Sunday links

From Ian:

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Palestine – Cutting Abbas Down To Size by David Singer

"PLO Chairman and Palestinian Authority President – Mahmoud Abbas – continues to promote the deceptive and misleading claim that the areas lost by Jordan and Egypt to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War constituted 22% – not 5% – of historic Palestine"

The Professor’s Shoddy History

Berlin’s Jewish Museum gave Judith Butler and Germans permission to indulge dangerous political impulses
"Why would the Jewish Museum give Butler a podium and allow her to advocate for BDS, a campaign that even the unyielding Israel critic Norman Finkelstein has labeled a “cult” that seeks to “eliminate” Israel by hiding behind nonviolent rhetoric? To understand the answer to that question, one must put Butler’s visit in the context of slowly shifting German attitudes toward Israel and Jews—as well as within Germany’s ongoing attempts to deal with its past. “I have also wondered whether the use of my abridged remarks about Hamas and Hezbollah itself was a kind of anti-Semitic attack,” Butler told the left-wing German newspaper Jungle World in 2010 in response to those Germans who had criticized her for her views on Israel. “I feel, in fact, again my vulnerability as a Jew in Germany, when I am discredited in this way in the media.” With such rhetorical feats, Butler transforms herself from an American intellectual into a latter-day victim of anti-Semitism, and in so doing gives Germans who might feel uneasy expressing support for the boycott of the Jewish state license to feel like victims as well."

Americans in Pakistan to protest drone strikes

“The American activists — around three dozen representatives of the U.S.-based activist group CODEPINK — along with Clive Stafford Smith, founder of the London-based legal advocacy organization Reprieve, want to march with Khan and publicize the plight of communities affected by the U.S. drones.
Ahead of the march, local media carried reports Friday of alleged suicide bombings planned against the demonstration and a pamphlet distributed in a town along the march route warned participants they would face danger. The main Pakistani Taliban faction issued a statement criticizing the event.”

UK think tank takes EU to task on Hezbollah stance

Whereas the United States, Canada and Holland recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist group, the EU does not.
“The Henry Jackson Society wants the EU and the UK to formally outlaw Hezbollah in its entirety – in line with the US, Canada and the Netherlands – and recognize it as “a terrorist organization that consistently uses violent terrorist tactics.”

French synagogue terrorized by blank shots as police raid jihadi cell

"A Jewish community leader told the Le Parisien newspaper that the shots were fired at the synagogue to scare the local community. “This was an act that was more against the Jewish community, it’s very worrying,” Val d’Oise Jewish community head Moshe Cohen Sabban told the paper."

Sixteen Arrested for Role in Iran's Currency Crisis

On Thursday, Tehran’s attorney general said 16 people had been arrested for their alleged “disruption of the currency market." The 16 were said to have worked with "external and internal forces" in creating a panic that benefited them personally and helped to disrupt the economy.

Vatican says talks to reconcile with anti-Semitic group ‘dead’

Chief of church doctrine says he is unable to bring Society of St. Pius X into the fold
“The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Saturday welcomed the suggestion that talks with the society had broken down and said it hoped the society’s members “will eventually give up their theology of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.”

Overheard in a coffee shop: A better way to do brain surgery, based on Israeli simulation technology

Two Israel Air Force officers and one American doctor have developed a novel way to allow surgeons to prepare for operations
“The idea for the Surgery Rehearsal Platform, known as an SRP, emerged, said Selman, when he overheard a discussion on flight simulation between former Israel Air Force officers Moty Avisar and Alon Geri. Knowing a good thing when he heard it, Selman, who is Neurosurgeon-in-Chief of University Hospitals in Ohio and Chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, got involved in the conversation. The result was the establishment of a new company with the Israeli experts (who were in Ohio working with Lockheed Martin’s office in Akron), called Surgical Theater LLC.”

Making fracking a greener proposition

Israel’s Flow Industries makes an ‘air gun’ for clearing industrial blockages, and it may also provide a better way to extract shale oil.

Australian naval contract for Israeli firm

Elbit Systems, the Israeli company that develops military technology, has won the contract to supply the Australian Navy with battle management systems in Australian ships.

UNICEF uses Israel-made water purification tablets in Syria

Israel Chemicals given special authorization to sell water purification tables to UN to rehabilitate Syria’s water sources

Jewish Virtual Library: October is Israel Innovation Month