RUTHFULLY YOURS

The recent enhancement of strategic coordination between Israel and Saudi Arabia highlights Israel’s role in bolstering the national security of the House of Saud. This coordination has become particularly critical, for Riyadh, due to the erosion of the US’ posture of deterrence, while the clear and present lethal Iran-fueled threats to Saudi Arabia are dramatically exacerbated.

While the blossoming Jerusalem-Riyadh coordination is consistent with short-term, surgical Saudi national security interests, it is inconsistent with the long-term, inherently puritanical Islamic, Wahhabi worldview of the Saudi regime, which considers the Jewish State an illegal, infidel, usurper, provisional entity in “the abode of Islam,” as documented by Saudi school textbooks and religious sermons. Could the enemy (Saudi Arabia) of Israel’s enemy (Iran) become Israel’s friend?

Meretz is again sponsoring a bill to label all products made beyond the Green Line. This is geared to facilitate boycotts within Israel proper – inside the 1949 armistice line that reflected the situation at the end of the War of Independence and which has since been elevated to an internationally hallowed border demarcation.

This isn’t Meretz’s first effort to spawn a local boycott.

The initiative predated the second intifada and has been assiduously reintroduced ever since – most notably in 2003 and most recently in 2012.

The legislation’s aim is to clearly declare on all consumer goods packaging precisely where the manufacturing process took place and thereby foil any attempt at camouflage.

For more than a decade Israel has marked all products that it exports with a code that allows customs officials in Europe to know “the point of origin.” The marking allows the custom officials to know the geographic location where the product was produced, grown or manufactured.

The US president holds Israel to a standard of immaculate altruism, while holding the Palestinians to no standards at all.
The raucous ruckus that erupted at The Jerusalem Post’s 2015 Conference in New York on Sunday, when US Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew tried to persuade the skeptical audience of the merits of the emerging nuclear deal with Iran, and of the unmatched security benefits that the Obama administration has provided Israel, served to somewhat obfuscate the fact that there was harsh condemnation of White House policies from numerous other sources.

With the world going to hell in a hand-basket, ISIS spreading like a hideous pestilence across more and more areas of the globe, the United States fast descending into a soft tyranny with its Constitution laying in tatters, all thanks to the benighted presidency of one, Barack Hussein Obama, what does this resident of the Oval office choose to proclaim?

“Climate change is the biggest threat to the world.”

Even when Barack Obama was choosing members of his new administration back in 2008, he selected Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and Carol Browner to lead a White House council on energy and climate.

Ms. Browner had headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration. Mr. Chu was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a leading advocate of reducing greenhouse gases.

I have attended quite a number of graduations since 1977….and most speeches- from grade school, high school, college and graduate school- are pretty generic. Occasionally they are charming and funny. They are very seldom patriotic and mostly, they are boring pontifications……Be kind, be good, be true to yourself, save the planet, and above all “be all that you can be.”

Now that a big campus drive is to erase gender and Jenneralities are the talk of the media, popular culture and education “transgender counselors” will the speeches now say:

“Be anything you want to be?”

Last week, President Obama said that he is “the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat” in the Oval Office. Which means, he said, that when people say he’s “anti-Israel,” “it hurts.”

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has said many noxious things. Mostly overlooked was something he said at a meeting with Senate Democrats early this year: that he understood why the senators were opposing his deal with Iran, because (according to the New York Times) “he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others.”

Needless to say, Obama was referring to the so-called Israel lobby, and to the general notion that support for Israel comes not from conviction, but from rich Jewish power-brokers. New Jersey senator Bob Menendez — who has opposed Obama over Cuba as well as Israel and Iran — stood up and told the president that he was out of line; Menendez said he took “personal offense” at Mr. Obama’s remark. (Menendez was later indicted by Eric Holder’s Justice Department.)

Several times, Obama has said he has “done more for Israel” — “more to ensure that Israel can protect itself” — than any previous president. This week, the Supreme Court ruled that only the president has the power to recognize nation-state sovereignty; despite congressional legislation, Mr. Obama’s State Department can choose — and has chosen — not to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The critics of self-identification as objective truth finally have their test case. Sky News reports:

A prominent civil rights campaigner is being investigated after it was claimed she had falsely portrayed herself as black for almost a decade.

President of the Spokane, Washington branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Rachel Dolezal reportedly identified herself as part African-American upon applying for her post on the city’s citizen police ombudsman commission.

But networks including KXLY say public records show her parents are white couple Ruthanne and Lawrence — who subsequently confirmed their daughter is also white.

Her mother told The Spokesman Review the family had Czech, Swedish and German roots, with “faint traces” of Native American heritage — adding that her daughter began to “disguise herself” in 2006 or 2007.

“Rachel is very good at using her artistic skills to transform herself,” she told the Coeur d’Alene Press.

Reacting on Twitter, the London Telegraph’s Timothy Stanley was quick to ask what many were thinking. “What,” Stanley inquired, “is the material difference between #RachelDolezal and Caitlyn Jenner?”

Please note:”Tim Hunt is a serious scientist. He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research. In 2006 he was awarded the Royal Medal, whose past recipients include Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Francis Crick, and Paul Dirac. His topic at the conference where he made his offending remark was the public good of science, and why scientific research should be publicly supported. He was making, as the Royal Medal award says, “important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge” — in this case, on the subject of cancer.”

Sir Tim Hunt has lab coats in a twist.

Addressing the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea on Monday, Hunt — at the time Honorary Professor with the University College London School of Life and Medical Sciences — reportedly said: “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”

Sir Richard Timothy Hunt is — predictably — no longer Honorary Professor with the University College London School of Life and Medical Sciences. He also no longer sits on the Biological Sciences Awards Committee of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, the oldest learned society for science in existence today, whose members have included Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, and Stephen Hawking. He resigned from both positions when his comments provoked a media firestorm.

As Hillary Clinton prepares to relaunch her campaign at a set-piece campaign rally on New York City’s Roosevelt Island this weekend, Robby Mook, her wunderkind campaign manager, and the Clinton camp’s chief communications officer, Jennifer Palmieri, did their best to drown an audience at a Politico-hosted event in conventional wisdom.

Mook and Palmieri embarked on a tour de force of classic Clintonian misdirection during the interview with Politico’s Mike Allen.

“She really listens,” Palmieri said.

“She can dive deep into any topic,” said Mook. “She is warm and caring about all of the people on her staff.”

“Her story, her life is advocating for other people,” added Palmieri.

Ah. If only the American people had known about that the last 25 years, then they would have had a completely different perception of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

How is it possible that Hillary is so misunderstood, Allen ventured to ask.

The headline blared, “Ex-Official Says Chris Christie Broke Grand Jury Law.” It is the latest hit piece from the New York Times against the Republican governor of New Jersey and putative presidential candidate. Not surprisingly, it was quickly picked up across the mainstream press.

Readers of my columns may recall that I am not exactly an ardent Christie fan. That said, the Gray Lady’s accusation that the governor violated federal grand-jury-secrecy law is campaign-season hyperbole, not news reporting. It is also rich coming from the Times, which tends to lionize leakers of confidential government information. On West 41st Street, any scrap metal left over when the Christie handcuffs are finished will surely be molded into a trophy for Edward Snowden.