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Monday, October 20, 2014

10/20 Links Pt2: Non-Islamic anti-Semitism in Europe; European Left turns back peace process

From Ian:

Non-Islamic anti-Semitism in Europe
The wave of modern anti-Semitism across Europe in July and August revealed a dangerous amalgamation of left-wing, Islamic-animated, and right-wing extremist Jew-hatred.
Mainstream Europeans remained largely indifferent to contemporary anti-Semitism, namely, the hatred of the Jewish State surrounding Israel's Operation Protective Edge. The firebombing of a synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany, along with protestors at mass rallies calling to "Gas the Jews" prompted scant outrage in German society.
"There is a startling indifference in the German public to the current display of anti-Semitism," said Samuel Salzborn, a leading expert on anti-Semitism at the University of Göttingen in Lower Saxony, in early August. The pressing question is, how can one explain Europe's robust tolerance of Jew-hatred?
This essay will begin by describing the social-psychological mechanism, in response to the Holocaust, driving non-Islamic anti-Semitism among Europeans. (h/t MtTB)
Myth of How the West Was “Saving Jews” and the European Reconquista
This seems absurd and illogical: Europe faces the threat of a total Islamization, the French will become an ethnic minority in their own country by the year 2049 and Germans around the same time. Muslim immigrants planning terrorist attacks are caught practically on a daily basis in all countries of Europe – and in spite of all this, Europeans support Arabs against Israel and are more worried over Israel building ten houses in its capital of Jerusalem then over Muslims building thousands of mosques in all European capitals, from Berlin to Lisbon.
However, quoting Zvi Mazel again: “An Italian politician recently told me, ‘Europe has resigned to its fate. It does not want to fight terrorism and is not even trying to stem the tide of Islamism, which is about to flood it. You are left alone, my friend.’”
Europe moves by inertia, and nobody wants to think about what will happen tomorrow. It is easier and more comfortable for aging Europe to go on thinking along the traditional lines: all evil comes from Jews, they crucified Jesus, they control all media and finances, they… they… they… And fighting against this “Jewish evil” becomes a main task for globalists and anti-globalists, for democrats and conservatives, for donkeys and elephants, for the defenders of the rights of gays, lesbians, rare species of birds, butterflies, roaches, bed bugs… My apologies if I forgot someone.
History is already dragging Europe to the slaughterhouse. Their entire civilization is under attack, and the attackers do not even hide their plan to destroy it all and place the “Banner of the Prophet” over the ruins– yet Europeans go on fighting “the Jews”.
European Left turns back Israel-Palestine peace process
All well-meaning people hope that the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors can be settled peacefully, if not ending in a paradise of inner tranquility. Regrettably, leftist political groups in European countries are damaging that hope in two ways. They ignore the belligerent statements as well as the actions of Palestinians.
In addition, by supporting unilateral actions by Palestinians, they repudiate formal international agreements made over the years, calling for an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict by negotiations. The peace process is not helped by breakage of international understandings.
The British House of Commons – which this week approved a non-binding resolution, moved by left-wing members of the Labour Party in Parliament, calling for the recognition of a state of Palestine by a vote of 274 to 12, though most of the Conservative party abstained – did not appear to understand this.
They perceived themselves as making a small but symbolic step and a gesture for common humanity, but in effect, they ignored the fact that significant parts of the Palestinian population and leadership do not recognize the State of Israel and would not allow that state to exist if they had the power.



Why the BDS Movement is a Major Step Backwards for Palestinians
Oslo and Geneva remain the benchmarks of any Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Both Israelis and Palestinians have legitimate national rights. There is no alternative to difficult mutual concessions and compromise. There is no alternative to a two-state solution which upsets both Greater Israel extremists who want to hang on to all West Bank settlements, and equally Greater Palestine extremists who hope to eliminate Israel. Neither Israeli Jews nor Palestinian Arabs are going to suddenly disappear. They will still be living side by side in 100 years time.
Progressive intellectuals on both sides have an obligation to meet and talk and debate until they find common ground that will provide a pathway to peace and reconciliation. Instead, the BDS movement proposes a ban on any dialogue that doesn't explicitly contribute to the end of Israel's existence. They eschew contact with those Israeli academics and intellectuals who are mostly likely to recognize Palestinian rights, and progress two states. And they do nothing to confront Palestinian reactionaries and religious fundamentalists such as Hamas.
Their activities will only lead to an ongoing nightmare for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
It’s about Israel, Stupid
The truth of the Arab-Israeli conflict is that it has never even been about land, or to be more accurate, part of the land. They will never settle for Gaza, which they already have, and the West Bank. They will never settle for the Galilee or East Jerusalem. They will only settle when they have it all – Haifa and Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Beersheva, Netanya and Eilat.
They’ll accept any piece we are willing to give them…and continue working to take whatever we won’t. Until Israelis are ready to accept that truth and begin negotiations from THAT standpoint, there will never be any movement towards any long term understanding.
It is NOT about the settlements, stupid. It is about Israel. It always has been and always will be. They do not accept us here – not then, not now. The only question is will they ever.
It is about Israel, stupid.
JPost Editorial: Christian persecution
Last week, as 4,500 Christians from more than 80 countries converged on Jerusalem to show support for Israel, prominent leaders of Jewish and Christian organizations spoke out against the persecutions Christians face daily throughout the Middle East.
World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder told the large Feast of Tabernacles celebration in Jerusalem on Monday night that the persecution of Christians must be stopped.
“Our enemy has shown its true face with rapes, and with the slaughter of Christian women and children and with beheadings,” Lauder said. “There is no safer place in the Middle East for Christians than here in Israel. In Israel, Christians can pray in the open. In Israel, Christian holy sites are protected. In Israel, Christians do not fear for their lives.”
He said it was time for leaders around the world to speak out against the “anti-Christian terror.” Christians were facing “a genocide” in the region, Lauder said. “Together we must speak as one and tell the world: No more discrimination, no more terror no more death and no more silence,” he declared.
Israeli aid to Iraq helps Christians persecuted by Islamic State
IsraAID, an Israeli Non Governmental Organization (NGO), joined the international movement to help persecuted Christians in the Middle East, by providing aid to thousands of refugees who have fallen victim to the activities of the Islamic State (IS).
The mission, which according to IsraAID, was the first of its kind by an Israeli aid agency, supplied food, beds and blankets to more than 1,000 families in the city of Duhok in Northern Iraq.
More than 1,000 to 1,500 Kurdish refugees arrive to the camp in Duhok every day, usually crossing into Iraq from Turkey. Many of them are from areas of Iraq under occupation or attack by the Islamic State, as well as the Kurdish city of Kobane in northern Syria. The refugees join the already 1.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 200,000 refugees currently residing in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
Lisa and Ilsa Klinghoffer: ‘Death of Klinghoffer’ is an injustice to our father’s memory
The terrorist thugs who murdered Leon Klinghoffer didn’t care about the good, sweet man our father was. To them he was just a Jew — an American in a wheelchair whose life they considered worthless.
As the years have passed, we have tried to ensure that his murder would not be forgotten or, worse, co-opted or exploited by those with an agenda. We believe his ordeal should continue to serve as a wake-up call to civilized society about the dangers of terrorism. We have dedicated our lives since the tragedy to educating people about the danger of terrorism, and putting a personal face on victims and their families through the Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer Memorial Foundation of the Anti-Defamation League.
Our father was one of the first American victims of Middle Eastern terrorism. Today with the memory of 9/11, the reality of al-Qaida and ISIS, and countless other attacks and threats, Americans live under the deadly threat of terrorism each and every day.
Terrorism is irrational. It should never be explained away or justified. Nor should the death of innocent civilians be misunderstood as an acceptable means for drawing attention to perceived political grievances. Unfortunately, “The Death of Klinghoffer” does all of this and sullies the memory of our father in the process.
Klinghoffer daughters' protest letter to appear in opera playbill
The opera by John Adams dramatizes the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists and the killing of Jewish-American passenger Klinghoffer. In a statement released Sunday by the Anti-Defamation League, Klinghoffer's daughters Lisa and Ilsa said the opera "presents false moral equivalencies without context and offers no real insight into the historical reality and senseless murder of an American Jew."
The full statement from Lisa and Ilsa Klinghoffer will be featured in the playbill for the Met production, according to the ADL.
"We are strong supporters of the arts, and believe that theater and music can play a critical role in examining and understanding significant world events," the daughters wrote. "'The Death of Klinghoffer' does no such thing.... It rationalizes, romanticizes and legitimizes the terrorist murder of our father."
Met Creates Special Website to Defend Klinghoffer #TerrorOpera
Composer John Adams, in an interview featured on the special page, alludes to finding the “humanity” in both the Palestinian terrorists and their American Jewish victim: “for all of the brutality and the moral wrong that they perpetrated in killing this man, they’re still human beings and there still has to be reasons why they did this act.” Not only is this moral equivalence repugnant but, in fact, Klinghoffer offers an extended apology for the violence via regurgitation of Palestinian propaganda themes.
None of the other 25 remaining operas of the 2014-15 season received the honor of its own webpage. In other words, the Met has not just stood by its decision to stage an opera that glorifies terrorism but compounded this decision by exalting Klinghoffer above all other productions.
Indeed, The Death of Klinghoffer deserves a special web presence, but in the far less grand form of a Twitter hashtag – I propose #TerrorOpera.
Phyllis Chesler: Opera v. truth: The fetid fouls of ‘Death of Klinghoffer’
The hijacking of the Achille Lauro was a 14-man Palestine Liberation Organization operation ordered by Arafat and Abu Abbas.
Eight terrorists simply walked out of Italy, claiming a spurious diplomatic status. The rest received sentences that ranged from four to 30 years, with early releases. All were considered heroes across the Arab world.
Choosing to stage “The Death of Klinghoffer” at the Met automatically confers upon it a prestige it does not deserve. The opera betrays the truth entirely and, in effect, joins the low-brow ranks of propagandists against Jewish survival.
Large protests expected at Met ‘Klinghoffer’ opening Monday
Large crowds are expected to gather outside the Metropolitan Opera in New York Monday night, where a controversial opera about a Palestinian terror attack to set to open.
Demonstrators, primarily associated with Jewish groups, plan to rally outside Lincoln Center with 100 wheelchairs, in honor of the slain handicapped Leon Klinghoffer, on whom “The Death of Klinghoffer” is based.
Can Holocaust Remembrance be Termed Colonialist?
Denis MacEoin has just sent this letter to Goldsmith College Student University Union (part of London University) in response to their vote not to commemorate the Holocaust and other genocides on the grounds that they are Eurocentric and Colonialist. He has kindly granted Arutz Sheva permission to post it.
Let me return to the Nazi Holocaust, which took the largest total of lives within a short period. It has a significance that merits worldwide commemoration. The Third Reich represented the breakdown of European values, values that had been sorely tested in the First World War. A war was a terrible thing, but what the Nazis did to innocent civilians in war and the utter barbarity of what they did to the Jews during the Holocaust, by bullet and noose and, above all, by gas, ripped apart all our beliefs about mankind’s basic sense of morality, for there was no morality in the Nazi system. A single race was singled out for slaughter, and that slaughter was one of the worst things that ever happened in human history. You are, I am sure, all anti-racists, yet here was the greatest act of racist violence of all time, yet your members voted not to commemorate it for thoroughly spurious reasons. What on earth brought you to this? Political Correctness? What can possibly be correct in refusing to recognize, commemorate victims, and condemn perpetrators of racism? By refusing to do these things, your Union just became complicit in Nazi racism.
Students at Cambridge University hit back at Israel-attacking academics
Goodman and his student colleagues said it was “almost laughable” to suggest that the Gaza war and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians “absolves anyone of the immorality of singling out Israel as these academics have done,” and then listed a range of world conflicts about which Goodman said the lecturers had said nothing.
And in equally strong language they noted that the academics, “who purport to be concerned with the humanitarian condition of the Palestinians,” had offered no comments on the plight of Palestinians in Lebanon who are denied citizenship or the thousands of killed and millions of displaced citizens in Syria.
And in a clever twist using the guise of three disciplines, the students highlighted three failings in the academics’ statement.
Lawyers, they suggested, could point out that every rocket fired from Gaza at an indeterminate location in Israel was a war crime. Philosophers might emphasize the moral hypocrisy in condemning Israeli actions without a single mention of the abhorrent acts of terrorism committed by Hamas. Historians might insist that “the blockade of Gaza was the result of Hamas’s eviction of Fatah government officials and the ensuing rocket attacks, and not a cause.”
And they concluded by attacking the academics for calling for an end to victimization of critics of Israel “without also calling for an end to victimization of Israeli supporters on campus and in the media,” which they said “continues the theme of discrimination by these academics.”
Oxford University Palestine Soc: “We are All Hamas”
Tonight I had the misfortune to attend the inaugural Palestine Society event here in Oxford. I went with Sapan and Jonathan out of a mixture of open mindedness and intellectual curiosity.
What I heard and saw genuinely shocked me. I’ve heard a lot in my time but this was by far the worst event I have ever attended. I can only describe it as a two hour hate fest of the variety described in George Orwell’s ‘1984.’ It went from the downright idiotic to the explicitly anti-Semitic – and often both. I heard a girl complain about the evils of ‘Zionist’ control in her native America – she even attacked ‘Zionists’ for controlling the make up she wore! No one challenged this girl’s delusions: they only reassured her that fighting Zionism must remain paramount. I heard numerous people glorify the ‘right of the resistance’ and reject non-violent tactics, even including an Oxford academic on the panel (Karma Nabulsi). (h/t MK)
‘Hostile Environment’ For John Jay Jewish Students
In the wake of this summer’s Gaza war, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity has spiked on campuses across the country. One spot where pro-Israel students are feeling particularly outnumbered and isolated is at John Jay College on the West Side, where the some 15 members of the school’s Hillel Club say the atmosphere has moved from uncomfortable to outright hostile.
What started with anti-Israel fliers moved to dirty looks, murmured insults and rising tensions in the Hillel Club’s shared office. It culminated last week in a “die-in” in the school’s New Building on West 58th Street so hostile that some Hillel Club members feared they would be jumped as they left the school.
It’s not clear what percentage of students are Jewish at the City University of New York’s school focusing on criminal justice, but all agree it’s miniscule. The school’s only Jewish organization is the Hillel Club, which was revived a few years ago and still has less than two-dozen members in a school of 15,000 students.
Anti-Israel Protesters Gather Outside Washington Wizards v. Maccabe Haifa Game
Wednesday night’s Washington Wizards preseason game against the Maccabe Haifa basketball team drew a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters.
A crowd gathered outside the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., waving Palestinian flags and shouting anti-Israel sentiments such as “Israel Kills.”
Another protester shouted, “We support Wizards, not bullets,” alluding to the Washington Wizards previous team name, the Washington Bullets.
One protester held a sign that read “Washington Wizards v. Israeli Bullets #FreePalestine.”
A number of pro-Palestinian protesters made their way into the game as well, holding Palestinian flags that appeared to block the view of some in the crowd behind them.
Fordham Professor Lambasts ‘Shabby Treatment’ In Row Over Israel Boycott, Vows to Continue Fighting Anti-Semitism (INTERVIEW)
The avuncular Ben Atar – a tenured professor whose research and publications span such topics as the early American republic and the history of anti-Semitism, and who is a playwright to boot – has become a cause celebre over the last 24 hours, following the publication of his article in Tablet Magazine detailing his “Kafkaesque” ordeal at Fordham.
In that piece, Ben Atar described how, at an April meeting of Fordham’s American History Program, he urged the severing of ties with the American Studies Association (ASA) for its December 2013 decision to join the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Shortly after that exchange, Ben Atar received a letter from Anastasia Coleman, Fordham’s Director of Institutional Equity and Compliance, informing him that a complaint had been received from Michelle McGee, the American History Program’s director. McGee alleged that Ben Atar had, as he wrote in Tablet, “threatened to destroy the program” and invoked Title IX – which prohibits discrimination in education programs receiving federal funding – as the basis of her complaint.
BBC’s Knell turns planned mixed Jerusalem neighbourhood into ‘Jewish settlement’
Seeing as it already reported on the same planning application in 2012, the BBC should be aware of the fact that there is nothing remotely “new” about the plan to build housing in the Givat HaMatos district of Jerusalem. Knell, however, refrains from informing readers that the neighbourhood was the site of temporary housing for new immigrants from the former USSR and Ethiopia from 1991 onwards. She neglects to state that initiatives to replace caravans with proper housing were first proposed nine years ago and that the plans approved by the district planning committee in late September allocate around half of the planned apartments to Arab residents of nearby Beit Safafa - which itself straddles the 1949 armistice line and yet of course is never referred to by Knell and her colleagues as a “settlement”.
Financial Times misleads with truncated quote by William Hague about ‘Palestine’
On Palestinian statehood, [Jack] Straw quoted the words in 2011 of William Hague, then Mr Cameron’s foreign secretary: “The UK judges that the Palestinian Authority largely fulfils the criteria for UN membership, including statehood.”
However, the Hague quote cite by the Financial Times is only a partial one.
Here’s the full passage from Hague’s statement to Parliament on November 9th, 2011, explaining his government’s decision to abstain on a vote in the UN on recognizing Palestine as a state with full membership.
“The UK judges that the Palestinian Authority largely fulfils criteria for UN membership, including statehood as far as the reality of the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories allows, but its ability to function effectively as a State would be impeded by that situation. A negotiated end to the occupation is the best way to allow Palestinian aspirations to be met in reality and on the ground.”
The Financial Times clearly left out a key passage, where Hague expresses his government’s view that prematurely recognizing ‘Palestine’ before a negotiated agreement is reached would impede the new state’s ability to “function effectively as a State”.
The New York Times’ Double Standards
In general, she says that columnists should be immune from the kind of disclosures that reporters should have to make. However, because his [David Brooks] son is serving in the Israeli military, he really has a greater obligation.
Yet when it came to the Times chief correspondent in Gaza who used a picture of Yasser Arafat as his profile picture on Facebook and referred to Israelis as terrorists, she voiced no such concerns. Even after Richard Behar broke the story in an article in Forbes magazine, the Times never acknowledged the bias of its correspondent. In fact, Fares Akram has continued to work for the Times even after the story was made public.
How can it be that the occupation of the son of a columnist is more significant than the personal admiration of reporter for one of history’s leading terrorists?
Extremist links of charities ignored in BBC reports
Like the rest of the content in all of Macfarlane’s context-free reports, this graphic makes no attempt to inform BBC audiences of the real reasons behind the information presented. There is of course nothing novel about that: from the very first day of the seven-week conflict the BBC misled its audiences by stating or implying that shortages of medical equipment in the Gaza Strip are a consequence of border restrictions imposed by Israel. On no occasion has any effort been made to clarify to BBC audiences that the permanent shortage of drugs and medical supplies in the Gaza Strip is the result of ongoing disputes between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and that Israel does not place any restrictions whatsoever on the entry of such items into the Strip.
Notably, the same context-free theme was also promoted by the BBC during Operation Pillar of Defence in 2012, including in an interview with the then WHO representative Tony Laurance who has since become the chief executive of MAP [Medical Aid for Palestinians].
The Palestinian Authority is Guilty of Anti-Semitism at International Book Fair
The European branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, headed by Dr. Shimon Samuels, this week released its list of those who circulated anti-Semitic books and magazines at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest annual gathering of publishers in Europe.
Qatar was cited as the “Worst Offender of 2014.” But the Qataris had stiff competition this year from a publishing house that operates from the PA-controlled city of Nablus (Shechem). The Palestinian “Bait al-Almaqdes Centre” was named “Runner Up” by the Wiesenthal Center.
In the official catalogue of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Bait Al-Maqdes describes itself as specializing “in publishing books and releases that are interested in Jewish-Muslim conflict over the ages and times.” Since Bait Al-Maqdes operates in PA territory, it could be shut down by the PA at any time, if the PA so chose.
Dutch Christians boycott church over Palestinian kids exhibit
A group of Dutch Christians vowed to boycott Utrecht’s Domkerk Church for the duration of an exhibition on jailed Palestinian children, which they said encourages anti-Semitism.
The group made its decision known earlier this month in connection with the exhibition “Room No. 4,” which was brought to the Domkerk — one of the Netherlands’ best known churches and one of Utrecht’s tourist stops, by the Dutch Coalition for Palestinian Children in Israeli Detention.
The exhibition, which ended on Sunday, features pictures of adult models portraying Palestinian children who are suffering in Israeli detention facilities.
In one picture, the hairy hands of a hidden puppet master are gripping a marionette’s handle whose wires are connected to two people, one of whom is strung up like a crucifix. Another shows a woman emptying out her pockets to show she has no money amid 11 extended palms surrounding her. A third picture depicts seven arms hoisting up a man into a crucifix position and away from a book he is reading.
Argentine far-left leader jailed for threatening Jewish rally at Iranian Embassy
The leader of the Argentine far-left group Quebracho was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for threatening a Jewish community demonstration.
Fernando Esteche was sentenced Friday after pleading guilty that day to charges of intimidation and violence against the 2006 protest in front of the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires.
Local Jewish groups said their rally was “against terrorism and in favor of peace.” The Quebracho group held a counter-demonstration supporting Hezbollah and against the State of Israel in reaction to the Israel-Lebanon conflict at the time. Esteche said he was protesting Israel’s “massacre against the Palestinians.”
The day of the demonstration, Esteche told the Argentine media that “we come here to repel the fanatics and to prevent the same type of aggression and arrogance that they carry in the Middle East and they want to do here with fundamentalist youth in Argentina.”
Nazis expelled from US were paid millions in Social Security
Dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards collected millions of dollars in U.S. Social Security benefits after being forced out of the United States, an Associated Press investigation has found.
The payments, underwritten by American taxpayers, flowed through a legal loophole that gave the U.S. Justice Department leverage to persuade Nazi suspects to leave the U.S. If they agreed to go, or simply fled before deportation, they could keep their Social Security, according to interviews and internal U.S. government records.
Among those receiving benefits were armed SS troops who guarded the network of Nazi camps where millions of Jews perished; a rocket scientist who used slave laborers to advance his research in the Third Reich; and a Nazi collaborator who engineered the arrest and execution of thousands of Jews in Poland.
There are at least four living beneficiaries. They include Martin Hartmann, a former SS guard at the Sachsenhausen camp in Germany, and Jakob Denzinger, who patrolled the grounds at the Auschwitz camp complex in Poland. (h/t Yoel)
Reader Post: Hadio Loves Hitler
This friend was shopping on Rue Mont Royal in Montreal and stumbled into a cute store called Hadio. The cute was clearly just on the outside, as once they entered the store, they found multiple shirts featuring none other than Hitler.
All of them had a tag that said “Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die” which I assume also means too ignorant to understand or respect the deaths of 11 million (low estimate) Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as those who dissented against the slaughter of the aforementioned people and just about anyone else who Hitler decided he didn’t like.
According to my friend, there was even a variety to choose from. The ones that stuck out were one that featured Hitler laying nude on his stomach captioned with “holiday”, the portrait shown in the photo below, and most shocking, another portrait, but in place of the swastika on Hitler’s arm-band was a heart.
Thousands Rally Against Anti-Semitism in Manchester, UK
Some 2,500 people attended a rally against anti-Semitism in the English city of Manchester Sunday, as British Jews remain concerned over a spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes in the UK.
Anti-Semitism rose dramatically worldwide during this summer's war between Israel and terrorists in Gaza, but Europe was particularly hard-hit by the wave of hatred.
While countries on continent such as France, Belgium, Holland and Germany saw some of the worse anti-Semitic incitement and violence, British Jewry was also left shaken following a 400% increase in anti-Semitism overall.
Experts Eviscerate 'Jewish Jack the Ripper' Claim
The scientist who carried out the DNA analysis that identified Victorian-era serial killer "Jack the Ripper" as a Jewish barber named Aaron Kosminski has apparently made a fundamental error that fatally undermines his case, according to several top experts.
Scientist Jari Louhelainen is said to have put a decimal point in the wrong place when using a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) database to calculate the chances of a genetic match between DNA left on a shawl that allegedly belonged to one of Ripper's victims, Catherine Eddowes, and was supposedly discovered near her body, and DNA taken from descendants of Eddowes and Kosminski.
The apparent error, first noticed by amateur criminologists in Australia blogging on the casebook.org website, “has been highlighted by four experts with intimate knowledge of DNA analysis – including Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, the inventor of genetic fingerprinting,” according to The Independent.
Israeli Chemist Discovers Link Between Type 2 Diabetes and Parkinson’s Disease
Miller’s second goal was to shed more light on Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, as well as the reason why people with type 2 diabetes have a higher risk for developing PD and not only AD. Miller’s hypothesis was that amylin can also interact with NAC or alpha-synuclein. This study spanned nearly three years of research using sophisticated computer simulations. The findings were then confirmed through experiments.
Miller set up her lab in BGU in 2011 after three years of post-doctoral research on AD at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. With her staff of four graduate students and one post-doctoral researcher, she focuses on the link between type 2 diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. Miller’s lab may continue investigating this further.
Brainstorm’s Stem Cell Based Drug NurOwn Gets FDA Fast Track Approval
BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, an Israeli developer of adult stem cell technologies for neurodegenerative diseases, announced that the US Food and Drug Administration has designated NurOwn as a Fast Track product for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease).
Based in Petah Tikva with offices in New York, BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics Inc. is a biotechnology company engaged in the development of first-of-its-kind adult stem cell therapies derived from autologous bone marrow cells for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
First Arameam Gets Registered in Israel
Two year old Yaakov Halul s the first Israeli to get registered as an Aramean in Israel, according to a Yisrael Hayom report.
Yaacov’s parents, Sha’di and Oxana, held off registering him for two years, as the only option open for his nationality was Arab, and they wanted him registered as an Aramean. Sha’di, who serves as a captain in an IDF reserves paratroopers unit, heads up an Aramean-Christian organization in Israel.
There are 12 million Aramean Christians in the world, 130,000 of them live in Israel. Israel is the first country to recognize Arameans as a distinct nationality.
Kohelet Parchment that Survived the Holocaust to Go on Display
The latest “survivor” of the Holocaust has been discovered by the Shem Olam Institute in Kfar Haro'eh. A parchment of the Scroll of Kohelet, a tome written by King Solomon and traditionally read on the Sukkot holiday, was recently found, and will be put on display by the Institute. The scroll, researchers said, was apparently written in Western Poland at the beginning of the twentieth century and was well hidden.
The Institute did not reveal how the scroll came into its possession, but officials said that it was well-cared for and was in excellent condition, considering all it has been through.
Researchers said they were trying to figure out to which community the scroll belonged. The scroll, they surmised, probably belonged to a congregation from Lithuania that had settled in Poland. Customarily, Polish congregations (“Galitzianers”) would read Kohelet from a printed book, while Lithuanian communities (“Litvaks”) would read it from a scroll, written on parchment like a Torah scroll.