RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the controversy over American Betrayal I am remiss in one respect. I never wrote a proper review of the book. Instead I wrote two versions of a review, and both were rejected by editors. For this I am grateful because in truth I had not invested the time required to properly do the job. I did not fully appreciate the impact of the campaign against American Betrayal, or how effective that campaign had been. For those who have not read the book, it is about the Communist infiltration of the U.S. Government, and the influencing of U.S. policy during the critical years of World War II and its aftermath. The facts reviewed in the book are not entirely new. What was original was the way in which these facts were presented; that is, in order that we might see the big picture with greater clarity. This is Diana West’s special achievement.

This is a book with far-reaching implications. These implications, of course, have yet to be mapped out. For example, we must assume that Soviet agents were not only at work in Washington during World War II. They were also at work in Chungking, Tokyo, Berlin, London and Paris. If the U.S. Government had Communist moles, every other government probably had them. As if to prove my point, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Louis Kilzer wrote a book titled Hitler’s Traitor: Martin Bormann and the Defeat of the Reich (which alleges that Bormann was Stalin’s agent). Here we discover that it wasn’t just a case of Harry Hopkins manipulating Roosevelt. Hitler was manipulated by Bormann, and probably by others we’ll never know about. Many books remain to be written; for example, regarding how Churchill was manipulated, and also de Gaulle. Consider a 1997 article titled How a Soviet mole united Tito and Churchill. Consider, as well, the situation of Charles de Gaulle, as described in the Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations: “In the late 1950s, and especially since the defection of Anatoli Golitsyn in 1961, strong suspicion surrounded the SDECE of harboring Soviet moles who were close to President Charles de Gaulle after he returned to power in 1958.”

Then there was the Tokyo spy ring, of course. Within that organization, Soviet spy Richard Sorge was credited with saving the Soviet Union in 1941. At the Spy Museum website we read, “The spies [of the Tokyo ring] pursued relationships with senior Japanese politicians, garnering information about Japanese foreign policy.” But as we know, Soviet spies do not merely garner information. Their primary work must have been to influence Japanese policy – as Moscow’s moles in Washington worked to influence American policy. Why did Tokyo fail to make peace with China and solidify a friendship with the United States? It is not an idle question when so many leading Japanese politicians thought the proper strategic direction for Japan was against the Soviet Union. In reminding us that Soviet agents are not merely spies, Mrs. West has laid bare the tragedy of a war that need not have been so costly. And this is why she has been so savagely attacked. This is why her work is called into question.

This might not be the best time for family gatherings. Uncle Norm says, “Let’s crush them.” Young Jake, home from school, hotly says that if Israel had given up the “settlements” there would have been no problem. The Arabs want peace. His professor says so and his professor knows best. The table erupts. Grandma says, “Let’s eat.”

I’m with Grandma.

There’ll be plenty of time to settle scores amongst our own when this is all over and Hamas is finished. King David took care of business that way.

Israel is at war. We are all at war in case you haven’t noticed. The world is coming at us from all directions, overhead the missiles, underneath, the tunnels. They’re breaking our windows again throughout Europe and it’s starting to happen even here in the United States. The news media are screaming for our blood, wherever we live.

Resolved: Only our IDF guys are the absolute heroes. The rest of us do the best we can.
In a time of war it gets simple. You’re with us or you’re against us…and if you are truly part of the Covenant, muzzle the dissent, please.

Morale is crucial and a loose lip is dangerous.

Resolved: Only our IDF guys are the absolute heroes. The rest of us do the best we can. How about we curb the nitpicking? Save it for later.

To argue the Palestinian side, in the Gaza war, is to make the case for barbarism.

Of all the inane things that have been said about the war between Israel and Hamas, surely one dishonorable mention belongs to comments made over the weekend by Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.

Interviewed by CNN’s Candy Crowley, Mr. Rhodes offered the now-standard administration line that Israel has a right to defend itself but needs to do more to avoid civilian casualties. Ms. Crowley interjected that, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jewish state was already doing everything it could to avoid such casualties.

“I think you can always do more,” Mr. Rhodes replied. “The U.S. military does that in Afghanistan.”

How inapt is this comparison? The list of Afghan civilians accidentally killed by U.S. or NATO strikes is not short. Little of the fighting in Afghanistan took place in the dense urban environments that make the current warfare in Gaza so difficult. The last time the U.S. fought a Gaza-style battle—in Fallujah in 2004—some 800 civilians perished and at least 9,000 homes were destroyed. This is not an indictment of U.S. conduct in Fallujah but an acknowledgment of the grim reality of city combat.

Oh, and by the way, American towns and cities were not being rocketed from above or tunneled under from below as the Fallujah campaign was under way.
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The Vatican failed in an attempt to cover up the contents of a prayer by a Muslim cleric at an interfaith “Prayer for Peace” service held in the Vatican garden on June 8. Departing from a pre-approved script, the imam recited verses 284-286 of Sura 2 from the Koran, the latter part of which calls on Allah to grant Muslims victory over non-Muslims.

Danish police raided a mosque in the Vibevej district of Copenhagen after a passerby allegedly saw weapons being carried into the complex.

“We now have hundreds of jihadists and thousands of sympathizers. This naïve Cabinet’s inaction is inviting an attack in the Netherlands.” — Geert Wilders, Dutch Freedom Party.

Conference attendees called on the Spanish government to sponsor an official study aimed at finding ways to bring European food standards into compliance with Islamic Sharia law.

Austria accused Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of stirring up trouble on June 19, when he urged thousands of cheering supporters in Vienna to reject “assimilation.”

Erdogan was rallying support for his candidacy ahead of Turkish presidential elections in August, and expatriate Turks have become a significant bloc of voters after changes to the electoral system now allow them to cast votes abroad.

Around 268,000 people of Turkish origin live in Austria, according to government figures, of whom nearly 115,000 are Turkish citizens.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, who had expressly warned Erdogan not to undermine efforts to integrate Turks into Austrian society, criticized the latest comments:

“These show very clearly that the Turkish premier has brought the election campaign to our country and created unrest with this. We reject this. And I can only say that respect for a host country looks clearly different.”

In Graz, the second-largest city in Austria, police on June 5 arrested a 41-year-old Islamic preacher from Chechnya who is believed to be involved in efforts to send Austrians to war in the Middle East.

State prosecutor Hansjoerg Bacher said that the imam is thought to be behind the radicalization and recruitment of eight Chechens resident in Austria, four of whom have died in fighting in Syria.

In Bulgaria, the Kardjali District Court on June 16 rejected a property claim lodged by the office of the Chief Mufti, the spiritual leader of Bulgaria’s Muslims, to be awarded ownership of the building housing the Regional Historical Museum. The court found that there was no basis for the claim, and ordered the representatives of the Muslim community to pay 91,062 leva ($63,000) in costs to the state.

This case was the latest in a series of lawsuits by the Chief Mufti’s office, filed under the Religious Denominations Act, which allows applications by recognized religious denominations to be awarded property believed to be historically theirs.

The building was originally intended to serve as a Muslim religious school, and it was funded in part by donations from the local Muslim community in 1920s and 1930s. However, the building was never used as a madrassa. Instead, it was nationalized during Bulgaria’s communist era and became a museum.

Lawyers for the Kardjali district administration argued that the Chief Mufti’s office is not the heir to the local Muslim community because at the time there was no such registered legal entity.

In the southern Bulgarian town of Peshtera, residents are angry over the local mosque’s powerful loudspeakers, which are blasting the Islamic call to prayer, the adhan, several times a day.

According to Radio FOCUS, the town is a model of multicultural tolerance, but residents are increasingly irritated by the adhan; the “silent discontent may escalate to petitions and protests,” the radio said.

While the U.S. government was a-howling over Israel daring to criticize Kerry’s performance, did they ever consider that Kerry’s performance actually was that bad?

he United States is circling the wagons around their secretary of state whose ego was apparently wounded by a torrent of Israeli criticism over the weekend regarding his proposed ceasefire draft plan.

John Kerry’s defenders are helping him look more pathetic by taking such umbrage to a unified Israeli cabinet’s rejection of his ceasefire proposal. And a virtually unified Israeli public, including the leftist and far left Israeli media, who are being accurately represented by the Israeli government’s less than flattering evaluations.

One of the biggest complaints about Israel’s criticism was ascribed to the State Department’s spokesperson Jen Psaki. She said, and was quoted in a myriad of media reports for saying, that Israel’s conduct in disseminating what she claims was false information about the proposed ceasefire draft: “it’s simply not the way partners and allies treat each other.”

There was a textbook example of a journalist baiting a government official to snipe at another government’s leadership despite her best efforts not to seem to be sniping.

Keeping America superpower strong is the last thing he wants.

Watching Fox News on Friday morning, I saw my friend retired Navy Capt. Chuck Nash talking about what we need to do to help resolve the crisis in the Ukraine. What he said made a lot of sense, but it struck me that we all know that President Obama will do absolutely nothing he recommended.

There are so many crises like that around the world and here at home that could be solved entirely or at least ameliorated by the president. The long list of actions President Obama should take to resolve many crises around the world describes many that are — or at least were before Obama — in America’s interests and within America’s grasp. We can take it to the bank that Obama will do none of these things. It takes only a few examples to illustrate the point.

After about ten days of public outrage, Europe has reverted to its Cold War default position, the appeasement of neo-Soviet Russia. For all the harrumphing about new sanctions, François Hollande has said that the sale of two warships to Russia will proceed on schedule. Yesterday’s Washington Post op-ed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for serious sanctions against Russia to demonstrate the world’s seriousness about stopping the Russian insurgents (and that’s what they are, not “separatists” but a Russian proxy force) from taking over his country. He wrote that the U.S. could help with shipments of natural gas to strengthen the Ukrainian economy against Russian blackmail. He wants the U.S. to organize a coalition of nations to stop Russian aggression. It won’t happen.

Obama could send military aid to Ukraine to reverse the gains the Russian-backed insurgents have made. But he won’t do that either.

We know that the Israelis keep declaring cease-fires in Gaza but the Hamas terrorist government there keeps violating them. Secretary of State Kerry, negotiating with whomever will talk to him (a shrinking cohort), wants to blame Israel for the continued killing. The Israelis are ignoring Kerry and Obama because their prescriptions for peace place all of the burdens and all of the risk on Israel, not the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who fire rockets aimed at Israeli civilians. All Obama was willing to do was to effectively blockade Israel by banning civilian flights to its principal airport for forty-eight hours. He takes no notice of Palestinian rockets, or their using concrete not to build schools but to construct tunnels into Israel to mount terrorist attacks.

Obama’s peace processors: Brotherhood love
The American administration has discovered new peace partners (the “neutral parties”) to help end the Gaza conflict: Turkey and Qatar. Egypt is not on the list (though it was thrown a bone by being nominated to host cease-fire talks). Egypt, of course, borders both Israel and Gaza, and made a serious cease-fire proposal a week back that Israel accepted and Hamas rejected, apparently on the advice of Turkey and Qatar.

Secretary of State John Kerry met with officials from Turkey and Qatar in Paris this week and the three countries seem to be on the same page in pushing cease-fire terms that could have been drafted by Hamas.

Today comes news of Turkish approval of a new flotilla, the so-called “Freedom Flotilla II” that will sail to Gaza to provide “humanitarian” assistance with support from the Turkish navy. The organizers of the flotilla are the IHH, the same group that sailed to the shores of Gaza in 2010 in the “Free Gaza Flotilla” armed with pipes, sticks and guns and ready to rumble with the Israel Defense Forces as part of their”humanitarian mission.”

If the new flotilla sails, Turkey may have to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and itself.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan burnished his credentials as a peacemaker this week blasting Israel for “barbarism worse than Hitler.” Erdogan also added: “Since [Israel’s creation] in 1948, we have been witnessing this attempt at systematic genocide every day and every month. But above all, we are witnessing this attempt at systematic genocide every Ramadan.”

In other words, Israel attempts systematic genocide every day for 66 years, but particularly during Ramadan. Erdogan’s comments seemed to echo the insights of Dean Wormer in “Animal House,” inventor of something called “double secret probation,” probably also in effect systematically every Ramadan.

Turkey’s government also saw fit to encourage wild mobs to congregate outside Israel’s embassy and consular facilities, in direct contravention of diplomatic rules, with members of Erdogan’s party leading the charge in some cases.

Ban on flights to Israel was just another attempt by US administration to force Israel to accept difficult conditions in Gaza.
Artificial sweet talk in public and stabs in the back behind the scenes – that’s how we should describe the attitude of US President Barack Obama’s administration towards us. From now on we can also call it “Obama’s wars on Israel.”

The first war was in the 2011 Arab Spring, when this American regime tried to portray the events as a sort of marvelous democratic uprising, compared to the obsolete Israeli democracy which is lagging behind. This is the way the Arab uprising was explicitly described by some members of Obama’s staff, all Jews of course.

Then came reality and hit Obama in the face, as the Arabs – all of them – collapsed: Syria died, Iraq died, Libya died, and an Arab democracy remained solely in the American hallucinations.

The second war was Secretary of State John Kerry’s desperate attempt in 2013 to reduce Israel’s size to the point of putting it in existential danger. He forced Israel and Mahmoud Abbas into futile but dangerous negotiations, which evoked destructive Islamic urges and deteriorated the security situation both in the Palestinian Authority and in Israel.

Encouraged by Kerry, the Palestinians’ imagination began going wild: They would receive Jerusalem, the return of the refugees, the Jordan Valley, lands, prisoners – and the result was arrogance, and therefore violence, defiance and self-destruction.

Of course those American diplomats rushed to blame Israel for all the world’s troubles, at their master’s order, but that war failed too. Israel insisted on its right to exist, and not to turn Judea and Samaria into Gaza.

Where is that Kerry today, the man wanted to hand Judea Samaria over to Arab sovereignty? Why everything that is happening in Gaza would have happened here, and that would have been the end of Israel. Fortunately, the Gaza war broke out now, because it illustrates what would have happened if, God forbid, we would have transferred more lands to the Arab terror.

Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are guesstimated to sneak into the United States through the Southern Border on foot or on wheels. Much less is known about the number of illegals who make their way through undiscovered tunnels dug underneath the border.

Unlike the limited baggage those crossing overland from Mexico can carry, the moles can smuggle through the tunnels not only tons of different illegal drugs, but also weapons, including WMD, conventional and unconventional explosives, GPRs, and shoulder-fired missiles, similar to the rockets Hamas is firing on Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Iranian and North Korean know-how assisted the construction of Hamas tunnels deep into Israel. Hezbollah and al Qaeda-affiliated groups have been active throughout Latin America in general and in Mexico in particular, and lately North Korean activity in the region has been noticed too. All these groups are known to cooperate with Mexico’s infamous drug cartels and transnational criminal groups.

Since all Islamists consider the U.S. as the Big Enchilada (“Big Satan”) that has to be conquered and that a vast tunnel network already exist under the southern border, how many members of Hezbolla and al Qaeda affiliates have already come through? What kind of conventional and unconventional weapons have they smuggled in? The discovery of well disguised tunnels is a difficult task even when such threat is acknowledged. David Masters, who oversees such DHS efforts stated earlier this year that “We can’t go check if every rock or boulder is a tunnel.”

Moreover, the Administration opposes any measure that will allow to identify and track illegal aliens, diminishing the probability of obtaining intelligence that would help destroy the tunnels and prevent drugs, weapons and terrorists who carry them from entering the country. Keep this in mind to better understand Obama’s growing pressure on Israel to stop the destruction of Hamas rockets filled tunnels that threaten the lives of all Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike. Still, it is disturbing that the president of what used to be the “leader of the free world” is actively engaged with the most radical leaders who are set on genocide and suppression of all freedoms.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/stop-the-surprise-it-is-war

Perhaps the most stunning aspect of the current Hamas battle against Israel is the exasperation expressed by Westerners. Incredulity by some that Hamas would use the people it was elected to represent as human shields, and by others, that Israel would persist when the deaths to Palestinians are so out of proportion with those to Israel is a prominent sentiment seen throughout the media. Each time it becomes apparent that double standards and false moral equivalences are being inappropriately applied, even more frustration is provoked. So many others, meanwhile, are simply weary from the very notion of violence.

Such responses indicate the degree to which Westerners are invested in seeing anything but the simple truth: Hamas, along with the rest of Palestinian leadership, declared WAR on Israel and Jews everywhere years ago and everything since is nothing more than battle maneuvers- EVERYTHING! Each day the West insists upon creating fantasies to disguise this truth it moves closer to bringing the same fate Israel experiences to its shores.

One need only digest the 1988 Hamas charter to understand. True, many attempts have been made to emasculate the power of the charter. Some write that it is an old document and no longer applicable to the aims of the organization. They point out that the charter was withdrawn from the Hamas website in favor of an election manifesto which itself omits a call for Israel’s destruction. Carter Center advisor Robert Pastor has written that reputed billionaire Hamas leader in hiding, Khaled Meshal, told him that the charter is “a piece of history and no longer relevant, but cannot be changed for internal reasons.” Peace negotiators try to assure us that, when in the room, Hamas representatives express different views.

These and other excuses fail to demonstrate that Hamas is anything other than what its charter describes. The US Constitution is also an old document and, to many, an aggravating obstacle to accomplishing many progressive goals. Nonetheless, until that Constitution is changed or eliminated, it will always be the best evidence of American principles, values, and intentions. Eliminating direct calls for the destruction of Israel and Jews from an election manifesto, essentially remaining silent on the subject, is insufficient to demonstrate any radical transformation of Hamas’ principles, values, and intentions. Further, it is unclear what “internal reasons” could possibly stand in the way of the suggested major overhaul of Hamas’ fundamental raison d’etre. If Islamists are known for anything, it is their ability while negotiating, to say anything with a straight face.

All of this is nothing more than Hamas’ use of tawriya or simple lying and deception. Much as the Islamic Republic of Iran has used taqiyya to fertilize our own willful blindness in order to advance its march to becoming a nuclear weapons state, Hamas will use whatever battle tactic it can to advance its mission. Both organizations are crystal clear that they are fighting a war that takes primacy over everything else. Still, Western politicians and intellectuals and a media amplifying their hopes to resolve an irresolvable conflict fail to see it.