RUTHFULLY YOURS

It is in how best to achieve the common goal of lifting the security and well being of all Americans in the most equitable way possible, while preserving the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and embedded in our Constitution, which differentiates the Left from the Right. At their essence, those differences are elemental and clear. The Left wants to use government to give things to people; the Right wants to use government to make it easier for people to fend for themselves. The old Chinese adage about a man and a fish applies.

While you wouldn’t know it from the media and despite the polarization in Washington, the political spectrum in America is less of a barbell and more of a bell curve – a continuum; though we all know that those lumped at opposite ends have recently taken on additional weight. Nevertheless, to argue that only one party is interested in the poor and that the other is only interested in tax cuts for the rich detracts from the fundamental differences between the Left and the Right. Mainstream media, which are largely leftist in their opinions, help perpetuate Democrats’ propaganda that it is the ends not the means that separates the two political parties. If one’s news is limited to sound-bites and political ads, one will find themselves ignorantly drowned in a miasma of disinformation.

Two centuries after the great composer’s birth, his anti-Semitism remains a bitterly contested issue. Perhaps that’s because neither his defenders nor his detractors have come to grips with its, or his, true nature.
Reading Nathan Shields’ powerful essay, “Wagner and the Jews,” reawakened memories from two decades ago when I attended the Bayreuth festival as a music critic. My most potent recollections are not of the performances I heard of Wagner’s music; nor do I recall any great revelations about the mind of the master who designed and built this self-aggrandizing temple. But I was left with three sensory impressions, and they have proved indelible.

First there was the sound of the theater, the venerable Festspielhaus. The music had an almost material presence. It didn’t seem to emerge from the orchestra pit extending under the stage but took shape, instead, in the resonant air of surrounding space, like the sound of an organ in a great cathedral. Wagner was as great an acoustician as he was an orchestrator.

It feels almost tasteless to be writing about good news while France is mourning a horrific terror attack. Yet there’s been so much good news from Israel over the last week that my biggest dilemma has been which item to pick. Having discussed immigration yesterday, it’s time to move onto Israel’s Arab minority–specifically, the stunning new Israel Democracy Institute survey in which 65 percent of Arab citizens said they were either “quite” or “very” proud to be Israeli in 2014, up from 50 percent the previous year.

To be fair, the poll was conducted between April 28 and May 29–meaning after the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian talks broke down, but before the summer’s war in Gaza, the shocking murder of an East Jerusalem teen by Jews, and other difficult events of the past several months. Thus had it been taken today, the number might well be lower.

Nevertheless, given the torrent of accusations of “racism” and “apartheid” that have been hurled at Israel for years now from both inside and outside the country, it’s quite remarkable to discover that as of eight months ago, 65 percent of Israeli Arabs were “proud” to be citizens of that “racist,” “apartheid” Jewish state, and 64 percent said they usually felt their “dignity as a human being is respected” in Israel. This raises the obvious question of whether perhaps Israeli Arabs know something about Israel that its detractors don’t.

In this regard, it’s worth considering some of the survey’s other surprising findings. For instance, 57 percent of Israeli Arabs said they have faith in the Israel Police–second only to the Supreme Court (60 percent), and significantly higher than the proportion of Jews who said the same (45 percent). This reflects the fruit of a decade-long effort by the police to rebuild trust with Arab communities after the nadir reached in October 2000, when policemen killed 13 Arabs in course of suppressing massive, violent Arab riots. Since then, police have tried hard to recruit more Arabs to the force, open more stations in Arab towns, and maintain a regular dialogue with Arab community leaders. And as the survey shows, this effort is working.

Even more astounding is that 51 percent of Arabs expressed confidence in the Israel Defense Forces–aka the “occupation army” that, according to Israel’s detractors, ruthlessly oppresses their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank. This exceeds the level of confidence Israeli Arabs expressed in the Knesset, the media, or their religious leadership and suggests they don’t buy the canard of IDF brutality enthusiastically swallowed overseas. I also suspect the IDF–and Israel as a whole–benefited from comparisons with the real atrocities being perpetrated in Syria and the heavy-handed tactics used by Egypt’s military: The contrast with the meltdown in much of the Arab world can’t help but make Israel look more attractive.

The massive march today in France is a wonderful sight in many ways, and represents France’s rejection of efforts to crush freedom of expression and especially to ban criticism of Islam.

But in addition to the ubiquitous “Je Suis Charlie” slogans it would have been nice to see more “Je Suis Juif” signs as well. After all, the journalists of Charlie Hebdo knew exactly what risks they were running. Their offices had already been bombed, and the constant presence of two police guards (both murdered by the terrorists last week) was a powerful reminder of the dangers. The French Jews who were murdered were just shoppers, preparing for the Sabbath. The journalists were killed for their deliberate actions–challenging and criticizing Islamic beliefs. The Jews were killed for being Jews.

Terrorism against French Jews is not new. In 2012 a terrorist murdered three schoolchildren and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse. There was no million-citizen march. And suppose that last week’s terror attack in Paris had not aimed at Charlie Hebdo, but “only” killed four Jews–or eight or twelve, for that matter. Does anyone believe a million French citizens would be marching in Paris, with scores of world leaders joining them? One is reminded of the synagogue bombing on Rue Copernic in Paris in 1980, after which Prime Minister Raymond Barre publicly declared that “A bomb set for Jews killed four innocent Frenchmen.” That shocking lack of solidarity– that definition of Frenchmen to exclude the Jews– does not seem to have been cured, and the French today appear to feel more solidarity with the journalists who were killed than with the Jews who were killed.

Hamas should be the last to denounce assaults on journalists and free speech. Its security forces in the Gaza Strip continue to arrest and intimidate Palestinian journalists on a regular basis. Just hours before the Hamas statement, a Hamas-affiliated website, Al-Resalah, tweeted a photo of the three slain French terrorists and described them as “martyrs.”

Hamas’s condemnation of terrorism — which apparently fooled many good people who sincerely hoped that maybe “this time” Hamas was actually reforming — should be seen only as efforts to appease the EU and persuade its governments that they were right to remove Hamas from the terrorist list.

In French, Hamas said “it condemns the attack… and insists that differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder.” Hamas, however, was extremely careful not to condemn the terror attack on the Jewish supermarket in Paris — because Hamas believes that attacks against Jews are legitimate. Condemning the killing of Jews would have meant that Hamas would also have to denounce its own terror attacks against Jews.

The French authorities killed three murderous savages yesterday. That was the only good news on a day in which a third hostage siege began in Montpellier. The bad news started at the top, with President Hollande’s statement after the Charlie Hebdo slaughter and the Kosher grocery siege:

Those who committed these acts have nothing to do with the Muslim religion.

Yeah, right. I would use my standard line on these occasions – “Allahu Akbar” is Arabic for “Nothing to see here” – but it’s not quite as funny when the streets are full of cowards, phonies and opportunists waving candles and pencils and chanting “Je suis Charlie.” Because if you really were Charlie, if you really were one of the 17 Frenchmen and women slaughtered in the name of Allah in little more than 48 hours, you’d utterly despise a man who could stand up in public and utter those words.

Oriana Fallaci, the late journalist, is quoted about the perils of the mass immigration of Muslims to the West. But a Muslim Caliban ignores her.

On January 10th, Enza Ferreri ran on her blog spot an excerpt from the late journalist Oriana Fallaci’s predictions about the fate of Italy (and of Europe) in the face of unopposed mass Muslim immigration from the Mideast and North Africa. In the excerpt, she argues that the minuscule size of the activist, fundamentalist, jihadist element in any European Muslim population is irrelevant. It is the inescapably virulent ideology which that population also carries with it like leprous lesions that enables and emboldens the terrorism-minded among it.

The canard of “moderate” Islam, the comedy of tolerance, the lie of the integration, the farce of multiculturalism continue. And with that, the attempt to make us believe that the enemy consists of a small minority and that small minority lives in distant countries. Well, the enemy is not a small minority. And he’s in our home. He’s an enemy that at first glance does not look like an enemy. Without a beard, dressed in Western fashion, and according to his accomplices in good or bad faith perfectly-assimilated-into-our-social-system. That is, with a residence permit. With the car. With family. Never mind if the family is often made up of two or three wives, never mind if the wife or wives are constantly beaten up, if he sometimes kills his blue-jeans-wearing daughter, if sometimes his son rapes the 15-year-old Bolognese girl walking in the park with her boyfriend. He is an enemy that we treat as a friend. Who nevertheless hates and despise us with intensity.

The contortions to which those in the Obama Administration will submit themselves in order to avoid calling Islamist terrorism just that would be comedic if the subject matter weren’t so deadly serious. Case in point comes to us in an announcement by the White House that a “summit on how to counter violent extremism” will be held next month amid fears amongst the American populace that Islamist terror attacks on US soil are all but certain.

The Washington Times reports:

“The White House on Sunday announced it will host a summit next month on how to counter violent extremism amid renewed fears among Americans that terror attacks on the homeland are inevitable.

“A Rasmussen poll released Sunday shows that 65 percent of Americans believe it is at least somewhat likely an attack ‘on those critical of Islam’ in the US will occur over the next year. Just 26 percent said such an attack is not likely, the survey shows…

Buried for decades deep inside the basements of the Library of Congress, researchers have just uncovered the following remarkable document dated December 7, 1942. It contains a call to the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, issued by 789 journalists from around the world and endorsed by dozens of chapters of Professors for Immediate Peace. Here is the text:

Dear Mr. President and Mr. Prime Minister:

We, the undersigned journalists and professors and other seekers of peace, call upon you to use your powers and influence to put an end to the blight that is eating away at the moral fabric of the societies of the Allied nations and weakening their resolve to pursue peace. We are referring to the form of bigotry and intolerance known as Naziphobia. For too long Americans and British fellow citizens have sat by passively while certain media outfits have vilified and insulted Nazis, mocking their sacred symbols and beliefs, belittling their ideological leaders.

These manifestations of intolerance have fanned the flames of the current international conflict and have led to a prolonging of hostilities. Thoughtless English-language newspapers have even taken to referring to the Germans as “Krauts” and the Japanese as “Japs” or “Nips.” Such language alienates the peoples in these countries and offends their sensitivities. This unbecomes us as civilized Western Anglo-Saxons.

We demand immediate action to end Naziphobia and to foster an atmosphere of reconciliation. We demand that Spike Lee be immediately incarcerated for his offensive song mocking the German leadership and we demand that the Congress issue an official writ of apology to the German people for that. We demand that American and British schools expose their children to the principles of Nazi ideology in order to end the demonization and allow them to understand the Other. We demand an end to derogatory newspaper comments about “Aryans.” We also insist that anti-German discriminatory laws in the US and Great Britain be erased from the books and that quotas preventing migration of citizens of the Third Reich and the Japanese Empire to the territories of these countries be eliminated.

Let us recall whence the Angles and Saxons came to the British Islands in the first place and hence ultimately to the New World. Let us recall the great cultural legacy our ancestors received from these Teutons. It is time to understand the Other, not to demonize him. Let us prove our moral worthiness to our current adversaries by prohibiting publication of offensive Naziphobia propaganda and racist Reich-baiting. Let us criminalize the public burning of Mein Kampf and portraits of the Fuhrer. Let us punish those who defile the buildings of London and New York with offensive graffiti caricatures of Hitler and the Japanese Emperor.

Peace may yet be restored if we purge ourselves of these manifestations of racism and bigotry! Stop Naziphobia!

Let us move forward to peace and reconciliation!

http://government.blogs.xerox.com/2015/01/11/is-two-better-than-one-the-public-private-partnership/#.VLOq6nvIhyJ

By Chuck Brooks, Vice President and Client Executive, Department of Homeland Security

Public-private partnerships have become essential for many government agencies, borrowing from the old adage – it takes two to tango. These relationships create a vehicle for cooperation that can help reduce costs, build expertise and innovation and provide business continuity and resilience. And yet, these types of partnerships can fail just as much as they succeed. According to InformationWeek Government, such partnerships may fit the bill of what’s “good” for the long-term, but the article questions PPP collaboration as viable.

I’ve discussed P3s before in an article on what you can learn from public-private partnerships and when it comes to P3s working together, I’m a firm believer that the relationship will lead to success based on previous results. Here’s a few successful examples of how the public-private sectors can work together:

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