From Ian:
BDS is a Settler Colonial Ideology
One of the foundational claims of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is that Israel is a settler colonial project without legitimacy.
It is a claim repeated in mindless rote fashion, as if repeating it ten times in every discussion is a litmus test for being truly anti-Zionist. The claim is that Jews have no historical claim to the land of Israel, that they are outsiders imposed upon the region by colonial powers upon the indigenous Arab (mostly Muslim) population.
The point of this post is not to address all the lies and distortions build into the settler colonial claim, which is an inversion of history. In fact, the Muslim conquerors who replaced the indigenous Jewish and other populations are the settlers who colonized the area. Zionism is the liberation movement of the indigenous People of the region. That many centuries have passed since Arabs from Arabia and northern Africa settled the area through force does not change the fact that they are not the indigenous Peoples. But that’s an argument for another time.
This post is about how BDS itself has become a settler colonial ideology, which imposes itself on other peoples and other struggles, conquers, and subjugates the goals of others, particularly people of color, to the anti-Israel agenda.
We have documented this hijacking of other movements many times, and described the damage BDS leaves behind. The most glaring example is how anti-Israel BDS activists have infiltrated and redirected the Black Lives Matter movement:
Caroline Glick: The American Inquisition
The most notable aspect of Wheatley’s letter is that it contained no commitment to investigate her allegations of anti-Semitic intimidation on the part of faculty and student BDS goons. It contained no commitment to purge bigoted intimidation from campus or invite Israelis with Zionist views to speak at Syracuse or participate in university events. It contained no mention of any plans to discipline Hamner for engaging in bigoted actions.
Rather, it simply reinvited Dotan, whose anti-Israel credentials were belatedly sorted out.
For nearly eight years, US President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has refused to investigate the flagrant civil rights violations carried out by BDS activists, groups and their faculty and administration allies and enablers. So there is no reason to think that any federal investigation will be conducted any time soon.
Rather, we can expect anti-Jewish prejudice to become ever stronger and more brazen. We can expect Israeli Jews to be shunned to greater and greater degrees and for pro-Israel students, faculty and administrators – Jewish and non-Jewish – to become less and less free to voice their views.
And we can expect the US higher education system to speed up its slide into moral dystopia and intellectual corruption.
Vic Rosenthal: How a white Jewish guy lost his guilt and found redemption
The recent release of the platform of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), which accused Israel of genocide and apartheid against the Palestinians (it has since been toned down slightly), gave rise to a spate of mostly predictable reactions: fury from Zionists, cheers from Palestinians, and a particularly emetic genre of “of course you are right that Israel is an oppressor, and I would never criticize a black person, but maybe you went too far, just saying” literature from guilt-ridden left-wing Jews.
Yotam Marom, 30, is a Jewish “political organizer, educator and writer” who was active in Occupy Wall Street and numerous other causes. He has lived in Israel and has a grandmother who survived the Holocaust. He was arrested in 2014 at the offices of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations where he was protesting Israel’s operation in Gaza. The M4BL platform, which he called “brilliant and powerful” nevertheless made him think about the place of Jews in a Left that some say is more and more anti-Jewish.
Marom, who has totally devoted himself to The Movement, and who spends his days demonstrating for “Palestinians in Gaza, or the Black folks being shot down in the streets,” wrote a long confessional article about how he finally came to the realization that the Left that he is so much a part of, hates Jews:
JPost Editorial: Visit Australia
The same day President Reuven Rivlin apologized profusely to Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop for canceling a planned trip to Canberra earlier this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received an invitation to visit by Bishop, who had made a two day visit to Israel. If he follows through, he will become the first serving prime minister to make an official visit Down Under.
Considering the special and very close relations that exist between Canberra and Jerusalem, it is about time an Israeli prime minister make the trip to Australia to show Israel’s appreciation for Australian support, which should not be taken for granted. An official visit by a serving Israeli prime minister would send that message.
Australian involvement in the creation of Israel goes back a century. Rivlin noted during his public apology to Bishop that the 1917 Battle of Beersheba, fought by the Australian Light Horse Regiment together with the British Army against the Ottoman Empire, helped pave the way for the Balfour Declaration and, eventually, the creation of the Jewish state.
In the early 1940s, a group of Australian Jewish businessmen lobbied Australia’s then-foreign minister Doc Evatt to support the creation of a Jewish state. Evatt was won over and as a leading figure in the United Nations, he actively pursued the creation of the State of Israel.
After the Second World War, Australia accepted a large number of European Jews who survived the Holocaust.
But relations have not always been smooth. Under the leadership of Gough Whitlam, Australia distanced itself from Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
NGO Monitor: Will the Dutch Government End Funding for Anti-Peace BDS Organizations?
Coinciding with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to the Netherlands, NGO Monitor called upon the Dutch Government to implement the Dutch Parliament’s recommendations regarding state funding of BDS organizations through the Human Rights & International Humanitarian Law Secretariat.
Since its inception, the Netherlands has contributed €2.9 million to the HR/IHL Secretariat which distributes funds to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) active in BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaigns and other forms of demonization against Israel.
According to the HR/IHL Secretariat, 80% of its distributions are allocated for core NGO funding. NGO Monitor research shows that of 24 core recipients, 13 advocate BDS, receiving $5.78 million (more than half) out of an operating budget of $10.38 million. Some grantees have also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and have apparent links to the PFLP terrorist organization. Core grantees include BADIL, Al-Haq, Addameer and MIFTAH, all vehemently anti-Israel NGOs at the forefront of BDS campaigns.
On June 16, 2016, 78 of the 150 members of the Dutch Parliament adopted a resolution calling on the government to review and halt, as soon as possible, all direct and indirect funding to NGOs that support BDS against Israel.
According to Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, “The Dutch Parliament took an important step in opening the debate on this abuse of taxpayer funds. The government has the opportunity to implement this resolution, and to stop providing taxpayer funds to the HR/IHL Secretariat, the majority of which ends up in the hands of vehemently anti-Israel groups that oppose peace and promote a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.”
In first, Germany admits PA is likely paying terrorists’ families
The German government has for the first time admitted that the Palestinian Authority likely grants financial support to terrorists and their families, and vowed to further investigate the matter.
Following repeated queries by an opposition lawmaker, the Foreign Ministry in Berlin last week also acknowledged that funds for so-called “martyrs” and Palestinian prisoners sitting in Israeli jails for security-related offenses come not only from the Palestine Liberation Organization but partially from the PA’s own budget.
Germany supports the PA annually with about €160 million ($179 million), but insists that the money only goes to specific development projects and not to so-called “salaries” for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons or to the relatives of killed terrorists.
“There are Palestinian institutions that make payments to the families of those incarcerated by Israel and the families of those who were killed or wounded. Among them are also relatives of assailants,” reads a Foreign Ministry document from September 1, a copy of which was obtained by The Times of Israel.
The document goes on the explain that Palestinian prisoners get financial support from the PLO Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs because the PA ceased its own payments to prisoners after its Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs was dissolved two years ago. “The Federal Government is investigating indications that the Palestinian Authority in individual cases supported the PLO’s Commission for Detainees’ budget,” the document states.
Micahael Lumish: This week on NOTHING LEFT (Sept 6, 2016)
Nothing_Left
3 min Editorial: Palestinian negotiations
12 min Juliet Moses, NZ Israel advocate on AIJAC trip to Israel
33 min Jonathan Spyer, journalist and expert on Syria
50 min Danny Lamm, Zionist Federation of Australia
1 hr 2 min David Hazony, The Israel Project and The Tower.org
1 hr 27 min Isi Leibler, Jerusalem
Celtic Green Brigade need to learn truth about history of Palestine
Last week I wrote critically about Celtic fans responsible for a pro-Palestinian flag display at a match against an Israeli team. I would have been equally critical had Rangers flown Israeli flags during a match against Palestinians.
Apart from anything else, it’s atrociously bad manners.
Football is supposed to bring people together, not tear them apart, which is why Uefa bans “gestures, words, objects or any other means to transmit any message of an ideological, religious, offensive or provocative nature”.
The twitter abuse from Celtic fanatics and Israel-haters was predictably vicious, and there were the usual crazy allegations against Israel from ignoramuses, anti-Zionists and anti-semites.
I’m a critical friend of Israel (and don’t get me started on the Ultra-Orthodox Jews whose political attitudes are deplored by the vast majority of Israelis), but I passionately believe in its right to exist.
In other words, I’m a Zionist.
Israel is a fine country which contributes mightily to the world, culturally, scientifically, technologically and in many other ways, while being in the Middle East a model of democracy and religious tolerance where women and gays can live like free people.
I’m desperately sorry for most Palestinians, but their miserable plight is mainly the fault of bigoted and callous leaders who at every turn have blocked a two-state solution with a Jewish state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine living side by side in peace.
Twitter will scream that Jews have no right to settle in the Middle East, yet they’ve been there for over 3,000 years.
UK Islamist preacher Choudary jailed for 5 years over ISIS praise
Anjem Choudary, Britain's best-known Islamist preacher, was jailed on Tuesday for five years and six months for encouraging support for Islamic State, ending years of frustration for police who had struggled to pin charges on him.
Choudary, 49, and close associate Mizanur Rahman, 33, who received the same sentence, had been convicted by a jury in July of using the Internet to urge followers to back the banned group, which controls large areas of Syria and Iraq.
"These men have stayed just within the law for many years and there has been frustration for both law enforcement agencies and communities as they spread hate," said Dean Haydon, head of counter-terrorism at London's Metropolitan Police.
"We have watched Choudary developing a media career as spokesman for the extremists, saying the most distasteful of comments, but without crossing the criminal threshold," Haydon said in a statement.
Long denounced by the press in Britain as a hate preacher, Choudary is also well-known abroad, making regular TV appearances in the wake of attacks by Islamist militants to blame Western foreign policy for targeting Muslims.
His trial heard that in postings on social media, Choudary and Rahman had pledged allegiance to the "caliphate" declared by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and said Muslims had a duty to obey or provide support to him.
"Their recent speeches and the oath of allegiance were a turning point for the police - at last we had the evidence that they had stepped over the line and we could prove they were actively encouraging support of ISIS," said Haydon.
Expel Livingstone, Jewish leaders urge Labour, as he revives Hitler-Zionist claim
The umbrella organization of British Jews on Monday called on the opposition Labour Party to expel Ken Livingstone from its ranks “immediately,” after the controversial former London mayor, a close ally of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, again claimed that Adolf Hitler once supported the Zionist movement.
“Hitler’s persecution of the Jews started early in the 1930s,” Board of Deputies Vice President Marie van der Zyl said in a statement. “He expressed his loathing for Zionism in the 1920s. But yet in 2016 Ken Livingstone seems to want to rewrite history to make it seem like Zionism was responsible for the Holocaust, which is as false as it is grotesquely offensive. Every day that Labour does not expel him is a stain on the party.”
Speaking on Vanessa Feltz’s BBC London radio show on Monday morning, Livingstone repeated the claims that he made on her show in April, which led to his suspension from the Labour party.
“After I did the interview with you and I got suspended I couldn’t walk down the street for people stopping me and saying ‘we know what you said is true – don’t give in to them’,” said Livingstone, in comments quoted by the Jewish Chronicle.
“It’s going to be very difficult for them to expel me from the Labour Party when I’ve got this whole sheaf of documents and papers which shows that what I said was true.
Red Ken Livingstone stirs his Nazi's / Zionism history - again (06Sept16)
Is George Galloway an antisemite?
This is all the more interesting for the fact that Galloway goes on to discuss other Jews who he argues were excellent examples of anti-apartheid Jews. He mentions Joe Slovo and Ruth First (they were married) and Albie Sachs in addition to Goldberg all of whom were communists save for Sachs who never had a bad word to say about Israel or Zionism.
By identifying them as Jews rather than by their chosen atheist ideology, Galloway makes it clear that the attempt by Jews to shed their Jewish skin and join the global brotherhood of the workers failed. Galloway is praising these people, but he is doing so by holding them up as examples of good Jews that other Jews should emulate, not as anti-apartheid campaigners that everyone should emulate. It’s a nuanced point perhaps but it sits at the heart of everything that brought Zionism into being. Even when we leave Judaism behind for the global brotherhood of the workers the global brotherhood will remind us that we cannot leave our Jewish identity behind no matter how hard we try.
In so doing, Galloway actually reminds us why it was that so many socialists were also committed Zionists. They knew that no matter how communist or socialist they were, it would never be enough to remove their Judaism in the eyes of their peers. For Galloway, it demonstrably doesn’t matter what a Jew does to shed their Jewish skin he will always hold them up as Jews first, here he does so alongside another Jew…Karl Marx. Let’s not even get into the fact that the way he tells it there was no such thing as an anti-apartheid Jew who was also a Zionist. Except there was.
This is Galloway’s antisemitism laid bare, his inability to do anything other than tell Jews what it is we’re allowed to believe, what it is we should believe and hold us to account according to standards he decides. Standards that as it turns out have little to do with reality.
Watch B’Tselem Spokeswoman Refusing to Call Hamas a Terrorist Organization
Alan Mendoza, Executive Director of the Henry Jackson Society, interviewed B’Tselem Spokesperson Sarit Michaeli on Monday on J-TV, a new YouTube channel “providing weekly content on Current Affairs, Jewish Wisdom, Movers & Shakers and Jewish Food.” As the conversation progressed, the host pushed Michaeli on the fact that her group devotes much more attention to the Israeli side, while most Arab violations of human rights are given a pass. Michaeli didn’t argue the facts, noting that B’Tselem does condemn major human rights violations by the Arabs in both Gaza and the PA, but that, being an Israeli organization, it is more dedicated to teaching Israelis about wrongs committed by their own government.
At some point, Mendoza asked her if B’Tselem has condemned Hamas as a terrorist organization and Michaeli said that when Hamas attacks Israeli civilians it certainly commits acts of terrorism. Yes, the host insisted, but are they a terrorist organization? Maybe a part-time terrorist organization? No matter how many times he tried, the B’Tselem spokeswoman would not go on the record condemning Hamas as a terrorist group. Instead she accused Mendoza of joining Israeli extremists who wish to associate B’Tselem with anti-Israeli politics. The more he pushed, the more she stuck to repeating that mantra.
Holocaust denial fliers circulate on Australian campuses
Anti-Semitic pamphlets claiming that the Holocaust is a hoax have been distributed at several Australian universities.
The leaflets turned up in Monash University, the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, and the University of NSW according to a report by BuzzFeed News.
The paper, titled “The greatest swindle of all time,” contains quotes from long-time pro-Palestinian activist and controversial academic Norman Finkelstein, who is himself the son of Holocaust survivors.
The flyer quotes Finkelstein out of context to the effect that “Much of the literature on Hitler’s Final Solution is worthless as scholarship. Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense if not sheer fraud.”
The page ends with the line, “For the facts, gentlemen, not the Hollywood production,” and a website address with the hashtag #Holohoax.
BDS said giving way to more disruptive anti-Israel activism on campus
Anti-Israel activism on college campuses in the US is shifting away from efforts to push for a boycott of the Jewish state to more dramatic displays of anti-Israel sentiment, such as disruption of events, a report released Tuesday shows.
However, the annual report by the Israel on Campus Coalition, reviewing the 2015-16 academic year, also found support for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) initiatives is still gaining momentum among Jewish critics of Israel, with their role shifting from mere supporters of the movement to initiators of anti-Israel resolutions.
The report coincides with the beginning of the school year for many US universities and colleges, considered a critical time for pro-and anti-Israel groups on campus to recruit new members.
The shift in activism from BDS to disruptions of pro-Israel events and other vocal activity is seen as a cause for concern by ICC.
“We’re facing a very serious problem. We’re facing detractors, we’re facing anti-Israel activists who are increasingly sophisticated and who are shifting their tactics almost in real time,” warned ICC executive director Jacob Baime.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Student’s Intransigence Class Conflicts With Dehumanization Of Jews (satire)
Khan Yunis, September 5 – A week into the academic year, a sophomore at the local UNRWA secondary school has discovered that two of his courses in raising the next generation of terrorists and antisemites are scheduled to take place at the same time, putting him in a bind.
Maher Shallalhashbaz, 15, expected to follow much the same timetable as last year, when his classes in diplomatic intransigence and in the dehumanization of Jews took place consecutively. However, a look at his Tuesday schedule this afternoon showed that he was enrolled in the next level classes for both subjects, which take place at the same time. Shallalhashbaz plans to speak to the principal and both instructors tomorrow as soon as he reaches school.
“I don’t know how it happened, and I seem to be the only one in my grade with the conflict,” said the student, the second child of seven. “My older brother Nimr didn’t have this problem three years ago.” Nimr was killed in the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, when he was shot by an Israeli sniper before he could detonate a roadside bomb. The teen was lauded by Hamas as a martyr killed in battle and given a military funeral, but the UN and various human rights organizations insisted he was a noncombatant.
Principal Aiwil Qillem was unavailable for comment, but the instructors of both courses said they would try to resolve the difficulty before the first session takes place. “We had to shift some of the classes around because many of the students have been drafted to dig tunnels, and we had to accommodate those demands. I guess Maher fell through the cracks, so to speak,” explained Intransigence instructor Ayyam Araq. “This better be resolved soon, because the sophomore year is when the intensity really picks up, and Maher will have a tough time keeping up with the rest of the curriculum, even in its newer, more integrated and efficient format.”
IsraellyCool: A Special Offer For Rogel Alpher
Rogel Alpher is a columnist for Haaretz. He is about as far to the left as you can imagine. In fact, he is so far to the left, I believe his official address should be registered in Khan Younis or maybe even Benghazi. In his latest abomination article he writes that he is not proud of his country. He includes the name of his country as Israel but the Israel he describes doesn’t exist on this planet. His article, his presence in this country, is an outrage and vicious slander so easily proven wrong. In fact, just yesterday, Israel showed Alpher’s words to be lies. That easy. That fast. That often.
Alpher encourages us to “face facts,” which he writes amounts to “there won’t be a Palestinian state, and Israel will no longer be the state of the Jews.” Now, amazingly enough, I agree with the first half of his sentence. There never was, and most likely never will be an independent state of Palestine. Despite numerous attempts, each possibility is shot down, quite literally, by renewed violence and intransigence by the Palestinians. As Abba Eban once said, “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
Right about the first part of his statement, Alpher immediately ends his short-lived streak of truth with the second part. As is typical of many journalists, he fills the article with about 8-10 paragraphs of fluff till he gets to what he is likely to consider the “meat” of his argument.
He refers to Israel as a “violent, bloody, binational non-democracy.” Well, wow. Despite common sense probably telling him that he’s already written more than anyone would want to read, he rushes to explain the title, why he isn’t proud of Israel. He, it seems, knows “the reality,” unlike millions of Israelis who know his reality is tainted by his agenda. Alpher says we have an apartheid state (we don’t); that the two-state solution is dead (it was never viable, so of course it is dead) and that “everything is bad here.”
Guardian contributor’s tweet shows how ‘privilege’ narrative obfuscates antisemitism
Moustafa Bayoumi @BayoumiMoustafa
French troops protecting 717 Jewish private schools nationwide underscores class divisions: only 2 Muslim private schools in all of France.
There’s so much to unpack in these few words.
First, as we noted in our own tweet, the fact that French troops must protect Jewish schools (private or otherwise) “underscores” many things which are far more important than “class divisions”, such as the dangerous increase in antisemitism in France, where half of all racist attacks in the country take Jews as their target though Jews number less than 1% of the total population. Indeed, the evidence suggests that Muslims represent a disproportionate percentage of the perpetrators of antisemitic violence in France.
Addressing the specific claim in his tweet, the putative ‘disparity’ in private schools can partly be explained by the fact that French Jews are increasingly the target of antisemitic attacks in public schools. In a recent article at JTA (How Paris public schools became ‘no-go zones’ for Jews), the president of CRIF attributed the flight of Jewish students from public schools in part “to “a bad atmosphere of harassment, insults and assaults”.
Indeed, the rising levels of antisemitism in France has caused a record number of Jews to flee the country, which in part helps explain why the narrative of privilege rests on such a specious premise.
First, as Pagano argued, the complaint that Jews are privileged (or, as it’s sometimes framed, beneficiaries of “white privilege”) actually incites classic antisemitism by framing Jews as the controlling elite.
Second, the exodus of relatively prosperous (“privileged”) French Jews due to antisemitic attacks disproportionately carried out by poorer (“not privileged”) Muslims demonstrates that “privilege” (loosely defined as social, educational and economic success) does not necessarily protect you from the dangers of racism – whether it’s the racism from the ruling majority or from a ‘marginalized’ minority.
Radio 4 provides more evidence of BBC double standards when reporting terrorism
Further examples of the double standard evident in the BBC’s use of the term terrorism were recently supplied by a series of programmes broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
On August 29th the station’s consumer affairs programme ‘You & Yours’ – presented by Winifred Robinson – broadcast an edition titled “Terrorism vs Tourism” which discussed the impact of terrorism “on people flying to Mediterranean resorts”.
“Terrorists are increasingly targeting tourist resorts and destination cities. In today’s You & Yours we report on the human impact of terror attacks and the long-term affect [sic] on the countries they target.
New research commissioned by You & Yours shows to what extent passenger numbers travelling to British holiday destinations, including France, Tunisia, Turkey, and Egypt have been affected by attacks over the last two years.”
Unsurprisingly, Israel – which has both past and recent experience of dealing with the effects of terrorism on its tourist industry – was not included among those “Mediterranean resorts”.
New York Times Column Smears Satmars as Ignorant Welfare Sponges
The latest salvo in the New York Times’ one-sided campaign against traditional Jewish education comes in the form of a column by Ginia Bellafante that is one of the nastiest and most unfounded attacks on a Jewish group published by the Times in recent memory.
The Times columnist accuses Satmar Hasidim of being welfare sponges:
Politicians who might otherwise feel free to lecture black and Hispanic communities on the importance of grit, self-reliance and the sacred path of higher learning express remarkably little outrage over the habits of a group that essentially enshrines its own dependency on the system. According to a 2011 study by the UJA-Federation of New York, the Jewish philanthropic organization, just 11 percent of Hasidic men and 6 percent of Hasidic women in and around New York City hold bachelor’s degrees, while the poverty rate among Hasidic households stands at 43 percent, nearly twice the figure citywide.
A reliance on public assistance is remarkably common among the Hasidim, explained Lani Santo, the executive director of Footsteps, an organization begun in 2003 to help those who decide to leave the ultra-Orthodox world.
This is problematic on at least two levels.
Belgian official resigns after calling Israel Islamic State’s twin
A Belgian Muslim official who compared Israel to Nazi Germany and the Islamic State is no longer employed as a minister’s adviser on tolerance.
Youssef Kobo, the adviser on diversity for the minister in charge of equal opportunity in the regional government of Brussels, offered to resign after finding he could no longer fulfill his duties, a ministry spokesperson told the HLN news website Monday.
Last month, Kobo apologized for his vitriol against Israel, which he said was a modern Nazi Germany and “an identical twin” of the Islamic State terrorist group.
He said he was “young and stupid” when he wrote the Facebook posts in 2014, which he said he “regrets,” the La Capitale daily reported. The newspaper had contacted Kobo, 28, following criticism by the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism.
However, in recent days Belgian media discovered earlier tweets, in which he proposed to slaughter activists working to prevent the ritual slaughter of animals.
Two Israeli universities rated among world’s top 100 for research
Two Israeli universities have been ranked among the world’s top 100 for research, according to the annual QS World University Rankings released Monday.
First compiled in 2004, the QS World University Rankings rates the world’s best-performing higher education institutions, assessing some 3,000 and ranking more than 800.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem was the highest ranking academic institution in Israel and ranked 148th globally, maintaining its standing from the previous year.
The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology was ranked third in Israel and 213th worldwide, dropping 15 places overall and out of the top 200 universities bracket from the previous year, when it ranked 198th. However, the university placed 76th globally for research.
Tel Aviv University improved its standing within Israel, surpassing the Technion to grab the second-ranking slot among the country’s leading universities. Globally, the university ranked 212th, a nine point decrease from the previous year.
But TAU ranked 22nd in the world for research, with a citations per faculty score of 97 out of 100.
Intel buys computer vision start-up Movidius as it looks to build up its RealSense platform
Intel’s RealSense platform was the star of its Intel Developer’s Forum conference in San Francisco last month and it seems the company is only looking to grow the scale and capabilities of its computer vision tech. Today, the company announced that it is acquiring the computer vision startup behind Google’s Project Tango 3D-sensor tech, Movidius.
In a blog post, Movidius CEO Remi El-Ouazzane announced that his startup will continue in its goal of giving “the power of sight to machines” as it works with Intel’s RealSense technology. Movidius has seen a great deal of interest in its radically low-powered computer vision chipset, signing deals with major device makers, including Google, Lenovo and DJI.
The eight-year old company has about 180 employees with offices in Silicon Valley, Ireland and Romania. The company had raised $86.5 million in funding across several rounds from investors including Summit Bridge Capital, Capital-E, DFJ and Emertec Gestion amongst others.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“We’re on the cusp of big breakthroughs in artificial intelligence,” wrote El-Ouazzane. “In the years ahead, we’ll see new types of autonomous machines with more advanced capabilities as we make progress on one of the most difficult challenges of AI: getting our devices not just to see, but also to think.”
Kim Kardashian poised to sign deal with Israeli tech company
American reality television star Kim Kardashian has reportedly been negotiating an advertising deal with Israeli technology company Shellanoo Group, Israel Hayom has learned.
If signed, the deal would see the megastar promoting Shellanoo Group products, which include mobile applications, artificial intelligence and online services.
Kardashian's social media presence is staggering, with some 80 million followers on Instagram and 30 million on Facebook. Given her online popularity, the star would likely be a good match for the tech-centered company.
Details of the potential agreement have yet to be revealed. Kardashian is no stranger to online marketing, having launched her own emoji app and computer game, through she reportedly earned about $150 million.
Kardashian was initially contacted to discuss the deal by Israeli entrepreneur Oded Kobo, one of Shallanoo Group's founders.
Report: Egyptian Antiquities Ministry Official Calls on World to Help Fund Restoration, Preservation of Country’s Ancient Jewish Artifacts
The head of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities Monuments Department is calling on the world to help fund the restoration and preservation of ancient Jewish artifacts, the Mideast news site Al Monitor reported on Sunday.
According to the report, Saeed Helmy, who is in charge of the country’s Islamic, Coptic Christian and Jewish monuments, told the outlet last month that this project has been difficult to fund, due to his country’s dire economic straits.
Helmy told Al Monitor that Jewish antiquities — which Egypt has begun registering, to protect them from theft and neglect — “capture the attention of people all around the world.”
There are 11 synagogues in Egypt, 10 in Cairo and one in Alexandria, according to the report, which contain thousands of documents pertaining to the now nearly non-existent Jewish community in the country (only six individuals remain), including birth and marriage records.
When tourism was still thriving, prior to the outbreak of the “Arab Spring” in late 2011, these synagogues were frequently visited by foreigners, particularly Old Cairo’s Ben Ezra, which houses thousands of ancient Jewish books — all in need of care.
In addition, the report said, the Ashkenazi synagogue in Ataba, built in 1887, requires serious renovation.
19th Century Paintings of Jerusalem Found in the Ottoman Imperial Archives
We pay tribute again to archivists and librarians who digitize their historical treasures. Pictures of these two paintings were found in the Ottoman Archives.
The first painting is by German artist Johann Martin Bernatz (1802-1878) who traveled in the Holy Land in 1836.
Bauernfeind moved to Jerusalem in 1898. He is buried in the German Templar Cemetery in Jerusalem. In 2007, his oil painting of the Wailing Wall sold for 4.5 million Euros at Sotheby.
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