Monday, March 09, 2015
Btselem’s Poor Methodology and Credibility
In January 2003, the Israeli human rights organization Btselem, which receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from its sponsor The New Israel Fund, posted on its official website the testimony of Bilal Murtada Muhammad Hafnawi, a 16-year-old high school student from Nablus who accused the Israeli Border Police of extreme brutal behavior against him and his friend, Khaled Hashash.My Schabas Dinner
In his testimony, which was taken by phone by Btselem’s field researcher, Ali Draghmeh, Hafnawi argued that Border Police operatives beat him severely with no reason for a prolonged period of time.
Btselem considered Hafnawi’s account indisputable facts. The damning title of the Btselem report reads, “Nablus: Border Police officers beat medical personnel, preventing medical treatment, January 2003.” Btselem did not post any comment of the Police Internal Investigations Department referring to this case or any updates on Bilal Hafnawi that might be relevant to evaluate his credibility.
Btselem described Hafnawi as “a high school student,” and added no further information about him or his political affiliation and connection to terrorist organizations.
During the years 2002-3, Hafnawi the “high school student,” as portrayed by Btselem, was in fact an operative of the Hamas terrorist organization. A year later he changed allegiance to the terrorist organization Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (Fatah). During this time Hafnawi threw on three occasions Molotov cocktails at military vehicles and a tank, possessed an M-16 assault rifle that was used by senior operatives of al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and facilitated the manufacturing of IEDs and pipe bombs in his home.
Hafnawi joined the al-Qaeda network in Jordan in 2005, and participated in the planning of a double mass-murder attack in Jerusalem. He was convicted on security charges and served eight years in prison.
This case illustrates once again Btselem’s flawed research methodology and its one-sided and anti-Israeli approach, which cast a dark shadow on its credibility.
“You really do? The last time we tried to outlaw war was the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and that didn’t go very well.”Book Review: A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide
“We outlawed it,” Schabas replied. “The Kellogg-Briand pact was the beginning. And then the Nuremberg trial. And the Charter of the United Nations. And it’s prevented global war.”
Attributing the failure thus far of World War III to launch to the niceties of the U.N. Charter and not, say, to the terrors of Mutually Assured Destruction, is the hallmark of a Model U.N. participant, not a serious scholar of global history. Neither the U.N. Charter nor the countless other treaties and legal instruments devised after World War II did anything to prevent the proliferation of incredibly bloody conflicts across the Third World (Korea, Vietnam, Angola, etc.) that functioned as Cold War proxy battles, nor the many small wars that have collectively claimed the lives of millions (Rwanda, Sudan, the Balkans, etc.) since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Budapest Memorandum has not stopped Russia from waging war on Ukraine. U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1559, 1680 and 1701 have not led to Hezbollah’s disarmament. The Convention on the Rights of the Child has not stopped Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and a host of other nations—all signatories to the document—from exploiting children as soldiers.
Later in the evening, Schabas was asked to address a problem inherent in the practice of international law, specifically as it applies to Israel and its adversaries—namely that the latter groups, in their conduct as belligerents, make no pretensions whatsoever to abide by any norms, legal or moral. “I think that they have their own rule book,” Schabas replied.
“What is it?” someone else at the table asked.
“I don’t know what it is exactly. I think everybody involved in combat plays by rules. They just disagree about what the rules are and we may not agree with the rules that they’re playing by … I don’t know that the Hezbollah fighter faced with a school filled with children is going to say, ‘let’s go and kill them.’ ”
It is all well and good that William Schabas recused himself from an enterprise that was corrupt from the beginning. But the explanations cited for his unsuitability are comparatively minor and tawdry next to the fact that he is a fool.
Historian David Cesarani hails Alon Confino’s triumphant demonstration that anti-Jewish policies are within the realms of comprehension and that it is possible to find the words to explain them accessibly, two qualities we badly need today.
At a time when we are told that a ‘wave of anti-Semitism’ is sweeping Europe and that Jews face a threat comparable to the menace of the 1930s, it is good to be reminded of what Nazi anti-Semitism was like and what it was about. Alon Confino’s subtle and elegantly written study obliges us to confront the ways in which the Nazis imagined the Jews and the emotions which these fantasies stirred in the minds of ordinary German people. Confino boldly rejects the interpretations of Nazism that currently dominate scholarship, asserting that these offer a rather too comforting explanation. He argues that Nazi anti-Jewish policy cannot be reduced to racism, and certainly not to perverted scientific thinking. Rather, ideas of race and scientific practices were warped to provide the right answers to a pre-determined ‘Jewish question’. Nor did the persecution of the Jews represent a ‘radicalisation’ of anti-Semitism or metastasise due to the brutalisation of a regime and a people that were in a virtually constant state of imagined or real warfare. On the contrary, the Nazis drew on traditions of Jew-hatred and the violence they practiced evoked patterns which were rooted in the German past and in Christianity. Crucially, Confino situates Nazi anti-Semitism within the Christian tradition of anti-Judaism. Although many scholars (and theological apologists) have maintained that National Socialism was anti-religious, Confino states that, ’Their aim was not to eradicate Christianity but to eradicate Christianity’s Jewish roots; not to replace Christianity with racism but to blend the two.’
Revealed: The Middle East’s secret army of Nazis
CHILLING details of a secret army of Nazis emigrating to the Middle East after the Second World War to become the nucleus of an Arab-led force to crush Israel have been revealed in Germany.European leaders silent on jihadi Jew hate
Intelligence officers, SS generals, propaganda specialists and even Holocaust functionaries went to Egypt after the collapse of the Third Reich to continue to persecute Jews.
Geraldine Schwarz, who has made a film on the subject called Exile Nazi: The Promise of the Orient, said the covert recruitment drive was the brainchild of Egypt’s King Farouk I.
“He commissioned a confidant to build a new army,” she told Die Welt newspaper. The king’s man was Adel Sabit, entrusted to build the anti-Israel force along with former Afrika Korps Lieutenant General Artur Schmitt. “The Arab League wanted it so,” she said.
Arabs failed in their first war against the Israelis in 1947, so the king and his ministers looked to “professionals” from Germany, as the old colonial powers of France and Britain were despised.
AFTER the Islamist violence in Paris and Copenhagen, Europe’s political leaders need to stop hiding behind a rationale that anyone explaining the anti-Jewish agenda of jihadists is guilty of “Islamophobia”, according to Melanie Phillips.NYPD investigating possible threat to synagogues
The outspoken British columnist was speaking in Australia last week in support of the United Israel Appeal campaign.
In Sydney, she took part in two events on behalf of the UIA Women’s Division, both held at the InterContinental Sydney Double Bay. The evening function saw Phillips appear with award-winning film director and multimedia journalist Rowan Dean, and young entrepreneur Jonathan Barouch – founder and CEO at start-up Local Measure.
Topics discussed ranged from the Lindt cafe siege, to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, to Israel’s success as a high-tech start-up nation.
Meanwhile, the morning function saw Phillips speak alongside media personality Miranda Devine and Jewish author Suzy Zail. At both functions, Yonat Daskal spoke about her IDF service, during which time she worked as a paramedic. After completing her service, she returned from travelling in Central America to assist in the most recent Gaza War. Combined, the functions drew approximately 700 people, and were hailed a success.
Addressing an event in Melbourne, Phillips said European leaders have made combating “Islamophobia” a priority “and nobody could talk about anti-Semitism in the Muslim world”.
The New York Police Department is investigating suspicious activity outside of two Brooklyn synagogues.Murdered Charlie Hebdo Staff Named ‘International Islamophobe Of The Year’
Unknown men took videos in front of two synagogues on Ocean Parkway, in the Borough Park neighborhood, on Saturday afternoon.
At the Safra Synagogue, they were driven off by a security guard, according to the New York Daily News. But the men later turned up at Beth Torah, a large Sephardic synagogue on the same block. One man attempted to enter either one or both synagogues, according to media reports, but was turned away.
The men drove away in a car with an expired Delaware license plate, the New York Daily News reported.
The NYPD has stepped up patrols at synagogues and Jewish institutions, according to the newspaper.
Charlie Hebdo has been named 2015 International Islamophobe of the year, despite many of its staff having been killed by Jihadists in January. The annual ‘award’ was given by Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a British group that claims to campaign against terrorism.Politicians want Mohammed Cartoons to be part of school curriculum
According to the Muslim website 5Pillars the award was given to Charlie Hebdo because of its “continual stoking of Islamophobic sentiment by caricaturing Muslims as terrorists and ridiculing their beliefs.”
It continued: “Charlie Hebdo’s repeated mocking of Muslims is part of a culture of hate that is intended to marginalise, further alienate and further endanger a community that has effectively been ‘otherised’ in much the same way that Jews were in Nazi Germany.”
Staff at Charlie Hebdo were unable to accept the award as many of them had been murdered for mocking Mohammed. Their offices were attacked on 7th January, when two gunmen called individuals out of the morning editorial conference to be executed. This included 47-year-old Stéphane Charbonnier aka Charb, pictured.
The public schools' association for religion teachers, Religionslærerforeningen, has today urged that the controversial Mohammed Cartoons, which were first printed in Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005, should become part of the public school curriculum as quickly as possible.Four held over links to Paris attacker Coulibaly
And now, several political parties – including Socialdemokraterne, Dansk Folkeparti (DF) and Konservative – have voiced their support for that idea, although the degree of support varies.
”It would be natural for the cartoons to become part of the material that the teachers can choose to use,” Mai Mercado, the political spokesperson for Konservative, told DR Nyheder.
”But there is a freedom of method that means the teachers have a right to use other material should they choose to do so.”
Four people have been detained over their connections to one of the jihadists who carried out the Paris attacks in January, a judicial source said on Monday.French PM: Anti-Zionism is Really Anti-Semitism
The four are said to be friends with Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four people at a Jewish supermarket and a policewoman during the January 7-9 attacks.
Europe 1 radio reported that one of those detained was a policewoman posted at Rosny-sous-Bois just outside Paris who converted to Islam two years ago. She was suspended from her duties in early February.
She was detained along with her boyfriend, a man said to have been close to Coulibaly and who is also wanted on separate drug charges.
Phone records indicate he was in close proximity to Coulibaly shortly before the attack on the supermarket.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France says the increasing anti-Israel and anti-Israel sentiments in French society have all the elements necessary to categorize them as anti-Semitism.The Ballad of Jihadi John: Terror, Apologists, and the Vindication of Gita Sahgal
"In the 1970s, a new type of Jew-hatred emerged among elites," Valls told The Wall Street Journal, "one that expressed itself primarily as hostility to Zionism and Israel. This new bigotry has all the [old] components of anti-Semitism, [including] a 'plot'-based view of imagined Jewish conspiracies.’’
Valls said that this anti-Semitism of the elites has gradually "followed a migration, [impacting] young people in the poor neighborhoods."
He said he fears that the anti-Semitism prevalent in today's French society is "much deeper [than just] a couple of idiots who desecrate Jewish cemeteries." He continued with incredulity: "In 2013 or 2014, you have people in the streets of Paris chanting ‘Death to the Jews!’ And in all the attacks in Paris or the attacks in Copenhagen, targeting the Jews is really at the heart of their motivation.”
In 2010, the head of Amnesty International's gender unit Gita Sahgal attempted to warn her organisation of the dangers posed by its links with former Guantanamo detainee and Cageprisoners director Moazzam Begg. She maintained that while it was right that Amnesty should campaign for the release or trial of Begg and others likewise held in extra-judicial detention, they should not be decorating such people with their own moral legitimacy, nor forging links with Islamist organisations of any kind, irrespective of overlapping concerns. In an internal email, Sahgal protested:Honest Reporting: Campus Anti-Semitism Becomes Mainstream Issue
I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International's integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights. To be appearing on platforms with Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgement.
When her objections were brushed aside, Sahgal went public in a Sunday Times interview, an act of principle and moral courage for which she was rewarded with a P45 [fired] and a tsunami of abuse, perhaps the most egregious example of which came from blogger-turned-Guardian columnist Sunny Hundal:
Listen Gita, we get it: you’re angry. No one rallied to your support other than a bunch of discredited neocons who are best known for their mealy-mouthed apologies for torture.
Oh and Salman Rushdie, the man offering moral guidance after signing a letter supporting child-rapist Roman Polanski. I suppose not many sane people would be heartened with that kind of support. But Gita bravely kept giving more interviews to Christopher Hitchens so they could together take down Amnesty. Brave stuff.
Five years on, Sahgal has every reason to feel vindicated. As CAGE's credibility implodes in the wake of Qureshi's ill-advised paean to Mohammed Emwazi, those previously proud to stand beside its activists are suddenly scrambling to find a way to distance themselves without admitting that they had ever been wrong.
Pro-BDS movements on college campuses have been pushing Jewish students to the margins for a while, sometimes through threats of violence and intimidation. But it took one dramatic incident on a major American campus to push the issue of campus anti-Semitism to the media mainstream.UC Campuses Roiled Over Claims of Anti-Israel Bias
The incident took place in the middle of February. A Jewish student, Rachel Beyda, appeared before the UCLA Student Council in a bid to join the council’s Judicial Board. During questioning, one student posed what the Atlantic magazine called “UCLA’s troubling question“:
“Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”
More than two weeks later, the incident is finally receiving the attention it deserves, with coverage in the New York Times and the Atlantic. A short video of the meeting appeared on the website for CBS Los Angeles.
It also sparked a discussion of campus anti-Semitism in general. The New York Times made clear that this was not an isolated incident, and linked it to the rise of the BDS movement:
The politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict keep seeping into campus life at the University of California.At UCLA, Anti-Semitism Becomes an Excuse for Anti-Zionism
In 2010, a group of Muslim student protesters disrupted a UC Irvine speech by the Israeli ambassador and later faced school discipline and criminal prosecution that their defenders considered overly harsh.
Last year, the UCLA student government debated whether representatives who took free trips to Israel sponsored by Jewish groups should face sanctions.
Over the past year, several UC student governments have voted, after bruising debates, to urge the UC system to sell off stocks in companies that do business with Israel’s military.
And provocative posters and graffiti linked to the Mideast debate have shown up on some campuses, offending Muslim and Jewish students.
Now UCLA is coping with the aftermath of an incident in which several student government leaders questioned a student’s eligibility for a campus judicial panel because she is Jewish. Those leaders later apologized and the Jewish student was unanimously approved for the position. However, some pain lingers from the situation along with questions of when legitimate protests can seem like bias, students and faculty say.
The incident became yet another symbol of the bias that exists across the UC system, the same system whose student government passed a resolution to divest from the United States just last month.Michael Lumish: Daily Kos Bigotry
However, there is something unique in what happened on the Los Angeles campus – there was one word that was missing from the “interrogation” of Ms. Beyda’s about her ability “to maintain an unbiased view” as a Jew. That word is Israel.
The State of Israel was not mentioned despite Beyda’s alleged support for the Jewish State. As a Jew, it was a major part of the reason this incident happened and it highlights a situation that has not happened before.
For years we – Israel’s supporters – showed that many of Israel’s detractors on college campuses are using Anti-Zionists rhetoric as a disguise to their Anti-Semitic claims that aim to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.
The UCLA case however, is the first time where it happened the other way around. Anti-Semitic questions targeted a Jewish student in order question her links, and allegedly biased views, towards the State of Israel.
The idea that Israel enjoys killing perfectly innocent Palestinian-Arab waifs is how the blood libel has metastasized and evolved to fit the current moment. No one outside of the Muslim world believes that Jews kill non-Jewish babies to use the blood in the making of matzoh, as they used to tell one another in medieval Europe.Daphne Anson: Pro-Palestinian Activist: "Far More To Do With Hatred Of Jews Than Any Concern With Israel’s Treatment Of The Palestinians"
Now they simply tell one another that Jewish Israelis like to kill Palestinian-Arab children, but it's the same old lie told for the same old reason.
The purpose, consciously acknowledged or not, is to incite anti-Jewish violence and to justify that violence to others.
This is why Daily Kos users almost never object to Arab on Jewish violence. For years prior to the latest Israeli excursion into Gaza, Jihadis shot thousands of rockets into southern Israel, ruining the lives of the people who live there, wrecking their economy, and giving their children Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Did Daily Kos participants speak out against this anti-Jewish violence?
Matt Carr, a UK-based pro-Palestinian activist, has to his credit drawn attention to, and blasted, the existence of the antisemitism that blights the anti-Israel movement.German government refuses to label BDS as anti-Semitic
He has written, inter alia:
"[T]he fact that antisemitism is used as an instrument of Israeli propaganda and political manipulation doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. I was reminded of its existence by some of the tweets and comments in response to a piece that I wrote about Netanyahu’s appearance in the US Congress, which was posted on the Stop the War UK Facebook site yesterday [5 March].
One linked to former KKK leader David Duke.
Another posted a cartoon of a hook-nosed evil-looking Jew holding the United States dog by the reins.
Yet another referred to the ‘masonic-zionist’ conspiracy to control the world – just a slight and not very convincing tweak of the old ‘masonic-Jewish’ conspiracies of old.
There were a number of references to ‘zionazis’ and the Rothschilds. One commentator suggested that ISIS had been created by ‘IsraeZionist Rothschilds’ in order to kill ‘innocent Muslims.’.
Obviously these comments don’t represent the official position of STWUK [Stop The War UK]... But they are nevertheless another expression of a very real phenomenon that has far more to do with hatred of Jews that [sic; i.e. than] any concern with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The spikes in attacks on Jewish synagogues and cemeteries and other antisemitic incidents in recent years may have accompanied Israel’s wars in Gaza, but attacking Jews because they are Jews is not an expression of solidarity with anyone.
Germany has rejected a definition of anti-Semitism that labels the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) as anti-Semitic.Pallywood at AIPAC
Responding to a legislative questionnaire released Thursday by leading Green Party MP Volker Beck, the Merkel administration wrote that “there does not exist a general academic definition” of anti-Semitism.
Beck, who heads the German- Israel parliamentary group in the Bundestag, sharply criticized the Merkel administration: “Here the federal government has cowered,” he said. “There is no doubt of the anti-Semitic motivation within the spectrum of the BDS campaign. BDS aims essentially against Jewish Israelis and is therefore anti-Semitic. Whoever aggressively boycotts Israeli goods and people, should also be viewed as anti-Semitic by the federal government.”
Code Pink managed to get some press coverage even though it didn’t shut down AIPAC, or even an itsy, bitsy part of AIPAC, because five protesters were arrested, including two from Ithaca, my current place of residence.Daphne Anson: "The Campaign To Boycott Israel is An Antisemitic Policy ... The Problem Starts With The World's Media": Aussie newspaper publisher
One of the arrestees, Ariel Gold, may be familiar to readers from prior coverage of Gold’s efforts to have GreenStar Food Coop in Ithaca boycott Israeli products and products co-owned by Israelis, such as Sabra and Tribe Hummus. Gold is employed as a professional organizer for Friends of Sabeel – North America, a group which works to weaken American Christian support for Israel, and is a leader of Ithaca Jewish Voice for Peace.
You may recall that when I spoke on local progressive radio against the boycott movement, Gold called into the control room to complain about me in the middle of the interview!
Publicity, of course, was the real goal of the Code Pink protest. If all you knew about the arrests was the press coverage, you’d think that the arrests were not the goal, but the byproduct of protesting.
Much as the Pallywood fake or staged photo ops are used to gin up press coverage against Israel, however, so too were the arrests at AIPAC. It was pure Pallywood, arrests contrived for the cameras.
As Ted Lapkin, a former adviser to the Abbott government, has observed in The Australian newspaper:More evidence that #GeorgeGallowayIsAntisemitic
'The moment actress Miriam Margolyes opened her mouth to opine on anti-Semitism during the ABC’s Q&A this week, the moral rot at the heart of 21st-century leftist thought came on full display. Responding to an audience question on the issue of Jew-hatred, the ever-so-progressive Margolyes indulged in a nauseating exhibition of “blame the victim” pathology. The reason “people don’t like Jews”, she didactically intoned, “is because of the actions of the state of Israel”.
Margolyes declared during a BBC interview in 2010 that she “totally understood” Palestinian anti-Jewish hostility because Israel “foments it”. Using Margolyes’s line of reasoning as a guide, the slaughter of Jews in Paris and Copenhagen should not be blamed on the jihadi fascists who actually pulled the triggers. The true culprits responsible for the shedding of Jewish blood in France and Denmark are instead those dastardly Zionists whose actions incite justifiable Islamic resentment.
.... Through her uncritical pro-Palestinian activism she provides political aid and polemical comfort to one of the most noxious theofascist movements in the world today.
.... Margolyes is Jewish, a fact that marks her for death in the Hamas covenant that explicitly invokes a genocidal campaign to kill every Jew on earth. She is also openly gay, another capital offence in the Hamas playbook. And she’s a woman, and thus consigned to second-class citizenship under the strictures of sharia law.
On Feb. 5th we posted about an episode of BBC’s Question Time in which Guardian executive editor Jonathan Freedland accused George Galloway, the MP from Bradford West, of fueling antisemitism with his conspiracy-ridden, obsessive hatred of Israel. A few days later, in the context of a tweet by Glenn Greenwald defending Galloway against these charges, a Guardian journalist named Hadley Freeman tweeted her belief that Galloway has indeed crossed the line into antisemitism.From Blood Libel to Tree Libel: JNF Responds to NYTimes OpEd
After Galloway threatened to sue Hadley for her ‘defamatory comments’, she deleted her tweet.
Since then, Galloway’s lawyers have attempted to stifle such criticism directed towards him by suing twitter users who, like Hadley, suggest that he has engaged in antisemitism.
Undaunted by such intimidation, we published a post on Feb. 12th expressing our view that Galloway is indeed antisemitic (based on the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism), and pointed to the following evidence.
In his OpEd “The Two Israels,” (NY Times, March 1, 2015) Nicholas Kristof made a rather broad accusation stating that Jewish National Fund plants forests on land owned by Bedouin Arabs. Unfortunately, Mr. Kristof chose to subscribe to the BDS diatribe against Israel and used JNF as a straw man to do so. We take exception to such reporting and in a response to the Times on March 3 let them know.The rise of Japanese-Israeli economic relations
Further, the fact that no Israeli governmental official was interviewed by Mr. Kristof to discuss that country’s laws, or identify any specific property disputes and claims procedures, or legal history on the subject should also raise red flags.
We are not a political actor in Israel but rather a 501(c) 3 charity and a UN NGO. Our mission betters the Land for all the people of Israel, regardless of ethnicity or religion. This multi-purposed goal facilitates the continuity of a secure and independent homeland for Jews across the diaspora, and supports our country’s only free and democratic strategic ally in the Middle East.
What Mr. Kristof did not report on was JNF’s multi-year work with the Bedouin community in the Negev that has improved their lives. Witness our efforts at a project called Wadi Atir, near the village of Hura, where the Bedouin community combines its traditional medicinal herbal practices and animal herding with modern farming techniques — the effects of which provide Bedouin men, and most importantly, women, with the tools to empower, educate and bring long-term financial and professional success.
Israel and Japan are situated at opposite ends of Asia, but this is a fact which binds them together rather than separates them. The vast continent of Asia is their connecting link, and the consciousness of their Asian destiny is their common thought.” – Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, July 1, 1952.Two small, smart countries doing tech together
Since Israel and Japan first established diplomatic relations over six decades ago, trade relations between the two nations have been relatively modest due to a variety of circumstances, among them a lack of awareness on both sides.
But now, things are changing. Many Japanese government and business leaders are realizing that Israeli technology and innovation can be highly beneficial for Japan’s world-renowned technology sector.
What does an Israeli company developing a real-time crime-reporting system have in common with an Israeli company developing an obesity treatment? Each is paired with a Singaporean entity through the Singapore-Israel Industrial R&D Foundation (SIIRD).Portugal open to citizenship applications by descendants of Sephardic Jews
Since 1997, 140 joint Israeli-Singaporean industrial R&D projects have been supported and facilitated through this foundation established by the Office of the Chief Scientist in the Israeli Ministry of Economy in cooperation with the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).Now, Israeli companies collaborating with Singaporean research institutes are also part of SIIRD.
At the same time, a new accelerator for Israeli startups in cooperation with the National University of Singapore (NUS)is being launched by Startup East, a private initiative connecting Israeli and Asian startups and investors through joint acceleration and training programs.
All of this activity points to the increasing importance of Asia as a trading and R&D partner for Israel. It’s easy to understand why there are so many Israeli initiatives in much larger countries such as China and Japan.Yet despite Singapore’s population of less than six million, it offers something unique.
The government of Portugal published its procedure for handling applications for citizenship based on the country’s law of return for descendants of Sephardic Jews.Kaspersky seeks new cyber talent in Israel
The new procedure, effective as of Sunday, is based on legislation passed in 2013 entitling the descendants of Sephardic Jews to the Portuguese nationality deprived of them due to religious and racist persecution as of 1492, the year that is widely accepted as the beginning of the Inquisition.
It forced hundreds of thousands of Jews to emigrate under duress.
“The following document will allow the realization of the right of return to Jewish Sephardic descendants of Portuguese origin who desire, through acquiring Portuguese nationality by naturalization, to integrate into the national community with all the inherent rights and obligation this entails,” reads the new decree of law, which was published Monday.
Spain has initiated similar legislation for similar reasons but its Congress has yet to vote on any bill.
Top security firm Kaspersky Lab has announced a global initiative to seek out “cyber-stars” – students and entrepreneurs who can make a contribution to the burgeoning cyber-security industry – and Israelis are invited. Those with the best ideas will be invited to the finals of the Kaspersky Security Start-ups Challenge in August, where they can win top prizes of $80,000.Producer of ‘Forrest Gump’ gives $10m. to TAU film department
To get there, candidates will have to go through some preliminary stages, including a workshop where local entrepreneurs will be showing off their ideas at an event organized by Kaspersky and Hebrew University on March 22-24 (applications accepted through March 21). Kaspersky is searching for early-stage start-ups in cybersecurity and related areas, such as fintech, healthcare, mobile, the Internet of Things, and the Cloud.
SSC will be held in a number of cities around the world. In addition to Hebrew U, the Israel the program will be held in cooperation with JNext, a program of the Jerusalem Development Authority, along with the Jerusalem Municipality and the Ministry of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, which gives the framework of services, resources, support and assistance to start-up entrepreneurs and young technology companies.
Renowned US film producer Steven Tisch donated $10 million to Tel Aviv University, it was announced on Thursday.Rare 2,300-year-old silver and bronze coins, jewelry found in ancient northern cave
Tisch, best known for producing critically acclaimed films such as Forrest Gump, American History X and Snatch, made the donation to the university’s Film and Television department.
“Storytelling is critical to promoting dialogue and understanding – things that the world needs most,” said Tisch. “Tel Aviv University is at the forefront of this and it nurtures and develops the most creative and talented students, with diverse voices from all over Israel and the region.”
The funds aim to help increase the scope of the department’s activities and will be used towards upgrading the school’s curriculum, renovations of school facilities and purchasing state-of-the-art equipment. In addition, the donation will allow the department to offer fellowships enabling students to produce films on an unprecedented scale in an effort to help enhance the impact of Israel on film and television around the world.
A rare cache of 2,300-year-old silver and bronze coins, minted during the reign of Alexander the Great, were recently discovered by a group of amateur explorers in an ancient stalactite cave in northern Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Monday.Iron Dome, WAZE developers among Israelis chosen for 67th Independence Day ceremony
According to IAA officials, the coins represent “one of the important discoveries to come to light in the north of the country in recent years, and will require much time to study in order to crack the secrets of the cave.”
The finding was made by three members of the Israeli Caving Club, Reven Zaki, Hen Zakai and Lior Halony, who wandered and crawled between the different parts of the cave for several hours, the authority said.
“The youngest member of the group, Hen, 21, said he forced his way into one of the narrow niches when he suddenly caught sight of a shining object,” spokesperson Yoli Shwartz said.
“There he discovered two ancient silver coins, which it later turned out had been minted during the reign of Alexander the Great, who conquered the Land of Israel at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, during late 4th century BCE.”
Since Israel’s inception, its reputation as a “Start-up Nation” has been enhanced by breakthroughs in almost every field of human endeavor.Comedian Leno heads back to Israel for cheek-pinching fun
Vera Weizmann, wife of Israel’s first president Chaim Weizmann, wrote a book, The Impossible Takes Longer, that defines the breakthrough character of Israel.
The breakthrough concept is the central theme of this year’s beacon-lighting ceremony on Mount Herzl, which will usher in Israel’s 67th Independence Day celebrations.
The 14 people selected to light beacons are all breakthrough achievers in their various professions.
The Iron Dome missile defense system is one of the most high-profile breakthroughs in the field of national security, which Brig.-Gen. (res.) Dr. Danny Gold initiated while serving as head of the IDF’s research and development division. Gold defied the bureaucratic opposition and disapproval and went ahead with the project, which proved so vital during Operation Protective Edge. He and his team were awarded the coveted Israel Defense Prize as a result of their efforts. Gold will be the first beacon-lighter.
Leno said he was thrilled to be invited back, comparing the warm welcome he received last year to a raucous Italian wedding.PreOccupied Territory: Leviathan Gas Field Found To Result From Jewish Cooking (satire)
“People seem to be genuinely happy to see you,” he told The Associated Press. “There you kind of get swarmed. People run over, and the grandmas pinch your cheeks. So that was kind of fun.”
He said he felt that people seemed especially appreciative of his decision to visit at a time when entertainers are under pressure to boycott Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians. “Israelis are thrilled when you actually show up,” he said.
Leno, who is not Jewish, described himself as a big supporter of Israel, and said he disagreed with critics who portray the country as an aggressor.
“It seems like they (Israel) have the worst PR in the world,” he said. “I don’t understand how Israel is the bad guy here. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
A new study has found that contrary to previous assumptions, one of the largest finds of natural gas in recent decades accumulated as a result of emissions from the digestion of traditional Jewish cuisine.
It had long been assumed, based on geological data, that the gas, mostly methane, accrued in a pocket of the earth’s crust through the decay and compression of organisms from the Mesozoic era, approximately 252 million through 66 million years ago. However, new data forced geologists to revise their assessment of the gas’s origins, and they confirmed today that the primary source for the gas has been the consumption and metabolism of the beef, grain, and bean stew for the Jewish Sabbath known as cholent.
In the upcoming issue of the journal Proceedings of the Educational Team of Academic Researchers and Doctors (PETARD), the scientists explain that they were troubled by the fact that only in recent years have there been any discoveries of such natural gas pockets in the Eastern Mediterranean, despite earlier exploration. Conventional explanations for the absence of gas until several years ago never proved satisfying, leading the researchers to look for an alternative process whereby the gas could have accumulated more recently.
