04/09 Links Pt2: Brendan O’Neill: Yarmouk exposes callous double standards of ugly Israel bashers

From Ian:

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Brendan O’Neill: Yarmouk exposes callous double standards of ugly Israel bashers

If there were an award for double standards, for getting crazily angry about some people’s behaviour while turning a blind eye to other people’s behaviour, anti-Israel activists would win it every year.
These are people who take to the streets to march and holler whenever an Israeli warplane leaves its hangar, yet who say next to nothing about the militarism of France, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and too many other states to mention.
They bang on endlessly about Israel being an apartheid state, yet through BDS they have created a system of cultural apartheid. In their eyes, culture created by us, or by China, or by Zimbabwe, is fine, but culture produced by them, those nasty Israelis, must be hounded out of theatres and galleries lest it infect us all with its contagious Zionism.
These are activists who cry “Censorship!” when a conference of theirs is pulled, as happened at Southampton University recently. Yet they spend the rest of their time agitating for the No Platforming of Israeli representatives on campus and for the shutting down of pro-Israel university societies. “Free speech! (For nice people like me, not for rotters like you)” — that’s their fantastically hypocritical motto.
And now we can see that their double standards extend even to the people they claim to care for: the Palestinians.Even here, even on the question of Palestinian suffering, anti-Israel activists only care some of the time. If you’re a Palestinian whose life is made harder by Israeli forces, they’ll share pictures of you, march in the streets for you, write tear-drenched tweets about you. But if you’re a Palestinian under threat from a non-Israeli force, forget about it. You’re on your own.

With the Palestinians, Obama Masters the Art of Pretending

Instead, there was McDonough, at the J Street convention, clinging to Netanyahu’s first comment—it was almost if he and Obama want Netanyahu to oppose a Palestinian state, so that they have something over which to criticize and pressure him.
But the remarkable thing about McDonough’s “we cannot pretend” statement is that the Obama administration frequently does indeed pretend that a foreign leader didn’t say something—when a Palestinian leader is the one who said it.
Here are a few examples, just from the past month. (All translations courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.)
On March 11, the PA dedicated a monument in its capital, Ramallah, to the late Dalal Mughrabi. She was the leader of the Palestinian death squad that murdered Gail Rubin, the niece of US Senator Abraham Ribicoff, and then 37 Israeli bus passengers on the Tel Aviv highway in 1978. The PA TV news broadcaster, describing the dedication, announced, “Dalal, Allah bless her, this female martyr, she taught us how we can liberate the homeland… We all see her as a model and as a symbol for us.”
Obama pretended the ceremony never happened—after all, how can he admit that his Palestinian allies glorify the killer of a US senator’s niece?
On March 23, the most senior religious official in the PA, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, declared—as quoted in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida—“The land of Palestine is waqf (i.e., inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law). It must not be relinquished nor must any part of it be sold… It is the duty of the leaders of the [Islamic] nation and its peoples to liberate Palestine and Jerusalem.”
Obama pretended it never happened—after all, how can he admit that his Palestinian allies call for the liberation of all of “Palestine,” that is, the destruction of Israel?
So yes, Mr. McDonough, you certainly could pretend “that those comments [by Netanyahu] were never made”—after all, you and your colleagues are experts at pretending that comments were not made, if it’s politically convenient for you to do so.

JPost Editorial: The PA’s audacity

To be sure, this is not the first time in which Israel announces it will deduct money to pay debts from PA revenues, but time and again international pressure quickly causes the government to backtrack. It would be no surprise if this episode is similarly concluded.
Nonetheless, the government cannot keep playing nice and avoid damaging our international image at a cost to the Israeli economy. The PA’s unbridled fiscal delinquency cannot be subsidized by Israeli citizens, even if the upshot would be bad press and the usual mud-slinging abroad.
Israel clearly possesses a range of options to make sure that its resources and population are not unconscionably exploited, especially by forces that lose no opportunity to ingrain enmity to the Jewish state. To then expect that state to keep bankrolling the PA is akin to extortion.
Israel must show the PA that it will not be cowed by shakedowns. Attempted blackmail will only intensify unless Israel indicates that it will not accept losses and inflict pain on its own citizens just to escape yet another demonization drive.
The more Israel appears to fear slander, the more potent the weapon of slander becomes in the ongoing anti-Israel offensive.

Security officials: Abbas' actions causing escalation in the West Bank

Recent intelligence appraisals suggesting a possible escalation of violence in April seem to have a firm footing in reality following Wednesday's terror attack against two soldiers in the West Bank. Last month the IDF arrested more than 200 people suspected of violent terror activity and the anger in the Palestinian Authority over Israel's freezing of tax transfers to the West Bank government have served to add fuel to the fire.
Last month it was reported that the security establishment was preparing for a possible escalation at the beginning of April. The IDF's preparations for a possible uptick in violence reached a climax with a surprise General Staff drill commanded by IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot.
One of the causes of the escalation is the Palestinians' anger at Israel, who they claim declared publicly that they would unfreeze the tax transfers, but in reality did not transfer them the full amount. The economic situation in the Palestinian Authority is causing senior officials in the defense establishment to lose sleep. They have warned that the economic pressure may serve to inflame the territory. The fact that a terror attack such as the one carried out Wednesday took place while security forces were in a state of high alert for the Passover holiday shows how determined the Palestinian street is to upset the status quo.
The belief within the security establishment is that, as relations with the Palestinian Authority get worse, the security and stability in the area is further undermined. One of the central reasons behind this estimation is the action taken by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the international arena with his rhetoric directed toward Israel. The IDF brass sees this as a complicated challenge that will undoubtedly influence the reality on the ground. After a period in which the Palestinian Authority thwarted multiple attempts to escalate the situation in the West Bank and the IDF reported a decrease in riots and attempted terror attacks, it seems in recent days the relative quiet has been disturbed.

Palestinian Police Expand Security Control in Judea and Samaria

Palestinian Authority police announced Wednesday that they had expanded the scope of their security control in Judea and Samaria following a deal with Israel.
Palestinian police will, for the first time, launch armed patrols in towns near Jerusalem, which have largely been under Israel's security control since the Oslo Accords in 1993.
Spokesman for the police, Louy Izriqat, said 90 officers had been deployed to Abu Dis, A-Ram and Biddu.
"An old agreement is being implemented today," Izriqat told Reuters. He added that officers, armed with assorted rifles and pistols, would mostly be fighting crime in the area.

Report: Qatar Lends PA $100 Million

Reports Wednesday said that the Palestinian Authority has received a $100 million loan from Qatar. The money is to go towards paying salaries. Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas, who is visiting Qatar, issued a public statement of gratitude, Reuters reported.
Earlier in the week, Abbas threatened to file charges against Israel in the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing Israel of “stealing” money the PA is supposed to get, according to Abbas. At issue is a portion of the money Israel collects on behalf of the PA for import duties and taxes.
Israel has been holding that money in escrow for the past four months in protest of the PA's violations of the Oslo Accords, which specifically stipulate that the PA cannot unilaterally join international organizations. Over the weekend, Israel decided to release part of the tax money, withholding a portion to pay Israeli creditors, like the Israel Electric Corporation. Abbas refused to accept the funds, demanding that Israel had over all the money, regardless of the PA's debt.

Brooklyn Judge Rejects Arab Bank Appeal of Terrorism-Funding Ruling

A Brooklyn district judge on Wednesday rejected a bid by Jordan-based Arab Bank to overturn a verdict by a jury that found it liable for supporting terrorism against Israelis.
The bank was originally sued by the victims of 24 terror attacks in Israel that have been blamed on the Palestinian terror group Hamas. The plaintiffs accused Arab Bank of providing Hamas with material and financial support. The case marked the first time in U.S. history that a bank stood trial over charges stemming from the Anti-Terrorism Act, which enables American victims of U.S.-designated foreign terror groups to seek compensation.
The jury’s verdict last September “was based on volumes of damning circumstantial evidence that [the] defendant knew its customers were terrorists,” U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said Wednesday in a ruling relating to post-trial motions, calling Arab Bank “willfully blind” to the Hamas ties of charities it had routed money to. But the judge did dismiss a pair of claims relating to two of the 24 terror attacks included in the lawsuit, citing insufficient evidence that Hamas had orchestrated those attacks.

Hamas said to be treating Sinai jihadists in Gaza hospital

The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip admitted for treatment Sinai jihadists aligned with the Islamic State, who were wounded while clashing with the Egyptian military, Israel’s Channel 2 reported late Wednesday evening.
According to the report, the injured fighters were being treated in the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the largest medical facility in the coastal enclave. Shifa is also the site where Hamas leaders holed up during Operation Protective Edge, the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas last summer.
The report did not specify how many jihadists were being treated.
Hamas was making significant efforts to hide the patients’ identity in order to avoid being seen as affiliated with the radical Sunni organization, the report said. The Gaza terror group has in the past rejected comparisons to Islamic State.

Palestinians, Assad to join forces to oust Islamic State from Yarmouk

A senior Palestinian official said Thursday that an agreement has been reached with the Syrian government to use military force to expel Islamic State militants from an embattled Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus.
Islamic State fighters overran much of the Yarmouk camp last week, marking the extremists’ deepest foray yet into the Syrian capital. The IS incursion in the latest trial for Yarmouk and its estimated 18,000 remaining residents, who have already survived a devastating two-year government siege, starvation and disease.
“We have agreed with the Syrian government on ways to force the terrorist group IS out of the Yarmouk refugee camp,” Ahmad Majdalani, the labor minister in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, told the Voice of Palestine Radio. “The military solution is the only one to force these terrorists out of the camp.”

Red Cross demands access to ISIS-held Palestinian refugee camp in Syria

The International Committee of the Red Cross called on Thursday for immediate access to a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria which has largely been seized by Islamic State and where 18,000 people are caught up in fighting.
The independent aid agency said that emergency medical care was urgently needed at the Yarmouk camp, which lies on the outskirts of Damascus. The ICRC has not had access to Yarmouk since October 2014.
"The ICRC is calling on all involved in fighting to allow the immediate and unimpeded passage of urgent humanitarian aid and to permit civilians who wish to leave the camp for safer areas to be able to do so at any time," it said in a statement.
Marianne Gasser, head of the ICRC delegation in Syria, said: "People were already worn down by months of conflict and constant shortages of food, water and medicine and they need urgent help."

Report: 47% of European Jihadists in Syria, Iraq are French

Nearly half of European jihadists known to have traveled to territory held by the extremist Islamic State group are French, a report by the country's upper house Senate revealed Wednesday.
Just over 1,430 French people have made their way to Iraq and Syria, representing 47 percent of jihadists from Europe that are known and accounted for, Senator Jean-Pierre Sueur, who spearheaded a parliamentary probe into jihadist networks, told AFP reporters.
According to Sueur, French domestic intelligence services are currently monitoring more than 3,000 people suspected of being involved in one way or another in Syrian networks - a 24-percent increase since November last year.
Some 85 French nationals are thought to have died in ISIS-held zones while two are being held in Syria, the report said.

Argentina to declassify all intel on Israeli Embassy bombing

The Argentinian government will declassify all intelligence documents about the March 17, 1992, attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 people and wounded hundreds.
The measure was announced Thursday on the government’s website for records of public proceedings, Official Gazette.
The move is a response to a request made Wednesday by the National Supreme Court of Justice in a document signed by all four justices.
The court is in charge of the investigation because the attack occurred on a diplomatic mission. The ongoing Supreme Court investigation has found that the attack was perpetrated by Hezbollah.
Interest in the investigation has picked up since last month when Argentina’s President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner rebuked Israel for not working to bring the perpetrators of the 1992 bombing of its embassy in Buenos Aires to justice. Israel responded that it is Argentina’s responsibility to bring the bombers to justice.
In 1999, the court ordered the arrest of top Hezbollah operations office Imad Mughniyah, who was assassinated in 2008, in connection with the embassy attack.

BDSHoles Hit A Wall In Attempt To Get Suzanne Vega To Boycott Israel

American singer songwriter Suzanne Vega is set to play in Israel with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra on June 9-10 (the latter show clashing with that of Art Garfunkel and possibly Duran Duran!).
As usual, the BDSholes are applying pressure on her to boycott Israel.
They are wasting their time.
This will be her fifth time in Israel and she has personally ‘Liked’ messages of support for her performing here – and against the BDSholes – on her Facebook page.
So BDSHoles, feel free to continue wasting your time.
As for Suzanne, thanks for coming and we look forward to your show.

Michigan Students Band Together to Defeat BDS

From UC-Davis to Northwestern to Loyola University Chicago, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is passing anti Israel resolutions in student governments across the nation. Until now, opposition has had difficulty stopping the velocity of the BDS movement. But last week at the University of Michigan, a determined contingent of pro-Israel students mounted a six-hour fight that killed a BDS resolution on the Ann Arbor campus.
“I feel that it was the greatest accomplishment of this academic year for sure,” commented Sarah LaPearl, a Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) fellow on campus. Jewish students had challenged the BDS forces last year in what amounted to a warm up for this year’s fight. “We knew they would be stronger,” LaPearl says, “so this time we got a little more united and a little more proactive.”
The vehicle for the opposition’s victory against the BDS resolution was a coalition LaPearl helped organize called Wolverines for Peace (www.wolverinesforpeace.com.) Its slogan is “Standing against divestment & working towards peace.”
“The Israel leaders from our campus got together to form this group and the people they got on board all had their own networks,” LaPearl describes the group’s formation. Organizers of the new coalition also posted on campus Facebook pages dedicated to Israel, spoke at Hillel meetings, and had a large organizational meeting in advance of the BDS vote.

Parke supports Lynch mob bullying as "academic freedom"

Education Minister Christopher Pyne has called on Bill Shorten to disassociate himself from Labor MP Melissa Parke, who has further aligned herself to the boycott campaign against Israel by supporting pro-Palestinian students and academics in a row over an ugly disruption at Sydney University.
Mr Pyne told The Australian the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign against Israel “has given anti-Semitism a fashionability among the far Left” which “has no place in Australia”.
Ms Parke and Greens senator Lee Rhiannon this week signed an open letter promoted by a pro-Palestinian group on campus, Sydney Staff for BDS.
The open letter, with more than 600 signatures, supports students who disrupted a talk last month by former British colonel Richard Kemp, and backs pro-BDS academic Jake Lynch, who remonstrated with security guards when they tried to remove the students.
Colonel Kemp, who led British troops in Afghanistan, was speaking on the ethics of tactics in counter-insurgency operations when the students stormed the venue shouting pro-Palestinian slogans.
“Free speech in Australia does not extend to threats, intimidation and physical harassment and it is inappropriate for anyone to pre-empt the findings of Professor Spence’s inquiry into this incident,” Mr Pyne said.
Senator Rhiannon said there was “ clearly a concerted attempt” to have Professor Lynch and Dr Riemer dismissed.
“I wanted to add my voice to the hundreds of people who have also rejected this course of action and to speak up for academic freedom.”
Apparently, to Parke, Rhiannon and the Lynch mob, "academic freedom" means freedom to violently silence anyone who disagrees with them.

USC Professor: Holocaust Denial Doesn't Make You A Radical

On Wednesday, Sohrab Ahmari, editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal, tweeted a link to an article from the Washington Post about Iran’s Holocaust-denial cartoon contest. The article explained:
In early May, organizers in Tehran will stage the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Contest… An exhibition will feature some of the 839 pieces of "artwork" submitted as part of the contest by artists from more than 50 countries, reports Iran's semiofficial Fars News Agency.
Ahmari tweeted, “Moderate Iran organizes Holocaust-denial cartoon contest.”
That’s when Alireza Tabatabaeenejad decided to sound off:
Tabatabaeenejad is a research professor at USC in the Department of Electrical Engineering, specializing in electrophysics. USC has not yet commented on the radicalism of its professor. The professor continued to tweet long into the afternoon about why Holocaust denial did not demonstrate radicalism:

USC Stands by Prof That Defends Holocaust Denial

The University of Southern California appears to be standing by a professor who questioned the Holocaust by saying “professors can say whatever they want.”
That comment was provided to Truth Revolt by Carl Marziali, USC Assistant Vice President of Media Relations, after calls were made to the Dean’s Office over tweets sent out by Alireza Tabatabaeenejad, a researcher and assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Those comments were first reported on by Truth Revolt.
The comments made by Tabatabaeenejad appear to be in violation of USC's rules of conduct laid out in their Faculty Handbook.
Tabatabaeenejad responded to a tweet by Wall Street Journal editorial page writer Sohrab Ahmari on Iran’s Holocaust denial cartoon contest by asking what is "anti-moderation" about holding such a contest.

AS Senate Passes Resolution Condemning Anti-Semitism, One Senator Abstains

The University of California, Santa Barbara Associated Students Senate passed A Resolution Condemning Anti-Semitism at their April 1 meeting. The resolution was passed with a roll call vote of 24-0-1; the one abstention was on-campus senator Steven Kwok.
“This resolution is really close to my heart,” said off-campus senator and author of the resolution Michelle Moreh. “I’ve grown up Jewish. It’s a huge part of my identity, and it’s been really difficult to come to campus and see so much anti-Semitism that affects us today. I hadn’t really been exposed to this much anti-Semitism until I got to UCSB.”
Moreh stated that recent occurrences of anti-Semitism on university campuses are what prompted her to write the resolution with Izeah Garcia. Among these anti-Semitic acts was the spray painting of swastikas on the chapter house of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi at UC Davis one week after the university’s senate passed a resolution in favor of divestment from companies that profit from human rights violations in Palestine and Israel. Additionally, flyers claiming that the terrorist acts on Sept. 11, 2001 were a Jewish conspiracy were posted throughout the UCSB campus in Sept. 2014.
“As the university system that has been at the forefront of social justice… we still have swastikas being spray painted on Jewish fraternities at other UC schools,” said Moreh. “We still have student senators publicly endorsing the demise of the one Jewish state in the world, and we still have a candidate of UCLA’s judicial bored being discriminated against on the basis of her Jewish identity, and we still have flyers at UCSB blaming Jews for 9/11. So we should have done this after the first incident happened, we shouldn’t have waited for Jews to be targeted again.”

Quietly, controversial play on pro-Palestinian activist hits NY stage

A play about American activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer in Gaza, is winning quiet acceptance in New York, where uproar postponed its debut a decade ago.
Her parents and the play’s director say the dimming controversy reflects a shift in American attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinian conflict.
“I think the landscape really has changed,” Rachel’s mother Cindy Corrie told AFP of the 12 years since her daughter was killed in 2003. Witnesses said she died trying to stop a Palestinian home from being demolished.
In February, the Supreme Court ruled that the state was not liable for Corrie’s death because it was a military act committed in a war zone.
“My Name is Rachel Corrie” is a 90-minute, one-woman play based on the late 23-year-old’s writings, edited by British actor Alan Rickman and Guardian editor elect Katharine Viner.

Brandeis Invites Israel-Hater To Be Commencement Speaker

Brandeis University, named for ardent Zionist and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandies, which rescinded its honorary degree to noted activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali last year, deeming her too controversial for Muslim students, has extended an invitation to vehemently anti-Israel former ambassador Thomas Pickering to be the commencement speaker for 2015.
Pickering’s history in recent years has been extremely hostile to Israel; last year he, along with noted Israel-hater Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Siegman, Lee Hamilton, Frank Carlucci and Carla Hills, wrote a letter including statements like, “The United States has allowed the impression that it supports a version of Israel’s security that entails Israeli control of all of Palestine’s [sic] borders and part of its territory” “Israel’s confiscation of what international law has clearly established as others’ territory,” Israel’s “illegal land grabs only add to the Palestinian and the larger Arab sense of injustice that Israel’s half-century-long occupation has already generated,” “No Palestinian leader could or would ever agree to a peace accord that entails turning over the Jordan Valley to Israeli control,” “these Israeli demands can hardly justify the permanent subjugation and disenfranchisement of a people to which Israel refuses to grant citizenship in the Jewish state.” The Israelis “do not have the right to demand that Palestinians abandon their own national narrative, and the United States should not be party to such a demand.”
As Lori Marcus writes for the Jewish Press, Pickering “fervently believes Israel is inappropriately coddled by the Obama administration and that the Jewish state has stolen land from the mythical land of Palestine, despite the ‘Palestinians’ having graciously conceded a huge chunk of the land ‘assigned’ to the ‘Palestinians in 1947.’

Kerry says US won't 'stand by' in Middle East as Iran steps up Yemen involvement

Secretary of State John Kerry warned Iran over its increased involvement in Yemen's civil war Wednesday, vowing that the U.S. would not "stand by" as the Middle East became destabilized.
Meanwhile, Iran President Hassan Rouhani said Thursday that a Saudi-led campaign of airstrikes against Yemen's Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, was a "mistake." Rouhani did not single out any country in particular but said, "You learned that it was wrong. You will learn, not later but soon, that you are making mistake in Yemen, too."
Speaking on the "PBS Newshour" Wednesday, Kerry said that Tehran was "obviously" supplying the rebels, whose military advances forced Yemen's U.S-and Saudi-backed president to flee last month. In response, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have been carrying out airstrikes against Houthi targets since March 26.
"Iran needs to recognize that the United States is not going to stand by while the region is destabilized or while people engage in overt warfare across lines — international boundaries — in other countries," Kerry said. "We have an ability to understand that an Iran with a nuclear weapon is a greater threat than an Iran without one. And at the same time we have an ability to be able to stand up to interference that is inappropriate or against international law, or contrary to the region’s stability and interest and those of our friends."

India assists Americans evacuating Yemen in wake of weak State Department response

One has to ask, what exactly is going on at the US State Department?
We have been following the deterioration of Yemen for months. Despite the obvious dangers to American citizens within this country, I guess our bureaucrats decided they really didn’t need an evacuation plan.
Fortunately, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government seem to be more on top of the situation.
The US, besides economically developed France, Germany and Sweden, besides 22 nations have sought India’s assistance to evacuate its citizens from violence hit Yemen.
An US government travel advisory for Yemen pointed out that India would offer its assistance to evacuate American citizens from Sanna to Djibouti. The US citizens have been advised to contact Indian diplomats in Embassy at Sanna for assistance for evacuation either by boat or air.

Sweden Surrenders to Saudi Arabia

The Swedish Prime Minister added that Sweden has no intention of ever criticizing Islam. As is customary, Expressen refrained from asking the PM if his comments should be taken as an indication that Sweden would stop criticizing such Islamic practices as torturing bloggers, executing infidels and oppressing women.
It is hard to say what concessions Sweden may have given King Salman in exchange for normalizing relations. Sweden may even have agreed to further the cause of Islam back home by, for example, promising to build new mega-mosques and giving greater influence to local imams.
Sweden's Minister for Culture and Democracy, Alice Bah Kuhnke, has already promised to initiate a "national strategy against Islamophobia" -- meaning any criticism of Islam or mass immigration.
If the Swedish-Saudi deal is as conjectured, Saudi Arabia will have obtained de facto veto power over Sweden's foreign policy -- and perhaps its domestic policies.
From now on, it will be hard to take seriously Sweden's claims to be a humanitarian and feminist superpower.

Hungary Suffers Two Anti-Semitic Attacks in Less Than a Week

Hungary has suffered two anti-Semitic attacks in the past week, mere days after the Jewish community’s watchdog on anti-Semitism reported that anti-Jewish attitudes were decreasing in the European nation.
An open-air Holocaust exhibition in Budapest was defaced Saturday, the Action and Protection Foundation (TEV) reported on Sunday. News sites picked up the story Wednesday.
According to the TEV report, a group of unknown vandals splashed red paint on 14 separate portraits showing Holocaust survivors together with members of their families.
The exhibition was organized by the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation and consisted of 24 portraits total. It was set up near the Madach Theater in the capital city's center.
The purpose of the exhibit was to commemorate Hungarian Jewry, after the community was decimated during the Holocaust. Of the 800,000 Jews living in the country before the war, only 180,000 survived.
Currently, 120,000 Jews live in Hungary, predominantly in Budapest.

Group Says String of Swastika Attacks on Boston Area Campuses Are Unrelated

Jewish human rights group the Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday said there is no evidence that a string of antisemitic attacks on Boston area campuses are connected to each other.
There is “no indication right now that these things are related” Robert Terestan, the ADL’s Boston regional director, told The Algemeiner. But, he added, “the impact on Jewish students is the same in each place.”
The spate began on March 29th when swastikas were found spray painted on several cars at a fraternity house at Tufts University campus on Packard Avenue. It was the fourth antisemitic incident at the university in less than two years.
A day later, a swastika was found drawn on a dry-erase board in the common space of the International Village dorm of Northeastern University. President Joseph Aoun called the incident a hateful act of antisemitism.

Israeli defense companies show up big at Brazil exhibition

Eighteen Israeli defense companies will showcase products at the LAAD Defense and Security 2015 international exhibition in Rio de Janeiro this month, the Defense Ministry has announced.
According to SIBAT – the ministry’s international defense cooperation directorate – the size of the Israeli pavilion reflects the “importance of the Latin American market” to Israeli defense industries.
The exhibition will run from April 14 – 16, and, according to SIBAT Director Brig.-Gen. (res.) Mishel Ben-Baruch, it will be “a major event that brings together developers and exhibitors from around the world who are all focused on security and defense. We look forward to fruitful cooperation with Latin American countries in general, and Brazil, in particular, regarding the wide range of solutions being presented at the Israel pavilion.”
Ben-Baruch added that “SIBAT sees in this cooperation an important strategic opportunity that will contribute to strengthening the two nations, both economically and defense-wise.”

Israeli scientists develop body armor inspired by fish skin

Israeli scientists have recently developed an innovative new material able to withstand bullets and knife attacks that could revolutionize body armor technology.
Inspired by the scaly skin of fish, researchers from the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology designed a hybrid double-layered material that provides protection against penetration while preserving flexibility.
“The secret behind this material is in the combination and design of hard scales above with soft, flexible tissue below,” lead researcher Assistant Professor Stephan Rudykh told American Technion Society — a university-affiliated website — last month.
While strength and flexibility are generally competing properties, Rudykh said that his team found that by varying the angle in which the scales are arranged, it was possible to increase their resistance to penetration by up to 40 times, while the flexibility of the material only decreased by 5 times.

Pomegranate-date combo helps prevent heart attacks, Israeli study finds

An Israeli study has linked regular consumption of pomegranate juice and dates to heart attack prevention.
Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have found that half a glass of juice a day, along with three dates, can bring about a significant reduction in therosclerosis — the accumulation of fatty cells in arteries which can cause heart attacks and strokes.
According to the study published recently in British scientific journal Food & Function, the scientists tested the effects of the fruits on mice as well as on arterial cells grown in the laboratory. They found that, used regularly, the combination of antioxidants contained within pomegranates and dates could lower cholesterol in the arteries by 28 per cent.
The researchers said the combination of the different types of antioxidants contained within the two fruits gave the best results in their tests for fighting arterial blockage.

IsraAID seeks to help Kenya deal with grief management after mass killing

Following the horrific massacre by the radical Muslim terror group al-Shabab from Somalia which killed over 150 Christian students in Kenya, the Israeli relief group IsraAID is helping Kenyan government officials deal with the tragedy.
IsraAID is currently holding discussions with Kenyan government counterparts as well as with the local Kenyan Red Cross and UN officials in hopes of creating a grief and disaster management plan for the government, modeled off the Israeli plan.
Were basing it on the Israeli model,” founding director of IsraAID, Sachar Zahavi told The Jerusalem Post. “IsraAIDs focus would be to provide post trauma training and treatment to help the affected community and service providers cope with their grief.”
Over 150 Kenyans were murdered at Garissa University College in the northeastern part of the country last Thursday. The attack was perpetrated by the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab group that has killed over 400 people in Kenya since 2013.

New Urban Nature Park Opens in Jerusalem

Braving a biting late spring wind, hundreds of people turned out for the March 30 grand opening of the city’s new urban nature park at Gazelle Valley – the only one of its kind in Israel.
Bordered on all sides by major traffic thoroughfares and dense residential housing, Gazelle Valley (“Emek HaTzvaim” in Hebrew) stretches over 62 acres. A herd of wild gazelles has long made its home in this unlikely refuge in southwest Jerusalem as the surrounding development effectively penned in the gentle beasts.
The newly opened nature reserve – with certain off-limits areas devoted to the revitalized herd — has five natural and manmade ponds, walking trails and bicycle paths, two flowing streams, bird and rodent watching stations, an arbor, a manmade island accessed via wooden bridges, and signposts describing its many plant and animal inhabitants.
A visitor center with a “green roof” offers binoculars, mats and deck chairs on loan, and visitors can sign up for guided group nature tours. In the future, the center will sell ready-to-eat picnic baskets as well.