From Ian:
In New Low, Scholars Defend Medieval Blood Libel Charges Against Israel
Leave it to the Middle East studies establishment to defend the vilest forms of conspiratorial anti-Semitic rhetoric, provided it’s in service of demonizing Israel. Jasbir Puar, the Rutgers University women’s and gender studies professor and Israel-boycott advocate who, in a controversial February 3 lecture at Vassar College, charged the IDF with the organ harvesting, deliberate maiming, and stunting of “Palestinian bodies,” can certainly count on support from its ranks.
Notorious Israel-bashers such as Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University), Joel Beinin (Stanford University), and Steven Salaita (American University of Beirut) are among the signatories to an open letter to Vassar College President Catharine Bond Hill defending Puar against an alleged campaign of “vilification and hatred” following her inflammatory lecture. Unlike the vast majority of academic jargon-filled apologias for bigotry that populate the lecture circuit, Puar’s talk was widely covered and rightly condemned by a disgusted public. In evoking “hate mail and other threats” against Puar, the authors allude to the specter of death threats — whether real or imagined — a time-honored tradition among academics unaccustomed to the twin horrors of criticism and accountability.
The letter inveighs against the particular evils of a February 17 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Mark G. Yudof, former University of California president, and Ken Waltzer, professor emeritus of history at Michigan State University, titled, “Majoring in Anti-Semitism at Vassar.” Yudof and Waltzer had the temerity to point out the obvious: by accusing Israel of extracting organs from Palestinians for medical research, Puar was “updating the medieval blood libel against Jews.”
In the face of such censure, and unable to silence Puar’s critics, the letter’s authors urge President Hill to take the drastic action of writing “a letter to the Wall Street Journal … condemning in no uncertain terms the unjustifiable attack on Vassar and on Professor Puar.” Take that, free speech!
NYTs: An Anti-Semitism of the Left
The rise of the leftist Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of Britain’s opposition Labour Party appears to have empowered a far left for whom support of the Palestinians is uncritical and for whom, in the words of Alan Johnson, a British political theorist, “that which the demonological Jew once was, demonological Israel now is.”
Corbyn is no anti-Semite. But he has called Hamas and Hezbollah agents of “long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region,” and once invited to Parliament a Palestinian Islamist, Raed Salah, who has suggested Jews were absent from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Corbyn called him an “honored citizen.” The “Corbynistas” on British campuses extol their fight against the “racist colonization of Palestine,” as one Oxford student, James Elliott, put it. Elliott was narrowly defeated last month in a bid to become youth representative on Labour’s national executive committee.
What is striking about the anti-Zionism derangement syndrome that spills over into anti-Semitism is its ahistorical nature. It denies the long Jewish presence in, and bond with, the Holy Land. It disregards the fundamental link between murderous European anti-Semitism and the decision of surviving Jews to embrace Zionism in the conviction that only a Jewish homeland could keep them safe. It dismisses the legal basis for the modern Jewish state in United Nations Resolution 181 of 1947. This was not “colonialism” but the post-Holocaust will of the world: Arab armies went to war against it and lost.
As Simon Schama, the historian, put it last month in The Financial Times, the Israel of 1948 came into being as a result of the “centuries-long dehumanization of the Jews.”
The Jewish state was needed. History had demonstrated that. That is why I am a Zionist — now a dirty word in Europe.
AFP Celebrates Murder: On International Women’s Day
Today, on International Women’s Day, the Agence France Presse (AFP) wire service published an article celebrating the wives of convicted Palestinian terrorists. Not all terrorists of course, only those who attack Israelis.
"Jailed Palestinians' wives caught between pride, struggle"
AFP starts by explaining that, “More than 7,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, with around 600 serving life sentences.” In a startling example of unashamed media bias, AFP makes no mention of why those prisoners are held, the terror that many have committed, or the number of lives they have claimed.
AFP says nothing of the Israeli victims or their families, nor does it mention that the Palestinian Authority government pays incarcerated terrorists sums far beyond what they could earn while free, thus creating a strong economic incentive to kill Israelis.
AFP goes on to make an emotionally charged case study of one Ahed Abu Golmi, mentioning only at the end of the article that he went to prison because of his role in the 2001 assassination of Rehavam Ze’evi, the Israeli Minister of Tourism. (Is there any country in the world where assassinating a government minister wouldn’t land the assassin in prison?) Not surprisingly, the article does not bother to interview, or even mention, Ze’evi’s family: he was survived by his wife Yael and their five children.
Palestinian terrorist kills US tourist, wounds 10 in Jaffa stabbing spree
An American tourist was killed and at least 10 people were injured Tuesday evening when a Palestinian man carried out a stabbing spree in Jaffa. Five of the injured were described as being in critical condition.
The terrorist stabbed his victims in at least three locations in an attack that lasted some 20 minutes, reports said.
The attacker was shot dead by police after a chase from the Jaffa Port along the Tel Aviv beach promenade. Police said he was a 21-year-old man from the West Bank Palestinian refugee camp in Qalqiliya.
After the attack, police sought to dispel rumors that a second attacker was at large.
Graphic footage from the scene of the attack appeared to show a policeman shooting one round at the stabber as he lay on the ground, with civilians cheering and urging him and other officers to aim for his head.
LISTEN - Breitbart’s Aaron Klein Stumps Anti-Israel Talk Radio Caller With $10,000 Challenge
Weekend talk radio host and Breitbart Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein on Sunday personally offered $10,000 to an anti-Israel caller if he could name another Middle Eastern country aside from Israel where all citizens are provided similar democratic rights.
The stumped caller, who went by the name of Peter in Brooklyn, could not provide an answer to the challenge despite being given three opportunities to do so.
“Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” is broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and Philadelphia’s NewsTalk 990 AM.
The ordeal began when Klein, a U.S. citizen who broadcasts his popular weekend American radio show live from Tel Aviv, took Peter’s call and the caller claimed Israel was not a democracy and that supporting the Jewish state was not in America’s interests.
Caroline Glick: The subversion of American Evangelicals
Monday the Bethlehem Bible College, an Evangelical Christian college in Jesus’s hometown, opened its fourth biennial Christ at the Checkpoint conference. The conference, which is directed specifically toward US Evangelicals, will run through the week.
Today, Evangelical communities in the US number anywhere between 60 and 150 million people, depending on who is counting. They form the backbone of American support for the Jewish state. It is the support of the Evangelical community, rather than the Jewish community in the US that ensures that come hell or high water, no matter how Israel is demonized in the media and in academia, the majority of Americans continue to support Israel.
But will this support last? One of the more surprising aspects of the 2016 elections is Evangelical support for businessman Donald Trump. Trump in many ways personifies everything that people who take the Bible seriously are supposed to oppose. He owns casinos. He curses and uses profanity in his public appearances. He has donated to Planned Parenthood and forcefully supported abortions on demand.
Trump has also insisted repeatedly that he will be neutral toward Israel.
Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Evangelical support for Trump is that he takes these positions as he runs against primary opponents who all wear their faith on their sleeves. All of his opponents have records of standing with the Evangelicals on social and other salient issues – including support for Israel.
Methodists Restarting BDS War Against Israel
The United Methodist Church is following in the footsteps of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ and the United Church of Canada, who all passed resolutions boycotting and divesting from the State of Israel.
In a sort of blundering naiveté, the United Methodist Church is ignoring what is surely inevitable: the very divestment they ostensibly imagine will stop the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians may actually serve to exacerbate it.
"Not all is lost. Many of the delegates to the General Conference come from Africa. They have witnessed jihad up close and personal and will likely have a much more sympathetic view of Israel's predicament than many of the delegates who live in the relative safety of the United States." — Dexter Van Zile, Christian media analyst.
"The BDS Movement has already fulfilled part of its potential – as a stalking horse for those seeking to destroy Israel by other means. ... It's committed not to peace but to a piecemeal elimination of Israel." — Dr. Harold Brackman, Simon Wiesenthal Center.
HuffPo: Truth vs. Myth In The BDS Movement
While BDS activists like to portray themselves for Western consumption as benign human rights campaigners, Omar Barghouti, the Palestinian founder and chief proponent of BDS, has not shied away from admitting what his real ambition is: the destruction of Israel. In 2009, Barghouti told the anti-Israel online publication, The Electronic Intifada, that "people fighting for refugee rights like I am, know that you cannot reconcile the right of return for refugees with a two-state solution. That is the big white elephant in the room and people are ignoring it -- a return for refugees would end Israel's existence as a Jewish state." Barghouti repeated the same position to a group of students at the University of Ottawa in 2014.
According to the unique UN definition of "Palestinian" refugees -- that is, the original 600,000-750,000 Palestinians refugees from the 1948 war plus their descendants through generations -- they now number more than 5.5 million. It is a definition that curiously applies only to Palestinians and does not extend to the 50 million other refugees registered by the UN High Commission for Refugees. A "return" of these refugees to Israel would demographically overwhelm Israel, destroy the Jewish state and turn it into another Arab-majority country.
This is Barghouti's -- and the BDS's -- ultimate objective. And it is time for those sufficiently naive to be lured by the "human rights" rhetoric of the BDS movement to demonstrate some intellectual honesty and face this malign fact.
FoxNews: 'NO PLACE AT OBERLIN'Ohio college's trustees fire back at crackpot professor
Trustees and alumni at a presitigious Ohio college are turning up the heat on the school administration, which has so far taken no action against a nutty professor who believes Jews were behind 9/11 and the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in France.
The Board of Trustees at Oberlin College demanded answers in a statement posted on the school's own website, with Chairman Clyde McGregor blasting "rhetoric and composition" Professor Joy Karega for anti-Semitic online postings.
“These postings are anti-Semitic and abhorrent,” McGregor said in the statement. “We deplore anti-Semitism and all other forms of bigotry. They have no place at Oberlin.
“As an Oberlin alumna, I can tell you that the vile anti-Semitism now on full public display before the nation has festered on the campus for decades.”
- Michelle Malkin
“These grave issues must be considered expeditiously,” he continued, adding that the school and faculty must "challenge the assertion that there is any justification for these repugnant postings and to report back to the Board.”
Karega’s Not Alone: Email Sent to Oberlin Students Blames 9/11 on ‘Zionist Jews’
An anonymous e-mail sent to a large number of Oberlin College students on Sunday accused Israel and “Zionist Jews” of responsibility for the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. The emails came amid mounting controversy over the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Joy Karega, an Oberlin professor whose Facebook posts were first exposed by The Tower two weeks ago. Karega had also accused Israel of being behind 9/11; she also alleged that Israel created ISIS and promoted the belief that the Rothschild family controls “your news, the media, your oil, and your government.”
Dean of students Eric Estes promptly denounced the emails as “anti-Semitic and deeply offensive” in a campus-wide email Sunday night. “We deeply regret that this has happened at a troubled, but crucial time for our community,” he wrote, in an apparent reference to Karega’s anti-Israel and anti-Semitic Facebook posts.
In one of her posts, Karega approvingly cited a video featuring Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has frequently been accused of anti-Semitism, blaming 9/11 on “Israeli and Zionist Jews.” Karega wrote on Facebook that though she has often disagreed with him, “Farrakhan is truth-telling in this video.”
Kevin Barrett, a writer for the Veterans Today, a website that prominently features anti-Israel conspiracy theories, offered his support for Karega and her 9/11 theories last week. Karega thanked Barrett, whose writings are often picked up by the neo-Nazi website Stormfront, for his support.
Palestinian Authority activists hope to win billions from US supporters of post-1967 development in Judea and Samaria.
A group of Palestinian Authority activists hope to win billions from United States supporters of post-1967 development in Judea and Samaria.
They’re suing Jewish and Christian business tycoons, religious groups and companies involved in Israeli communities developed after the Six-Day War, and hoping to reap $34.5 billion.
The lawsuit was filed in the Federal District Court of Washington D.C. this week by PA activist Bassem Tamimi and 35 others, according to Qatar-based Al Jazeera.
Unsurprisingly, the Arab network did not name the other plaintiffs in the suit, nor did it reveal details about the charges leveled against the defendants.
The trial is not expected to start until at least five years from now – if at all.
Named in the lawsuit are: Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson Real estate tycoon Irving Moskowitz World-renowned Pastor John Hagee Christian Friends of Israeli Communities Dead Sea cosmetics firm Ahava Industrial mega business Israel Chemicals Ltd
Is Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Boycotting Israel?
On April 23, 2014—the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth—Shakespeare’s Globe embarked on a simple yet daring project: to stage a sixteen-person production of Hamlet in every country in the world in just two years.
From Albania to Zimbabwe, director Dominic Dromgoole’s Hamlet is expected to grace 193 countries before April 23, 2016. “Globe to Globe Hamlet was created with the aim of performing Hamlet to as many people as possible, in as diverse a range of places as possible,” he has said. “The central principle of the tour is that Shakespeare can entertain and speak to anyone, no matter where they are on earth; and that no country or people are not better off for the lively presence of Hamlet.”
Yet Israel will not be graced with such liveliness and entertainment, it seems. The tour has but two months left to run, and a listing for a performance in Tel Aviv on February 29 that once appeared on their website has vanished into the online ether.
Troublingly, the travelling company has been in Israel’s neighborhood three times during the course of their tour without dropping in. In January of this year, Hamlet was staged in Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar. In November 2015, they performed it in Turkey, while in October they visited Jordan twice—including one performance at the Za’atari refugee camp—as well as the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and the Palestinian Territories. There are even plans to go to Iran before the end of April.
It is scarcely believable that, having arranged a visit to Ramallah to perform at the state-of-the-art Ramallah Cultural Palace—something that most probably would have had to have been cleared by Israeli authorities—they could not have travelled a few kilometers to stage Hamlet at Jerusalem’s Khan Theatre or any venue in Tel Aviv.
Palestinians Arrest Teachers and Anti-Israel Protesters Couldn’t Care Less
American college professors have now shown their true colors when it comes to Israel. Remember how 126 historians recently tried to get the American Historical Association (AHA) to condemn Israel for “interfering with the travel of students” by maintaining security checkpoints? Well, now it’s the Palestinian Authority (PA) that is setting up checkpoints to block teachers—and wouldn’t you know it, those angry historians have suddenly fallen silent.
The 126 radical historians presented their resolution at the AHA’s convention in Atlanta in January. The Gang of 126 claimed the students are sometimes delayed “15 minutes or more” at Israeli security checkpoints, and these delays supposedly are “impeding instruction at Palestinian institutions of higher learning.”
The real impediment to Palestinian education, however, is the behavior of the PA. More than 20,000 Palestinian public school teachers are striking because the PA has failed to implement a 2013 agreement between the PA and the Palestinian Teachers Union. The pay raises and promotions required by the agreement have never been put into effect.
BDS events in Vienna city-funded building cancelled
The Amerlinghaus, a municipal-funded cultural center in Vienna, canceled a series of boycott events targeting Israel on Monday.
Lisa Grösel, a spokeswoman from the Amerlinghaus, said the center “decided in consultation with the event organizers to cancel the events.”
Grösel added, “At the same time, we believe that a discussion about the political situation in Israel is correct and important, and we regret that this was stopped under pressure.”
When asked by The Jerusalem Post in February about the BDS activities in the Amerlinghaus, Martin Ritzmaier, spokesman for Vienna Mayor Michael Häupl, said, “We would like a cancellation.”
Ritzmaier added that the city of Vienna has contacted the Amerlinghaus management to urge a cancellation of the BDS activities.
“The city of Vienna rejects boycott calls against the State of Israel, and the BDS-Austria association receives no funding from the city of Vienna,” he said.
York University accused of allowing anti-Semitism to spread
Shelley Yachaev has watched the anti-Israel propaganda at York University evolve over the four years she’s been there from being very much in one’s face to a well-crafted “strategic” effort that has infiltrated the entire system.
Yachaev, who moved to Canada from Israel at age 12 and is president of the Israeli Students Union at York, says “every little part” of the university has been infiltrated with anti-Semitism.
In fact, she says, some of her own professors have endorsed the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement — an international Palestinian-led movement that seeks to demonize the Jewish state.
This past October, the York Federation of Students (YFS) formed an official alliance with the Students against Israeli Apartheid group, she adds.
Complaints about the protests and the intimidation are mostly ignored, says Yachaev, who is pursuing a degree in human resources management.
“I don’t walk into anywhere at York (anymore) where I trust the fact I can speak freely,” she says.
Major Jewish Group Demands ABC Cancel ‘Quantico’ for ‘Vicious Defamation of Jews, Israel and the IDF’
A major Jewish group is gathering signatures for a petition against ABC to cancel the series Quantico, amid allegations of anti-Israel and antisemitic content.
The Zionist Organization of America has been protesting what it considers the “blatant, vicious defamation of Jews, Israel and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), promoting ugly lies against the Jewish people and the Jewish state” on the TV thriller about a group of FBI recruits training to become special agents.
In a statement released on Friday, ZOA President Morton A. Klein and Director of Special Projects Liz Berney referred to a previous complaint they had lodged with ABC – on October 30 – and what they considered an “unhelpful letter” from the network, which “failed to address Quantico’s factual anti-Semitic errors.”
Artist With Flag In His Butt at Haaretz Event Shocks People Who’ve Never Read Haaretz (satire)
(EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS REALLY HAPPENED!)
The scandalous performance at yesterday’s Haaretz Culture Conference during which an artist placed the flag in his tuchus while pelting attendees with orange rinds, shocked and offended those members of the audience and the public who had never, like, actually “read” Haaretz. The Daily Freier rushed to the scene to console the traumatized, somehow find a way to work through the horror, and to monetize this story.
“I….I don’t know what to say” said a shell-shocked Adi F., who admitted that she had never read a column by Gideon Levy. “I wonder if Maccabi will cover therapy sessions. I really want to un-see this.”
Other audience members were visibly angry. “This is an outrage! A shonda to the Goyim! How could he do this?” demanded Michael H., before letting slip that his exposure to Haaretz is limited to peaking at the Weekend Edition left on his Vad Bayit’s doorstep.
Interestingly, audience members who were accustomed to Haaretz were visibly less upset. “Still not as offensive as an Amira Hass article!” chuckled alert local Ronit S. as she sipped a cappuccino in the lobby.
After security escorted the artist from the stage and removed the flag from his posterior, a subsequent body cavity search further revealed 3 Shekels, 40 Agurot, some cheap sunglasses, and a Rav Kav.
Looking beyond the BBC’s simplistic portrayal of Gush Etzion
Last week Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz produced an article in which he described Gush Etzion Junction as having been “built forcibly on their [Palestinian] land”. That article – and that sentence in particular – prompted a response from Professor Asa Kasher on Facebook.
“‘Do they imagine’, asks Gideon Levy of the settlers in his column ‘that the Palestinians will ever give up on the junction which was built forcibly on their land, against their wishes?’. That question comes to sell its readers a lie and a falsehood. Here are the facts:
At the end of Hosanna Raba […] -1926 – the chairman of the association [“Memory of David”] Rabbi Menahem Kasher [my grandfather] went out accompanied by a lawyer to Migdal Eder. There, ten Arabs were gathered in one big room; these were the owners of the land. Each one of the owners present received his part in cash payment and signed his agreement to sell his part of the land of Migdal Eder (“Settlements that were Abandoned”, by Ben-Zion Michaeli, 1980).
Migdal Eder was the first Jewish settlement to be built in Gush Etzion. My grandfather and his friends were Orthodox Jews from Jerusalem who were interested in the land of Migdal Eder. The Jewish settlement was built with impressive personal and community efforts. It came to an end during the riots of 1929. The lives of the residents were saved thanks to a few friendly Arab neighbours but the settlement was robbed and totally destroyed. The settlement Migdal Eder existed exactly in the place where today Gush Etzion Junction is located. Gideon Levy is lying.”
Facebook: Anti-Semitic messages earn Mark Zuckerberg criminal complaint from German lawyers
German lawyers have filed a criminal complaint against Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg over anti-Semitic speech on the social networking site. There was no immediate response to the complaint from Zuckerberg.
Germany has strict laws against hate speech given its experience under Adolf Hitler. It is illegal to incite hatred and to circulate or display Nazi symbols in Germany and if Zuckerberg is found guilty on those charges, he could face a fine of up to $163m (€150m).
A spokeswoman for the Hamburg prosecutors told Fortune that they are still examining the merit of the lawyers' complaint before deciding whether or not to proceed against Zuckerberg.
"I think Facebook has changed German society — not for the good," Bavarian lawyer Chan-jo Jun told Vice News. "I wanted to find out if the German legal system would prevail against an American company."
Jun has compiled a list of more than 300 Facebook pages and posts that contain swastikas and other Nazi-related images as well as calls for violence against the Middle Eastern and North African immigrants who have flooded Germany over the past year.
BBC Trending’s preposterous International Women’s Day question
On International Women’s Day (March 8th) the question that BBC Trending found it appropriate to ask visitors to the Middle East page on the corporation’s website was “Are Saudi women really that oppressed?“.
In the text accompanying that video report, readers are told that what they know about the state of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia (including, apparently, its 2015 ranking by the World Economic Forum at 134 out of 145 countries) is a “stereotype”.
“Life for women in the Arab kingdom is often painted as one of repression, after all they are forbidden from driving and are restricted by male guardianship laws which deprive them of their independence.
And BBC Trending has covered several stories that have gone viral that show how these restrictions affect women’s lives.
But many of these stories also show how women are using social media to make their voices heard, challenging not only their own society but also the stereotype the world has of them.
So for the “Saudis on Social” series we asked Saudi women, if they are really that oppressed?”
On 100th Anniversary of Founding, BMW Expresses Regret for Having Used Forced Labor to Supply Nazis With Arms
German car manufacturer Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) expressed regret on Monday for using forced labor to help supply weapons components to the Nazis during WWII, the UK’s Daily Mail reported.
Under the National Socialist regime in the 1930s and ’40s, BMW operated exclusively as a supplier to the German arms industry, the company said in a statement. As demand for its aero engines increased, BMW recruited forced laborers, convicts and prisoners from concentration camps to assist in manufacturing them.
‘To this day, the enormous suffering this caused and the fate of many forced laborers remains a matter of the most profound regret,” BMW said.
BMW issued the statement on the 100th anniversary of its founding in Munich in 1916, at the height of WWI. The company celebrated with an event in the city, where it unveiled a new “Vision Vehicle” concept car. The futuristic automobile has a spacious interior and self-driving features.
The statement and celebration also come days after BMW and Rolls-Royce became involved in a dispute over whether the UK should remain in the European Union.
Israeli remote health tech sought for China’s healthcare system
As China’s population ages, its healthcare needs are growing – and to keep costs down, the country is looking at ways to keep patients out of the doctor’s office, via Israeli communication technology.
“The best way to save money is to bring healthcare to the home, to enable people to better take care of themselves,” according to Renming Zhu, president of Truth Enterprises, which calls itself a “smart healthcare technology” company. “With mobile and video technology, patients will be able to connect with many specialists at a minimum cost.”
Renming was in Israel for the recent mHealth Mobile Health Conference, where technology to do that, as well as to diagnose patients and improve their health, were on display. Israelis start-ups, medical tech firms, and executives of the health industry were all on hand to show off their latest developments to Renming and hundreds of other visitors, from Israel and abroad.
Renming was particularly interested in early stage start-ups, some of which he hoped to attract to a new incubator his company was establishing in Shanghai.
Israel's Big Gift to the U.S. Economy
From manufacturing to medical research, the Jewish state is crucial to the economic health of the U.S.
The movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (often referred to as BDS) hopes to economically isolate the Jewish state to the point that it is pressured into permitting the creation of a Palestinian state under conditions that would threaten Israel’s security and even its very existence. Those of us who fight against this support Israel’s right to exist and are usually motivated by religion, a specific worldview, or a moral code. But when boycotts hurt Israel’s economy, they hurt America as well. Israel makes massive and often unknown contributions to America’s The economy and quality of life. If the boycott movement were to achieve its aims, Americans would lose regardless of their position on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the last few presidential election cycles, the economy has ranked among the top two most important issues to voters, and this year will likely be the same. This means that this fight is much bigger than the pro-Israel community, and the coalition to fight boycotts of Israel should expand to include those concerned about American domestic policy as well. Americans needs to understand that this hurts them too.
The U.S.-Israel alliance is expansive. Pro-Israel advocates understand that the alliance contributes to America’s security and its position as a moral, democratic leader in the world. Decades of polling show Americans outside the foreign policy establishment support Israel because of the democratic, liberal values shared by our two nations. But the alliance is much deeper than that. As of December 2015, according to the World Bank, Israel is the 37th largest economy in the world by gross domestic product (GDP), an extraordinary accomplishment for such a young and perpetually beleaguered nation. But last year Israel was also America’s 23rd largest trade partner. From Israel, America receives unusually high amounts of investment; helpful and profitable technologies and services; and advancements in science, agriculture, the environment, and healthcare that improve the quality of and, in some cases, quite literally save our lives. Our exports to Israel create jobs in America. Through Israeli innovations and collaboration, our scientists and medical professionals become smarter and more effective at their jobs, and our agriculture and environmental sectors become more efficient and productive. The impact of the alliance is as wide as it is deep.
Supermodel Naomi Campbell says Peres inspires her
Former president Shimon Peres hosted supermodel Naomi Campbell at the Peres Center for Peace on Tuesday, in honor of International Women’s Day.
Peres presented Campbell with the “Women Leading Change” award in honor of her work for women and communities.
“Leaders like you, Mr. Peres, and Nelson Mandela, are what make the world a better place,” said Campbell during a joint interview with Peres. “You inspire me.”
“My mother is an anchor in my life. She raised me alone and made me believe in myself and not give up,” Campbell continued.
The women warriors that broke the IDF's glass ceiling
For International Women's Day, four female IDF warriors that serve in core IDF combat positions have shared with us how they trail-blazed into places reserved almost exclusively for men.
Captain Lieutenant (Capt.-Lt.) Omer Haham, who serves in a combat role in the Navy, is the first female officer to serve on a helicopter assistance unit for Sa'ar 5-class missile corvettes.
"I operate navy operating systems from within the helicopter. I don't do my work because I want to be a trailblazer but because it is interesting and hands on," Haham told The Jerusalem Post's Hebrew sister publication Ma'ariv.
"My advice for women is that they not try to carry out their jobs differently because they are girls. The job is the same for men as it is for women and it must be done to the highest standards," she said.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.