From Ian:
JPost Editorial: Campus challenge
With the academic year set to begin at universities throughout North America next week, Jewish students who care about Israel are going to face some daunting challenges.
As laid out in a widely disseminated column published in The Washington Post recently by McGill University junior Molly Harris, titled, “So you’re a Jew and you’re starting college? Prepare for anti-Zionism,” elements of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic overtones are common place on her campus in Montreal, and have also been reported on campuses throughout the US.
Last week, the atmosphere Harris described was also reported by Milan Chatterjee, a former UCLA student president, who informed the university that he would be leaving due to a “hostile and unsafe campus climate” created by pro-BDS organizations.
Chatterjee told the Los Angeles Jewish Journal that he has been harassed and discriminated against because he “refused to support an anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist activity, organization and position while serving as president of the UCLA Graduate Student Association.”
Another worrisome aspect of North American campus life Harris described was the growing tendency to exclude Israel-friendly Jewish students from social justice campaigns and organizations.
That trend may intensify following the release of Black Lives Matter’s platform last month. The popular left-wing cause, which many US Jewish organizations and campus groups have vocally supported, outrageously called Israel an “apartheid state” and accused the United States of complicity in Israel’s “genocide” against the Palestinians.
The NY Times has Duranty's Syndrome on Islam
Pulitzer Prize winner, Bret Stephens, in the Wall Street Journal highlighted a gap in the investigative journalism of the New York Times:
“An Israeli heavyweight judoka named Or Sasson defeated an Egyptian opponent named Islam El Shehaby Friday in a first-round match at the Rio Olympics. The Egyptian refused to shake his opponent’s extended hand, earning boos from the crowd. Mr. Sasson went on to win a bronze medal. If you want the short answer for why the Arab world is sliding into the abyss, look no further than this little incident. It did itself in chiefly through its long-abiding and all-consuming hatred of Israel, and of Jews. That’s not a point you will find in a long article about the Arab crackup by Scott Anderson in last weekend’s New York Times magazine, where hatred of Israel is treated like sand in Arabia—a given of the landscape”.
David French in the National Review also explains that “the role of Islam is minimized by the New York Times”. Reading Anderson’s investigation, it seems that the recent history of the Middle East is only a succession of betrayed hopes, neo-colonialism, ethnic fault lines, migrations. No mention of radical Islam and its project of conquest.
The long essay by Anderson is just one example of what William McGowan, winner of a National Press Club Award, in a book titled “Gray Lady Down” (Encounter Books), called “the decline and fall of the New York Times”, the bible of liberal intelligentsia, the object of worship of American journalism.
The New York Times was immediately ready to back Obama’s efforts of a “rapprochement with the Islamic world”, by drawing attention to the speech in Cairo in June 2009 modeled on cultural relativism and political correctness. Not once has Obama spelled the words “Islamic extremism” or “jihadism”. Yet Obama’s speech on Islam was music to the ears of the Times, which in an editorial titled “The Cairo Speech” magnified the naiveté of Obama.
MSNBC host accused of anti-Semitism after BDS post on Twitter
A host on TV news network MSNBC was accused of anti-Semitism after he responded to a Twitter post about an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man as a "perfect time" to talk about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement against Israel.
On Wednesday, journalist Collier Meyerson complained on Twitter of being forced to move seats on an Air France flight after a "Hasidic man" refused to sit next to her.
MSNBC host Christopher Hayes, who is also editor of far-left magazine The Nation, responded to her post saying it was the "perfect time to start a good, frank BDS convo."
@collier perfect time to start a good, frank BDS convo.
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) August 31, 2016
Meyerson, whose father is Jewish, shot back at Hayes' comment, saying that she "doesn't discriminate against Hasidic folk" and pointed out that the man may be from the Satmar Hasidic sect, which is anti-Zionist. His post garnered dozens of responses, most of the them perturbed by his connection between the actions of the Jewish man on the flight and a boycott of Israel. Several of the commentators said that making the link was anti-Semitic.
The Jerusalem Post's Op-Ed Editor Seth J. Frantzman responded to Hayes' comment, saying that "it's time to start a good frank discussion about [anti-Semitism]." In the same post, he asked why "every time Jews do something [you] attack Israel?!"
Dr. Mordechai Kedar: The real meaning of the Czech Republic's treachery regarding Jerusalem
A small, unimportant-looking article appeared in an obscure spot on one of the inner pages of a weekly newspaper this week, reporting the fact that the Czech Republic, having decided that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel, will be presenting it as such in its history texts and atlases. The impetus for the change, the article further added, was pressure from the Palestinian Arab envoy in Prague. Israel's Foreign Ministry is working to change the decision.
The Czech decision follows a similar one by UNESCO which claimed in April of this year that the Temple Mount belongs to Muslims - and only Muslims - and that its name is the El Aqsa Mosque.
There are those who see this as just another point of contention between Israel and the Arab Palestinians, another topic for the negotiation table to be settled in the agreement that it is hoped will be reached at some future time. The problem is that this viewpoint is totally detached from reality, and it's time for all of us to open our eyes and see what is really behind the Arab Palestinian campaign regarding Jerusalem.
Hamas, Fatah and the Palestinians, both religious and secular, modern and traditional, in Israel and out of it, see in uprooting Israel from Jerusalem a sacred obligation, a supreme mission and goal from which there is no way to backtrack. Saeb Erekat, the head of the Palestinian Authority negotiating team, has declared frequently that without East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, there will not be one.
Yasser Arafat coined the phrase "Millions of shaheeds marching to Al Quds," meaning that the Arabs are prepared to sacrifice millions of shaheeds in order to wrest Jerusalem from the hands of the Jews.
Daphne Anson: Monsieur Millière Warns The West: "France is completely lost ... Political correctness works" (video)
'Islam wants to conquer Europe and militant Muslims know they can succeed and I think they are right.
One of my friends who was a survivor of Auschwitz said to me: "The people who were pessimistic survived. The people who were optimistic died."...
France is completely lost ....
The French press lie all the time.... The media is largely in the hands of the Left....
The French don't know how to fight but they do know something: preemptive surrender....
Muslims use two tools to conquer Europe. First, attacks. Second, "Dawah": invitation to submit to Islam....
Political correctness works ...
The Left and Islam have something in common: they want to destroy Western civilisation.... Islam is a totalitarian political movement. ... Islam is fighting a war against the West, against freedom.... I am here [the USA, to which he emigrated two months ago] because I want to win.... We have to choose strength.'
The speaker is a French philosemitic pro-Israel intellectual, Guy Millière, about whom I have blogged before.
A short review of Dutch anti-Israel incitement
Next week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit the Netherlands.
A succinct summary of anti-Israel incitement there may help him and his staff to better understand how the current Dutch reality differs from the distorted positive image many people still hold, namely the one based on the much publicized story of Anne Frank and her diary.
The Anne Frank story has entirely overshadowed a far more important one: the total disinterest of the Dutch government in exile in London during the Second World War in the fate of its Jewish citizens under the German occupation.
Three-quarters of the 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands were murdered in the German death camps in Poland. The Netherlands is now the only Western European country which has never admitted to the wartime failure of its government’s attitude toward the Jews. Even Luxembourg and Monaco have recently done so.
Furthermore, though archives contained the information for decades, it has only recently been published that Dutch SS volunteers participated in mass killings of Jews in Eastern Europe.
Around the turn of this century, the anti-Israel attitude in many Dutch circles strengthened. The ongoing incitement against the Jewish state by many Dutch politicians – mainly extreme-left and center- left – leading media, pseudo-humanitarian NGOs and so on has greatly influenced Dutch citizens.
A Deep Look at the ‘Sickness’ of the British Left
On the modern left, hostility towards Israel goes hand in hand with anti-capitalism, LGBT rights, and environmentalism. But it need not be this way. Nor, historically, has it always been this way. In The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism, Dave Rich tells the story of how activists forced the question of Palestine onto the British agenda, how this cultivated a culture of hostility on the left towards Jews (by effect or design), and thus how it came to be that in 2015, the Labour Party elected a leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who considers Hamas “an organization…dedicated [to] long-term peace and social justice and political justice.”
Rich, a senior figure in the British Jewish community’s main anti-Semitism watchdog CST, introduces some history that might surprise readers. He traces the roots of the left-wing critique of Israel to before the Six Day War, when Egypt and the PLO already presented Israel through the lens of “Third World forms of Marxism,” as an innately imperialist project. He shows how this paradigm was picked up by “radical anti-colonial” activists in the youth wing of the UK Liberal Party, transmogrifying through the “more activist, militant and confrontational” version of the New Left from the late 1960s into a dominant strand in student politics—and often with funding from Arab regimes. And he shows how this worldview built alliances with Islamists, found a home in the Labour Party, and ultimately seized the mantle of the party itself by winning the broader battle to define the left.
By proudly parading its “anti-racist” bona fides while considering it an “article of faith…that Zionism is a racist ideology,” rich argues that the modern left is unable to recognize anti-Semitism as anything but a right-wing phenomenon, and is thus unable to identify it within—and treats with contempt allegations of its existence.
Rich also gives a thorough history of the shameful period in the 1970s when student unions attempted to ban or curtail Jewish societies. In 1974, the National Union of Students adopted a “no platform” policy for racists. In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly recognized Zionism as a form of racism. Together, this led to numerous attempts to suspend university Jewish clubs for refusing to denounce Israel, since “Zionism is inherently racist.” This alone lends the book to an American audience, offering salutary lessons of where ostensibly anti-racist campus activism against Israel can lead, and how Jewish students can adopt the language of identity politics and build alliances to rebuff it.
Font of hatred: How Hamas relies on two UK websites
Western governments invest tremendous effort in exposing the funding routes that allow terrorist organisations to flourish and carry out deadly attacks. In a world where social media enables online radicalisation, it’s also vital to expose those who provide the content that engenders this hateful agenda.
This week I ran across yet another blog post by the Hamas terror group, on its active English-language Twitter feed. The piece was originally written by an anti-Israel activist and posted on Middle East Monitor (MEMO), a self-ascribed news site that has links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
MEMO is populated by bloggers and activists and directed by Daoud Abdullah, a senior researcher at the London-based Palestinian Return Centre – an organisation outlawed in Israel for its connections with Hamas and acting as the terror group’s de-facto arm across Europe.
When you read stories on the site directed by Mr Abdullah, you’re reading material edited by senior editor Ibrahim Hewitt, who is also director of Interpal, a British Muslim charity designated as a terror-supporting group in Israel. The charity is also a longstanding member of the United States Treasury’s list of specially designated terrorist organisations.
Interpal, the organisation Mr Hewitt directs, was embroiled in controversy recently for sponsoring a Gaza festival during which a little girl was filmed play-acting, pretending to stab two small boys dressed as Israeli policemen, and firing a mock semi-automatic rifle at child soldiers, to cheers from the crowd. Some $10,000 of the charity’s funds were invested in this festival.
Ryan Bellerose: Ryan’s Simple Checklist For Colonizers And Imperialists
Here’s my simple checklist for colonizers and imperialists.
Did you force your language on other peoples?
Did you force your religion on others?
Did you claim and subsume others sacred sites?
Do you deny indigenous people the right to self-determination on land that you conquered?
Did you conquer a large percentage of the known world?
Are you an asshat?
If you answered yes to more than one of these questions, chances are good that you are in fact a member of a colonialist imperialist people. The short version is did you take someone elses stuff and claim it as your own?
NGO Monitor: Shawan Jabarin (Al Haq) becomes FIDH Secretary General
In August 2016, FIDH: International Federation of Human Rights, based in France, held its 39th congress in Johannesburg, South Africa, and elected Shawan Jabarin as Secretary General. Jabarin had previously been one of the organization’s Vice-Presidents.
Jabarin’s positions in FIDH are especially problematic due to his alleged ties to the PFLP terrorist organization. (See NGO Monitor’s unofficial translation of a ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice [June 20, 2007], describing these allegations in denial of an appeal to be granted an travel permit.)
Jabarin also serves as General Director of Al Haq, an FIDH member organization a leader in lawfare and BDS (boycotts, divestments and sanctions) campaigns targeting Israel. Al Haq is very active at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, as well as in the UN and other platforms, demanding “war crimes” proceedings against Israelis.
Jabarin previously served as one of the 15 Vice Presidents of FIDH, The Vice-Presidents and Secretaries-General, along with the President and Treasurer make up FIDH’s International Bureau (IB) – the body that “determines FIDH’s main strategic goals and orientations….”
Jabarin’s election highlights FIDH’s central role in “lawfare” and BDS campaigns that exploit human rights to target Israel. At the recent Congress, Al Haq presented an “Urgent resolution on Palestine,” supporting BDS and accusing Israel of a litany of offenses, including “apartheid,” “discrimination,” “transfer of its civilian population,” “collective punishment” and “forced displacement.” With Jabarin in a more senior leadership position, these types of accusations and related political attacks are likely to intensify and become an even more central part of FIDH’s agenda.
The Crown Heights Riots, 25 Years Later
There is no shortage of reminders these days about how easily peace can turn into violence. Protests turn into disturbances very easily — all too often resulting in senseless crime directed against people who have no connection to the grievance that sparked the unrest.
The Crown Heights riots of 1991 were a different, and fortunately still singular, kind of event in America. They constituted the first time, perhaps since the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915 Georgia, that a rampant violent mob targeted Jews. Hopefully it will be the last.
Looking back, it’s hard to understand how the rumor that a Jewish ambulance squad refused to treat a dying black child spread so quickly, and for so long, without being effectively dispelled. In reality, it was the police who told the Hatzolah ambulance crew, who wanted to save the child’s life, to leave the scene for their own safety.
A “perfect storm” of tragedy mixed with dysfunction followed. There was a lack of sufficient official, accurate information channeled through community leaders when it was needed most. And to top that off, there was incredibly weak leadership at the police department and in City Hall.
Into this nest of chaos (as police, for whatever reason, failed to forcefully quell the riots with mass arrests) walked Yankel Rosenbaum. One man was later convicted of inciting the mob with “get the Jew;” and the mob did just that. And many others went free who were just as guilty.
Israeli students host South American bloggers to fight BDS
A delegation of 12 bloggers from South America arrived in Israel this week as part of the Applaud project, a special initiative by students at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya who belong to the StandWithUs Israel advocacy organization.
The bloggers traveled to Israel from Chile, Brazil, Mexico and even Venezuela, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. The group included Candelaria Molfese, star of an Argentinean soap opera, who has 2.6 million followers on Facebook and 2.1 million followers on Instagram. She was even recognized by some Israelis.
"Before I came here, I thought this was a much more closed country and that everyone I met would be covered up head to toe, and that it was even dangerous here," Molfese said.
"But since I've been here, I realized that this is an amazing country with warm people, very similar to my own culture. A country that has a lot of tourists and lots to see, with amazing food. I recommend that everyone visit Israel," she said.
IsraellyCool: Allies Turn On Antisemitic Thug KOK
Remember Ken “KOK” O’Keefe, the antisemitic thug who was on board the Mavi Marmara terror ship, and who bragged of bashing IDF commandos?
He’s facing some serious accusations of fraud from some of his one-time allies (hat tip: Harry).
This is not the first time KOK has been accused of wrongdoing and threats from his own camp.
Now don’t get me wrong. I do not know whether or not there is truth behind these allegations – this Max Igan is a Jew hater just like KOK – but I do enjoy seeing dissension in the ranks and KOK being blocked.
Watch this space.
Teacher at Paris High School Suspended for Antisemitic Facebook Posts
A school teacher in France has been suspended for making comments hostile to Jews on social media, the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism (CFCA) reported this week.
According to the report, a “literature preparatory class English teacher” at the Janson de Sailly high school in the 16th arrondissement of Paris wrote Holocaust-denying and conspiracy-related posts on her Facebook page, which was open for students to read.
The school has launched an investigation into the matter and the teacher could be expelled. At the very least, she will not teach during the upcoming school year, the report said.
The teacher’s actions “deeply shocked the entire high school community and disrespected all members of the campus,” the director of the school, Patrick Sorin, said in a statement last week.
In May, The Algemeiner reported that rising antisemitism in the Paris area was forcing French Jews to move elsewhere in the country or immigrate to Israel.
Campus Watchdog: Upcoming ‘Palestine’ Course Will Increase Antisemitic Atmosphere at UC Berkeley
An upcoming “anti-Zionism” course at the University of California, Berkeley will contribute to greater hostility toward Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus, the head of a watchdog group and an Israel advocate told The Algemeiner on Thursday.
According to Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder of the AMCHA Initiative — which combats, monitors and documents antisemitism at institutions of higher education in America — the course in question, titled “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis,” is a “classic example of antisemitic anti-Zionism.”
“Based upon the syllabus, the class treats Israel as a settler colonial state and Zionism and Israel as illegitimate,” Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner, adding that “a goal of the class appears to be talking about ways to decolonize Palestine, which essentially means to eliminate the Jewish state.”
“This is clear eliminationist anti-Zionism, which is not just criticism of Israel, but opposition to the existence of the Jewish state with efforts to eliminate that state,” she said.
'UCLA campus has become hostile towards Jews, Israel supporters'
Despite a formal rejection of the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement in March by the University of California system, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), one of most prestigious public colleges in the state, has empowered and enabled the anti-Israel movement, targeting those who challenge BDS and allied organizations.
Efforts by campus BDS groups, bolstered by the University itself, have in the words of a former UCLA Graduate Student Association (GSA) president, made the school’s campus a “hostile and unsafe environment for students, Jewish students and non-Jewish, who choose not to support the BDS movement, let alone support the state of Israel.”
As reported by The Algemeiner, ex-GSA president Milan Chatterjee slammed school administrators for giving BDS activists a free hand on campus – and even actively assisting them in their harassment of those challenging the BDS agenda.
The school administration, Chatterjee wrote, “not only allowed BDS organizations and student activists to freely engage in intimidation of students who do not support the BDS agenda, but has decided to affirmatively engage in discriminatory practices of its own against those same students.”
Chatterjee himself, in his capacity as GSA president, became the target of the BDS movement when he limited the distribution of GSA funds for a campus event last November to non-BDS organizations.
Chatterjee pointed out that the arrangement was accepted by school officials beforehand.
Major Canadian-Jewish Organization Calls on York U to Discipline Staffer Who Called 9/11 a ‘Zionist Attack,’ Said Jews ‘Cut Deal With Hitler’ to Run Nazi Camps
Following the appearance on social media of antisemitic and anti-Zionist remarks by a York University staff member, an official from a major Canadian Jewish advocacy group told The Algemeiner that the school’s administration must take decisive disciplinary action.
Aidan Fishman, campus affairs coordinator for B’nai Brith Canada, was referring to a slew of hate-filled Facebook posts over the years by York Department of Physics and Astronomy lab technologist Nikolaos Balaskas, who accused Jews of being “imposters” and “followers of the Evil One,” among other epithets.
Fishman told The Algemeiner on Thursday that his organization became aware of Balaskas’ postings after receiving complaints from a number of Jewish students at York.
“We then investigated the matter ourselves, finding not only that the students were correct, but that Balaskas had written many other antisemitic posts in the past,” he said, adding that his organization “acted swiftly to file a formal complaint with the York administration over this issue.” As a result of this complaint, the York Human Resources Department launched its own investigation, which, it said, would be completed “expeditiously.”
According to Fishman, it is extremely important for strict measures to be taken against Balaskas, “particularly given that previous York investigations into antisemitic conduct have yielded disappointing results, often including no punishment whatsoever for perpetrators.” A strong message needs to be conveyed, he stressed, that antisemitism will not be tolerated at such an institution. “The absence of such a message would signal that the phenomenon is not only tolerated, but welcome, at York,” he said.
Balaskas’ postings were offered as evidence by B’nai Brith Canada of his “violation of a number of York University policies,” Fishman said.
Facebook Deems ‘Humans Of Jerusalem’ Unworthy
It seems every day we are confronted with a new instance of Facebook taking down a pro-Israel page.
The latest victim? A page called Humans of Jerusalem
Friends, I never tag random friends in my posts, and I’m only doing so because I need your help.
I am the latest in a series of attacks against pro-Israel pages. Earlier this week, I was mysteriously locked out of my personal profile, and tonight, I received notification that my page, Humans of Jerusalem, has been unpublished for an unspecified violation of Facebook’s terms. I’ve attempted to appeal it, but from what we’ve seen with Uri Silberman ‘s page, The Israel Network, the only way to get Facebook to take notice is to make noise. Guys, please reach out to any connections you have, share this on your profiles, post about it on your pages, let’s get my project back on the air, because this isn’t my own personal page. We’re all Humans of Jerusalem.
There was absolutely nothing hateful about the page – just showing real people of Jerusalem, in the mold of Humans of New York.
Apparently, this is something Facebook finds offensive.
To make matters worse, there is an impostor Humans of Jerusalem page – in Arabic – which is still up, even though it contains posts like this supporting terrorism.
PreOccupiedTerritory: No One Clamoring For Removal Of ISIS’s Google+ Pages
Executives at Google have noted that whereas controversy has erupted for years over the use of Facebook and Twitter accounts to promote the Islamic State and other violent, radical groups, their company has yet to receive any requests to shut down the Google Plus accounts of any such entities.
Yo Giberra, a spokesman for the internet giant, told reporters that the company has yet to determine why no one is clamoring for such pages to be closed, but that each social media network appeals to a different type of user, and perhaps the profile of the Islamic militant or apologist mysteriously does not dovetail with Google Plus.
“It’s not entirely clear why we have received no requests,” confessed Giberra. “With Google Plus you can reach literally dozens of people worldwide, so one might think that would invite users bent on spreading their hate, as other social networks have demonstrated. We’re not entirely clear on how Google Plus has remained so fortunate. It’s possible that there are no such pages on our network, but it’s equally possible there are, and people simply haven’t reported them.” To do so would require that users encounter those pages, he added, which in turn requires that such users exist.
Industry analysts differ as to why or how Google’s network has so far escaped the controversy. “You see it a lot with pro- and anti-Israel pages on Facebook, for example,” explained Henry Thoreau, who specializes in social dynamics. “Facebook has earned some negative publicity by treating anti-Israel or anti-Jewish content as acceptable, and anti-Palestinian rhetoric as incitement. Google Plus has avoided that problem so far by adopting what I call the LinkedIn approach. LinkedIn has similarly attracted few, if any, Islamic apologists, because the values behind LinkedIn are incompatible with the Jihadist mindset. For LinkedIn, it’s whom you know that counts; for the Jihadist, it’s whom you kill or rape.”
CAMERA's UK Media Prompts Telegraph Update on Killing of Gaza Family
We recently posted about an attack, during the summer 2014 war, on a Gaza home which killed nearly a dozen members of the Siyyam family in light of a new IDF Military Attorney General (MAG) report which concluded that the family was NOT killed by the IDF. The MAG report concluded that an errant Hamas rocket was likely to blame.
We noted that reports in the Guardian andTelegraph shortly after the incident both blamed Israel for the attack.
Though both publications reported within the past few days on the conclusions of the new MAG report, neither updated their original stories to acknowledge this new information.
Following our communication with the Telegraph, however, they agreed to add the following addendum to their July 21, 2014 article:
UPDATE: In August 2016 Israeli military prosecutors disputed media reports that 12 members of the Siyam family – including six children – were killed on July 21, 2014, by an Israeli airstrike. They concluded that no strikes were carried out in that area at the time by Israeli forces and suggested instead that the family had been killed by a botched Hamas rocket launch near the house.
We thank Telegraph editors for the addendum.
DNA of 6,000-year-old barley reveals its secrets
Barley grains from the Chalcolithic period 6,000 years ago have become the oldest plant genome ever to be sequenced, announced a team of Israeli and international researchers in the journal Nature Genetics.
The barley grains and tens of thousands of other plant remains were retrieved from the remote Yoram Cave near one of Israel’s most popular heritage sites, the famous Masada fortress overlooking the Dead Sea.
The painstaking excavation process was headed by Uri Davidovich from the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Nimrod Marom from the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa. Ehud Weiss of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan led the archaeobotanical analysis.
“These archaeological remains provided a unique opportunity for us to finally sequence a Chalcolithic plant genome. The genetic material has been well-preserved for several millennia due to the extreme dryness of the region,” explained Weiss.
In order to determine the age of the ancient seeds, the researchers split the grains and subjected half of them to radiocarbon dating while the other half was used for DNA extraction.
Israeli Company Buys Spanish Competitor to Create World’s Largest Online Shipping Firm
Freightos, an Israeli company that set up the world’s first marketplace for international shipping, has purchased a Spanish competitor, the Jerusalem-based organization announced on Wednesday.
The purchase of WebCargoNet will help the it create the “world’s largest freight Big Data database” for companies seeking the best price to ship cargo by air, land or sea, Freightos marketing director Eytan Buchman said in a statement. WebCargoNet dealt primarily in air cargo, complementing Freightos’ existing services in sea and land shipping. The cost of the purchase was in the “multi-million Euros range,” Buchman said.
The enlarged company will have over 200 million data points, Buchman claimed, giving more choices to companies looking to move goods internationally.
Shipping logistics was once done manually with little ability to compare prices. By creating an online resource that allows shippers to compare prices and services for all modes of shipping, Freightos will “help companies ship goods at increased savings,” Buchman said.
Play giant Tetris, Snake and Pong on Tel Aviv’s City Hall
The Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality has brought back classic arcade games of the Seventies and Eighties and is inviting the public – residents and tourists alike – to take part in the fun. Every Thursday after dark, the City Hall building will be transformed into a giant computer screen with Tetris, Pong and Snake available for free play.
It’s every gamer’s dream to play their favorite games on a gigantic scale and Tel Aviv’s City Hall façade features a 3,000-square-meter screen comprised of 480 LED lights.
The municipality placed two huge joysticks (1.5m by 1.5m) in Rabin Square, adjacent to City Hall, to let players control the game. A spokesperson tells ISRAEL21c that the municipality recently invested in a new screen and “playing games seems like a great way to utilize it for the enjoyment of the residents and visitors.”
The nighttime public gaming fun was launched on August 30 with a Tetris tournament to mark the upcoming DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival (Sept. 25-29, 2016).
Newman (Wayne Knight) ad for IKEA Israel (Optional English Subtitles)
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