From Ian:
Breaking the Silence Gets Failing Grade in Channel 10's Fact-Check
Once described as the "most hated group" in Israel, few NGOs evoke the same level of raw emotion as "Breaking the Silence" (BtS). The European-funded Israeli organization publishes testimony, in Hebrew and in English, of Israeli soldiers with the stated aim to "expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories."
Although leading international media outlets have in the past cited and relied upon the organization's material, at the core of the controversy surrounding this group is the question of whether the published testimonies are reliable. A July 12 investigative report by "Hamakor," Israel’s Channel 10's flagship news magazine, suggests that the answer is a resounding "No."
BtS: Highest Professional Standards?
Since a group of Israeli soldiers who served in Hebron launched the organization in 2004, BtS has published dozens of soldiers' testimonies documenting "everyday life in the Occupied Territories" in order to “demonstrate the depth of corruption which is spreading in the Israeli military.” Defending themselves from critics' accusations that they are merely peddling in gossip and unconfirmed reports, BtS argues "its personal testimonies have all been crosschecked, verified and passed through Israeli military censorship before publication."
Some defenders of the organization have claimed that so far not one serious error has been found in their published testimonies.
"Hamakor" Investigative Report
BtS's claim of nearly infallible standards took a big hit this week with Channel 10's broadcast. While largely sympathetic to the BtS activists whom it depicted as idealistic and motivated by good intentions, Channel 10 reporters Anat Goren and Itay Rom found their investigative standards to be lacking. Under rigorous scrutiny, a large percentage of the group’s accounts which Channel 10 reviewed proved to be either false or exaggerated.
New Israel Fund Supports Organization That Calls Israeli Heroes Murderers
B’Tselem, which has received $2,202,381 over the last 10 years from the the New Israel Fund (NIF), recently published a document providing data on casualties caused by Israel since Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009).
The document also includes a list of Palestinians killed by Israeli citizens in the West Bank during that period. The document indicates that the vast majority of casualties were terrorists killed by security forces or armed civilians — either after or during attacks on IDF soldiers or innocent Israeli citizens.
B’Tselem chose to merely describe the circumstances in which Palestinians were shot, while refraining from noting that they were killed while trying to commit terrorist attacks. Instead, B’Tselem vilifies the people who tried to stop the terrorists and save lives.
Some examples:
Muhammad Zaharan Abd El-Halim Zaharan: Age 22, inhabitant of A-Dik village in the Salfit district, was killed on December 24, 2015 in Ariel, in the Nablus District, shot by live bullets. Additional details: Was shot to death by a female security guard in the industrial zone, after he had stabbed her and an additional security guard.
Fadi Muhamad, Mahmud Hsiv: Age 30, inhabitant of Ramallah, was killed on November 27, 2015 in the vicinity of Kefar Adumim shot by live bullets by an Israeli citizen. Additional details: According to the police announcement, he was shot after running over two persons who were waiting at a hitchhiking stop, wounding them slightly, then emerging from his car and running towards them with a knife in his hand.
Shadi Mahmud Khsiv: Age 31, inhabitant of Ramallah, was killed on November 22, 2015 in the vicinity of Kefar Adumim shot by live bullets. Additional details: According to the announcement of the police spokesperson, he was shot after attempting to run over people waiting at a hitchhiking stop; then he emerged from his car and stabbed and wounded one of them slightly.
Muhammad Abed Mussah Nimmer – Age 37, inhabitant of Al-Isawiyah in Jerusalem was killed on November 10, 2015 shot by live bullets. Additional details: He was shot to death by a security guard of the Jerusalem Light Rail system, when he attempted to stab him.
Fadel Muhamad Awad El-Kawasami: Age 18, inhabitant of Hebron, was killed on October 17, 2015 in Hebron, shot by live bullets. Additional details: According to the announcement of the IDF spokesperson, he was shot while attempting to stab an Israeli civilian.
The Uri Weiss Affair and Bar-Ilan’s Cowardice
For years, the anti-Israel academic Left in Israeli universities has defended the “right” of anyone and everyone to boycott Israel. The BDS terrorists are just exercising freedom of speech. So are those who organize conferences on why Israel needs to cease existing. Every antisemitic loon has the “right” to appear on Israeli campuses, from neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein to Mister Khmer Rouge — Noam Chomsky. In addition, the Left wants everyone to have the right to boycott “settlers,” which is why artists and performers who refuse to work across the Green Line must not be denied their cushy governmental subsidies. And of course Ariel University must be boycotted!
The one thing the Left will never tolerate is a boycott of violently anti-Israel left-wing academics. Students at Israeli universities must themselves never be allowed to boycott tenured traitors or radical anti-Israel howling pseudo-academics. That would be anti-democratic!
All of which brings us to the Uri Weiss Affair at Bar-Ilan University last week. Bar-Ilan is usually not the campus of choice for the left-wing ultras in Israel, although it does have a few, like political science prof Menachem Klein, who thinks Sephardim are Jewish Arabs and who wants the Old City of Jerusalem to be judenrein.
Another faculty member at Bar-Ilan is one Uri Weiss, who studied law at the radical leftist law school of Tel Aviv University and teaches a course in the Bar-Ilan business school. To clarify, Weiss is not a tenure-track appointee but an outside adjunct, which in the world of academia makes him well below the janitors in terms of status or importance. More to the point, adjuncts who do not have a quorum of students for their course get that course cancelled and they do not get paid.
Now Komrade Uri has been in the news a lot in recent days. In particular, he published ghoulish attacks against settlers whose children were murdered by terrorists. The settlers not only deserved to see their children murdered, but are themselves guilty of psychosis for living in places the Palestinians want. Never mind that the Palestinians also want the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv. (h/t YOSEF22ADAR)
NGO Monitor: EU Funding for NGOs- Value for Money? Part II- an Echo Chamber
Executive Summary
The relationship between the European Union (EU) and civil society is marked by an unbalanced distribution of funding, favoring a small number of highly interconnected NGOs. The EU and NGOs rely on one another for information, creating a closed echo chamber, undisturbed by any external input or independent evaluation.
The EU regards NGOs as authentic and reliable representatives of civil society, without employing any measures to ensure that this is indeed the case.
The concentration of EU funding among a narrow segment of civil society expands the influence of these groups in a manner that does not necessarily reflect the public interest or democratic norms. This happens on an international and a local scale, and in both donor and recipient countries.
EU funding also inflates NGO representation in the EU’s decision-making processes, due to EU reliance on self-reported, unverifiable information from a limited number of sources. The EU and NGOs repeatedly cite one another in publications.
The biggest beneficiary NGOs are highly interconnected – with overlapping memberships in multiple networks and shared board members.
NGO funding is the result of, as well as the enabler of, lobbying – leading to yet more concentration of funding. The EU also directly funds lobbying networks whose mission is specifically to lobby the EU for money.
Recipient NGOs and EU donor frameworks are highly interdependent, lending each other legitimacy irrespective of substantive impact.
NGO Monitor: Senate Report Highlights Absence of Oversight in NGO Funding
Initial Analysis of “Review of U.S. State Department Grants to OneVoice”
On July 12, 2016, the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), released a report detailing the use of resources developed with State Department funding to advance the “V-15” political campaign during the last election cycle in Israel.
In 2013, the U.S. State Department provided One Voice Israel with a grant of $233,500 for a project to “Defray Costs for Program ‘Campaign to Support the Negotiations’ Between the Israel Government & Palestinian Authority- Building Up Public SUPPORT.” The State Department also approved a $115,776 grant to One Voice Palestine for to “Work to Inspire Civic Participation Through Grassroots ACTIVISM.” Both projects were funded from September 2013 to November 2014.
Soon after the end of the grant period, One Voice embarked on a political campaign under the “V-15” name to “collapse” the governing coalition in Israel, activity that State Department officials called a “red line” if done using U.S. government funds.
The subcommittee concluded that One Voice did not directly use U.S. funds for its election campaign or violate its agreement with the U.S. government. However, it sharply criticized the State Department for not properly evaluating One Voice before grant approval and monitoring the organization during the course of the project. The State Department “failed to adequately guard against the risk of OneVoice using government-funded resources for political purposes…[d]espite OneVoice’s previous political activity in the 2013 Israeli election.”
Operation Mole Cricket 19: 34 years later, the IAF's most decisive victory remains the standard
In 1992, just a year after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Maj.- Gen. (res.) David Ivri, then-director- general of the Defense Ministry and a former commander of the Israel Air Force, made a visit to the Czech Republic.
“The Czech deputy chief of staff told me that when he was in the National Defense College in Moscow in 1982,” Ivri recalls, “he learned that the blow to the Syrian surface-to-air missile batteries [SAM] was a catalyst for glasnost [increased government transparency] in the Soviet Union. The strategic theory that the West lacked the capability to withstand the SAM system had been disproven, and this raised many doubts about Soviet capabilities in general, and the defense sector in particular.”
The Czech official was referring to Operation Mole Cricket 19, perhaps the greatest success of the First Lebanon War. This was the first time that a Soviet-built SAM missile battery was destroyed without the use of ground troops. Within two hours on June 9, 1982, the IAF had destroyed 15 of 19 SAM batteries in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley while downing 90 enemy aircraft at the same time.
To this day, the details of Operation Mole Cricket 19 remain classified. It was perhaps the IDF’s greatest military achievement, maybe even surpassing Operation Focus, the opening air strike at the start of the Six Day War, during which Israel practically destroyed the Syrian and Egyptian air forces. Last week marked the 34th anniversary of the outbreak of the First Lebanon War, when the IDF succeeded in doing what no other army had ever done before: eliminating an enemy’s missile capability within an hour and 50 minutes.
This day in history: Argentina 22 years after the AMIA Bombings
On this day in history, July 18, 1994, a suicide terrorist drove a car filled with explosives into the Jewish community's AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina) center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, causing a horrific hit to the largest Jewish community in Latin America and the sixth largest Jewish population in the world.
Eighty-five people were killed and over 300 were injured, making it the worst terrorist attack in Argentina's history.
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This attack followed an earlier attack in 1992 at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 people and left hundreds injured.
The Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah is widely believed to have carried out the attacks with Iranian backing. In 2005, Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman charged 21-year-old, Lebanese citizen Ibrahim Hussein Berro as the suicide bomber who was believed to have ties to Hezbollah, and in October 2006, Nisman and fellow prosecutor Marcelo Martínez Burgos formally accused top officials within the government of Iran with planning the bombing and Hezbollah for carrying it out.
Though the case remained dormant for a while after the accusations, in an effort to resolve the cases, in 2013 Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran. Argentinian Jewish leaders were outraged at the decision to involve Iran in a “truth commission” investigating a crime that Iran is believed to have organized.
While investigating the case, in 2015, hours before Nisman was due to appear in front of the Argentine Congress and present his evidence that Iran was behind the bombings and the Argentine government had covered it up, he was found dead in his apartment with one bullet wound to the head.
Lebanon, UNIFIL Deaths, and Ireland’s Diplomatic Machinations
RTE’s documentary, job ‘Peacekeepers: The Irish in South Lebanon’ (produced and directed by John Higgins, and Shane Brennan), was notable for providing such an anti-Israel slant that it would be difficult to distinguish its content from that of the more virulent forms of conflict propaganda. Despite the benefit of hindsight, the documentary forwarded many of the falsities presented by the Irish media through the years, which unduly focus on Israel-related wrongdoing to the near-exclusion of all else.
The programme failed to mention any violent attacks on Ireland’s UNIFIL troops by the PLO, with Dr. Ray Murphy stating that the South Lebanon Army caused virtually all of the conflict issues with Irish UNIFIL troops. The documentary misrepresented the identity of the first UNIFIL casualty, by distorting the timeline. It presented UNIFIL forces as battling the SLA near At Tiri, and so effectively presented Stephen Griffin as Irish UNIFIL’s first fatality, having some Israeli-related cause. However, the first UNIFIL fatality was Gerard Moone, who died in a “traffic Accident”. After Moone’s death, Thomas Reynolds would die of another traffic accident that same year, and Private Philip Grogan would drowned the following year. The documentary focused on Israeli/SLA actions but failed to mention that more than two-thirds of all the Irish UNIFIL deaths occurred due to non-combat issues, primarily accidents.
The programme discussed in significant detail the killings by the SLA’s Mahmoud Bazzi, and the death of another soldier in 1999 during an SLA attack. It is likely that roughly equal numbers were killed by both sides. Yet, on the opposing side, the documentary would only mention the killing of a single soldier by Amal, even though Amal is associated with an intentional IED hit, which killed three troops in 1989, claimed to be a cover-up: an independent governmental report “deficient assessment” was the cause. There was no mention of the killing of two soldiers by the PLO in 1981, one of which was ‘disappeared’, and could not be found after years of investigation by the Irish Defence Forces.
UK: It Wasn't a Gaffe
The naming of Boris Johnson as Britain's Foreign Minister set off in his home country a storm of name-calling and hand-wringing that approximates the Democrat reaction to Donald Trump. Without wading into British politics, there is one specific incident that the Daily Mail called an impolitic "gaffe" that should be assessed at greater length -- and from a different angle:
Last November local [Palestinian] officials called off a visit to Palestine on safety grounds after the then-London mayor told an audience in Tel Aviv that a trade boycott of Israeli goods was "completely crazy" and supported by "corduroy- jacketed, snaggletoothed, lefty academics in the UK."
Palestinian officials accused him of adopting a "misinformed and disrespectful" pro-Israel stance and said he risked creating protests if he visited the West Bank.
Johnson was right on the merits: The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is largely a function of university campuses and has little to do with Israel-UK trade, which is robust and growing. But the incident should be understood as a window into Palestinian strategy, and as such should not be overlooked.
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas did not use the opportunity presented by Mr. Johnson's visit to offer his view, to explain why Johnson was wrong, to promote UK-Palestinian trade, or even to argue for BDS. He reflexively threatened a prominent European guest with violence. It surely would have erupted on schedule if Johnson had continued his visit. The Palestinians are no longer interested in discussing their interests/demands/wishes. They have entered a period of ultimatum: one-hundred percent or nothing; my way or violence even with their friends.
Watch: Chief Rabbi Gives Evidence to UK Anti-Semitism Committee
The UK Home Affairs Committee is carrying out a short inquiry into anti-Semitism, looking at whether prejudice against the Jewish community has increased and the particular dangers facing Jewish people arising from terrorism.
Last Thursday evidence was given by Ephraim Mirvis, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth; Sir Mick Davis, Chairman, Jewish Leadership Council and Mark Gardner, Director of Communications, Community Security Trust.
The video above gives an insight into some of the evidence taken as those called to appear spoke to MPs about hatred towards Jews in the UK.
A full transcript of the oral evidence can be read here. Written evidence as submitted by the Jewish Leadership Council can be found here.
The highly unprofessional inquiry into UK Labour anti-Semitism
On June 30, Shami Chakrabarti published her report on the investigation of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of racism in the British Labour Party. The document is highly unprofessional.
The opening sentence of her foreword already embodies a double manipulation. Chakrabarti writes, “The Labour Party is not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or other forms of racism.” The first manipulation in this sentence is omitting the fact that the scandal engulfing the British Labour Party for the past months, exclusively concerns extreme anti-Semitic remarks by elected representatives of the party. The addition of Islamophobia and racism to her assignment, of which Labour had not been accused, dilutes the specific multiple accusations of anti-Semitism.
The second manipulation in this opening sentence is a fallacy called “a strawman” – a tactic of attributing an extreme and easily refutable statement to your opponent and then “disproving” the invented argument, which he has not made. In this case, Chakrabarti denied that Labour has been “overrun by anti-Semitism.” Nobody, however had made this claim. Far more MPs protested against the anti-Semitism than the few MPs and other leading figures in the party who attempted to minimize its relevance.
UK Labor MP: I'm not anti-Semitic, but my Facebook post was
A recently reinstated UK Labour MP acknowledged to the BBC Monday that a message she posted to social media earlier this year was "ignorant" and "anti-Semitic."
Naz Shah for the first time sat down with BBC Radio 4's World at One to discuss her experience since being suspended in April from the UK's largest opposition party over a 2014 Facebook post suggesting Israel should be moved to the United States.
"I wasn't anti-Semitic, what I put out was anti-Semitic," Shah said in the interview.
"The language I used was anti-Semitic, it was offensive," she continued. "What I did was I hurt people and the language that was the clear anti-Semitic language, which I didn't know at the time, was when I said, 'The Jews are rallying.'"
The Bradford West MP was readmitted into the Labour party on July 5.
Before Shah became an elected official in the UK's parliament, she had posted a graphic to Facebook that showed an image of Israel's outline layered over a map of the US. The image was labelled "Solution for Israel-Palestine conflict - relocate Israel into United States, with the comment "problem solved," according to the BBC.
The post was first exposed by British political website Guido Fawkes.
Beinart joins Jews confronting IDF in Hevron
Dozens of American Jews spent Friday in Judea and Samaria practicing nonviolent resistance against Israel's presence here.
On hand to help were some bold-faced names in the American Jewish community's Israel debate, including Peter Beinart and Amna Farooqi, the Muslim president of J Street U.
The activists used tactics familiar from the U.S. civil rights movement to provoke Israeli authorities in Hevron -- the most volatile city in the region Bank and the site of frequent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians. When many of the activists staged a sit-in and refused a military order to leave a Palestinian property, Israeli police detained six of them with dual Israeli citizenship.
Though anti-occupation demonstrations in Judea and Samaria are nothing new, such a large group taking action under the banner of American Judaism is.
The some 45 Americans and other Diaspora Jews came to the region earlier in the week with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, a new movement that organizes Diaspora Jews to challenge Israeli rule in Judea and Samaria. The 10-day trip is dedicated to community service and political action on behalf of the Palestinians.
The activists expressed confidence they were part of a historic shift.
"I feel like I'm seeing the emergence of a new leadership. It's really remarkable," Beinart told JTA. "People will try to write these guys off as lefties that don’t have any connection to the Jewish community. But it's amazing when you talk to them, these kids actually come from the bosom of the Jewish community. A lot of them are affiliated. A lot of them are doing this without the knowledge of their families, with a lot of pain in their families."
New Report Refutes NGO’s List of Israeli Laws That ‘Discriminate’ Against Arab Citizens; Accuses Group of Delegitimizing Jewish State to Negate Its Existence
A key method of the BDS movement is to delegitimize Israel by portraying it as an apartheid state, which discriminates against its Arab citizens through its legal system, the project manager of an Israeli think tank told The Algemeiner on Sunday.
Adi Arbel from the Institute for Zionist Strategies (IZS) was explaining the impetus behind his research organization’s newly released report refuting a list of more than 100 “discriminatory laws,” compiled by the Israeli NGO, Adalah-the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and posted on its website.
The 62-page Hebrew report, titled “Adalah vs. the State of Israel,” did not take ideological issue with the NGO, said Arbel. “One can argue about the validity or wisdom of all kinds of laws in Israel,” he told The Algemeiner. “But twisting what they actually contain for political purposes is inexcusable, as it presents a warped picture of the Jewish state, which is then used by its enemies to demonize it.”
Two examples cited in the report are the Law and Administration Ordinance, which defines the country’s official days of rest, and the Law for Using the Hebrew Date, both of which are included in Adalah’s list. According to IZS, both “explicitly exclude institutions and authorities that serve non-Jewish populations for whom the law provides for definitions and procedures appropriate for their specific needs.”
BBC ignores annual terrorist indoctrination of Gaza youth yet again
The summer season is upon us and with it come the annual ‘summer camps’ organised by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. The Tower reports:
“Hamas has opened three-week-long training camps in Gaza for over 50,000 elementary, middle, and high school students, the Gaza-based terror organization said in a press release Sunday.
Hamas official Ismail Radwan explained that the theme of the camps is the “Jerusalem Intifada,” and that the goal is “to raise a generation of Palestinians who love the resistance and the liberation of Palestine and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” The camps also include scouting and religious educational programming.”
In previous years the BBC has completely ignored these ‘youth camps’ but last year it made a minor exception: BBC audiences got a full fifty-two seconds of coverage of that topic in a programme made by Lyse Doucet. So far this year, the corporation appears to have reverted to form.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Media Call For Transparency After Reporters Barred From Holy Of Holies (satire)
Journalist groups denounced the administration of the Holy Temple today for impinging on freedom of the press after the administration refused an application to allow reporters to accompany the High Priest into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement.
Luke Baker, head of the Foreign Press Association in the Holy Land and a journalist for Reuters, called for greater transparency in the conduct of the Temple service, saying it was an improper restriction on the media to prohibit reporters from entering. He spoke at a gathering of journalists in Jerusalem to discuss the challenges and issues facing them in the context of reportage on developments in the country and region.
“This organization has lodged a formal protest with the authorities over the banishment of journalists from certain parts of the Temple complex,” he announced. “At a time when transparency is recognized as a pillar of good governance and procedure, we cannot fathom the thinking of the Temple administration in restricting access to the Holy of Holies only to one person when he enters several times on Yom Kippur.”
Baker related that a team of reporters and cameramen applied for access to film the rites that are performed once a year in the Holy of Holies, and were turned down. “The people have the right to know what’s going on in there,” he argued. “If there’s a ritual happening that’s supposedly on behalf of the people, then what business do they have hiding it from the people? I’m not implying anything untoward is happening behind closed doors – it’s the principle of the thing.”
Holocaust monuments vandalized in Germany, Belarus
Three World War II monuments in Germany and another Holocaust memorial in Belarus were vandalized.
The cases were reported earlier this month. No arrests have been made.
In Belarus, a tour guide reported seeing doused yellow paint on a statue commemorating the mass murder of Jews in the Minsk Ghetto, which German occupation forces established 75 years ago and imprisoned 100,000 Jews.
The monument, a depiction of men, women and children descending into a pit, commemorates the shooting on March 2, 1942 of about 5,000 Jews from the ghetto. At least 50,000 Jews are believed to have perished there.
In the former East German state of Thuringia, vandals using pink paint defaced a memorial at a subcamp of the Mittelbau Dora concentration camp with the numbers "9201." Police said they did not know what the numbers meant but were investigating the vandalism. Mittelbau Dora was a satellite camp of Buchenwald, where tens of thousands of Jews were imprisoned before and during the Holocaust.
Also in the former East Germany, in the state of Brandenburg, firecrackers destroyed an information board at the open-air exhibition in Jamlitz commemorating the victims of the concentration camp that was there before 1945 and the special Soviet prison for low-level Nazi party functionaries set up after the war. It was the third time in three months that vandals destroyed information boards at the site, apparently using the same methods.
Man who threatens Colorado Jews gets one year
A resident of Boulder, Colorado was sentenced to one year imprisonment, combined with work, for sending threatening letters containing a white substance to Jewish organizations in Colorado.
Jeffrey Thomas Klingel, 34, will leave the jail in the morning for work, and will return to the jail in the evening. Klingel's sentence also includes four years of probation.
The severity of Klingel's crimes could have technically allowed for jail time of up to five years. In March, Klingel admitted to sending the threatening letters and using material that was intended to look like chemical weaponry.
In the end, the white material on the letters was found to be corn starch.
According to JTA, Klingel's lawyer noted that his client holds conspiracy theories concerning the terror attacks of September 11, believing them to be perpetrated by the Israeli government. His lawyer also told The Daily Camera that his client is mentally ill.
Mexican soccer mogul apologizes for linking Jews and money
A Mexican soccer mogul referred to a Jewish Fox Sports commentator using the canard associating Jews and finance and later apologized.
“You’re Jewish, you bring the very essence of commercialism and it’s a simple rule,” said Jose Luis Higuera, CEO of the Ominilife Chivas group, which owns the Chivas soccer team, the most popular in Mexico. “You with your Jewish blood know what commerce is, you know what trade, money and business are.”
Higuera addressed his comments to Daniel Brailovsky via telephone during a videotaped live broadcast of a Fox Sports Radio round table debate on Wednesday, the La Aficion news portal reported.
In response, the Argentine-born Brailovsky, a former Israeli soccer player and manager, said: “What do Jews have to do with this case? You have brought this up in a mocking way. Yes, I am [Jewish] with much honor and I’m very proud. Only Jews know that? No other member of other religions? It looks like you’re saying something a little bit out of place.”
Higuera then said, “I apologize if you felt offended,” which he later reiterated on social media, ESPN reported.
Users of Popular Gaming App ‘Clash Royale’ Call for Burning of Jews
A popular mobile gaming app has become a hotbed of antisemitic and racist activity, VICE Gaming reported on Tuesday.
According to the report, the “Clash Royale” freemium strategy game has become an attractive portal for racist, antisemitic, neo-Nazi and white supremacist users to unite in online hatred.
Launched in January 2016, the game has quickly gained in popularity, pulling in more than $250,000 in revenue each day in the US alone for its maker, Supercell. Clash Royale allows friends and strangers to play against one another in a virtual arena, based on card-directed combat. Users have the option of forming clans, which are private groups that allow members to play regularly with one another and monitor the game’s progress.
An anonymous source from the gaming development world reached out to VICE, seeking to expose how numerous clans are engaging in antisemitic “speech” through the game’s new Tournament feature.
Indian-Israeli Hackathon Aims to Solve Pressing Healthcare Issues
More than 600 people will work together across Israel and India next week to develop solutions to healthcare challenges facing low-income Indian communities.
The first-ever India-Israeli Affordable Healthcare Hackathon, scheduled to take place in Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore from July 22-24, will feature engineers, designers, health practitioners, entrepreneurs, programmers, and other looking to disrupt India’s affordable healthcare sector.
“The aim is to connect Israeli technology to world challenges and penetrate developing markets,” said Andi Gergely, the community and outreach manager of the Tel Aviv University Pears Program, which is helping to organize the event. “In Israel there are over 1,000 startups in the healthcare sector, but most of them target the U.S. and European markets. We believe there is a lot of potential in Africa and India. There is an opportunity for growth, working with the low income consumers in these markets, to make their lives better.”
The competitors will have to create a solution or prototype for one of seven pressing healthcare issues in India: creating an anemia diagnostic test for young girls; finding a technological solution to monitor food and milk intake among infants; screening and diagnosis solutions for hearing impairment; creating real-time monitoring devices for pregnant women; managing the side effects of chemotherapy in remote areas; improving access to funding for cancer treatments; and creating technology driven-solutions to give psychological counseling for cancer patients by connecting them to doctors and counselors.
12 aging-tech Israeli startups to watch
The world’s fast-growing over-60 population needs tech solutions for everything from retirement planning to health monitoring, and Israeli companies are stepping up to meet the challenge.
Some of the most promising products were displayed at the recent Israel Aging 2.0 startup contest during the Conference for Technologies for Aging Well at Bar-Ilan University.
“We see the entry of more and more high-quality Israeli ventures in this field, and more interest from the investor community,” says Dov Sugarman, the Israel representative for Aging 2.0, a global platform to accelerate innovation to improve the quality of life of the aging population.
The competition was part of Aging 2.0’s worldwide startup search. Winners of 40 local events are featured on the Aging 2.0 website from July 19 to August 18 for popular voting and expert judges’ review. A chosen few will vie for prizes and mentoring at a San Francisco event in October.
Mexico, Israel aim to triple annual trade to $2.1 billion
Commercial ties between Mexico and Israel will be expanded, aiming at tripling current trade figures, according to Israel’s ambassador in Mexico.
In 2015, two-way trade between the nations amounted to $700 million, a 300 percent increase since the nations signed a trade agreement in 2000.
“This is a very timely moment for the relationship between Mexico and Israel, which is expressed at political, economic and cultural levels,” the ambassador, Jonathan Peled, told El Universal newspaper Thursday, citing President Enrique Pena Nieto’s scheduled visit to Israel in 2017 as a booster of technological cooperation.
The agreement will be updated as of 2017 to cover other areas such as investment and services. Israel is Mexico’s biggest trading partner in the Middle East and 42nd globally.
Israeli youth win chess gold in Europe
Israeli chess players Igor Bitensky, Evgeny Zanan, Nitzan Steinberg, Eyal Grinberg and Ariel Erenberg dominated the Open section of the European Youth U18 Team Chess Championship 2016 in Celje, Slovenia, to win the gold medal.
Team Israel defeated Austria in the final round to win the European Youth Team Champion 2016 title. Second place went to Hungary and third to Ukraine. Other countries taking part in the contest included Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Slovenia and England.
The European Youth U18 Team Chess Championship was organized by the Slovenian Chess Federation, under the auspices of the European Chess Union, and took place July 9-16, 2016.
Aliyah 'airlift' kicks off Tuesday with 220 North American olim
Some 220 North American Jews are expected to make aliyah Tuesday on a chartered plane under the auspices of the Nefesh B'Nefesh organization.
The organization says it plans to fly almost 2,000 olim from Canada and the United States this summer, joining the 45,000 who have made aliyah through the organization over the years.
According to organizers, the flight includes single men and women who went to prestigious universities and who, despite having lucrative job offers, decided to realize their Zionist dream. One oleh on the flight is a man in his 70s and some 31 olim on the flight plan to live in the Negev Desert or the Galilee.
Nefesh B'Nefesh was founded in 2002 as a non-profit organization. According to its website, its core mission "is to revitalize aliyah and to substantially increase the number of future olim by removing the professional, logistical and financial obstacles that prevent many individuals from actualizing their dreams." Its aliyah efforts are coordinated with the Jewish National Fund, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
Never-Before-Seen 48-Year-old Footage Released of Israel’s First Prime Minister Reminiscing in English About Jewish State, Saying, ‘It’s Only the Beginning’
Interviews conducted nearly five decades ago with the late David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, were revealed on a Channel 10 talk show on Sunday.
The never-before-seen interviews were conducted in English by Dr. Yitzhak Clinton Bailey, an American-born ethnographer who lived near Ben-Gurion in Sde Boker, the Negev community founded by the Zionist leader.
In the snippets broadcast on Israel’s “The Morning Show with Orly and Guy,” Ben-Gurion talked about the early days of the state. Prodded to talk about his role in it, he said, “I didn’t guide Israel; I guided myself. I never guided Israel.”
When asked by Clinton Bailey whether he feared for his country, Ben-Gurion answered, “I always feared for it. Not only now. That state does not yet exist. It’s the beginning only.” It was 1968 at the time, two decades after the state’s establishment.
According to show hosts Orly Vilnai and Guy Meroz, who were interviewing Clinton Bailey about the old films, Ben-Gurion also talked about his belief in Buddhism alongside Judaism, though this was not among the clips they aired.
Instead, they moved on to show the “Old Man” (as he was known) — who gave the interviews to Clinton Bailey five years before his death in 1973 — engaging in manual labor and discussing why he wanted to build Sde Boker.
House committee approves bill honoring Elie Wiesel
A bill to honor the life and work of Elie Wiesel was approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The bill was introduced earlier this month by three congressional members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council — Reps. Steve Israel, D-N.Y.; Patrick Meehan, D-Pa., and Ted Deutch, D-Fla.
Wiesel, who was well known internationally for his many books, essays and educational projects about the Holocaust, died on July 2 at 87. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
The bill, which had the bipartisan co-sponsorship of 158 Congress members, “memorializes the life and work of Elie Wiesel and reaffirms the Congress’ commitment to continuing his work of keeping the memory and lessons of the Holocaust alive and preventing similar atrocities from occurring in the future,” said a statement from Deutch’s office.
“Elie Wiesel committed his entire life to ensuring that the memory of the victims of the Holocaust live on, both through education of the horrors of the Holocaust and through advocacy in preventing future atrocities,” Deutch said. “This resolution reflects our appreciation and deep respect, and he will be remembered as one of the greatest and most courageous and influential humanitarians of our lifetime.”
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