RUTHFULLY YOURS

It is a few weeks past 140 years since a boy christened Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was delivered at England’s Blenheim Palace. He survived the trenches of France, political reversals, and even being struck by a New York City driver to lead Britain from its greatest peril in May 1940 to victory over Nazism five years later. This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of his death. In the age of radical Islam, can we draw inspiration from his career?

Yes, but only, it seems, from his finest hour. Until his moment arrived in 1940, Churchill was frequently dismissed even within his own party as an imperialist adventurer with baroque ambitions, a throwback to an earlier epoch, an author of military debacles, out of touch with a supposedly emergent world of international comity. In short, he was regarded then as most contemporary liberals might view Ted Cruz or Benjamin Netanyahu today.

If Iran wanted to make a nuclear deal with the West, they would have made it by now. It doesn’t take years and years to do a deal. The leaders of the West and the whole “Progressive” movement are delusional to even think Iran wants a deal.

When Iranian demonstrators chant “Death to America” (and, of course, “Death to Israel”) they are not singing a love song. It is a song of death: the death of individuals and the death of our culture.

In the 1930’s, Europe allowed Germany to rearm contrary to the Treaty of Versailles. Germany built combat air planes, tanks, battleships and submarines. It is different this time. Now, the Jihadists are building rockets and nuclear bombs which cause more destruction and kill more people for less money than old-fashioned conventional weapons.

Iran’s new rocket said to be inter-continental – able to hit the United States

Op-ed: The time has come for Israel to throw off the constraints of adhering to politically correct policies that are clearly detrimental to its continued existence and start fighting for its survival. With Israeli elections quickly approaching, it’s a near certainty based upon historical precedents that we’ll soon be hearing assorted domestic and international voices emphasizing the need to restart negotiations with the Arabs as soon as the next government is formed. Still further and based upon a 20-year old broken record that never seems to stop, we’ll once again be told that in the face of the growing uncertainty in the region a breakthrough in the talks with the Arabs is vital for the continued existence of the Jewish state.

Therefore, in order to prevent needless resources being devoted to yet another attempt at advancing the two-state track, it’s long overdue that the obvious is publicly stated: The king, otherwise known as the two-state solution, has no clothes. In other words, there is no diplomatic solution.

In a recent op-ed in one of the Hebrew dailies, titled “Why I called on Europe to recognize Palestine,” revered novelist A. B. Yehoshua offered explanations for his joining some 1,000 other Israelis in supporting European parliamentary resolutions recognizing a Palestinian state with borders along the pre-1967 armistice lines.

Yehoshua declared, “The first reason stems from the desire to signal to the moderate Palestinian camp not to give up on the peace process. … The second reason stems from the growing fear … that the road to the two-state solution is being blocked because of Israel’s unceasing settlements in the territories.”

But neither rationale holds up under even minimal scrutiny.

No doubt there are moderate Palestinians that would be happy to live in peace alongside Israel, but polls of Palestinian opinion demonstrate that they are a dwindling minority. In part this is due to the actions of Yehoshua and his associates in what he characterizes as “the peace camp,” who, two decades ago, pushed Israel to embrace Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization as its peace partner. After two decades of indoctrination by the media, mosques and schools controlled by Arafat and his heirs, indoctrination declaring that the Jews are merely colonial usurpers, that the Zionist state is illegitimate, and that it is the duty of Palestinians to dedicate themselves to its demise, moderates are a much rarer phenomenon.

President Obama is cutting short his visit to India to stop in Saudi Arabia to pay his respects on the death of King Abdullah and no doubt try to repair what has been a fraying relationship. It’s a good move, but he’ll need an explanation for the latest stories that the U.S. is suddenly prepared to live with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

For several years Mr. Obama has said Assad must leave power as part of ending Syria’s four-year civil war. But Administration sources are now leaking that the President thinks Assad and his Alawite regime may be part of the solution. The thinking seems to be that the priority now is defeating Islamic State, and Assad is an ally in that effort.
Where to begin? As the Saudis will point out, the first problem with these leaks is that they send a confusing signal about U.S. policy. When he unrolled his anti-Islamic State (ISIS) strategy in September, Mr. Obama promised to support anti-Assad rebels who aren’t aligned with ISIS or al Qaeda. This is hard enough given Mr. Obama’s failure to protect the rebels against Assad’s air force. But it will be impossible if the world thinks Assad is our man in Damascus after all.

The former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, has called on Israel’s leaders “to stay out of America’s politics” – just hours after he urged the United States to interfere in Israel’s politics, something he himself has been doing for years.

The latest events began with John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. The New York Times quickly sought a comment from Indyk, who is constantly quoted by the news media since the conclusion of his singularly unsuccessful term as the Obama Administration’s chief envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

No, I do not wake up in the morning with that question foremost on my mind. But rarely does a day pass without my putting the question to myself: Why does President Barak Hussein Obama still command the support of half the electorate?

Of course, one immediate response could be that the polls – given that they are largely in the hands of the Liberal Establishment who form the base of his support – may just not be accurate. But they are so consistent, sometimes reflecting a little downward movement in moments of particular crisis, that one pretty much has to accept that is the judgment to half the population which thinks at all politically, that is, that he is doing an adequate job after six years in training.

“The threat we face is existential. Continuing ignorance of its nature on the part of western political leaders, the intelligentsia and assorted useful idiots will be our undoing. We better ‘get busy’ learning and living or ‘get busy’ deferring and dying. Think it can’t happen? Ask the Jews.”

It comes as no surprise that tolerant and pacific followers of the Prophet opt for the most part to stay mum. Knowing full well that their sacred texts extol violence, which leaves little room for doctrinal debate, they are also aware that the creed’s more ardent acolytes have knives at the ready.

Islam has five pillars. They are inwardly focussed and innocuous taken in isolation. The problem lies elsewhere — in the Koran and Hadiths and in the widespread preaching of intolerance, domination and violence which are integral and endemic to that scripture.

Apologists for Muslims and Islam also have five pillars. These are not innocuous. They support a flaccid and vacillating response to a dire threat. In no strict order, these pillars are as follows.

Terrorism has nothing to do with true Islam.
The vast majority of Muslims are moderate.
Western wrong-doing and war-mongering inspires terrorism.
Alienation, disadvantage, and/or mental instability are often behind home-grown terrorism.
Muslims suffer most from Islamic terrorism.

‘The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1788. Changing just one word of this eternal truth renders it even more urgent: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and militant Islam to gain ground.”

From virtually every direction, radical Islam is on the march, spreading havoc and horror in its path. Simultaneously, the civilized world contorts itself nearly beyond recognition to accommodate Muslim fundamentalism. This is a formula for pain.

Just days after Islamic terrorists murdered 17 innocent Parisians in the Charlie Hebdo and kosher-grocery attacks, two militant Muslims in Belgium were killed and a third was injured in a gun battle with police.

The betrayal of Taiwan is a stain on the legacy of Nixon/Kissinger’s vaunted mission to China….culminating with Jimmy Carter’s removal of the American embassy in Taipei to Peking, ducking the American obligation to a growing democracy to kow tow to a Maoist terror state….rsk

In the president’s State of the Union speech, he patted himself on the back for establishing diplomatic ties with Cuba’s dictators — a decision, he said, that has “extend[ed] the hand of friendship to the Cuban people.” Never mind that the Cuban people have no say in the government up to which Mr. Obama is cozying — but if the president is in a friendly mood, there’s a different island nation that could really use American diplomatic ties. One whose government derives its power from the consent of the governed. It’s time we re-recognized Taiwan.