PMW: Nazareth municipality has school children honor murderer of 3 Israelis
Last week, the municipality of Nazareth, a predominantly Arab town in Israel headed by Israeli-Arab Mayor Ali Salam, held an event that glorified terrorist murderer Baha Alyan who together with an accomplice murdered 3 Israelis on a bus in Jerusalem last year. "Hundreds of elementary and high school students and young men and women of all ages" participated in the event organized by Nazareth municipality and the Inma'a Association for Democracy and Capacity Building. [Al-Quds, Dec. 11, 2016]UK Limits Aid to Palestinians Following Terror Financing Scandal
At the event, the coordinator Saeb Masawrah from Inma'a stated that the chain was a "completion of the message of Martyr Baha Alyan" and that the "Nazareth municipality supported the project":
"'We saw fit to establish the largest and longest chain of readers in the city of Nazareth as a completion of the message of Martyr Baha Alyan who came out of Jerusalem. We are gathering here in order to emphasize our unity as Arabs everywhere, and we will complete the message in all of the Arab cities and villages.' Masawrah noted that the Nazareth municipality supported the project and welcomed the cultural idea."
[Al-Quds, Dec. 11, 2016,]
Before Baha Alyan's terror attack, in which he murdered 3 innocent Israeli civilians, he had once established a readers' chain in Jerusalem. It is under this pretext that Nazareth honored him. However, his public legacy is one of murder.
The United Kingdom issued new guidelines on Friday limiting the foreign aid it gives to the Palestinian Authority following reports that the money was being used to pay salaries to terrorists and their families.Amona residents take deal, avert forced evacuation
The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) announced that the Palestinian Authority will continue to receive British aid money “in order to maintain stability, provide vital services and build and strengthen the institutions needed for a viable two-state solution.” However, “key changes” have been made regarding how and to whom the money will be distributed.
1. UK support will now focus solely on vital health and education services, in order to meet the immediate needs of the Palestinian people and maximise value for money. Funding will only go towards the salaries of health and education public servants on a vetted list.
2. UK funds will no longer be used to support the salaries of Palestinian Authority public servants in Gaza who have not been able to work.
3. The UK will assess fiscal and public financial management reforms that the Palestinian Authority will need to show progress against in order to secure full future payments from the UK.
According to the FCO, Palestinian aid will now be directed through the European Union’s PEGASE mechanism (Palestinian-European Socio-Economic Management Assistance Mechanism), which will provide a list of qualified individuals limited to the health and education sectors. Those on the vetted list will be “checked by independent auditors” for risk factors including terror financing.
In a move likely to quell fears of a violent showdown between settlers and security forces, residents of Amona voted Sunday to evacuate their outpost peacefully, accepting a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would see 24 families moved to an adjacent plot of land while the rest set up in nearby Ofra.
The state said earlier that it would request an extension for the evacuation notice — set for December 25 — which the High Court is likely to accept, in order to allow time for the implementation of the compromise deal.
The residents voted 45 in favor of the proposal, with 25 opposed and two abstentions. A few hours later, cabinet ministers embraced it in a unanimous vote.
The last-ditch effort to prevent the forced evacuation of Amona, presented Saturday night, was built on a previous proposal, rejected by the settlers last week, that would have seen only half as many families remain on the hilltop.
Under the agreement, presented by Netanyahu, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Yossi Dagan, head of the Shomron Regional Council, 24 of Amona’s 40 families would receive mobile homes on a plot just meters from the outpost — as opposed to the 12 in last week’s offer — while the remaining families would be given temporary residences in Ofra.
IsraellyCool: The Arabs Who Aren’t Indigenous And Jews Who Are
The resistance to Jews living in Judea and Samaria is ideological as we’ve said many times. There’s no shortage of space, especially north of Jerusalem (where Amona sits) the hills are largely empty. While Jews in those areas live mostly in humble and some would say shabby homes, you can see some astonishing Arab homes out there.Canadian tourist among 7 killed in Jordan shooting attack
The following video shows you Arab homes built in Samaria. These homes are visible from Route 60 when one drives to reach Amona and Ofra. There’s a Hebrew voiceover about the phenomenon of so many Arabs leaving the area but maintaining palatial holiday homes. The video also contains some interviews with these ex-pat Arabs in English. I’ll put a version of the accompanying story below.
I agree with the gentleman getting a shave: it is easier for both Jews and Arabs to make a living in the US or outside of Israel. Making money in this country is hard. You’ve got to be pretty lucky to be able to afford houses like that based on what you can earn in Israel. I’m sure these people also feel an affinity to this land: but there is nothing like the 3000 years of Jewish connection to Israel in their history.
Jews are returning to Israel, even from a more comfortable life in the USA or elsewhere. The pull of being and living and breathing an indigenous life is very strong and helps overcome the discomforts and deprivations of giving up the relative financial ease of living elsewhere. This is something, perhaps, those more distant from religion and belief don’t understand. The power of living a life that’s been in our souls for millennia is incredibly rewarding, way beyond a new BMW or a fancy house.
Gunmen killed seven people including a Canadian tourist and police officers on Sunday in southern Jordan, where security forces were hunting down the unidentified attackers.Trump donated $10,000 to West Bank settlement of Beit El, founder says
The shootings took place in Karak, a tourist destination known for one of the biggest Crusader castles in the region, around 120 kilometers (70 miles) south of the capital Amman.
Jordan’s general security department said four policemen, a female Canadian tourist and two Jordanian civilians were killed in a series of shootings. Several other people were reported wounded.
The first attack took place when a police patrol went to check on a fire that had broken out in a house in Karak, the department said.
“As soon as they reached the area, unknown gunmen who were inside the house opened fire on the patrol, wounding a policeman, and then fled by car,” it said in a statement carried by the official Petra news agency.
“Shortly afterward, gunmen opened fire on another patrol without causing any casualties,” it added.
At the same time, gunmen holed up in the Crusader castle opened fire on the Karak police station, “wounding several policemen and passers-by” who were rushed to hospital, the statement added.
US president-elect Donald Trump made a $10,000 donation to the West Bank settlement of Beit El in 2003, a leader of the Ramallah-area community revealed on Sunday.The NYT Is Having a Meltdown Over Trump’s Israel Nominee
Former MK and Beit El Founder Yaakov Katz told the Galey Israel radio station that Trump’s gift was made in honor of his friend David Friedman, who went on to become his adviser and whom Trump last week nominated as the next US ambassador to Israel.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret: When Friedman was our guest of honor at a fundraiser years ago, incoming president Trump sent us a donation of $10,000,” Katz said.
Friedman serves as president of American Friends of Bet El Institutions, an organization that raises millions of dollars each year to support the large settlement.
“I had no idea that one day he would become president, otherwise I would have saved that check,” Katz added.
He clarified that Trump’s contribution was designated for the building of a yeshiva in Beit El, and not for the expansion of the community itself.
For a moment this week it felt as if the sneering, embittered media hysteria surrounding Donald Trump was starting ever so slightly to subside. But not so fast. The New York Times, the paper of record of urban liberal contempt for Deplorable America, discovered a fresh new outrage: Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel.HonestReporting: Media Get US Settlement Policy Wrong
David Friedman is a prominent and successful attorney in New York who has spent 20 years representing Donald Trump, among other clients. He is also a proud Jew who holds unapologetic pro-Israel views that are heretical in Times-world, and he has also expressed acid disdain for the kind of Jewish anti-Israel activism regularly glorified in the pages of the Times.
So he must be destroyed—and to destroy him he must be lied about. Which is what the Times did.
The report, by Matthew Rosenberg, is a caricature of political frustration and resentment masquerading as news. The headline, of course, is “Trump Chooses Hard-Liner As Ambassador to Israel,” the phrase “hard-liner” being an all-purpose Times denigration of anyone who holds political views anathema to liberals, but never as a description of liberals who hold views anathema to conservatives.
Friedman, Rosenberg writes, is “a bankruptcy lawyer aligned with the Israeli far right” who “did not wait long on Thursday to signal his intention to upend the American approach” to Israel. He has “no diplomatic experience” and “could end up undercutting the security of Israel and the United States and condemn ‘the Palestinians to further disenfranchisement and dispossession.’” (The quote is from the anti-Israel activist Daniel Levy, who helped found J Street, an important detail that Rosenberg curiously omitted.)
It’s a common misconception that the United States considers Jewish settlements in the West Bank to be illegal.AFP, NBC Also Err on 'Palestinian Land'
This is incorrect. In fact, the US government does not consider Jewish settlements to be illegal. It considers them to be objectionable, calling them “obstacles to peace” and prejudicial to the outcome of final status talks and questions their legitimacy. It has not, however, called them illegal.
However, some media reports on Donald Trump’s proposed US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman have repeated the error.
In addition to NPR, this weekend Agence France Presse and MSNBC also incorrectly identify the disputed West Bank as "Palestinian land."BBC omits key context in account of potential US embassy move
Using partisan language, AFP today refers to some Israelis who "view Trump's victory as an opportunity to expand settlements in the West Bank, Palestinian land occupied by Israel for nearly 50 years" ("Israelis look past anti-Semitism after Trump win," emphasis added.)
On Dec. 16, NBC's Katy Tur, reporting on Andrea Mitchell Report, also tripped up on the tendentious claim that the disputed West Bank is "Palestinian land."
Just over four minutes into her report, Tur defines "settlers" for listeners as "Jews who are settling their homes in the West Bank which is, has been, Palestinian."
Identifying the land as "Palestinian" completely endorses one side's political claims over the other side's claims in what is, in reality, an unresolved dispute. (Given AFP's employment of reporter Nasser Abu Baker, who leads the boycott against Israeli journalists and recently ran for the Fatah Revolutionary Council, in a gross conflict of interest and violation of journalistic ethics, the agency's unabashed bias regarding the so-called "Palestinian land" is hardly surprising, though certainly not excusable.)
However, the report refrains from informing BBC audiences that previous US presidential candidates – both Republican and Democrat – pledged to do the same during their election campaigns.France postpones peace summit over 'unfavorable' conditions
“Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both promised during their presidential campaigns to move the embassy to Jerusalem. Both later backed away from those promises, convinced by Middle East experts that doing so would prejudge negotiations for a final settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Neither are readers informed of the existence of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act and the related bi-annual presidential wavers.
“Every president since the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 was passed by Congress has signed the waiver every six months, determining the delay is necessary “to protect the national security interests of the United States.””
Whether or not the US embassy in Israel will be moved to Jerusalem under the Trump administration remains to be seen, but obviously the president elect’s statement on the topic is in no way as novel as this report implies. BBC audiences have clearly not been provided with the full range of information which would enable the proper understanding of this story.
The international peace conference France planned to hold later this month in Paris will be postponed to January, French Ambassador to the U.N. Francois Delattre said Friday, noting that the two sides are still too far apart to resume peace talks.UK police probe minorities advocate over anti-Semitic slurs
"After nearly a year of efforts, France will hold in January an international conference bringing together all the states seeking peace," Delattre told the U.N. Security Council. "Everyone knows that only the Israelis and Palestinians will be able to conclude a peace directly, but we have to recognize that the conditions are not in place today to restart negotiations," Delattre told the council and warned that the two-state solution might "continue to disappear like a mirage in the desert" if no progress was made.
Delattre stopped short of announcing any new dates on Friday, and did not say whether France would try to arrange an Israeli-Palestinian summit. The fact that President-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2017 may have also played a role in France's decision to postpone the conference
A man whose supposed European body represents ethnic minorities — except for Jews — has been reported to the police for anti-Semitic comments on Facebook.Swedish Foreign Minister tweets about trip to 'Palestine'
Jason Schumann’s website, the European Forum for Ethnic Minority Individuals, Communities and Organisations, known as Efemico, has been taken down in the wake of a stormy fight with the Campaign Against Antisemitism, (CAA) which has taken action against him.
Efemico accused three organisations — the CAA, the Community Security Trust, and Jewish Human Rights Watch — of harassing “innocent” individuals and threatening them with a Charity Commission investigation.
In a Tweet on the Efemico account, Schumann, whose personal Twitter account has been suspended, wrote: “Whilst antisemitism is wrong, anyone harassed by @CST_UK, @antisemitism or @jhrwatch, please contact us to take further”.
Schumann recently told a Jewish Facebook user: “It is Jews who are the real nazis. [sic] No group of people more insidious, more evil, or more pernicious. An eternal curse upon them.”
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, who was refused meetings with Israeli ministers during her visit to the region, on Saturday tweeted about her visit to “Palestine”.Arab MK: 'No comparison between West Bank outposts and illegal building by our constituents'
“Returning from Palestine. Action is needed to save the two state solution. Settlements and demolitions thwart conditions and hope for peace,” tweeted Wallstrom, who visited Ramallah and met with Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki.
The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that during her visit to Ramallah, Abbas decorated the Swedish minister with an award he calls the Grand Star of the Order of Jerusalem.
Speaking in a press conference while there, Wallstrom said, "Sweden's policy was aimed at creating a future in which Israel and Palestine can live side by side. It is deeply worrying that Palestinians are beginning to lose hope in the future after 50 years of occupation.”
In a video posted on Facebook Friday, Netanyahu referred to the Amona evacuation and said that there would have to be enforcement against illegal Arab building too. "I will fight for there to be one law for all, something that has not been the case until now for decades," he said.Israeli Arab faction panned for lauding Aleppo's fall to Assad
Arab leaders held an emergency meeting in the northern town of Arara Saturday night to discuss Netanyahu's threat.
Touma-Sliman described the Amona construction and that at other outposts as being carried out by "gangs of settlers taking over private Palestinian property and building on it under the sponsorship of the government that takes care of subjugating the law and legislation in order to continue settlement."
"Not only is this comparison without foundation, it proves again that the government of Israel wants the Arab population to pay the existential, civic and political price for the occupation and settlement policy," she said.
The factions comprising the Joint Arab List found themselves at loggerheads Saturday after one official took to social media to back Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces' brutal takeover of Aleppo. Joint Arab List head Ayman Odeh was quick to issue a statement saying the party denounced the atrocities in Syria.Saudi Arabia Applauds Decision to Remove Wonder Woman As UN Ambassador For Female Empowerment (satire)
In a Facebook post Saturday, Adel Amer, head of the Communist Party faction Maki within Hadash, which alongside Balad and Ra'am-Ta'al makes up the Joint Arab List, wrote: "Taking Aleppo from the terrorist groups is a turning point in the efforts to thwart the imperialist and reactionary offensive on the people of the region. The unification of Aleppo brings an end to the plans to divide Syria, and illustrates the failure of the American, Turkish, Saudi and Qatari strategies, as well as of their inability to continue to protect the terrorist groups that have destroyed Syria and terrorized civilians.
"This development will bring about considerable changes in the entire region. The Syrian people have paid a heavy price as a result of the rule of the terrorist groups, and they have made many sacrifices to vanquish terrorism," the post continued. "We stand against any harm coming to civilians. We support a diplomatic solution focused on eliminating terrorism and promoting a political process that integrates all the forces in Syria that believe in a united, independent, democratic and pluralistic Syria."
The post sparked a heated social media debate, with Israeli Arab leaders both blasting and lauding Maki and Amer.
Saudi Arabia’s representative to the UN Human Rights Council has made a statement applauding the decision of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to not renew Wonder Woman’s status as the ambassador for female empowerment.Latin American universities seek academic cooperation with Israel
The Saudi’s objections to Wonder Woman echoed complaints of many feminists that she was a culturally insensitive and overtly sexualized character with “a shimmery, thigh-baring bodysuit with an American flag motif, knee-high boots, and small albeit perfect, breasts”.
The Saudi Representative also added that Wonder Woman frequently ventured outside the HQ of the Justice League without a male relative. He pointed to her having been in scandalous situations with several male members of the Justice League and that her piloting an invisible jet was absurd because “women drivers aren’t real”.
The Saudi Representative finished his statement by saying that the values of female empowerment and self-sufficiency ran counter to the values of so many global citizens, especially in the Middle East, and that he was encouraged to see that modern feminism had finally awoken to the dangers that a woman who can read, write, disagree with men, or leave the house by herself, posed.
Apparently the Saudis are still not aware that Wonder Woman is also Israeli.
Rectors from leading Latin American universities were in Israel last week to sign agreements with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in a first-of-its-kind conference signaling growing academic cooperation.IsraellyCool: Oxfam Admits Screwing Up Over ScarJo Sodastream Row
Representing institutions in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, the rectors signed about 20 cooperation agreements with the Israeli academic institution.
“This was a very productive gathering and we hope it will lead to many fruitful collaborations with universities in Latin America,” said Naama Shpeter, executive director and the conference organizer at the Truman Institute.
The rectors also met with President of the State of Israel Reuven Rivlin, at his official residence in Jerusalem.
Remember how actress and former global brand ambassador of Sodastream Scarlett Johansson ended her association with Oxfam over their BDS stance?How Anti-Semites Wield the Holocaust Stick to Attack Israel
Yeah, so does Oxfam. Because it really screwed them!
Campaigning for “less popular” causes is a delicate balancing act that can easily backfire on charities, Oxfam boss Mark Goldring has warned, while admitting he has twice got it wrong with damaging consequences.
In a candid presentation to an audience of charity professionals on 14 December, Goldring said Oxfam had made high-stakes misjudgments in its notorious “perfect storm” clash with the coalition government and in the row over the involvement of its then celebrity ambassador, Scarlett Johansson with a company operating in an Israeli settlement on the West Bank.*
The Johansson furore had cost Oxfam America “literally thousands” of donors, Goldring revealed.
In late November, radical protesters in London attacked a Jewish communal building. As they wrestled with police at the gates, they screamed abuse about “baby killers!” and cried out, “It’s a Holocaust!” According to local media outlets, among them the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish News, the protesters also daubed the building with graffiti that included a Star of David, a smear about a “kosher Holocaust,” and references to the Nazi persecution of the Jews.German politicians ignore bank’s BDS account
What was the reason for the protesters’ anger, the cause of their unashamedly anti-Semitic outburst? You’re probably thinking, for good reason, that this had something to do with Israel. In fact, it didn’t.
The building attacked was the kosher Kedassia abattoir (slaughterhouse), and the attackers were members of a militant vegan group—there is such a thing, apparently—attempting to prevent the delivery of a truckload of live chickens. Now, as insane as I regard such protests—not to mention the obscenity of getting worked up over a bunch of chickens when real human beings are being butchered in the thousands in Syria—these people certainly have the right to protest against the production and consumption of meat.
What’s significant, though, is that the character of the protest was entirely determined by the Jewish nature of the target. To even pick on a kosher abattoir when Jews make up less than 1 percent of the British population reeks of anti-Semitism. As Shimon Cohen, a spokesman for Kedassia, observed, “There are 760 million chickens a year slaughtered in this country, and the Jewish community is responsible for just under one million. I wonder why there is such a focus on us.”
German politicians affiliated with the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) in southern Germany ignore the financial institution’s role in punishing Israel’s economy with a BDS account, a leading anti-boycott activist says.Despite Its Good Deeds, the Salvation Army Has a Jewish Problem
“All these [BDS] initiatives harm Israel and contribute to an attempt to delegitimize the Jewish state. They are a negative element which is rooted in antisemitism,” Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi-hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday.
Zuroff, who runs the Jerusalem office of the center, added “Any effort to close down accounts like this are to be welcomed and encouraged.”
Prominent German Jews have called on the LBBW and other German banks to pull the plug on BDS accounts.
Charlotte Knobloch, the head of Munich’s Jewish community and a Holocaust survivor, told the Post, “I advocate that anti-Israeli groups and organizations have no possibility to keep accounts with respectable German banks.”
A friend recently alerted me to the church’s statement about the Jewish people — and I am filled with grief that an organization that does so much good can promote the notion that the Jewish people have collectively forsaken God and are no longer in His care. But that’s what the Salvation Army says in black and white, right there on its website.IsraellyCool: Reader Post: Antisemitism in Atlanta – And the Apathy of a Local Jewish Media Outlet
In a statement titled “Reaching Jews With the Gospel,” the Salvation Army declares that “Israel has largely forsaken its place within the care and special purposes of God.” The next goes on to state:
It is the privilege and responsibility of the Christian Church and Christians everywhere to ‘go and make disciples of ALL nations’. In the face of ready acceptance or of stubborn obduracy the Christian Church must continue to fulfill its mission. The Jews are part of this mission, and we recognize that the Great Commission is not fulfilled before the gospel has been presented in a meaningful way also to the Jews.
Like a lot of Christian churches, the Salvation Army is committed to the Great Commission that calls upon Christians to share the faith with everyone — but the Jews especially. The focus on converting the Jews is troublesome because when Christians who express a particular desire to convert Jews are frustrated in their desire, their disappointment can turn to hostility very quickly.
It’s usually best to ignore the trolls. However, there are some exceptions to this rule – especially when the troll is employed by a large corporation and has a position of authority presiding over very vulnerable people.Bullet holes found in French synagogue’s front wall, mailbox
According to her LinkedIn profile, Carol Hoskins-Burks appears to work as a District Director of Clinical Documentation improvement for Kindred Healthcare Incorporated in Atlanta – a fortune 500 company and one of the largest health care providers in the United States. Her line of work brings her into contact with some of the most vulnerable members of our society –people who need high level medical care – primarily senior citizens.
Hoskins-Burks appears to be a prolific Twitter user and on 12/11/2016 expressed her admiration for Adolf Hitler by tweeting a meme that contained a quote from the late Nazi leader stating that “one day mankind would learn and appreciate…” the fact that he tried to save them from the Jews. ” In other tweets, she trolled and abused well known Jewish comedian Roseanne Barr and other Jewish Twitter users.
Police in western France found bullet holes in the mailbox of a synagogue in Western France.Israeli Treatment for Arthritis Licensed by Indian Pharma Giant
Police, who are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, were twice called over the past three weeks to the synagogue of Le Havre, the news website Paris-Normandie reported.
The first set of bullet holes was discovered in the building’s façade on Nov. 28 and another, which included the mailbox, was discovered on Dec. 2, the newspaper reported Sunday.
In 2015, the SPCJ protection service of the French Jewish community recorded more than 800 incidents it defined as anti-Semitic. Some 12 people have died in three armed attacks on Jewish targets by jihadists in France and Belgium since 2012. Hundreds more were killed in terrorist attacks in those countries on civilian targets generally.
A Mumbai-based pharmaceutical giant, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, has signed an exclusive worldwide licensing deal to further develop a novel treatment for osteoarthritis pain created by Tel Aviv’s Moebius Medical.BDS Fail: Israeli Wine Sells for Record $24,000 at Miami Auction
The MM-II injection lubricates arthritic knee joints, thereby reducing friction and pain due to mild-to-moderate osteoarthritis. It is based on patent-protected technology licensed by Moebius Medical from the tech-transfer companies of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and Hadassah University Medical Center.
Osteoarthritis is one of the most common chronic health conditions and a leading cause of pain and disability among adults, affecting more than 100 million people. More than 20 million US citizens suffer from knee osteoarthritis.
“The fact that our novel technology was conceived in Israel and developed within the RAD Biomed Accelerator, confirms the unique quality of the country’s biotechnology ecosystem,” said Moshe Weinstein, CEO of Moebius Medical.
Two bottles of an Israeli wine that is banned in some parts of the world due to the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish State, sold for a record $12,000 each during an auction in Miami on Tuesday.Pitbull remixes A-WA
The historic sale of the wine from Psagot Winery in Israel took place on Tuesday evening during a fourth, annual, private dinner hosted in collaboration with Psagot and the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) in Miami, Florida.
Both bottles of Psagot Edom wines brought in $24,000, all of which have gone to help the work of WIZO, which was founded in 1920 in direct response to the needs of women and children in Israel. The bidding started out with one bottle between Larry Freidman and Nava Izak, who kept outbidding each other before Psagot agreed to offer another bottle to the auction. Both men were able to go home with one bottle, which they each paid $12,000 for.
Tickets for the luxurious dinner costed $1,800 and featured food prepared by Chef Marcus Gershkovich of Angelica gourmet restaurant in Jerusalem.
It’s not every day that a worldwide rap star picks up an Israeli song and remixes it into a global hit. But that’s exactly what happened when Pitbull – the Cuban-American rapper Armando Christian Perez – took the Israeli A-WA (pronounced ay-wah) band’s electro-Yemenite track, “Habib Galbi,” and added his vocals to the harmonizing sisters.
The new audio track went live on YouTube and the iTunes store on December 1 and quickly scored tens of thousands of hits.
Pitbull has collaborated with stars including Jennifer Lopez, Usher, Christina Aguilera, Chris Brown, Kesha and Shakira. Producer Steve Greenberg, who heads the S-Curve Records label, is credited with making the A-WA-Pitbull matchup.
Greenberg told local media that legendary Israeli radio announcer Tony Fyne regularly sends him station Reshet Gimmel’s weekly hit list. One week, A-WA’s popular single, “Habib Galbi,” was on the list.