Tuesday, February 04, 2014
Elie Wiesel: People are no longer ashamed to be anti-Semites
"The Holocaust is a unique event, but it has a universal significance which must be memorized incessantly," he says, voicing concerns over the temptation of Iran's nuclear ability and the civil war in Syria, which has already claimed a price of 150,000 deaths. And the world is silent.At SodaStream, Palestinians hope their bubble won’t burst
The unstoppable conversation between us has been going on for several years now, but the murky wave of anti-Semitism sweeping over the Western world, as well as Eastern Europe (with the recent incidents in Hungary and Ukraine), are fresh and extract statements with despair running through them.
"Unfortunately, anti-Semitism still exists," Wiesel says. "It has been alive for more than 2,000 years, and will likely continue living. I thought that the memory of the Holocaust would shame those boasting anti-Semitic opinions. I was wrong. It still exists in different countries, and it seems people are no longer ashamed to be anti-Semitic."
“There are no job opportunities in the West Bank,” Fares told The Times of Israel. “Even the jobs that do exist pay no more than NIS 1,500-2,000 ($430-570) a month.” Fares now earns triple those sums.PA Report: Palestinians Prefer to Buy 'Blue and White'
Many educated women like Fares were forced to seek work outside the home following the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 to support the household as the Palestinian economy collapsed, she explained.
Fares’s husband, a first lieutenant in the Palestinians’ prestigious Preventive Security Force, earns NIS 2,000 ($570) per month after 10 years of service.
Last month, BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) activists slammed Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas for not joining in with them to boycott Israel – and on Monday, the PA revealed just how uninvolved it was in the BDS movement. According to a PA report, 70% of the PA's imports were from Israel, with imports worth $3.5 billion entering the Authority from Israel.
It should be noted that Israel generally does not restrict imports of consumer goods to the PA, and that Israeli goods compete on Palestinian store shelves with goods from Arab countries and Europe as well as from the PA. Rather, it is the Palestinian consumer who is driving the push for Israeli goods in the PA, Palestinian merchants said. (h/t Bob Knot)
Financial Times has a meltdown over SodaStream model of co-existence
First, the SodaStream factory is located in an industrial park within greater Ma’ale Adumim and, even according to Peace Now, only 0.5% of the settlement territory was built on Palestinian land. Additionally, while the fate of the disputed territory will be decided by negotiations between the two parties, it’s important to note that Ehud Olmert’s generous offer to Mahmoud Abbas in 2008, which included a contiguous Palestinian State in 93% of the West Bank, included Ma’ale Adumim as part of Israel.
Further, the phrase “Arab East Jerusalem” is of course a misnomer, as the only time “East Jerusalem” was ‘Arab’ (that is, 100% Jew-free) and separated arbitrarily between “East” and “West” in its entire history was between 1949 and 1967, the short period when Jordan controlled that part of the city (after expelling all the Jews).
BBC displays its campaigning colours in SodaStream story coverage
That specious portrayal again completely neglects to inform audiences that the end game of the BDS movement (led by its guru Oxfam Connolly artorganization PACBI) is not the dubious labelling of soda making machines or tomatoes based on the postcode and ethnicity of their producers, but the denial of national rights and self-determination to the Jewish people by means of delegitimisation of Israel. Connolly’s description conceals the fact that the BDS movement rejects the existence of Israel as the Jewish state, opposes ‘normalisation’ of relations between Israelis and Palestinians and demands the ‘right of return’ to Israel for millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees.Ha’aretz Tweets Anti-Johansson Meme, Issues Clarification After Readers Protest
Israeli daily Ha’aretz tweeted an altered photo of Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson as celebrity spokeswoman for Israel’s SodaStream to its 122,000 followers on Sunday, offending readers whose complaints prompted the newspaper to issue a clarification, though it stopped short of a formal apology.Daniel Pipes: Pretending Tel Aviv is the Capital of Israel
With the caption,”The sip heard around the world,” Ha’aretz posted a screenshot of the actress, posing with a soda straw and carbonated beverage in hand, superimposed in front of a chain link security fence enclosing a group of Arabs.
Some, especially in the mainstream media, pretend that not Jerusalem but Tel Aviv serves as the capital of Israel. (Tel Aviv hosts the Ministry of Defense but not much else of the central government.) This parallels a tendency lately to pretend there’s a country called Palestine. The weblog entry documents some of those delusions, which are appearing more often, in reverse chronological order:NY Times Op-Ed About Anti-Israel "Propaganda War" Ignores Key Antagonist: The Times Itself
There could be no more convenient a climax by the newspaper's opinion page editors. After a month of battering Israel by focusing obsessively on its problems, real and invented, without even one column dedicated to Palestinian faults, and after many prior months of the same, their final jab at the Jewish state not only strikes at the country's reputation, but also feigns innocence, ignoring their own major role in the battle to poison public opinion about Israel. It's a clever twist. Not only are New York Times opinion editors trying to harm Israel's reputation, but to the extent that they have succeeded, this is cast as yet another reason to dislike the country.75% of January terror activity on Israel’s southern borders ignored by BBC
While the New York Times propaganda war needs to be taken seriously, it is worth remembering that, in fact, Israel does not seem to be losing that war at all — at least not in the United States, the subject of a Gallup headline in mid-2013 that read, "Americans' Sympathies for Israel Match All-Time High." (h/t Yenta Press)
In other words, the BBC’s record of reporting terror attacks on Israel originating in the Gaza Strip and northern Sinai throughout January (even in the form of a brief mention in an article relating to another subject) stands at 25%, with 75% of the attacks having been completely ignored.Terrorism is a bigger threat than economic boycott
That of course means that BBC audiences have been denied three-quarters of the data, are thus unaware of the steep rise in missile attacks from the Gaza Strip in January compared to previous months and hence lack the necessary context which is essential for them to be able to reach informed opinions on the subject of Israel’s responses to the activities of terror organisations on its southern borders.
The expected impact on preventing terrorism is much more concerning than the concomitant economic damage of any boycott, because the ramifications of terrorism are far more acute, even in economic terms. At the moment, we have maintained control, but according to the Kerry document, that control will either disappear or dwindle dramatically.An Open Letter to Actress Emma Thompson, Boycotter of Israel
The American proposal is difficult in an ethical sense as well. The secretary of state intends to legitimate Palestinian claims for a capital in east Jerusalem, a city which, in the past, barely played a role in Arab political or cultural life. Islam's upgrade of the city in recent times has woven an intricate tapestry of lies and deception, rewriting Jerusalem's history by insisting that Muslims were here before the Jews ever arrived. Jerusalem is the justifiable embodiment and memory of the Jewish people. Israeli acquiescence to the Kerry proposal's Jerusalem clause is nothing less than denial. (h/t Bob Knot)
That, Ms. Thompson, is what I fear will happen to you if you throw in your lot with the haters and boycotters of Israel. The radical chic that is so appealing to you today will be revealed as a horrible mistake soon enough. You will, eventually, recognize the true nature of the tyrants and terrorists of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. But how much must Israel suffer until you, like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, finally stop romanticizing dictators?A “Correction” Obscuring Real BDS Goals
Yes, there are evil regimes that deserve to be boycotted. The apartheid regime of South Africa deserved it. So do the terrorists who rule Gaza. But democratic, peaceful, egalitarian Israel does not.
Actually, the original statement, which can be read to suggest BDSers target all of Israel in their boycott demands, was right on the money. The correction, which gives the impression the movement only targets companies with West Bank interests, distorts BDS goals. As the BDS Movement itself states:Why is Facebook Enabling Anti-Semites?
Boycotts target products and companies (Israeli and international) that profit from the violation of Palestinian rights, as well as Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions. Anyone can boycott Israeli goods, simply by making sure that they don’t buy produce made in Israel or by Israeli companies. Campaigners and groups call on consumers not to buy Israeli goods and on businesses not to buy or sell them.
Anti-Semitic French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala was banned from entering Britain on Monday, and he responded by giving his reverse Nazi salute to Queen Elizabeth II, AFP reports.Dieudonne Gives 'Quenelle' to Queen After British Ban
The comic, who has a string of convictions for hate speech in his homeland, performed the stiff-armed gesture after naming the queen in a rant during a show in the Swiss town of Nyon.
Anonymous (and sometimes not-so-anonymous) lunatics post hateful pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic stuff on Facebook.Israel Emerging as Cybersecurity Powerhouse With Investor Kramer
People dutifully complain about the stuff they see.
Facebook responds by telling people that the imagery does not violate the company’s community standards, (which includes bans on hate speech and the promotion of violence).
Who at Facebook sends out these messages? Really!
Israel’s campaign to become a cybersecurity powerhouse, an effort trumpeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, owes a debt to entrepreneur and investor Shlomo Kramer.IBM, Cisco next big players in Israeli cyber-security
Over more than two decades, Kramer has founded or backed six Israeli online-security companies, amassing a personal fortune of about $800 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The 47-year-old has taken the money earned from deals and initial public offerings and plowed it back into new startups and technologies, developing fresh ways to fend off virtual enemies.
IBM and Cisco became the latest multinationals to announce major investments in Israel’s new cyber-security technology park in Beersheba. IBM said it would work with Ben Gurion University to establish what it called a Center of Excellence for Security and Protection of Infrastructure and Assets, where students and workers will learn cyber-security skills to ensure the safety of the digital future, the company said.US approves Israeli pill camera to screen colon
The new project “reinforces IBM’s commitment to accelerate innovation that meets the industry’s most pressing long term business requirements,” said Steve Mills, senior vice present and group executive, IBM Software & Systems. Speaking at the recent CyberTech 2014 event in Tel Aviv, Mills said that “our ongoing investments and rich history of patent leadership is helping our clients secure and protect their infrastructure and data in today’s new era of Big Data and Cloud Computing. Our partnership with Ben-Gurion University will help extend innovation not only in Israel but around the world.”
A kinder, gentler approach to one of the most dreaded exams in medicine is on the way: US regulators have cleared a bite-size camera to help screen the large intestine of patients who have trouble with colonoscopies.Jewish ‘refugee day’ proposal advances in Knesset
The ingestible pill camera from Given Imaging is designed to help doctors spot polyps and other early signs of colon cancer. The Food and Drug Administration cleared the device for patients who have had trouble with the cringe-inducing procedure, which involves probing the colon using a tiny camera on a four-foot long, flexible tube.
A bill to establish an official day for commemorating the fate of Jewish communities who fled Arab lands and Iran passed its first of three readings in the Knesset plenum on Monday, and looks set to become law in the coming weeks.Portman joins Israeli aid effort to Syria
The Bill to Commemorate the Flight and Expulsion of Jews from Arab Lands and Iran, proposed by Morocco-born MK Shimon Ohayon (Yisrael Beytenu), would designate November 30 — the day after the November 29 commemoration of the 1947 United Nations partition vote that gave formal international recognition to Jewish statehood — as the day for commemorating the former Jewish communities of Muslim lands and the tribulations they endured with their flight and expulsion from those lands in the 1940s and 1950s.
Hollywood actress Natalie Portman has joined an Israeli initiative to send aid to Syrian refugees, it was announced Monday, donating money and clothes to a cause which she said “deeply moved” her.British deserter who stole tanks for Haganah dies
Operation Human Warmth was launched by several Israeli organizations in January as an effort to collect winter clothes and supplies for Syrian refugees who have been displaced by the civil war in their country, and who often lack basic necessities to survive the cold.
Mike Flanagan, a former British soldier who smuggled two Cromwell tanks to the Haganah in 1948, passed away on Friday at the age of 85. Flanagan was buried in the Sha’ar HaAmakim cemetery alongside his wife and son on Sunday, and will be honored by the IDF for his contribution to fledgling Israel’s war efforts during the War of Independence.IDF Blog: Female Arab Soldier: "I Would Sacrifice My Life for Israel"
“We owe Flanagan a debt of honor,” said Lt. Col. Michael Mass, the vice president of the Armored Corps Memorial Site and Museum. “The two Cromwells helped us greatly in the battles of the War of Independence and he himself fought bravely in our ranks. Today we will take our leave of him and salute his memory.”
Flanagan, an Irishman, fought in the British army during World War II and participated in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. After the war, he was stationed in British Mandate Palestine as a technician in the armored forces. On June 29, 1948, Flanagan, alongside his friend and tank commander Harry McDonald, broke into a military base near the Haifa airport, stole the two tanks and drove them to Tel Aviv where Hagana operatives were waiting.
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