A case for Israel: Rooted in more than security

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Tzipi Hotovely, Israel's new deputy foreign minister: "It is
important to say that this country is ours, all of it. We didn't
come here to apologize for that."

Noses went out of joint and knickers got in a twist when Israel's new deputy foreign minister delivered her inaugural speech to the Jewish state's diplomatic corps.

"We need to get back to the basic truth of our right to this land," said Tzipi Hotovely, who is running the foreign ministry's day-to-day operations, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retains the title of foreign minister.

The land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, she declared, and their claim to it is as old as the Bible. "It's important to say this" when making Israel's case before the world, and not to focus solely on Israel's security interests.

Of course security is a profound concern, Hotovely observed, but arguments grounded in justice, morality, and deep historical rights are stronger. She even quoted the medieval Jewish sage Rashi, who wrote that Genesis opens with God's creation of the world to preempt any subsequent charge that the Jewish claim to the land was without merit.

Needless to say, Hotovely's message was scorned on the left as primitive zealotry. "Her remarks raised eyebrows among many in the audience," the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. One diplomat said his colleagues "were in shock" at the suggestion that they should cite the Torah when advocating for Israel abroad.

Diplomacy is not Bible class. Yet why should Israel and its envoys shrink from making the fullest defense of Jewish rights in what was always the Jewish homeland? Though modern Zionism didn't arise as a political movement until the 1800s, the land of Israel has always been at the core of Jews' national consciousness.

Even during 19 centuries of exile, Jewish life in Israel (renamed "Palestine" by the Romans) never ceased. In all those years, no other people ever claimed the land as their country, or built it into their own nation-state.

Jewish sovereignty wasn't regained by downplaying the historical and religious bonds linking the Jews to the land. World leaders and opinion-makers didn't regard those links with patronizing disdain; many found them intensely compelling.

In 1891, alarmed by reports of Jews being massacred in Russia, hundreds of prominent Americans signed a petition urging the restoration of Palestine to Jewish rule.

"According to God's distribution of nations it is their home, an inalienable possession from which they were expelled by force," declared the petition, among whose signatories were the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the speaker of the House of Representatives, future President William McKinley, and scores of influential industrialists, bankers, educators, and journalists. (One of them was Charles H. Taylor, the first publisher of the Boston Globe).

Twenty-five years later, when Britain famously committed itself to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," its motives were not only strategic and pragmatic, but religious. Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour spoke feelingly of Jewish history. "I could tell you all the kings of Israel," Lloyd George said, recalling his school days, "but I doubt whether I could have named half a dozen of the kings of England."

President Woodrow Wilson, whose father was a Presbyterian minister, also endorsed the Zionist cause. "To think," he later exclaimed, "that I, the son of the manse, should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its people!" Still more enchanted with the revival of Jewish governance in the Jewish homeland was Harry Truman, whose lifelong study of the Bible strengthened his conviction that the Jews had a legitimate historical right to Palestine.

When the League of Nations set the terms of the Mandate for Palestine in 1922, it
unanimously recognized "the historical connection of the Jewish people with
Palestine" and the justice of "reconstituting their national home in that country."

The immemorial Jewish bond with the land is even enshrined in international law. When the League of Nations set the terms of the Mandate for Palestine in 1922, it unanimously recognized "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and the justice of "reconstituting their national home in that country."

It was essential, wrote Winston Churchill at the time, to stress that the Jews were "in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance," and that the Jewish national home there "be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection."

Israel has gained nothing from its unwillingness to vigorously assert the Jewish claim to the land as a matter of historical justice and biblical legitimacy. It has only made it easier for its enemies to promote a false narrative of Zionist aggression and illegal occupation.

Hotovely may have "raised eyebrows" in exhorting Israel's diplomats to focus unapologetically on Jewish rights and history, but the record is clear: Those are the arguments that have always gained the most traction.

To repeat: Diplomacy isn't Bible class. But the strongest case for Israel is rooted in something more transcendent than security. Even now, according to the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of American adults — and 55 percent of American Christians — believe that Jews have a God-given right to the land of Israel.

A backward superstition? On the contrary. The Jewish nation's ties to its homeland are an enduring element of the human story, and an asset that Israel underrates at its peril.

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Five things liberals should boycott

From the files of Michele Hickford, Editor-in-Chief at Allen B. West.com

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Iran’s leaders have reiterated their pledge to destroy Israel. The charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel and says in Article Seven: “Muslims will fight the Jews; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!”

On the campus of California State University at Fullerton, a discussion of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) was part of events scheduled during women’s history month.

BDS groups are dedicated to promoting nonviolent pressure toward Israel by boycotting university and cultural institutions that falsely promote “soft” images, when in reality they’re engaging in violent acts with Palestinians.

But while the BDS movement brings protests against the Israeli institutions designed to punish the government, it is also bringing with it the odious stench of anti-Semitism.

As promised, here’s a handy guide for all of those folks who support the BDS movement, with a little anti-Semitism thrown in. If you’re going to boycott Israel, you might as well go “whole hog” and boycott Jews!

1. Avoid barcode scanners and DVD players – it was Jewish American physicist Theodore Maiman who successfully fired the first laser.
2. If your heart stops at the airport, better not use one of those defibrillators or get a pacemaker installed afterwards. Jewish American cardiologist Paul Zoll was one of the pioneers in those technologies.
3. Love those stainless steel appliances? Oh no. German Jewish chemist Hans Goldschmidt developed the process by which carbon-free chromium could be produced in 1893.
4. Any movie with Steven Spielberg’s name on it. Duh.
5. And finally, stop using Google - It was invented by two Jews, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

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Obama attacks religion in America

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

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Americans tend to take the liberties spelled out in the Bill of Rights for granted.

This is especially true of freedom of religion in which the First Amendment protects “the free exercise thereof” while at the same time prohibiting “an establishment of religion” to ensure that neither a state nor the federal government can stipulate a specific religion as the “official” one.

The earliest Americans came here to avoid persecution for their beliefs and created a nation in which tolerance of other faiths was an established virtue.

All of the major religions of the world condemn homosexuality and prohibit same-sex marriage. While homosexuality has gained a measure of tolerance in America many if not most Americans do not accept same-sex marriage as a “right” that can be found in the U.S. Constitution.

In the March 9 edition of the National Review, one news item noted that “The sheer brazenness of President Obama’s dissembling on gay marriage—confirmed by David Axelrod in a new book—might gall even the most hard-bitten of cynics.”

“Obama, Axelrod writes, ‘was in favor of same-sex marriages during the first presidential campaign, even as (he) publicly said he only supported civil unions, not full marriages’, but he could not admit as much for fear of losing black churchgoers. Thus it was confirmed that the ‘change’ candidate had fallen back on a ‘sacred’ religious belief he claimed to be representing, in furtherance of a policy that he now openly describes as a ‘civil right.’ There is a word for this sort of conduct. But it is not ‘hope’.”

The word is “liar”, but after six years of Obama, anyone paying any attention knows that he lies routinely and constantly no matter what the topic may be.

He lied repeatedly to secure support for the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. Passed into law by Democratic Party votes—no Republicans voted for it—the so-called contraceptive mandate has created many problems for Christians and others who are pro-life. In a similar fashion, many people of faith oppose same-sex marriage.

A new book, “Religious Freedom in America: Constitutional Roots and Contemporary Challenges”, edited by Allen D. Hertzke of the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage, calls religion “an exceedingly messy area of constitutional law…because the boundaries of religion, state, and society are complex and ever shifting.”

For most Americans there is no shift in their view of marriage as a sacred rite exclusively between a man and woman. One can read the Old and New Testaments from start to finish and find no justification for same-sex marriage. From its earliest days civilization throughout the world has never deemed same-sex marriage lawful, but Americans are being told by its courts that the Constitution does.

The Founders who wrote the Constitution would be astonished to learn this.

As Mary Nussbaum wrote in the Summer 2009 edition of Dissent, “Government plays a key role in all three aspects of marriage. It confers and administers benefits. It seems, at least, to operate as an agent of recognition or the granting of dignity. And it forms alliances with religious bodies.”

“Clergy are always among those entitled to perform legally binding marriages. Religions may refuse to marry people who are eligible for state marriage and they may also agree to marry people who are ineligible for state marriage.

But much of the officially sanctioned marrying currently done in the United States is done on religious premises by religious personnel. What they are solemnizing (when there is a license granted by the state) is, however, not only a religious ritual, but also a public rite of passage, the entry into a privileged civic status.” (Emphasis added)

When the Defense of Marriage Act was being debated, Sen. Richard Byrd (D-WVA) said,

“throughout the annals of human experience, in dozens of civilizations and cultures of varying value systems, humanity has discovered that the permanent relationship between men and women is a keystone to the stability, strength, and health of human society—a relationship worthy of legal recognition and judicial protection.”

That is what’s at stake. Homosexuals have been offered “civil unions” granting them access to the government benefits that “marriage” provides, but they have regarded this as stigmatizing and degrading. They have insisted that society change and, for most who hold a strong religious faith, that is impossible for the reasons stated by Sen. Byrd.

Ms. Nussbaum concludes saying, “The future of marriage looks, in one way, a lot like its past. People will continue to unite, form families, have children, and, sometimes, split up.

What the Constitution dictates, however, is that whatever the state decides to do in this area will be done on a basis of equality. Government cannot exclude any group of citizens from the civil benefits or the expressive dignities of marriage without a compelling public interest.”

So, the 14th Amendment that guarantees the “equal protection of the law” will encompass the demand that citizens of the same sex can marry even if religions and those who see this as a threat to a well-ordered society disagree.

Religions in America, many of whom administer charities, maintain colleges and universities, and serve people of all faiths have encountered a world of problems following the passage of ObamaCare.

They are also being challenged in schools and academia, and being told that any form of public prayer is unacceptable.

Here are just a few examples:

In 2006, Boston’s Catholic Charities shut down its historical adoption program after the State of Massachusetts refused their “conscience accommodation” in its licensing requirements. The same year, Morristown, New York began prosecuting Amish home-builders for code violations.

In 2009, the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission ruled that Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina violated discrimination laws by not offering birth control in its health plan coverage. A family court in Laconia, New Hampshire ordered a Christian mother to stop home schooling her daughter because she “appeared to reflect her mother’s rigidity on questions of faith.”

In 2010, the Catholic Charities of Washington, D.C., shut down its foster care program because of mandates that violated church teaching. The following year three Illinois diocese adoption and foster care programs were shut down.

In 2011 Alabama law made it illegal for churches to serve undocumented immigrants, including baptisms, hearing confessions, anointing the sick, giving marriage counseling and providing Sunday school, Bible studies, or even providing Alcoholics Anonymous a place to meet.

In 2012 through 2014, facing huge fines for violating religious principles, more than 300 religious institutions and businesses filed lawsuits against the Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate.

As Hertzke noted, “A key measure of a free society, in sum, is the extent to which people are not forced to choose between sacred duties and citizenship privileges or obligations. This is what makes religious freedom foundational to the American constitutional order.”

In 1993 Congress seemed to have agreed. It passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which states that “government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a restrictive means of furthering” a “compelling government interest.” It was signed into law by President Clinton. Four years later, the Supreme Court struck down its core in Boerne v. Flores. It ruled that RFRA was unconstitutional when applied to state and local governments, but upheld it when applied to the federal government.

Issues such as ObamaCare’s contraception mandate and same-sex marriage raise vital questions about individual religious faith and the government’s right to determine societal standards.

The question of whether religion in America is losing the battle for historical and traditional moral standards is one that affects people of faith and the society as a whole.

Editor's Note: "Religious Freedom in America" is published by the University of Oklahoma Press ($24.95, softcover).

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Are We Seeing History Repeating Itself?

Are We Seeing History Repeating Itself? from the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

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“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is the famed quote of George Santayana, a Spanish philosopher (1863-1952). I am beginning to think that the world is making its way toward a future that repeats the horrors of the last century’s wars and earlier times when Europeans battled Islam to free Jerusalem, to protect their homelands in Europe, and to eject Muslims from Spain.

In his book, “Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries” historian Paul Fregosi documented the history of Islam and its attacks on European nations, characterizing jihad as “essentially a permanent state of hostility that Islam maintains against the rest of the world.” It is a Muslim sacrament, a duty they must perform.

Religion of Peace

Occurring at the same time is the agenda of the global environmental movement and on February 4 Christina Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves; which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history."

"This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” (Italics added)

Figueres was wrong. The objective of the 1917 Communist revolution that began in Russia and Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” (1958-1961) was the same that is now being openly embraced by the United Nations in 2015. The result of both was the death of millions.

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Humanity is under attack from an Islam that intends to impose its barbaric seventh century Sharia law and from the environmental movement’s intention to end capitalism and replace it with the income distribution central to Communism.

Both spell a terrible future for the people of the world.

The President of the United States is devoted to pursuing both of these goals as the defender of Islam and the opponent of “income inequality.” We have twenty-two months to survive Barack Obama’s remaining time in office.

Obama was first elected on the promise to end the U.S. engagement in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. After many years Americans welcomed the prospect of ceasing the loss of lives and billions those wars represented. With the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) they are now seeing the true price of that policy. Just because we don’t want to fight a war doesn’t mean our enemy will cease to pursue it.

We are at a critical moment in time because it is evident that Obama wants to provide Iran the opportunity to build its own nuclear weapons arsenal. It is a time as well when the military capability of the U.S. has been diminished to what existed before the beginning of World War II. All of Europe and much of Asia would have fallen under the control of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan if the U.S. had not stepped up to the task of defeating them.

Relentlessly, Obama has done everything he can to reduce the size of our military fighting force and the ships, planes and other weapons needed to protect our security or support that of our allies. He has withdrawn the U.S. from its position of global leadership and left behind allies that no longer trust us and enemies who no longer fear us.

Raymond Ibrahim of the Middle East Forum wrote on February 5 that “approximately 100 million Christians around the world are experiencing the persecution by Muslims of all races, nationalities, and socio-political circumstances.”

At the same time, we are witnessing a new exodus of Jews from Europe, mindful of the Holocaust in the 1940s. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2013 the Jewish population worldwide was approximately 14 million. Just over 6 million reside in Israel, another 6 million are U.S. citizens, and the rest are in Europe and elsewhere around the world. What has not changed from the last century, however, is the level of anti-Semitism and it appears to be on the rise.

What we are witnessing is a full-scale attack on the West—Christianity and Judaism—and upon Western values of morality, democracy, and freedom.

Whether it will erupt in a new world war is unknown, but if history is a guide, we are moving in that direction.

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An Auschwitz anniversary

An Auschwitz Anniversary from the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

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There was some serious irony when U.S. Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew gathered together with French President Francois Hollande and a Russian delegation led by Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s chief of staff, along with leaders from Germany and Austria to participate in the January 27th ceremony commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 by Russian troops.

I suspect that an entire generation or two born after that year, 70 years ago, may have little or no knowledge of what Auschwitz was. It was a Nazi death camp located in Oswiecim, Poland. Its full name was Auschwitz-Birkenau and it is estimated that one million people, mostly Jews, were killed there.

I say “irony” because Auschwitz-Birkenau was part of a system of six Nazi death camps that included Belzac, Chelmo, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka. Each camp was filled with the victims of a widespread anti-Semitism that had existed in Europe for two thousand years, so it was not difficult for the Germans to turn a blind eye or the French and others to provide assistance in rounding up their Jews.

The camps engaged in large scale murder to fulfil Adolf Hitler’s intention to exterminate every Jew in Europe. In 1933 there had been nine million living in 21 nations that would be occupied during World War II. By 1945, two out of every three European Jews had been killed.

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In addition to the Jews, an estimated five million others deemed enemies of the state for political or other reasons such as being Communists, trade unionists, gypsies or homosexuals also died in the camps.

What is rarely acknowledged is that the Europeans of that era were largely educated, had a rich culture of music, literature, and drama, and many were church-goers. In short, you would not have been able to tell them apart from the Europeans of today.

The Nazis wrote the book on the use of terrorism to facilitate their barbaric, murderous theology of death. The Muslims that have moved to Europe have adapted it to their own ends, seeking like the Nazis to become globally dominant. They don’t have death camps—yet—but the widespread and constant slaughter in which they are engaged has a similar feel to it.

In the 1930s those European Jews had few places to which to flee. They were not even that welcome in America where anti-Semitism was widespread. Those that could did emigrate and, again there is irony because several of the German physicists that came to the U.S. were instrumental in the creation of the atomic bomb that ended World War II while others played roles in the Nazi’s defeat during the war. One such emigrant, Albert Einstein, was the first to suggest the creation of the weapon to Franklin Roosevelt.

In response to European anti-Semitism, a movement called Zionism had begun before World War II with the intention of reestablishing Israel as a Jewish state where Jews could be safe. The movement was founded by Theodor Herzl in 1896.

Here again there is irony because the movement was dominated by secular Jews who were not motivated by Jewish history or the Torah. What they wanted was to be free of the oppressive antipathy of the nations in which they lived. What they were seeking was emancipation.

By the time World War II occurred they were a force to be recognized in Israel, known at the time as the Palestinian Mandate and run by the British who, as often as not, shared the anti-Semitism that had given life to the Zionist movement.

It would take the Holocaust to accelerate the movement of Europe’s surviving Jews to Israel which in 1948 declared its sovereignty and was immediately attacked by the Muslim nations surrounding it.

Fast forward to our times and the Jews of Israel as well as those around the world know one truth. If Iran is permitted to reach a point where it can create its own nuclear weapons and put them on their missiles, Israel will only be minutes away from an extermination that the Iranian leadership and the other Muslim nations of the Middle East have openly called for since Israel came into being and the Islamic Revolution took control of Iran in 1979.

This time, however, the same nuclear weapons that would destroy Israel would also be turned on the United States because the shouts of “Death to America. Death to Israel” are a part of the daily lives of the Iranians, as well as others in the region.

What makes these days so dangerous is that the United States of America is engaged in negotiations with an Iran that has never made a secret of their intention to be a nuclear-armed nation. What makes these days so dangerous is that the President of the United States has barely hidden his own anti-Semitism and animus toward Israel.

One can only pray that seventy years hence some other writer will not be commenting on the second great annihilation of the Jews, literally within the lifetime of people who were alive during the first one.

I am one of those people and Auschwitz is not some place that existed a long time ago. It was yesterday.

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The antisemitic derangement

The antisemitic derangement by Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe

Even before last week's terrorist attacks in Paris, the French prime minister was concerned about the continued viability of Jewish life in France. In an interview with The Atlantic prior to the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket massacres, Manuel Valls made a grim prediction:

"If 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure."

His misgivings were far from groundless. An exodus of French Jews is already underway and accelerating rapidly. In 2012, there were just over 1,900 immigrants to Israel from France. The following year nearly 3,400 French Jews emigrated; in 2014 approximately 7,000 left.

For the first time ever, France heads the list of countries of origin for immigrants to Israel, and the ministry of immigration absorption expects another 10,000 French Jews to arrive in 2015.

That would mean more than 22,000 Jews fleeing France for Israel in the space of just four years, nearly 4.5 percent of the country's Jewish population. The departure of 100,000 French Jews might once have been inconceivable. No longer. In a survey last spring of France's Jewish community, the largest in Europe, three out of four respondents said they were considering emigrating.

These are staggering numbers — all the more so in a "Jewish community that has been in place for centuries and feels itself deeply attached to being French," as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has written. But what is driving so many Jews to leave "is not Israel's pull…. It is France's push."

Over the past 15 years, that "push" — violent eruptions of French antisemitism — has grown relentless. The murder of four Jews by jihadists at the Hyper Cacher market on Friday was only the most recent on a long list of ominous events, including mob attacks on synagogues in Paris last summer, and the targeting of Jewish teens with Tasers, tear gas, and pepper spray.

To his credit, the French prime minister has been forthright in his condemnation of Islamist anti-Semitism. Over the weekend he declared that France was at war "against terrorism and radical Islam," a war in which "journalists were killed for drawing" and "Jews were killed because they were Jewish." But strong words from a prime minister will not halt the antisemitic derangement, and Valls is right to fear what that derangement would mean to France's future well-being.

Anti-Semitism is commonly regarded as a variety of racism, but the prolific English historian Paul Johnson suggests that it should be seen as a kind of intellectual disease, fundamentally irrational and highly infectious. It exerts great self-destructive force, Johnson wrote in a notable 2005 essay, severely harming countries and societies that engage in it. In a pattern that has recurred so predictably that he dubbed it a "historical law," nations that make Jewish life untenable condemn themselves to decline and weakness.

At a shop in a Jewish section of Paris, a notice says the business has been compelled
 "by recent events" to close temporarily. (AP Photo)

For example, Spain's expulsion of the Jews in the 1490s, and its subsequent witchhunt of the converted "New Christians" who remained behind, meant a loss of Spanish financial and managerial talent at the very moment the New World was being opened up to lucrative colonization.

That had "a profoundly deleterious impact," Johnson argued, "plunging the hitherto vigorous Spanish economy into inflation and long-term decline, and the government into repeated bankruptcy." More than 500 years later, Spain — where, incidentally, Valls was born and lived until his teens — still regrets that self-inflicted wound, and has looked for ways to rectify it.

Johnson pointed out other prominent examples of the phenomenon. Czarist Russia's persecution of Jews, reinforced by the encouragement of brutal pogroms, fueled a massive migration of Jews to the West, especially to Britain and the United States; those countries' cultural and entrepreneurial gain was Russia's debilitating loss. Germany's descent into demonic Jew-hatred under the Nazis ended in devastating military defeat, followed by a decades-long Cold War rupture and the end of German renown as Europe's intellectual center.

The Arab world, steeped in antisemitism and obsessed with the Jewish state, squandered vast oil riches "on weapons of war and propaganda," wrote Johnson. "In their flight from reason, they have failed to modernize or civilize their societies, to introduce democracy, or to consolidate the rule of law." Arab culture once led the world in learning, innovation, and pluralism. Today it is a world leader in almost nothing, save fratricidal violence and Islamist fanaticism.

France's Jews are leaving, and that never bodes well for the society driving them out. The prime minister puts his finger on it: If there is no Jewish future in France, if the antisemitic cancer has metastasized so alarmingly that tens of thousands of French Jews are ready to flee, then France will indeed no longer be France. It will be something darker and more deformed, wrecked by an injury it inflicted on itself.

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Traveling with Dr. Ben Carson in the Holy Land

Traveling with Ben Carson to the Holy Land from Armstrong Williams at the Washington Times

Dr. Ben Carson and Armstrong Wlliams

I don’t usually get so personal in these columns, but today I want you to know that I feel particularly blessed. I am in the Holy Land with my friends, Dr. Ben and Candy Carson.

Israel is one of my favorite travel destinations in the world. This will be my eighth visit. It is the first trip there for the Carsons, and it is truly a privilege to escort them through this remarkable country.

Dr. and Mrs. Carson are deeply faithful Christians, who I suspect will soon find themselves enveloped by the deep sense of spirituality that is palpable in the air of Israel. They will no doubt be very moved by the experience of touring Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem, a city sacred to Jews and Christians and which, despite not being mentioned in the Koran, has become significant for Muslims too.

There we will walk the same streets traversed by Jesus, gaze upon the Mount of Olives and visit the Western Wall, a retaining structure that is all that remains of the Second Temple, built on the very spot where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son Isaac.

We plan to see Nazareth and to head north to explore the Galilee. With Christmas fast approaching, we hope to also be able to visit Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, now under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

On the secular level this visit will be a fact-finding mission for Dr. Carson. He is not a politician but rather a man of many intellectual accomplishments who is visiting Israel to gain a deeper understanding of the many complex forces at play in the Middle East.

Dr. Carson will fly along Israel’s narrow borders to see for himself the immense defense challenges that Israel faces. At its narrowest point, Israel is just nine miles wide. The capital cities of surrounding countries that seek to attack and ultimately destroy the Jewish state are closer than many major American cities are to one another.

Perched along Israel’s border with Lebanon is Hezbollah, a terrorist organization supported spiritually and financially by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Few Americans realize that Hezbollah is second only to al Qaeda in terms of the number of Americans it has killed due to its brutal terrorist army’s global reach.

Syria also sits along a section of Israel’s northern border. There, the brutal chaos of its bloody civil war continues unabated. “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside,” said President Obama in August 2011. However, despite Mr. Obama’s assertion that Mr. Assad must go, he is still ruling the country with an iron fist while over 190,000 Syrians have gone to their graves.

To the south of Israel is Hamas, a terrorist organization whose founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and whose reign of terror also holds the Palestinians of Gaza in its grip.

Even while Egypt and Jordan fight to maintain their internal stability while faced with challenges from radical Islamist elements, their borders with Israel have been quiet since peace deals with Israel were reached.

Like most pragmatic thinkers and successful businessmen, Dr. Carson believes it is important to learn from what works and to adopt the “best practices” that have proven successful. To that end, he will make time on his short trip to visit Jordan and examine the Middle East of today from that country’s perspective.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Christians and other religious minorities are under intense threat, in many cases desperately fleeing for their lives from their ancient communities. Dr. Carson will visit with Christians residing in the Palestinian territories, as well as Christian Arabs in Israel, where the right to worship is respected and Christian, Muslim and Jewish holy sites are protected.

I expect this trip to be jampacked with important stops all along the way — stops that underscore the most deeply held values of Dr. and Mrs. Carson. The Carsons will also devote time to exploring areas of great interest, such as the booming entrepreneurial sector within Israel, focused on cutting-edge technology and medical research as well as innovative programs helping at-risk teenagers.

This whirlwind tour will undoubtedly contain the deep and thoughtful experiences that will help shape Dr. Carson’s perspective on Israel and the broader Middle East.

Like you, I look forward to hearing his impressions, which he will share with us all on TV, radio, in newspapers and online.

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Armstrong Williams is sole owner/manager of Howard Stirk Holdings and executive editor of American CurrentSee Online Magazine

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The Jewish state's newest hero wasn't Jewish

The Jewish state's newest hero wasn't Jewish from the files of Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe

Israeli police officers carry the coffin of their colleague Zidan Saif, an Arab Druze
who died after being shot during a terrorist attack in a Jerusalem synagogue.

By the thousands they streamed to Yanuh-Jat, Israelis of every description making their way on Wednesday to the remote northern Galilee district, where a fallen hero was to be buried with full honors. Israel's president, Reuven Rivlin, was there to pay his respects; so were the minister of internal security and the nation's top police commissioner.

From around the country, hundreds of black-hatted haredi ("ultra-Orthodox") Jews came on chartered buses, disembarking to join throngs of Arabic-speaking Druze in traditional white turbans, police officers in dress blues, and so many other mourners that even the roofs of nearby homes were crowded with onlookers.

They had come to bid farewell to Zidan Saif, the Druze police officer who was the first responder on the scene of Tuesday's massacre at a synagogue in Jerusalem. Saif had put himself between the terrorists and the worshipers, taking a bullet in the head and dying of his wounds that night. Befitting a defender who had died in the line of duty, his coffin was draped with Israel's flag, its blue Star of David prominently centered.

Like many of the Jewish state's loyal sons and heroes, Saif wasn't Jewish. That didn't make him any less an Israeli, just as Israel's sizeable Arab and non-Jewish minorities don't make it any less the sovereign Jewish homeland. Nor did it diminish even slightly the honor and gratitude Israelis across the spectrum expressed for the slain officer.

In his eulogy, Israel's president extolled Saif as "one of the first guardians of Jerusalem." A rabbi from the Jerusalem synagogue where the bloodbath had occurred told residents of the village he had come "simply to be with you and to cry with you," and called the "devotion and the determination" of the 30-year-old patrolman "an example to us all."

There have always been pessimists convinced that Israel's multiethnic Jewish democracy is doomed to fail. For some, the horrific images from the Bnei Torah synagogue, where peaceful scholars were hacked to death as they prayed, their blood drenching phylacteries and turning prayer shawls crimson, only encourages such fatalism.

"The attack on the synagogue in Har Nof," wrote commentator Joel Pollak, sends the message that "Jews and Arabs may not be able to live together easily even in the same country." A New York Times analysis was bleakly headlined: "In Jerusalem's 'War of Neighbors,' the Differences Are Not Negotiable."

For all the savagery of the terrorism that has sent so many innocents over the years to early graves, though, the funeral of Saif is poignant evidence that peaceful coexistence is not only possible in the Jewish state, it's a daily reality, woven into the warp and woof of Israeli life.

Of course there are tensions, disputes, and resentments, just as there are in every imperfect democracy — and what democracy isn't imperfect? Yet Israel from the outset has risen to the challenge of building a society held together by centripetal forces stronger than the centrifugal differences pushing it apart.

Indeed, the Jewish state's declaration of independence, proclaimed by David Ben Gurion in May 1948, explicitly implored the country's non-Jewish inhabitants to remain "and participate in the building-up of the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship." A great number did remain — including many thousands of Arab Druze — and went on to share in the blessings of Israeli freedom, democracy, and equality.

It's still a work in progress, but largely a successful one. The small Jewish state with the notable Arab minority not only survives but thrives, the implacability of its worst enemies and the violent instability of its neighborhood notwithstanding.

Yes, terrorism is a grim plague. Yes, the toxic Palestinian political culture that incites it is growing worse. All the same, Israel manages to stand out as an oasis of pluralism, respect, and tolerance in a part of the world not known for those qualities.

Israeli police officer Zidan Saif holds his baby
daughter in a family snapshot. Saif was killed
in the line of duty on Nov. 18, 2014.

One of the strongest condemnations of the synagogue slaughter came from — of all people — Bahrain's foreign minister, who blasted the "killing [of] innocents in a house of prayer." Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa warned sharply that "those who will pay the price for the crime of killing innocents in a Jewish synagogue and for welcoming the crime are the Palestinian people."

It was startling to see such strong language from a senior Arab official, especially when many Palestinian officials were "welcoming the crime," quite exuberantly and openly.

But as journalist Evelyn Gordon pointed out in Commentary, pragmatic Arab governments like Bahrain's know quite well that at a time when Muslims are being butchered and abused by fanatics across the Middle East, "mosques in Israel and the West Bank — including Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque — remain among the safest places in the Mideast for Muslims to pray."

That's no small achievement, even if the world does take it for granted. Terrorists may have killed Zidan Saif, but his memory will be a lasting blessing, for Jews and non-Jews alike.

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Honest Media? The CNN Jihad on Israel

HONEST MEDIA? CNN's Jihad on Israel from the files of Audrey Russo at Clash Daily.com

Read the Audrey Russo Column at Clash Daily.com

It’s no secret that the Western media has been less than honest, accurate or professional for some time.

But CNN‘s recent reporting on an Islamic attack on a Synagogue in Jerusalem begs the question…

Is CNN intentionally stoking hate toward Jews and Israel?

A stretch you say? I beg to differ…

According to Algemeiner.com, two Palestinian terrorists invaded the Kehilat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem at about 07:00 a.m., opened fire with weapons and struck worshipers with a meat cleaver and knives. The results were 4 dead innocent, unarmed Jews, 3 of which were Americans…and several others wounded. Two police officers in the area were able to shoot and kill the Jihadists.

Hamas in Gaza praised the attack, calling it “heroic.” “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”

Perhaps CNN agreed with Hamas…here is how CNN reported the terrorist attack on innocent Jews worshiping in the temple:

• During a CNN interview with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat an erroneous caption was above the Mayor’s name and read “Deadly Attack On Jerusalem Mosque”
• CNN reporter Ben Wedeman was responsible for the headline depicting the massacre under the headline, “Israeli police shot dead two Palestinian civilians”

No mention of the horrific slaughter on innocent Jews that these two terrorists (not civilians) just committed. Of course, this is not the first time CNN‘s reporting on Israel has been biased. The issues are many, including CNN’s Diana Magnay calling Israeli’s “scum” in a tweet after cheering a rocket that fell into Gaza.

The question of accountability and integrity are critical here. Is CNN incapable of comprehending the consequences of reporting criminally negligent bias against Jews, in a world population with a critical rise in anti-Semitism?

Are they intentionally stoking the fires of hatred for Jews in the Middle East and elsewhere, which will put the lives of the innocent in peril?

Do their reporters harbor such loathing for the Jewish State that they are incapable of controlling their emotions?

Now, if CNN wants to announce itself an independent Leftist, Jew-hating, 501(c)4 group, I have no problem…have at it.

But, I think it’s time they relinquish their press credentials, because this current media jihad on Israel has rendered them impotent on integrity.

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Is there anywhere safe to be a Jew?

Is There Anywhere Safe to Be a Jew? from Warning Signs by Alan Caruba Facts-not-Fantasy

Know the Warning Signs from Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

One might think that being a rabbi praying in a synague in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem, Israel was about as safe as one could get, but you would be wrong.

Jews, no matter where they are, understand they can be attacked and killed for being Jews. It is the price of their Covenant with God (Exodus, Chapter 12). This has been part of the history of Judaism for three millennia. In the last century it manifested itself as a Nazi genocide that killed six million European Jews and in this one it is the continuation of an Islamic war on Israel.

On Tuesday, November 18, two Palestinians, armed with a rifle and butcher knives, killed three American-Israeli rabbis, a British-Israeli rabbi, and a police officer. They injured seven others. The synague isn’t even close to the line that divides the Jewish and Arab sections of the city. In recent months Jerusalem has been the scene of a number of attacks attributed to Muslim anger regarding the desire of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, a holy site on which a mosque, al-Aksa, was built following the Arab conquest of the city in 637 A.D.

News of Tuesday’s killings was celebrated in the streets of Gaza and no doubt elsewhere. While condemning the killings, President Obama also managed to blame Israel for building housing for its citizens. Why he thinks he has the right to tell the Israelis where and how much housing can be built is testimony to both his arrogance and his enmity toward the Jewish State.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abba condemned the killings in one breath and incited more hatred with the next, claiming that Jews had “contaminated” the Temple Mount where Abraham’s faith was tested by God.

From its independence in 1948 to the present, Israel has been attacked in wars and with organized terror campaigns called intifadas. The Palestinians rewarded the Israeli decision to turn the whole of Gaza over to them in 2005 by rocketing it ceaselessly from there until the Israelis conducted a military operation in June to bring a stop to it. In the process, they discovered dozens of tunnels intended to be used by terrorists to attack Israelis.

The Palestinians have been given many opportunities to have peace with Israel but they have never chosen to embrace it. American efforts by several Presidents have all failed. There are two Palestinian groups that claim governance or representation, the Palestinian Authority located on the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza.

The answer why is perhaps best found in the Hamas founding document. Proclaimed in 1988, it calls for the creation of an “Islamic state in Palestine in place of Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.” How is that to be achieved? Victory is defined as “killing the last Jew on earth…”

The murderous nature of Islam was highlighted in the latest Global Terrorism Index published by the Institute for Economics and Peace. CNS news reported that “The number of people killed by terrorists worldwide in 2013 rose by 60 percent compared to the previous year—from 11,133 to 17,958—with four Sunni Muslim extremist groups responsible for two-thirds of all fatalities…”

The Middle East was the region where most of the killings occurred and it should be noted that Christians for whom the region has been home for millenia have been also been targeted in the same fashion as Israel's Jews.

In a broader context, the level of anti-Semitism has been increasing in recent years and, despite the horror of the Holocaust during World War II, it is particularly evident in Europe. The increased Muslim population in European nations may have something to do with that, but it is also clear that the hostility toward Jews is evident in its non-Muslim population. It is not an exaggeration to say that one can find anti-Semitism virtually anywhere in the world, even in nations where there is no perceptible Jewish population.

The two Palestinians who perpetrated the attack were killed in a police shootout. In a November 19 editorial, The Wall Street Journal opined that “What Israel needs now is confidence that the U.S. will not reward these acts of jihad by browbeating Mr. Netanyahu back into negotiations with Mr. Abbas.”

“The best way to prevent another intifada is to reassure Israel that the U.S. supports its self-defense, while warning Palestinians that they will never have a homeland as long as they cultivate a society that celebrates murdering the innocent in the name of religion.”

The Palestinians are not members of a sovereign state and never have been. The closest one gets to one is Jordan which is home to many Palestinians. Other Middle East nations have not assimilated the Palestinians, often keeping them in camps for generations and denying them any vestige of citizenship. They are the oldest refugee group of the modern era, but those who chose Israeli citizenship enjoy the rights of all Israelis. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab population in 2013 was 1,658,000!

Jews are members of the oldest monotheistic religion on Earth. Judaism birthed a breakaway religion called Christianity which incorporates the Old Testament with the New, and about 1,400 years ago Mohammad declared he was the newest and last prophet. He proclaimed Islam, an amalgam of the first two religions and the paganism of his Arab culture.

In 1948 Jews resurrected Israel and restored it as the Jewish state. Killing rabbis and other Israelis will not change that, something that Muslims antagonistic to Israel refuse to understand, but they also don’t understand why having two distinct and warring sects claiming to be the only true Islam, Sunni and Shiite, nor killing each other doesn’t make a lot of sense either.

Are Jews safe in Israel? No more than on any other inch of planet Earth.

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Question for Jewish Democrats: Why?

Question for Jewish Democrats: Why? by Michele Hickford, Editor-in-Chief at the Allen B. West Website

Meet Michele Hickford

I am a Jewish Republican. I know there aren’t that many of us – not even in my own family, as it happens. But whenever we GOP Jews — a minority of a minority — get together, we always wonder how most American Jews can be Democrats, and in fact, vote for Barack Hussein Obama not once but twice?

Don’t these Jewish Democrats see they have no friend in President Obama, who has more time for the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahmoud Abbas, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan than Benjamin Netanyahu? Even the fact he refers to ISIS as ISIL gives a pretty big hint, but then again maybe that’s too subtle for some.

But perhaps it’s too much to expect American Jewish Democrats to feel any concern for Obama’s apparent disdain for Israel when even their own fellow Jews serving in Congress can’t even stand up for Jews in Israel.

This week we reported about the Islamic terror attack in Jerusalem in which a jihadi plowed his car into a crowd of people waiting for a light rail train. A three-month-old baby girl with dual American and Israeli citizenship was thrown from her carriage and died from her head wounds. Fortunately, her murderer was shot and killed.

But he was celebrated for his “heroic martyrdom.”

According to Palestinian Media Watch, “Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor has glorified the terrorist who murdered three-month-old Israeli-American Haya Zissel-Brown and injured eight others yesterday, when he intentionally drove his car into people waiting for a train. Sultan Abu Al-Einein, advisor to Abbas, praised the terrorist, calling him a “heroic Martyr” on his official Facebook page.”

“Abbas’ Fatah movement likewise glorified the killer, posting an obituary for the murderer on its official Facebook page, and also using the words “heroic Martyr.” Fatah portrayed his death as “his wedding” – a reference to the Islamic belief that Martyrs for Allah are wedded to 72 virgins in Paradise.” ~ fatah praises baby killing hero 231014

Also according to Palestinian Media Watch, five Democrat members of Congress demanded Abbas remove Al-Einein for glorifying murder. The five were:

• Eliot Engel (NY)
• Nita Lowey (NY)
• Ted Deutch (FL)
• Brad Sherman (CA)
• Ed Royce (CA) who is the only non-Jewish member in the list. 

I’m not sure why these were the only members of Congress who saw fit to complain, but I am surprised the entire list of Jewish members didn’t follow suit.

Where is Debbie Wasserman-Schultz on this? Where is my representative, Lois Frankel? I suppose we can excuse lone Jewish Republican Eric Cantor from not speaking out, but honestly, what does he have to lose at this point?

Here’s the remaining list of Jewish Members of Congress who were not moved to comment on the Palestinian leadership’s glorification of the murder of a 3-month-old American-Israeli infant:

• David Cicilline (D-RI)
• Stephen Cohen (D-TN)
• Susan Davis (D-CA)
• Alan Grayson (D-FL)
• Steve Israel (D-NY)
• Sander Levin (D-MI)
• Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
• Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
• Jared Polis (D-CO)
• Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
• Adam Schiff (D-CA)
• Brad Schneider (D-IL)
• Allyson Schwartz (D-PA)
• Henry Waxman (D-CA)
• John Yarmuth (D-KY)

Why do you think that is? Why is there no outrage? I’ll tell you why. Because liberalism always trumps faith, morality and truth.

Whenever I ask Jewish liberals why they continue to support a party that clearly does not support Israel, that even votes to take “God” out of its platform, that has succumbed to moral relativism and political correctness, the most common response I get is a shrug. I simply don’t understand it.

Why would you support a party that breeds racial divisiveness, punishes those who achieve material success and constantly makes apologies for those who have stated (and demonstrated) they wish to destroy you? It makes no sense to me.

But so much being done by Democrat leadership in this country makes no sense to me. Perhaps the polls are correct. Perhaps the American electorate, no matter what religion or race, is finally waking up to the damage this administration has done to our nation. I pray it is so.

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We’ll find out on November 4th. Tags:

Who will rest and who will wander?

Who will rest and who will wander? from the files of Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe

Kurdish carry the few belongings they have left after crossing
the border between Syria and Turkey near the southeastern
town of Suruc on Sept. 20, 2014.

There is a transfixing passage in the High Holy Day liturgy, recited on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which depicts God sitting in judgment of mankind, reviewing each person's deeds and deciding who will live and who will die.

Ominously, the ancient prayer enumerates the awful ways a life can end. "Who by water and who by fire; who by sword and who by beast; who of hunger and who of thirst; who by earthquake and who by plague…"

Then comes a shift. Something else is at stake: "Who will rest and who will wander."

The juxtaposition seems incongruous. Can those condemned to "wander" in the year ahead — to be exiled, displaced, to be forced to flee — be likened to those who will meet death by sword or plague? The uprooted and evacuated, after all, can always make new lives for themselves elsewhere. The dead cannot.

Of course it is true that many refugees successfully start over, and the rabbis of antiquity who composed this prayer would have been the last to deny that where there is life there is always hope. But like Jews since time immemorial, they knew only too well how terrible the fate of refugees and dispossessed migrants can be.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported in June that for the first time since World War II, the number of refugees worldwide exceeds 50 million. "We are witnessing a quantum leap in forced displacement in the world," said António Guterres, who heads the UN's refugee agency. "There is no humanitarian response able to solve the problems of so many people."

This flood wave of suffering and disaster shows no sign of having crested. In just the past week, more than 150,000 Kurdish refugees from Syria have fled into Turkey, which was already reeling from an influx of 1.5 million refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war. At least as many Syrians have poured into Lebanon and Jordan.

"It is the war in Syria that most dramatically illustrates how quickly a country's fate can be upended by civil war," observes the New York Times. "In 2008, it was the world's second largest refugee-hosting country.

By 2013, it was the world's second largest refugee-producing country." Yet Syrians constitute only a fraction of the planet's desperate exiles, asylum-seekers, and expellees. Millions more have been driven — by fear or violence or hunger or persecution or natural catastrophes — from their homes in Afghanistan, Somalia, Burma and elsewhere.

The plight of certain groups of refugees — Vietnamese boat people, Sudanese migrants from Darfur, victims of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Cubans escaping a Communist tyranny — will sometimes touch the heart of societies fortunate enough to be blessed with domestic tranquility and prosperity. Far more commonly, they will be resented or spurned or ignored.

Or worse: Australia last Friday signed an agreement to transfer asylum-seekers to Cambodia, rather than grant them safe haven on Australian soil. When a wave of child migrants from violence-plagued Central American countries crossed into Texas earlier this year, many Americans across the political spectrum demanded that they be sent back.

Like war, refugee flows have been part of the human condition since the dawn of history. And if any people has known the anguish of being forced to "wander," it is the Jews, whose history is replete with banishment and exile.

Jews know from painful experience what it means to suffer
exile and dispersion. Above, displaced Iraqi Jews arrive
in Israel in 1951.

In the Middle Ages, Jews were expelled en masse from England and France and Spain and Austria; in the 20th century they were driven by oppression and pogroms from Egypt and Iraq and Libya and Syria.

When the Pew Research Center, in a 2012 report, analyzed the religious composition of the world's migrants, it found that one in four Jews today live in a country other than the one they were born in — far and away the highest percentage of any religious group.

Not all who migrated fled in fear or from danger. But the Jewish people know from long and painful experience that "who will rest and who will wander" can be as momentous a fate as life and death.

In the final paragraphs of A History of the Jews, Paul Johnson writes: "The Jews were the emblem of homeless and vulnerable humanity. But is not the whole earth no more than a temporary transit-camp?"

That lesson could hardly be more urgent. Every minute eight more people become refugees, leaving everything behind to escape war, persecution, or terror. No one can relieve all the suffering that dreadful statistic represents. But surely each of us can relieve some of it.

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