06/12 Links Pt2: Jewish Voice for Peace? Not really; A new low in fake "moral equivalence"

From Ian:

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Jewish Voice for Peace? Not really

In the saturated market of pro-Palestinian activism, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has emerged as a major player.
On its website, JVP now boasts over 60 member-led chapters across the country and more than 200,000 online Facebook and Twitter supporters.
These days it’s also flush with new funding sources.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which describes JVP as the “largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States”, until very recently the organization reported an approximate average of $300,000 in annual contributions.
By 2013 that figure had jumped to over $1 million.
It’s been a pretty busy couple of years for an organization that’s operated in relative obscurity for much of the last twenty.
You’ve got to hand it to JVP’s new leadership team and their savvy marketing skills.
They’ve managed to carefully craft and disseminate a brand that draws on the appealing language of rights along with Jewish culture and values to justify vilifying the planet’s only Jewish state, expressing an utter hostility to the notion of Jewish peoplehood and self-determination, and lending support to Israel’s enemies.
But now that JVP has a real shot at playing in the big leagues of American organizational life, it also has a strong incentive to clean up its act.
Cavorting with obvious Jew-haters and being attacked for whitewashing anti-Semitism is counterproductive.
All it does is tarnish the brand.
So now JVP is quietly trying to scrub its online presence of past partnerships with sketchy anti-Semites.

A new low in fake "moral equivalence"

Australia's distinction as a major source of recruits joining "Islamic State" has been used as a pretext for a variety of commentators to defame Israel, through the morally vacuous argument that the phenomenon is no different to that of Jewish Australians who serve in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).
A typical example was Phillip Adams writing in his Weekend Australian column that "the government is understandably concerned by the indoctrination of local youth who head off to Iraq or Syria, though we've not expressed concern about the generations of young Australian Jews who've headed for Israel to join the army."
In the Canberra Times, ANU Professor Amin Saikal wrote, "some Western countries, including Australia, have had no qualms over some of their Jewish citizens either joining or fighting for the Israeli security forces, and have not viewed their return with trepidation. It is not surprising to hear Muslim voices raised about double standard."
And in the Courier Mail columnist Paul Syvret wrote that "all religions and societies tend to breed their own brands of extremist ratbaggery", and then inveigled against "young Jewish Australians who ‘make Aliyah' with a return to Israel and service in that (foreign) country's military - an armed force well schooled in bloody regional and religious conflict".
There are many other examples I could provide.
This tendency to react to any mention of the problem of Australians going to join ISIS by immediately responding "What about Israel?" is now so common that one could be forgiven for thinking that Jewish Australians are enjoying some unique dispensation to serve in a foreign power's armed forces.

Denis MacEoin replies to Guardian letter calling for a boycott of Israeli Film & TV Festival

The signatories to the letter about the Israeli film festival have never, to my knowledge, called for the banning of any Iranian film, based, not on individual merit, but on the human rights abuses of the country in which they were made or the nationality of their directors, producers, and actors.
The Guardian has published, before this, praise for several North Korean films, including A Flower Girl. But North Korea is one of the world’s most repressive and dangerous states, governed by a regime that might even make the Ayatollahs of Iran hesitate. So why no letters in the Guardian boycotting their films? Oh, I forgot, nobody ever calls for a boycott of North Korea or any really repressive state.
The activists never march against Saudi Arabia, which has just confirmed the sentence of a blogger, Raif Badawi, to a flogging of 1000 lashes, “very harshly” as the flogging order read, as a punishment for writing thoughts such as, “My commitment is… to reject any oppression in the name of religion… a goal we will reach in a peaceful and law-abiding way.” They never march against Qatar, Iran, North Korea, Russia, China or Sudan. They only protest about the actions of one of the freest liberal democracies in the world, and the only country in the Middle East that gives human rights to all its citizens.
Each of those forty signatories should feel ashamed. To uphold human rights by supporting a murderous terrorist state, while condemning a democracy forced to defend itself against outside forces bent on its destruction — do any of these writers know what free speech and human rights are about, what democracy means, or what international law consists of? One suspects not.
Meanwhile, Seret will go on. Genuine lovers of cinema and television will watch the films and go away satisfied, hoping to see more like them.

David Singer: "I Came To You, Israel, Wanting To Hate You"

Recently, a group of 52 Harvard students – of all backgrounds and faiths – visited Israel for 10 days during the Harvard Israel Trek 2015
Sometimes the impact of such a trip cannot be expressed in prose – but can only be captured in poetry.
What follows is a poem – posted on the Harvard trek blog by Oliver Marjot – a British PhD candidate studying Medieval Latin at Harvard – that reflects his transformative experience.
Oliver expected that the Trek would confirm his reasonable European certainty of Israel’s arrogant oppression. That’s not quite the way things turned out.
Oliver's Poem eloquently answers those who continue their vicious attempts to denigrate and delegitimize Israel by exhorting the boycott and isolation of Israel, its people, products, commercial enterprises, medical breakthroughs, academics and artists:

Allah In Wonderland – How My Mind Was Raped By The Palestinian Propaganda Machine

I am an academic. Because I am educated and familiar with scholarly work and critical thinking, I rely only on widely accepted, scholarly history, scientifically based, peer reviewed research, and ethical journalism. The Palestinian Propaganda Machine generates shallow, false, contradictory, hypocritical, manipulative, sensational and illogical tropes. I fight for human rights and dignity everyday. The Palestinian Propaganda Machine demonizes Israel and spreads hatred of Jews everyday.
I am an American Jew who lives in the American bubble of freedom and peace. I went to a “Students For Justice in Palestine” event with an open mind, and my mind was raped. That’s what I said. Raped. I went to an SJP event and for two hours, my identity and my right to exist, was stolen while I was force fed nasty distortions and outright lies about my people – all in the name of justice for another people. In retrospect, I was in a semi-naive, privileged, American-Jew, daze. As if on a bad acid trip, I fell down the rabbit hole and landed on a checkerboard of outrageous lies, facing a venomous queen clad in ’90’s grunge. A passionate idiot who would eagerly trade in her soul for victory in her cause to destroy an entire indigenous nation – Israel. An earnest hypocrite who doggedly dehumanized Jews in the name of saving Palestinians. An oblivious poser whose “down to earth and open to dialogue”, persona was quickly stripped away when challenged by any facts which went against her canned narrative. In response, she angrily hissed only the threat of more bloodshed through her teeth, in the trope “No peace. Justice, then peace.” In other words, we will continue our attempts to destroy your legitimacy and your identity, and murder your people until we get the entire land of Israel.
Not only were my sensibilities raped, I bore witness to vulnerable college students who had fallen prey to the same lies – who’s emotions had been played upon to the point that truth and facts, and the complexity of any event in human history simply didn’t matter. In room G316, we were all treated to a reductionist, fallacious “presentation” which was as gripping as a Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Denzel Washington collaboration, starring Zionism and Jews as the evil villains. Those fresh faced, college students’ heads nodded more vigorously than the audience for the emperor’s clothes. “I’ll believe what the f*ck I want to believe”, one threw out at me. And in his heightened state of compassion (translation: blind rage), he would destroy another people because that is justice. No my young friend, that is murder.

After Pamela Geller is Silenced, Who’s Next?

The radicals who hate on Israel in America’s public square are motivated by an anti-democratic agenda. Israel is not the only democracy they seek to harm.
What is most troubling is that a number of people who should know better seem intent on making it easier for jihadists to destroy our public square with their threats and intimidation.
One way they do this is to point the finger of condemnation at Pamela Geller and not at those who are intent on murdering her.
In the headline to a Reuters article about the planned attack, Business Insider described Geller as the “Head of anti-Muslim hate group.” Whoever wrote this headline is legitimizing jihadist hate and violence against Geller by portraying Geller, and not those who would kill her, as the problem.
It didn’t start with Pamela Geller and it won’t end with her.
Now it’s Pamela Geller’s turn.
Who’s next?

Daphne Anson: In Ireland's Parliament, Talk of Israeli "Terrorists"

The Trotsykite chair of the Irish Anti-War Movement (we all know what such movements are often synonyms for, of course, and this one is true to form, targeting the United States and its allies and interests) Richard Boyd Barrett, born in November 1967, is an extreme example of a member of the generations that grew up after the Six Day War and have learned to perceive Israel only as a "military occupier" with no empathy whatever for the dire situation in which Israel has found itself since its foundation due to Arab rejectionists nor appreciation for the humanitarian efforts and breakthroughs wrought by the embattled little Jewish State.
On 9 June in Ireland's Parliament, in which he sits for Dún Laoghaire, he spewed out invective against Israel, cherry-picking unrepresentative firebrand statements attributed to certain Israelis and using them in a shamelessly distorted attempt to demonise the Israeli government and the Israel position as a whole.
This is rich, considering Mr Barrett's apparent support for Hamas as suggested by, for instance, this news item from 2009 which shows him attending an Islamic event in Ireland's capital and questioning Israel's very right to exist:

Arab Boycott Head Gloats: Israeli Hysteria Proves BDS is Working

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is continuing its efforts to initiate an international boycott against Israel so as to force the Jewish state to unconditionally withdraw to the 1949 Armistice lines, giving up its Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria as well as eastern Jerusalem.
Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) movement and a leading figure in the movement to boycott Israel, called for the international solidarity movement supporting the Palestinian Arabs to strengthen their economic attack on Israel.
He also called for the pro-Palestinian movement to work to bring about sanctions against Israel, and to cause financial investments to be pulled from the Jewish state.
Speaking at a press conference at Oxford University in London this Wednesday, Barghouti said the boycott is targeting the "occupation" and the "racist separation regime."
The boycott "is the greatest expression of the human struggle in peaceful ways supported by the right of peoples to freedom, as it was in South Africa," said Barghouti, airing the apartheid claim against Israel which has been thoroughly debunked.

The Judean People's Front: Calling BS on BDS - Israeli Apartheid

The reason why [Noura] Erakat says this is because the main characteristic of apartheid is the way in which a racial hierarchy is firmly established by law and enforced through violence. Unfortunately for her, as we have shown, there are no racial laws in Israel. Jews and non-Jews live in the same towns, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same hospitals and schools, vote in the same elections, serve in the same governments and more. Whereas every aspect of life in Apartheid South Africa was governed by laws designed to prevent the mixing of races and maintain domination by the minority ethnic group over the majority, nothing remotely similar exists in Israel.
Since no such race laws exist in Israel, Erakat resorts to lies, distortions and omissions in order to force an analogy that just does not fit.
The apartheid paradigm has a profound impact on the movement, because it simply and brilliantly draws on a historical example of apartheid and calls upon the tactics used in that struggle to fight apartheid in its newest form—boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS). The apartheid paradigm allows peace and justice activists to challenge Israel’s “moral authority” and for the first time to set the terms of the debate.
This last part is key because everything before it is a complete lie. As we discussed at the beginning, while an anti-occupation movement is clearly working towards an end to said occupation (usually ambiguous to confuse the masses and make it seem as though they are referring to the one from 1967 not 1948) and would ostensibly be satisfied with a two state solution, an anti-apartheid movement can only be satisfied with an end to a state that is based at its core in racist principles (and who could be against that?). By discussing this as an anti-apartheid movement, BDS supporters are indeed "setting the terms of debate" and doing so in a way that leads to only one logical conclusion: the dissolution and destruction of the Jewish State.
If anyone ever tells you BDS isn't about destroying the State of Israel, now you know how to call them on it.

Calling BS on BDS - Genocide Libel

One of the most absurd claims the BDS crowd makes is the allegation of a "Palestinian Genocide." Any action that Israel takes in self-defense is automatically labelled genocide today, along with the baseless allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Operation Protective Edge was labeled a genocide before it even got its name and this was no different than Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense. BDS-holes use this inflammatory rhetoric not because it is accurate, but because it creates such a visceral reaction among those who hear it. Most people don't follow the news from Israel as closely as we do, but if they hear the world "genocide" they'll take notice and have an automatic disdain for whoever is being accused of it.
But it is important to remember that despite what BDS-holes would like, the word "genocide" does have an actual definition. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, genocide is:
acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical [sic], racial or religious group
This definition was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. So first lets examine the quintessential example of genocide:

The wrong side of history? Despite the Guardian’s best efforts, BDS is failing miserably

Within the radical left British cultural elite, the mere inefficacy of your futile political campaign is no impediment to its survival – at least, that is, as long as there are receptive media outlets willing to amplify your marginal views.
Enter the Guardian – the online home for those engaged in the obsessive, morally hypocritical campaign against Israel.
The latest target: London theatres hosting Seret 2015, the London Israeli film and television festival.
Anti-Israel activists campaigning against the festival: a couple dozen artists and producers, such as Ken Loach, Peter Kosminsky, Ewa Jasiewicz, Mike Leigh, Miriam Margolyes and John Pilger.
Here are a few passages from the letter published in the Guardian on June 9th:
We, the below listed artists, producers, and concerned citizens, are disappointed and saddened to see that Curzon, Odeon, Bafta and other cinemas are hosting theLondon Israeli Film and Television Festival.
This comes at a time when the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel is gaining unprecedented momentum, and the Israeli government is finding itself increasingly isolated for its systematic violation of Palestinian human rights, the Geneva conventions, and international law.
It’s unclear how they define “unprecedented momentum”, but since the BDS movement was founded in 2004, noted Gregg Carlstrom (a journalist typically quite critical of Israel) writing in the Global Post, “exports to the European Union have doubled to $15.6 billion per year”. “Foreign investment in Israel“, Carlstrom added, has similarly surged.

BBC News gets round to mentioning some of the missile fire from the Gaza Strip

The implication in both the headline and the synopsis is that the August 26th 2014 ceasefire – which reportedly includes the clause “All Palestinian factions in Gaza will stop all attacks against Israel by land, air or sea, and will stop the construction of tunnels from Gaza into Israel” – has been upheld throughout the last ten months.
That, of course, is not the case but with BBC audiences having received decidedly scant information on Hamas’ reconstruction of tunnels and building of additional infrastructure, its frequent test-firing of missiles, its recruitment drive and no fewer than seven separate incidents of missile fire over the past ten months, they are not in a position to appreciate that the ceasefire agreement has long been ‘endangered’.
Knell’s report opens with an interesting addition to the BBC lexicon. With Hamas having been previously portrayed as “conservative”, the term “ultra-conservative” is now apparently the terminology of choice to describe other groups along the same ideological scale.
“Gaza hasn’t begun to recover from last year’s devastating war with Israel and now its residents and the Hamas authorities are facing a new threat from within: ultra-conservative Jihadists who support the Islamic State group.”

BBC WS radio promotes Avi Shlaim’s historical misrepresentations – part two

So according to Shlaim the historian, all was sweetness and light for Jews in Arab lands in general and Iraq in particular until the Arabs lost the war they initiated against the newly declared Israeli state in 1948. One might have thought that a historian would have remembered to mention the one of the most important events in the Iraqi Jewish community’s modern history – the Farhud of 1941 – especially as that event’s anniversary was marked just one day after this programme was broadcast.
Of course anyone familiar with Avi Shlaim’s record will be well aware of the fact that more often than not his political views – along with his self-awarded role of “judge and jury” – shape his accounts of history and his portrayal of Zionism as “a European idea and a European project” in this broadcast is a classic example of Shlaim’s seemingly unlimited ability to ignore inconvenient facts such as the First Aliyah wave of immigrants from Yemen and the event – the Farhud – which signalled that relations between Iraqi Jews and their neighbours were not quite as “harmonious” as Shlaim would have listeners believe.
The trouble with this BBC programme is that the vast majority of those listening to the radio show will not be familiar with the prolific political activities of the learned professor and will not be able to apply the necessary context of his underlying agenda to the ostensibly neutral and academic analysis he provides. And of course the real issue is that Owen Bennett-Jones and his BBC colleagues made no effort whatsoever to provide audiences with the information necessary for them to appreciate that any application of context and critical thinking was required at all.

Pulp Content and the New York Times’s Dead Palestinian

Local papers use the reports differently, so editors tailor the headlines to fit available space in their print editions. But space considerations are different online.
Which brings me to the New York Times.
During IDF activity in Jenin, soldiers killed a Palestinian holding an IED (improvised explosive device). The New York Times published a condensed version of a longer Reuters report. I don’t have a problem with the wire story, nor do I have any issues with the way the Times whittled it down to a terse, 98-word paragraph.
But I am scratching my head over the Times’s headline.
Here’s the original Reuters headline.
"Israeli troops on West Bank raid kill Hamas man, say he had bomb"
Compare that with the Times’s header. Here’s what editors of America’s top newspaper crafted.
"West Bank: Palestinian is Killed"

Former al-Jazeera America journalist sues over anti-Israel, pro-Arab bias

The former head of Al Jazeera America’s documentary unit has sued the news network, claiming it is biased against non-Arabs and women in stories that it produces and in how it treats employees.
The troubled news network, an offshoot of the international Al Jazeera network, has reached few viewers in the United States. Through lawsuits and resignations over the past two months, a picture has emerged of a place that has consistently fallen short in its efforts to give Americans a hard news, unbiased alternative to CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.
“As ratings failed to live up to the expectations of management, Al Jazeera openly decided to abandon all pretense of neutrality in favor of putting the Arabic viewpoint front and center, openly demanding that programs be aired that criticized countries such as America, Israel and Egypt,” High-Bassalik’s lawsuit stated.
High-Bassalik said that she was told to hire an Arabic woman as a producer even though the person was unqualified and there were several non-Arabs ready for promotion. She claimed that performance ratings for Arabs were systematically upgraded, while non-Arabs saw their ratings go down.
She accused the head of the company’s investigative unit of tweeting that “Israelis are like Hitler.” During coverage of the 2014 conflict in Gaza, she said she was told the mission was to cast Israel as the villain and emphasize the Arab and Muslim point of view. (h/t Ori)

Note to Jon Snow: The Jews fled Iraq decades before the 2003 US invasion

Aziz was sentenced to death for his role as a senior member – and the token Assyrian Christian – of a regime which murdered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. He was a loyal defender of Saddam Hussein until he was overthrown during the Second Gulf War. Nonetheless, Snow defended his comments about Aziz, telling The Independent:
“I think he was made the fall guy by the West. It’s a long time ago. He’s been in prison for a long time. There were plenty of people who needed to go to prison in that regime. He was one of the only ones who were picked off.”
“I just described him as a nice guy. It’s an absolute tragic morass in which everybody has behaved badly. What was the idea of going in and smashing that place? It meant Christians couldn’t stay. It meant Jews couldn’t stay.
Note to Snow: The flight of Iraq’s Jews occurred more than fifty years prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In the 1930s, Iraq’s Jewish population numbered nearly 150,000. However, from 1949 to 1951, 120,000 of Iraq’s Jews left or were evacuated in Israeli Operations Ezra & Nechemia following the end of the British Mandate, when the 2,700-year-old community suffered horrible persecution – including Nuremberg-style legislation stripping Jews of their citizenship and their property.

NBC Foreign Correspondent to Address Leading Anti-Israel Group

An NBC News foreign correspondent is facing criticism for agreeing to be the keynote speaker this Friday at a conference hosted by a group known for its fierce criticism of Israel and affiliation with leading anti-Israel commentators.
NBC News foreign correspondent and MSNBC anchor Ayman Mohyeldin is scheduled to be the keynote speaker Friday evening at a dinner hosted by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which for years has been accused of harboring an anti-Israel bias and of celebrating the Jewish state’s most vociferous critics.
Mohyeldin’s scheduled presence at the conference has sparked criticism from leading pro-Israel organizations and supporters. It is inappropriate, they argue, for a supposedly non-biased newsman to lend his support to an organization with a clear political agenda.
President Barack Obama and several of his senior advisers received similar criticism in 2012, when they filmed messages of support for the ADC and attended its annual conference in Washington, D.C.

British Fascist Group Films Vandalism at Jewish Monument, Uploads Video to YouTube

A fascist group filmed some of its members defacing a Jewish monument at a park in England and uploaded the video to YouTube, British reports said on Wednesday.
In the video, vandals are seen at dusk hoisting a Nazi flag showing the iconic Third Reich swastika over the memorial.
Additionally, the video showed vandals in black hooded sweatshirts stenciling a Star of David with “1%” written in the middle and “bankers” daubed beneath on a concrete wall.
District police launched an investigation after the video was posted by an account linked to a far-right nationalist group.
The group, called National Action, had previously been under investigation by a counter-terrorism unit in the British police, according to the British Mirror.

'Germans Hide Jew-Hatred in Israel-Hatred'

Elias Paz, the emissary for Bnei Akiva and the Jewish Agency in Germany, told Arutz Sheva about a report recently published by the German government, which details that last year there was a whopping 1,000% rise in anti-Israeli crimes and violent assaults, and a 25% rise in anti-Semitic crimes and attacks.
The latter figure includes physical assaults on Jews, as well as vandalistic attacks on synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, in addition to incitement at protests.
According to Paz, the German anti-Semites have found a way to cover their hatred of Jews in an increasingly internationally acceptable camouflage of antagonism against Israel.
"They know that they risk losing their jobs for anti-Semitic statements, so they speak in anti-Israeli terms," he reports. "You meet Germans who speak with you about the conflict with the Palestinians and then you realize that they don't really understand what's happening in the Middle East, but it's more politically correct to speak against Israel."
Paz estimates that the Israelis living in Berlin are deluding themselves into thinking things will be okay.
"They're hanging on to the thought that this is anti-Israeli and not anti-Semitism. But there's no way of knowing what it will develop into," he warned.

The Vanished Stumbling Stones of Villingen

If you have recently traveled to a German city such as Berlin, Hamburg, or Freiburg you may have stumbled across a small brass marker laid into the sidewalk. This Stolperstein, or “stumbling stone,” is the creation of artist Gunter Demnig, who designed the cobblestone-sized memorials to commemorate individuals murdered under Germany’s National-Socialist regime. Each Stolperstein displays the name, birth year, and fate of an individual victim, including the dates of deportation and death, if these are known.
The Stolpersteine project, which began in the early 1990s, has flourished across Europe, with over 40,000 memorials laid not only for Jewish victims, but also for Sinti, Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the disabled, and others. These histories are typically researched by local individuals, often as part of school projects, and each stone is laid by the artist himself at a small ceremony, sometimes attended by surviving relatives. Each stone costs 120 Euros, with all of the costs borne by private donors.
The Stolpersteine are quite distinct from large, centralized monuments such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which stands next to Berlin’s Brandenburg gate. The stones are designed to be part of everyday life and to mark the memory of an individual in the place where he or she lived. But while this individualized form of Holocaust memorial has become very prevalent in Germany, it is not universally accepted.
In Villingen, a German city of about 80,000 located in the Black Forest region, the Stolpersteine created for the 19 Jewish Villingen residents persecuted during the Holocaust are currently not installed in the city streets, but instead are sheltered in the basement of Friedrich Engelke, a retired math professor, and his wife Gabriele, an English teacher.
The town council of Villingen has twice voted to refuse permission to allow these privately funded memorials on public property. The Engelkes and other community members have founded an organization dedicated to placing these memorials where they are designed to go. This pro-Stolpersteine group organizes frequent vigils to keep the fight for the Stolpersteine alive.

Spain passes law of return for Sephardic Jews

Spain’s lower house gave final approval to a law offering citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews Thursday.
Under the law approved Thursday, the Spanish daily El Pais reported, applicants need not travel to Spain, as proposed in previous amendments that did not pass, but must hire a Spanish notary and pass tests on the Spanish language and history.
Applicants can study for the tests and take them at the facilities of the Cervantes Institute, a government entity that offers courses on Spanish culture and its language in over 20 countries, including Israel.
“The procedure for acquiring Spanish nationality regulated in this law will be electronic,” the law reads. “The request will be in Spanish and will be overseen by the General Directorate of Registrars and Notaries.”

Europe’s biggest cyber-tech firm to open center in Israel

In its search for cyber-security innovation, Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Security (SIT) is coming to Israel.
Fraunhofer SIT, the biggest private organization for applied scientific research in Europe, will establish a cyber-security innovation center in Israel, the company announced this week. The project will be officially launched at the end of June, when dozens of German government and business officials will converge on Tel Aviv for events marking the 50th anniversary of Israel-Germany diplomatic relations.
On June 30, Fraunhofer will hold its first Israel event, a cyber-security innovation workshop to be attended by top cyber defense, IT and government officials from Israel and Germany. At the top of the agenda is likely to be a discussion on an incident that has shocked Germany — a major cyber attack on the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament. The attack began over two weeks ago, and apparently is still active, with malware sucking out sensitive information from over 20,000 computers — which, the government believes, may have to be replaced altogether.
Information technology experts in Germany have accused Russia of launching the mass attack, but other than anecdotal evidence — the source code used is similar to that of another infection last year traced to Russia — there’s no solid proof of the allegations.

TripAdvisor CEO says his favorite trip was to Jerusalem

When Stephen Kaufer, the CEO of TripAdvisor, an $11 billion company that runs America’s leading user-generated hotel review website, thinks back to all the places he has visited, one stands out as his favorite. Jerusalem.
“Oh my gosh, looking at all of these amazing structures, the history that you could still visually appreciate from thousands of years ago with modern life going on all around it — I just thought it was magical,” Kaufer said of his 1989 visit to Israel. “It instantly turned into my favorite trip then and ever since.”
The trip is etched in Kaufer’s memory for another reason: It was the honeymoon he took with his young wife, Caroline Lipson Kaufer. She died in 2005 of pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer at age 42, leaving Kaufer with four young kids to raise on his own.
Kaufer, now 52, is not your typical tech company CEO. He’s gray-haired, understated and sounds far more like the droning high school teacher played by Ben Stein in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (“Anyone? Anyone?”) than the head of a public corporation.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth Honors President of Ben Gurion University

Earlier this week, the President of Israel’s Ben Gurion University, Professor Rivka Carmi, was proclaimed an honorary Commander of the British Empire in the name of Queen Elizabeth II. Carmi was honored by Buckingham Palace for her significant work in deepening academic and scientific links between the United Kingdom and Israel.
Professor Carmi, who is a stem cell scientist, was presented with the medal and scroll personally signed by Queen Elizabeth II at the British Ambassador’s Residence in Ramat Gan on Monday, June 9.
“Rivka is an outstanding leader whom I hold in high esteem,” said British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, who presented Carmi with the honor.
“She is also an outstanding and wonderful friend and partner in the mission to build scientific links between the U.K. and Israel. She has invested huge amounts of time to make it happen, and I could not have hoped for a better partner,” said Ambassador Gould.
Both Ambassador Gould and Professor Carmi are founding co-chairs of the U.K. Israel Science Council, which was established five years ago to improve science collaboration between both countries. The U.K. Israel Science Council, a body of some 20 leading U.K. and Israeli scientists, was launched by U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague in November 2010. Hague has described Britain and Israel as “scientific superpowers.”

New IDF Policy Supports Equality for Same-Sex Parents

The IDF recently issued a new policy that ensures that same-sex couples won’t have to simultaneously report for reserve duty. “This new regulation means that in case of a national emergency – I know that my daughters won’t be left at home without a parent,” says Maj. (res.) Etai Pinkas. “As a father, this is very reasuring.”
Previously, direct commanders individually determined the need for postponing reserve duty for same-sex couples. However, following the new policy, same-sex couples with children can now officially claim this right.
“Since I became a father to our twins Gal and Noa five years ago, my commanders have been considerate and understanding with regard to my reserve service,” explains Yoav. “That being said, it’s good to know that from now on it’s official policy. Same-sex parents will no longer be left dependent on their commanders’ judgment.”

Gay Pride revelers take to the streets in Tel Aviv

Some 180,000 people marched through Tel Aviv’s streets Friday in the city’s 17th annual Gay Pride Parade, the nation’s largest and oldest gay pride event.
The parade, boasting trucks bearing DJs, dancers and drag performers, began at 11 a.m. local time as participants gathered at the city’s Meir Park. At noon, marchers began walking down some of the city’s busiest thoroughfares, ending at Charles Clore Park on the Mediterranean beach.
Of the estimated 180,000 participants, 30,000 are tourists, many of whom came to Israel to participate in the march, according to officials.
The event has become one of Tel Aviv’s most popular annual festivals. Streets and stores have been decorated with rainbow flags for days. Thousands of Israelis flocked to the city center to observe the parade, filling cafes and restaurants along the route to capacity.

Mike’s Place: A True Story of Love, Blues and Terror in Tel Aviv

There’s an important new graphic novel coming out next week.
Back in 2003 when filmmaker Jack Baxter first visited Mike’s Place, a beachfront blues bar in Tel Aviv, he envisioned making a documentary about a venue where Jews, Muslims, tourists and expats could gather in peace and leave their differences at the door.
The bar had a rule — no discussing politics or religion — that appealed to the region’s young people who just wanted to let loose and enjoy themselves.
But Baxter couldn’t have predicted that a few weeks into filming, Mike’s Place would be attacked by a suicide bomber. The blast killed three people and left 50 injured, including Baxter. Baxter and Israeli filmmaker Joshua Faudem finished the documentary, “Blues by the Beach,” about the lead-up to the bombing and the bar’s rebirth after the tragedy.
More than a decade later, the filmmakers teamed up with Israeli-born illustrator Koren Shadmi to adapt their experience into a graphic novel. The result is “Mike’s Place: A True Story of Love, Blues and Terror in Tel Aviv,” out Tuesday from First Second Books.

MIKE'S PLACE: A True Story Of Love, Blues, And Terror In Tel Aviv Book Trailer


Terror Victim Ayala Shapira Celebrates Bat Mitzvah Six Months After Near-Fatal Firebomb Attack

On Thursday night, six months after she was severely wounded in a near-fatal terror attack, Ayala Shapira celebrated her bat mitzvah with her family, Israel’s NRG news reported.
The celebration was held on a lawn in the settlement of Ma’ale Shomron, near the Palestinian city of Qalqilya in the West Bank, where Ayala’s family lives. Ayala’s classmates were also invited to the celebration, as were friends she made during her long rehabilitation process.
At the celebration Ayala declined to talk to reporters, but her parents spoke of the difficulties they have faced in the months since the attack.
Ruth, Ayala’s mother, said that, “six months ago we were not sure that we would reach this moment. This is not a mere birthday, this is a very important moment in her life. It is a day with great personal significance.”
Her father, Avner, said Ayala’s condition is continuously improving, even though she is still in the midst of the rehab process, and that she is no longer undergoing dramatic changes in her condition.