RUTHFULLY YOURS

Murder and mothers’ milk
During the wee hours of Wednesday morning, 16-year-old Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir was forced into a car by two men near his home in Shuafat, an Arab neighborhood in east Jerusalem. He was then killed, set on fire and left in a forest.

After identifying the body and giving a statement to the police, his father spoke to the media.

“The settlers killed my son, they kidnapped him and killed him,” he told Time magazine, displaying a photo of the two suspects on his cellphone, from footage caught by the surveillance camera of an adjacent shop.

His assertion that Israeli “settlers” had committed the crime was made before any facts were established by forensic examiners or police investigators. The assumption behind the charge was that Muhammad’s murder was a revenge attack committed by frenzied Jews responding to the abduction and slaying of Israeli teenagers Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaer and Naftali Frenkel on June 12.

As soon as word got out about Muhammad’s murder, Arab residents of east Jerusalem began to riot. Some young men proceeded to pelt Israeli police with rocks and Molotov cocktails; others smashed and torched light-rail stations, burning tires in the middle of the street. It was an eruption of violence that spread to the Beit Hanina neighborhood and continued for days.

Though the funerals of Eyal, Gil-ad and Naftali had just been held the previous day — amid increasing rocket-fire into Israeli towns from Gaza, and retaliatory strikes by the Israeli Air Force — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it his first order of business on Wednesday morning to issue a statement condemning Muhammad’s “despicable murder” and vowing to “uncover” who was behind it.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, declared: “This is a horrible and barbaric act which I strongly condemn. This is not our way and I am fully confident that our security forces will bring the perpetrators to justice. I call on everyone to exercise restraint.”

Israelis from across the political spectrum reacted similarly, rushing to denounce “price-tag” actions committed by Jews. Some went as far as Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev, who blamed Israeli society as a whole for the murder.

“The gangs of Jewish ruffians man-hunting for Arabs are no aberration,” he wrote. “Theirs was not a one-time outpouring of uncontrollable rage following the discovery of the bodies of the three kidnapped students. Their inflamed hatred does not exist in a vacuum: It is an ongoing presence, growing by the day … nurtured in a public environment of resentment, insularity and victimhood.”

I go through the headlines and news stories in over one-hundred publications daily. I do this so that I can view multiple sources on some of the same stories. Doing this allows me to formulate what is fact and what is disingenuous spin; propaganda meant to trick the public into thinking one way instead of another. Make no mistake, both ideological prospective do it. It’s the art of modern political war. But the Progressive Left has myriad vehicles to attack the ideological Right, where the Right has many fewer (thank you uber-stingy money people on the Right).

A perfect example of the Left’s disingenuous attack on the Right’s information sources comes in an article in the Huffington Post by Jack Mirkinson titled, FOX News Really Doesn’t Want to Talk About the Good Jobs News, where he writes:

“Quick! Can you find Fox News’s coverage of the latest job figures?”

He includes some main page screen shots.

“Still can’t find them? OK, we’ll help you out. What if we zoom in?…OK, OK, we’ll show you! The link is that little one right in the corner there…For some reason, FOX News appears to want to downplay the very good job numbers. For good measure, the network also downplayed the figures on its airwaves as well.”

He then goes on to show how the far-Left mainstream media outlets dutifully took the Obama Administration’s spun numbers touting them as miraculous by supplying one – one – example: a screen shot of CNN’s breaking news on the numbers.

The good numbers that Mr. Mirkinson points to are the BLS statistic that 288,000 jobs were created last month. Is that good news? Yes. Is it the miraculous news Mr. Mirkinson suggests? No.

To remain at peace when you should be going to war may be often very dangerous….Let us attack and subdue…that we may ourselves live safely for the future.– Thucydides (c. 460–395 BCE)

No government, if it regards war as inevitable, even if it does not want it, would be so foolish as to wait for the moment which is most convenient for the enemy.– Otto von Bismarck (1815–1890)

If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.– Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
For anyone with half a brain it should be crystal clear: The peace-with-Palestinians paradigm is irredeemably broken.

The triple murder of the abducted teenagers, together with the shower of rockets on the South, should have driven that point home, even for the most obdurate devotee of what, perversely, has become known as the “peace process.”

Cavalcade of counterproductive concessions

Over the last half decade, the Netanyahu government has made a series of humiliating and hazardous concessions in an ill-advised and ill-fated attempt to sustain an unworkable process and an egregious endeavor to curry favor with an innately inimical US administration.

Predictably, this has produced nothing but further demands for even more hazardous and humiliating concessions.

The cavalcade of counter-productive climb-downs began shortly after Binyamin Netanyahu’s return to power in 2009, when he reneged on his election pledges and accepted the idea of a Palestinian state.

This ideological capitulation dramatically transformed the debate on Palestinian statehood from whether there should be a Palestinian state, to what the characteristics of that state should be. It was followed in November 2009 by acquiescence to an unprecedented 10-month construction freeze in the hope of coaxing the Palestinians into negotiations. The only response this elicited – and only as it was just about to expire – was a demand for it to be extended.

Then, in 2012, in stark contradiction to Netanyahu’s publicly professed principle of resolute refusal to bow to demands from terrorists (which in large measure brought him much of his initial public prominence), he bowed to the Hamas conditions, releasing over 1,000 convicted terrorists in exchange for a single IDF soldier, Gilad Schalit. This was something so abjectly compliant that even his predecessor, the wildly accommodative Ehud Olmert, had resisted such an exchange.

By so doing, in a stroke Netanyahu made a mockery of his own defiant doctrine which had deemed concessions to terrorists counterproductive.

Counterproductive cavalcade (cont.)

Israel was soon to reap the bitter fruits of its misplaced “largesse” with the brutal murder this April of Baruch Mizrahi, a father of five, at the hands of a terrorist freed in the Schalit deal.

The Justice Department’s charges against Khatallah are curiously sparse.

What happens when the president who has politicized law-enforcement to a degree unprecedented in American history meets a terrorist responsible for killing Americans he has recklessly failed to protect, decimating his pretensions about “decimating” al-Qaeda?

What happens is: You get the most politicized terrorism indictment ever produced by the Justice Department. Behold United States v. Khatallah, Case No. 14 Crim. 141, quietly unsealed in a Washington courtroom last Saturday while the country dozed off into summer-vacation mode.

Ahmed Abu Khatallah, of course, is the only suspect apprehended in connection with the Benghazi massacre, a terrorist attack on a still-mysterious U.S. diplomatic installation. J. Christopher Stevens, the United States ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans — State Department official Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty — were killed. Until recently, such attacks have been known as acts of war carried out by the enemy. In the age of Obama, they are now known as “crimes” for which “defendants” like Khatallah are “brought to justice” — rather than brought to Gitmo. Meaning: They are whisked into our country when no one’s paying much attention. The red carpet is rolled out at a federal courthouse, where the “defendant” is given Miranda warnings, taxpayer-funded counsel, and all the rights of the American citizens they plot to kill, including lavish discovery-of-intelligence files relevant to their civilian trial.

Gold-plated due process for our enemies begins with the constitutional right to an indictment returned by a grand jury, providing the “defendant” with notice of the charges against him. In Khatallah’s case, the first thing you’ll notice is that the indictment is tiny: less than two pages long — 15 measly lines of text once you discount the caption, citations, and signature lines. This is a startling departure from Justice Department indictments in jihadist terror cases, a turn to brevity that cannot be explained solely by Obama’s banning of words like “jihadist” from the government lexicon.

In big criminal cases — and there are none bigger than those involving terrorist attacks — indictments tend toward book length, written in a narrative style designed to cut through the legalese and explain what happened. See, if the prosecutor is ethically convinced that there is sufficient evidence to convict an accused terrorist, his duty is to plead the case as expansively as necessary to get that evidence admitted.

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL: KATHRYN LEE BATES 1913

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern impassion’d stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev’ry gain divine!

O Beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Revolutions are not unique. Some countries have revolutions all the time until revolution becomes their national sport. In banana republics the overthrow of one dictator to make way for another gives everyone a day off from work.

These revolutions, no matter how they are cloaked in the familiar rhetoric of liberty, are nothing more than tyranny by other means.

What made the American Revolution unique was that its cause was not the mere transfer of power from one ruler to another or one system to another, but a fundamental transformation of the nature of rule.

Every revolution claims to be carried out in the name of the people, but it’s never the people who end up running things.

The Declaration of Independence did more than talk about the rights of the people. It placed the people at the center of the nation and its government, not as an undifferentiated mass to be harnessed for whatever propaganda purposes they might be good for, but as individuals with hopes and dreams.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

That is not merely some bland reference to a mass of people. There is no collective here, only the individual. The greater good of independence is not some system that will meet with the approval of the mass, but that will make it possible for the individual, each individual, to live a free life, not a life lived purely for the good of the mass, but for his own sake.

In a time when government mandates what you can eat and how much of it, only one of the ways it seeks to regulate every aspect of daily life for the greater good– the declaration that started it all declares that the purpose of government is not social justice, a minimally obese population, universal tolerance or even equality. Equality is acknowledged as a fact, not as a goal.

For Gustav Niebuhr, a former religion reporter with The New York Times, last month’s decision by the Presbyterian Church (USA) to divest from companies that do business with Israel is an affront — both spiritual and personal.

The nephew of famed Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr — once described by Barack Obama as “one of my favorite philosophers” — is fighting back against what he sees as a misguided take on Israel and an attack on his great uncle.

The Jewish community was also taken aback — and angered — by the national Presybterian organization’s approval of the divestment, which narrowly passed with a 310-303 vote after a decade of similar efforts and earlier this year, the release of a controversial document.

In “Zionism Unsettled,” a study guide published by a national committee of the Presbyterian Church that blames the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “on pathology inherent in Zionism,” the authors attack not only the Jewish state, but also its supporters — including Reinhold Nie­buhr.

Niebuhr was one of the most prominent theologians in America until his death in 1971 and a close friend of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a leading Jewish thinker. But the study guide casts him in a different light. It accuses him of “moral blindness” in supporting the Jewish state and ignoring the plight of Palestinians.

“To call him ‘morally blind’ is really just disgraceful,” said Gustav Niebuhr, who is Presbyterian and a professor of religion at Syracuse University. Also, “it’s just not true.”

In response, Niebuhr is working with Presbyterian clergy and laypeople around the United States — including at least one minister in Philadelphia — to mend ties with the Jewish community. He is also helping draft a full-page advertisement to run in The New York Times on behalf of Presbyterians who oppose the divestment.

Niebuhr was 16 when his great-uncle died, and remembered him as a “kind older relative” who lived on the Upper West Side. But much of his connection to the prominent theologist came later, reading his books and what others had written about him. Toward the end of Reinhold’s life, as his health declined after several strokes, he took almost daily walks with Heschel.

“These walks, ordered by the doctor for Reinhold’s health, when in the company of Abraham, became times of exchange and refreshment,” his widow, Ursula Niebuhr, said in a 1983 speech delivered at the College of St. Benedict in Minnesota. “It was no wonder to me that these two friends found each other so congenial, not only in this shared universe of discourse, but also in their dependence upon and reference to the Hebrew prophets.”

Go into any Jewish community in the United States these days and spend a few hours talking to people. At a certain point in the conversation, at least one person will bring up Ari Shavit’s bestselling book, My Promised Land.

Mention of the book will arouse great enthusiasm. Invariably, a prominent member of the group will say, with utter conviction, and to the nods of all present, “I think that Shavit’s book should be required reading for all American Jewish students.”

The most illustrious American Jewish writers and editors today are all but unanimous in their praise for Shavit’s book, which they proclaim is an “epic,” account of Israel.

As Martin Kramer wrote this week in the online journal Mosaic, “the last ‘epic’ account of [Israel’s birth in] 1948 to seize the imagination of its Jewish and non-Jewish readers,” as Shavit’s has done was Leon Uris’s Exodus, published in 1958.

Uris’s book was an inspirational, historical fiction that told the story of Israel’s birth. Decades of American Jewish readers were profoundly influenced by the narrative. Ask any American Jew over the age of 35 who made aliyah if he read Uris’s Hollywood-style account of the Zionist revolution. The answer is almost always affirmative.

Like Exodus, Shavit’s My Promised Land has been a runaway success. As Kramer noted, Shavit has been embraced by the Jewish establishment’s celebrity intellectuals – sharing stages with New Yorker editor David Remnick, and Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg. He’s been kvelled over by Tom Friedman and Franklin Foer from The New Republic.

Shavit got marquis billing at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington in March, and has been feted by the Jewish Federations and the most affluent synagogues in America.

Unlike Exodus, which is a fictional account of Israel’s founding, Shavit insists that his narrative is the undisputed truth. As Foer put it in his blurb an on the back cover, Shavit’s book is an, “epic history . . . full of moral complexity . . . mind-blowing, trustworthy insights.”

Diana West was attacked on American Thinker by two columnists who, in their own words “did not read the book” .

CLARICE FELDMAN WEIGHS IN ON DIANA WEST WITHOUT HAVING READ THE BOOK!!!! SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/demagogic_writers_and_the_people_who_love_them.html

“This week I’m making an exception in highlighting the imbroglio between Ron Radosh, an historian whose knowledge of the American Communist party and the McCarthy era is unmatched, and Diana West, author of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on our Nation’s Character. I’m doing so, not to attack West whose work I have not read, but to point out the dangers of demagogic writers — everywhere on the political spectrum and the emotional bonds their fans form with them. ”
ANOTHER “REVIEW” OF DIANA WEST BY RON CAPSHAW-SOMEONE WHO HAS NOT READ THE BOOK !!!!

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/the_beginning_of_wisdom.html

“I haven’t read West (I do intend to), but from the scuttlebutt and reviews circulating the internet, it is fairly apparent that she is a reckless historian of the McCarthy school of history. This, Ron Radosh is not. Unlike the conspiratorial school, populated on the left by Oliver Stone, and onthe right by West, Radosh dares to take a complex view of history. He is grown up enough to realize that both Hiss was guilty and McCarthy was a reckless demagogue; that the blacklist was wrong and that the Hollywood Ten were selective civil libertarians.”

Furthermore, the shrill and unbecoming attacks from Radosh, Horowitz, Conrad Black were deflected by Vladimir Bukovsky with the strongest defense of West and her work…..rsk

“With the publication of my second book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, I am looking forward to a vigorous debate about my findings,” Diana West wrote when the book was released.

What followed was not exactly what she had in mind.

On August 9, 2013, after the book had received largely glowing reviews and endorsements from conservative writers, Frontpage Magazine published a blistering attack by Ronald Radosh, “McCarthy on Steroids.” The review questioned not only the author’s conclusions, but her competence.

This kicked off the nastiest internecine conflict on the right in recent memory, pitting, in the eyes of their adversaries, supine “court historians” against wild-eyed “yellow journalists.” Embroiled in the controversy were, among others, two groups of individuals who, in some cases, had been barely aware of each other — critics of Islam and writers on Soviet subversion in the U.S. in the ‘30s and ‘40s.

Concerned about the “decline in patriotic feeling and civic engagement” in present day America, editors Amy A. Kass, Leon R. Kass and Diana Schaub have compiled a thought-provoking anthology entitled What so Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. It is a particularly timely item.

If nothing else, I have to thank the 44th President because without his total disregard for the United States Constitution, I would never have begun the exhilarating process of becoming a more informed American.

Thus, I came across the words of a true leader — President Abraham Lincoln.

On January 27, 1838 in an address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, a young politician by the name of Abraham Lincoln expressed his concern that “Americans were increasingly inclined to take the law into their own hands” and were “substituting vigilante justice for the justice of the law.” Entitled “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” it speaks to the “reverence for the Constitution and the laws” something which this present administration and members of both political parties have forgotten.

Lincoln was concerned about the consequences of such actions.

Obama incites people to lose their temper. He understands that embedded in the word danger is the word anger and as he continues to put us in danger, he is counting on our anger taking front and center stage. The more Obama goads the people, the more he hopes we will make his self-fulfilling prophecy of a defeated America come true.

Consider, for example, that this White House, under the pseudo-guise of compassion, actually advertised for escort services for unaccompanied alien children to pour into the southern border of America. Narcotics smuggling, human trafficking and possible terrorist infiltration constitute this brewing cauldron. Diseases that American doctors have not seen in years are beginning to appear, and now states have to shoulder the financial hardships as these children are shipped to various locales.

It certainly does not take much imagination to understand the seething anger that people experience because of this deliberate usurpation of the law by Obama. Righteous resentment is building.

And it was exactly this that Lincoln was concerned about when he asserted that: