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Friday, February 16, 2018

02/16 Links Pt2: Justice for Oxfam’s Anti-Israel Bigotry?; Is Refusing Israeli Help Worth a Drought?; Phillips: Poland unleashes its own inner demons

From Ian:

Justice for Oxfam’s Anti-Israel Bigotry?
Minnie Driver has stepped down from her role as Oxfam​ Ambassador because of allegations that staff for the charity — in Haiti and other countries — paid vulnerable people for sex.

In 2014, Oxfam threw Scarlett Johansson under the bus because of her association with SodaStream, an Israeli company that employed hundreds of Palestinians and served as a bellwether for peaceful co-existence between Palestinians and Jews.

Johansson refused to be bullied, and likewise stepped down from her Oxfam position. I am proud to have worked directly with Scarlett’s people during that fiasco.

A bit of justice for Oxfam? Perhaps. But no justice for Haitians who were abused — or for Palestinians who lost jobs and friends they treasured.

Is Refusing Israeli Help Worth a Drought?
Akoob claims that maybe South Africa can learn from Israel while simultaneously boycotting Israel — simply by taking Israeli design specifications, but never interacting with Israeli scientists or engineers.

Again, Akoob gets it wrong: according to a whole range of scientists, experts, and engineers (as summarized in this report from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs), there is simply no substitute for working together when it comes to water.

Based on all these misstatements of fact, Akoob concludes:

South Africa does not need the help of Israel to solve our drought.

And just to make her point, Rumana Akoob is — apparently — willing to bet the very safety of the South African people on her views.
Melanie Phillips: Poland unleashes its own inner demons
If Poland wants to demonstrate it really did have nothing to do with the Holocaust, it’s going a mighty strange way about it.

A new law passed by the Polish parliament criminalizing any suggestion that Poland was involved in the Holocaust has produced a crisis in Polish-Jewish relations described as the most serious since the fall of communism in 1989.

Poland is well known for its sensitivity to the false description of Nazi concentration camps on its soil as being “Polish camps.” But the new law goes much further.

It makes it a criminal offense for anyone to accuse Poland of being “responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich... or other crimes against peace and humanity or war crimes...”

This is in effect to criminalize telling the truth about Polish history. For there is ample evidence of Polish complicity in the extermination of the Jews.

Poles often shopped Jews to the Nazis; the historian and survivor Emanuel Ringelblum has noted that Polish police “played a most lamentable role in the extermination of the Jews of Poland... [and were] enthusiastic executors of all the German directives regarding the Jews.”



Islamic Anti-Semitism in France: Toward Ethnic Cleansing
Graffiti on Jewish-owned homes warn the owners to "flee immediately" if they want to live. Anonymous letters with live bullets are dropped into mailboxes of Jews.

Laws meant to punish anti-Semitic threats are now used to punish those who denounce the threats. A new edition of a public school history textbook for the eighth grade states that in France it is forbidden to criticize Islam.

Those French Jews who can leave the country, leave. Most departures are hasty; many Jewish families sell their homes well below the market price. Jewish districts that once were thriving are now on the verge of extinction.

"The problem is that anti-Semitism today in France comes less from the far right than from individuals of Muslim faith or culture". — Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
JPost Editorial: Whither Malaysia?
At the end of December, not long after US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak led thousands in protest.

“There are 1.6 billion Muslims,” Najib, the leader of the Muslim-majority nation in Southeast Asia, declared.

“There are only 13 million Jews. It does not make sense if 1.6 billion lose to the Jews. If we don’t unite, we will be looked down upon.”

Greatly exaggerating the extent of Jewish power and blaming the Jews for one’s own failures is a common trait of the antisemite. Malaysia, like other Muslim nations, has a long history of knee-jerk rejection of anything Israeli and blind support for anything Palestinian.

In the winter of 2013, Razak paid a visit to Hamas’s rulers in Gaza and announced, “We believe in the struggle of the Palestinian people. They have been suppressed and oppressed for so long.”

The Malaysia government’s anti-Israel/antisemitic sentiment carries over to nearly every imaginable area of life. In 2016, for instance, Malaysia hosted a windsurfing competition but conditioned participation of Israeli players on them erasing all national symbols from their surfboards or their swimsuits. Malaysia ultimately refused to grant the Israelis visas.
How 1973’s Spike in Oil Prices Transformed the Middle East
The year 1979 saw the fall of the shah, Saddam Hussein’s ascent to power in Iraq, the treaty between Israel and Egypt, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; thus, there is good reason to see it as a great turning point in Middle Eastern history. Simon Henderson, however, argues that the real shift took place in 1973:

The current fixation with 1979 results from the fact that Saudi Arabia’s new de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman . . . sees it as the date when Saudi Islam became extremist. . . . [But] I think 1973 is more significant, not because of the October war when Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria but because of one of its consequences: a fourfold increase in oil prices.

The flood of revenues was used in part by Saudi Arabia, the largest oil exporter in the world, to burnish its Islamic credentials—as well as to finance multimillion-dollar arms deals and some grand palaces. The Saudi royal family used some of the dollars to placate the kingdom’s religious establishment, which historically has legitimized its rule. Abroad, mosques were built by the dozens, and copies of the Quran distributed by the tens of thousands. But these Islamic endeavors were often not good works, [but a largely successful attempt to export the most radical and intolerant forms of Islam and support the Muslim Brotherhood]. . . .

[Furthermore], the cold war was still raging. Moscow’s influence rivaled Washington’s across great swaths of the Middle East—Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Algeria. Saudi Arabia wanted to replace godless Communism with [radical] Islam. The United States found that useful.
Israeli Academic Supports BDS Because Yad Vashem Doesn’t Commemorate Palestinian Suffering
Earlier this year, The International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy announced that it will hold its 2019 meeting in Israel, which triggered an unsurprising torrent of calls to boycott the proceedings or move them elsewhere.

Not to be outdone by their fulminating peers abroad, a good number of Israeli psychoanalysts who identify as radical leftists (or am I repeating myself?) quickly joined those who advocate for the singling out of the Jewish state for calumny. The debate raged on mainly among members of Psychoactive, a group that defines itself as “mental health professionals for human rights.” A minority of its members opposed supporting the boycott, stating, quite rationally, that the BDS movement is interested in little save for the delegitimization of Israel and that, besides, ideologically driven censures aren’t particularly conducive to free thought and speech. But most of Psychoactive’s members, according to reports in the Israeli press, voted to join in on the anti-Israel festivities.

Their arguments? Thus spake Ilana Lach, who teaches at the Academic College of Society and the Arts in Netanya: “We are not ‘good Israelis’ who don’t deserve to be boycotted because we don’t vote for Bibi or [Naftali] Bennett,” she wrote, attacking one of her colleagues who opposed the BDS movement. “You and I can’t boycott this country so long as we live in it, so we need to find other ways to resist… If there’s serious international pressure, like the kind applied in South Africa, maybe it’ll save us from ourselves.”

This lunacy alone, however, wasn’t enough for Lach. She had one more ace up her sleeve: BDS, she said, deserved support because Yad Vashem selfishly and chauvinistically commemorated only the suffering of Jews murdered in the Holocaust and not Palestinians oppressed by Israel.
Government to make list of Israeli BDS supporters, deny them benefits — report
The government is reportedly planning to compile a blacklist of Israeli supporters of the BDS movement and deny them tax breaks and participation in government tenders, to complement a similar existing list of foreign activists and groups.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon is set to approve the new regulations preventing the benefits from applying to BDS supporters in the coming days, along the lines of a law approved last year that banned foreign individuals calling for a boycott of Israel from entering the country, Haaretz reported Thursday.

In March 2017, the Knesset amended the Law of Entry to prevent leaders of the BDS movement from being allowed into Israel. The amendment applies to organizations that take consistent and significant action against Israel through BDS, as well as the leadership and senior activists of those groups.

The text of the law refers not only to advocates of a boycott of Israel, but to those calling for a boycott only of West Bank settlements as well. However, the question of whether the expected regulations will apply to those who only boycott the settlements is yet to be decided, the report said.

Sources in the Strategic Affairs Ministry were quoted as saying details of the regulations’ implementation will be determined by a new committee expected to be established by the Finance Ministry under the supervision of legal advisers.
Conor Lamb Says He Has ‘No Memory’ of Accusing Israel of ‘Terrorism,’ Targeting ‘Innocent Civilians’
Pennsylvania Democrat Conor Lamb said he had "absolutely no memory" of saying Israel was guilty of "terrorism" and intentionally targeted civilians, comments from 2002 revealed by the Washington Free Beacon on Monday.

Lamb was asked about the comments by an attendee of a Tuesday event at the South Hills Jewish Community Center who read aloud the full contents of Lamb's 2002 post on his college newspaper's website, which remains on the site. The attendee told Lamb "several members of the Jewish community" were "concerned" about Lamb's comments on Israel, which were sparked by a pro-Israel ad published in the Daily Pennsylvanian.

"It was disheartening to see the add [sic] in the DP the other day which read, ‘Wherever we stand, we stand with Israel,'" wrote Lamb as a student at the University of Pennsylvania.

"Just the other day, the Israeli Government launched an attack on innocent civilians in Gaza, citing them as ‘armed terrorists,'" Lamb wrote. "Among the dead were a 14 year-old boy and woman in her late 40s. The army intentionally fired on a medical facility treating the over 100 wounded."

"There is no doubt that both sides of this conflict have committed wrongs, but if this latest attack is not terrorism, I don't know what is," he concluded.

Lamb's campaign still has not responded to inquiries on the post, but said he had "absolutely no memory" of it when confronted on Tuesday, according to a recording of the event obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

"I've looked at that several times in the last 24 hours and as a prosecutor I'll give you the most honest and accurate thing that I can say, which is, I have absolutely no memory of ever using those words at all," Lamb said.
Dan Meridor welcomed with shouts of ‘Shame,’ protests at London university event
Former Israeli deputy prime minister Dan Meridor faced a difficult beginning to his whistle-stop trip to the United Kingdom this week, where he spoke to students on university campuses.

In a visit organized by a new campus organization, the UK-based Pinsker Centre, Meridor faced a hostile, shrieking crowd of about 60 students at King’s College, London. On succeeding nights, the former politician had two calm and peaceful meetings in Durham and Oxford.

The Pinsker Centre, formed after Jewish students faced violent disruption at the King’s College campus in 2016, says its mission is “to preserve freedom of speech on British university campuses and allow a non-hostile platform for discussion on Israel.”

It joins forces with existing campus organizations such as the local student Israel society. King’s is part of London University and the week’s first event was jointly promoted by Pinsker, King’s Israel Society and City University’s Israel Society.

The hostility at King’s was spurred by the fact that the King’s College Action Palestine Society (KCLAP) advertised the Meridor event on Facebook, encouraging people to come and protest.

Stringent rules as to who could or could not enter the Great Hall of King’s central London campus were laid down by the King’s College authorities. It was a ticket-only event, but in the end many of those opposed to Meridor bought tickets but chose instead to stand outside the Great Hall, keeping up a screaming, baying protest designed at disrupting the speech.
George Galloway declares Israel “should be no more” at IHRC event
George Galloway, former member of parliament and prolific anti-Israel activist has declared that the State of Israel “should be no more”.

Mr Galloway made the controversial statement on 28 January 2018 at a seminar titled, “The Future of Jerusalem” organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC).

It is important to note that IHRC runs the anti-Israel Al-Quds day march and was in the news this week for its anti-Israel poster in Luton. You can find out more about their anti-Israel ways here.

Galloway was talking about Trump’s decision to move the Embassy, which he referred to as “incredibly stupid”. He said that “It’s not actually really relevant, on the bigger level, where the United States has its embassy. The point is, it’s an embassy to an illegitimate state that should be no more. Should be no more.” He emphasised.

After calling for the world’s only Jewish state to be “no more”, he said it was a “foul lie” to accuse himself and others who oppose Israel as being antisemitic. “We will stand tall and stand firm. Whatever they call us, they’re lying,” he declared.

Galloway also claimed that “many Jews are not Zionists, most Zionists are not Jews, many Zionists hate Jews, we on the other hand love Jews”.

“We hate Zionism,” he declared, “not least, because it has lead so many of the Jewish people off the path of righteousness and onto the path of gangsterism.”
Corbyn’s anti-racism interviewer sent tweets joking about Jews and Hitler
Jeremy Corbyn has appeared alongside a YouTube star who sent tweets containing the N-Word and jokes about Jews and Hitler.

The Labour leader was interviewed by David Vujanic in a video published on Thursday.

The pair attended a ‘Show Racism the Red Card’ event where they discussed Mr Corbyn’s support for the charity.

However, according to the Guido Fawkes site, in a series of tweets in 2012 Mr Vujanic joked about Hitler and Jews, writing: “Hitler was playing the Jew challenge game. Jew goals are my speciality.

“I bet if Hitler was alive and did a little Douige [a popular dance move] everyone would forget about the whole genocide thing.”

Other tweets included jokes about black men dating fat white women.
IsraellyCool: Terror Supporter Reem Assil a Semi-Finalist for James Beard Award for Best Chef
Last year, Israeli chef Michael Solomonov won a James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef (and an Israellycool award for Outstanding Pose).

This year, someone who glorifies the murderer of Israelis like Michael is a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Best Chef.

Awards season for restaurants kicked off today with the release of the annual list of James Beard Foundation Awards semifinalists. In what seems par for the course, the Bay Area had a solid showing, with 28 nominations.

The most notable aspect of this year’s nominations list concerns the demographics of the Best Chef West category, which covers California, Hawaii and Nevada. Out of the nine Bay Area chefs nominated, six are women, compared to last year, when the Bay Area contingent was 10 strong but only three women were included.

Among the new additions to the Best Chef West list are 2017 Chronicle Rising Star Chef Reem Assil (Reem’s California, Oakland) who is getting her first James Beard nod less than a year after opening the doors to her namesake bakery in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood.
In France, Furor Over a Muslim Reality Show Star Reveals Deeper Tensions
First of all, keen-eyed observers of the affair pointed out that, of the several Arabic-language versions of Cohen’s “Hallelujah” available in translation, Ibstissem selected the one by Muhammad al Hussayin’s, an extreme revision of the original lyrics that turn the song into a nasheed, or a Muslim religious chant. Now titled “Ya Illahi,” or “Oh My God,” al Hussayin’s version scrubbed Cohen’s original of any reference to King David and the bible, not to mention all that erotic talk of “remember when I moved in you / And the holy dove was moving too.” Cohen’s distinctive blend of sex and metaphysics, deeply rooted in Jewish and kabbalistic soil, has been replaced by a story of sin, morbid guilt, and submission to God. Given the common perception among radical Islamists that the Jews have lied on their sacred texts and that their writings must be corrected and replaced with the words of the Prophet, the implications of choosing such a stern version of “Hallelujah” are troubling.

Just, however, when Ibstissem’s critics warmed up to their diatribes, her defenders noted that her questionable tweets aside, her website also features her singing songs by the Franco-Israeli singer Tal, as well as by a wide array of pop stars, from Beyoncé to Bob Dylan. And, on The Voice, Ibstissem chose to be mentored by Mika, an openly gay singer and a strong advocate for gay marriage, hardly positions consistent with the Muslim Brotherhood’s worldview.

Ibstissem’s world, then, seems to be one of multiple versions of herself that contradict each other yet coexist peacefully. But this complex insight itself proved too difficult to some in France, who, having learned little from the last decade’s tribulations, found all the wrong things to admire about the young singer. The ultra far right and professional anti-Semite Alain Soral, for example, has come to her defense, and so has—in Le Monde, no less—a local politician called Abdel-Rahmène Azzouzi, who, in the summer of 2014, as French synagogues were under attack, said in a public speech: “I am an anti-Semite and I live with it.” The left’s other leading newspapers, including Liberation, keep publishing essays in Ibstissem’s support, saying that her beauty and her tribute to Cohen are all the proof anyone should need of her pure intentions. Here we are, then, back where we were after the Toulose murders of 2012, when nothing was more urgent than to present radical terrorists as lost kids. It does not take a genius to see where this regressive path is leading.
You Are Invited Into Idan Raichel’s Living Room
Raichel discusses fatherhood, going solo, and fighting BDS with tea.
For almost 14 consecutive years, Idan Raichel was on tour. Alongside with his motley crew of singers and musicians, he traveled across the globe, performing for large and small audiences, bringing life each night to his unique mix of Middle Eastern sounds and lyrics. While on his most recent tour, the now 40-year-old Israeli musician received a video-call from one of his daughters. “Papa,” she said. “Are you angry at me? Why are you not coming home?”

Raichel was taken aback. For him, that was a moment of truth; he understood that while he was out there performing, someone else was paying the price for it. So after completing the tour, he returned to his home in Tel Aviv, and began a new routine, dominated by his daughters’ needs (“Every morning, I prepare shoko for them”), their kindergarten, the coffee shops in Tel Aviv and the people who bring them to life.

Nine months later, he’s ready to hit the road again. But this time, it’s without his band, the Project, with whom he created some of his greatest hits, including his break-through song, Boee, which featured a blend of whispered Ethiopian vocals and a lightly-tapped percussions.
IsraellyCool: What AJ+ Does Not Tell You About “Ahed Tamimi As Wonder Woman” Artist Jim Fitzpatrick
In the latest attempt to “lionize” Ahed “Shirley Temper” Tamimi, “artist” Jim Fitzpatrick has turned her into Wonder Woman. And Al Jizz’s AJ+ is there to tell us all about it (in their lying, misleading way, of course).

Here’s some information Al Jizz omitted from this video..

Besides loving a good terrorist and mass murderer like Che Guevara, Jim Fitzpatrick loves making Israel-Nazi comparisons

And espousing conspiracy theories, like Israel and the US being in cahoots with ISIS

And he supports Assad’s Syrian army, retweeting antisemite Partisangirl

Of course, just because he compares us to Nazis and retweets antisemites, does not make him a Jew hater. Some of his best friends are Jewish

This is the sort of person throwing their support behind Ahed Tamimi. Well, this type and virtual signalling ignoramuses.
Ukrainian monument to Jewish Holocaust victims vandalized
A monument for Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust in what is today Ukraine was vandalized by unidentified individuals, who painted a swastika and the SS Nazi elite unit’s symbol on it.

The incident occurred earlier this month in the city of Ternopil, located about 80 miles (129 kilometers) east of the city of Lviv in Western Ukraine, Eduard Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, wrote on Facebook Wednesday.

In March 2017 the memorial was defaced in a similar way.

The day before the recent incident, on February 2, the editor-in-chief of a local newspaper in Chortkiv, a city located 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Ternopil, published an article claiming Jews have excessive power in Ukraine and beyond, and that only 800,000 Jews died in the Holocaust.

“If you go deeper into history, then you’ve always had Jews where the money, where the power, the benefit are,” wrote Maryana Polyanskaya, in her column in the Chortkovskiy Vestnik newspaper. She also condemned Israel’s “expulsion of Palestinians.”
‘Swiss Oskar Schindler’ who saved tens of thousands of Jews in WWII honored
A room in the Swiss Federal Palace where high-level foreign policy decisions are made was renamed for a diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

Carl Lutz, who worked as vice consul for Switzerland in Budapest during the years of World War II, is credited with having a hand in saving about 86,000 Jews from the Nazis. He is called the Swiss Oskar Schindler.

The room in the palace in Bern was renamed the Carl Lutz room on Monday, on the 43rd anniversary of his death, The Local-Switzerland reported. A commemorative plaque bearing his name and those of Harald Feller, Gertrud Lutz-Fankhauser, Ernst Vonrufs, and Peter Zürcher, who all worked with Lutz to help save thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps, also was hung in the room.

Lutz served as vice consul for Switzerland in Budapest from 1942 to 1945. In 1944, when the Germans entered Hungary, Lutz signed an agreement for the Germans to provide safe passage for 8,000 Jews and then extended the diplomatic letters of protection he received to whole families instead of individuals. When the 8,000 documents were used up, he issued new ones. Lutz and his diplomatic colleagues also set up safe houses around Budapest for thousands of Jews.

Lutz has been honored by Israel’s Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.
Holocaust survivor, Normandy veteran receives French Legion d’Honneur
Walter Bingham describes himself as a “small cog in the vast allied undertaking” that landed at Normandy in France in 1944 to help defeat the Nazi menace. On Thursday he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur aboard a French warship at the port of Haifa, symbolizing far more than a cog, as he spoke on behalf of comrades and colleagues who have not lived to see this day.

The Legion d’Honneur is the highest French decoration for military and civilian accomplishments. Created in 1802 it has been awarded to thousands, but rarely to those with as colorful a life as Bingham. French Ambassador Helene Le Gal welcomed the honoree aboard the French warship Jean de Vienne on Thursday. “France would like today to honor a veteran who fought to free our country from Nazi occupation 74 years ago,” she said. The ambassador reminded those attending, including Bingham’s family and an assembled honor guard on the helicopter pad of the warship that Bingham had been born in 1924 in Germany to Polish Jewish parents. He fled to the UK in 1939 after Kristalnacht and joined the army in Britain where he enlisted in the army and landed at the beaches of Normandy as an ambulance driver on June 7th, 1944. “France wants to thank you officially for your commitment,” Le Gal declared. Then she pinned the red award on his chest and an honor guard paraded around the deck.

Bingham said the ceremony was a great honor. “I represent all my comrades and colleagues who didn’t make this day but deserved the same [award].” He said that as a refugee arriving in England he felt a special devotion to fight and defeat the Nazis. “Our motivation was very strong. I came to England with a Polish passport,” he recalled. Even though he had grown up in Germany, the country did not provide Jewish immigrants from Poland the right to citizenship. In a strange irony in 1939 when he arrived as a refugee in England with German Jewish youth he was considered a “friendly alien” because Poland was allied with the British against the Nazis. The German Jewish children arriving on German passports were seen as “enemy aliens” even though they were fleeing.
The Jewish sheriff at Florida shooting cites Talmudic verse as his motivation
As he leads the police response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is likely enduring some of the toughest days of his career. And he’s probably looking to his Judaism to guide him through it.

Israel is the county’s first Jewish sheriff, and it’s an identity he has embraced. A 2016 campaign flier reported on that year by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel centers on the role that faith in general, and Judaism in particular, plays in his life.

“My Jewish faith is a central part of my entire life,” the flier quotes Israel as saying. “My late father Sonny Israel fought in the Korean War and became a police officer because he believed in the call from the Talmud that ‘Whoever saves one life saves an entire world.’ Those words guided my brother and I, as we also became police officers.”

Israel is the sheriff in charge of the area that includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 faculty and students were killed by a gunman on Wednesday. Israel’s children, triplets, had attended the school. In a video recorded by a local NBC affiliate, he called the mass shooting a “horrific, homicidal, detestable act.”
Five members of Jewish community among 17 killed in Florida massacre
Four Jewish students and a teacher were confirmed Thursday to be among the 17 victims killed during a massacre at their Florida high school the day before.

The dead included four students — Jamie Guttenberg, Alyssa Alhadeff, Alex Schachter, Meadow Pollack — and teacher Scott Beigel, heralded for putting himself in the line of fire to save others.

The five deaths were reported by family members, friends, and community members. Rabbi Mendy Gutnick of Chabad of Parkland, who has been in touch with many of the families of those killed and injured, confirmed the five deaths to The Times of Israel.

A former student, identified as Nikolas Cruz, armed with an AR-15 rifle, opened fire at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday, killing at least 17 people, officials said, in a harrowing shooting spree that saw terrified students hiding in closets and under desks as they texted for help.

Broward County officials said they would release a full list of victims later Thursday.

The Jewish community in Parkland was reeling over the massacre at the large school, with many members of the community belonging to the student body.
Israel Develops Pocket-Size Device to Test for Heart Attacks
It starts with an uncomfortable pressure gripping the center of your chest. A sharp pain shoots through your arms, neck and jaw. Your breath starts to shorten; you feel a growing urge to vomit.
What do you do next? Nearly half of Americans do nothing.

A report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the early warning signs of heart attacks discovered that "about 47% of sudden cardiac deaths occur away from hospital." This suggests, the report continues, that "many people with heart disease do not act on early warning signs."

Not only are the symptoms of a heart attack frightening by themselves, but testing for them at a hospital in the United States can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Most important: The longer a heart attack goes undetected, the greater the damage to the victim's heart.

"Time is muscle. We know the heart muscle can live without blood for four to six hours, so if you are opening the artery after four hours, there will be a lot of damage to the heart," said Dr. Chaim Lotan, director of the Heart Institute and Cardiovascular Division at Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem. "If you open the artery early, you can save a lot of muscle."

But a device developed in Israel could radically change how we detect heart attacks by making the process simpler, quicker and cheaper. It is the brainchild of Emil Katz, founder and CEO of Novamed, a life-sciences company that makes medical products, who was alarmed at how quickly a number of his friends suddenly died from heart attacks.
Israeli Startup CommonSense Robotics Raises $20 Million
Israel’s CommonSense Robotics, whose technology enables retailers to offer quick and affordable grocery deliveries, said on Thursday it has raised $20 million in an early-stage investment round, bringing its total funding to $26 million.

The round was led by Playground Global and includes previous investors venture capital fund Aleph and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors.

The funds will be used to scale up CommonSense Robotics’ deployment rate, develop their next generation of robotics and artificial intelligence and expand global operations.

CommonSense Robotics said its solution enables retailers to shorten the grocery supply chain by transforming underutilized urban retail space into centers where robots will efficiently store, sort and process inventory. This allows retailers to keep their inventory close to customers, not in hangars far removed from cities.

The company is deploying its robots in its first operational facility and plans to open more facilities in the United States, UK and Israel in 2018.
Israeli Krav Maga Empowering Women Against Sexual Harrassment
"We are women and we are strong" How Israeli martial art Krav Maga is empowering women of all kinds to fight back against sexual harassment at the Rachel Shear - Krav Maga Academy.


Gliding to ‘Hava Nagila,’ Israelis land in men’s Olympic figure skating final
Israeli figure skaters Alexei Bychenko and Daniel Samohin qualified for the Olympic finals Friday, with finishes of 13th and 18th respectively in the short program qualifying heat.

Defending Olympic champion, Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu, led the field with a record 111.68 points, building more than a four-point lead over Spain’s Javier Fernandez.

Bychenko, skating to “Hava Nagila,” managed a total of 84.13 points for his routine.

Samohin was not far behind, with 80.69 points for his routine skated to “L’Immensita” by Il Volo.

Neither Israeli, however, looks likely to score a podium finish as the top 24 skaters, out of a field of 30, progress to the final round — Saturday’s decisive free skate at the Gangneung Ice Arena.

Placed third, over seven points adrift of his compatriot, was another Japanese skater, Shoma Uno, with China’s Jin Boyang lying fourth.




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