Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Palestinian Leaders Bet Future on Trump Impeachment
Palestinian leaders are betting their future on President Donald Trump being impeached by Democrats following the mid-term elections, according to Arabic language comments by a senior Palestinian government leader who praised Special Counsel Robert Mueller for targeting Trump and his top allies.
Palestinian government leaders, under pressure from the Trump administration as it slashes U.S. taxpayer aid to the embattled government, say they are betting on a Democratic takeover in Congress that will stall the administration's agenda and put the still languishing peace process on the back burner.
Muhammad Shtaya, a member of the Fatah government's Central Committee, said regional officials are counting on Democrats winning the midterms and seizing control of Congress, a scenario the Palestinians believe would work in their favor as the Trump administration pursues efforts to isolate regional governments for their support of terrorism.
The comments come amid a new push in Congress and the Trump administration to slash U.S. taxpayer aid to the Palestinian government as a result of it spending this money to pay the salaries of terrorists and their families. Parallel efforts in the United States also seek to redefine how Palestinian refugees are classified, a move that would change the calculus on peace talks.
Shtaya said in Arabic language comments that many are waiting with anticipation for Democrats to win the midterm elections.
November "is the midterm elections for Congress and the Senate," Shtaya said, according to an independent translation of his remarks provided to the Washington Free Beacon. "If the Democrats seize the majority in Congress and the Senate, I believe we will arrive at two results: First, the first result, a total paralysis of the Trump administration, as he will not be able to pass any bills in Congress. And second, and he spoke about this the other day, and he is the first American president to say, if I'm impeached, the world markets will collapse and everyone will pay a price for it."
The ongoing Mueller investigation also has provided a lifeline to Palestinian leaders who are hopeful it will erode Trump's presidency.
Barry Shaw: The happy Palestinians
The survey brought below dates back to 2015 - and the Palestinian condition has improved since then, despite the propaganda lies to the contrary. You will find it amazing.NGO Monitor: French Funded Propaganda Film Exploits Palestinian Youth
Happiness - Palestinians are 3rd happiest in all Arab countries, and 30th globally.
Water Resources - Despite claims to the contrary, Palestinian per capita use of natural, fresh water is 140 cubic meters per annum against Israel's 150 cubic meters per annum. Almost the same.
Education - Palestinians were 63.5% satisfied as opposed to 50% average among Arab states. Netherlands 60.3%, Sweden 61.6%, Japan 54.5%.
Literacy - Literacy rate of Palestinians aged 15+ was 96.5%
Infant Mortality - Palestinian infant mortality stood at 13 per 1000 live births compared with 27 per 1000 in Arab states, and 36.58% global average.
Life Expectancy - Palestinian age 76, Arab states 71, Global average 70.
Poverty - West Bank 18%. Israel 21%.
In August 2018, the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine (PFP), a French funded anti-Israeli NGO,1 published a documentary titled “No Kidding, Games under control.” The video, which was made “available for free access,” was produced in 2010 with the support of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the French Agency for Development (AFD).
The producers describe the film as “an assessment of Palestinian children’s rights, in particular, under the situation of the Israeli occupation.” The half-hour film features seven children and teenagers supposedly “chosen at random” from Gaza and the West Bank. According to PFP, the young interviewees “describe the Israeli military operations, the Wall, the settlements … they testify of the effects of the occupation on their daily life.”
The film systematically erases any notion of Israeli security concerns, including the context of violence and terrorism, and instead disseminates multiple unverified claims. The producers themselves state that the film is “slanted” in order to “let the children, without frame or constraint” tell their stories. As a result, the film whitewashes terror, promotes the demonization of Israel, and manipulates and exploits Palestinian children for political gain.
Denial: Norman Finkelstein and the New Antisemitism, by Alan Johnson, or as Finkelstein calls me, ‘the stupid goy’
In recent days the US polemicist Norman Finkelstein has injected a crude claim into the debate about antisemitism in the UK Labour Party: ‘the brouhaha is a calculated hoax — dare it be said, plot?’ This kind of denialism and victim-blaming is, of course, itself an example of contemporary antisemitism, and if the UK Labour Party listens to the counsel of Norman Finkelstein about antisemitism in its ranks then it really will have lost its way, and perhaps for good. In response, Fathom is making available an extract from ‘Denial: Norman Finkelstein and the New Antisemitism’ a chapter by our editor Alan Johnson in Unity and Disunity in Contemporary Antisemitism, edited by Jonathan Campbell and Lesley Klaff (forthcoming, Academic Studies Press, Boston, 2018). The editors wish to express their thanks to Academic Studies Press for permission to publish the extract. We encourage our readers to buy the book. The other contributors are David Hirsh, the late Robert Fine, Kenneth Marcus, Dave Rich, David Seymour, Bernard Harrison, Matthias Kuentzel, Rusi Jaspal, Amy Elman, and Lesley Klaff.Guardian op-ed defends the view that Israel has no right to exist.
The concept of a ‘new antisemitism’ directs our attention to some of the ways in which some people talk about Israel, Israelis and ‘Zionism’, suggesting that these ways have left the terrain of ‘criticism of Israeli policy’ and become something much darker. The concept is concerned to distinguish between legitimate criticism of that policy (most obviously, of the occupation of the territories, the settlement project, the treatment of minorities in Israel, and the degree of force Israel uses to restore deterrence against Hamas) and an essentialising, demonising and dehumanising discourse which bends the meaning of Israel and Zionism (and most Jews) out of shape until they are fit receptacles for the tropes, images and ideas of classical antisemitism.
The concept alerts us to antisemitism’s tendency to shape-shift through history. And to the possibility that since the creation of a Jewish state, in some quarters, what the demonized and essentialised ‘Jew’ once was, demonised and essentialised Israel now is: malevolent in its very nature, all-controlling, full of blood lust, and the obstacle to a better, purer, and more spiritual world.
The new antisemitism, which might also be called antisemitic anti-Zionism, has three components: a political programme to abolish the Jewish homeland, a discourse to demonise it, and a movement to make it a global pariah state. The old antisemitism – which has not gone away, but co-mingles with the new form – believed ‘the Jew is our Misfortune’. The new antisemitism proclaims ‘the Zionist is our misfortune’. The old antisemitism wanted to make the world ‘Judenrein’, free of Jews. The new antisemitism wants to make the world ‘Judenstaatrein’, free of the Jewish state which all but a sliver of world Jewry either lives in or treats as a vitally important part of their identity.
The headline of a Guardian op-ed by Ahmad Samih Khalidi (Siding with the Palestinian struggle is not antisemitic), extracted from text, is of course a straw man, as nobody claims that merely “siding with the Palestinians” is antisemitic. Khalidi, a former adviser to both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, has a broader goal, to defend those who object to the continued existence of a Jewish state, based on the “profound injustice” at the root of Zionism.U.S. Media Ignore Furor Over Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘British Zionists’ and ‘English Irony’ Remark
In an effort to legitimise his anti-Zionism, Khalididi grossly misleads by claiming that “Jewish opposition to Zionism has a long and distinguished history”. In fact, whilst there was a lively debate before Israel declared independence on the question of Zionism, today, Jewish opposition to the living, breathing state of Israel represents a minuscule, politically irrelevant fringe.
Khalidi further charges that the “insidious goal of the ‘anti-anti-Zionist’ campaign is to silence the Palestinians and their supporters”, which would only hold true if you characterise as “silencing” attempts to delegitimise extremists who wish to wipe the world’s only Jewish state off the map.
Following a brief moral throat clearing on the legitimacy of fighting ‘real’ antisemitism, Khalidi then suggests that Jews are only “pretending to be offended” by expressions of hostility towards Israel’s existence by Corbyn and his defenders.
In an attempt to justify his anti-Zionist stance, Khalidi then cites a laundry list of so-called Israeli ‘massacres’ since 1948. This includes an “Israeli massacre” in Lydda in 1948 that never in fact occurred, and an equally fictitious “massacre” of Egyptian prisoners during the Six Day War in 1967. Likewise, Khalidi charges Israel with “shooting down a Libyan civilian aircraft in 1973”, without mentioning that the incident was widely understood to have been caused by Libyan pilot error and miscommunication, and that it actually elicited very little international criticism.
Corbyn’s recently revealed 2013 remarks about “British Zionists” follows mounting criticism in recent weeks for Corbyn’s consorting with anti-semites and members of terror organizations.Everything You Need to Know About Corbyn in 3 Minutes
Yesterday, Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of England, warned that Corbyn is an anti-semite whose “British Zionists” remark “was the most offensive statement made by a senior British politician since Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech,” referring to a widely-reviled anti-immigration speech.
Surprisingly, the news pages of American media outlets have been completely silent on Corbyn’s remarks, mirroring their lack of interest earlier this month in the revelation that the Labour leader had laid a wreath in a Tunisian cemetery just meters away from the masterminds of the Munich massacre. The notable exception is yesterday’s Reuters article (“Former UK chief rabbi calls opposition leader Corbyn an anti-semite“). Other international wire agencies, namely the Associated Press and Agence France Presse, failed to cover the “English irony” story, even though they both have bureaus in London. Leading U.S. media giants like The New York Times and CNN, which stress international coverage, addressed the story only with outside (critical) Op-Eds.
12 Ways Jeremy Corbyn proved definitively that he is an Antisemite and supporter of terrorism.
Haneen Zoabi comes to Corbyn's defense over antisemitism charges
MK Haneen Zoabi (Joint List) condemned the Israeli media's recent upsurge in reportage about the United Kingdom's Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, which portrays him as an antisemite, as "unjust, offensive and absurd."The TIPH of the iceberg: Foreign occupation of Israel
The lawmaker specifically singled out in her statement a piece published in The Jerusalem Post's sister publication, Ma'ariv, Wednesday morning.
The Joint List MK referenced Corbyn's statement regarding a controversial Gaza flotilla raid, a military operation in which the IDF seized six civilian ships in international waters in May of 2010. Corbyn argued that Israel wrote speeches for UK parliamentarians about the incident.
Zoabi was aboard the ship Mavi Marmara, along with a group of activists which included a smaller group of IHH activists (humanitarian relief foundation, which the quasi-government Tirkel Commission Report identified as being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood) boarded a number ships to try to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas in Gaza.
While Israel commandeered and stopped most of the ships without incident, Israel Navy commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara and were attacked by IHH activists, leading to the injury of some commandos and the eventual deaths of 10 IHH activists.
Foreign occupation in the Land of Israel? It conjures up visions of the Maccabean Revolt against the Syrian Greeks, the Jewish Uprising against the Romans, and the modern Hebrew Rebellion against the British. Historically, Jews don’t take kindly to foreign occupiers in their homeland.Vanessa Redgrave doesn’t regret ‘Zionist hoodlums’ speech
Since 1994, I’ve been complaining about TIPH, the Temporary International Presence in Hevron, that anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian foreign occupier watchdog group, patrolling in Israel.
Temporary? Almost twenty five years is not temporary.
Enough is enough! It’s time for the Israeli government to kick them out of the City of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. And, let’s not forget, that Hevron was also David’s capital city, for almost seven years, before Jerusalem. Hevron is the second holiest city in Judaism, after Jerusalem.
But, the threat of invasion from foreign troops or “observers,” continues...
Just recently, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, has spoken about sending armed UN peacekeepers as one of four proposals, for safeguarding so-called Palestinians, that live under “Israeli occupation” in Gaza. First, let me remind you, that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
He also offered an alternative, “armed forces from a group of like-minded states operating under a United Nations mandate,” (from the 47 Muslim-majority states in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, for example?). It sounds a lot like a plan for Islamic invasion of the Land of Israel, under UN/international legitimacy.
Gaza, or better, Hamastan, is occupied not by Israel, but an Islamic terrorist organization called Hamas. A parasitic group, that has fed off the misery of the Gazans since 2007.
Forty years after she denounced “Zionist hoodlums” while accepting an Academy Award, actress Vanessa Redgrave said she has no regrets.GOP picks Trump-backed pro-Israel conservative for Florida’s governor race
“I had to do my bit,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on Tuesday. “Everybody had to do their bit, to try and change things for the better. To advocate for what’s right and not be dismayed if immediately you don’t see results.”
Redgrave – who is set to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday – was reflecting on the speech she gave in 1978, after receiving the best supporting actress prize from John Travolta.
The actress won for her role in Julia, the 1977 film about the fight against fascism and Nazism in 1930s Austria. But the very same year, Redgrave also produced and appeared in a documentary film called The Palestinian. Critics called the movie anti-Israel propaganda and said it was produced in conjunction with the PLO; Redgrave interviews Arafat in the film. The movie and Redgrave were relentlessly criticized by many Jewish groups, including the extremist Jewish Defense League, who protested outside the awards ceremony.
“In the last few weeks you have stood firm,” Redgrave told the audience during her 1978 acceptance speech, “and you have refused to be intimidated by the threat of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums, whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world, and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.”
After using the phrase “Zionist hoodlums,” an audible gasp and a series of boos can be heard in the crowd at the awards ceremony.
A boost from US President Donald Trump secured the Republican Florida gubernatorial nomination for a right-wing congressional backer, Ron DeSantis, while the Bernie Sanders-backed Tallahassee mayor, Andrew Gillum, won the Democratic nod.German bank accused of opposing Israel’s existence
Trump’s relentless backing for DeSantis, a fierce defender of Trump in the US House of Representatives as the president faces a federal investigation into alleged improprieties by his campaign and presidency, boosted him over the candidate the establishment had backed, Adam Putnam, the state’s commissioner of agriculture.
DeSantis is close to the conservative pro-Israel community and was among those leading the congressional charge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem — a pledge Trump fulfilled in May. DeSantis trounced Putnam 57-36 percent.
“Such a fantastic win for Ron DeSantis and the people of the Great State of Florida,” Trump said on Twitter.
A German Green Party politician and religious studies academic slammed the Bank for Social Economy on Monday for failing to match its rhetoric with action regarding Israel’s right to exist.KFC Announces It’s Definitely Coming Back to Israel
Volker Beck of the Green Party accused the embattled bank of hypocrisy toward the Jewish state for providing an account for the pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) extremist group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East. Beck, who is currently in Jerusalem, told The Jerusalem Post that he wrote the bank in an email: “Your business practice is neither compatible with advocacy for Israel’s right to exist nor with your commitment to reconciliation between Israel and Germany.”
Beck, a lecturer in the Center for Religious Studies at Ruhr University in Bochum, urged the bank to examine its behavior regarding the BDS account. “I consider it unacceptable” that the bank holds business relations with the BDS group Jewish Voice because of a “political assessment.”
The bank has requested a meeting with Beck. The bank’s chairman Harald Schmitz declined to answer a Post media query. The bank has previously claimed that it supports Israel’s existence and is dedicated to “reconciliation between Germany and Israel.”
The Cologne-based bank is under fire from politicians across Germany’s political spectrum for enabling economic warfare against Israel.
A cryptic statement issued by fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken this week has thrilled the Colonel’s fans in the Holy Land. The statement, according to Israel Hayom, went: “We are very optimistic about the Israeli market and we strongly believe in the success of the network here. We are now in the process of planning the re-launch in Israel. We can give further details later.”BBC tries to erase Hamas’ role in ‘Great Return March’ violence
So KFC, which to date has failed three times to conquer the Israeli market, is trying again.
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The chain, which belongs to the global food group YUM, has already met with a number of potential franchisees and real estate agents in Israel, and has begun negotiations with poultry suppliers. KFC representatives have visited Israel three times in recent months, and last week a team of ten reps landed in the Jewish State.
Back in 2013, the New York Times reported that KFC was being smuggled into Gaza through tunnels, and the smugglers were charging a steep $27 for 12-piece bucket. “It’s our right to enjoy that taste the other people all over the world enjoy,” entrepreneur and smuggler Khalil Efrangi, 31, told the Times. The expensive buckets were being smuggled from the KFC in El Arish, Egypt, across the Gaza Strip border.
On August 28th a filmed report titled “Bullet shatters Palestinian cyclist’s Asian Games dream” was posted on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page.Not in The National Interest
“The Asian Games continues in the Indonesian capital Jakarta until 2 September, with 18,000 athletes participating.
One Palestinian cyclist could not fulfil his dream of competing after he was shot during a Gaza strip demonstration, which has left Alaa Al-Daly with one leg. But he is determined to not let it stop him cycling.”
Together with the interviewee’s unconfirmed and unquestioned account of his story, viewers see statements from the BBC itself which once again reinforce its chosen narrative concerning the ‘Great Return March’.
“Alaa’s dream was to represent Palestine at the Asian Games. But an Israeli bullet put an end to his dream.
On 30 March, Alaa was taking part in what has been called “The Great March of Return” at the Gaza-Israel frontier. The protest campaign expresses support for the declared right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel.”
As has been the case in all previous BBC reporting on this topic, no effort was made to provide audiences with a clear view of what the Palestinian demand for ‘right of return’ means in terms of the two-state solution, to clarify that its real intention is to threaten the existence of Israel as the Jewish state or to explain what the non-binding UN GA resolution upon which that demand is supposedly based actually says.
We’ve got plenty of corrections over the years after flagging throwaway references to Tel Aviv that falsely imply that it is Israel’s capital.Travel Review Takes a Wrong Turn
But it’s rare that the error appears as many times as it does in an article in The National Interest concerning Israeli weapons.
1 and 2.Farley is probably correct in arguing that the Israel’s nuclear-tipped SLCMs are less practical than Tel Aviv’s other nuclear-delivery platforms.
(This sentence is repeated at the conclusion of the article.)
3. Unofficially, Tel Aviv wants everyone to know it has them [nuclear weapons], and doesn’t hesitate to make thinly-veiled references to its willingness to use them if confronted by an existential threat.
Michelle Jackson is an author and travel writer who runs a site called The Novel Traveller. She wrote a sponsored article on her experiences touring South Africa for the Irish Sunday Independent.BBC News coverage of terrorism in Israel – July 2018
Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse when Jackson included her thoughts from Johannesburg:
The most important must-do in Johannesburg is the Apartheid Museum. Walking through its ‘blank’ entrance takes me right back to 1970. It is printed on my ticket that I’m white/blank and the other entrance has non-blank emblazoned across it. I’m reminded that apartheid still exists in the world.
A visit to Selma in Alabama or a stroll through the Bogside in Derry informs the most earnest traveller that this has happened before and indeed is still happening in parts of the world such as Palestine. Injustice is clearly seen in retrospect while walking through the corridors of a well-furnished museum.
Only this month I was in the Apartheid Museum during a South African speaking tour and briefly mentioned my own feelings in a post written upon my return to Israel:
While those of us who live in Israel are acutely aware of just how inaccurate and defamatory the Israel apartheid libel is, it is enlightening to witness what real apartheid actually was. A visit to Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum and a tour of the notorious former prison at Constitution Hill with a former prisoner who outlined his experiences there helped to place things in proper perspective.
The Israel Security Agency’s report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during July 2018 shows that throughout the month a total of 255 incidents took place: 70 in Judea & Samaria, 11 in Jerusalem and 174 in the Gaza Strip sector.Sigmund Freud’s Letter Detailing his Jewish Roots, Family and Career on Auction
In Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem the agency recorded 65 attacks with petrol bombs (eleven of which were in Jerusalem), eleven attacks using improvised explosive devices (IEDs), two shooting attacks two arson attacks and one stabbing attack.
Attacks recorded in the Gaza Strip sector included 93 attacks with petrol bombs, one shooting attack and two sniper shooting attacks, 6 attacks using IEDs and two grenade attacks. 67 separate incidents of rocket and mortar fire were recorded, with 118 launches.
Two Israelis were killed and seven wounded in attacks that took place during July.
As we see the BBC News website reported one sniper shooting incident and one stabbing attack as well as two separate rounds of rocket fire. At the very most it can therefore be said that BBC News website audiences saw coverage of around 24% of the terror attacks which took place during July.
Since the beginning of 2018 the BBC has reported under 20% of the terror attacks that have taken place and 87.5% of the resulting fatalities.
An unusually personal four-pages long letter, dated June 30 1913 and written by Sigmund Freud on his personal stationery from his home in Vienna, goes on auction this week at Nate D. Sanders’ auction house in Los Angeles. The opening bid for the set of letters and envelopes is $25,000.Freelance work marketplace Fiverr said to be seeking IPO at $1 billion valuation
According to the auction website, the autographed letter contains Freud’s notes on his Jewish heritage and ancestry, the development of psychoanalysis and the ”intense rejection” it had endured, his marriage and children, and his professional writings and honorary degree.
The letter is addressed to fellow psychoanalyst Dr. Paul Federn, one of Freud’s earliest proteges. Freud dryly comments at the beginning of his letter about his reluctance to answer Federn’s correspondence, which he misplaced – ”most likely as a consequence of my resistance.”
”For several months, your communication of 04/21 had made itself untraceable – most likely as a consequence of my resistance…” Freud writes. “I was born on the 6th of May [18]56 in Freiberg / Moravia. My father and mother came from Galicia. My mother, nee Nathansohn, from Brody, of very distinguished ancestry (the Nathansohn – Kallir family), my father of the merchant class. According to tradition, as he once reported to me, the Freud family is said to have sometime left their hometown of Köln [Cologne] during a period of persecution of Jews and then to have migrated eastward…
Israel’s Fiverr is looking to hold an initial public offering of shares in New York at a company valuation of at least $1 billion, TheMarker reported on Tuesday without saying where it got the information.Intel’s newest and fastest processors for laptops are sired by Haifa team
Representatives of the company have been meeting with potential Wall Street underwriters and is targeting the beginning of next year for a share offering on the Nasdaq, TheMarker reported, citing unnamed sources.
The startup, which has raised some $111 million to date, according to data compiled by Start-Up Nation Central, has become a global leader for online freelance services. The firm was set up in 2010 by Micha Kaufman, Shai Wininger and Guy Gamzu.
A spokesman for the startup declined to comment.
On the Fiverr platform, freelancers can offer their services in a wide variety of categories, starting from $5. As of September 2017, Fiverr offered a catalog of digital services in over 150 categories, with more than 10 million services online from 150 countries, according to data provided by the company. And some 6,000 new services were added every day. The company employed some 280 workers, 180 of them in Israel and the rest in the US.
Intel Corp., whose processors power most of the world’s computers, on Tuesday announced new additions to its 8th generation processors, targeted at super-thin and light laptops, with the promise of up to 12 times faster connectivity speeds and twice the performance of a 5-year-old PC. The design of the new processors was led by its development team in Haifa, Israel.Israeli smart software flags patients at risk for colon cancer
The new U and Y series — codenamed Whiskey Lake and Amber Lake respectively — are designed for “the next wave of mobile computing,” Chris Walker, vice president of the Client Computing Group and general manager of Intel Mobile Client Platform. said in a statement.
They will optimize connectivity in thin, light laptops and in 2-in-1 computers — laptop-tablet hybrids — for the first time, Intel said in a statement. The processors also provide a long battery life, the statement said, as the US semiconductor giant announced the new processors at the 2018 Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) consumer electronics exhibition in Berlin.
Laptops with the series U processors will for the first time include Gigabit Wi-Fi, which enables connectivity speeds 12 times faster than previous generations.
Illustrative: A team of surgeons operating in the hospital (iStock)UNESCO: Israel 2nd in global R&D spending as percentage of GDP
Medial EarlySign, an Israeli startup, has developed machine learning-based software that analyzes standard blood test results to identify patients at high risk of colon cancer.
The product, called ColonFlag, does not directly diagnose colon cancer, but it is currently being used by doctors at Israel’s healthcare provider Maccabi, Kaiser Permanente in the US, and other organizations, to flag patients at high risk of the cancer, enabling the system to be proactive about getting these patients tested.
The firm was set up by Ori Geva, Ofer Arieli and Nir Kalkstein in 2009. Kalkstein is an expert in big data and machine learning algorithms, who also co-founded Final Israel Ltd., an algorithm-based trading company.
“In Final, Kalkstein’s technology used AI to crunch financial data to predict where assets are going,” said Geva in a phone interview with The Times of Israel. “Now, we are using medical algorithms with that same modeling method to look at medical records data and predict where people are going.”
“We can tell health providers which patients to focus on and which would benefit from an early intervention, and how best to do this,” he said.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has ranked Israel's spending on global research and development as second in the world in terms of percentage of the country's gross domestic product.Israel down to 5th worldwide in per capita patents
"According to UNESCO, Israel ranks second in global R&D spending as a % of GDP! This investment is necessary to promote the U.N.’s Global Sustainable Development Goals, and achieving progress," Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon tweeted Tuesday.
Israel was topped only by South Korea, and was ahead of Japan, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Germany and the United States.
Israel's relations with the U.N.'s cultural agency have deteriorated in recent years following a serious of anti-Israel resolutions questioning, among other things, the Jewish link to Jerusalem.
Israel suspended its membership in UNESCO in December, as did the United States, which maintains observer status.
Israel has been one of the leading countries in the past eighteen years in terms of number of international patents filed via the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in relation to population size. The peak came in 2000, when Israel was ranked third in the world for patents filed per capita according to the country of the inventor, after Finland and Sweden. Today, Israel is fifth, after Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and South Korea. Finland has dropped to sixth. The data are from a new report by the National Council for Research and Development in the Ministry of Science and Technology.Remembering Jewish Allies As Israel Inches Closer To Official Recognition Of The Armenian Genocide
A local record for number of patents filed came in 2007, but immediately following the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 the number of international patents filed declined. In the past few years the trend has reversed again and the number of patents filed is rising.
The report was prepared for the ministry by researchers at the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research: Dr. Eran Leck, Dr. Daphne Getz, and Ilia Zatcovetsky. It examines patents filed under the PCT, that is, patents intended to protect an invention in the international market, and it strengthens the findings of a previous report compiled by the Samuel Neaman Institute for the Ministry of Science and Technology on scientific publications. As in patents, Israel's standing in scientific papers published is very high, but its advantage is receding as other countries come to the fore.
The ranking of patents filed per capita according to the country of the inventor includes patents filed by international companies and universities where Israelis work. In the ranking of number of patents filed per capita according to the country of the filer (which could be an individual, an academic institution, or a commercial company), Israel was fourth in 2000 (after the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Finland), and is currently ranked eighth (having been overtaken by Japan, South Korea, Denmark, and Germany). These are OECD figures, and for most of the years in question they do not include China.
On May 23, the Israeli Knesset approved a motion on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The motion’s architect, Tamar Zandberg, chairwoman from the Meretz party, argued, "This is our moral and historic obligation … some things are above politics."
The Knesset postponed an official debate on the Armenian Genocide recognition until unanimous support can be coalesced among MPs to avoid the much-deserved humiliation that would result from a failure of the Israeli government to collect a majority (let alone unanimous) agreement on acknowledging the Ottoman Empire extermination of 1.5 million Armenians.
On June 4, President Netanyahu once again postponed the debate over three bills that recognize the Armenian Genocide until after the Turkish elections so as to not aid Erdogan during his re-election campaign. Besides the Israeli MP’s pushing for the recognition of this heinous crime against humanity, Jews have historically been some of the staunchest Armenian allies.
One of the most important Jewish allies of the Armenian people in the 20th century was Raphael Lemkin. Aside from coining the term genocide, Lemkin lobbied the U.N. to successfully adopt "The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." The convention defined "genocide" in legal terms. The concept was meant to allow legal protection of groups. Lemkin often said that the genocide of the Armenians was the catalyst for his crusade. It was his belief that had the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide been punished, then the Holocaust would not have taken place.
Lemkin was overwhelmed at the prospect of a race being destroyed with the resources available to a modern and relatively progressive government.
MEMRI Mourns The Passing Of Sen. #JohnMcCain Who Spoke At 2015 #TomLantos Event On #Antisemitismhttps://t.co/mP3XGjOkJW pic.twitter.com/7DDOOJGTz3
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 28, 2018
