Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Manufacturing and Exploiting Compassion: Abuse of the Media by Palestinian Propaganda
Blaise Pascal once observed that “people…arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof, but on the basis of what they find attractive.” Today this is confirmed by science, and it explains why Palestinians have won the media war.Arab Intellectual Calls For Theological-Cognitive Revolution To Extricate Arab World From Backwardness, Crises, And Internecine Warfare
In 2011 – an age of abundant and verifiable information – opinion polls found that as many as 40-60 percent of Europeans believed that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” That so many Westerners baselessly accuse Israel of genocide is all the more baffling when one considers that it is Israel that is regularly threatened with annihilation. Those poll results are not peculiar to Europe: similar worrying trends have been noted among American youth, liberals, and minorities. Israel, a liberal democracy caught between tyrannies and sectarian violence, is increasingly perceived as uniquely evil. Tired refrains can no longer obfuscate the truth: the success of the Palestinians in generating such widespread hostility towards Israel has been earned, and in fact can be scientifically explained.
Hashem Saleh, an Arab intellectual of Syrian origin who currently resides in Morocco, wrote in his August 10, 2013 column in the London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that in order to extricate itself from crises, backwardness and internecine warfare, the Arab and Muslim world must undergo a theological-cognitive revolution. He explained that it must discard the approach of rejecting the other and embrace a more tolerant and enlightened approach – like the revolution experienced by Europe three centuries ago. Saleh adds that since we are in the era of an information revolution and globalization, this process can take place more quickly than it did in Europe, and could take as little as three decades.The World From Here: Defeating ‘cocktail terrorism’
In short, the “cocktail terror” strategy has been to attack Israel from the outside using classic terror tactics while at the same time attempting to unravel Israel’s legitimacy, its public’s trust and morale from the inside. The EU’s bifurcated treatment of Hezbollah as a military and political organization poses similar challenges. Fatah-Palestinian Authority-sponsored incitement to murder Jews while mobilizing lower-level terror – “popular protest” violence – has successfully challenged Israel’s legitimacy in international circles.JPost Editorial: Remembering 9/11
Shifting international perceptions of legitimacy of Hamas, Hezbollah and other Fatah-associated groups influence IDF strategy and tactics in counter-terror campaigns. This became clear in the IDF’s softer approach in the Mavi Marmara pro- Hamas flotilla following the IDF’s Cast Lead operation resulting in the UN Goldstone Report. The legitimacy war opposite semi-terror, semi-government groups is a zero sum game. The more they are perceived as legitimate, the more complicated it is for Israel to defend itself against them. In short, like the law of “communicating vessels,” Israel’s military legitimacy depends on the levels of its political and diplomatic legitimacy. This is true both domestically and internationally.
The ability of the West to truly influence the Middle East is limited. Totalitarian Islamist regimes and organizations – including al-Qaida – have proven to be remarkably resilient. Hopes that the Arab spring would lead to a more democratic Middle East have yet to materialize.Remembering Tech Titan Danny Lewin, the Fighting Genius on Flight 11
Instead, democratic election gave rise – temporarily in Egypt’s case – to Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated governments.
And this geopolitical reality – as we mark the 12th anniversary of 9/11 – presents serious challenges, not only for Israel, but for the rest of the freedom-loving world.
The first victim of the 9/11 attacks was a veteran of an elite IDF unit, as well as an innovative Internet entrepreneurWhat a Real Peace Process Would Look Like
By most accounts, Danny Lewin was the first victim of 9/11. Seated in seat 9B aboard American Airlines flight 11, he saw Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari, sitting just in front of him, rise and make their way to the cockpit. According to calls from flight attendants to air traffic officials, later documented in the 9/11 Commission’s report, Lewin wasted no time in acting. Having served as an officer in Sayeret Matkal, the Israel Defense Forces’ top unit, he moved to tackle the terrorists. The man in 10B, Satam al-Suqami, moved, too, producing a knife and slitting Lewin’s throat. Less than 30 minutes later, at 8:46 a.m., the plane crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
Elsewhere, in America and all over the world, people desperate for accurate information turned to the Internet for news. Straining under the overwhelming demand of tens of millions of simultaneous requests, the web’s biggest news sites threatened to collapse. Very few did, thanks in large part to the technology that Lewin himself had developed years earlier: Although only 31 at the time of his murder, he was the co-founder of Akamai, a pioneering technology company whose content routing solutions enable the seamless flow of nearly 20 percent of the web’s traffic.
Ordinary Palestinians feel they’ve gotten nothing from the peace process, and they’re right. That, however, is because the PA deliberately chose to give them nothing. It never used its massive infusions of aid to build, say, better housing for Palestinian refugees living in squalid West Bank camps; on the contrary, it publicly vowed that even if a Palestinian state someday arises, the refugees won’t be given citizenship. Nor did it use foreign aid to upgrade its hospitals: Patients who need state-of-the-art treatment are still routinely sent to Israel. It refuses to cooperate with Israel on mundane issues like sewage treatment that would improve Palestinian lives, and allows anti-normalization thugs from the ruling Fatah party to drive away Israeli businesses that would provide Palestinians with jobs. In short, rather than trying to help its people, the PA has done everything possible to keep them in a state of perpetual misery.Where Are the Borders?
Palestinian Authority officials, evidently terrified that talks with Israel might actually lead somewhere, have predictably placed yet another obstacle on the way. They are now claiming that they received a guarantee from Secretary of State Kerry that negotiations over a two-state solution would be based on the 1949 Armistice lines, before they were obliterated during the Six-Day War. Even such a promise, if it exists, would be all but worthless. It blatantly contradicts United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, ratified five months after the war, which set the parameters for future negotiations and agreements between Israel, Arab states, and the Palestine Liberation Organization.Terrorism in Judea and Samaria Becoming More Sophisticated
Commander of the Binyamin Regional Brigade Colonel Yossi Pinto said at an annual review of incidents in the sector that Israeli forces are not facing a rise in terror overall in Judea and Samaria but rather a rise in the sophistication of terrorist infrastructure and planning. These changes demand a high-level of intelligence gathering from security forces.The Guardian falsely characterizes First Intifada as a “largely unarmed rebellion”
Of course, as anyone familiar with the uprising (from 1987 to around 1991) would know, characterizing it as an “unarmed rebellion” is extraordinarily misleading, as the intifada was violent from the start. Whilst most people remember images of rock throwing Palestinian youths, in fact more than 3,600 Molotov cocktail attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks and 600 assaults with firearms were carried out during that time – violence directed at soldiers and civilians alike."A Conference That Features Fringe Conspiracy Theorists & Ideologues": Australian National University Slammed For Hosting Anti-Israel Event
During this period, over 200 Israelis were killed by such terror attacks, and more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 Israeli soldiers were injured.
The report quotes Peter Wertheim, executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, thus:Center-Right victory in Norway elections expected to improve country’s tone toward Israel
"A conference that features fringe conspiracy theorists and ideologues and omits recognised scholars in the field has no academic credibility.
It is appalling that one of our top universities, the ANU, seems no longer to understand the difference between genuine scholarship and political advocacy."
In 2008, when Myrland’s organization asked Solberg to write a greeting in a book it had published in honor of Israel’s 60th birthday, she wrote, “Culturally, historically and politically, there is no land in the Middle East that is closer to Norway than Israel.”New Olympic chief heads Arab-German trade group set up to boycott Israel
Myrland said that all of the likely parties in the new coalition have said they would review Norway’s non-critical economic support of the Palestinian Authority. Norway is one of the PA’s biggest donors, giving some $52 million annually.
“Even the Conservative party has been strongly critical of the former government for giving money to the PA to pay salaries to terrorists sitting in Israeli jails,” he said.
Thomas Bach, a German who was elected Tuesday for an initial eight-year term at an IOC session in Buenos Aires, is chairman of Ghorfa, the Arab-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which was set up in the 1970s by Arab countries to boycott trade with Israel.Obama Appoints Zogby to Commission on Religious Freedom
“It betrays the principles of sportsmanship and fair play for the IOC to be headed by someone who actively participates in ongoing Israel boycott campaign measures,” said Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee Berlin Ramer Institute.
Zogby was also a featured writer for the Arab Voice at the time that paper was excerpting the notorious anti-Semitic forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Zogby responds at the base of the article, which is followed by a follow-up article casting doubt on parts of his explanations). He accused Israel of waging a “Holocaust” against the Palestinians. More recently, he embraced political polemics if not conspiracies regarding the Iraq war. And most recently, Zogby accused Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of being an “Israel firster,” an anti-Semitic trope.Spanish festival bans musician for attending pro-Israel event
The organizers of the Festa Major Alternativa told Eric Herrera that he could not play with his band, Amusic Skazz Band, on August 29 after photos surfaced of him attending an event marking Israel’s 65th anniversary in Barcelona earlier this year, band members told the news site Dialogo Libre.World’s First ‘No Blood’ Glucose Monitor for Diabetics; Developed by Israeli Start-Up Cnoga Medical
The band canceled its performance in Manreza, where anti-Israel activists reportedly handed out posters of Herrera posing next to the Israeli flag at the celebration. The same photos were circulated among some festival goers ahead of the event.
Israel’s Cnoga Medical Ltd. has developed a blood glucose monitor for diabetics that uses optical censors to measure change in skin color instead of a pin prick to take a physical sample of blood.Israel Chemicals teams with Vietnamese Co.
This “non-invasive” device is now available in Europe, and will likely require a clinical trial in the U.S. before being sold officially to diabetics, although the device’s technology has already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for other applications, CEO Dr. Yosef Segman told Israel’s Globes business daily.
Israel Chemicals Ltd. (TASE: ICL) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Vietnamese chemicals company Duc Giang to jointly mine phosphates and build phosphates processing plants for the local and Southeast Asia markets.Ormat completes 100MW New Zealand geothermal power station
Israel Chemicals says that the agreement is part of its Next Step Forward strategy, and is part of its plan to expand and diversify its mining sources outside of Israel, broaden its global phosphate operations, and provide a growth engine for its primary markets
Ormat Industries Ltd. (TASE: ORMT) unit Ormat Technologies Inc. (NYSE: ORA) today announced that it has completed the 100-megawatt Ngatamariki geothermal power plant in New Zealand under the $142 million Supply and Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contracts signed with Mighty River Power Ltd. in June 2011. The plant is the largest singular binary power plant in the world, and was built in 24 months.
The Ormat Energy Converters are directly fed by a high temperature (193 degrees Celsius) geothermal fluid. Until now, on such resources, only steam turbines or Geothermal Combined Cycle plants were used. In this configuration, 100% of the exploited geothermal fluid is reinjected with zero water consumption and low emissions, minimizing the impact on the environment with no depletion of the underground reservoir.
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