RUTHFULLY YOURS

Publication day is a proud moment for most authors but it turned into a nightmare for Michel Houellebecq. The French writer’s sixth novel, “Submission,” which will be published in the U.S. next month, had been heralded as his most topical. The book imagines France in 2022 under the rule of an Islamic political party headed by a Muslim president.

On Jan. 7, the day “Submission” came out in France, the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo ran a caricature of the author on its cover. Bleary-eyed and sporting a wizard’s hat, the novelist was portrayed as a lugubrious prophet spouting asides like “In 2015 I’ll lose my teeth” or, more pointedly, “In 2022 I’ll observe Ramadan.”

On the same day two gunmen of the Islamic faith attacked the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people. Mr. Houellebecq, who lost a friend—the economist Bernard Maris—in the attack, has been under round-the-clock police protection since.

The 59-year-old author, who declined to be interviewed for this article, first ran afoul of Islam in 2001 when he described it to the French magazine Lire as “the dumbest religion.” After saying this he was taken to court by four Muslim associations “for insulting a group of people due to their religious beliefs.” The charges were dismissed.

His third novel “Platform,” which was published in 2001, foreshadows today’s headlines. The book features an Islamophobic anti-hero, Michel, who becomes a sex tourist in Thailand. “I had a vision of migratory flows crisscrossing Europe like blood vessels,” the protagonist says. “Muslims appeared as clots which were only slowly reabsorbed.”

Doing its best to minimize damage to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, the State Department released news that new private server emails that were not turned over by her earlier had been discovered. Bradley Klapper of the AP writes:

The Obama administration has discovered a chain of emails that Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to turn over when she provided what she said was the full record of work-related correspondence as secretary of state, officials told The Associated Press Friday, adding to the growing questions related to the Democratic presidential front-runner’s unusual usage of a private email account and server while in government.

The messages were exchanged with retired Gen. David Petraeus when he headed the military’s U.S. Central Command, responsible for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They began before Clinton entered office and continued into her first days at the State Department. They largely pertained to personnel matters and don’t appear to deal with highly classified material, officials said, but their existence challenges Clinton’s claim that she has handed over the entirety of her work emails from the account.

There are actually two Hillary Clinton lies revealed by this release. One is that the sworn statement she submitted to a court that she handed over all emails is false. (But there may be Clintonian wiggle room in that statement – see below). The second is a serious lie she propagated about when she started using her private server. Reuters explains:

Ben Carson’s recent statements about Islam and the U.S. presidency have garnered a wide array of commentary. Most of the remarks have been quite critical, with even some conservatives taking Carson to task. Predictably, many of those critical of Carson point to the Constitution’s “no religious test” clause. Also predictably, many who are making this argument completely ignore that Carson was not advocating for such a “religious test.”

Interestingly, every one of the American colonies did have a “religious test.” What’s more, these tests continued long after the United States was formed. The U.S. Constitution went into effect on June 21, 1788. An excerpt (Article 7, Section 2) from the 1796 Tennessee constitution reads, “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State.”

Article 11, Section 4 of the very same constitution says, “[N]o religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state.” Within the same state constitution, there resides a religious requirement for holding public office along with a prohibition against a “religious test.” Therefore, we can conclude that, in the era of our founding, many believed that requiring a belief in God for elected officials did not constitute a “religious test.”

To see the emptiness of liberal/Democrat logic, try the following at the next dinner party.

If I vote for Ben Carson, am I still guilty of being a racist, considering the way you hurled that accusation at me when I told you that Obama was a very bad choice because of his ideology and his acquaintances?

If I vote for Carly Fiorina, am I still guilty of a war on women, given that this woman has broken through the glass ceiling, overcome a deadly disease, and still come out fighting?

If you insist that the federal government fund Planned Parenthood even after the uncovering of illegal sales of aborted body parts, I am confused. Wasn’t Obamacare supposed to provide universal coverage for all Americans? Why, then, does the federal government need to continue funding Planned Parenthood?

If you vote for Bernie Sanders, will your house in Chappaqua be available for the government’s use if Sanders decides you have no right to private property anymore? As Thomas Sowell has opined, “what exactly is [the] fair share of what someone else has worked for?”

For the environmentalists who maintain that we have no right to use trees to produce paper towels for bathroom use, did you know that “dryers use electricity which produces a ‘carbon footprint’ that liberals link to global warming”?

“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15-16)

Major newspaper editorials and some columnists have their knickers in a twist over remarks by Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson. Appearing last Sunday on “Meet the Press,” Carson was asked by host Chuck Todd whether he believes Islam is consistent with the Constitution. “No, I don’t,” he said. “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.” Asked whether he could vote for a Muslim for Congress, Carson said Congress is a different story, but that it “depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are.”

Carson critics are quick to mention Article VI of the Constitution, which prohibits a “religious test” for office, but that means no one can be barred from office because of their faith; it does not and could not prevent citizens from voting for or against someone for religious reasons.

Hamburg city officials say that owners of vacant real estate have refused to make their property available to the city on a voluntary basis, and thus the city should be given the right to take it by force.

“The proposed confiscation of private land and buildings is a massive attack on the property rights of the citizens of Hamburg. It amounts to an expropriation by the state [and a] “law of intimidation.” — André Trepoll, Christian Democratic Union.

“If a property is confiscated… a lawsuit to determine the legality of the confiscation can only be resolved after the fact. But the accommodation would succeed in any event.” — Tübingen Mayor Boris Palmer.

Officials in North Rhine-Westphalia seized a private resort in the town of Olpe to provide housing for up to 400 migrants

“I find it impossible to understand how the city can treat me like this. I have struggled through life with grief and sorrow and now I get an eviction notice. It is a like a kick in the stomach.” — Bettina Halbey, 51-year-old nurse, after being notified that she must vacate her apartment so that migrants can move in.

The landlord is being paid 552 euros ($617) for each migrant he takes in. By cramming as many migrants into his property as possible, he stands to receive payments of more than 2 million euros a year from government.

We all know that Jewish life on many North American and European college campuses today has become a living hell: Jewish students are lambasted on all sides for affiliating proudly with the Jewish people and with its revived, historic homeland, the State of Israel. This predicament, although more severe than ever, is not a new one.

I furiously scribbled the following essay in the space of a single evening and night in the Fall of 1990 while attending graduate school at Columbia University, and I re-issue it here in the hope that it may furnish succor — and throw up a challenge — to our young comrades in arms battling it out on the front lines from Berkeley to Brown.

The starting point of the essay involved a lecture delivered on the Columbia campus by a professor of African studies to whom a number of anti-Semitic slurs had been attributed. The piece pulls no punches and will unquestionably anger some readers, but hey: I’m used to that…

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Last Monday night Leonard Jeffries came to Columbia, and I went to hear him speak. Seldom have I experienced such a welling-up of nausea, such an onslaught of disgust, such a feeling of helplessness in the face of unbounded ignorance, such a feeling of hopelessness for the predicament of my people, as I did that night. Yet strange to say, all those gut-wrenching, heart-searing emotions converged upon me before the esteemed professor began his demagogic discourse, indeed, before I even entered Ferris Booth Hall. For it was there, standing in line on that building’s patio, that I had the misfortune to witness one of the most saddening and despair-inducing spectacles I have seen in a good while.

There on the grass opposite were my fellow Jews, pleading with the crowd to understand that hating Jews is bad, and that (even worse) it has “no place in multiculturalism.” They were there “to express our anger, and our fear” (our fear!). As I listened to these members of my supposedly proud family begging the gentiles (who for the most part ignored them, busy chatting away amiably enough): “We appeal to you, look into our faces, see our pain,” my revulsion soared to unprecedented heights; as I watched these representatives of my supposedly creative community standing silently (!) behind a fence (!!) holding up signs rehearsing the same old useless platitudes, I felt ashamed; and when I heard the pathetically comical “dialogue” between one group of retreating Jews half-heartedly crying, “We want Jeffries fired!” (quite the maximalists, aren’t we?) and another group frenziedly hushing them (no doubt the chant was deemed inconducive to the all important “image” the second group was so “responsibly” and “moderately” seeking to evoke — after all, the “Spectator” might get the wrong idea!) — when my ears caught this finale of idiocy, which produced its share of chuckles and smirks from those standing in line, I confess that I bowed my head and thanked the Lord that next year I will live in Jerusalem forever, and never again have to subject myself to the flagrant manifestations of the ever-new lows to which some diaspora Jews will descend.

1. The US connection: Columbus Day is celebrated around Sukkot. According to “Columbus Then and Now” (Miles Davidson, 1997, p. 268), Columbus arrived in America on Friday afternoon, October 12, 1492, the 21st day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, the Jewish year 5235, the 7th day of Sukkot, Hosha’na’ Rabbah, a day of universal deliverance and miracles. Hosha’na’ Rabbah is celebrated 26 days following the beginning of the Creation, and 26 is the numerical value of Jehovah (יהוה). Hosha’ (הושע) is the Hebrew word for “deliverance” and Na’ (נא) is the Hebrew word for “please.” The numerical value of Na’ is 51 (נ=50 and א=1), and Hosha’na’ Rabbah is celebrated on the 51st day following Moses’ ascension to Mt. Sinai, which marks the conclusion of the repentance process (of Yom Kippur).

2. Sukkot – the 3rd Jewish pilgrimage, following Passover and Shavou’ot (Pentecost) – is a universal holiday, inviting all peoples to come on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as expressed in the reading (Haftarah) of Zechariah 14: 16-19 on the first day of Sukkot: “Then, the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up [to Jerusalem] every year to worship the Lord Almighty and to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles.” According to the Sukkah tractate of the Mishnah (the oral Torah), the 70 sacrificial bulls of Sukkot represent the pilgrimage of 70 nations to Jerusalem; a demonstration of universal solidarity and comity. Sukkot expresses the yearning for universal peace, highlighting the Sukkah of Shalom (peace). Shalom is also one of the names of God. Shalem (שלם) – wholesome and complete in Hebrew – is the ancient name of Jerusalem and of 32 towns (Salem) in the USA.

I presume that I am to feel honored that a Jew, one Roger Cohen, during the break from synagogue services in London on Yom Kippur this year, penned, without breaking his fast, an op-ed for the New York Times entitled “Jews as Far as Possible” the whole point of which was to focus on my residency in Shiloh and to defame me as a “Messianic Jewish settler”.

His title originates in a phrase of Maimonides he quotes:

“We have freed ourselves of our previous deeds, have cast them behind our backs, and removed them from us as far as possible.”

The phrase is from Maimonides’ “Guide for the Perplexed”, Book Three, Chapter 46 in discussing the sacrificial goat to be sent off to Azazel:these ceremonies are of a symbolic character, and serve to impress men with a certain idea, and to induce them to repent; as if to say, we have freed ourselves of our previous deeds, have cast them behind our backs, and removed them from us as far as possible.

Cohen may have seen it in Rabbi Sacks’ April article. Cohen’s conclusion is that

Jews, as I said, are a practical people. Their interest is in the feasible not in magic wands.Possibly short of words, he again quotes, this time Stefan Zweig, who defined Jews as“the ever-recurring — since Egypt — community of expulsion,”

So short of words was Cohen we know because his op-ed of last October carries the same theme and the same title, The Community of Expulsion. At that High Holiday season he was upset that his Rabbi had not mentioned the Gaza hostilities of last summer. Zweig’s quotation is found in his memoir sent to his publisher a few months before doing what, presumably, Cohen perhaps thinks as practical: he and his wife committed suicide. His Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday, in which you can read this: “The real determination of the Jew is to rise to a higher cultural plane in the intel­lectual world.”) reflects at one point on the situation the Jews of Austria found themselves during the Hitler ascendancy and the persecution that followed and it readsonly now, for the first time in hundreds of years, the Jews were forced into a community of interest to which they had long ceased to be sensitive, the ever-recurring — since Egypt — community of expulsion. But why this fate for them and always for them alone? What was the reason, the sense, the aim of this senseless persecution? They were driven out of lands but without a land to go to.”

“As heaven knows, good cannot overcome evil unless both are acknowledged and only one fought for.”

As his five-day visit to the United States comes to an end, Pope Francis continues to receive the undivided attention of audiences as major in number as in stature.
It is not clear whether the head of the Holy See is worried about the danger of succumbing to the sin of pride from having his ring kissed so readily by so many illustrious figures.
Something for which the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church ought to hang his head in shame, however, is his repeated sins of omission.
While Christians across the Middle East are being terrorized, tortured, sold into slavery and slaughtered, the pope spoke before the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, at Ground Zero and other venues about peace and justice.