RUTHFULLY YOURS

Israel’s March 17, 2015 general election shed light on the increasingly local – rather than national/regional – order of priorities of the 1.7 million Israeli Arabs; the intensifying Israelization/localization of their self-determination; the widening cultural/ideological gap between Israeli Arabs and the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza; the deep fragmentation within Israeli Arabs (despite the current Joint Arab Slate); their growing appreciation of Israel’s civil liberties and expanded trust in Israel’s political system; and the gap between the worldview of a growing number of Israeli Arabs on the one hand and most Arab Knesset Members on the other hand.

According to a February, 17, 2015 public opinion survey, conducted by Tel Aviv University’s researcher Arik Rudnitzky, a project manager at the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation, the top priorities of Israeli Arabs are employment, education, healthcare, neighborhood crime and women’s rights (43%), ahead of enhancing the status of the Arab community in Israel (28.1%) and the Israel-Palestinian conflict/negotiation (19%).

Oily Mr. Baker is a hard core antagonist of Israel…. In his 1952 senior thesis at Princeton University Baker defended the 1940’s anti-Zionist policies of British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and lambasted “the irrational and extreme behavior of American Zionists [in the 1940’s]” and dismissed U.S. support for Jewish statehood in 1947 as nothing more than a case of “the vote-conscious American Government back[ing] its Zionists.”In more recent years, Baker reportedly referred to pro-Israel members of Congress as “the little Knesset,” according to the Los Angeles Times…..rsk

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III is to deliver the keynote at this weekend’s J Street conference, a gathering of left-wing activists opposed to the Israeli government and to recently re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Baker, who served under President George H.W. Bush, is also advising Gov. Jeb Bush on foreign policy in his presidential effort–at Bush’s invitation. Baker is considered hostile to Israel and is controversial among Jewish voters.As the Algemeiner notes:

Baker is of course infamous for reportedly saying in private conversation, while George HW Bush’s secretary of state, “F**k the Jews, they didn’t vote for us anyway.”

On Thursday, the press announced that the Obama administration would fully consider abandoning Israel in international bodies like the United Nations.

According to reports, President Obama finally called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to congratulate him – but the “congratulations” was actually a lecture directed at forcing Netanyahu to surrender to the terrorist Palestinian regime.

For some odd reason, many in the media and Congress reacted with surprise to Obama’s supposedly sudden turn on Israel. The media, in an attempt to defend Obama’s radicalism, pretend that Netanyahu’s comments in the late stages of his campaign prompted Obama’s anti-Israel action.

But, in truth, this is the culmination of a longtime Obama policy of destroying the US-Israel relationship; Obama has spent his entire life surrounded by haters of Israel, from former Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman Rashid Khalidi to former Jimmy Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, pro-Hamas negotiator Robert Malley to UN Ambassador Samantha Power (who once suggested using American troops to guard Palestinians from Israelis), Jeremiah Wright (who said “Them Jews ain’t going to let him talk to me”) to Professor Derrick Bell (“Jewish neoconservative racists…are undermining blacks in every way they can”). Here is a concise timeline, with credit to Dan Senor and the editors of Commentary:

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4531910/senators-marco-rubio-tom-cotton-us-israel-relations

They said he couldn’t do it.

“They” being the mainstream media mouthpieces in the United States, Europe and Israel. According to our enlightened scribes and talking heads, Benjamin Netanyahu was a goner and Israel was about to welcome in a new left-wing government that would be more pliable to the Obama administration’s relentless demands on the Jewish State.

Only things didn’t work according to the global Left’s script–in fact, it was quite the opposite. Netanyahu’s Likud party won a resounding victory over Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union that left no doubt that Bibi would be the man to lead Israel through the very rough waters ahead: from ISIS to Hamas to Hezbollah to the global “BDS” movement to a rise in anti-Semitism worldwide to a hostile “international community”–led by the Obama administration–demanding the quick establishment of a Palestinian state, to of course, Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

That’s a tall order, to say the least–yet Netanyahu is the right man for this particularly perilous period in Israel’s history.

It’s got nothing to do with American principles and everything to do with partisanship

David Harsanyi is a Senior Editor at The Federalist
Israel is a liberal nation—in the best sense of the word—but it’s not a leftist one. And for increasing numbers of Democrats, the center-right consensus of Israeli politics is unacceptable, immoral and bigoted— incompatible with their conception of American values. Or so they say.

This is bad news, because Likud looks like it’s going to win around 30 seats. If the numbers hold, Benjamin Netanyahu, despite the best efforts of the president and his allies, will likely remain prime minister. Bougie Herzog will, no doubt, have a bright future in the opposition.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Paul Krugman had already declared Likud’s impeding fall was all about inequality. (What isn’t, right?) Slate proposed that Likud’s looming death would be about housing, or maybe it was racism. Mostly, though, Netanyahu was going to lose because he has a nasty habit of challenging the progressive worldview of Barack Obama, which offends many people, according to the New York Times. And really, is there any bigger sin?

The Obama White House is enlisting all its allies to make its case for the bad nuclear deal with Iran that, say administration allies, is better than no deal. The alternative, they claim, is war. And to what purpose? Many nuclear experts, Middle East analysts, and journalists argue, after all, that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would set the program back only two to three years. Indeed, Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, asserted last week that setting Iran back “only a couple of years” is “the best-case scenario.”

However, it’s not entirely clear where that assessment—a couple years, or a few years, or two to three years—comes from. “When U.S. government officials have given specific estimates, like two to three years, these are for an Israeli attack on Iranian facilities,” says Matthew Kroenig, a former Pentagon official. “They’re not talking about a U.S. attack, which would obviously be more than what an Israeli strike could accomplish.”

Even then, says Kroenig, author of A Time to Attack: The Looming Iranian Nuclear Threat, these estimates regarding American strikes are based on worst-case scenarios. “That is, if after a strike Iran decides to rebuild immediately, encounters no significant difficulties, and is able to get whatever it needs in the international marketplace. But that’s hard to imagine.”

Iran is an opportunity, not a threat; it’s a potential partner, not an enemy.

For more than six years, this view of the Islamic Republic has guided the decisions made by Barack Obama. The president has repeatedly declared his eagerness to welcome Iran into the community of civilized nations. His words sometimes suggest that Iran has a choice to make, that their acceptance into this mythical community depends in some way on their behavior. But there’s little over those six years to indicate that he means it. Instead, Obama has made clear that in his eagerness to salvage anything from his tattered foreign policy legacy he is willing to gamble the security of the United States on a blind and irrational hope that Iran will someday change for the better.

To this end, he has abandoned more than three decades of bipartisan U.S. policy towards Iran—on its nuclear weapons program, on its regional ambitions, and on its support for terrorism.

These are radical departures. The Obama administration’s goal in nuclear talks is no longer preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons at all costs, but managing the process by which Iran becomes a nuclear state. The Obama administration no longer seeks to thwart Iran’s expansionist aims in the region and in many respects is now facilitating its aggression. On terrorism, the Obama administration has cast aside inconvenient realities about Iran’s support for jihadists of all kinds and has chosen instead to pretend that to the extent there any longer exists a war on terror, Washington and Tehran are on the same side.

Tough topics demand a special degree of adroit evasion by those who would prefer unfortunate truths be swept from view. If we are ever to scotch, say, bloody jihad’s appeal to a disconcerting number of Muslim youths, those clouds of obfuscation must be blown away.

Let us begin thus:

Blacks in the US are about six times more likely to be murdered than whites. Over ninety percent of blacks murdered are murdered by blacks.

Evil people are intent on persuading disaffected young people to become radical Islamists. Disaffected young Muslims are falling prey to Islamic radicalisation.

If you were to focus only on the first sentence in each of the above two paragraphs you might miss some vital information. And no help is likely to be forthcoming from most of the commentariat. Their interest is not so much in presenting the objective truth as it is pushing a post-modern political agenda. I am at a loss to know their innermost passions. I have previously speculated that they are victims of alien body snatchers. But I have no hard evidence for that.

George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language” postulated that the language had become “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish”. Perceptively, he also thought that the poor state of the language made it easier to have foolish thoughts. ‘A vicious circle,’ comes to mind, to use a cliché he might have deplored. Ugly and inaccurate language wasn’t the end of it. Dishonesty was also in his sights. He gave examples of statements in his day that were “almost always made with intent to deceive”. He proposed improving the use of the language as a “necessary first step towards political regeneration”.

Coffee, Tea, or an ‘Honest’ Conversation about Race? Jonah Goldberg

Starbucks’s new campaign is yet another sign of the relentless politicization of American culture.
Starbucks is easy to make fun of on its best days, what with the pretentious names for everyday items, never mind the ridiculously high prices for those same everyday items. Even the cashiers have fancy monikers — “barista.” The snootiness is by design, of course. And you can make fun of it all you want; it’s worked. Using many of the same techniques realtors have employed to hawk borderline tenements as unique gateways to the urban experience, Starbucks has managed to educate the consumer that it’s okay to pay through the nose for what used to be a “cuppa joe.” Even that slightly burnt taste is spun as a feature, not a bug. We’re subtly informed, “That’s the way it’s supposed to taste, you philistine.”
Now, Starbucks has decided to lean into the mockery. Howard Schultz, the company’s CEO, is launching a new initiative called “Race Together.” Starting March 20, baristas will be encouraged to write “Race Together” on coffee cups “to facilitate a conversation between you and our customers” about their “race journey.” It’s ironic. The Obama years were supposed to usher in an era of racial harmony. That didn’t happen — which presumably is why Schultz feels the need to help mend our racial wounds. What has happened, however, is that hordes of college graduates, unable to find jobs suitable to their degrees, have ended up toiling away at places like Starbucks. It’s kind of ingenious. Since sociology majors can’t find relevant jobs, Schultz is making the jobs they have relevant to their majors. If this becomes a trend, maybe my dog walkers will start reciting Proust in French on their perambulations. As a business decision, I find the whole thing bizarre. If I don’t have my coffee in the morning, I get a headache that feels like a Hell’s Angel is trying to press his meaty thumb through my forehead. This is not the most propitious moment to engage me in a conversation about my “race journey.”