RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Monday evening, after two and a half days of back-to-back lectures, panels, workshops and children’s activities, Limmud Oz 2015 came to a close. Though the major Jewish conference was founded in Britain in 1980, its model is now used by communities around the world. Each has its own flavor, depending on the location, but the idea behind the endeavor is basically the same: to gather Jews from all walks of life, levels of religious observance and political orientation and learn from one another.

I had the good fortune to be invited to this year’s event in Sydney, Australia — hosted by the Shalom Institute at the University of New South Wales — to present my perspective on the Israeli elections, the framework for the Iranian nuclear deal, Zionism, anti-Semitism and aliyah. This gave me the opportunity, in between my own sessions, to attend those of other lecturers and panelists.

The president of the Space and Science Research Corporation, John Casey, is also the author of “Cold Sun: A Dangerous ‘Hibernation’ of the Sun Has Begun!” and has called attention to a meteorological cycle that until the global warming hoax occurred, was largely unknown to many people and, to a large degree still is.

Nature has not cooperated with the charlatans who made claims about a dramatic warming of the Earth. Since 1998 the planet along with the Sun has been in a solar cycle distinguished by very few, if any, sun spots—evidence of solar storms—and a cooling of the Earth that has some predicting a forthcoming new Little Ice Age.

This past weekend, more than 50 leaders of Jewish organizations and pro-Israel groups from several countries met to plan a more systematic response to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Many journalists found the most interesting aspect of the meeting the fact that Sheldon Adelson, a supporter of Republicans, and Haim Saban, a supporter of Democrats, were joined at the hip in this new effort.

A goal of $50 million was reported to have been set to support efforts on campuses to fight the BDS campaigns — generally led by Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association.

Adelson described three components of his Campus Maccabees concept: donors who will fund the operation; activists on the ground willing to take the fight to the campus; and researchers who will supply information about the anti-Israel groups and recommend possible legal avenues to block their activities.

We don’t know how much damage to national security Rand Paul created by grandstanding his attempt to blockade the NSA’s program that obtained telephone records and analyzed them to spot terrorist connections.

In intelligence, what you know you don’t know – the “known unknowns” – and the what you don’t know that you don’t know – the “unknown unknowns” – are equally dangerous. That’s why our intelligence agencies are always trying to devise new methods of getting the former and identifying and discovering the latter.

The iconic photograph of Israeli soldiers gazing at the Western Wall, in Jerusalem, for the first time in their lives, after entering the city as Israel beat the invading Arab armies in 1967. Photo: Israel Knesset. June 10, 1967, marked the end of the Six Day War and the beginning of the radical left’s hate […]

Last week’s rancid pro-BDS statements to an approving Cairo audience by Orange CEO Stéphane Richard, indicating his desire to immediately sever his company’s links to Israel, should come as no surprise to those who follow French politics. Orange, which maintains a licensing agreement with the Israeli cellphone company Partner Communications, is partly owned by the French government, making France at least indirectly complicit with Richard’s anti-Semitic, pro-BDS statement.

Since spewing those ugly sentiments, Richard has performed a complete about-face [2], claiming that he “loves Israel,” “invests in Israel,” “radically opposes” any form of boycott against the Jewish State and has announced plans for an immediate trip to Israel to meet with business leaders and political officials. Of course, these new adoring sentiments fly in the face of what he said in Cairo, but Richard, ever the businessman, likely realized that his comments were counterproductive for the bottom line and had to adjust his remarks accordingly. Moreover, technology companies are keenly aware that the road to innovation goes through Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and not through Cairo or Baghdad. In other words, morality played no part in Richard’s miraculous transformation. It was strictly a matter of dollars and euros.

It’s fashionable for the media to mock the “clown car” of the Republican presidential primary field. And it’s true that the Republican Party is burdened with a surplus of overqualified candidates with name recognition; successful governors, smart young senators and even a celebrated surgeon and CEO.

Meanwhile the Democratic Party’s “inevitable” candidate is inevitably generating financial scandals faster than her husband generated his inevitable sex scandals.

Competing against her is Senator Bernie Sanders who is currently discussing 90 percent tax rates and why he believes women want to be raped. His winning campaign slogan is “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants when children are hungry in this country.”

You also don’t need a choice of 23 highly qualified conservative free market candidates when you can choose between Hillary Clinton and a senile Socialist from Vermont visiting late night talk shows to discuss his rape fantasies. Either Hillary Clinton will take all your money or Bernie Sanders will take all your money and then take away your underarm spray deodorants for the sake of all the hungry children.

And you’re lucky if that’s all he does.

In a 6-3 ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court sided [2] with the Obama administration and struck down a law allowing Jerusalem-born Americans to record Israel as their place of birth on their passports. “Put simply, the nation must have a single policy regarding which governments are legitimate in the eyes of the United States and which are not,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote [2]. And if the nation must speak with one voice, he added, and “that voice must be the President’s.”

The law in question was part of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act [3], passed in 2002 and signed by President Bush. Section 214 instructed the State Department to “record the place of birth as Israel” in the passports of Jerusalem-born American children if their parents requested that designation. However despite signing the bill, Bush insisted, “U.S. policy regarding Jerusalem has not changed,” and that his administration was not legally bound to follow that provision. He further insisted [3] the resolution “would, if construed as mandatory rather than advisory, impermissibly interfere with the president’s constitutional authority to formulate the position of the United States, speak for the nation in international affairs, and determine the terms on which recognition is given to foreign states.”

On April 14, 2015, by a unanimous vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a procedure for the Senate and House to review the future nuclear agreement with Iran. The Senate and House subsequently approved the bill and it was signed into law in late May.

What did we get? After the completion of an Iran nuclear deal the US Senate and House of Representatives will get to decide whether and when the previously approved Congressional sanctions on Tehran will end.

Critical to that determination will be whether the administration has sufficient leverage to get necessary Iranian concessions to make a deal worthwhile.

Supporters of the new preliminary framework with Iran on its nuclear work castigated supporters of this Congressional initiative. They described it as an attempt to “kill the Iran agreement”.

They challenged critics to come up with a better alternative deal.

They also claimed some opponents of the framework agreement simply wanted war with Iran or were opposed to an agreement only for partisan purposes.

Voters have not only foiled Recep Tayyip Erdogan plan to mesh the country’s parliamentary system with his autocratic instincts, they have stripped his party of the capacity to form a government in its own right. In a part of the world not know for it, this is encouraging news.
Voters in the Turkish Republic have dealt the so-called neo-Ottomanism of Recep Tayyip Erdogan a blow. The Sultan – sorry, President – had hoped his Islamist movement, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), would not only win a clear majority of 276 deputies in the 550-seat parliament but a two-thirds majority. Had the AKP won 330 seats in the June 7 election, Erdogan could have set in motion constitutional changes leading to the transformation of Turkey’s political system from a parliamentary system to a presidential one. As it now stands, however, Erdogan’s AKP has won less than 41% of the vote and will have to make do with 258 deputies — not enough to form a government on its own.