ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Posted By on February 8th, 2016

Leftist movements begin with rebellion and end with conformity. No Utopian movement can tolerate rebels for long because there is no room for dissent in paradise. An ideal society, the goal of leftist political movements, not only has no room for war, racism, greed and all the other evils the conformist paradises of the left hope to eliminate, it also has no room for disagreement.

The perfect society and its perfect ideology are also the perfect tyranny. Against this Utopian collectivism, which promises paradise and delivers a prison, is the traditionalist rebel who finds virtue in the acknowledgement of human flaws rather than in the unthinking pursuit of an unchanging perfection.

The traditionalist rebel is not seeking perfection, but humanity. He is a skeptical idealist who is interested in character rather than movements. He is above all else an individualist with an instinctive distrust of any movement that requires him to abandon his rights for the greater good.

The traditionalist rebel is the snake in the liberal Eden because he does not have faith in the noble motives of the bureaucratic activists who claim to be the gods of this Eden. He knows enough of human nature to reject the fallacy that the right ideology makes men so righteous that they can be trusted with absolute power without absolute corruption following in their wake. He knows that socialists have not risen above the crimes of selfish self interest that they condemn mankind for.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Palestinian “Moderate” Leaders A sober look at words vs. deeds. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on February 8th, 2016

When Barack Obama or his shills at the State Department aren’t busy apologizing to the Muslim world for America’s imagined misdeeds or thanking the Iranians for kidnapping our sailors, they’re usually excoriating Israel for “creating obstacles to peace” while the other side – the so-called Palestinians – generally escape criticism. Palestinian Authority incitement and outright anti-Semitism are all but ignored by the Obama administration as is the fact that 6% of the PA’s budget is earmarked toward paying the salaries of convicted terrorists or their families. Since a substantial portion of that budget is subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer, it places the administration of being in the odd position of being an accessary to terror.

The incidents and examples of Palestinian Authority incitement are too voluminous to note in this piece but there are a few recurring themes. Jews (and sometimes Christians) are routinely referred to as apes, pigs or monkeys. Ancient blood libels accusing Jews of kidnapping Arab children for the purpose of using their blood in preparing Passover Matzah are regurgitated with regularity and lastly, those who engage in terrorism and murder are extolled as heroes or Shahids. They or their families are often rewarded with cash payments or lucrative job opportunities. Some have even had public places named after them.

Two watchdog groups, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) have done an outstanding job documenting and compiling the data relating to Palestinian incitement and anti-Semitism and their viewing should be mandatory for State Department staff. I doubt that will ever happen under an administration besotted by the concept of tearing Israel’s ancestral and historic heartland away from its people.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Bullish and Bearish Cases for Rubio: Jonathan Last

Posted By on February 8th, 2016

The morning after Marco Rubio’s bad debate, a crowd of perhaps 550 packed into a high school cafeteria to see the candidate in the flesh. Outside, the Democratic PAC American Bridge sent two guys dressed up as robots to capitalize on Rubio’s failure last night.

The crowd seems receptive, but not jubilant. It seems like it’s split about equally between people who are supporting the candidate and people who are shopping. And Rubio opens by referring to his debate misstep. He doesn’t make a joke out of it, though. He tries to make a larger point, doubling-down and unpacking what he was saying. Here’s the passage, in full:

Right now, after last night’s debate—oh you said the same thing three or four times. Well I’m going to say it again: The reason why these things are in trouble is because Barack Obama is the first president, at least in my lifetime, that wants to change the country. Change the country. Not fix it. Not fix its problems. He wants to make it a different kind of country. He wants to make it like other countries around the world. I don’t understand that. People come here to get away from those countries. When is the last time you read about a boatload of American refugees washing up on the shores of another country? If you want to live in another country, move to another country.

These things he’s done to America are not accidents. Obamacare is a disaster, but it’s not an accident. It is an effort to take over your healthcare. The undermining of the Second Amendment is not an accident. It is because if they could—if he could get away with it—he would ban guns. He doesn’t even want there to be a Second Amendment. He’ll never admit it, but that’s how you get a president that when he was running for president, talked about people clinging to their guns and to their religion.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Book of David The biblical framework for a novel of redemption. By David J. Wolpe

Posted By on February 8th, 2016

The Hebrew Bible is shaped by two extended portraits, of Moses and David. Of the two stories, Moses’ is better known, but the narrative of David is more psychologically complex and dramatically vivid. As they divide the great mountains (Sinai and Zion) and two dominant terrains (desert and land) between them, Moses and David represent, respectively, the giving of the law and the attaining of ultimate redemption through the line of the Messiah.

The story of David is less familiar, partly due to its placement in the book of Samuel instead of the Pentateuch. David’s story is intricate, incident-packed, and follows several different strands. Fascinating in all its parts, it requires some thought and time to weave it together. In some ways, therefore, David’s life is ripe for a novel. Skillful novels unfurl complicated stories and run a strong narrative line through them, helping the reader to understand their shape. Novels can also alter or supplement the original to help the reader understand its essential shape. Here, in Geraldine Brooks’s skillful and eloquent account of the life of David, rather than hint at the apparent hostility David’s brothers bear him, she has one of them accuse him of bestiality. There is no warrant for this in the biblical text, but it certainly does fix the animosity in the reader’s mind.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

The Next Administration’s Immigration Crisis National security must be much more than a sound bite. Michael Cutler

Posted By on February 8th, 2016

Immigration has finally emerged for the elections and the debates – particularly among the Republican candidates for the presidency. Donald Trump opened the floodgates about this issue when he talked about building a wall on the U.S./Mexican government and deporting the criminals entering the United States from other countries. During several debates Senators Cruz and Rubio have come to verbal blows over immigration accusing each other of being weak on immigration.

But immigration must be more that a slogan for a campaign and real solutions must be devised and then implemented. National security must be much more than a “sound bite”.

However, it is my view that most journalists and most supposedly “scientific” polls continue to suppress any meaningful discussion about immigration and its true significance. Pollsters and journalists claim the fear of terrorism is usually placed at the top of the list of concerns for Americans, followed by the economy. Immigration is often characterized as being considerably further down the list of issues Americans want addressed.

Immigration is a critical element in our war against terrorism.

Hiring many more ICE agents and focusing, at least initially on locating and arresting illegal aliens who are citizens of countries that are engaged in terrorism would achieve two important goals- shrink the “haystack” in which the deadly needles are hiding and cultivate informants within that tight-knit community by using our immigration laws as an effect “carrot and stick.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hindered by New Anti-Discrimination Laws, BDS May Increasingly Target U.S. Jews by Ben Cohen

Posted By on February 8th, 2016

2016 may well be remembered as the year that Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel finally died its death—in a clinical sense, at least.

Across the U.S., state legislatures are passing bills that will outlaw state authorities from investing public funds in, and entering into contracts with, companies and other entities that engage in a boycott of Israel. This doesn’t mean that engaging in a boycott of Israel is illegal, but for anyone who cares about their bottom line, the legislation should provide a powerful incentive against its adoption.

These anti-boycott bills should properly be seen as anti-discrimination measures, and welcomed on those grounds. No U.S. state should contract with entities that enforce discriminatory policies—and boycotting Israel in the expectation that doing so will contribute to the Jewish state’s demise is, by definition, an act of discrimination. Why should taxpayer funds subsidize such bigotry? Why should jobs and revenues be sacrificed in the promotion of hatred towards an entire nation?

As we’ve learned over several years, however, in the inverted world of the boycotters, this same hatred is regarded as love and this same discrimination is regarded as justified resistance. Hence the BDS movement’s depiction of the anti-boycott bills as a conspiracy of “special interests” aimed at crushing free speech for Palestinian advocates.

This is, of course, the sort of distortion that we have come to expect from the boycotters. The truth is that, unlike France, which in October 2015 determined that BDS, as a form of discrimination, is outlawed in speech and in action, in America the advocacy of a boycott of Israel remains protected speech. As the Lawfare Project pointed out in an incisive analysis of current objections to the anti-boycott bills, “Individual consumers, acting in their own individual capacities, cannot be punished for refusing to purchase Israeli products, regardless of motivation. Supporters of BDS are also free to stage protests, circulate petitions, and otherwise exercise their First Amendment rights to advocate for boycotts of Israel, Israeli goods, and Israeli persons.” Further, with regard to the specific allegation that the anti-boycott bills violate the First Amendment, the Lawfare Project counters that the statutory prohibitions apply only to business conduct that is discriminatory, and not “advocacy, picketing, or other forms of speech in furtherance of boycotting.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Will Israel’s Natural-Gas Fields Ever Get Developed? Arthur Herman

Posted By on February 8th, 2016

Tens of trillions of cubic feet of gas lie waiting offshore, with the potential to transform the world’s energy map and perhaps even stabilize the Middle East.

What a difference a year makes.

A year ago, the Israeli government was at complete loggerheads with an American company and its Israeli partner over the future of “Leviathan,” Israel’s massive offshore natural-gas reserve. The question was whether either of the two companies, Noble Energy of Houston and the Delek Group of Israel, would be allowed to participate in actually developing the field they had discovered five years earlier. And then, in August, with negotiations stalled, and no other candidates in sight, the Italian energy giant ENI announced the discovery, in Egyptian waters, of an even larger and more easily accessible gas field. Some energy experts were beginning to wonder if Leviathan would ever be developed at all.

At the same time, Israel’s relations with Turkey, formerly one of its closest allies, could not have become worse. Ever since Recep Tayyip Erdogan took office as Turkey’s prime minister in 2005, a diplomatic chasm opened between the two countries, exacerbated in 2010 when the Israeli navy boarded the Mavi Marmara, a blockade-running ship bound for Gaza, and by Erdogan’s galloping regional ambitions. The latter have been accompanied by Erdogan’s growing penchant, now as Turkey’s president, to vilify the Jewish state in extremist language mirroring that of Tehran, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

But then, this past December, things suddenly reversed on both fronts. Cutting through the Gordian knot of a half-decade’s negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that, despite Knesset opposition, his office had reached a final deal with Noble Energy. Only a day later, the Wall Street Journal reported that top-secret talks in Switzerland had resulted in a diplomatic breakthrough: normal relations were being restored between Turkey and Israel. On his way back from a visit to Riyadh, Erdogan remarked to a reporter, “Israel and Turkey need each other.”

Provided Ankara doesn’t back out at the last minute, and provided Israel’s supreme court doesn’t overturn Netanyahu’s deal with Noble and Delek, these two breakthroughs—a double-play for Israel’s prime minister—could begin to change the energy landscape of the eastern Mediterranean and the entire Middle East.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Infiltrates the West Bank by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on February 8th, 2016

“The Patient Ones,” Al-Sabireen, are seeking Palestinians as a group to become an Iranian proxy in the region, and redoubling efforts to eliminate the “Zionist entity” and replace it with an Islamist empire.

Loosed from its sanction-based constrictions, Iran is now free to underwrite terror throughout the region. This is precisely what is happening in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Iran’s infiltration of the West Bank should serve as a red flag not only for Israel, but also for the U.S. and other Western powers. An Israeli pullout, leading to a Hamas takeover of the West Bank, has been a subject of concern. Now, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians are wondering if such a vacuum will provide an opening for Iran.

Emboldened by its nuclear deal with the world powers, Iran is already seeking to enfold in its embracing wings the Arab and Islamic region.

Iran’s capacity for intrusions having been starved by years of sanctions. Now, with the lifting of sanctions, Tehran’s appetite for encroachment has been newly whetted — and its bull’s-eye is the West Bank.

Iran has, in fact, been meddling for many years in the internal affairs of the greater region. It has been party to the civil wars in Yemen and Syria, and, through the Shiite Muslims living there, continues actively to undermine the stability of many Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

The lives of both the Lebanese and the Palestinians are also subject to the ambitions of Iran, which fills the coffers of groups such as Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Until recently, Iran held pride of place as Hamas’s primary patron in the Gaza Strip. It was thanks to Iran’s support that Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, held hostage nearly two million Palestinians living in the Strip. Moreover, this backing enabled Hamas to smuggle all manner of weapons into the Gaza Strip, including rockets and missiles that were aimed and fired at Israel.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Taiwan’s Election: Out of the ‘Strait’ Jacket Tsai Ing-wen, the president-elect, hopes to diversify away from shaky China. By Therese Shaheen

Posted By on February 8th, 2016

The January 16 Taiwan elections were the latest evidence of a new reality in Asia: Taiwan’s cross-strait neighbor, China, is in significant decline. Replacing a government that made integration with China its chief priority, incoming Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen asked for and received a mandate to reform her island nation’s economy, precisely because the close links established by her predecessor have been dragging down the island nation as the depths of China’s economic challenges become obvious.

During the Great Recession, the belief among analysts, economists, and corporate leaders in the advanced economies was that China was the engine that would pull the world through. China’s sharply increasing inflationary policies did give some lift to the region, but one need only look at Taiwan’s sharp decline in economic growth over the past year to see that, as China’s economy has slowed under the weight of public debt that increased dramatically during and since the crisis, the situation has turned around: China’s slowdown imperils global growth, something that is immediately evident in Taiwan.

Tsai’s victory was complete, and there should be no doubt that the voters intended to send a clear message. In a three-way race, she carried 56 percent of the vote. She had coattails, too. Her Democratic People’s party earned its first majority in Taiwan’s parliament, the unicameral Legislative Yuan, gaining 28 seats to win 68 of 113 seats overall. Her predecessor’s party, long seen as the most accommodating to Beijing, lost 29 seats in a rout.

What is the message? Tsai’s DPP has been painted by Beijing — and many China analysts in the U.S. and elsewhere — as a pro-independence party. While Taiwan’s last (and only other) DPP president, Chen Shui-bian, was considered suspect by the U.S. for his pro-independence leanings, that is not Tsai’s message or mandate.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Uses of Marco Rubio By Kevin D. Williamson

Posted By on February 8th, 2016

As much as I despise John Kasich’s notion that the president is some sort of national father, there is some historical precedent for the idea: Consider the nature of the monument they built to George Washington. Some people demand that a president not only share their values but act as a vessel of them, serving as a kind of moral mascot for the country or even a personification of it.

Not me. I just want to know what I can use him for.

Which brings us to Senator Marco Rubio. Some conservatives, including some whose opinions I respect, simply cannot forgive Rubio for his attempt to forge a bipartisan immigration deal with the so-called Gang of Eight. To be sure, the Gang of Eight bill was a bad one: Bad enough that Rubio later said if an identical bill were brought up in the future, he’d vote against it. But it isn’t just the bill: Some conservatives are mad that Rubio would attempt to cooperate with Democrats at all, that he’d be in the same room with Chuck Schumer. These are the conservatives who need their candidate to personify something, rather than to be of use.

I think Rubio could prove very useful.

Rubio was of course wildly wrong in that immigration debate, and he was pretty sneaky, too, as Mark Krikorian has argued. But if your worry is that President Rubio is going to sign an amnesty bill in March of 2017, you should worry about something else: Barring some dramatic and unforeseeable development, there’s going to be a Republican House next year, it’s going to be a conservative one backed up by a lot of conservatives in the Senate, and our hypothetical President Rubio is never going to sign that amnesty bill because Congress isn’t ever going to send it to him, even if he were so inclined – which I don’t think he is.

How did Rubio get it so wrong on immigration? Or, more precisely, why? You have to understand the job he was interviewing for – which wasn’t president.