Thursday, July 07, 2016
The Great Arab Implosion and Its Consequences
Who or what will replace a century of failed Sunni Arab dominance? What, if anything, can the West do to help shape the future?Why Are American Jews Abandoning Israel?
In 2007, in a seminar room in Jerusalem, a day-long session was devoted to Israeli regional strategic perspectives. I was among the participants together with several other scholars, a former Israeli interior minister, a future Israeli defense minister, and two future Israeli ambassadors to the U.S. At a certain point, the talk turned to various scenarios for the regional future and the opportunities or dangers each of these entailed for Israel. When the possible breakup and partition of Arab states like Iraq or Syria was raised, the near-unanimous response was that this was simply too fantastic a scenario to contemplate.
Now we live that scenario. The great Sunni Arab implosion that began with the 2011 “Arab Spring” was unforeseen in its suddenness, violence, and extent. But some, both inside and outside the Arab world, had long suspected that, sooner or later, a day of reckoning would indeed arrive. (Among Westerners, the names of Bernard Lewis and David Pryce-Jones come most readily to mind.) Today, those in the West who acknowledge this great collapse for what it is will be better able to face the emerging realities. But the first and most important step is to recognize that there is no going back.
Dov Waxman, Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016) 328 pp., $29.95.IsraellyCool: UNRWA Caught With Their Lying Pants On Fire Again
What transpired in Boston distressed the American Jewish community. Yet it didn’t come as a total surprise. The controversial nature of AIPAC is well known, and the unique ideological proclivities of younger American Jews are rapidly becoming better known. What went down the next day in Manhattan, nevertheless, did shock the community—or rather the vast majority of it. On April 20, IfNotNow marched into the lobby of the building that houses the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Around one hundred activists donned shirts reading, “No liberation with occupation,” and belted out songs in Hebrew. This was an arrow straight through the heart, for the ADL is possibly the most cherished institution of “mainstream” American Jewry. Established in 1913 in response to Eastern European pogroms, its slogan is “Imagine a World Without Hate” and its agenda involves advocating not just for a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also for LGBT rights, voting rights, disability rights, immigrants’ rights and women’s reproductive rights.
Many who want Israel to withdraw from the “Palestinian territories” (which, at the moment, usually means the West Bank, including East Jerusalem) also participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). Jews, it’s estimated by various sources, constitute at least 20 percent of the economic-pressuring BDS, which is akin to the campaign once waged against apartheid-era South Africa. Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-BDS nonprofit based in Oakland, California, “is perhaps the fastest-growing Jewish organization on campuses nationwide,” a professor at Brooklyn College posited in the New York Times recently. In a late-March interview on the Michael Medved Show, Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, went so far as to brand BDS “an anti-Jewish movement.” (It’s not a stretch to deduce from Booker’s remark that BDS is anti-Semitic and, hence, Jews involved with it are “self-haters.”)
If this wasn’t enough to raise blood pressure, mainstream American Jews are realizing that they’re vanishing and, as a result, a lot that’s precious is being lost. Spend a day at a Reform temple—about 35 percent of Jews subscribe to Reform Judaism, making it the largest Jewish denominational movement in the United States by a wide margin—and you’ll discover that baby boomer parents and, especially, greatest generation grandparents are alarmed. The sound of thousands of light switches switching off in cavernous sanctuaries across the country rings in their ears—and hearing aids.
Within several generations, perhaps two or three, it’s possible that very few people in the United States not adhering to some variant of “observant” Judaism will readily self-identify as “Jewish.” Pew found that 30 percent of American Jews have no denominational affiliation while 22 percent have “no religion.” Before 1970, intermarriage was under 20 percent among American Jews of all denominations. Since 2000, it’s been over 72 percent among non-Orthodox American Jews. Additionally, and it almost goes without saying, religious ritual, custom and belief drop precipitously in intermarried households. Even Judaism as a “culture,” which in the Land of the Free today means hardly more than an affinity for bagels, sarcasm and social justice, will soon be more common among non-Jews than Jews, if it isn’t already. From coast to coast, mainstream American Jews reared on a love of Israel and a Judaism of progressive values are despondent and desperately eager to understand what’s happening.
Poor Ali Farahat. He needs surgery, but he can’t get out of Gaza.
Well, little does Ali Farahat know, people leave Gaza all the time to take advantage of the many wonderful medical facilities the Zionist Entity has to offer.
All you really need to do is fill out a little paperwork. Hey, us Israelis do it all the time when we need medical care.
And that’s when COGAT Israel, the agency responsible for coordinating civilian issues in the territories, replied to UNRWA’s very disingenuous tweet and accompanying article with 3 simple tweets that not only demolished this lie but turned it into a plea for the public to help Ali’s parents issue the paperwork necessary to facilitate his treatment.
Hillary Campaign Slams Top Advisor’s Son For Smearing Elie Wiesel. But They’re Full Of It.
On Tuesday, the Clinton campaign on Tuesday ripped the vicious comments made by anti-Israel Jewish journalist Max Blumenthal, the son of Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, regarding the late Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor who died on Saturday.Another Democrat Trashes Elie Wiesel: 'Holocaust Whore'
Jake Sullivan, senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton, told The Jerusalem Post, “Secretary Clinton emphatically rejects these offensive, hateful, and patently absurd statements about Elie Wiesel.”
Factor in Hillary Clinton’s own dubious record regarding Israel, as this is the same woman who once hugged Yasser Arafat’s wife after Suha Arafat claimed Israel was using poison gas to pollute Judea and Samaria’s water and land. Factor in Clinton’s cozy relationship with Huma Abedin, whose mother, Saleha, as Andrew McCarthy noted in National Review, was “a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s female division (the ‘Muslim Sisterhood’), and a major figure in not one but two Union for Good components. The first is the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief (IICDR). It is banned in Israel for supporting Hamas under the auspices of the Union for Good.”
Factor in the consistent anti-Israel advice Hillary Clinton receives from friends and advisors. Put all of it together and it becomes patently obvious that the Clinton campaign’s public efforts to distance themselves from Max Blumenthal are a poor fig leaf to cover Hillary Clinton’s own inherent anti-Semitism.
Another prominent Democrat has trashed Elie Wiesel — the Holocaust survivor, author, and Nobel Peace laureate who died on Saturday. Dorothy Reik, president of the Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains and a member of the Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee, wrote an email quoting a reference to Wiesel as a “Holocaust whore” and adding: “I had met people who made their livings from the holocaust [sic] but never to the extent that Wiesel did.”How James Zogby Seduced Liberal America
Reik had been defending Max Blumenthal, the virulently anti-Israel writer and son of Hillary Clinton adviser Sid Blumenthal, who had tweeted: “Elie Wiesel is dead. He spent his last years inciting hatred, defending apartheid & palling around with fascists.” Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton’s campaign distanced itself from Blumenthal’s statements.
In her email, Reik also wrote:
Sadly I have to agree with Max Blumenthal. I hope that people on this list do not use this as an excuse to attack my friends and associates, most of whom probably do not agree with me. Why do I post this at all? Because I think it is the truth and so I am compelled to speak out so that we are wary of others who are honored as peacemakers but are not.
In 2014, Reik, an anti-war activist, was honored by local Democrats for her effort to “move the party in a progressive direction, focusing on electing Democrats who will move on such issues as the environment, economic justice, and peace.” According to the Malibu Democratic Club, Reik “has taken a leading role in influencing policy in the Democratic Party.”
This column originally appeared at Forward.Trump Praised Saddam Hussein for Killing Terrorists. In Reality, the Iraqi Dictator Paid Them Lavishly for Killing Jews.
While pro-Israel Democrats might feel relieved that their Party platform committee rejected language calling for “an end to occupation and illegal settlements” proposed by James Zogby, the committee did vote to express support for Palestinian rights.
This was welcomed by J Street’s Jeremy Ben Ami, who called it “an important step forward” and can be seen to mark yet another step in President Obama’s program to put “daylight” between America and Israel. Indeed, the inclusion of Palestinian rights language is a milestone in a decades-long campaign to steadily pry American liberals away from Israel. It is a campaign envisioned by James Zogby.
Zogby is head of the Arab-American Institute and his place on the platform committee was secured by Bernie Sanders, who also was able to install Cornell West, another virulent critic of Israel.
Recently discovered footage, recorded sometime in the 1990s, shows how stunningly prescient James Zogby has been. Several decades ago, few could imagine the Democratic Party becoming sympathetic to the Arab side of the conflict. Much less could it then be imagined that there would emerge a Jewish leader like Ben Ami, whose organization would lobby America to force Israeli concessions that its democratically elected government has expressly rejected.
In the video we see Zogby explaining to a Jordanian interviewer just how the Arabs in America can defeat the pro-Israel Jews by capitalizing on the growing influence of social justice movements within the American political scene. The interviewer scoffs at the notion that “powerful Jews” — who, he imagines, control American politics and its media — could be defeated by a small number of American Arabs.
On Tuesday night, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump repeated one of his few consistent foreign policy views. Speaking in North Carolina, the mogul said, “Saddam Hussein was a bad guy … but you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good.”John Bolton: On Saddam Hussein, Donald Trump Is Dead Wrong
Unlike most of Trump’s positions, he has actually been consistent on this one. The candidate previously valorized Hussein’s purported counterterror prowess in New Hampshire back in January 2014, then repeated the claim again on Fox News in December 2015.
Like a great many things Trump says, however, this assertion is not only incorrect, but the opposite of the truth—as any Israeli would tell you. To begin with, Hussein infamously terrorized hundreds of thousands of Israel’s civilians in 1991 by rocketing Tel Aviv and Haifa with scud missiles during the Gulf War—even though Israel was not a party to the conflict. (He was cynically attempting to provoke an Israeli entry into the war to break up the Arab coalition against him, and used the lives of innocent Israelis as pawns in his sadistic game.)
Hussein also personally bankrolled Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians. As numerous media outlets reported in 2002, the Iraqi dictator issued scores of payouts to the families of suicide bombers for sums reaching $25,000. Hussein’s incentives appeared to have an impact. As CBS reported in April 2002: “Since Iraq upped its payments last month, 12 suicide bombers have successfully struck inside Israel, including one man who killed 25 Israelis, many of them elderly, as they sat down to a meal at a hotel to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover. The families of three suicide bombers said they have recently received payments of $25,000.”
Given its length, the Chilcot report will address many subjects. One that will likely receive minimal attention will be the actual overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, a military success of stunning scope and effectiveness, achieved in just three weeks. By eliminating Saddam’s threat to Middle Eastern peace and security, the 2003 invasion fully justified itself. Leaving him in power would have all but guaranteed further conflict with other Arab states, and a resumed quest for weapons of mass destruction.Trump’s son-in-law: He’s ‘tolerant,’ couldn’t have intended anti-Semitism
But rather than considering the alternative history of Saddam still pursuing WMD and threatening Israel and the region’s oil-producing monarchies, we will hear again about “dodgy dossiers” and US/UK intelligence failures regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities. I will make only two points on intelligence issues.
First, intelligence can underestimate as well as overestimate a threat. UN inspectors in 1991 were stunned how close Iraq was to producing nuclear weapons before its programme was dismantled. Remember Eisenhower’s famous contingency note in case the D-Day invasion failed: “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available.”
Second, as America’s Silberman-Robb Commission stressed (in March, 2005, no less), the critical error regarding chemical weapons was believing Saddam’s post-1991 declarations of extensive stockpiles. Iraq resisted repeated UN efforts to verify its claim of destroying its chemical weapons, leading everyone, from Hans Blix to Tony Blair to conclude in 2003 the opposite. In fact, Saddam lied about his capabilities and about trashing them. Had he stayed in power, he would today have even larger chemical stockpiles. His “nuclear mujahideen,” the 3,000 scientists and technicians he had retained, would have recreated his nuclear-weapons programme.
Jared Kushner, the Jewish son-in-law of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, has denied an accusation that he knowingly ignored anti-Semitic symbolism in a recent tweet by his father-in-law.Pat Condell: Meet the British pensioner whose outspoken views on Islam, feminism and political correctness have racked up more than 60 million views (and a few death threats)
Kushner, the owner of the New York Observer, was responding to an open letter penned by a writer at the paper, accusing him of pandering to white supremacists and of “playing dumb” on an image tweeted out by Trump claiming corruption by his rival Hillary Clinton alongside a six-pointed star reminiscent of a Star of David.
Trump later deleted the image, but many considered it to be the latest in a series of messages from his campaign with anti-Semitic undertones.
Kushner is heavily involved in Trump’s presidential campaign, as is his wife, Ivanka Trump.
In a press statement, Kushner seemed to deny ignoring the anti-Semitic messaging of the controversial tweet, insisting Trump was too tolerant to have ever intended the suspected racist message.
“My father-in-law is an incredibly loving and tolerant person who has embraced my family and our Judaism since I began dating my wife. I know that Donald does not subscribe to any racist or anti-Semitic thinking,” the statement said.
Kushner’s statement continued: “I have personally seen him embrace people of all racial and religious backgrounds. The suggestion that he may be intolerant is not reflective of the Donald Trump I know.”
A British pensioner who boasts 'I don't care if you are offended' has become an unlikely hit on YouTube for his outspoken opinions on controversial issues.Edgar Davidson: Theresa May banned American bloggers from entering the UK because they were 'pro-Israel'
Pat Condell, 66, has 275,000 subscribers and has racked up more than 64 million views of his dead-pan monologues on issues including Islam, feminism, the EU and political correctness.
But Mr Condell, who was born in Ireland and lives in London, has attracted lots of criticism, from being called an 'old fart' to receiving death threats.
One of his videos entitled ‘Welcome to Saudi Britain’ was removed by YouTube.
However, the video-sharing website said it had taken down the post 'erroneously' and it was soon reinstated, a move that was applauded by famous atheist Richard Dawkins.
His most-popular video is entitled ‘No Mosque At Ground Zero’ and has over six million views.
In 2013 I wrote extensively about the banning of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller from the UK. As part of their subsequent lawsuit against the UK Government, Spencer and Geller received documents confirming that their pro-Israel views had been a major factor in the decision to ban them.
It is important to note that Theresa May who - according to just about everybody - is shortly going to become the next British Prime Minister, is the person who was responsible for this decision as Home Secretary. Who needs Jeremy Corbyn......
Sharansky: France makes sincere efforts to protect Jews
Revisiting what he defined as uncertainty over French Jewry’s future, Natan Sharansky said Jews are increasingly feeling uncomfortable in France despite the government’s best efforts to protect them.Toronto teacher calls a terrorist who killed a 4 year old Israeli girl a “hero”
Sharansky, head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, addressed the subject in a letter he sent Tuesday to his organization’s board of governors following its meeting last week in Paris. The event was held in the Paris capital for the first time as a sign of solidarity with French Jews following terrorist and anti-Semitic attacks on that community in the past few years.
His letter said that media reports covering the event saying Sharansky believes the community has no future do not accurately capture the issue’s complexity.
“For several years now, I have been speaking and writing about the question mark that hovers over the future of the French Jewish community and of Jewish communities elsewhere in Europe,” Sharansky wrote. “The issue is complex, and I have always been careful to state that it is best represented by a question mark.”
In the past two years, Israel has seen the arrival of a record 15,000 immigrants from France, which in 2014 for the first time emerged as Israel’s single largest provider of newcomers – a position it retained in 2015. Sharansky has attributed the influx to a convergence of factors, including France’s anti-Semitism problem, its near-stagnant economy and the strong attachment of French Jews to Israel.
Nadia Shoufani, a Toronto teacher, was one of the speakers at the annual pro Iranian Islamic Al-Quds Day Rally in Toronto which was held on Saturday, July 2, 2016 in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in support of the call of Iranian regime to oppose Zionism and Israel’s right to exist.Playing to Our Strengths Against BDS
A graduate of the American University of Beirut and a former employee at UNRWA, Shoufani is a teacher for Special Education, ESL, Literacy and Science at Dufferin-Peel District School Board. “Ms. Shoufani” is mentioned as a SERT/ESL teacher at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic School in Mississauga. Nadia Shoufani is also affiliated with the Palestine Solidarity Movement and Actions4Palestine and is a director at the Arab Canadian Cultural Association.
In her speech at AL-Quds Day rally, Shoufani expressed her support of the Palestinian struggle “in any form possible” to liberate “all Palestine”, meaning the destruction of the State of Israel. The following are excerpts from Shoufani’s speech accompanied with CIJnews comments:
In contrast, when it comes to fighting BDS, no one organization has been handed (or earned for themselves) that portfolio, which means responsibility for dealing with the problem tends to fall to different individuals and organizations, often working together in coalition. Such coalitions can be extremely effective, even powerful, but they tend to not be nimble given the need to get many groups with differing opinions and agendas on the same page before plans can be agreed upon and then executed.Jewish Oxford Students Slam Labour for ‘Sweeping Issue of Campus Antisemitism Under the Carpet’
Israel’s domestic foes have even bigger problems forming coalitions, given that they represent the same kind of unstable alliances one finds among Israel’s nation-state enemies. But the guerilla tactics that define BDS, which leverage contemporary distributed/network politics, tend to minimize these disadvantages, at least during any one BDS battle where the enemy is able to put aside differences to achieve a specific, time-bound end (such as winning a divestment vote in a student government, or launching a boycott campaign at a local food coop).
Lack of unified command on our side means the response to one of these guerilla-style campaigns can be delayed as pro-Israel individuals and organizations struggle to figure out how to respond and determine who should take point. This delay is compounded further since people on the ground (such as pro-Israel college students or food coop members) are often inexperienced and struggle to determine what to do or whom to turn to, or have to navigate offers of help from people and groups they might know little to nothing about.
The recent string of anti-BDS votes within state governments (best described as the success of the BDS movement in getting sanctions enacted – against them!) represents the community’s success in outflanking our opponents by fighting where we are strong and the opposition weak. Even so, it would be nice to couple this momentum with success on other battlefields, especially college campuses where anti-Israel groups (and sentiment) seem to dominate.
To devise tactics that can confound and defeat our rivals, however, we must first fully understand the weapons the forces of BDS bring to the battlefield, a subject we will turn to next.
Two leading Jewish student organizations at the University of Oxford slammed Britain’s Labour Party on Tuesday for failing to keep its promise to address allegations of antisemitism in its recently completed inquiry into the matter.DA investigating anti-Jewish protest at UCI
In a joint statement by the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) and Oxford Jewish Society (J-Soc), the two groups said that, following the results of the Chakrabarti Inquiry — named after the controversial head of the investigation, Shami Chakrabarti — “It is evident that the Labour Party have swept the issue of alleged antisemitism within Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) under the carpet.”
As reported by The Algemeiner, Labour launched an investigation in response to the resignation of OULC co-chairman Alex Chalmers in February 2015, after he claimed that a vast number of the group’s members “have some kind of problem with Jews.”
The inquiry into the OULC — led by Labour peer Baroness Janet Royall — did not find evidence of “institutional antisemitism,” but said the club now faces “difficulties” in making Jewish students feel welcome. Royall also issued recommendations for Labour, saying those expelled from the party for antisemitism should not be permanently barred, since “people may change their views.” She called on the party to adopt “a definition of antisemitism” and issue new policies aimed at “swifter action” against claims of antisemitism. Only the executive summary and recommendations of the OULC report were published.
A local District Attorney’s office is now investigating the University of California, Irvine’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter over its hostile takeover of a Jewish event on campus in May.CAMERA Op-Ed in Washington Examiner Notes Palestinian Incitement
Campus Reform had initially reported the story that a group of Jewish students at UCI was effectively held hostage by an aggressive mob purportedly consisting of anti-Israel students organized by SJP, who surrounded the Jewish students as they chanted “Intifada, Intifada, long live the Intifada.”
“Email the district attorney now and demand that he drop the charges.”
In response, 36 local and national Jewish and civil rights advocacy groups sent an open letter to UCI’s administration condemning the incident as just the latest in a “long-standing and pervasive problem of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism that has incited hatred of Jews and acts of aggression and violence against Jewish and pro-Israel students.”
Although UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman did respond to the letter, he refused to acknowledge any sort of deep-seated or historical problem of Jew-hatred on his campus.
Now, however, the case has been passed along by a third party to the Orange County District Attorney’s office for further investigation into whether any criminal behavior occurred during the SJP protest, DA spokesperson Roxi Fyad confirmed with Campus Reform.
UCI told Campus Reform that its student affairs office is currently conducting a simultaneous investigation of the case, but noted that its police officers did not pass their findings along to the District Attorney.
(Note: A version of this article was published as an Op-Ed by the Washington Examiner on July 6, 2016 under the headline "Missing the Palestinian after-terror after party")Reuters' Luke Baker Spins An Article About the Quartet's Report Into a Propaganda Piece
After two Palestinian Arab cousins murdered four Israelis and wounded 16 others in a terrorist attack in a Tel Aviv shopping center, Arabs in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Gaza Strip celebrated with fireworks and by handing out free food. The June 8, 2016 assault itself received considerable—if sometimes flawed—coverage. But, the Palestinian after-terror after party was ignored by media that frequently underreport anti-Jewish incitement.
A Lexis-Nexis search of U.S. print news outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, The Baltimore Sun and The Los Angeles Times, among others, failed to show examples of Palestinian celebrations.
Some, such as The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun, noted an Associated Press report that Hamas—the U.S. designated terror group that rules the Gaza Strip—praised the attack as a “heroic operation.” No additional details were provided and the full scope of Palestinian jubilation went unreported. However, such information was available.
In an interview with Fox News on the night of the attack, Israeli Police Superintendent Micky Rosenfeld said, “Unfortunately, within the West Bank area we have seen Palestinians celebrating this attack. Meanwhile here in Israel…we will be mourning for a week over the people that were lost—and we are talking about four innocent people that were shot to death, literally shot and killed at close range for no reason whatsoever.”
With language unbefitting a journalist, the bureau chief suggests that "Israel was set for a serious ticking off." But what foiled the condemnation, according to the reporter, citing more anonymous "officials", is that Netanyahu was "determined to talk the Quartet down" and so he met with Russian President Putin, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.AP’s Messy Math
"Israel is effective at pulling the strings," Baker quotes yet another anonymous official as saying, as if to imply that Israel should have and would have been condemned were it not for its leader’s wheeling and dealing.
"In the end, after weeks of delay," Baker laments, "the report was mild in the extreme. Israeli settlement-building was criticized but not called illegal. The prime focus was on Palestinian incitement."
Aside from cherry-picking statements by anonymous officials and diplomats to reflect Baker’s own apparent negative views of Israel, the only named people he quotes are Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Nikolay Mladenov, both of whom are partisan players.
Erekat is quoted to express "outrage" about the report, as Baker puts it, while Mladenov is quoted "to express frustration that the Quartet's report had not been harder hitting." The reporter bolsters the Palestinian politician's view by suggesting "there is a fair degree of sympathy" for it. Among whom? Baker does not specify.
The reporter ends by complaining that "Mladenov's passionately argued piece" criticizing Israel did not receive enough attention. Baker's article was presumably meant to remedy that.
In an article on Israel’s response to recent attacks, the Associated Press vastly under-counts Palestinian terrorist attacks. The AP writes:BBC Persian promotes egregious falsehood in report on Elie Wiesel’s death
Palestinians have carried out dozens of attacks since September, killing 34 Israelis and two visiting Americans. Some 200 Palestinians were killed during the same period.
How many attacks have Palestinians carried out during this time period? According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
There have been 155 stabbing attacks (including 76 attempted attacks), 96 shootings, 45 vehicular (ramming) attacks and one vehicle (bus) bombing.
That is a total of 297 attacks. In the AP’s language, that would be almost 25 dozen.
In addition, the AP seems to disconnect Palestinian deaths from these attacks. The news wire service simply says how many Palestinians were killed during the “same period.” But unless it directly states that the vast majority of Palestinians killed have been terrorists neutralized by Israelis defending themselves, it creates the impression that Israel is acting with vastly disproportionate force against innocent Palestinians — something very far from the truth.
A member of the public recently alerted us to an inaccuracy in an article concerning the death of Elie Wiesel which appeared on the BBC Persian website on July 2nd.BBC Persian Wiesel artBBC News coverage of terrorism in Israel – June 2016
The final paragraph of that article tells readers that in 2014, during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, Elie Wiesel accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. A translation of that paragraph (confirmed by a professional Farsi translator) reads as follows:
“Two years ago, Elie Wiesel, together with 300 Holocaust survivors, criticised Israel because of its attack on Gaza, and accused the Israeli government of genocide.”
Elie Wiesel made no such accusation and did not put his name to that statement advertised by IJAN (International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network) in the New York Times. In fact, the IJAN statement included direct criticism of Wiesel and was made in response to an earlier advertisement criticising Hamas’ use of human shields which was put out by Wiesel himself.
The BBC should be familiar with the facts behind that story: after all, it took it upon itself to amplify that IJAN statement extensively at the time. Clearly the falsehood promoted by BBC Persian requires immediate retraction and prominent correction.
The Israel Security Agency’s report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during June 2016 shows that throughout the month a total of 103 incidents took place: 71 in Judea & Samaria, 29 in Jerusalem, two inside the ‘green line’ and one incident originating from the Gaza Strip.CNN explains U-turn to list Tel Aviv terror attack in graphic
The agency recorded 86 attacks with petrol bombs. Two shooting attacks, 10 attacks using explosive devices, one vehicular attack and one stabbing attack took place in Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem. One stabbing attack and one shooting attack occurred inside the ‘green line’. Along the border with the Gaza Strip one shooting attack took place.
Five Israeli civilians were murdered in Palestinian terror attacks during June. Twenty-one people (mostly civilians) were wounded: fifteen in the shooting attack in Tel Aviv on June 8th, one during the attack in Kiryat Arba on June 30th, two in a stabbing attack in Netanya on June 30th, two in a vehicular attack in Kiryat Arba on June 25th and one soldier was wounded by a petrol bomb in Issawiya on June 29th.
The BBC News website covered the shooting attack at Sarona Market in Tel Aviv on June 8th and produced a follow-up article the next day, the third version of which included the names, ages and genders of the four people murdered.
News network CNN has updated a graphic it featured this week listing some of the deadliest terror attacks that occurred throughout the month of Ramadan to include reference to the July 8 shooting attack in Tel Aviv.Micromedic jumps after cancer diagnosis trial success
An advocacy group for Israel, Stand With Us, pointed out the update on its social media, claiming that "criticism" led to the change.
But the graphic does not include reference to several other attacks that have occurred within Israel and the Palestinian territories, including the fatal stabbing of a teenage girl in her bedroom and the murder of a father in front of his wife and kids.
CNN offered The Jerusalem Post comment to explain the decision of which attacks to include in the graphic.
"We included the attack in Tel Aviv on June 8 that killed four people, because, in line with the other terror attacks listed on the map, we felt rose to the level of a large scale, mass terror attack," said Allison Gollust, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of CNN Worldwide.
"The other four that you mention, while of course horrible incidents, we did not feel rose to the level of Tel Aviv and the others on the map in terms of style of attack and number of casualties, which is why they were not included in our count."
Micromedic Technologies Ltd.'s (TASE:MCTC) share price skyrocketed over 75% today, after the company reported positive results in a trial of its prostate cancer diagnosis solution from a urine sample using the CellDetect technology developed by its Zetiq Technologies subsidiary .Israeli Wildlife Hospital Builds World’s First Blood Bank for Birds
The trial results showed that when the CellDetect technology was used to diagnose samples from 18 patients and healthy subjects, both groups were accurately diagnosed.
The company believes that development of this non-invasive test is likely to improve diagnosis of prostate cancer, avoid unnecessary biopsies, and save the health system hundreds of thousands of costly tests.
Micromedic is a biotech company that invests in diagnostic and treatment research. The company's current market cap (after the today's rise) is NIS 13.8 million, after losing 60% since the beginning of the year.
The Israeli Wildlife Hospital (IWH) is opening the first bird blood bank in the world to be used for migrating birds, especially birds of prey, who are found injured or exhausted in Israeli territory.The vast potential of Israel-Africa
Like humans, birds have different blood types. The project to create a blood bank for birds is the brainchild of Dr. Elad Smit, who said the Israeli blood bank already has 16 samples.
“Now we’re considering taking a blood sample from every bird we treat, to aid in the saving of the next bird that would come,” he said, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
So far, the blood bank has helped a common buzzard, which was given a blood transfusion and was later released back into the wild after it recovered.
As a proud Israeli who loves speaking of and for my country, it’s utterly refreshing to arrive in a place where, at the mention of my nationality, I am met with smiles, and welcomed warmly. This is no dream — it’s my experience in Africa.StandWithUs+: To Save a Life
Over the past two and a half years, I have been engaging in business development as the chief of staff of a private holdings and investment group currently in its fourth decade of operations there (and whose managing partner also serves as Rwanda’s honorary consul in Israel). In over 30 months, I have travelled around the continent more times than I can recall, having visited about a dozen countries and having met with public officials and business leaders from about a dozen more. This is the reality I am met with, each and every single time. Indeed it is a stark contrast from my preceding eight-year military service, most of which I served as a spokesman (including that of IDF operations in the West Bank, no less), constantly facing criticism and derision.
Africa. A continent that is second only to Asia in geographic size and population. A continent that is diverse, comprised of fifty-four independent, sovereign nations, each with its own history, culture, government, strategy, policy, opportunities and aspirations, challenges and threats. A continent that is hailed as being the most relevant place for business and investment today (with returns hovering around 20%), while also becoming a main battleground in the global war on Islamic terror (the rise of Boko Haram, Al Shabab, and the like). Africa has long been on the map for most of the countries of the world, and yet for Israel, despite the warm receptions, friendly attitude, and endless possibilities, it has, for decades, been all but completely forgotten in terms of strategic policy, whether diplomacy, security, foreign relations, trade, or investment.
What are the protocols and values which guide the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli medical teams when it comes to war?
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