Tuesday, October 10, 2017
IsraellyCool: Tablet Mag Goes Full Antisemite
With the news of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s fall from grace clogging the news cycle, it was only a matter of time before we would see antisemitic articles stressing the fact he is Jewish, and somehow connecting it to his despicable behavior.Shmuley Boteach: A shameful attack on Elie Wiesel
And none is worse than this article from Neo Nazi site The Daily Stormer.
Excerpt:
At first squint, Harvey Weinstein seems like a very familiar type. Isn’t he the old, same old, another rich, entitled, powerful man with a bad dye job abusing his might to coerce women into sex? Isn’t Harvey just like Roger Ailes, or Bill O’Reilly, or, for that matter, Bill Clinton? But look at the details of the case and you’ll see that the answer is no. Harvey is different. Harvey, sadly, is a deeply Jewish kind of pervert.
As despicable as you may find Ailes, O’Reilly, and the other grabby goyim, you’ll recognize their behavior fits a pattern as old as time itself, as trite as Fox’s complaints about the “war on Christmas”: Men crave sex, and the worst of them will obtain it by whatever means necessary. These despicable gents have power and influence, and they aren’t above promising a lucrative gig—or threatening to take it away—to get laid. In these transactions, women are nothing but objects, and any “consent” is just an illusion. Morally, the men are no better than the pimps who crowd into James Franco’s character’s bar on The Deuce, the new HBO show; psychologically, they are no more complex than the johns. Cash in, cum out. The women are collateral damage.
Only it was not really from The Daily Stormer. It is from Tablet Mag, an American-Jewish publication.
What makes this even more infuriating is I have always found Tablet to be proudly Jewish. We are not speaking about the Jewish Forward or Ha’aretz here, which are constantly providing grist for the antisemites’ mill. In fact, one of its writers, Yair Rosenberg, constantly writes about antisemitism and describes himself on Twitter as a “troller of Nazis.”
This article will no doubt be spread far and wide by the same Jew haters Yair Rosenberg likes to write about and troll. I call on the managing editor of Tablet to remove the article immediately and issue an apology to its readers and Jews everywhere.
Quite a few questions arise from Ron Rosenbaum’s twisted and shameful attack in Tablet magazine on Elie Wiesel, the most famous Holocaust survivor.A Misleading Picture of Today’s Anti-Semitism
First, what was the motive of the magazine’s editors in publishing the piece? It would be one thing if the column was of high literary quality and rhetorical merit.
But endless repetition alone demonstrates how this was a thoughtless hit piece, designed to disparage Wiesel in the most degrading way possible. How many times do we have to hear Rosenbaum’s description of Wiesel as “a golem of grief,” a man with “eyes circled in gloomy Dantean darkness, the Man in Black, the Johnny Cash of the death camps,” or read about Wiesel’s endless “cloud of gloom.”
We get it Ron. You believe that one of the most revered personalities of the 20th century and the man whom President Obama – whom you claim to have supported – called the “conscience of the world,” was a charlatan who utilized a melancholic affectation to increase stature. And my, aren’t you clever with all your colorful descriptions.
The second question is why Rosenbaum decided to even write his piece, given how much he insists Wiesel doesn’t matter. Rosenbaum’s column hammers home how much Wiesel “had passed his moment of real relevance,” “fewer paid attention to his stoic mien,” adding, “He was no Simon Wiesenthal.”
Ouch.
There is an article running in this month's issue of JLife (Orange County Jewish Life) by Lisa Armony, who is the director of the Rose Project, a financial arm of the Jewish Federation and Family Services of Orange County (California). It is entitled, Anti-Semitism in Charlottesville. Beginning with the recent incident in Charlottesville, Armony gives us a recitation of the history of anti-semitism in the 20th century. It is not what is in Armony's article that I take issue with. It is what is not in the article.
I do not dispute the facts of what Armony writes. Furthermore, I have no intention whatsoever of coming to the defense of people like Richard Spencer, David Duke, the KKK or neo-Nazis. They are all despicable and should be rejected by every decent American. However, there is a glaring omission here. Armony fails to write one single word about Islamic anti-semitism and the role it plays in today's anti-semitism. I happen to know Ms. Armony, and I have personally told her what I write below. In fact, we had a conversation last January at the Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach when that synagogue hosted an interfaith event dedicated to fighting racism, anti-semitism and Islamophobia. The event was dedicated almost as much to bashing President Trump, his supporters, and the alt-right. Here is what I wrote about the event at the time.
As laid out in the above link, Ms Armony refused to present my written question to the panel during Q and A. The question asked who was responsible for anti-semitism at UC Irvine, where I formerly taught part-time. The correct answer would have been Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Student Union and their invited speakers over the past several years. Indeed, it is the pro-Palestinian lobby on college campuses all over the US which has made campus life an unpleasant experience for so many Jewish students. Though not Jewish myself, I have seen it first-hand and have spoken out about it for some ten years. When the above meeting was ended, I made it clear to Ms. Armony that the worst purveyors of anti-semitism today are not neo-Nazis or skin-heads; rather it is Muslims (not all, of course). Armony told me that this was not the time or place to bring that up. Of course not. Present at the event were some prominent Muslim leaders from Orange Country including Imam Muzammil Siddiqi, who, in recent years, has lent out his Islamic Center of Orange County for Muslim students from UC Irvine to assemble their mock "apartheid wall" for display at UCI during the annual anti-Israel week of events every May, a most inconvenient fact, which I brought to his (and everyone else's) attention during a followup event at UCI featuring many of the same people.
Al Jazeera planted undercover reporter in US pro-Israel groups
An al-Jazeera editor acknowledged planting an undercover reporter inside pro-Israel organizations last year in Washington, DC.An anti-Semitic smear gets another hearing
Clayton Swisher, the Qatar-owned news network’s head of investigative reporting, made the revelation Monday in an interview on al-Jazeera’s main Arabic channel. He said a documentary will be aired based on the reporter’s work.
Earlier in the day, the United Kingdom official media watchdog rejected complaints against an earlier al-Jazeera documentary that exposed an Israeli embassy official attempting to influence British lawmakers. Ofcom said the network’s reporting, which led to the resignation of Shai Masot, who was filmed plotting to “take down” British lawmakers seen as unfriendly to Israel, was not anti-Semitic.
Rather, Ofcom concluded, the program was “a serious investigative documentary which explored the actions of the Israeli Embassy and, in particular, its then Senior Political Officer Shai Masot and his links to several political organizations that promote a pro-Israel viewpoint.”
Following the announcement, Swisher said that at the same time al-Jazeera had an undercover reporter in Britain, it also had one in Washington, DC. He said the network held off on broadcasting its reporting from the US capital until hearing Ofcom’s verdict.
“With this UK verdict and vindication past us, we can soon reveal how the Israel lobby in America works through the eyes of an undercover reporter,” he told The Intercept. “I hear the US is having problems with foreign interference these days, so I see no reason why the US establishment won’t take our findings in America as seriously as the British did, unless of course Israel is somehow off limits from that debate.”
Last month, former CIA officer Valerie Plame crossed a line on social media even the mainstream liberal media couldn’t ignore. Plame gained fame due to her unmasking at a time when her husband was a prominent critic of the George W. Bush administration’s Iraq War policy. But her status as a liberal icon took a hit when she retweeted an anti-Semitic polemic that claimed Jews were responsible for pushing the U.S. into wars in the Middle East for Israel’s sake. Plame defended the piece before eventually issuing a weasel-worded apology that further damaged her reputation.My Name Is Rachel Corrie audience member trivialises the Holocaust.
But the interesting aspect of this incident was the way some critics of Israel sought to disassociate their slanders of supporters of the Jewish state from the sort of anti-Semitic invective Plame had promoted. The Washington Post’s Molly Roberts whined that Plame’s open hate discredited an otherwise reasonable argument about Israel and its friends playing the puppet master on unsuspecting Americans.
While almost all of the attention devoted to anti-Semitism in the weeks since the Charlottesville incident has been devoted to hate from neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, Roberts was unhappy that the attention devoted to Plame changed the narrative to one about the "intolerant left" and because it undermined her desire to have a debate about “the outsize role Israel plays in American foreign policy.”
But the problem is that those who single out Israel and its supporters in this fashion inevitably traffic in age-old anti-Semitic themes that cannot be disguised as scholarship or legitimate debate.
What Roberts seems to want is a rehashing of “The Israel Lobby” thesis promoted by authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt a decade ago. They claimed Israel and its supporters, especially the AIPAC lobby, were buying the votes of members of Congress to do Israel’s bidding against the best interests of Americans.
Here is footage that, we are informed, was taken immediately subsequent to those exchanges. As you can see in this 65 second clip a woman is profusely apologising to the young British Jewish man “for saying that”. “That” presumably being the negative reference to the young man’s Star of David.
She explains “I lost it, ok?” having seemed to become upset because of the leaflet (see above) she had been handed describing the lies told in My Name Is Rachel Corrie.
She then says to the young British Jewish man “You’re wearing a good thing, but doing bad things.”
Then an Israeli woman asks her “Why did you say ‘Why do you sob about the Holocaust?'” to which the woman seems to respond:
“I said you should not be killing people because it’s also what happened in the Holocaust.”
It seems My Name Is Rachel Corrie is not so much a dog-whistle as a foghorn to those who might harbour anti-Semitic sentiments.
Why They Keep Leaving Jews Out of the Holocaust
It was actually Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi-hunter, who was first responsible for spreading the “five million” figure. Confronted many years ago by Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, Wiesenthal said that he invented the idea of “five million non-Jewish victims” because he thought it would help get non-Jews more interested in the Holocaust. One can understand Wiesenthal’s concern. But he chose the wrong way to address it.Academia’s Attack On Israel
The President’s Commission on the Holocaust, appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1978 and chaired by Elie Wiesel, specifically warned against “any attempt to dilute” the Jewish nature of the Holocaust “in the name of misguided universalism.”
But the Wiesenthal formulation appealed to White House aides who liked the idea of making the Holocaust more ecumenical, even at the price of historical accuracy. As a result, Carter’s October 1979 executive order establishing the US Holocaust Memorial Council — which then created the US Holocaust Memorial Museum — referred to the Holocaust as “the systematic and State-sponsored extermination of six million Jews and some five million other peoples by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II.”
Professor Walter Reich, former executive director of the US Holocaust Museum, has written the following:
And so the executive order … officially defined the Holocaust in a way that realized Wiesel’s great fear–that the Holocaust would be defined as an event in which eleven million people, six million Jews and 5 million non-Jews, had been killed, and that the crucial distinction between the planned and systematic extermination of all Jews on racial grounds, and the killing of civilian non-Jews on, say, political grounds — in response to resistance, or because of acts of collective reprisal or brutality –would be lost.
Simon Wiesenthal picked a number of non-Jewish victims that was high enough to seem substantial, but still a little less than the number of Jewish victims. He thought that this formulation would still keep Jews as the primary focus. Evidently he didn’t realize how easy it would be for someone — even an American or Canadian government official — to slide down the slippery slope from “a Holocaust of Jews and non-Jews,” to a Holocaust without Jews at all.
It’s just not that far from a Holocaust of everybody, to a Holocaust of nobody in particular.
Students and professors propagate anti-Israel ideology at America’s college campuses, harshly lambasting the Jewish State, Dr. Richard Cravatts explained during an interview on The Alex Nitzberg Show. Dr. Cravatts is the author of Genocidal Liberalism: The University’s Jihad Against Israel & Jews.Columbus in Palestine?
The Muslim Brotherhood spawned Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and The Muslim Student Association (MSA) “as beachheads on American campuses” for the purposes of advancing Islam, undermining America and altering people’s views of America and Israel, Dr. Cravatts explained, noting that he does not know if they maintain “a direct line of influence currently” to the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to Dr. Cravatts, people including members of SJP, and another group called Jewish Voice for Peace, and other activists, have chanted: “Intifada, intifada, long live intifada.” As he explained: “An intifada is a uprising in which Jews are murdered randomly, not Jewish soldiers, but Jews in discos and pizza parlors and cafes minding their own business and leading their own lives.”
Calling this “grotesque,” he noted the inevitable and appropriate outrage that would ensue if activists called for “stringing up black people and sending them back to Africa” or supported the murdering of Mexicans who illegally entered America. “But when people say that about Israel and calling for the murder of Jews, there’s an interesting silence on campus … ” he said, noting that this reveals “how profoundly deadly this animus towards Israel on campus actually is.”
Dr. Cravatts deems SJP an “anti-Israel group” rather than a “pro-Palestinian group” because they denigrate Israel and its supporters rather than working to promote Palestinian welfare. He said the SJP chapter at Binghamton University seeks to oppose Zionism by forbidding any SJP involvement with pro-Israel groups and by disrupting pro-Israel speakers.
Last year, as part of a protest against Columbus Day, the activist website ThinkProgress published an article by Lebanese-American journalist Justin Salhani titled "The struggle for indigenous rights extends to Palestine."Left-wing Israeli writer paints bleak future for anti-Trump Resistance
"Much as the Native Americans view Columbus Day, the Palestinian people view the creation of the State of Israel, a day they commemorate on May 15 each year as youm al-Nakba, which means 'day of catastrophe' in Arabic," Salhani wrote. He might admit to a historical Jewish presence in the land of Israel and the Middle East, but claims that "indigenous Jews continue to suffer today, even within the borders of Israel. Mizrahi Jews (Jews of Middle Eastern descent) often face strong counts of racism from Ashkenazi Jews (descendants of European Jews)," and it's obvious that Palestinian children's suffering should be thrown into the mix.
The annexation of American history is the latest in the Palestinian takeover of U.S. protest movements on various issues: Linda Sarsour, for example, became the official spokeswoman of women's groups when she created a unique link between feminism and Islamism in the name of fighting racism. Sarsour, a native of Brooklyn who led the so-called Women's March on Inauguration Day, also became one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter protest movement, whose official colors have become black, white, red and green – the colors of the Palestinian flag.
Israel can't ignore this growing trend of Palestinians' co-opting the narratives of minorities in American society, especially in light of the fact that the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist dialogue ignores the fact that Muslim Arabs, including the Palestinians, were and are a colonialist phenomenon, not victims of history, even if for a short period of their existence they were under colonial rule.
It’s hard to find an apt comparison in U.S. media for the role that Haaretz plays in Israeli media.Arab man joins reservists battling anti-Israeli activism on US campuses
Haaretz is “far-left” in its opinion content, but also has some excellent straight news reporting, particularly on security issues. And when I say “far-left,” I emphasize “far” in that equation. Reading some of Haaretz’s opinion columnists makes it hard to distinguish the paper from anti-Israel Islamist polemicists.
Haaretz has little readership in Israel precisely because it has tied its fortunes to the marginalized Israeli left. But Haaretz’s English language website has outsized influence in the West, particularly among left-wing Jews in the U.S., who must imagine Haaretz represents a sustantial portion of the Israeli electorate.
If you thought “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was bad, Haaretz has been suffering from Bibi [Netanyahu] Derangement Syndrome for much longer.
Chemi Shalev is a Haaretz correspondent who frequently covers U.S. politics.[*] He’s not on the extreme end of Haaretz opinion writers, but his anti-Bibi sentiment shows through in most of his columns. Shalev has a column today that explores a possibly bleak and frustrating future for the anti-Trump Resistance, one in which they suffer the same fate as the anti-Bibi movement in Israel.
If you can put aside some of the anti-Trump and anti-Bibi commentary, or at least put it in the context of Israeli left frustrations, the column is quite perceptive, Like Israeli Leftists, Trump-tortured American Liberals Will Learn to Live With Rage.
It’s hard to find an apt comparison in U.S. media for the role that Haaretz plays in Israeli media.Watchdog Plans Protest Over Center for Jewish History’s Hosting of Anti-Zionist Group
Haaretz is “far-left” in its opinion content, but also has some excellent straight news reporting, particularly on security issues. And when I say “far-left,” I emphasize “far” in that equation. Reading some of Haaretz’s opinion columnists makes it hard to distinguish the paper from anti-Israel Islamist polemicists.
Haaretz has little readership in Israel precisely because it has tied its fortunes to the marginalized Israeli left. But Haaretz’s English language website has outsized influence in the West, particularly among left-wing Jews in the U.S., who must imagine Haaretz represents a sustantial portion of the Israeli electorate.
If you thought “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was bad, Haaretz has been suffering from Bibi [Netanyahu] Derangement Syndrome for much longer.
Chemi Shalev is a Haaretz correspondent who frequently covers U.S. politics.[*] He’s not on the extreme end of Haaretz opinion writers, but his anti-Bibi sentiment shows through in most of his columns. Shalev has a column today that explores a possibly bleak and frustrating future for the anti-Trump Resistance, one in which they suffer the same fate as the anti-Bibi movement in Israel.
If you can put aside some of the anti-Trump and anti-Bibi commentary, or at least put it in the context of Israeli left frustrations, the column is quite perceptive, Like Israeli Leftists, Trump-tortured American Liberals Will Learn to Live With Rage.
The grassroots watchdog group JCCWatch.org is planning a protest outside New York City’s Center for Jewish History over an upcoming event in which the museum will give a platform to the anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).BDS Morocco attacks world-renowned Israeli singer in Tangier
The Center for Jewish History is hosting JVP, which supports the BDS movement, during an Oct. 26 event titled, “The Balfour Declaration: Support for a Jewish Homeland or Jewish State? Is there a difference?”
Protesting the event, JCCWatch.org is organizing an Oct. 18 rally outside the Center for Jewish History, and is running ads in several Jewish newspapers and on commercial radio garnering support for the planned demonstration.
“The center has really hoodwinked many of their board members, and the staff is amenable to have anti-Israel groups come and put forth their positions,” Richard Allen, founder of JCCWatch.org, told JNS.org. “We can only expect this to keep on going and growing,” he said, asserting that the center has become a “hotbed for anti-Israel activity.”
The Center for Jewish History is made up of five organizations: the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Each organization has a board of directors and, as Allen points out, they not be aware of the ties between the center and JVP.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement activists protested the concert of international singer Noam Vazana in Tangier, Morocco, last month, and an anti-Israel protester rushed toward the stage during her performance.Student Leader: With New Speakers Policy, University of California-Berkeley Encouraging ‘Double Standard’ on Israel
“The incident was scary,” Vazana told The Jerusalem Post on Monday, in a wide-ranging interview. “I didn’t know what he would pull out of his clothes. I went into survival mode and just continued to perform and smiled at him,” said Vazana, who is currently on tour in Germany.
An alert security guard at the Tanjazz Festival in Tangier stopped the man before he could reach Vazana. The man had his hand in his clothing, suggesting he was about to use a weapon.
The object he hid under his clothes was later revealed to be a flag.
“When he was led away from the hall, people started cheering,” Vazana said.
“The audience was very supportive.”
As a result of attempted attack, an adviser to Moroccan King Muhammad VI intervened to provide extra security measures for Vazana, in addition to the already tight security at the festival.
A new policy on campus events at the University of California-Berkeley encourages a “double standard” that works against pro-Israel groups, a student leader told The Algemeiner on Monday.NGO Monitor: Local Branch of French Government Funded Organization Promotes Violence
The charge comes as retired Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz prepares to speak on Israel at UC-Berkeley on Wednesday. Dershowitz’s talk was originally slated to take place a day earlier, but faced cancellation as its co-sponsors — the Chabad Jewish Student Center and Tikvah: Students for Israel — ran afoul of an events policy instituted at Berkeley in August. The “viewpoint-neutral” measure requires that campus police be notified eight weeks in advance of events that are not sponsored by a department and expect to draw an audience of over 200 people.
While organizers sought to secure sponsorship from a number of departments in response, their efforts were rebuffed and the talk was in jeopardy, until Dershowitz received an invitation to speak from Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.
Adah Forer — co-president of Tikvah and an Emerson fellow with the pro-Israel education group StandWithUs — told The Algemeiner that multiple departments at UC-Berkeley either rejected or ignored requests to host Dershowitz, “including those that we know have sponsored anti-Israel speakers in the past.” Among these is the Ethnic Studies Department, which in 2015 sponsored a talk by Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.
The department “refused to host Dershowitz, claiming that student groups must have a relationship with the department in order to ask it to sponsor a speaker,” Forer said.
On October 2, 2017, AFPS 34, the Southern France-based branch of Association France Palestine Solidarité, shared a post on its Facebook page praising the Palestinian wave of violence, which began in October 2015 and has included multiple knife and gun attacks against Israeli civilians and security forces. The post, accompanied by pictures of Palestinians hurling rocks, was written by a Palestinian Professor from Al-Aqsa University in Gaza. The post:Why Naujaneriai in Lithuania Is Important
- Refers to these violent events as a “popular uprising in Palestine” in which “the young Palestinians pursue their peaceful and spontaneous actions against the soldiers and the Israeli settlers.”
- Claims that young Palestinians respond to “bloody reprisals” with “peaceful demonstrations and an exemplary resistance, and the attacks by these young people don’t go beyond knife attack.”
- Justifies the attacks using the false pretext that the Israeli casualties are “all soldiers and settlers who are illegally in the Palestinian territories recognized as occupied.”
- States that “the participation of young women in peaceful demonstrations, in the throwing of stones and even in the attacks of soldiers with knives…reveals the bravery and the determination on the part of these women, absent of the second Intifada.”
In Lithuania there are 227 documented Holocaust mass murder sites, so it’s not surprising that a place like Naujaneriai has hardly ever gotten much attention.Ukraine teens arrested in vandalism at Jewish cemetery
After all, some 70,000 Jews were murdered in Ponar (Paneriai), which is also on the outskirts of Vilna/Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, so the 1,767 Jewish men, women and children killed in Naujaneriai by Lithuanian Nazi collaborators on September 24, 1941, until now have remained a minor statistic in a litany of Holocaust horror.
This year, however, that anonymity was lifted for the first time in decades. Naujaneriai was chosen as the site for the annual alternative Holocaust memorial ceremony held by a new initiative called “Cia guli Musiskiai” (Here lie our people) initiated by popular Lithuanian author Ruta Vanagaite. (Full disclosure, we wrote a book together last year on Lithuanian complicity in Holocaust crimes titled Musiskiai: Kelione Su Priesu (Our People; Journey With an Enemy.
In Lithuania, Holocaust Memorial Day is officially marked on September 23, the day the Nazis evacuated the Vilna Ghetto in 1944. This year, because the date fell on Shabbat, the ceremonies were shifted to a later date. Anyone who has ever attended the state ceremony at Ponar, the largest mass murder site in Lithuania, can quite easily identify the glaring problems plaguing official governmental commemoration of the Holocaust in Lithuania.
Of course the tragedy is bemoaned and the victims must be remembered, but there is no mention of the extensive role played by all strata of Lithuanian society, from the political leadership and intelligentsia to the hooligans, in all stages of the mass murder.
Nor is there any mention of the fact that 96.4% of the Jews living in Lithuania under the Nazi occupation were annihilated, the highest percentage of victims in the large Jewish communities ravaged by the Shoah.
Nor is there mention of the fact that a Lithuanian murder squad killed close to 20,000 Jews in Belarus and that thousands of foreign Jews were brought to Lithuania to be murdered.
Authorities in Ukraine have identified several teenagers whom police said desecrated at least 20 Jewish graves in August.Israeli Company Develops Revolutionary Artificial Cornea Implant
The teens, all males younger than 18, were detained last month in connection with vandalism in Svalyava, a city in Western Ukraine that is located approximately 100 miles southwest of Lviv, a local news site reported last week.
The report did not say whether the suspects admitted the actions attributed to them or what punishments they will receive if convicted.
The teens pushed over at least 20 gravestones, causing some to smash, including the gravestone of the town’s former rabbi, Rabbi Shalom Goldenberg. The cemetery they allegedly vandalized has not been in use for decades.
In 2012, the Council of Europe adopted a nonbinding resolution placing responsibility for the care of Jewish cemeteries on national governments. The resolution was based in part on a report that said Jewish cemeteries are “probably” more vulnerable than other cemeteries.
An early-stage Israeli ophthalmic medical devices startup has developed a revolutionary artificial cornea implant that holds out hope to millions of blind and visually impaired people suffering from diseases of the cornea.US tank brigade to be armed with Israel’s Trophy system
The nanotech-based solution by CorNeat Vision of Ra’anana is a synthetic cornea that uses advanced cell technology to integrate artificial optics within ocular tissue.
After successful initial tests on animals, the company plans to move to human implantations in Israel in the middle of next year, and also to begin a larger clinical trial of 20 to 60 patients in the United States.
According to the World Health Organization, diseases of the cornea are the second leading cause of blindness worldwide, second only to cataracts. As many as 30 million people are affected, with around two million new cases each year.
“Though [corneal diseases are] a profound cause of distress and disability, existing solutions such as corneal transplantation are carried out only about 200,000 times a year worldwide,” said 47-year-old CorNeat Vision CEO and VP R&D Almog Aley-Raz.
“There exists an urgent need for an efficient, long-lasting and affordable solution to corneal pathology, injury and blindness, which would alleviate the suffering and disability of millions of people.”
A brigade of more than 80 Abrams tanks belonging to the US military are expected to be deployed to Europe in 2020 armed with Israel’s Trophy active-protection system to counter the growing threat from Russia.Polish museum gives millionth visitor free tickets to Israel
According to a report by Military.com, US army officials made the comments Monday at the Association of the US Army’s annual convention and exhibition in Washington.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who gave the keynote address, said the international arena is the most complex and demanding he had seen in more than four decades of service and that the US military must be “fit for their purpose, fit for their time in these days of emerging challenges.”
For the first time since World War II, national borders in Europe have been changed by the force of arms, Mattis said, referring to the annexation and occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea by Russia in 2014.
“One country proved willing to ignore international law to exercise a veto authority over its neighbors’ rights to make decisions in the economic, diplomatic and security domain,” he said.
Less than three years after it opening, the core exhibition of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews registered a million visitors, management said.Yad Vashem displays sole remnant of one Dutch Jewish community
The millionth ticket was bought by a Polish couple, Barbara and Sławomir, from the city of Szczecin in northwest Poland, a museum spokeswoman, Zaneta Czyżniewska, wrote in a statement Wednesday. They received a free museum card and return flight tickets for two to Israel from an airport of their choice in Poland.
The core exhibition, titled ”1000-year History of Polish Jews,” is made up of eight galleries, spread over an area of 43,000 square feet presenting the heritage and culture of Polish Jews.
Earlier this month, the museum was recognized with a top honor from the European Union for a project promoting Jewish cultural heritage.
The Europa Nostra Prize, or Our Europe, was presented at a ceremony at the Warsaw museum. Twenty-nine laureates from 18 countries were honored.
Stained glass from the synagogue that served the Jews of the Dutch city of Assen, almost all of whom perished in the Holocaust, is now displayed at the synagogue of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem.WATCH: Tomer Hemed & Beram Kayal on The Real Israel
The glass windows of the now-destroyed synagogue feature symbols related to the High Holidays: a shofar (ram's horn); a sukkah; and the four species used in special Sukkot rituals – a lulav (palm frond), alongside myrtle and willow branches, and an etrog (a special kind citron).
The windows were designed by the local Jewish architect Abraham van Oosten, who died in 1937.
According to Yad Vashem's website, the stained glass windows were just one of his projects. "The windows were completed and installed in 1932, as attested to by the inscription engraved upon them. Five years later, van Oosten died at the untimely age of 40. His widow, Heintje, and their three children, Gunda, Leo and Johanna, remained in the town," the sites says.
In 1940, after Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, the son Leo was deported to Auschwitz, where he was killed. The widow Heintje and her daughters Gunda and Johanna were rounded up with the other Jews of Assen and sent to the Westerbork transit camp.
We’ve seen these two life-long friends before – Brighton & Hove Albion FC players Tomer Hemed and Beram Kayal. And here they are again, in an interview for Show Racism The Red Card, putting to rest any ideas that Israel is an apartheid state.
6,000 Christians from over 100 countries attend Jerusalem event
More than 6,000 Christians from over 100 countries were in Jerusalem Monday night to attend the annual Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot) celebration hosted by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, the largest Christian Zionist organization in the world.The mission to save Jabotinsky’s home from destruction
The theme of this year's event, which is the largest show of Christian support held in Israel, is the 50th anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem. The event has already marked the largest number of participants in its history, seeing a 30% jump compared to previous years. Over 20 members of parliament and government ministers from across the globe were also expected to attend.
Executive Director of the ICEJ, Dr. Jürgen Bühler, said, "Thousands of Christians from around the world come to Jerusalem to express their deep support for the State of Israel. The tourists who come to Israel within the framework of the Feast of Tabernacles event return to their countries and become the best ambassadors Israel has in those places."
The impressive show of support will be highlighted by the international march in Jerusalem. The march, held on Monday and Tuesday, is held in conjunction with the Jerusalem Municipality, Nahal Soreq Regional Council, various government ministries and the "Connecting to a Shared Future" network of NGOs. Some 60,000 people are expected to participate.
Communications Minister Ayoub Kara went on an unannounced trip to Ukraine this week on a mission to convince the government to preserve the childhood home of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism and the Likud’s ideological forebear.Marking the life of a forgotten heroine
Kara was in Odessa on Tuesday, meeting with local authorities, but declined to discuss the matter because of its “sensitivity.”
The residents of the building in which Jabotinsky lived for most of his childhood, on Odessa’s historic Jewish Street, wrote letters to President Reuven Rivlin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko asking that the structure be preserved as a historic site, according to Odessa newspaper Dumskaya.
Seven high-rises are set to be built five meters from the building, at the site of a former tea-packing factory, and the residents expressed concern that it would cause damage to their home, which was built in 1880.
“Our home was last renovated 50 years ago,” a resident named Vasily Kozubenko told Dumskaya. “The house will just crumble.”
On March 31, 1940, prominent Zionists and luminaries of the Czechoslovakian government in exile gathered at Golders Green Crematorium.
They came to say farewell to Marie Schmolka, one of the key European organisers of Jewish emigration in the 1930s. The JC published an obituary with a photo. Today, few know her name.
It was Marie Schmolka’s appeal for help in December 1938 that brought the young Nicholas Winton to Prague.
For the next three weeks, Winton helped organise the emigration of Jewish children to Britain, where he returned in January 1939 to continue with refugee work.
We rightly celebrate Winton, but we need to place him into the context of more senior and usually female volunteers who saved thousands of Jewish and political refugees from the Nazis. Marie Schmolka features eminently among these forgotten heroines.
Born to an assimilated Prague Jewish family, Schmolka married late and was widowed early. Quiet, warm, and with immense organisational talent, she became an avid Zionist following a trip to Palestine.
