RUTHFULLY YOURS

In a recent op-ed in one of the Hebrew dailies, titled “Why I called on Europe to recognize Palestine,” revered novelist A. B. Yehoshua offered explanations for his joining some 1,000 other Israelis in supporting European parliamentary resolutions recognizing a Palestinian state with borders along the pre-1967 armistice lines.

Yehoshua declared, “The first reason stems from the desire to signal to the moderate Palestinian camp not to give up on the peace process. … The second reason stems from the growing fear … that the road to the two-state solution is being blocked because of Israel’s unceasing settlements in the territories.”

But neither rationale holds up under even minimal scrutiny.

No doubt there are moderate Palestinians that would be happy to live in peace alongside Israel, but polls of Palestinian opinion demonstrate that they are a dwindling minority. In part this is due to the actions of Yehoshua and his associates in what he characterizes as “the peace camp,” who, two decades ago, pushed Israel to embrace Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization as its peace partner. After two decades of indoctrination by the media, mosques and schools controlled by Arafat and his heirs, indoctrination declaring that the Jews are merely colonial usurpers, that the Zionist state is illegitimate, and that it is the duty of Palestinians to dedicate themselves to its demise, moderates are a much rarer phenomenon.

President Obama is cutting short his visit to India to stop in Saudi Arabia to pay his respects on the death of King Abdullah and no doubt try to repair what has been a fraying relationship. It’s a good move, but he’ll need an explanation for the latest stories that the U.S. is suddenly prepared to live with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

For several years Mr. Obama has said Assad must leave power as part of ending Syria’s four-year civil war. But Administration sources are now leaking that the President thinks Assad and his Alawite regime may be part of the solution. The thinking seems to be that the priority now is defeating Islamic State, and Assad is an ally in that effort.
Where to begin? As the Saudis will point out, the first problem with these leaks is that they send a confusing signal about U.S. policy. When he unrolled his anti-Islamic State (ISIS) strategy in September, Mr. Obama promised to support anti-Assad rebels who aren’t aligned with ISIS or al Qaeda. This is hard enough given Mr. Obama’s failure to protect the rebels against Assad’s air force. But it will be impossible if the world thinks Assad is our man in Damascus after all.

The former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, has called on Israel’s leaders “to stay out of America’s politics” – just hours after he urged the United States to interfere in Israel’s politics, something he himself has been doing for years.

The latest events began with John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. The New York Times quickly sought a comment from Indyk, who is constantly quoted by the news media since the conclusion of his singularly unsuccessful term as the Obama Administration’s chief envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

No, I do not wake up in the morning with that question foremost on my mind. But rarely does a day pass without my putting the question to myself: Why does President Barak Hussein Obama still command the support of half the electorate?

Of course, one immediate response could be that the polls – given that they are largely in the hands of the Liberal Establishment who form the base of his support – may just not be accurate. But they are so consistent, sometimes reflecting a little downward movement in moments of particular crisis, that one pretty much has to accept that is the judgment to half the population which thinks at all politically, that is, that he is doing an adequate job after six years in training.

“The threat we face is existential. Continuing ignorance of its nature on the part of western political leaders, the intelligentsia and assorted useful idiots will be our undoing. We better ‘get busy’ learning and living or ‘get busy’ deferring and dying. Think it can’t happen? Ask the Jews.”

It comes as no surprise that tolerant and pacific followers of the Prophet opt for the most part to stay mum. Knowing full well that their sacred texts extol violence, which leaves little room for doctrinal debate, they are also aware that the creed’s more ardent acolytes have knives at the ready.

Islam has five pillars. They are inwardly focussed and innocuous taken in isolation. The problem lies elsewhere — in the Koran and Hadiths and in the widespread preaching of intolerance, domination and violence which are integral and endemic to that scripture.

Apologists for Muslims and Islam also have five pillars. These are not innocuous. They support a flaccid and vacillating response to a dire threat. In no strict order, these pillars are as follows.

Terrorism has nothing to do with true Islam.
The vast majority of Muslims are moderate.
Western wrong-doing and war-mongering inspires terrorism.
Alienation, disadvantage, and/or mental instability are often behind home-grown terrorism.
Muslims suffer most from Islamic terrorism.

‘The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1788. Changing just one word of this eternal truth renders it even more urgent: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and militant Islam to gain ground.”

From virtually every direction, radical Islam is on the march, spreading havoc and horror in its path. Simultaneously, the civilized world contorts itself nearly beyond recognition to accommodate Muslim fundamentalism. This is a formula for pain.

Just days after Islamic terrorists murdered 17 innocent Parisians in the Charlie Hebdo and kosher-grocery attacks, two militant Muslims in Belgium were killed and a third was injured in a gun battle with police.

The betrayal of Taiwan is a stain on the legacy of Nixon/Kissinger’s vaunted mission to China….culminating with Jimmy Carter’s removal of the American embassy in Taipei to Peking, ducking the American obligation to a growing democracy to kow tow to a Maoist terror state….rsk

In the president’s State of the Union speech, he patted himself on the back for establishing diplomatic ties with Cuba’s dictators — a decision, he said, that has “extend[ed] the hand of friendship to the Cuban people.” Never mind that the Cuban people have no say in the government up to which Mr. Obama is cozying — but if the president is in a friendly mood, there’s a different island nation that could really use American diplomatic ties. One whose government derives its power from the consent of the governed. It’s time we re-recognized Taiwan.

We need a great deal more honesty about the religion, as the “no-go zone” debate reveals.

Footballs are deflating, the president is detached from reality, the Saudi king is deceased, and the sharia state next door, Yemen, is descending into bloody chaos. With mere anarchy loosed upon the world, it would be easy to miss the fact that, in England this week, Bobby Jindal gave as important and compelling a speech as has been delivered in years about America — our leadership role on the world stage, our preservation as a beacon of liberty.

In the birthplace of the Magna Carta, it has nonetheless become legally risky to speak with candor (even when quoting Churchill). Yet Louisiana’s Republican governor became that rarest of modern Anglo or American statesmen. Bobby Jindal told the truth about Islam, specifically about its large radical subset that attacks the West by violent jihad from without and sharia-supremacist subversion from within.

With Western Europe still reeling from the jihadist mass-murders in Paris at Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Kacher Jewish market, Governor Jindal outlined a bold, Reaganesque vision of American foreign policy guided by three imperatives — freedom, security, and truth. It is on the last one, truth, that our capacity to ensure freedom and security hinges. “You cannot remedy a problem,” Jindal explained, “if you will not name it and define it.”

Too many on the left believe that it’s better to be consistently wrong than inconsistently right.

Dear Reader (Unless you’re sitting in a tub full of Cap’n Crunch, in which case you’re too busy talking to the leader of the free world),

Look, any week where Joe Biden tells the public he prefers “deflated balls” can’t be all bad. Before you go someplace filthy with that, the quote in context is that “as a receiver” Biden likes softer balls.

(“I’m not sure you’re helping.” — the Couch).

Anyway, it was a very long week for me. I am drowning in deadlines and this solo-parenting thing is hard. (My wife is out of town for a family emergency.) Whenever I’m on my own with my kid and dog I marvel at how little time it takes for the house to look like the mob was here searching for its stolen heroin. I’m also amazed at how, when I am alone, I don’t think twice about eating all of my meals over the kitchen sink — and yet I still generate so many dirty dishes. It’s a mystery.

But I also think about how hard it must be to be an actual single parent. It seems to me that this is the ground-floor argument conservatives should build up from when talking about marriage. Raising kids is just easier with two committed parents around. Put aside the moralizing for a second (moralizing I often agree with, by the way) and just talk logistics. It’s very hard to do all the things you want to do for your kids without a wingman (or wing-gal). I’m not even talking about the financial part, which is huge. It’s simply harder to help with homework, show up at games, serve home-cooked meals, and generally participate in your kids’ life if you’re the sole breadwinner and sole parent. (Charles Murray has been making this point for a very long time.)

The golden era for U.S. business schools is over. Gone are the days when a master of business administration degree was essential for a career at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey & Co. Young professionals now balk at the $100,000 price tag and two-year commitment needed for an M.B.A.

The rise of Asian business schools poses another challenge. Although applications from the region are still strong at top U.S. schools, many Asian students and successful entrepreneurs have opted to stay closer to home to hone their skills. Business schools have mushroomed in India and China, offering courses and networking opportunities that are more relevant to their home markets.

Top U.S. business schools have responded by introducing shorter and more specific business programs, and adding international business cases for study.

Indian-born Nitin Nohria, the first Asian dean of Harvard Business School, talked to The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong about the new environment of business education. Edited excerpts: