RUTHFULLY YOURS

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust remembrance day. It’s a day to honor the Jews who fought their murderers and those who were unable to, and to note the dishonor of those who, while in no danger themselves, failed to act to protect their people.

It’s not enough to have a big emotional catharsis on Yom Hashoah, to cry about the children, mothers, fathers, poets, Torah sages and others who were murdered because of their Jewish blood.

It’s not enough for well-meaning Jewish organizations to put on plays and presentations to bring a sense of the Holocaust to safe and well-fed Jews who otherwise would have little understanding of it.

It’s not enough to present programs about lost shtetl life, Yiddish culture, Jewish food and hazzanut (I guarantee that NPR will broadcast segments full of pathos that will tear out the hearts of their listeners — before they cut to the news program in which they will misrepresent the efforts of today’s Jewish state to keep bloody history from repeating itself).

Saudi Arabia is building a 1000-kilometre wall to protect itself from the Islamic State — a bricks-and-mortar exercise in irony, as it is the Saudis who nurtured, financed and encouraged the same firebrands and zealots they are now frantic to exclude
Until 1975 Lebanon was one of the few prosperous places in the eastern Mediterranean. Its various ethnic and religious groups lived side by side in tolerance if not harmony. Then came the civil war, which lasted until 1990, and the country has been in decline, sometimes chaos, ever since.

The central contention of Robert G. Rabil’s Salafism in Lebanon is that Salafism (or Islamic fundamentalism) has “now emerged as a prominent ideological and political driver of the Sunni community” in Tripoli and surrounding rural districts of northern Lebanon. The power of today’s Sunni political and religious leaders “lies not only in their ability to mobilise their community and face off Hezbollah but also the identity, political authority and religious crisis engulfing Sunnism in Lebanon”. Critically, traditional Lebanese sectarianism, the civil war, the Palestinian camps, Syrian interventionism, a local version of Khomeinism (Hezbollah) and the Syrian Civil War have all contributed to the rise and rise of Salafism in Lebanon, and yet in themselves they do not constitute a sufficient explanation for the growth of Islamic revivalism.

Ruthie Blum is the editor of Voice of Israel talk radio (voiceofisrael.com).

Every year at this time, Israelis reassert a vow never to forget the horrors of the Holocaust, in order to ensure they are not repeated.

That we disagree with one another on the lessons that need learning to keep this promise doesn’t seem to pose a problem. Arguing such points is not only par for the course in the Jewish state, but it provides two key things: fodder for talk shows and the moral legitimacy to invoke the H-word for political purposes, without being accused of doing so inappropriately.

Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is given leeway by his internal adversaries to take the ceremonial opportunity to remind the public that the will and means to annihilate Jews is not a relic of the past.

There is no URL here. My friend Clarence Schwab delivered this speech on Yom Ha Shoah at Young Israel of Long Beach, New York.
Like some here tonight, I am a child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors. My father and my father’s mother survived. And I am also the grandson of a rescuer, my mother’s father, Gilel (Hillel) Storch. This day of remembrance, I hope to share with you one of my grandfather, Hillel Storch’s, rescue efforts toward the end of the war, and the impact it and his other contributions have had on me.
I first learned about this rescue effort from my grandfather when I was twelve.

Over a ninety day period, starting in February 1945, my grandfather, then living in Sweden, dares to think and act unconventionally, and in so doing, helps keep imprisoned Jews alive in concentration camps in Germany.

To frame the effort, permit me to give you some context.

A successful businessman, a Zionist and a representative of the Jewish Agency, my grandfather, Hillel, comes to Stockholm in July 1940 from Riga, Latvia, just as Russia invades. He had secured a six-day business visa through well-placed contacts, because he was one of Sweden’s most reliable suppliers of phosphate.

Attack Now – Russian Interference Leaves Israel No Choice

Soon it will be too late, if it is not too late already…

The Obama Doctrine – scorn your friends, reward your enemies – has finally reaped the whirlwind, namely Russia and its pledge to provide Iran with an array of the most advanced “defensive” missiles on earth. This leaves Israel with no choice except to act BEFORE those missiles are deployed.

Israel must attack to remove those nukes before it’s too late.

If it was difficult to successfully strike Iran’s nuclear facilities today, tomorrow will be near impossible. So the scientific experts tell us.

This week in two meetings with prominent American Jews, President Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet.Either the Jews of America will rise to the challenge or they will allow Obama to marginalize them.

It is their choice, and now is the time for them to decide.

In the first meeting, Obama met with centrist Jewish leaders from major Jewish organizations like the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC. Major donors to these groups, like to almost every other major Jewish organization in America, are largely Democrats.

According to The Washington Post, the purpose of the meeting was “to defuse antagonism toward [Obama] and to convince [Jewish leaders] that he shares their concerns about the safety of Israel and the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.”

That is, the main goal of the meeting was to silence Jewish criticism of Obama’s deal with Iran.

So far, Obama seems to have accomplished that goal.

One of the most closely guarded secrets in Washington, D.C. about U.S. involvement in the Syrian war is that the “moderate” rebels whom the Obama administration (and many Republicans) backed were closely aligned with al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra. They were also, at times, aligned with the Islamic State.

For regular PJ Media readers, this will come as no surprise. I’ve repeatedly documented the ties between the State Department’s “vetted moderate” rebel groups and designated terrorist groups based on snippets of reporting that challenged the administration’s official narrative.

The Islamic State laid out its plans for carving a path to Israel and overcoming the Jewish state’s defenses, from working with establish jihadists in the region to hoping for impassioned geeky converts like Edward Snowden.

The new 150-page book distributed on file sharing sites this week follows other titles in the ISIS series including an e-book on how the jihadists plan to sack Rome [2].

The title has been expected for months, and declares that the “beginning of the end of Israel” will happen in 2022 — two years after they plan to take Rome.

Where’s Tipper Gore when you need her? “One of the great political mysteries of the early 2016 presidential campaign has been solved,” David Knowles of Bloomberg Politics reports, one hopes sarcastically: “Hillary Clinton did not leave a tip at the Chipotle restaurant she visited during her road trip to Iowa on Sunday.” Manager Charles Wright tells Knowles that ”the other lady,” presumably Huma Abedein, handed $21 to the counterman. The change, less than a buck, “was pocketed rather than deposited in the tip jar as many customers at the restaurant do, said Wright.”
We’re with Mrs. Clinton on this one. If she or her entourage had failed to tip a waiter or bartender, it would have been a deviation from custom, evidence that the candidate is stingy or out of touch. But leaving a gratuity at a fast-food counter is hardly obligatory. Many chains don’t even have tip jars.

That said, there was some rough justice in Mrs. Clinton’s being subjected to such an inane journalistic gotcha, which is typical of the coverage Republican candidates get. Knowles suggests his inquiry was prompted by Rush Limbaugh, who on his Tuesday program wondered “if she left anything in the tip jar, because that would be an indication that she understands the average, ordinary everyman that she seeks to represent.” It’s a successful application of Saul Alinsky’s Rule No. 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

Hamas is consolidating its grip over the Gaza Strip and making plans to turn it into a separate state.

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah consider the purported plan a “severe blow” to the two-state solution and unity among Palestinians.

The Americans and Europeans will also have to listen very carefully to what Hamas is saying: namely that a Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza Strip — or any part of the Palestinian territories, would not end its struggle to destroy Israel and replace it with the State of Greater Palestine.

As the U.S. Administration and the international community continue to push for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, Hamas seems to be working toward establishing an independent state of its own in the Gaza Strip.

In recent weeks, reports have surfaced in a number of Arab and Western media outlets to the effect that Hamas leaders have decided to establish a “higher committee” for managing the affairs of the Gaza Strip.

Although Hamas spokesmen have denied the reports, sources close to the Islamist movement said that discussions were underway with representatives of other Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip to set up the “higher committee.”