Wednesday, May 06, 2015
Anti-Semitism Goes to School
War differs from other forms of human interaction in dividing us into those for and those against. The organization of politics against the Jews constitutes an unusual form of warfare in that all the aggression is on one side and all the hunger for resolution on the other. The desperation or “pessimism” that is generated by this genuinely irrational barrage has tempted some Jews to hold other Jews responsible, preposterously, for the suffering of Palestinian Arabs. Anti-Semitism thrives on the “hopeful” idea that if Jews are responsible for a crisis, it can be easily solved by the Jews’ transformation, or elimination. Some Jews, seduced by this irrationality, help to stoke its fires.BDS Is An Anti-Indigenous, Pro-Colonial Movement
When the current enemies of the Jews first chose the universities as a primary battleground in America, they met little or no opposition from liberal administrators or faculty, including Jewish faculty. Anti-Semitism, after all, is just an idea—is it not?—and ideas, which is what universities traffic in, can be the springboard for the best of human endeavors. Indeed they can; but they are also the springboard for the worst, and not even God can help those who fail to distinguish between the two. Anti-Semitism, among the very worst of human inventions, has by now thoroughly corroded Arab societies and with great force and determination is making its way back into Europe. Can America prove exceptional by recognizing the threat and fighting it off?
First and foremost, as I have alluded to in my opening paragraph, BDS is neither about human rights or co-existence. The goal from the outset has always been to dissolve Israel and replace it with an Arab Palestinian state, thereby restoring the country to Arab colonial domination. Barghouti himself made this clear when he openly boasted of his desire to “euthanize” Israel, and that the outcome of BDS would not be a two state solution, but “a Palestine next to a Palestine.”"Courage: The Reason I'm an Israeli-Arab Diplomat Not a Palestinian Refugee"
Other prominent BDS supporters, such as As’ad Abu Khalil, were even more candid, saying that “justice and freedom” for Palestinians is “incompatible with the existence of the State of Israel.” And what would happen to the Jews in such a state? Only time can answer that question, but given the obscenely high rates of antisemitism throughout the Arab world, it is safe to say that deportations and massacres (against Jews) are far more likely than anything resembling peaceful co-existence. This, however, is of no concern to the BDS movement or its sympathizers.
Second, although the dominant narrative in Israel/Palestine discourse is that Palestinian Arabs are the “true” indigenous occupants of the Holy Land, a cursory glance at the history of the region paints a very different picture. Palestinian Arabs, as their name directly implies, are a subgroup of the larger Arab nation whose origins lie in the Hejaz province of what is now Saudi Arabia. Their presence in the Levant largely dates back to the 7th century AD, when Arabian armies colonized a significant portion of the Middle East and nearly all of North Africa. And even though today’s Palestinians share a considerable amount of genetic material with diaspora Jews, indigenous status is lost when one fully adopts the mantle of the colonizer. Throughout their conquests, Arabs have oppressed, subsumed, and eliminated countless indigenous cultures while imposing their own via brute force. Israel was just one of the many regions that came under Arab colonial rule, and Jews (at least those who remained after the earlier Roman occupation) were just one of the many indigenous peoples they subjugated. The Dome of the Rock was deliberately built on the site of the fallen Temple, and was intended to be a symbol of humiliation to the Jews.
Israeli-Arab diplomat George Deek weaves together his family history, his childhood and his hopes for the future, bringing the audience at the StandWithUs UK Annual Event to their feet.
FIFA to host Israeli and Palestinian soccer heads
FIFA says it will host the leaders of the Israeli and Palestinian soccer federations within days, seeking an agreement before the governing body’s congress this month.Tight security as Tunisia hosts Jewish pilgrimage
The Palestinian Football Association wants Israel suspended from world soccer because its security forces restrict movement of players in the West Bank and Gaza.
The PFA defied FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s wishes by pushing for a vote of 209 member countries on May 29 in Zurich.
FIFA says Blatter met Israeli soccer leaders on Wednesday and told them “any member association that is fulfilling its statutory duties should not be suspended.”
The Israeli federation has said the issues are political and beyond its control.
An annual Jewish pilgrimage to Africa’s oldest synagogue in Tunisia began in a festive atmosphere Wednesday, despite tight security after the Bardo museum massacre and warnings of planned attacks.A Tale of Two Societies: When a President’s Hero is a Terrorist
Around 200 Jews joined the pilgrimage on the island of Djerba in southern Tunisia, voicing defiance as they chanted and lit candles at the Ghriba synagogue.
“I could not miss this,” Janet, a 54-year-old Israeli of Tunisian origin, told AFP. “It was important for me to make this pilgrimage, whatever the risks.”
Believed to have been founded in 586 BC by Jews fleeing the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the Ghriba synagogue has long been a pilgrimage site, especially for Jews of Tunisian descent.
The first female Fatah terrorist captured by the Israelis was Fatima Bernawi. In October 1967, Bernawi placed a bomb in the Zion Cinema in Jerusalem. Note, by the way, that the attack did not take place in “occupied territory,” except in the sense that Fatah considers even pre-1967 Israel to be “occupied Palestine.”The vicious campaign against Ayaan Hirsi Ali
By sheer chance, the bomb did not explode. Bernawi was captured and sentenced to life in prison for attempted mass murder. Unfortunately, she was released after 10 years as a “gesture” in honor of the visit to Israel of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. That was a terrible mistake by the Israelis. It helped create an expectation about releasing terrorists when, in fact, Israel should have always maintained that Arab leaders who are against terrorism surely would not want terrorists to be set free.
Shortly after the establishment of the PA in 1994, Bernawi was rewarded with the position of chief of the women’s section of the PA police. That, too, was an outrage. The PA should have been told in no uncertain terms, by both Israel and the U.S., that no terrorists should be rewarded with government jobs. Such rewards send a message that terrorists are heroes and should be emulated—exactly the wrong message to send to young Palestinians.
The fact that the U.S. helped train the PA police makes the situation even more outrageous. American government personnel were training a convicted bomber. Imagine if Bill Ayers were to apply for a position in his local police department. Would anyone in his right mind say he should be hired?
Bernawi, like Ayers, never expressed any regret for her terrorism. To this day, she regards planting a bomb in a movie theater as an act of heroism.
Fatah’s official web site, announcing Abbas’s decision to present Bernawi with a medal, hailed her as “one of the first Palestinian women to adopt armed self-sacrifice operations after the start of the modern Palestinian revolution.” (Translation courtesy of the Middle East Media and Research Institute.)
So there you have it. An American president who distances himself from a terrorist, and an American society that utterly rejects terrorism. A Palestinian president who embraces terrorists, and a Palestinian society that treats mass murderers as heroes.
Two societies, two different sets of values, two different ways of life. Perhaps there is nothing Americans can do to change the PA. But why must $500 million in U.S. aid continue to be sent to the PA each year? American taxpayers would not want to subsidize Bill Ayers; so, why is their money being used to subsidize Fatima Bernawi?
Ever since Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s latest book “Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now” came out at the end of March, the writer who should be celebrated as a “hero for our time” has been maligned in numerous articles. It was arguably no surprise that Israel-haters like Max Blumenthal would try to denigrate Hirsi Ali, but it was pathetic to see that supposedly serious media professionals like Al Jazeera presenter Mehdi Hassan promoted Blumenthal’s smear campaign on Twitter.A Jew in Bradford
The latest attack against Hirsi Ali describes her as “dangerous” and sets out to explain why “we must reject her hateful worldview.” The sub-header hints already at the major reason: endorsing Hirsi Ali “insults and mocks a billion Muslims” – and as we know from many incidents, that can indeed be very “dangerous”… But of course, nobody knows that better than Ayaan Hirsi Ali herself.
What is particularly noteworthy about this attack against Hirsi Ali is that it is authored by a very successful self-described “Muslim” woman whose own life-story and life-style is quite unthinkable in any Muslim country. Indeed, in an interview Rula Jebreal gave to an Italian blog in 2009, she described herself as “married to Western values of freedom and democracy, secularism and tolerance.”
Welcome to Gallowayland.Daniel Gordis: Criticism Follows Israeli Aid to Nepal
This is what I think as I drive into Bradford.
In two hour’s time I will be punched in the head.
The squinty moon-face of one of Britain’s most ferocious orators glares from the street posters, capped by a black fedora.
RoadTrip1-transparent-iconGeorge Galloway has turned the constituency of Bradford West into his own world, catapulting into parliament as a Muslim-grievance politician from Britain’s most Islamic city.
Galloway, a former Labour Party MP, has got his seat by using anti-Zionist rhetoric, whilst suing critics who say he is anti-Semitic. His political genius is to have twigged that Bradford’s multiculturalism is a mirage: He now plays the city’s Pakistani clan politics, of family controlled votes, for power.
British civility has collapsed in Bradford’s elections.
Israeli humanitarian aid, however, is unique in that it invariably evokes cynicism. Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch (an organization so hostile to Israel that even its founder rebuked it in disgust and later left the organization), tweeted “Easier to address a far-away humanitarian disaster than the nearby one of Israel's making in Gaza. End the blockade!”The Biggest Mistakes Pro-Israel Advocates Make #3: How to Actually Know What You’re Talking About
Israelis, too, have joined the pile-on. Haaretz, Israel’s hard-left-leaning paper of record, couldn't help but point out that “once again, Israel is shining during a disaster thousands of miles away. But the people down the coast are another thing.” (Haaretz didn't mention that Gaza’s Hamas government is sworn on destroying Israel, and unleashed a war against Israel’s citizens this past summer.) Another Haaretz column insisted that “Disaster relief feeds the illusion that we can somehow be clever, creative and cooperative enough to make the world absolve us of everything else that is wrong with what we do.”
Some Israelis, though, have had enough and are beginning to push back. In what started out as a Facebook post that eventually went viral and become a blog entry on the Times of Israel website, Haviv Rettig Gur wrote:
If I hear one more time that Israel's field hospital in Nepal is somehow connected to the conflict with the Palestinians, I'm going to permanently block the person saying so on the grounds that they're stupid. Here's the thing: Israel is an entire … country, with all the complicated impulses and competing agendas of any human society. … The IDF doesn't go to Nepal to avoid the Palestinian issue. It goes because Israelis have honed emergency medicine into an art form, and because the IDF has never quite shed its founding culture of adventurousness, and, above all, because there are people out there who desperately need help.
You don’t have to be a genius to understand that if you are caught giving out wrong facts, you lose your credibility. Since a lot of the anti-Israel activists are well-trained professionals, we have to work so much harder than they do as they are quick to exploit any holes in our logic or story. Their activists know how to draft resolutions, infiltrate student governments, and captivate their audiences to the point that they’re all over these innocent students before we get a chance to sneeze, let alone say “Am Israel Chai.” Therefore, they get to frame and direct the argument. Fortunately for us, the facts, and history, are on our side, and the other side is the one that is twisting facts and ideas. Another advantage is that pro-Israel activists tend to be more educated on the issue, because the antizionist viewpoint usually belongs to someone who was too lazy or had too much at stake to pick up a nonrevisionist history book. However, even those of us who are educated tend to make mistakes, especially given how biased and misinformed sources we trust such as politicians, the media, NGOs, and even the UN often are. The most common errors are 1) that Arabs (“Palestinians”) are indigenous to Israel and 2) That the settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law. I’m going to debunk those two myths because they are so ingrained in the discourse that they are seen as truth, even among most pro-Israel students.Student groups at 5 universities join BDS movement
Representatives of student representative councils at five South African universities announced that they would begin pressuring their schools to cut ties with Israel on Monday.Airbus with Saudi Arabian logo turns up at Ben-Gurion Airport
Speaking at a press conference in Pretoria, student leaders from the University of South Africa, Cape Town University of Technology, Mangasutho University of Technology, Durban University of Technology and the University of the Western Cape stated that their respective SRCs had all adopted resolutions to " join the academic and cultural boycott of Israel."
The students said they were following a 2011 mandate of the South African Union of Students which urged "all SRCs, student groups and other youth structures to strategize and implement a boycott" and that they would push their respective universities to divest from Israel. In pursuit of this goal, the student groups will also "be auditing our universities' investment funds and service providers to ensure that companies that are in violation of the BDS call and complicit in the Israeli Occupation...are excluded from investment funds and service contracts."
On Wednesday Mcebo Dlamini, the president of the Wits SRC, was terminated after posting "I love Adolf Hitler" on Facebook, underscoring the significance of the challenges facing Jews on South African campuses. In March students at the University of Cape Town were appalled to find posters swastikas and images of Adolf Hitler plastered around their campus as part of a campaign to remove a statue of British businessman and colonialist Cecil John Rhodes.
The arrival of jumbo jet with the logo "Saudia" to Ben-Gurion Airport overnight Tuesday generated a stir in the Israeli media on Wednesday after surprised airport workers spotted the plane.CNN Fails Again, This Time With Yemen Reporting
The plane in question, an Airbus A330-300 devoid of passengers, arrived from Brussels to Tel Aviv for routine maintenance work with the Bedek Aviation Company, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), officials said. A European client that works with Bedek for plane maintenance happens to lease its jets to various corporations, including Saudia, they explained.
"IAI confirmed that the Airbus came to IAI facilities in order to have maintenance work done due to an agreement that IAI has with a European company that leases the plane to Saudi Arabia," a spokeswoman for IAI told The Jerusalem Post.
Typically, routine maintenance on such planes takes about a few weeks, officials said. (h/t J_April)
Of course, it wasn’t as though CNN wasn’t able to cut away from Baltimore at all. So what did CNN cut away from Baltimore for? CNN cut away from Baltimore, not to cover civilian casualties of war in Yemen, but to cover Sunday’s protests in Tel Aviv. Because Israel, as we know, is The Most Important Story On Earth. (CNN coverage of the Tel Aviv protest, of course, neglected to mention that, unlike in Baltimore, the police officer whose actions spurred the protests was immediately suspended and is to be removed from the police force.) CNN also managed to spare a few minutes Monday morning for Peter Beinart to blame the victims of the attack on a free speech event in Texas on Sunday.Guardian parrots Palestinian propaganda in claim that Avigdor Lieberman doesn’t live in Israel
Civilians dying in Yemen, like civilians dying in Iraq or civilians dying in Syria, just don’t merit the same level of attention from CNN as civilians dying in Gaza. By featuring such images with such relentless prominence when Israel is involved, and by omitting them totally or nearly totally in other cases, CNN is adding to the misperception that Israel acts with disproportionate force, and the misperception that only Israeli wars produce widespread civilian casualties. Rather than informing its viewers, CNN is just adding to the misinformation.
We often complain that the Guardian’s reporting on Israel – even when not in violation of the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code – is consistently tendentious. That is, most of their straight news stories (reports as opposed to op-eds), by the intentional use of biased language or through obfuscatory prose, implicitly promote a particular point of view within the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.Guardian amplifies Breaking the Silence’s baseless allegation of Israeli racism
The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent Peter Beaumont provided an excellent example of such ‘views as news’ reporting in a story published on May 4th titled ‘Israel’s foreign minister resigns, throwing coalition in doubt‘.
Here’s the penultimate paragraph in Beaumont’s report:
Lieberman was unusual in the world of international diplomacy in not having his residence in the country he represents, instead choosing to live in a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which Palestinians claim for their future state.
Beaumont opens by noting that the BtS report relies on “testimonies provided by more than 60 Israeli soldiers who fought in last summer’s war in Gaza” which he concludes raises “serious questions over whether Israel’s tactics breached its obligations under international law to distinguish and protect civilians”.BBC editorial guidelines flouted in promotion of ‘Breaking the Silence’ booklet
Tellingly, Beaumont failed to note that Breaking the Silence had reportedly “declined to share any of the evidence or testimony it collected from soldiers [to the IDF] with it before publishing”, thus preventing “the IDF from investigating any alleged wrongdoings uncovered in the report itself”.
Indeed, it’s next to impossible to fisk the soldier accounts cited in Guardian report, because they lack details necessary to research the specific incidents they’re allegedly recounting, including one soldier account cited by Beaumont suggesting that the IDF operation was compromised by anti-Arab racism.
Obviously that introduction – like Frank’s closing description of the organization as an “Israeli advocacy group” – fails to clarify to audiences the political aims behind ‘Breaking the Silence’ and notably Tim Franks made no effort to challenge Stoller with regard to his claim that “we are not subcontractors of anybody” despite the group’s considerable foreign funding.Josh Bornstein: White supremacists stole my identity to spew hatred on the Times of Israel
Another interesting aspect to the BBC’s multi-platform promotion of the claims made by ‘Breaking the Silence’ is the fact that its booklet of testimonies was published on the same day that the two above BBC reports appeared and yet as of the morning of May 4th, the booklet was only available in Hebrew. Despite that fact, the BBC managed to produce a written report in English within a matter of hours and to arrange World Service radio interviews not only with Stoller but also with the ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and with the IDF spokesman with similarly impressive alacrity.
No less remarkable was Tim Franks’ promotion of the notion of ‘war crimes’ on two occasions during the twelve-minute segment. Franks asked Stoller:
“If you’re imputing that war crimes were committed – and it sounds as if you are – isn’t that the province of the International Criminal Court?”
He later asked Bensouda:
“In terms of the allegations that have been made today, how far would they constitute war crimes if they could be substantiated?”
The storm was all but over within 36 hours. Unlike other victims of social media shaming, I did not lose my job. On the contrary, my work colleagues rallied around me.France’s National Front founder Le Pen suspended from party
That said, there is another digital twist to this bizarre and disturbing experience. Before the offending article was torn down, an image of it was placed on another site. Despite vigorous attempts to have it removed from the internet, it still continues to be peddled online. As a result, I have received more threats.
A genuine blogger, Daniel Sieradski, was prompted by my experience to do some online detective work about this episode. He discovered that a few weeks before the fake blog began to be published by the Times of Israel, a post appeared on a website foreshadowing what was to come:
“Using a fake Jewish name, profile, and photo, I got myself a blog on The Times of Israel,” the post read. “These people believe I’m really a Jew.”
Sieradski’s work led me to a site that appears to have been created by a neo-Nazi group based in the US. In one of their posts, the group denigrates me as a “subversive Jewish parasite”, a “human rights activist”, “open borders advocate” and “staunch supporter of hate speech laws”. The same photograph of me that was published by the Times of Israel appears on this website; this time with a yellow Star of David emblazoned on my forehead.
France’s National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen was suspended from the far-right party his daughter Marine now leads after a disciplinary hearing on Monday.Hungarian Holocaust Denier Ordered to Study the Holocaust
Patience with the 86-year-old rabble-rouser has run thin within the party in recent weeks after he reiterated his view that the Nazi gas chambers were merely a “detail of history” and made comments about defending the “white world.”
A special meeting of party members will be called “within three months” to decide whether to strip him of the title of honorary president of the National Front (FN), a party statement said.
Le Pen described his supension as a “criminal act.”
A Hungarian prosecutor on Tuesday ordered a man to read up on the Holocaust after he shared a picture on social media depicting Auschwitz as an imaginary fun camp, reports the AFP news agency.Amal Clooney Stirs Controversy Wearing Met Gala Gown by Disgraced Designer John Galliano
The 33-year-old, from Gyongyos east of Budapest, must visit a Holocaust museum and read a well-known history book on the period, the chief prosecutor in Heves county said in a statement.
The picture, made by an unknown person, showed the entrance to the former death camp in Poland with the sign "Auschwitzland, the world's largest fairytale camp!" Around 4,000 people saw the image.
To avoid criminal charges, the man must also convince supervisors over a two-year period that he is unlikely to repeat the act, the prosecutor said, according to AFP.
In February 2010, the Hungarian parliament made denying the genocide committed by the Nazi regime a crime punishable by a maximum three-year prison sentence.
Amal Clooney, the Lebanese human rights lawyer who rose to prominence last year after marrying famed actor George Clooney, prompted a social media uproar after revealing that disgraced designer John Galliano had designed her gown for the Met Gala on Tuesday night.Looted Nazi painting returned from Louvre to heirs
Ahead of the prestigious event,Vogue magazine posted on Instagram a photo of Clooney, 37, being fitted by Galliano into the voluminous red dress before heading out to the star-studded event with her husband. Also appearing in the shot was Anna Wintour, the powerful Vogue editor-in-chief who has been working to rehabilitate Galliano after he was fired from Christian Dior four years ago over an antisemitic rant.
Social media users said they were disappointed by Amal’s decision to wear the design by Galliano. One Instagram user said, “So a human rights lawyer is being dressed by a vicious antisemite? Hideous.” Another wrote, “I thought she was a human rights lawyer? I am so disappointed by her choice to wear something by Galliano.” Yet another said she was “surprised and confused” by the choice.
“I use to be a fan of her work and now I think she may be just a phony. Such a shame she wouldn’t see the hypocrisy,” another noted.
A 17th-century painting that was looted by the Nazis from a prominent Jewish art curator in Munich and ended up at the Louvre in Paris is being returned to the heirs of its rightful owner.Walking While Jewish In Montevideo
The painting, “Portrait of a Man,” was recovered by the French government and the US Department of Financial Services’ Holocaust Claims Processing Office, which has helped recover more than 100 Nazi-looted works of art and returned some $171 million in assets to victim’s families.
Before World War II, “Portrait of a Man” was owned by August Liebmann Mayer, a renowned art historian and curator, according to the Department of Financial Services. After the Nazis rose to power, Mayer was forced to resign his positions at the Bavarian State Paintings Collection and the University of Munich, and on March 24, 1933, he was arrested and the property in his Munich home was seized.
In 1935, Mayer was able to flee to Paris, but his home was again looted when the Nazis captured the city during the war. Mayer eventually was deported to Auschwitz, where he died on March 12, 1944.
We’ve featured many videos of the street harassment that accompanies Walking While Jewish in many European cities, including Paris, Copenhagen, Malmö and parts of Britain.Jewish sister suffragettes on display in new UK exhibition
So here is a change of pace.
Chabad produced a video of one of its Rabbis spending 10 hours walking through Montevideo, Uruguay.
An amazing thing happened.
Nothing. Other than some compliments.
In October 1913, three Jewish women were thrown out of London’s New West End Synagogue during the Yom Kippur service after loudly declaring, “May God forgive Herbert Samuel and Sir Rufus Isaacs for denying freedom to women; may God forgive them for consenting to the torture of women.”Israeli Food Tech Startup to Make Sugar Taste Twice as Sweet
The women were members of the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage (JLWS), an organization founded in 1912 dedicated to attaining votes for British women. The JLWS also campaigned for equal religious and communal rights for women within the Jewish community and its membership included both Liberal and Orthodox rabbis as well as notable Anglo-Jewish families such as the Montefiores and the Zangwills.
Although the League was largely law-abiding, the 1913 Yom Kippur disturbance resulted in its members being branded by the Anglo-Jewish press as “blackguards in bonnets” – a description that is the title of a new, small exhibition at the Jewish Museum London.
Timed to coincide with the United Kingdom’s general election on May 7 and running until May 22, Blackguards in Bonnets looks at significance of the British Jewish women and men who were involved in the struggle to gain electoral representation. From awareness-raising tea parties, rallies and lectures to more militant actions such as hunger strikes and acts of arson, the exhibition shows this political movement crossed the class and religious spectrum.
Israeli greentech startup DouxMatok believes that they will revolutionize how manufacturers and consumers worldwide use sugar.Israel-born chef wins America’s top foodie prize
“DouxMatok’s technology will allow for a reduction of 30-60 percent of sugar in a product, depending on the application, and with no effect on taste,” CEO Eran Baniel told Tazpit News Agency.
Baniel added, “When we tested it in the UK, our product had the exact same taste profile as un-adapted sugar, with none of the aftertaste caused by artificial sweeteners.”
For health-conscious individuals with a sweet tooth, these are enticing promises.
In recognition of their breakthrough, Baniel’s company won “Best Company” at the “Agravest 2015″ event, last week. Agravest, a yearly conference organized by Israel’s Ministry of Economy, Trendlines Agtech, and GreenSoil Investments, took place at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
The James Beard Foundation on Tuesday awarded Israeli-born chef Alon Shaya with America’s top food prize, naming him Best Chef in the southern region for 2015, following three consecutive years he had been nominated as a finalist in the category but ultimately failed to win the prestigious award.In Photos: Israeli clowns help ease trauma in quake-hit Nepal
Shaya, executive chef at Domenica in New Orleans — a restaurant he opened in 2009 with John Besh — left Israel at age four and grew up in Philadelphia.
The ex-Tel Avivian cook is known for adding a bit of Israeli flavor to Italian dishes, particularly on Jewish holidays. He says he “spent most of his time in the kitchen with his mother and grandmother, which instilled in him a passion for cooking,” according to a biography featured on Domenica‘s website.
Dana Cowin, the editor-in-chief of the prestigious Food & Wine magazine, named Domenica as one of her top restaurants of 2012. In the same year, New Orleans Magazine honored Shaya as “Chef of the Year” as well. Domenica is regularly awarded “Best Hotel Restaurant” by Gambit Weekly and appears as a Top Ten restaurant in the Times-Picayune’s Dining Guide.
A team of five medical clowns from Israel is in Nepal visiting earthquake victims to ease trauma effects and to reduce pain and anxiety among children and adults in communities and hospitals.Israel a big player in Microsoft’s big data future
More than 7,500 people were killed and hundreds of thousands left homeless by the April 25 earthquake in Kathmandu.
Israel opened a field hospital in Kathmandu last month to help treat the thousands of Nepalese injured in the massive earthquake, and its rescue teams continued to help comb the rubble for survivors.
The rescue teams are operating under the command of the Nepalese military, which is directing them to various sites.
The future of Microsoft is big data analytics – squeezing meaning out of the trillions of bytes of data that will soon be in “the cloud,” that amorphous repository of the bits and bytes where nearly everything we do online is stored.5-minute car battery charger on its way
It’s not just online. In an Internet of Things future, said Yoram Yaakovi, CEO of Microsoft Israel’s R&D Center, data will be collected from a wide variety of devices and appliances, from refrigerators to washing machines, uploaded to the cloud for analysis.
And Israeli technology, he said, will be at the forefront of figuring out how to use this data for the benefit of users. Israel, Yaakovi added, has the start-ups, engineers, ideas and experience to leverage technology and “provide real insight into data so we can use it for our benefit.”
StoreDot made headlines when it unveiled its prototype instant phone battery charger at last year’s Microsoft ThinkNext exhibition in Tel Aviv. The FlashBattery/FlashCharger unit could be available on smartphones by the end of this year.
In another bombshell, the Israeli company announced at yesterday’s 2015 ThinkNext that it intends to demonstrate its five-minute ultra-fast-charge car battery at this time next year.
This groundbreaking technology would enable drivers to charge their car batteries in less time than StoreDot needs to explain how it works.
