Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Europe would not last a week if it had to face what Israel does
I was watching the videos from Ramallah and elsewhere of the Palestinian riots against the blessed American decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. All those Israeli policemen and soldiers engaged in dispelling the riots and violence without inflicting losses but managing to contain the damage.Phyllis Chesler: Are New Yorkers becoming like Israelis?
These young Israelis doing such a tragic job are the same age as I am, at night they return to their wives and children, mothers and fathers. They are not shaheeds, they care about human life, their own and the ones of the people they must confront in the streets. They are the face of a state dealing with this drama for the last 70 years.
Then I thought of all the blackmail, the attacks, the wars, the threats, the tension and the death drawings that the world prepares for the small Jewish state with whose disappearance it is obsessed. And I thought, looking and looking at those images, that no European country, not one, would survive a week of this instead of Israel.
Most of commentators today worry about the “consequences” of the just and historical American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But if the fear of violence had dictated its actions, Israel would not have been born in 1948 and the Jews after Auschwitz would have been found in a deli of Brooklyn rather than on the beaches of Tel Aviv.
In its 70 years of existence, Israel has lost 23,447 soldiers and 2,495 civilians, it survived 12 wars and thousands of missiles, while coexisting with the specter of a chemical and nuclear war.
On 9/11, I typed, “Now, we are all Israelis.”History repeats itself as Lord Allenby captures Jerusalem’s Old City, again
At the time, what I meant was that Muslim terrorists had come after us in New York CIty in a rather big way, just as they’d been attacking Israelis decade after decade, even as the world yawned indifferently or cheered the terrorists on.
Now, what I mean is that terrorist attacks have been normalized in the West, even in New York City, which has seen one attack after the other, beginning with the political assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990 by El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born American citizen radicalized in Pakistan, who was later involved in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
Let’s not forget that in 1994, Lebanese-born, Rashid Baz, shot at a van filled with Orthodox Jewish students, killing Ari Halberstam and wounding three children.
Who can forget the 1997 Brooklyn-based Palestinian bomb plot to blow up the New York subway trains—or the lone, Palestinian shooting attack on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.
One can write that Palestinian Arabs export terrorists—not just terrorist ideology.
For a couple of hours on Monday afternoon in Jerusalem’s Old City, there was partying like it was 1917.
World War I Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers, Turkish pashas, local religious leaders, ladies in long skirts and bonnets — and the legendary T.E. Lawrence — celebrated as they awaited the arrival of Field Marshall Edmund Allenby, commander of the British Army’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force, to officially liberate Jerusalem from Ottoman rule.
A century after the Great War, these actors played the long-dead Allenby and other historical figures to the delight of the many hundreds gathered from around Israel and the world who were genuinely excited to join in the festive reenactment.
Exactly 100 years ago on December 11, 1917, General Allenby delivered the British Army’s Proclamation of Martial Law in Jerusalem in seven languages from the steps of the Tower of David.
For some, like eighth-generation Jerusalemite Shalom Bagad, showing up on Monday was coming full circle.
“My mother Shulamit was here exactly on this very date in 1917 to watch Allenby enter Jerusalem and give his proclamation,” Bagad said.
What Life Was Like For Christians And Jews When Arabs Ruled Jerusalem
From the very start, the Jordanians banned Jews outright, even though the armistice promised “free access to the holy sites and cultural institutions and use of the cemeteries on the Mount of Olives.”CAMERA Op-Ed: UNESCO Indulges Anti-Semitism
But the Arab governing bodies also persecuted the Christian church and its followers during the same 19 years it ruled over Jerusalem.
“Christian residents, like Jews, did not have equal rights,” noted pastor John C. Hagee, founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel, in an interview with TheDCNF.
Jordanian and local Arab edicts prohibited Christians and later Christian churches from buying land and houses in the Old City of Jerusalem, according to the nonprofit Gatestone Institute.
The Institute reported that Arab Muslims restricted the number of Christian pilgrimages permitted in Jerusalem and Bethlehem during Christmas and Easter. They further imposed strict rules on Christian schools, including mandatory teaching of the Muslim Koran.
Hagee recounted the many indignities suffered by Christians who lived in Jerusalem.
“In 1952, Jordan proclaimed Islam as the official religion, including in Jerusalem,” he recalled. “In 1953, Christians were constrained for buying or holding land near holy sites. In 1955, all Jordanian schools were to be overseen by the government and only government-sanctioned textbooks could be used. In 1964, Churches were prohibited from buying land in Jerusalem. Churches were barred from funding hospitals or social services in Jerusalem.”
While Christians faced hardship and very harsh restrictions, Jews were banished entirely from the holy city.
In October, the U.S. State Department notified the director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that America would be withdrawing from the U.N. body. The U.S. cited the need for fundamental reform, mounting arrears and “continuing anti-Israel bias” at the organization. But the problem is much deeper: UNESCO denies Israel's very right to exist, a fact that its defenders would do well to acknowledge if they're serious about reforming the agency.JCPA: Can Iran and Its Proxies Be Restrained in Syria?
In recent commentaries in The Hill and elsewhere, some have obfuscated UNESCO's efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state. Commentators such as Dan Wagner, a special adviser to the UNESCO director-general, have minimized the organization's troubling agenda, stating, “When it comes to Israel and some other hot-button political issues, the majority of UNESCO member nations and the U.S. have sometimes found themselves on opposite sides.”
The reason? “Because UNESCO—as the U.S. insisted at its founding—is a fully democratic body that gives each member nation a single vote,” according to Wagner, “the majority truly does rule.” Yet this omits that the majority of UNESCO member nations have engaged in, or passively enabled, efforts to single out Israel. That it was done via “majority rule” hardly makes it any better, as the history of anti-Semitism regrettably illustrates.
UNESCO claims that it aims to “contribute to the building of peace,” and lists “fostering cultural diversity” and “intercultural dialogue” as some of its top objectives. But as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and others have documented, UNESCO has engaged in political warfare against Israel, seeking to delegitimize the Jewish state and erase the Jewish people's historical connection to their ancestral homeland.
For example, on April 15, 2016, UNESCO adopted a resolution that removed any Jewish historical ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall area in Jerusalem, referring to the former as the “al-Aqsa Mosque/al-Haram al-Sharif” and the latter as “al-Buraq Plaza.” The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism. The existence of both structures—as verified by archaeologists—predates the founding of Islam by hundreds of years. UNESCO not only sought to strip these holy sites of their Jewish identity, but condemned Jewish visits and policing of the sites.
Iran has managed to make considerable progress towards this goal: It took advantage of its willingness to use brute force and to make the necessary sacrifices by its own Revolutionary Guard Quds force, by military and probably military industry experts, and by Hizbullah and Shiite proxies from various Asian countries. It also exploited the American decision to confine the U.S. intervention in Syria to the fight and defeat of ISIS, abandon the pragmatic elements of the anti-Assad Sunni opposition and refrain from taking any risk on their behalf. The weakness of the pragmatic Sunni camp in Syria and the Russian support for Assad contributed significantly to the Iranian success, too.US Congress to let Iran deadline pass, leave decision to Trump
Faced with this reality, Israel understands what has to be done – by itself – to protect its interests:
- Deny the Iranians and their Hizbullah proxy any permanent presence near the Israeli border in the Golan Heights. Israel fears that such presence can be used for launching terror attacks against Israel by terror groups affiliated with Iran.
- Foil the Iranian attempt to supply Hizbullah with advanced weapons produced now in Syria, transferred by air, or via the new ground corridor Iran is establishing through Iraq and Syria. Weapons may also be transferred by sea to Syrian ports. Iran reportedly wants a permanent naval base in Syria, like Russia.
- Prevent Iran from building permanent Iranian military and military industrial (including unconventional) presence in Syria.
By “mowing the grass” through repeated attacks, Israel shows that:
- Unlike the other pragmatic players, it is ready to put its fingers in the fire to guarantee its role in shaping the future in Syria in a way that fits its security concerns.
- It is powerful enough to deter its rivals from retaliating – at least so far.
- It maintains an impressive intelligence dominance on the battlefield that enables it to act against targets in a timely and accurate manner.
- Even though it acts in accordance with its own interests, it proves to be the most valuable asset of the pragmatic camp in the region in the effort to prevent Iran and other radical elements from spreading their influence in the region.
The U.S. Congress will allow a deadline on reimposing sanctions on Iran to pass this week, congressional and White House aides said on Tuesday, leaving a pact between world powers and Tehran intact at least temporarily.MEMRI: Iranian Daily: 'We Must Prepare Ourselves To Build A New World Order... Implement The Revolutionary Discourse Of The Imam Khomeini, And Prepare Ourselves, Using The Jihadi And Revolutionary Model, To Play [Our] Role In The Future Of The World'
In October, Trump declined to certify that Iran was complying with the nuclear agreement reached among Tehran, the United States and others in 2015. His decision triggered a 60-day window for Congress to decide whether to bring back sanctions on Iran.
Congressional leaders have announced no plans to introduce a resolution to reimpose sanctions before Wednesday's deadline and aides say lawmakers will let the deadline pass without action.
By doing that, Congress passes the ball back to Trump, who must decide in mid-January if he wants to continue to waive energy sanctions on Iran.
Trump's failure to do so would essentially blow apart the deal, a course opposed by European allies, Russia and China, the other parties to the 2015 accord, under which Iran got sanctions relief in return for curbing its nuclear ambitions.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and denies it has aimed to build an atomic bomb. It has said it will stick to the accord as long as the other signatories respect it, but will "shred" the deal if Washington pulls out.
In his November 29, 2017 column in the Iranian daily Javan, which is affiliated with the country's ideological camp, commentator Abdollah Motevalian wrote about the superiority of Iran's Islamic Revolution over other revolutions in the world, which, he said, faded out after a few years. He set out the principles of the Iranian regime's Islamic revolutionary model, and explained how to make this regime global by exporting the revolution. The aim of the Islamic revolution, he emphasized – much as Iranian regime officials emphasize – is to build a new world order – a Shi'ite Islamic one – on the ruins of the Western world order.Anti-Israel Students Spread Jew Hatred at McMaster University: ‘Hitler Should Have Took You All’
Citing Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations," i.e. that Islam will be the civilization to challenge the West, Motevalian wrote that the Islamic revolutionary regime of Iran, which has expanded its penetration to Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Gulf of Aden, Bab El-Mandeb, the borders of China, and the Mediterranean coast, is the Islamic force capable of shaping a new world order.
Anti-Israel students at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada have published multiple social media posts praising Adolf Hitler, demonizing Jews, and glorifying terrorist organizations, The Algemeiner has learned.Vancouver school apologizes to students for banning Hanukkah
Dozens of individuals affiliated with the campus group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) published incendiary comments on Jews and Israel in recent years — among them the “openly anti-Semitic Mac SPHR students” Rawan Qaddoura, Esra Bengizi and Nadera Masad, the anonymous watchdog group Canary Mission charged in a new report.
According to screenshots obtained by Canary Mission, Qaddoura — a political science and economics major who unsuccessfully ran for the SPHR presidency in 2016 — tweeted in September 2012, “i just don’t like jews lol #sorrynotsorry”
On August 2013, she wrote, “‘@judeZAdude: The whole world is controlled by Zionist Jews and until you understand that, life will never make sense.’”
Qaddoura also repeatedly praised Hitler, tweeting in January 2012, “I honestly wish I was born at the time of the second world war just to see the genius, Hitler, at work.”
She doubled down on these sentiments in June 2013, writing, “everytime I read about Hitler, I fall in love all over again.”
The Vancouver School Board has apologized to two Jewish 6th grade girls and their families after their principal prohibited them from bringing Hanukkah symbols into their public school — even though Christmas decorations already decked school halls.Tim Blair: ONE ENCHANTED EVENING
Last week, Maya Sontz and Rebecca Weinberg and their parents turned to the media after the girls’ requests to set up a Hanukkah display alongside General Gordon Elementary‘s Christmas decorations were denied by the school’s administration. The principal, Hope Sterling, also refused to allow any Hanukkah songs to be sung in the school’s winter holidays concert.
“I have nothing against Christmas. I just think they should add more Hanukkah and more other religions,” 11-year-old Rebecca told CTV News.
“It is a public school, so if you are going to invite everybody, you’ve got to include everybody,” said her classmate Maya.
Sterling’s reported rationale for excluding items like a Hanukkah menorah and candles was that such symbols were religious, while the Christmas tree in the school’s hallway was merely cultural.
Like me, you’ve probably wondered what it might be like to go on a first date with an intersectional feminist.CORBYN LAUNCHES LABOUR MUSLIM GROUP HEADED BY “ISRAEL HAS NO RIGHT TO EXIST” ACTIVIST
Besides being exactly like going on a final date with an intersectional feminist, because both events occur simultaneously, it turns out you can expect a gruelling, night-long East German-style ideological interrogation.
We know this thanks to “queer femme of color” Lara Witt’s profoundly instructive 10 Things Every Intersectional Feminist Should Ask On a First Date:
5. Are you a supporter of the BDS movement?
BDS stands for “Boycott, Divest, Sanctions” — an effort to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians … Being pro-Palestine is not the same thing as being anti-Semitic. I shouldn’t even have to express that, but being pro-Palestine and BDS is a necessary part of intersectionality.
Just like Israeli technological ingenuity is a necessary part of that smartphone you’re using. Boycott and divest that, toots.
A Labour activist who tweeted “Israel has no right to exist” and suggested Jewish people are stingy is spearheading a new group for Muslims in Labour which Jeremy Corbyn helped launch last night.Conference participants object to comparisons of antisemitism and racisms
John McDonnell, Dawn Butler, Andy Slaughter, Rupa Huq, Wes Streeting and Afzal Khan were also present at the launch of the Labour Muslim Network, hosted in parliament by Ali Milani, an NUS Vice President who was criticised for past anti-semitic comments. In 2012, Milani posted a tweet suggesting Jewish people are stingy: “Nah u won’t mate it will cost you a pound #jew”. He also sent messages stating:
“Israel has no right to exist.
“Israel is a land built on ethnic cleansing and colonialism. Oppression is something your people should know about.
“So lecturer asks the class today ‘nobody in this room would ever want to go to war right?’ My hand rises. ‘Who?’ Me: ‘Israel’.”
Comparisons drawn between antisemitism and other forms of racism were met with objections by some participants of a conference held in Tel Aviv on Monday, hosted by the World Jewish Congress and NGO Monitor.What Golda Meir's shocked advisor learned about foreign journalists
One Israeli journalist asked panelist Arab-Israeli journalist Lucy Aharish how she could compare hatred against Muslims with hatred toward Jews, given the disproportionate amount of murders carried out by Muslims.
The question drew an impassioned response from Aharish.
Jews living as part of a minority in the US, she said, can understand her position as an Arab Muslim woman in Israel, much better than Israelis can.
“When I’m talking about racism inside Israel toward Arabs or toward Muslims, I’m talking about what I am experiencing,” she said.
Referring to the regular racist abuse she experiences, Aharish said: “We’re talking about Jewish people who came to Israel and who are living in their Jewish land after 3,000 years who went through so much, who went through the Holocaust, who were burned and buried alive, and still they think they are better than other religions, or they think they are allowed to be racist toward other people. When I look at Jewish people I expect more from you because you went through more than anyone, you know how it feels to be put in a place where people are treating you in a racist way, you know how it feels to be hated.”
Sitting at a table in the hotel bar, Avner writes that a slightly inebriated Bailey told him:Jerusalem terror attack gets 21 words of BBC coverage
“I know it sounds crazy,” he owned up, “but I’ve only the vaguest recollection of your Six-Day War, and how you came to be in Arab East Jerusalem in the first place.”
“Can I recommend a book or two before you start production?” I asked. He sounded shocked. “Me – a book? I don’t have time for books. Guys like me have to rely on guys like you for information.”
“So how do you hope to produce?”
“You see those guys over there?” He stopped me, pointing to a group of fellow journalists. “How many of those people do you think ever do real research? Go on, ask them! Ask them how many know anything about the history of Zionism, or how the conflict began, or how you came to be in the West Bank. Go on, ask them.”
He was growing insolent in defense of his ignorance. “Ask them how many know your language – even those posted here. I bet not a one. All we journalists are slaves to all-news-all-the-time deadlines. We live by them, from one to the next. Who’s got the time to do research? Our bosses want human action, not complicated facts.”
“So how on earth do you dig up your information?” I asked naively.
“By poking our noses where your television cameras and newsmen poke theirs, and by picking the brains of guys like you, and by getting tips and gossip from Arab locals, like my cameraman....”
The BBC News website did not produce any stand-alone reporting on that story and the only mention of the IDF’s announcement came in twenty words in half a sentence in yet another article about the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital that was published on the website’s Middle East page on December 10th under the headline “Netanyahu: Palestinians must face reality over Jerusalem“.Inaccuracies and distortions go unchallenged on BBC WS ‘Newsday’ – part one
Notably, despite the IDF having identified the tunnel as belonging to Hamas, the BBC did not report that information to its audiences and was ‘unable’ to describe the tunnel’s purpose in its own words.
“…Israel said it had blown up a tunnel from Gaza, which it says was being dug to enable militant attacks”
Obviously Israeli officials did not use the phrase “militant attacks” and so for the third time this month we see the BBC inaccurately paraphrasing statements made by Israelis despite the fact that the BBC’s guidance on ‘Language when Reporting Terrorism’ states:
“…we don’t change the word “terrorist” when quoting other people…”
Pollard’s presentation of Barghouti as “a member of the Palestinian parliament” is of course misleading because not only has the Palestinian Legislative Council not functioned for over a decade since the Hamas coup in the Gaza Strip, but – like the rest of the PLC members – Barghouti’s term of office ended years ago.Inaccuracies and distortions go unchallenged on BBC WS ‘Newsday’ – part two
Barghouti opened with a spurious reference to ‘international law’ that went completely unquestioned and went on – likewise unchallenged – to promote the ‘apartheid’ smear.
Barghouti: “It’s very significant but it’s very reckless – from a president who seems to be risk reckless on many issues. And it means the United States is officially participating in violating international law. And it is showing such a level of bias to Israel that it is killing any future role of the United States in any future peace process. As a matter of fact Mr Trump is aborting his own peace initiative before it is born. And the worst thing is that he’s making a dangerous move that will definitely destabilise the region and will consolidate, or help consolidate, a system of apartheid that Palestinians suffer from.”
Pollard: “Sorry. Let me just ask you about immediately what you think the consequences will be. First off, in the street – do you think that there is a risk of a violent response to this in terms of demonstrations and attacks?”
Barghouti: “No. From the Palestinian perspective we don’t want violence. We have opted for non-violent resistance but for mass popular non-violent resistance which was very successful last July in Jerusalem and we managed to defeat Netanyahu and force him to remove all obstacles he put in front of the people in Al Aqsa Mosque.”
Pollard failed to challenge Barghouti’s false claims of ‘non-violent resistance’ or to inform listeners of the incitement to violence from Hamas, the PA and Fatah even before the US announcement had been made. He also failed to clarify to listeners that his interviewee’s mention of “last July in Jerusalem” in fact refers to events triggered by a violent terror attack near Temple Mount or that those so-called “obstacles” were metal detectors and security cameras.
As we see, Lawrence Pollard yet again made no effort whatsoever to challenge the multiple inaccuracies and falsehoods promoted by the inadequately introduced Makdisi, meaning that BBC audiences once again went away with misinformation and misleading impressions that distorted their view of the story.PreOccupiedTerritory: Media Settle On 35:1 Ratio For Stories On Palestinians Vs. Israelis As Victims (satire)
In the subsequent December 6th edition of ‘Newshour’ listeners once again heard (from 00:25 here) an edited version of Mustafa Barghouti’s earlier comments that included unchallenged repetition of his dubious interpretations of international law, two repetitions of the ‘apartheid’ smear, lies about Palestinian ‘non-violence’ and a distorted account of events in Jerusalem last July that began with a terror attack near Temple Mount that Barghouti erased from his account.
It is glaringly obvious that both Mustafa Barghouti and Saree Makdisi were given unfettered platforms from which to promote inaccurate claims and blatant falsehoods without any hindrance whatsoever from ‘Newday’ presenters. Moreover, Barghouti’s slurs and inaccuracies were subsequently recycled both in the programme itself and in a clip promoted on social media.
While those softball interviews clearly contributed to the advancement of a specific political narrative, they certainly did not enhance audience understanding of the specific story under discussion or the wider topic.
Several weeks of deliberation among bureau chiefs of foreign media organizations have resulted in a joint decision to set the quantity of attention given to attacks on Palestinians at exactly thirty-five times the attention given to attacks on Jews, a representative of the group announced today.Israel’s Technion ranked #1 worldwide in digital education
Peter Baker, head of the Foreign Press Association and Reuters Jerusalem Bureau Chief, apprised the association’s members this morning that the team of journalists from seven different Western media outlets had agreed on a uniform editorial policy for reporting violent incidents, to forestall any awkwardness over potential accusations of bias vis-à-vis others’ reportage. The new policy ordains that for every story a media outlet carries about an Arab attack on Jews, it must publish thirty-five such reports about Jews hurting or harming Arabs.
In practice, observed Baker in a phone interview, the numbers will seldom work out precisely, and the policy has built-in flexibility to account for that likelihood. “It doesn’t have to be the number of reports,” he noted. “It’s the amount of attention in which we’re interested here. So, for example, even if there aren’t thirty-five things to report on a given day that make Israel’s treatment of Arabs look bad, the ratio is calculated in number of paragraphs in a written article, number of Palestinian vs. Israeli perspectives quoted, or number of minutes of video or audio reporting.”
The newest Times Higher Education survey ranks the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa as the world’s top academic institution in terms of preparing students for leading positions in the digital revolution.Congratulations to Lian Najami, Rhodes Scholar from University of Haifa
Survey respondents from global companies ranked University College of London second and Korea Institute of Science and Technology third. The only American school in the top 10 was Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in sixth place.
“This is a badge of honor for Technion,” said Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie. “In recent years, Technion has placed considerable emphasis on training its students to meet the changing needs of the digital revolution. As a result, Technion’s interdisciplinary research is expanding and advancing by leaps and bounds, in a process integrating life sciences and engineering.”
The 2018 Rhodes scholar from the University of Haifa Lian Najami is a perfect example of the diversity of Israeli society, and of intersectionality at its best.Israeli Organization Wins Prize for Innovative App that Cuts Down on Rescue Response Time
Lian grew up in the culturally mixed Haifa neighborhood of Ein Hayam. At the age of 12, Lian began volunteering at her local community center and by her 15th birthday she founded her first start-up. Fluent in five languages, Lian graduated with a BA in Political Science from the University of Haifa. She was a foreign policy adviser to US Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI),and was a featured speaker at the Forbes Israel 30 Under 30 Summit in 2016. While at Oxford, Lian plans to research initiatives designed to promote political inclusion within society emphasizing marginalized groups.
Lian joins 32 other students will begin their studies at Oxford in October 2018. They were selected from a pool of 866 candidates nominated by their colleges and universities.
United Hatzalah founder and president Eli Beer received the Conference of European Rabbis’ second-place prize for innovative technology during the Slush Conference in Helsinki on November 30, 2017.Israeli business leaders to travel to Bahrain in next normalization step
CER prizes are awarded annually to three individuals or organizations whose technological innovations are making a better world for all of humanity. This year, more than 400 applicants vied for the honor.
Beer accepted the award for United Hatzalah’s Moskowitz LifeCompass, a tracking app that dispatches volunteer EMS personnel based on their proximity to the scenes of medical emergencies.
“We created our app before smartphones existed based solely on GPS technology,” Beer said. “Through utilizing the application we have been successful at dramatically cutting down EMS response time to less than three minutes countrywide and helping to treat more than 2.5 million people in the past decade.”
The app — first in the world to apply advanced GPS tracking technology to the field of EMS — gets its name from Florida supporters Cherna Moskowitz and her late husband Irving. “They supported the development of the technology from its infancy and saw it grow into what it is today, one of the most advanced EMS dispatching systems in the world,” said Beer.
A delegation of Israeli business leaders is due to visit Bahrain next month in a follow-up to the current visit to Jerusalem of a Bahraini interfaith group, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center which is the organizer of both initiatives.Former Knicks Star Amar’e Stoudemire Returns to Madison Square Garden to Light Hanukkah Menorah
Cooper, speaking to The Jerusalem Post at a dinner for the interfaith group, said: “The Bahrainis have approved it. It will be a Wiesenthal Center delegation. The idea is to establish some direct contacts, which are not political, but the idea is to start normal contacts.”
The interfaith group’s visit has sparked outrage among Palestinians and also back home in Bahrain.
Cooper termed the visit of the 24-member interfaith delegation, which began on Saturday and concluded on Wednesday, a “breakthrough.”
The delegation included Christians, Sunnis, one Shi’ite, a Hindu leader, a Buddhist, a Sikh and others – all of them organized by the pro-monarchy NGO This is Bahrain. The vast majority of the delegation were expatriates who live in Bahrain, but it also included several native Bahrainis. Muslims comprised a minority of the delegation.
Former New York Knicks player Amar’e Stoudemire is set to return to Madison Square Garden to light a menorah for the first night of Hanukkah, the New York Daily News reported.Top Senator Praises Hanukkah-Eve Passage of Key Holocaust Restitution Legislation
The menorah-lighting ceremony was to be held at Tuesday evening’s showdown between the Knicks and the visiting Los Angeles Lakers.
“Lighting the menorah on the first night of Hanukkah is a privilege in any location but having the opportunity to do it at Madison Square Garden and with the Knicks during their first ever Hanukkah Night is special,” the 35-year-old said in a statement.
The six-time NBA All-Star moved with his family to Israel in the summer of 2016 to play for the Hapoel Jerusalem basketball team — which he helped win the Israeli League championship in June.
He is deeply connected to Judaism, and has said in the past that his family mostly keeps kosher and gathers for weekly Sabbath meals.
Stoudemire returned to the US this summer.
Senate minority leader Charles Schumer hailed the passage of new legislation on Tuesday that will boost the restitution process for Holocaust survivors and their families.
The Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act, passed by the Senate hours before the start of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, requires the State Department to report on certain countries compliance with Holocaust-era assets. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, is a co-sponsor of the bill, which was introduced by Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Marco Rubio (R-FL).
Schumer said that the act would “ultimately help in the restitution of Nazi-confiscated assets stolen during the Holocaust.”
“Passing this bill makes eminent sense and was the right thing to do, especially on this night because the memories of those who perished in the Holocaust will always shine brightly like Hanukkah candles,” the New York senator continued. “Now, I am calling on my colleagues in the House of Representatives to swiftly pass this legislation and provide Holocaust survivors and family members of the victims with some measure of justice.”
