Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Daniel Pipes: How 99 percent of ‘Palestine refugees’ are fake
And even if no one replaced U.S. donations, denying UNRWA money does not get to the heart of the problem, which lies not in its sponsored activities but in its perpetuating and expanding population of “Palestine refugees” in three unique, even bizarre ways: allowing this status to be transferred without limit from generation to generation; maintaining the status after refugees have acquired a nationality (such as the Jordanian); and assigning the status to residents of the West Bank and Gaza, who live in the putative Palestinian homeland. These tricks allowed UNRWA artificially to expand the refugee population from 600,000 in 1949 to 5.3 million now; an accurate count of real refugees now alive numbers around 20,000.Melanie Phillips: Our crazy world: fire, fury and UNRWA
Therefore, while enthusiastically endorsing Trump’s political goals, I suggest that withholding funds is not the right tactic. Better would be to focus on the “Palestine refugee” status. Denying this to all but those who meet the U.S. government’s normal definition of a refugee (in this case, being at least 69 years old, stateless, and living outside the West Bank or Gaza), diminishes the irredentist dagger at Israel’s throat by over 99 percent. It also puts the “Palestine refugee” status into play, permits millions of Palestinians to live more healthily, addresses the dank heart of Arab anti-Zionism, and helps resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Accordingly, I propose that the president adjust U.S. policy to work with Jerusalem and continue to send aid to Palestinians while making it contingent upon the overwhelmingly majority of recipients formally acknowledging that they are not now and have never been refugees.
The Middle East Forum, which has been working this issue since 2010, has proposed legislation to make such a shift. It’s both simple and feasible, as it does nothing fancier than bring Washington’s relations with UNRWA into line with U.S. law and policy. About time.
Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the fire and fury around President Trump, America’s attempt to draw the poison of UNRWA (25:30), and the extraordinary fact that Israel helps keep the Arabs of Gaza alive in response to which the Arabs of Gaza keep trying to murder them.
UNRWA – end the UN state
As long as the “UNRWA state” exists, the Palestinian issue will never be resolved.
In the 1948 war the Arab Liberation Army suffered a crippling defeat. The Arab League refused to accept defeat and, to save its reputation, decided to demand the implementation of the principle “status quo ante bellum.” Meaning to restore the Palestinian refugees to their homes.
The United Nations embraced the League’s demand and created a special UN agency – the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The goal was not to rehabilitate the refugees, but rather to render the League refugees state services, like health, welfare and education.
Had the question of rehabilitation been on the agenda, the UN would have decided to let the International Refugee Organization (IRO – established in 1944) to take care of the Palestinian refugees.
Thus, the UN created a political unit/ entity of its own – UNRWA. A political Palestinian semi-entity, ruled by Arab states and/or organizations, depending on the location. Despite the fact that this political entity enjoys UN immunity, it is controlled by the PLO.
Every new physician, on the day of his graduation, knows that you can’t heal a wound unless you had drained the purulence first. As long as UNRWA exists, the Palestinians will never agree to reach an agreement with Israel. They believe that, through the “assistance” of the refugee-hosting Arab countries, UNRWA eventually will serve them the annihilation of Israel on a silver plate, by bring them back to Haifa, Jaffa, Beersheba and Jerusalem. They consider the refugee ID card UNRWA provides them the passport to the promised land.
UNICEF has declared war on the IDF
Anti-Israel activity at the United Nations is mainly associated with UNRWA and UNESCO.French Society ‘Under Stress’ From Islamist Terror, Says Jewish Community President on Third Anniversary of ‘Hyper Cacher’ Siege in Paris
UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, has a reputation for inciting to violence and perpetuating the Palestinians' refugee status, while UNESCO, the U.N.'s cultural agency, consistently denies any Jewish links to Jerusalem.
But while the U.S. was threatening to withhold funding from UNRWA as Israel watched closely, another U.N. agency, the International Children's Fund – UNICEF – was making its own effort to delegitimize Israel.
New research by the nonprofit watchdog group NGO Monitor reveals that "UNICEF Palestine" and other NGOs are working to add the IDF to a U.N. blacklist of organizations that violate children's rights. This list mainly comprises terrorist organizations such as Islamic State, al-Qaida, Boko Haram and the Taliban.
Every year, the U.N. secretary general issues a report on "Children and Armed Conflict," with an appendix listing groups that commit grave violations (such as using children as soldiers, systematically killing or wounding children, and committing sexual violence against children). Since 2007, UNICEF has headed a working group of organizations charged with documenting supposed violations of Palestinian children's rights. The group's findings are plugged into UNICEF data and quoted in various reports, including the secretary general's. UNICEF pours millions of dollars into these tracking and reporting efforts.
As France marked the third anniversary of the Hyper Cacher supermarket siege in eastern Paris on Tuesday, the head of the country’s Jewish community emphasized that French Jews were no longer isolated in their fear of Islamist terror.Muslim owner of torched Paris kosher shop: ‘I just feel sick’
“French society is under stress,” Francis Kalifat — president of CRIF, the French Jewish communal body — told The Algemeiner in a wide-ranging interview.
French Jews continue to feel in the “forefront” of the threats posed by terrorism and religious extremism, Kalifat said — a point brutally underlined as the Hyper Cacher anniversary fell on Tuesday morning, when two adjacent kosher stores in a shopping mall that had been vandalized with swastikas only last week were firebombed – “but the risk is shared by their compatriots.”
In January 2015, three days of Islamist terror that began on Wednesday, January 7 with the massacre of ten people at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo culminated on Friday, January 9 with French police confronting a double siege. At one location, a print works near Paris, security forces surrounded and eventually shot dead Said and Cherif Kouachi, the two brothers who executed the Charlie Hebdo outrage. At the second location, a kosher supermarket in the eastern Paris neighborhood of Porte de Vincennes, a 32-year-old Islamist gunman named Amedy Coulibaly took nineteen people hostage.
Coulibaly threatened to kill his hostages unless the Kouachi brothers were permitted to go free. When police stormed the Hyper Cacher store at just after five o’clock in the afternoon, Coulibaly was killed in the ensuing shootout. Earlier in the siege, he had murdered four of the hostages — Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab and François-Michel Saada — whose bodies were discovered at the site by police. The four victims were later buried in Israel.
The Muslim owner of a French grocery store said he was sickened by suspected arson attack on Tuesday that gutted his kosher business.Eli Lake: Europe's High Representative for Appeasement
“I just feel sick,” said the store’s owner, a 44-year-old Muslim who asked to remain anonymous.
“I’m Muslim. I work in a Jewish shop. There is no incompatibility there,” said the businessman, who was briefly hospitalized with shock after seeing the extent of the damage.
The attack revived anti-Semitism fears, as it came three years to the day since a deadly terror attack on a Jewish supermarket by an Islamist terrorist that killed four Jews.
Prosecutors said the store in the southern Paris suburb of Creteil caught fire in the early hours, days after it was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti.
Anti-semitism watchdog BNVCA said that the attack was intended to “punish” the Muslim owner for his links with the Jewish community.
A source close to the police probe said it was “too soon to discuss motives, ” though Creteil prosecutor Laure Beccuau said investigators do not believe the fire was an accident.
If Federica Mogherini didn't exist, the world's autocrats would be trying to invent her.House Passes Resolution Supporting Iranian Protestors 415-2
As the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs, she is a tireless advocate for engaging rogue states. Few diplomats though have pursued this kind of engagement with such moralizing puffery. In Mogherini's world, diplomacy with dictators should not aim to transition these countries to open societies, but rather to prevent conflicts at all costs.
Just consider her trip last week to Cuba, a plantation masquerading as a nation-state. Did Mogherini use her visit to call attention to the struggle of human rights activists or to comfort the families of political prisoners? No, Mogherini was in Cuba to reassure a regime that Europe will not go along with America's trade embargo.
"I know very well that right now some are trying to isolate Cuba. We Europeans want to show, on the contrary, that we are closer to you than ever," she said in a speech at Cuba's San Geronimo College. Stay tuned. Next month, Cuba's minister for economic development will participate in a broader dialogue in Brussels on improving Europe's ties to the island.
While Mogherini found her voice in Havana about Cuba's "isolation," she was mute on the popular uprising in Iran. She waited six days to say anything about the demonstrations there. When she finally did, it was a mix of ingratiation and neutrality. “In the spirit of openness and respect that is at the root of our relationship," she said, "we expect all concerned to refrain from violence and to guarantee freedom of expression."
The House of Representatives approved House Resolution 676 on Tuesday, putting into the Congressional Record its support for the protesters that have taken to the streets in cities across Iran in opposition to its oppressive radical Islamic government.Tehran Protester: Money Sent to Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, While We Steal and Women Sell Their Bodies
HR 676 reads: “Supporting the rights of the people of Iran to free expression, condemning the Iranian regime for its crackdown on legitimate protests, and for other purposes.”
Two Republicans voted against the resolution: Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Thomas Massie (R-KY).
The House Radio and TV Gallery confirmed to Breitbart News the vote count and the two members who voted “no” on the resolution.
The regime in Iran has insisted the protests have been put down, but supporters — including those who have held rallies across the United States in recent days — say the protesters need support for their cause to bring about a Democratic Republic in the country.
Hundreds gathered in Washington, DC, and an estimated 2,000 in Los Angeles, California, over the weekend in support of the protesters.
In a protest against Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, which took place in Tehran, a woman shouts that Khamenei was sending Iranian money to Iraq, devastated by ISIS, while "Iran itself is full of poverty and corruption, of young men who steal and women who sell their bodies due to poverty and the high cost of living. The video was tweeted by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, Reuters' correspondent on Iranian affairs, on November 20.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Nation Ruled By ‘Supreme Leader’ A Real, Not Comic-Book, Place (satire)
Political commentators and officials have taken note recently that despite the caricatured, moralizing fantasy connotations of the term, there exists a country controlled by a person with the title “Supreme Leader.”Vienna police charge 3 men for waving Israeli flag at rally
The Islamic Republic of Iran, currently under the control of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, refers to him by that title, and all indications point to the fact of Iran being an actual, true location, not some imaginary realm out of science fiction, adventure fantasy, or superhero comic books that any normal human would associate with the laughably bombastic moniker.
“It turns out Khamenei is the second to hold the title,” observed one diplomat, suppressing a chuckle. “The first was the cleric who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and its enduring icon, Ruhollah Khomeini. And it looks like there’s no sense of irony intended by these people. It’s amazing.”
Others shared the diplomat’s surprise. “Wait, is this a thing?” inquired CNN personality Jake Tapper. “This has to be a prank. No one who wants to be taken seriously would knowingly be that clumsy. Please tell me it’s just some people trolling. Please.”
The Vienna police are pursuing criminal charges against three pro-Israel activists for waving an Israeli flag in protest of antisemitic slogans at a demonstration against Jerusalem having been recognized by the US as the capital of the Jewish state.REPELLENT: Jewish Students Fined In Austria For Holding Israeli Flags At Palestinian Demonstration
The police are seeking a €100 fine or two days in jail for the display of Israel-support at the December 8 anti-Israel rally near the US Embassy in Austria’s capital.
The criminal notice, dated January 3, states that the activists “showed an Israeli flag at a rally in an extremely provocative way and manner that was visible for participants at the rally and thereby produced considerable offense and provocation among the Palestinian protesters.”
The German-language edition of the news site Vice first reported on Tuesday on the penalties against the three men and conducted an interview with one of the pro-Israel protesters.
“My mother is Israeli, her family [members] are refugees from Iraq and Libya,” the pro-Israel protester said. “An Arab-speaking friend from Israel was able to translate some of the slogans yelled [at the rally], for example, the Arab battle cry to massacre Jews: ‘Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning,’ and... ‘Death to Israel.’”
The Arabic cry references an ancient Muslim attack on Jews in the town of Khaybar in what is now Saudi Arabia, killing many and looting their homes. The provocative chant is frequently used when attacking Jews and Israelis, and was chanted on the Mavi Marmara Gaza flotilla ship in May 2010.
In the second week of December, three Jewish students were fined one hundred Euros apiece for waving Israeli flags at a pro-Palestinian demonstration at which “Death to the Jews” was chanted.Judge Reinstates Hamas/American Muslims for Palestine Lawsuit
The fact that on the one hand, Palestinian supporters were allowed to chant such vitriolic hate, while on the other, Jews peacefully holding Israeli flags were fined, is especially significant since Austria’s history of anti-Semitism predates the Nazi era, in which they were complicit with the atrocities of the Nazi regime’s plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
As far back as the fifteenth century, Albert V ordered the imprisonment of all of the Jews in Austria. Two hundred ten Jews were burnt alive in public while the rest of the Jews in Austria were deported. Frederick the Third rescinded the deportation order in 1469, permitting Jews to return. Some Jews were deported again in the 17th century; there was even a law allowing only first-born children of Jews to marry.
In November 1938, the Kristallnacht pogroms triggered most of the synagogues in Vienna being destroyed, while thousands of Jews were arrested and deported to the Dachau or Buchenwald concentration camps. Systematic mass deportations from Vienna began in October 1941. Roughly 35,000 Jews were deported from Vienna to ghettos in eastern Europe, primarily Minsk, Riga, and Lodz; most of the Jews sent to Minsk and Riga were shot by the Einsatzgruppen.
On Thursday, a Chicago federal judge reinstated a lawsuit alleging that a virulently anti-Israel group and several of its activists are “alter egos and/or successors” of a defunct US based Hamas-support network, which was previously found liable for the murder of an American teen in a 1996 terror attack.War on Want Confirms Why it is Blacklisted
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) routinely sponsors conferences that serve as a platform for Israel bashers, and openly approves “resistance” against the “Zionist state.” One AMP official acknowledged the goal is to “to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”
AMP is also one of the principal advocates of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish state. Its BDS campaigns include: Ramadan Date Boycott, a SodaStream boycott, Stop the JNF, Stolen Homes/Airbnb and Stop G4S. Because BDS is dedicated to Israel’s elimination and singles out Israel for criticism while ignoring other nations with severe human rights abuses, BDS campaigns are considered inherently antisemitic.
US District Court Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman not only vacated her earlier dismissal of the case, but she also authorized limited discovery in the case: “[T]his Court placed too much weight to defendants’ declarations without providing plaintiffs with the opportunity to conduct limited jurisdictional discovery on the existence of an alter ego relationship. Accordingly, this Court will vacate its previous order dismissing the case … and permit plaintiffs to conduct discovery solely to address jurisdiction.”
It’s not a surprise that some of the 20 organizations on an Israeli blacklist preventing prominent members of their organizations and supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement from entering Israel have criticized the Israeli policy.Jackie Walker Stops Moisturising, Occupation Ends!!
But Asad Rehman, the executive director of War on Want, however, demonstrates exactly why his organization is on the blacklist with a hate-filled missive in The Guardian.
Taking apart Rehman’s anti-Israel charges point by point is barely worthy of the attention but there is a tangible theme running through the piece.
This repressive move is borrowed straight from the playbook of South Africa’s apartheid regime, which had the same aim of silencing critics. …
This isn’t War on Want’s first encounter with a blacklist from an apartheid state. …
That’s why we are calling on the British government not only to condemn this crackdown, but to stop arming Israel – and to hold its government to account for the apartheid policies that made BDS a necessity in the first place.
It’s not only BDS that Rehman says he is proud to support.
This year we remember that it is 70 years since more than 800,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes; they are still denied their right to return by Israel.
The so-called right of return would effectively flood Israel with Palestinians destroying Israel as a Jewish state. Not to mention that Rehman’s issue with Israel clearly isn’t about the consequences of 1967 but 1948 when Israel was created.
In a bid to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and to bring an end to an intransigent conflict that has claimed the lives of thousands, Jackie Walker announced today that she will no longer be moisturising. In what some commentators are calling a ‘brave’ and ‘daring’ step taken my Mrs Walker, Revlon shares are reported to have plummeted this morning.Are we bored of Ahed Tamimi yet?
Reports have also been circulating that Ken Loach will no longer be conditioning his hair and Tony Greenstein’s preening routine is also facing drastic changes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called an emergency cabinet meeting and has given instructions to his generals to draw up contingency plans for a full scale withdrawal from the occupied territories.
On Saturday, our neighbors in the Southland called for a rally in front of the Israeli consulate in solidarity with that young promoter of suicide attacks and stabbing, Ahed Tamimi.
The rally was sponsored and promoted by LA4Palestine, Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Jews for Palestinian Right of Return, Palestinian American Women's Association, Me Too March International, AF3IRM LA, AIM So-Cal, Idle No More So-Cal, ANSWER Coalition, Black Lives Matter - Pasadena, March and Rally LA, California for Progress, Palestinian Youth Movement. CODEPINK: Women for Peace, SWANA-LA, Martin Luther King Coalition of Greater Los Angeles, Labor for Palestine, International Action Center, BDS LA for Justice in Palestine, International League of Peoples' Struggle So-Cal, Dignity and Power Now and the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
You'd think with all those groups endorsing and promoting this event on a beautiful weekend afternoon, they could have gathered more than a few dozen people.
You'd think.....
Agents! We need to you help Agent @HenMazzig. If you sign this petition we'll double your next Hasbara check.
— The Mossad (@TheMossadIL) January 9, 2018
https://t.co/UScKfGMUWk
Leading Irish newspaper honours Israel-Nazi comparison as “letter of the week”
As we noted in the following tweet, editors at The Irish Independent, the country’s largest-selling daily newspaper, chose, as it’s letter of the week published on Jan. 7th, an anti-Israel screed which includes a comparison between the Nazi treatment of Jews and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.Guardian provides platform for War on Want’s unbridled hate against the Jewish state
In addition to the incendiary, anti-historical and intellectually unserious nature of the suggestion that Israeli “atrocities” against Palestinians are anywhere in the same moral universe as Nazi atrocities against the Jews, such comparisons are codified as antisemitic by the EU Parliament and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, of which Ireland is a member.
Often, the Guardian allows its Israel page to peddle Electronic Intifada style propaganda – fact-free hyperbole and hate that has no place at a serious ‘respectable’ news site. Today is one of those days, as editors decided to publish a diatribe against Israel by the director of a radical anti-Israel NGO (Israel’s BDS blacklist is straight out of apartheid. The UK can’t condone it, Jan. 10)."Foreign Policy Fails To Tell The Truth About UNRWA"
The big lie in the op-ed, by War on Want (WoW) director Asad Rehman, in response to Israel’s decision to ban leaders from 20 pro-BDS groups from entering the country, that Israel is an apartheid state, shouldn’t drown out the ‘smaller’ lies, which begin in the opening paragraph, when readers are told that Israel’s “blacklist…bans 20 charities and human rights groups from entering the country…”.
However the groups banned, such as WoW, are not “human rights” organisations in any real sense of the term, but rather highly politicized radical anti-Israel pressure groups. Indeed, in 2016, the British government stopped funding WoW, a sponsor of ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ in the UK. The decision was reached following revelations that a speaker at a WoW event legitimised the lie that Israelis were harvesting dead Palestinians’ organs. At another WoW event, radical professor Steven Salaita justified Palestinians terror attacks against Israelis.
Other groups subject to the Israeli ban, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, have hosted and praised Palestinian terrorists, and have promoted antisemitic messages. One JVP video included the outrageous suggestion that Jewish organizations are responsible for the killings of blacks in the U.S. by police.
In his op-ed, Rehman compares Israel’s ban on pro-BDS groups to restrictions imposed by South Africa during Apartheid. However, whatever the merits of the Israeli law, as our colleague Gilead Ini recently demonstrated, it is in fact not substantially different than restrictions imposed by democracies such as the US.
As its headline illustrates, a Jan. 5, 2018 Foreign Policy article, “Nikki Haley’s Diplomacy of Revenge Targets U.N. Relief Agency,” substituted editorializing for reporting, while omitting key facts about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The dispatch, by reporter Colum Lynch, ostensibly detailed U.S. warnings that it would cut aid to UNRWA.I’m A Jew. I Had No Idea I’d Be Spending Christmas Among Neo-Nazis
But Foreign Policy—which pitched the article as an “exclusive” report—failed to explain UNRWA’s curious mission and history.
As CAMERA has highlighted, UNRWA is the only U.N. organization whose stated mission is to assist a specific group of refugees, Palestinian Arabs. All other refugee populations in the world fall under the jurisdiction of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (“The Washington Post Whitewashes UNRWA,” Jan. 5, 2018).
UNRWA was established after Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, which occurred when Arab states rejected the U.N. partition plan and declared war on the fledgling Jewish state. Although the agency was created to resettle Palestinian Arab refugees from the conflict, it soon changed course—beginning with changing the definition of what constitutes a “refugee.”
Unlike UNHCR, UNRWA considers people generations removed from the 1948 War and people who are citizens of other countries to be “Palestinian refugees.” This definition is exclusive to Palestinian “refugees” and, as CAMERA has noted, enables people like the twenty-year-old Los Angeles-born fashion model, Bella Hadid, to be classed as a “refugee” to a war that occurred seventy years ago.
The bus creaked along a worn-out road as I stared at the Polish countryside, happy to sit. Our group had spent a long day walking the winding paths of the Jewish Quarter in Krakow.Anti-Semitic song played in court as Holocaust denier Alison Chabloz faces trial
I didn’t notice the bus was slowing until it had come to a stop. The driver announced our bus had broken down and people around me slung bags and backpacks over their shoulders. We made our way back into the night.
We heard it first after trudging along the frigid bridge en route to our motel.
“Nazi! Nazi! Nazi!” a group of men yelled at us. They greeted us with sieg heil salutes, and we put our heads down and hurried across a bridge.
As a Jew, I truly had no idea that I would be spending Christmas among neo-Nazis. Our group was filled with Jewish students and young adults on an educational trip “focusing on the Holocaust experience in Poland.” In the span of seven days, we visted the German death camps Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Birkenau as well as Jewish ghettos in Warsaw, Krakow, and Lodz.
I expected the blistering cold and the horrific Holocaust sites. I did not expect open anti-Semitism. In fact, there was commerce around it.
A Westminster magistrate strongly reprimanded a member of the public on Wednesday after applause was heard in court following the playing of an anti-Jewish song. Judge John Zani made his warning — saying that if there were any repetition people would be removed from the public gallery — after a song was played which the Crown says is inciteful and likely to stir up hatred against Jews.IsraellyCool: When Life Gave Israelis Lemons..
The song — and others which followed it — are the work of musician Alison Chabloz, a self-described Holocaust revisionist. Ms Chabloz, 53, from Derbyshire, sat in court on Wednesday morning clutching bouquets of tulips presented to her by a well-wisher before the case began, and was seen to be smiling broadly as the strongly anti-Jewish songs were replayed.
Prosecutor Karen Robinson said Ms Chabloz was facing five charges of sending, or causing to be sent for viewing on social media, several videos of her playing three songs, two of which were performed in front of an audience of the London Forum in September 2016.
Giving evidence against her on Wednesday morning, Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, unpicked the lyrics of the first song, [[[Survivors]]], whose three brackets Ms Robinson said denoted the “echo” used by antisemites to identify Jewish people on social media.
A few days ago, the Guinness World Records twitter account tweeted the following:Israeli Hospital Opens Pilot Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Unit
#OnThisDay in 2003 we confirmed a new record for the world's heaviest lemon, grown by farmer Aharon Shemoel on his farm in Kefar Zeitim, Israel. The mighty citrus fruit grew next to another huge lemon and weighed 5.265 kg (11 lb 9.7 oz) - heavier than an adult human's head! 😮🍋 pic.twitter.com/vfCmpKaODU
— GuinnessWorldRecords (@GWR) January 8, 2018
The record still stands to this day.
Interestingly enough, I have not (yet) seen the palestinians claiming the record for themselves, or accusing us of “cultural genocide.” Although surely they hold the record for the biggest case of sour grapes.
Update: I spoke too soon. Commenters to this Facebook post are claiming the record belongs to the palestinians.
A pilot Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Unit, opened three months ago at Sheba Medical Center/Tel Hashomer in Ramat Gan, and it is the first of its kind in Israel and possibly in the world, according to its founder, Dr. Damien Urban, director of oncology at the medical center.Intel, Mobileye unveil first autonomous car
The goal is to help patients cut through medical red tape and receive results of oncological tests — blood work, biopsies, MRIs and CT scans — within two weeks as opposed to the three months this process normally can take.
Urban says the rapid approach is virtually unheard of in the Western world. The handful of rapid diagnostic centers in countries including the U.K., U.S. and Canada focus on specific cancers such as prostate, lung, breast and colon. “But [I have seen] nothing regarding across-the-board cancer testing,” he says.
The Australian émigré and his staff recognized the need to drastically streamline the process in order to get a diagnostic response and a treatment regimen in place quickly and efficiently. “If a person has a cancerous growth in their body, the race against time becomes a critical factor,” Urban says.
“The mental trauma of a patient waiting for results over a three-month period can also have a devastating effect. It literally freezes people in their daily lives, so we are trying to overcome this process with the creation of the Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Unit,” says Urban.
The CEO of Intel Corp., Brian Krzanich, on Monday unveiled the US semiconductor giant’s first autonomous car, run with technology developed by Israel’s Mobileye.Gal Gadot is the new 'feminist' Revlon Global Brand Ambassador
During Krzanich’s keynote opening address at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, a self-driving Ford Fusion rolled onto the stage. It was the first of a 100-vehicle test fleet run by Mobileye, the Israel-based software company. Mobileye processes the information cars “see” from cameras and sensors.
The car includes 12 cameras, radars, laser scanners and computing technologies developed by Mobileye and Intel, according to a CNBC report. There are three high-resolution cameras at the front of the car that enable a 180-degree view field and the car image processor is able to see at a distance of up to 300 meters.
Intel bought Jerusalem-based Mobileye for $15.3 billion in March.
Krzanich also announced a new collaboration with China’s carmaker SAIC Motor. As part of the collaboration, SAIC will develop self-driving vehicles in China based on Mobileye’s technology.
2017’s highest grossing actress Gal Gadot is the new global brand ambassador for American beauty brand Revlon, helping to launch the Live Boldly campaign which capitalizes on the shifting perception on feminists and feminism.Chris Rock bares soul in roaringly honest Israel debut
“Feminism is not about hating men or burning bras or fighting anyone," Gadot said in an interview with WWD.com on Tuesday. "It’s about, first of all, equality, and it’s about freedom of choice and I think that in this world we should all be feminists and whoever is not is a sexist. And I am that [a feminist], and I love women, and I think especially now with everything that’s been going on in Hollywood, we’re in a beautiful moment and in a very interesting era for women. It truly feels like there’s this cultural change — shift — and I think that it’s necessary.”
Gadot took to Twitter to announce her excitement. “So happy to announce that I’ve joined the @revlon family and am helping launch the #LiveBoldly campaign. Stay tuned… it’s going to be beautiful!”
Aside from the occasional name-drop of mega-superstars he hangs out with (or tries to date) in his spare time, it was Rock’s failures and shortcomings, not his celebrity achievements, that made up the majority of his unrelenting 70-minute set. Revealing an intimacy we’ve seen before in interviews but rarely on the stage, the show’s focus was not his hilarious treatment of US racial and social idiosyncrasies, but his struggles with divorce and adultery, and his fight for shared custody of his two daughters.Israeli Doctor Performs Life-Changing Surgery on Palestinian Teen
That’s not to say that he left his riotously delivered observations at home, weaving his personal confessions in with classic Rock riffs on police violence (“You would think occasionally the cops would shoot a white kid, just to make it look good”), the differences between men and women (“women, children and dogs are loved unconditionally… but a man is only loved if he can provide something”) and airport security (“What about shampoo is so dangerous? They take our shampoo and then sell it back to us in duty free”). The newly introspective Rock succeeded in giving a performance that was as intimate and personal as it was playful and roaringly funny.
“Tel Aviv! Shalom motherf#ckers,” he opened to the cheers of the crowd, always flattered by localized recognition.
While the 52-year-old has never performed in Israel before, he did visit the country in 2008, along with Ben Stiller and Jada Pinkett Smith, for the Israeli premiere of “Madagascar 2,” in which Rock voiced Marty the zebra.
“I’m loving this country. Israel, yeah!” he offered after one of the many applause breaks.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn’t enter into Israeli hospitals, where patients are treated equally, regardless of citizenship, religion or ethnicity.IDF Blog: Helping Syrians through Operation Good Neighbor: A year in review
That’s how Yusef Rabaya, a 19-year-old from Jenin, located in the Palestinian Authority territories, received a revolutionary treatment in Israel that has transformed his life and got him walking again for the first time in nearly a year.
Rabaya was born with cerebral palsy and a neuromuscular kyphosis – a curve from the front to the back of his body that looks like a hump.
When Rabaya hit his teens, the curve became so pronounced that he could no longer stand and was in terrible pain. His parents searched for a cure in Europe to no avail.
Finally, the family made a connection in Boston where surgery was performed to implant rods into his back to strengthen his spine. But the rods broke and Rabaya was now confined to bed in even worse pain.
The solution to Rabaya’s misery turned out to be not in Europe or Boston, but right here in Israel.
Dr. Josh Schroeder, a senior surgeon and spine specialist at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center, performed four-hour reconstruction surgery.
It was not easy.
The war in Syria was sparked in March 2011 and quickly spiraled into a humanitarian crisis. In February of 2013, the first wounded Syrian came to the border asking for help and was then treated by the IDF. From then on, many more Syrians were accepted into Israel to receive medical care. As a result, a decision was made to establish a field hospital on the Syrian border to ensure efficient medical aid. This marked only the beginning of what would soon transform into Operation Good Neighbor, an official humanitarian mission.
Establishing Operation Good Neighbor
In July 2013, the 210th Division was established with the goal of securing Israel’s northern borders and to prepare for any escalated situation in the region. With the crisis in Syria worsening, and after many years of helping its neighbors, the IDF decided it needed to do more. As a result, the IDF launched Operation Good Neighbor in June 2016 with the 210th Division.
Operation Good Neighbor is exactly what it sounds like; it’s a humanitarian mission aimed at helping Israel’s Syrian neighbors by increasing aid to civilians while remaining uninvolved in the armed conflict.
Israel and Syria don’t maintain diplomatic relations with each other, making the IDF’s only obligation a moral one. “We must not forget, this operation is a moral stance taken by the State of Israel with regard to the situation of the Syrians across the border,” stated Lt. Col. A, Commander of Operation Good Neighbor.
The operation’s administration has identified the Syrian’s most crucial needs and has filled in those blanks. In 2017, Operation Good Neighbor made outstanding progress in providing Syrians in need with the basic supplies they lack in hopes of healing their physical and mental health wounds.
Providing Medical Care
Throughout Operation Good Neighbor, the IDF has assisted in the establishment of two medical centers in the region and a field clinic in an IDF post in the southern Golan Heights. This includes the Mazor Ladach field hospital that the American organization, Frontier Alliance International, donated, along with providing American doctors.
In 2017, the IDF supplied 2,124 containers of medicine and 400 medical devices, which helped the 685 Syrian children who received medical care just in 2017 as a part of Operation Good Neighbor.
