral withdrawal, his opponents leak incriminating photos. “The scandale Kotler” becomes 24-hour-a-day news, and he sneaks out of the country with Leora, flying to Yalta.

LOST IN THE MIRE OF WATERGATE AND THE DREADFUL PRESIDENCY OF JIMMY CARTER IS THE BETRAYAL OF TAIWAN BY THE UNITED STATES, FORGED IN THE SHABBY DEAL THAT NIXON/KISSINGER MADE WITH THE TYRANTS OF MAINLAND CHINA….RSK

A political showdown looms in Hong Kong. Beijing has stripped the city of the high degree of autonomy it promised in a 1984 treaty with the United Kingdom. Local residents are preparing a campaign of civil disobedience in protest. Yet London has failed to express even mild criticism of Beijing’s treaty violation.

The people of Hong Kong overwhelmingly want to elect their next Chief Executive, a reform that until a month ago seemed within reach. On Monday university and secondary students began a week-long boycott of classes to demonstrate for democracy. A new poll from Chinese University shows that one-fifth of the population is considering emigration because of the city’s uncertain future.

This turmoil is the result of Beijing’s shock decision at the end of August to rig the 2017 Chief Executive election with the most antidemocratic system tabled by its local supporters. Only politicians who receive majority support from a committee packed with Beijing’s supporters will be allowed to run.

The Communist Party’s response to criticism is that any election conducted with universal suffrage is a step forward. The Sino-British Joint Declaration did not explicitly promise democracy, and the British didn’t introduce elections for legislators until five years before their departure. So it is the “rankest hypocrisy,” in the words of the Chinese ambassador to the U.K., for Chris Patten, the last colonial governor, to claim London has a moral responsibility to speak up for Hong Kong.

Yet the desire for greater democracy was the critical issue facing Hong Kong long before the 1997 handover. Beginning in 1985, a drafting committee of local residents and Chinese officials created a constitutional document, the Basic Law, reflecting the Sino-British Joint Declaration’s promise of self-government. “How Hong Kong develops its democracy in the future is completely within the sphere of the autonomy of Hong Kong,” Lu Ping, China’s top official on Hong Kong matters, promised in the People’s Daily in March 1993. “The central government will not interfere.”

Every president gets things wrong. What sets Obama apart is his ideological rigidity and fathomless ignorance.

Serious people feel an obligation to listen whenever Barack Obama speaks. They furrow their brow and hold their chin and parse every word. They assume that most everything a president says is significant, which is true. They assume that what’s significant must also be well-informed. Not necessarily.

I’ve been thinking about this as it becomes clear that, even at an elementary level, Mr. Obama often doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It isn’t so much his analysis of global events that’s wrong, though it is. The deeper problem is the foundation of knowledge on which that analysis is built.

Here, for instance, is Mr. Obama answering a question posed in August by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who wanted the president’s thoughts on the new global disorder.

“You can’t generalize across the globe,” the president replied. “Because there are a bunch of places where good news keeps on coming. Asia continues to grow . . . and not only is it growing but you’re starting to see democracies in places like Indonesia solidifying.”

“The trend lines in Latin America are good,” he added. “Overall, there’s still cause for optimism.”

Here, now, is reality: In Japan, the economy is contracting. China’s real-estate market is a bubble waiting to burst. Indonesia’s democracy may be solidifying, but so is Islamism and the persecution of religious minorities. Democracy has been overthrown in Thailand. The march toward freedom in Burma—supposedly one of Mr. Obama’s (and Hillary Clinton’s ) signature diplomatic victories—has stalled. India may do better than before under its new prime minister, Narendra Modi, but gone are the days when serious people think of India as a future superpower. The government of Pakistan is, as ever, on the verge of collapse.

It’s not every college girl who gets to have her claim of sexual assault aired on the front page of the NYTimes Arts Section or reported by the leading art critic of that paper. In this case, Emma Sulkowicz, the self-reported victim, has not been satisfied by the hearings that were authorized by Columbia University after she reported this rape; the assailant was found to be not responsible and that finding was upheld by a subsequent appeal. Emma followed up by attempting to file charges with the NYC police but she found this so “upsetting” that she dropped that plan.

Some mitigating factors in this story are that Emma had two previous consensual sexual experiences with the fellow student whom she then accused of rape the third time. Although it’s entirely possible that this is exactly what happened, there is also the lingering possibility that two yeses paved the way for the third attempt which was less a rape than a misunderstanding between a couple who had already been intimate twice before. In other words, this was a more “nuanced” assault than one which occurs between two strangers or between two people who have never been physically intimate before. It’s easy to imagine the problems of a panel hearing these accounts and trying to sort out what each person expected based on their past experience. Yes, yes, no is a more complicated situation to parse than NO! followed by a scream for help.

“Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.”

Productive vs. Parasitical Societies

Daniel Greenfield, writing as Sultan Knish, penned an excellent and perceptive essay, “The Rationing Society.” My chief problem with the essay is in the choice of the terms “production society” and “rationing society,” which misdirect attention from the fundamental issues. Mr. Greenfield’s focus in the essay is the mechanics of wealth distribution in a “rationing society,” at least of such wealth would remain in an economy crippled by controls. I have selected a few of Greenfield’s statements to throw some light on their validity.

The best literary depiction of a dystopian or “rationing society” or polity is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Regardless of the value of Orwell’s perceptive insights into the means and ends of totalitarianism – and they are many and spot-on – his basic conception of a functioning totalitarian regime was flawed. A “production society” means free minds, minds free to innovate and sustain a technological or industrial civilization, free to act, and free to trade and to move about and assemble with others or not. A “rationing society” depends on the very attribute in men it wishes to leash or exterminate: free minds free to act.

Orwell’s other famous novel, the parable Animal Farm, was merely an attack by a “democratic socialist” on Stalin’s regime. Stalin and Soviet Russia lost many supporters in the West on the occasion of the Non-Aggression Pact signed by Stalin and Hitler in 1939. But when Nazi Germany invaded Soviet Russia, its Western supporters hurried back into the fold.

A rationing or authoritarian society seeks to freeze things in a state of stagnation, the better to control things and everyone, but even a technologically stagnant society still needs minds that can sustain it. This is an implicit confession that the state is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. A rationing society will put a premium on the competence to even repair a telescreen or a “Floating Fortress” or weaponry or manufacture razor blades. A free, independent mind is such a society’s primary enemy. The result of leashing or punishing it is the impoverishment of nearly everyone but the entrenched political class – and then collapse.

Until the collapse occurs, competent minds able to prop up dwindling products such as shoes and razor blades and food which must now be rationed, until the assembly lines halt, raw materials become scare, and the stockpiles are depleted. The minds that could have replaced them will have been snuffed out, or, as happens in Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, those minds will finally have gone on strike and disappeared. Rand noted in The New Intellectual:

This week’s Glazov Gang was guest-hosted by Renaissance Woman Ann Marie Murrell, the Editor-in Chief of PolitiChicks.com and the co-author of the new book, What Women Really Want.

Ann-Marie was joined by Shillman Journalism Fellow Daniel Greenfield, who came on the show to discuss “ISIS Rising,” analyzing Obama’s policy of fighting terrorists by arming terrorists.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/daniel-greenfield-on-isis-rising-on-the-glazov-gang/

Jihadi violence serves not only to advance the terrorist’s delusion of immortality, but also to add, however perversely, an apparent and desperately needed erotic satisfaction, using religion as the justification.

Persuasive promises of immortality — the desperate hope to live forever — underlie virtually all major religions.

Washington and Jerusalem should finally address what needs to be done in addition to military remediation — reinforcing efforts to convince these terrorists that their expected martyrdom is ultimately just an elaborate fiction.

Even after witnessing several beheadings and mass executions, American and Western strategists dealing with Jihadist terror still miss the key point. Whatever the particular terrorist group of the moment — the Islamic State [IS or ISIS], Hamas, al-Qaeda, or some other kindred terror organization — the core struggle is never really about territory, geography, or democracy. Always — in Iraq, Afghanistan Syria, or Gaza — this enemy seeks something far more important and compelling. In essence, Jihadi violence serves not only to advance the terrorist’s delusion of immortality, but also to add, however perversely, an apparent and desperately needed erotic satisfaction, using religion as the justification.This core point is not difficult to understand. Persuasive promises of immortality — the desperate hope to live forever — underlie virtually all major religions. Yet this point remains neglected or misunderstood in Washington, Jerusalem, and all other Western capitals.

The Jihadi terrorist claims to “love death,” but in his or her mind, that “suicide” is anything but final. Ironically, these Islamist terrorists aim to conquer mortality by “killing themselves.” The would-be killer has been promised that death will represent just a trivial and momentary inconvenience, a minor detour on just one more glorious “martyr’s” fiery trajectory toward a life everlasting, in Paradise.

How can one ever hope to counter such a seductive promise? How can any promise compete with the incomparable promise of immortality?

Happy, healthy, challenging and rewarding new year!

1. Rosh Hashanah is a universal, stock-taking, renewal and hopeful holiday, celebrated on the 6th day of The Creation, which produced the first human being, Adam.

2. Rosh means, in Hebrew, “beginning,” “first,” “head,” “chief.” The Hebrew spelling of Rosh (ראש) is the root of the Hebrew word for Genesis (בראשית), which is the first word in the Bible. Just like The Creation, so should the New Year and our own actions, be a thoughtful – and not a hasty – process.

3. Rosh Hashanah is celebrated at the beginning of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, which means beginning/Genesis in ancient Akkadian. The Hebrew spelling of Tishrei (תשרי) is included in the spelling of Genesis (בראשית).

4. Rosh Hashanah is also referred to as “Ha’rat Olam” (the pregnancy of the world), and it’s prayers highlight motherhood, optimism and the pregnancies of Sarah and Rachel, the Matriarchs, and Hannah, who gave birth to Isaac, Joseph & Benjamin and the Prophet Samuel respectively. Sarah (שרה, the root of the Hebrew word, Israel, ישראל) and Hannah (חנה, the root of the Hebrew words Pardon, Amnesty and Merciful, חנינה, חנון) were two of the seven Jewish Prophetesses: Sarah, Miriam, Hannah, Deborah, Huldah, Abigail, Esther. Hannah’s prayer has become a role-model for God-heeded-prayers which are recited by the “non-privileged”.

Noah – who led the rebirth of humanity/world – also features in Rosh Hashanah prayers.

5. Rosh Hashanah underlines human fallibility, humility, soul-searching, responsibility (as a precondition to the realization of opportunity), renewal/rebirth, memory (lessons of history) and the need for systematic education.

6. The Shofar (ritual horn) is blown on Rosh Hashanah as a wake-up call to mend human behavior. Rosh Hashanah is also called “Yom Te’roo’ah” (the day of blowing the Shofar). Shofar (שופר) is a derivative of the Hebrew word for enhancement/improvement (שפור), which is constantly expected of human beings. It requires humility, symbolized by the Shofar, which is bent and is not supposed to be decorated.

While the Middle East burns and tens of thousands of corpses pile up in Syria and Iraq, Jewish residence anywhere beyond the 1949 armistice lines –– in eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank, transfixes the attention of foreign governments. Just recall the Obama Administration saying nothing when, in March 2010, the Palestinian Authority (PA) named a public square in Ramallah in honor of blood-soaked terrorist Dalal Mughrabi –– but condemned Israel for announcing a program of building Jewish homes in eastern Jerusalem the day before.

Now, Israel has designated 988 acres in the Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem as state land, leading the Obama Administration to condemn this “settlement announcement” as “counterproductive to … a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians.”

Meanwhile, Obama’s “blocking back,” the faux “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street organization, has gone still further, urging President Obama in the pages of the Los Angeles Times to start calling Jewish communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines “illegal.”

There is some relevant history here. In 2011, President Obama vetoed a UN Security Council resolution making this false declaration –– although that was only after he unsuccessfully attempted have the U.N. Security Council baselessly call them “illegitimate.”

Clearly, J Street is trying to push the President in a direction he’d like to go but can’t, due to legal and factual hurdles that would cost him politically to straddle, but which J Street would like to ameliorate.

Factually and legally unsound, J Street’s agitprop on this issue is simply designed to isolate and increase pressure on Israel, not defend the cause of peace that is actually unthreatened by this Israeli administrative action.

The Etzion bloc was home to substantial Jewish communities even before Israel was created. It’s widely accepted that it would be incorporated into Israel in any feasible peace treaty, should one emerge one day.

Even an anti-Israel partisan like former President Jimmy Carter has publicly stated regarding the Jewish communities in the Etzion bloc that this “area is not one I ever envision being abandoned or changed over into Palestinian territory.’

So why the furor? It’s not as if the designation changes the land’s pre-existing status. Since the days of the British Palestine Mandate, the land in question has always been classed as public land. Its designation as ‘state land’ merely reaffirms this, following exhaustive investigation to ascertain that such a designation was not in conflict with any private property rights.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/daniel-greenfield-on-isis-rising-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

Daniel Greenfield on “ISIS Rising” — on The Glazov Gang

This week’s Glazov Gang was guest-hosted by Renaissance Woman Ann Marie Murrell, the Editor-in Chief of PolitiChicks.com and the co-author of the new book, What Women Really Want.

Ann-Marie was joined by Shillman Journalism Fellow Daniel Greenfield, who came on the show to discuss “ISIS Rising,” analyzing Obama’s policy of fighting terrorists by arming terrorists.

Don’t miss it!