From Ian:
Israelis ‘Believe We Have No Better Friend Than Canada,’ Netanyahu Says
Upon hosting Canadian Foreign Minister Robert Nicholson in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israelis believe the Jewish state has “no better friend than Canada.”
Netanyahu cited recent instances of “international hypocrisy,” including the passage of a motion to boycott Israel by the United Kingdom’s National Union of Students “less than a year after they refused to support a boycott of ISIS (Islamic State)” as well as seeing “Turkey and Iran vote to give Hamas affiliate status” at the United Nations.
“I stress these points, Rob, because Canada stands out so clearly and so powerfully against these distortions of truth and distortions of justice, and I want to express the feeling of the people of Israel that we believe we have no better friend than Canada,” Netanyahu told Nicholson. “We value that partnership. It was exemplified last week, two weeks ago, in the vote of Canada, alongside the United States and Great Britain, in rolling back the attempt to single out Israel in the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty on nuclear weapons) votes. That is deeply appreciated here.”
Netanyahu also said that the Canadian-Israeli friendship “is a model of the partnership between two democracies, exemplary democracies.”
“Israel values the support, unstinting, unfaltering, of Canada in an international environment that is often marked by cynicism and double talk,” he said. “Canada, led by Prime Minister [Stephen] Harper, is always stalwart and tells the truth. And we think that this is a refreshing wind in an increasingly hostile environment, hostile to the truth.”
Hamas entryism at the UN
As readers may be aware, on June 1st the UN Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations approved the application of the London-based Palestinian Return Centre for UN accreditation.
This vote, however, is only the first stage in the process.
“The 54-nation ECOSOC, which meets in July, has the power to approve or reject the committee’s recommendations and to make the final decision.”
The Palestinian Return Centre has been an illegal organization in Israel since 2010 because of its connections to Hamas. PRC activists and staff regularly crop up in connection with assorted delegitimisation projects and are active in other organisations too – as anyone monitoring and documenting anti-Israel activity well knows. Below, for example, is a photograph from a 2011 visit by British parliamentarians to Lebanon which was jointly organised by the Palestinian Return Centre and the Council for European Palestinian Relations and which included in its itinerary a meeting with Osama Hamdan of Hamas.
Among the PRC’s current projects is a campaign to have Britain apologise for the Balfour Declaration. Previous initiatives have included a public relations campaign on behalf of Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel which was launched at a conference organized by the PRC in 2012. As was noted on our sister site UK Media Watch at the time:
Israel boycott rejected by British university umbrella group
An umbrella group representing Britain’s universities on Wednesday distanced itself from a decision by the country’s student union to boycott Israel a day earlier, saying it was “firmly opposed” to the embargo on the grounds that it contradicts the
principle of “free exchange of ideas.”
Universities UK, which represents 133 British universities, said in a statement that it wanted to make clear its rejection of the boycott passed by the UK National Union of Students, joining official London in speaking out against the vote.
“Given the reported perception in Israel that UK universities support an academic boycott, the board of Universities UK wishes to confirm its previously stated position that it is firmly opposed to any academic boycott of Israeli universities,” the statement read.
Time to Fight the Jew Haters
Once again, the Jewish State and the Jewish people stand alone. Once again, Jewish existence is on a knife’s edge.
What to do? Fight back. Stop apologizing. Stop defending. Stop burying our collective heads in the sand. You can’t convince the Jew haters. You can’t embrace them, have sex with them or celebrate Passover together. All you can do is fight them toe-to-toe. You have to fight them in the media, you have to fight them on campuses, you have to fight them in the corridors of power – you can never surrender. You have to call them for what they are and you have to put them on the defensive. Remind the decent people of the world, for example, that Israel’s enemies practice clitorectomy. Remind them that millions of Arab girls are pinned to kitchen tables and have their clitorises cut off by family members wielding steak knives. This is the face of Israel’s enemies. They decapitate those who oppose them. They murder minorities, they throw gays off tall buildings, they rape little girls, they destroy archaeology, they crucify Christians, they don’t hesitate to use gas, terror or any other weapon that can wreak havoc with the civilized world and they cut the clitorises of their own children. They are not interested in “states” – not even Arab states – not even “Palestine”. They want to create an evil empire. They are interested in creating Islamic republics or caliphates that are ruled by an ideology of death. To support them and oppose Israel is to be on the wrong side of an apocalyptic war.
And this war needs funding. Israel’s supporters generally and the Jewish state specifically must fund an army of well-trained PR warriors to engage the enemy at every turn. All the money in the world will not make Jew lovers out of Jew haters. But it will bloody their nose, move decent people to the right side of this conflict and ensure that Israel and the Jewish people survive.
The Biggest Mistakes Pro-Israel Advocates Make #7: How to Deliver Different Strokes for Different Folks
When we promote Israel, whether on campus or off, we project the same monolithic message every single time. Israel is great! Look at the beaches! Look at the gay pride parades! Look at the hot women! Support Israel because we’re sexy!
Except that doesn’t work for everyone. In fact, that style was founded and projected in the 1980’s during the Reaganomics yuppie age. That time of relative tranquility between the 1960’s and ’70’s revolution and the post-9/11 activist reemergence when everyone wanted to be a “Material Girl (or Guy)”. The late 1980’s was the heyday of gangsta rap, where bragging about getting rich, piling on the bling and name brands, and pretending to have bank accounts as big as your hair, were in vogue (if you want to understand that zeitgeist, think of the movie Clueless). Nowadays, pretending to be as bohemian and ascetic as possible, what I would like to call “fake poor” or “thirdworldist” is chic. This means raiding thrift stores (or wearing new designer clothes that look like they were bought at a thrift store), listening to indie bands with weird, often esoteric names, and going to coffee shops with torn or patched up plaid sofas. This means looking back on the ’80’s and ’90’s with “WTF was that?!” and looking back to the ’60’s and ’70’s with wistful longing, nostalgia for an era that most of us have never experienced despite being glorified everywhere by today’s young “hipsters” – the trendsetters of the modern day.
Obviously, the zeitgeist is different now. Our Hasbara strategy hasn’t changed with the times, and the fact that today’s “cool kids” look down on the 1980’s with revulsion doesn’t help our cause. In fact, it makes us look even worse to them, because while our fancy, exclusive, 600$/plate fundraising galas might have thrilled 1980’s “Material Girls,” it just reminds Millennials of all the starving children in Africa (or Palestine!) who are suffering, as well as the elitist or classist lack of inclusion that only bolsters the common narrative of Israel being Goliath and the Palestinians being David. Palestinian activists know this, which is why they make all their events free, include free childcare, and host them at grungy but trendy cafés. They’re the cool kids. We’re so last century!
Campus anti-Semitism, decades in the making: a teacher’s perspective
Some claimed to be “shocked” at the beginning of the school year when swastikas were found painted on the walls of Nock Middle School, located at the Newburyport School District in Boston. This was preceded by an anti-Semitic video made to insult a Jewish student. To be honest, with the public schools turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism and progressive educators regarding Israel with great disdain, I wouldn’t be surprised if teachers encouraged the video.
You can call me crazy, but in my experience as a public educator, anti-Semitism is rampant in the public education system. When I taught in Costa Mesa, California in the late 1990s, I particularly remember another history teacher admit that she avoids the lesson on Israel. Keep in mind that this teacher was promoted as the lead sixth-grade core teacher.
My experience a couple of years later, teaching in Glendale, Calif. was no different. A Jewish student of mine received several anti-Semitic threats and was beaten and bullied for the whole school year. The students who hurt her weren’t punished in the same way a white student harassing an African-American student would be. To make things worse, other teachers made anti-Semitic comments about the student as well. I made the administration aware of the anti-Semitism coming from one particular teacher, but nothing was done.
It certainly doesn’t help the situation when student teachers at universities organize to preach hatred toward Israel. Recently, student workers at the University of California (UC) organized a “pro-Palestinian” group and issued the following statement:
“We are teaching assistants, tutors, and other student-workers at the University of California represented by UAW 2865. We have a responsibility as educators to both learn about and teach the social issues of our time, including pressing global struggles such as the struggle of the Palestinian people for liberation from settler-colonialism and apartheid.”
Daniel Mael: The "Speech-Denialists"
Last year, at Brandeis University, when I sought to bring a human rights display highlighting the oppression of LGBTQ individuals in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the initiative was blocked in a flood of administrative bureaucracy. The member of the administration with whom I met was clearly not thrilled by the idea.
Meetings with a gay rights group and the Muslim Students Association (MSA), however, were just as telling. Hoping to solicit partnerships in the initiative, I explained to leaders and members of both organizations that the project was not about Islam, but about how, on a routine basis, certain governments murder people who identify as LGBTQ. Members of the gay rights organization expressed concern about "Islamophobia," while members of the Muslim Students Association expressed concern about "homophobia." The initiative was rejected. Both groups evidently prioritized the emotional and intellectual comfort of the campus community over drawing attention to the plight of innocent LGBTQ individuals in the Muslim world.
In denying the average college student the opportunity to hear, think, question and learn, these minority organizations violated the basic principles of a liberal arts education and what higher learning should presumably be about: challenging assumptions and talking openly about issues that might cause discomfort. It is still puzzling why the LGBTQ club and the MSA are not at the forefront of defending other members of their respective groups, regardless of where they may live.
Both micro-sensitivity and political correctness require at best, obfuscating information, and at worst, silencing it. It is incumbent upon those who recognize the dangers of the ever-expanding "speech-denialists" in the "political correctness" movement to put up a fight -- figuratively, of course.
Stanford Students: Israel/U.S. Have 'No Right to Exist'
A graduating senior and an alumna of Stanford University penned a vitriolic op-ed calling for the end of the United States and Israel claiming crimes and discrimination against blacks and Palestinians.
Because of the subject matter, the university's paper, The Stanford Daily, refused to publish the piece. Instead, writers Manny Thompson '15 and Laura Perez ‘14 turned to the student-led progressive journal Static which was happy to publish the article. Under the headline "Israel Has No Right To Exist - And Neither Does The U.S." reads: "Earlier this week, our campus newspaper refused to publish the following piece without citing a single factual error."
The complaint continues:
On a campus that claims to prize the free exchange of ideas, some ideas are barred from entering. But for those of us actually interested in freedom, challenging the existence of capitalism, the United States, or Israel should not be considered heresy. We have every right to question the existence of states that discriminate by design.
The writers then turn their sites to target number two, Israel. The "founding values" of the U.S. and Israel are compared as doctrines of "Manifest Destiny and Zionism" complete with "ethnic cleansing of indigenous populations."
"Palestinian subjugation is no accident," the piece declares. "Israel has no intention of permitting freedom for those it subjugates."
HRC Op-Ed in Hill Times: Buy, Support, and Develop Israel
In response to a May 25 Murray Dobbin op-ed in the Hill Times which called on Canadians to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel, HRC encouraged the opposite in a counter op-ed published today which encouraged Canadians to buy, support and develop Israel:
Under the false imprimatur of international law, Murray Dobbin accuses Israel of “fascism”, “racism”, and of being a “rogue state” when he encourages Canadians to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) Israel.
Ignoring Israel’s pluralistic, multicultural and democratic character, Dobbin libels Israel as an “apartheid” state. His egregious claims are mere rhetoric, not substance.
What Mr. Dobbin fails to disclose to Hill Times readers is that the true objective of the BDS campaign is to brand Israel as a criminal pariah state analogous to apartheid-era South Africa, to isolate it internationally and to pave the way for its eventual destruction. BDS advocates blur the lines between healthy criticism of Israel and the complete delegitimization of Israel in the international arena.
A hallmark feature in this campaign against Israel’s legitimacy is the criminization of the Jewish State’s very existence, divorced from any specific policy or action.
Christ at the Checkpoint Activists Equate Israel with ISIS in Video
In a publicity video produced in March to publicize a July 2015 gathering of young adults under the rubric of the Christ at the Checkpoint movement, filmmakers have juxtaposed the victims of ISIS who have been set on fire and decapitated with Palestinians going through a checkpoint.
They have also juxtaposed the ISIS flag with the Israeli flag.
If you watch the video (which is located beneath the jump and is not for the faint of heart), you’ll see horrific images of the Jordanian Air Force pilot standing behind metal bars as he is being set on fire followed by images of Palestinians walking through a checkpoint, which itself is comprised of metal bars.
The inference that the viewer is encouraged to draw is that there is a connection between the plight of the Jordanian pilot stuck in a cage, about to be set on fire, and the Palestinians going through a checkpoint.
The same video also juxtaposes ISIS fighters driving down the road and through the streets of a city (flying the easily recognizable ISIS flag) with images of a vehicle flying an Israeli flag as it travels away from the camera.
Antisemitism and Oren Ben-Dor
And in this passage from Ben-Dor’s article even the Holocaust itself becomes a kind of monstrous entity – uncanny, camouflaged, self-serving: ‘The Holocaust is a sublime and uncanny event. There is something so Jewish in the Holocaust as well as in those who perpetrated it. The being of the Holocaust may well so perfectly self-conceal – quintessentially for the sake of Jewishness. There is signification to humanity of such expression of megalomanic hatred towards the phenomenon of the ultimate other. This other utilises this hatred through memorialising it as mere racism thus stealthily preserving that which is concealed and which is fateful to recur through hatred-inducing and righteous Israeli polity’.
With so much else at work in that passage, one might overlook the casual suggestion that the Nazis were themselves somehow ‘Jewish’. But Ben-Dor develops this theme more explicitly here: ‘“The jews” can encompass all those who were stealthily assimilated into the pathology of hatred that nourishes victimhood and chosenness, even if they are not actually Jews … Based on this understanding, existentially, “jews” includes the Nazis, those very perpetrators of violence against the Jews who nourished the phenomenon of denial and thus persistence of the condition’.
For Ben-Dor there is something mystical or even apocalyptic about the phenomenon he is describing. In the final pages he hints at some momentous cataclysm to come: ‘Some conflict that will engulf all humanity is to come through the denial at the heart of the left Jewry reaction to Zionism … As “the Holocaust” shuts down thinking of its own origin, its service to this dark prophecy in the shape of derivative left reaction to Zionism is rendered. There is prophetic force to the denial that unites the left reaction to Zionism. The Jewish Question refuses to be tamed in a national project that nevertheless manages to protect its own survival’.
This is the last of many references to the impossibility of ‘taming’ the supposed problem as though it were a monstrous creature. Over the course of the article the coldly clinical wording of the opening abstract – ‘pathologies pertaining to Jewish being and thinking’ – has been alchemised into something more like the ‘rough beast’ in Yeats’s millenarian poem The Second Coming.
NGO Monitor: Catholic Aid Societies and Political Campaigns Directed at Israel
Key Findings
1. NGO Monitor analyzed Catholic charity funding for NGOs claiming to promote peace and human rights in the Arab-Israeli conflict. We document how funds provided by ten Catholic aid societies are often used for highly politicized purposes, including activities that, contrary to the Vatican’s declared goals, intensify the conflict and undermine genuine efforts for peace.
2. The period studied is 2008 – 2014. We determined that an estimated €7.4 million (approximately $10.1 million) was allocated to some 37 highly politicized NGOs as described above. (See Appendix I)
3. Due to a marked lack of transparency, a complete picture of the flow of funds from Catholic aid societies to politicized NGOs cannot be presented. Funding decision-making processes are unknown outside the aid agencies. Often, various Catholic aid agencies are listed by beneficiary NGOs as donors, but funding amounts are not available on the grantee’s or Catholic charities’ websites.
NGO Monitor: Analysis of Reports on Palestinian Health to the 68th World Health Assembly, 2015
In 2014, the 67th World Health Assembly (WHA) of the World Health Organization (WHO) commissioned a “field assessment” report on the state of health in Gaza, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Golan Heights, to be presented to the 68th WHA in May, 2015. Unlike reports delivered to other UN bodies such as the UN-Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the authors are listed by name in a rare display of transparency. However, this publication is rife with factual errors based on data provided by unreliable, politicized NGOs and makes false legal claims on key issues. The authors also focus on controversial political issues unrelated to medicine and present a distorted reality that focuses disproportionately on Israeli security restrictions while ignoring the context of terror that necessitated them.
The “field assessment” report was followed by a similar document produced by the WHO Secretariat. This submission focused on many of the same issues as the “field assessment” in addition to listing the WHO’s involvement in Palestinian health issues.
Haaretz Expunges Khader Adnan's Islamic Jihad Affiliation
Not for the first time, Haaretz whitewashes the violent past of a Palestinian prisoner.
The following prominent, four column, above the fold, stand alone Agence France Presse color photograph appears on page 2 of the English print edition today:
The accompanying caption reads:
The father of Khader Adnan, a Palestinian prisoner who is on a hunger strike in protest over his detention without trial, sits next to a framed poster of his son in the West Bank village of Araba, near Jenin, yesterday.
Haaretz's caption includes no mention of Khader Adnan's senior position in Islamic Jihad, a designated terror organization, although the original AFP caption (below) did specify Adnan's affiliation.
BBC News again ignores Hizballah operations in Cyprus
According to local media, the police suspect that Israeli tourists in Cyprus were among the likely targets and the Jerusalem Post reports that:
“Security sources in Israel say they believe the apartment in which the suspect was captured was an explosive materials storeroom that belonged to Hezbollah and was supposed to constitute an outlet for carrying out a large-scale series of terrorist attacks across Europe against Jewish, Israeli and Western targets.”
Readers may recall that just over two years ago it took the BBC over a month to get round to reporting on a similar case in which a Hizballah operative was arrested and tried in Cyprus. Currently this latest story has received no coverage on the BBC News website’s Middle East or Europe pages.
A sports story which did not interest the BBC
The Israeli delegation to the World Masters Judo competition held in Rabat on May 23rd and 24th was unnecessarily detained upon arrival in Morocco.
“The members of the Israeli delegation were held up at the airport for more than eight hours, in a large room with no chairs, food or water. […]
Only after the International Judo Federation chairman threatened to call off the entire competition, the Israeli delegation members were allowed into the country, and were escorted to their hotel by the king’s security unit.
On the first day of the competition, the Israeli judokas experienced hostility again, and the Israeli flag was nowhere to be seen. In response, a representative of the International Judo Federation demanded that all the flags of the participating countries be removed.”
In addition:
“The Israeli team was also not mentioned on the tournament’s website. The spectators waved Palestinian flags, shouted “We’re going to kill you,” and booed each time a member of the Israeli team appeared.”
No report on those events appears on the BBC’s dedicated Judo page or elsewhere in the sports section of the BBC News website and neither was it covered on the website’s Africa or Middle East pages.
Dagbladets level of debate: Its difficult not to compare Israel’s policies to Nazism
OK this is not penned by a drugged Dagbladet journalist, but by a hateful writer named Hege Ramson. Nevertheless, Dagbladet should know the limits of hateful lies that you can publish in the name of enlightened debate. Ms. Ramson seems to be utterly ignorant about facts on the ground, such as Israel did not murder over 2000 Palestinians last summer. Unfortunately, due to Hamas indiscriminate attacks against over 5 million Israeli civilians, Israel engaged in a lawful war against Hamas and other terror outfits, Hamas subjected its own population to crimes against humanity by placing weapons and other lawful military targets in the middle of densely populated areas. If Ms. Ramson would be just a little bit interested in facts, no matter how inconvenient for her hate filled venom she likes to spread around, she could spend her ample spare time by reading Amnesty International’s and Human Rights Watch’s reports about Hamas’s conduct. Her allegation that despicable calls to murder Arabs is commonplace in Israel is a dangerous twisting of facts; perhaps a handful of d***heads spend their time shouting hateful rubbish, but they are promptly put in their place by the majority of Israelis, who have no time for such nonsense. However, the brainless yet hateful Ms. Ramson can write whatever rubbish she likes, but Dagbladet should under no circumstance allow barefaced lies to soil the public debate. As yet another proof that Ms. Ramson lives with her head safely tucked up her tuches, is evidenced by her lack of knowledge of the little chat Netanyahu had with EU’s foreign secretary last week. Perhaps it does not fit her narrative? Her take on Eyelet Shaked beggars belief…
John Galliano Atones With Rabbi at His Side
John Galliano’s apology tour continued late last week in London, where the controversial designer spoke at a Jewish educational event organized by three area synagogues, The Guardian reported. Galliano, who in February 2011 was filmed in Paris giving an anti-Semitic tirade, and has since worked to rebuild his professional image, took the stage “wearing a smart suit with a lavender tie, his long hair tied back:”
“I am an alcoholic. I am an addict,” he said. “This is in no way an excuse. We alcoholics and we addicts are not responsible for our disease. However, I do take complete responsibility for my recovery and making amends.” He added: “I get a daily reprieve from this disease and that comes from total abstinence.”
Rabbi Barry Marcus of London’s Central Synagogue, who has “played a key role in Galliano’s public rehabilitation, sat next to the designer [and] said that Galliano should be forgiven as an “endless list of celebrities” have also made anti-Semitic remarks:
Huge swastika built on San Francisco high school football field
South San Francisco police have launched an investigation after vandals placed a giant swastika in the middle of El Camino High School’s football field after graduation ceremonies on Friday.
School officials said that snap-together tiles were used to produce the symbol, and that the field was not damaged.
Robin Braun Belinsky, a local resident, was driving past the field when she noticed the swastika on the 40-yard line of the football field. She stopped her car to take photographs and video.
“When I saw a giant swastika on the field, I was really pissed off,” said Belinsky, who recalled being teased as a child for being Jewish. “It was an ugly thing to see — really jarring.”
Cycling from Auschwitz to Celebrate Jewish Life
The Second Annual Ride for the Living, a unique event combining commemorating the Holocaust with bicycling, will take place this Friday.
Inspired by Jewish Community Center of Krakow (JCC Krakow) member Robert Desmond who cycled 1,350 miles from London to Auschwitz visiting World War Two sites of liberation, Ride for the Living implores participants to not just remember Poland’s Jewish history, but to celebrate the Jewish life that exists today in Poland.
JCC Krakow members, staff and friends from around the world will come together for the second year for the 55-mile ride from Auschwitz-Birkenau to the JCC to raise awareness and funds to ensure the future of Krakow’s Jewish community and celebrate Jewish life in Poland.
Ride for the Living is an annual event under the patronage of Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich. Both local and global participants will tour Auschwitz-Birkenau on Thursday; join the Jewish community of Krakow for Shabbat dinner on Friday night after the Ride; and then participate in the 7@Nite Festival on Saturday.
Last year’s participants raised funds for a trip for Holocaust survivors from the JCC’s Senior Club to visit Israel – many for the first time.
Medics create smart wearable bands with complete medical profiles
When Elly Gorodetzer’s mother fell off an escalator in the mall, first responders noticed the MyMDband on her wrist and scanned its QR code to access her medical profile, at the same time automatically alerting her loved ones of the incident’s location.
No doubt she’s grateful to her son Elly and grandson Gidon for inventing MyMDband in the first place.
“We assembled a team of medical professionals, technology experts and patients to come up with a solution to one of the most critical problems in emergency medicine: Lack of access to a patient’s medical information,” explains Gidon Rogers, a computer professional and a volunteer medic for Israel’s Magen David Adom first-response network.
MyMDband recently went on the market in eight countries. The waterproof, maintenance-free, lifetime-guaranteed silicon band with a laser-engraved QR code on a stainless-steel buckle displays all the data needed immediately after it’s scanned: prior medical conditions, current medications, allergies, vaccinations; even the patient’s last EKG.
The patent-pending device has multilingual capability, automatically displaying the data in the language of the caregiver — an especially useful feature for world travelers.
Experience Judea and Samaria as You've Never Seen It
Award-winning wines; delicious cuisine; breathtaking nature; thrilling family adventures; endless, rich history.
These aren't the first things which come to mind for most people when the words "West Bank" or even "Judea and Samaria" come up in conversation.
As someone who moved from London's concrete jungle to the hills of Samaria myself, the gap between perception and the reality of what life here is really like hits me almost every day. It's always most pronounced when friends and relatives - of all political and religious persuasions - come to visit: "Wow, I didn't realize it was so nice here!" is usually one of the first (so very British) things to pass their lips.
One even expressed genuine amazement that we don't live surrounded by barbed wire and barricades.
When my wife set up a tour company specifically providing trips to Samaria (aptly-named SoulWalk Tours) some people thought she must have gone mad. What kind of business model is that? Who wants to visit a war zone? And yet, as the steadily growing number of foreign and Israeli visitors are learning for themselves, such a perception is so incredibly far from the reality.
So what is Judea and Samaria really like, beyond the headlines?
CNN Report Highlights Record Number of Women in Knesset
The 29 women serving in Israel’s newly elected Knesset have once again set a record, CNN reported yesterday.
“If you don’t have women around the table, then decisions are made according to what’s convenient for men, not what’s convenient for women,” said Rachel Azaria, a first-term Knesset member with the Kulanu party.
“Every Knesset, one after another, the number of women have been growing,” said Azaria, “and this is part of the way things are moving ahead. And I hope that one day we will be 50%. I think that will happen.” …
The Knesset is 24.2% female, which puts it ahead of the United States, where 19.4% of Congress is female, but behind the United Kingdom’s 29.4%. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Rwanda leads the world in female representation. Rwanda’s Chamber of Deputies is 64% female.
Soup Nazi, but no soup, for Tel Aviv
Larry Thomas, rather better known as Jerry Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi” — anti-hero of a classic seventh-series episode — was in Israel this week for an acting job.
“It’s my first time in Israel and I brought my 87-year-old mother for her birthday,” Thomas told a reporter from “Good Evening with Guy Pines.”
Thomas, who was nominated for an Emmy for his Soup Nazi role, was taped skipping down Nahalat Binyamin Street in Tel Aviv.
The American actor — who reprised the role in the “Seinfeld” finale — has appeared in many commercials worldwide, often recreating his role as the fierce, ill-tempered owner of a New York City soup stand who demanded his customers adhere to his arbitrary rules or not be served.
Israel and China give each other a hand on train tech
Israel and China are helping each other out on moving railway passengers. In China, Israeli tech firm Radware is supplying China Railway with e-ticketing equipment, while that same company will be working with Israel’s Solel Boneh to build Tel Aviv’s Red Line train.
In recent months, China Railway began selling tickets online, a service that has become so popular that it overwhelmed the network. With close to a billion passengers a year, the railway sells millions of tickets a day – and to keep the network robust, the company chose a hardware and software solution from Radware.
Radware’s application delivery controller (ADC) provides virtualization, integrated application acceleration and on-demand scalability that allows the railway to quickly determine prices, capacity, and statistics on how many passengers are using the railway.
Meanwhile, China Railway’s Tunnel Group, along with Shikun Binui Solel Boneh Infrastructure group has won a a $750 million tender by Israel’s NTA Metropolitan Mass Transit System to build the Red Line, the first in the planned subway network that will eventually crisscross the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.
Israeli tech poised to bring streaming games to US homes
GameFly, the biggest video game rental service in the US, is moving into the streaming business – and it’s using Israeli video streaming experts Playcast to accomplish that. On Tuesday, GameFly announced it was acquiring Playcast. According to industry sources, the deal is worth about $30 million.
And GameFly is putting its Israeli acquisition to work right away. The US company announced Tuesday that it was starting a new streaming game service, called GameFly Streaming. The service will be available exclusively for now on Amazon Fire TV, the streaming broadcast media service run by the Internet retail giant.
Amazon TV is just the beginning, according to industry sources. With GameFly Streaming, Playcast will bring its technology to a large group of active game players who regularly rent games and devices to play them on.
Located in many malls in the US, GameFly has been said to be planning its move from retail consumer-facing rentals of games and equipment into streaming for a long time – but was stymied by the technological challenges. Unlike streamed TV shows and movies (such as those on Amazon TV or Netflix), games cannot be streamed with compression; game players who want an experience similar to the one they can get on their high resolution PlayStations, Xboxes, and other devices, wouldn’t stand for it.
Breast-feeding may lower leukemia risk, Israeli study finds
Breast-feeding a baby for at least six months may be linked to a lower risk of childhood leukemia, according to a review presented Monday by Israeli researchers of previously published research on the topic.
The findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics suggest that breast-fed babies have a 19 percent lower risk of the blood cancer compared to babies who are given formula or who are breast-fed for a shorter period of time.
“The many potential preventive health benefits of breast-feeding should also be communicated openly to the general public, not only to mothers, so breast-feeding can be more socially accepted and facilitated,” said the study led by Efrat Amitay and Lital Keinan-Boker of the University of Haifa, Israel.
Their study reviewed 18 past studies on the association between breast-feeding and leukemia, the most common childhood cancer. It accounts for about 30 percent of all pediatric cancers.
In Morocco, Exploring Remnants of Jewish History
The year was 1438, and this move marked a momentous shift in Moroccan Jewish life. Oral tradition places the Jews in Morocco since just after the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C. Under Arab rule the climate was for long periods (but not without exception) characterized by a general spirit of tolerance, first formulated in the seventh century, when Jews became known as dhimmi, or “protected persons.” They were free to practice their religion, but they were also required to pay a special poll tax, and they were barred from certain occupations. At times they were allowed to live in the city; at others not. Long stretches of tranquillity were interrupted by sporadic outbreaks of violence.
It was after one particularly extreme attack that the Sultan moved the city’s Jews to a walled neighborhood near his palace on what had once been a salt marsh, or mellah. Mellahs soon appeared in Marrakesh, Rabat, Salé and elsewhere. But whereas European ghettos were established out of a punitive impulse, the Moroccan mellah was — ostensibly — intended to safeguard.
Today the mellah in Fez still feels distinct from the city’s other precincts. The buildings are multistoried, since the limited acreage developed vertically to accommodate a growing population. They are also pierced with windows and fitted with festive balconies, while in the medina most turn a blank facade to the street, in support of the Muslim policy of keeping women concealed.
“Muslims used to come to the mellah to party,” Youness said as we made our way along its market street. “They could drink alcohol and look at unveiled women. Sometimes,” he added with a raised eyebrow, “more than just look.”