RUTHFULLY YOURS

By Lesley Clark | McClatchy Newspapers

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/02/05/182103/obama-to-visit-israel-and-the.html

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will travel to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan this spring, the White House said Tuesday, amid signs the administration is interested in revisiting stalled Middle East peace talks.

The trip would be Obama’s first visit to Israel as president; he traveled there and to the West Bank as a presidential candidate in July 2008.

It comes as he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both embark on new terms in office, amid renewed turbulence in the Middle East, and represents an opportunity to forge a different relationship. White House officials said Obama discussed the potential trip when he called Netanyahu on Jan. 28 to congratulate him on the Israeli election.

“The start of the president’s second term and the formation of a new Israeli government offer the opportunity to reaffirm the deep and enduring bonds between the United States and Israel and to discuss the way forward on a broad range of issues of mutual concern, including Iran and Syria,” said Tommy Vietor, the White House spokesman for the National Security Council.

No date for the trip has been announced, though Israeli press reported that Obama would arrive on March 20.

The president also will travel to the West Bank and Jordan “to continue his close work with Palestinian Authority officials and Jordanian officials on bilateral and regional issues of mutual interest,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, a U.S. Army chaplain known as one of the “Immortal Chaplains” who gave up his life to save others. Photo by Wikimedia Commons http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/this-day-in-jewish-history/this-day-in-jewish-history-a-u-s-army-chaplain-makes-the-ultimate-sacrifice.premium-1.501044 On February 3, 1944, Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, a U.S. Army chaplain on the U.S. Army Transport, died after giving up his life vest to other soldiers […]

The 12 minute video below (start at about 1:25, after the trumpet player), features 19 year old Chloe Valdary, a black Christian University of New Orleans sophomore who explains the antisemitism that hides behind false claims of apartheid against the Jewish state.

This young woman states the problem more honestly and eloquently than any rabbi I have ever heard!

Ms. Valdary created a campus-based group “Allies for Israel,” which is made up of both Jews and non-Jews. The group endeavors to fight BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) actions against Israel, anti-Israel sentiment and anti-semitism on campus.

http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/pro-israel-christian-college-student-chloe-valdary-speaks-the-truth

Janet Levy,
Toronto

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/gaffney020613.php3 On her way out the door, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the unspeakable, literally. Until last month, when she repeatedly warned in congressional testimony concerning the Benghazi debacle that we confront a “global jihadist threat,” the Obama administration did not allow the use of the words jihad and threat in the […]

Why is the GOP dividing itself alike an amoeba into weaker and less viable sections? My friend Daniel Greenfield sums this up today:

“First, they will nuke their own grassroots by raising money to attack deviant Tea Party candidates and protect true conservatives who support amnesty, tax shelters and tax hikes. Considering that the Tea Party was responsible for the first Republican victories since 2004, spending money going after it is bound to attract voters and improve prospects for more victories in 2014.”

Why recycle bores and losers? Granted there were some real flops but so what?There is so much talent out there in the GOP…..check out the governors and check out some stellar people in Congress….Jeb Hensarling from Texas, Paul Ryan (yes!! Paul Ryan), Chris Gibson in NY, Sem Ted Cruz in Texas…. and I am just listing a handful.

Did you ever meet Rob Astorino the Westchester County Executive? I did and he is a super star with ambitions for higher office….stay tuned.

The worst thing the GOP can do now is to recycle the old guard.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3384

Taking moral relativism to immoral heights

As soon as the findings of a three-year study on Palestinian and Israeli textbooks were released on Monday, it became clear why the powers that be in Ramallah were as pleased as punch. In one fell swoop, decades’ worth of proof that Palestinian children are taught to deny the existence of the State of Israel and to commit jihad against the Jews was erased.

The study was initiated by the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land, funded by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and conducted by political psychologist Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University, director and cofounder of the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University, and professor of psychiatry Bruce Wexler of Yale University.

Given the title of the study (“Victims of our own narratives?”), one need not have waited three years to read the conclusions of the “experts” whose goal is achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians through education. Indeed, as its name suggests, the study finds that, while neither Israel nor the Palestinians are guilty of “dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the other,” each side presents “the other as a violent enemy bent on destroying or dominating the self-community …”

One example of the latter is that Israeli textbooks depict Palestinians “negatively” by linking them to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. (How this particular piece of history could be portrayed otherwise without rewriting it is beyond me.)

It is no wonder, then, that the Israeli Education Ministry decided not to cooperate in the study at its outset and now denounces its outcome. Just like the infamous 2009 Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, the Israeli government realized that this was going to be yet another “balanced” document equating the democratic Jewish state with its hostile counterparts.

Nor is it entirely surprising, as was reported in the Jerusalem Post, that many members of the Scientific Advisory Panel set up to review the study, and the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, say they were not shown final drafts of the document prior to the press conference announcing its release.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/oldest-republican-club-in-the-nation-to-honor-pamela-geller?f=puball The Queens Village Republican Club, will be honoring Pamela Geller as the “American Patriot of the Year” at its 138th Anniversary Lincoln Dinner on February 10th. Ms. Geller is an author, investigative journalist, activist, captivating speaker and founder, editor and publisher of Atlas Shruggs.com a breaking news blog, and executive director of American Freedom […]

http://jcpa.org/two-years-of-the-arab-spring-reflections-about-democracy-in-the-arab-world/
During a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and several American senators, Rabin was asked how he could envisage signing a peace agreement with Arab regimes that did not profess democracy, but rather acted as oppressors of their own people. Rabin responded: “If we have to wait till democracy prevails in the Arab countries, then Israel will have to wait for a hundred years at least.”

Since its very first days, Israel has been surrounded by authoritarian regimes where there is no freedom of speech, no personal freedom, or freedom of any kind. The citizens of the surrounding countries live in a world where many things are forbidden, where they must guess what is acceptable and suitable in order to survive. Instead of speaking their mind, they let their rulers hear what they want to hear and kept the truth to themselves, deep inside.

In the years following the end of Western colonialism, the Arab world was divided into monarchies and dictatorial regimes based on sectarian divisions, with the sole exception of Lebanon as a sectarian republic. In a later phase, the Arab world lost some of its monarchies to military juntas and dictatorships that further deepened the sense of lack of individual freedoms. This process did not spare other Arab regimes where military rebellions alternated with civilian regimes.

In any case, the result was the same: the core of the Arab world was ruled by the military, whereas the rest were ruled by hereditary monarchies supposedly chosen by Allah. In either option, the concept of Western democracy was never implemented since it could never be accepted by Arab rulers and was a concept foreign to Islamic tradition. The closest concept to Western democracy in Islam is the Shura institution, which is a sort of advisory board with no real powers, since authority is vested in the ruler himself. The adoption of Western institutions such as parliaments only mimicked the West, while in fact the authority and power to decide remained in the hands of the ruling junta.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/islamist-spring-christian-winter?f=puball Nina Shea and Samuel Tadros of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom spoke at Washington, DC’s Institute of World Politics on January 28 at “The Rise of Islamists: Challenges to Egypt’s Copts.” The pair described a bleak future for Christians in Tadros’ native Egypt and the wider Middle East under an aggressive and […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-economy-is-a-lot-worse-than-you-think Most Americans know the economy is in bad shape even if a majority voted to reelect the man most responsible for making a bad economy worse. And, no, it was not George W. Bush who is responsible for the 2008 financial crash. It was the government with its housing programs that encouraged giving mortgage […]