RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s alarming that a university is quicker to condemn an academic for an off-colour remark than a terrorist

On Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab blew himself up in an aeroplane bound for Detroit. Luckily the bomb, placed in his underpants, did not work properly, and hurt only him, but it was intended to kill all 289 people on board. Abdulmutallab had recently graduated from University College London (UCL), where he had been president of the student Islamic Society.

On June 10 this year, it was announced that Sir Tim Hunt, the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, had resigned as UCL’s honorary Professor of Life Sciences because of remarks he had made about girls in labs: “You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.”

When it was pointed out to UCL’s authorities that Abdulmutallab’s radicalisation might have had quite a lot to do with what happened when he was a UCL student and perhaps they should be more careful about the extreme speakers who addressed the Islamic Society, they vaulted on to the high horse of “academic freedom” and refused to intervene.

“So even if, as Edward Grossman suggests, we today aren’t quite the giants our grandparents were, if necessary we will do the same in this case, too. Because if we aren’t willing to protect ourselves by ourselves, there’s really no reason to have a Jewish state at all.”

Jews have long been able to thrive while under threat. Today’s Israelis, living in the face of a nuclear Iran, are the latest example.

“Worried and Happy”: that was the title on the advance copy of Edward Grossman’s essay sent to me by Mosaic’s editors. Reading it, however, I couldn’t help feeling that for Grossman, Israel’s current mood is mainly worry and very little happiness. After all, about 90 percent of the essay focuses on a single major worry: Iran’s nuclear program. And Israel has no lack of other worries as well: Hamas, Hizballah, the Palestinian Authority, international isolation, the cost of living, Arab and ḥaredi integration, and on and on.

It seems the fishing vessel Marianne of Gothenburg, leading this year’s flotilla to Gaza stunt, may be heading for a scuppering.
According to a press release just issued in Tel Aviv:

‘The Israeli civil rights group, Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, has sent a warning letter demanding that the Swedish bank Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) cease in providing financial services to Free Gaza and Ships to Gaza, which are helping to arrange a flotilla to breach Israel’s lawful naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

In particular, SEB holds a maritime lien on the Marianne of Gothenburg, the lead ship in the planned Gaza flotilla. The bank issued a mortgage to the owner of the boat, Charles Bertel Andreasson, a veteran anti-Israel provocateur who has engaged in illegal efforts against the Jewish State in the past.

In a letter to SEB’s president and group chief executive, Annika Falkengren, Shurat HaDin’s president, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, made clear that the flotilla ship might be destroyed or confiscated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and that the Stockholm-based bank is at serious risk of losing its collateral: the boat.

Editor’s note: The following is the second in a series of articles that will center on the Frontpage motto: “Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out.” Each piece will examine recent examples of leftist overreach and expose the totalitarian mindset animating these excesses. To view the first article in the series on The Death of the Neighborhood, click here [2].

Since ancient Athens free speech has been at the heart of political freedom. “Free men have free tongues,” as Sophocles said, for freedom depended on citizens empowered to speak freely in the public deliberations about policy and the laws through which they governed. That’s why the Founders wrote the First Amendment, to prevent force from trumping law by silencing dissent. That’s also why the enemies of political freedom always try to destroy free speech.

With his encyclical, “Laudato Si” (Be Praised), the Pope stepped into the quagmire that is climate change. While it is a theological treatise, he joined his infallible voice with those who regard man as the principal cause of climate change. He placed blame on the “developed” world, by which he means the English-speaking nations, Western Europe and Japan. He wrote: “The exploitation of the planet has already exceeded acceptable limits and we have still not solved the problem of poverty.” There was no mention that capitalism and democracy have done more to reduce poverty than anything else, including religion.

In the hot days of summer, the progressive revolution that took over cities and even the national government is frenziedly devouring itself.

The media is pounding away at Hillary Clinton, not because it cares about her foundation’s dirty deals or the contents of her email server, but because it doesn’t trust her ideological commitment. If the media were sure of that, both stories would have been treated like Benghazi; mocked, ridiculed, falsely fact checked and then buried in a haunted Indian graveyard under the New York Times building at midnight.

Instead the media pined for Elizabeth Warren. When the Native American Rachel Dolezal declined to jump into the race, they switched their allegiance to Bernie Sanders; a senile Socialist who fondly reminisces about 90% tax rates. Now Ready for Warren is throwing its support behind Bernie.

Marzouk’s remarks refute claims by some in the Arab and Western media that Hamas is moving toward pragmatism and moderation, and that it is now willing, for the first time, to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Many in the West often fail to understand Hamas’s true position because they do not follow what Hamas says in Arabic — to its own people. In Arabic, Hamas makes no secret of its call for the destruction of Israel.

The current strategy of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is to negotiate with the international community, and not with Israel, about achieving peace in the Middle East. The ultimate goal of the PA is to force Israel to its knees. For the PA, rallying the international community and Europe is about punishing and weakening Israel, not making peace with it.

As the New York Times reports this morning, not a single Republican presidential candidate has the courage to tell South Carolina to stop flying the Confederate battle flag from its state capitol. It is a bit late for that, to be sure; public display of any kind of the symbol of the slaveholders’ rebellion should have been banned after the Union victory in 1865. Removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of South Carolina’s seat of government has become an African-American cause in the wake of last week’s Charleston church massacre. It may be incommensurate with the crime, but black Americans are entirely justified in their rancor against official sanction of a symbol of slavery.

The most explosive passage in Michael Oren’s new book on the frayed U.S.-Israel relationship is not about President Barack Obama’s repeated fights with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Rather, it is about Obama himself.
Struggling to understand how Obama–who has genuine empathy for Israel, Oren says–could adopt policies and postures so hostile to the Jewish state, Oren turns to Obama’s first memoir, Dreams from My Father. What he reads shocks him:

“More alarming for me still were Obama’s attitudes towards America. Vainly, I scoured Dreams from My Father for some expression of reverence, even respect, for the country its author would someday lead. Instead, the book criticizes Americans for their capitalism and consumer culture, for despoiling their environment and maintaining antiquated power structures. Traveling abroad, they exhibited “ignorance and arrogance”–the very shortcomings the president’s critics assigned to him.”

Hillary Clinton says, “Success isn’t measured by how much the wealthiest Americans have, but by how many children climb out of poverty.” So why did she charge an exorbitant speaking fee to a charity that helps poor kids?

Fine, she sent the cash to another “nonprofit” — the family’s $2 billion foundation. But Condi Rice, another ex-secretary of state, gave her own (much lower) fee from the same outfit — the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach, Calif. — back to the charity.