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Thursday, October 18, 2018

10/18 Links Pt2: Phillips: Corbyn is not the cause of left-wing Jew hate, he's the result of it; Even after 46 years, Fatah still lauds its Olympics massacre

From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: Jeremy Corbyn is not the cause of left-wing Jew hate, he's the result of it
There are two two principal reasons why the left is institutionally antisemitic.

The first is that “Palestine” is its signature cause of causes. And the “Palestine” cause inescapably rests upon the extermination of Israel and the obliteration of the Jewish people from their own national story in their ancient homeland — the triple connection which constitutes Judaism itself.

The second is that, for the left, the world is divided into the powerful and the powerless. Those with power can never be good; those without power can never be bad. So every group deemed to be powerless claims victim status.

But grotesquely, Jews aren’t seen as victims because, as everyone “knows”, they emerged from the Holocaust to run the financial world, the media, the law, the arts, American foreign policy.

What’s more, since Israel is highly armed (solely for its defence) the Jews are seen as an all-powerful global force.

And so ancient anti-Jewish paranoia has been given loathsome legs on the left. And hence also the left’s extreme reluctance to acknowledge the disproportionate involvement of Muslims in antisemitic incidents in Britain and Europe.

The frequency of overt antisemitism on the left is not the key issue. It’s rather the collusion by Jeremy Corbyn with this bigotry — not only his refusal to deal with it in his party, but the fact that he himself is associated with these attitudes.

This is a cultural poison of long standing of which Corbyn is not the cause but the extremely problematic result.
Caroline Glick: Jewish Democrats Increasingly Anti-Israel
The current election cycle makes this point very clearly. As JTA reported this week, there are 36 Jewish candidates running as Democrats in House races. Half are incumbents, and half are challengers.

Over two-thirds of the Jewish Democratic incumbents (13 of 18) supported President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the most outspoken critic of the deal, arguing that it posed an existential danger to Israel by giving Iran an open path to a nuclear arsenal. Three-quarters of Israeli Jews agreed with him.

Nearly half of the Jewish Democratic incumbents (7 of 18) have received contributions from J Street, the anti-Israel Jewish political group founded with help from George Soros. Throughout Obama’s years in office, J Street served as the administration’s Jewish fig leaf.

J Street was a central actor in the campaign to block a Senate veto of the Iran deal. It has placed the blame for the failure of the Israel-Palestinian peace process squarely on Israel’s shoulders, and campus chapters of J Street have reportedly aided anti-Israel activists in attempts to support the antisemitic “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) campaign against Israel. The organization is considered so hostile to Israel that Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, refuses to meet with its representatives.

Among the Democratic challengers, five of 18 have received funding from J Street, according to JTA’s report. Ten have received money from other far-left PACs or were endorsed by Obama.

One of the Democratic candidates, Dan Kohl, who is running in Wisconsin’s 6th District against two-term Republican incumbent Glenn Grothman, is one of J Street’s founders, and its first political director. His uncle, Herb Kohl, served as a Senator from Wisconsin for four terms and was staunchly supportive of Israel.
The Story Of David And Goliath Gets Archaeological Evidence Backing It Up
Scoffers beware: the Biblical tale of David and Goliath just got more real than ever, thanks to an archaeological discovery that fits the Biblical description of Goliath’s armor.

In the Biblical tale, roughly 3,000 years ago, David, when he was still a young shepherd and not yet the immortal king, engaged in single combat on behalf of the Jews against Goliath, the huge champion of the Jews’ arch-enemies: the Philistines. The story read like this:

A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. His shield bearer went ahead of him.

Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.”

After David volunteered to fight Goliath, David confronted him: “As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground. So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him. David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine’s sword and drew it from the sheath. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword.”

As Haaretz reports, in 2017 archaeologists found shards of pottery in Philistine Gath that were inscribed with names similar to Goliath’s. In the first book of Samuel, it states, “He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze ... on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back.”



PMW: Even after 46 years, Fatah still lauds its Olympics massacre
The world was enraged when 8 Palestinian terrorists from Fatah's Black September took 11 Israeli athletes and coaches hostage at the Olympics in Munich on September 5, 1972, and later murdered them.

However, in Palestinian ideology the attack and the murders are presented as a "heroic" event to be proud of. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that both the PA and Fatah continuously glorify the terror attack, the terrorists themselves, and those who planned it.

On this year's anniversary of the murders of the Israeli athletes, Abbas' Fatah Movement posted a video that lauds the attack and praises Fatah's terror organization Black September that planned and carried out the attack. Fatah introduced the video of what it called the "heroic operation" with the following words:

Posted text: "The 46th anniversary of the heroic operation #Munich #The_symbols_of_the_Fatah_Movement_Lebanon #Be_strong_and_brave_homeland"


PMW: Jews "dance and live on the body parts of others" and are behind "global corruption," says PA Islamic Judge on PA TV
A judge in the Palestinian Authority's Islamic court system taught that Jews "dance and live on the body parts of others, and on the blood of others," and that "there is no global corruption that their rabbis did not allow." The Antisemitic Shari'ah Judge, Muhannad Abu Rumi, spouted this hatred on official PA TV earlier this month.

Muhannad Abu Rumi: "[Khan Al-Ahmar is] holy land. We know its value, and not them [Jews], the foreigners, the fabricators of history, who dance and live on the body parts of others, and on the blood of others. Read their history: There is no global corruption that they are not behind. There is no global corruption that their rabbis did not allow..." [Official PA TV, Not a Neighbor, Oct. 5, 2018]

Later in his sermon, Abu Rumi echoed Mahmoud Abbas' advisor on Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who has stated that the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis/Jews is the battle between "good" vs. "evil," and that Israel represents the "culture of Satan" in the battle against "Islamic culture in all its splendor and human glory."


Twitter Won’t Ban Farrakhan For Calling Jews ‘Termites.’ They’ll Ban Conservatives For Calling Chelsea Manning A Traitor.
On Wednesday, according to BuzzFeed, Twitter announced that they would not ban anti-Semite par excellence Louis Farrakhan from their platform despite Farrakhan’s equating Jews to termites on Twitter.

Buzzfeed reported:

Twitter did remove Farrakhan’s verification checkmark after he tweeted, “Thoroughly and completely unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan.” But the insect comparisons were still okay under Twitter’s rules, despite the site’s proposed policies regarding “dehumanizing” tweets.

Just three weeks ago, Twitter announced that “non-targeted dehumanizing speech” would be banned from the platform — and explained that an example of such speech would be, “Statements along the lines of ‘All members of protected group X are dogs or rats or whatever.’”

According to the company, those rules have not yet taken effect.

Still, conservatives have been banned from Twitter for unspecified reasons. GayPatriot, a popular conservative account run by Bruce Carroll, was banned from Twitter this week. He wasn’t given a reason.
'Disgusting': Ambassador Grenell Calls out Louis Farrakhan
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has been called out for making light of his own anti-Semitic record by U.S. ambassador Richard Grenell.

America’s top diplomat in Germany, Grenell made his feelings known on Twitter:


Grenell acted after Farrakhan addressed a gathering in Detroit on Sunday to mark the 23rd anniversary of the Million Man March, and used it as a platform to launch yet another attack on Jews, calling them “termites.”

“To the members of the Jewish community that don’t like me, thank you very much for putting my name all over the planet … I’m not mad at you, ’cause you’re so stupid,” Farrakhan said. He then continued to an audience that erupted in adoring laughter:

“So when they talk about Farrakhan, call me a hater, you know they do, call me an antisemite — stop it! I’m anti-termite! I don’t know nothing about hating somebody because of their religious preference.”


Jewdas: Attacking antisemitism is participating in “Class Oppression”
It’s always nice to take a look at the Jewdas website. You get to read articles like their latest: Philosemitism is the New Antisemitism: How Jews Are (Still) Used to Manage Exploitation or to translate it into English, liking Jews is the new antisemitism.

Note the thrust of the article:
“I’ll spell it out: whereas before antisemitism was encouraged in order to direct the public’s attention away from its exploitation, today antisemitism is vilified in order to divert public support away from the best chance for better living than we’ve had in decades.”

Which begs the question, encouraged by whom? We’re slipping quite neatly into a conspiracist world view now where the same people pulling the strings in Tsarist Russia are still pulling the strings in the UK. Then the author accidentally goes on to make the case for Zionism:
“the nationalist fever sweeping through Europe did not miss the Pale [of settlement], where Polish, Ukrainian, Slavic and other peoples sought emancipation from Russian Tsarism through national liberation and the concept of ‘one people, one language, one territory.’ The Yiddish-speaking Jews in the cities and villages of the Pale did not fit neatly into this enlightened new order.”

The “yiddish-speaking Jews” (note the implication that the issue of antisemitism was merely one of language) as well as those Jews who spoke Russian, Polish, French, German, English and any other language you might care to name were fully aware of this and therefore developed their own national liberation movement called Zionism, which was the mechanism through which they intended to escape their plight.

What burns through the article is lack of blame attached to people attacking Jews. Always attacks on Jews were something organised by an all encompassing power. How about holding people to account for their own actions?
Muslim Labor MP tweets link to anti-Semitic article on former KKK leader's website which claimed Israel controls Australian foreign policy
A Muslim Labor MP has tweeted a link to an anti-Semitic article from a KKK leader's website which claimed Israel controls Australian foreign policy.

Shaoquette Moselmane shared the article link about 10pm on Wednesday, titled: 'Israel Lobby Controls Australian Foreign Policy - Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr'.

The link went through to David Duke's website, who is known as a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and a former Republican Louisiana State Representative.

Mr Moselmane was elected in 2009 as the first Muslim in the NSW Parliament.

He shared the link in response to Prime Minister Scott Morrison's comments about being 'open to moving the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem'.

He claimed that he was unaware of the background of the author and immediately deleted to the tweet.
Jon Lansman 'believes pro-Corbyn JVL inflames tensions between Labour and Jews'
Jon Lansman, the architect of Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to power, thinks the “very existence” of pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice For Labour group is inflaming tensions between Labour and the Jewish community, sources have said.

A senior figure in left-wing campaign group Momentum said that its founder, Jon Lansman, believed it is problematic that senior JVL figures claim to speak for the entire community but actually only reflect the views of a small faction of anti-Zionist Jews.

The source also told the JC that Mr Lansman felt it was entirely wrong for leading JVL figures to suggest that their organisation deserves equal recognition from Labour, on a par with the bigger, more established Jewish Labour Movement.

JLM has criticised the party leadership’s handling of the antisemitism crisis, while JVL has sought to play it down.

The Momentum chief is also said to have taken a dim view of John McDonnell’s decision to attend an event last week with JVL co-chair Jenny Manson, which was meant to promote her bid to stand as a Labour candidate in Finchley and Golders Green.

But the source said Mr Lansman believed the Labour shadow chancellor has played a productive role overall in trying to end the party’s antisemitism crisis.
Head of pro-Corbyn group seeks to become MP in Britain’s most Jewish district
The head of a controversial group which allegedly denies that the Labour Party has a problem with anti-Semitism is seeking nomination for candidacy in Britain’s most heavily Jewish parliamentary constituency.

Jenny Manson’s run for the Labour nomination in Finchley and Golders Green is backed by Jeremy Corbyn’s closest political ally and has already sparked a fierce row.

Last week, the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, appeared at an event in support of Manson, who is co-chair of Jewish Voice for Labour.

The meeting saw allegations of efforts to prevent Jewish journalists from attending and an attempt to burn an Israeli flag.

The event was organized by a local branch of the pro-Corbyn Momentum group. Before it commenced, attendees were also reportedly told no questions on Israel, Palestine or anti-Semitism would be allowed.

Momentum reversed an initial attempt to bar journalists from Britain’s two principal Jewish weekly newspapers, the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish News. A group of Jewish students who were refused entry are said only to have been admitted after the intervention of a rabbi.
Supreme Court allows US student accused of supporting BDS to enter Israel
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that an American student accused of advocating boycotts of Israel can enter the country, putting an end to a weeks-long saga that drew scrutiny of an Israeli law allowing alleged anti-Israel activists to be barred from entry.

Lara Alqasem, 22, has been held in detention for the past 15 days after arriving in Israel for a master’s program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The state alleged that Alqasem, who was a member of the pro-boycott Students for Justice in Palestine group while studying at the University of Florida, supported the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

In accepting her appeal, the Supreme Court overturned a ruling by a lower court that upheld the ban on her entry under a 2017 law forbidding BDS activists from entering Israel.

Alqasem was expected to be released shortly after the Supreme Court decision, barring an appeal from the state.

Justice Neal Hendel, one of three Supreme Court judges who heard the appeal, affirmed in the ruling that while the state has the authority to bar BDS activists from the country, the law was not applicable in Alqasem’s case.

“In this case, preventing the entry of the plaintiff does not advance the purpose of the law and it was even argued, for example, by the Hebrew University that it harms Israeli academia,” Hendel wrote.

“The fight against boycotts is fitting and vital, as are the actions taken by the State of Israel on the matter. However, the concrete action before us clearly deviates from the range of reasonableness and cannot be accepted,” he added.
No, Israel Has No Obligation to Let In a BDS Supporter
Lara Alqasem advocates for the end of the Jewish state. No country permits non-citizens who are enemies of the state to enter their land. That should be the end of the conversation.

But for Israel, the universal standard does not apply. The United Nations has proven time and again the existence of a double standard by which Israel is judged. This double standard is the lifeblood of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the worldwide campaign to boycott Israel. Alqasem, it’s leader on the University of Florida campus as recent as this past school year, has become the latest darling of Israel detractors that dominate the Left.

Alqasem was recently detained at Ben Gurion airport while trying to enter the country. She came to the land she despises to take advantage of its higher education system and obtain a master’s degree from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. But her advocacy of BDS, an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic movement caught up with her.

Israel’s disparagers sell BDS as a non-violent form of protest that seeks to improve the lives of Palestinians and forge a two-state solution. Nothing could be further from the truth.

BDS exists to bring down the state of Israel. But don’t take my word for it.

“Most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine,” stated BDS founder Omar Barghouti. “Palestinians and Arabs in general have never and will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”

To hear Barghouti describe Zionism as a myth and still believe that the goal of the BDS movement is peaceful coexistence with Israel is a case study in denial.
Abbas meets J Street leadership, thanks group for lobbying work
Amid a nadir in US-Palestinian relations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met Wednesday with the leadership of the liberal Mideast policy group J Street at his headquarters in Ramallah and thanked the group for its lobbying efforts in support of the peace process.

Abbas welcomed the delegation, led by J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben Ami, expressing his “appreciation for their efforts to support the peace process within American society,” according to a readout of the meeting published by the official PA news site Wafa.

Abbas noted the group’s involvement in signing 112 Democratic representatives of the House of Representatives and 34 senators to a letter sent to the White House calling to reverse the decision to “end vital United States contributions to the United National Relief [and] Works Agency (UNRWA).”
UKMW prompts correction at Indy on ‘settler attack’, and at the Telegraph on Jerusalem embassies
Earlier in the week, we posted about the Independent’s rush to judgment is pronouncing Israeli settlers guilty in a rock throwing attack that killed a Palestinian woman in the West Bank, despite the fact that police were still investigating the case and their weren’t any suspects.

Here’s the sentence in question, in an article published on Oct. 14:
A Palestinian woman has been killed after being struck in the head by a stone thrown by Israeli settlers.

We noted that other media outlets were far more careful, as the accusations against unidentified ‘settlers’ were based on testimony by the victim’s relatives who didn’t actually see the perpetrators.

We complained to Indy editors both about the opening sentence, and about the headline, which similarly stated, as if it were a fact, that settlers killed the woman. Whilst they only agreed to add ‘scare quotes’ around the words (‘after Israeli settlers pelt her car with stones’) in the headline to note that it was only an accusation, they also added the key word “allegedly” in the opening sentence – a modest change which at least makes the article more accurate.

Here’s the new sentence:
A Palestinian woman has been killed after being struck in the head by a stone allegedly thrown by Israeli settlers.

Flyers Promoting Talk With Israeli Druze, Arabs Defaced at University of Houston
Posters promoting an event with Israelis from minority communities were vandalized at the University of Houston (UH) in Texas on Tuesday.

Messages scrawled on the flyers with red maker accused the speakers — who belong to Israel’s Arab, Druze, and Christian communities — of complicity “in genocide of Palestinians,” according to photos posted online by Nofar Salman, a Jewish Agency Israel fellow at Houston Hillel and one of the event organizers.

“Israel is a racist states (sic) & these are their murders (sic),” one message read. “Blood is on your hands,” charged another.

The speakers, part of the group Reservists on Duty (RoD) — which was founded by Israeli reserve soldiers who oppose boycotts of their country — came to share stories of their lives as minorities in the Jewish state. They ultimately proceeded with the event as planned.

Salman said the speakers represented Israel’s “racially and ethnically diverse” population, and sought to share “their unique perspectives so that Cougars can learn more about life in Israel and gain a better understanding of people from a different country and culture firsthand.”

She said the posters were defaced “with insidious lies and troubling accusations” against the guests.
IsraellyCool: BDS Fail: BDS-Hole Gushes About Israeli Healthcare
Jamarl Thomas is a YouTuber who operates a channel called the Progressive Soapbox, which he describes as “an honest analysis of the news with a progressive view-point without allegiance to anything other than the truth.” He has a reasonable following – over 14,000 subscribers – and pulls in over $1,000 a month on Patreon doing it.

As part of this “honest analysis,” he is anti-Israel and pro-BDS.

For reasons I cannot determine (read: cannot be bothered going through his videos to see if he mentioned why), he is in Israel. I suspect some BDS shenanigans were on the agenda, which would make this next video of his an even bigger fail than it already is.

You see, Jamarl found himself in need of prescription medicine while here. And – shock, horror – he was impressed by our healthcare system, especially when compared to what he is familiar with in the US.

Or if you cannot bother watching the whole thing, the punchline is at the end:

“I was able to get prescription drugs that typically cost three, four hundred dollars, for like ten bucks!”

I am pretty sure this is NOT how to do BDS, Jamarl. Just saying.
Dutch government apologizes over diplomat punished for saving Jews in WWII
The Dutch Foreign Ministry has apologized to the family of a diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, but was punished after the Second World War for his actions because they involved issuing unauthorized visas.

In a written response to parliament, Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said efforts had been made to make amends for the treatment of Jan Zwartendijk, who was honorary consul of the Netherlands, in what today is Lithuania, during the war years, the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting TV channel reported Thursday.

After the war the Dutch Foreign Ministry reprimanded the diplomat for overstepping his authority to save thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, and deprived him of royal honors, new research has shown.

“If that happened,” Blok wrote, “that was completely inappropriate. Jan Zwartendijk earned recognition and tribute for his brave behavior, unfortunately posthumously, from the 1990s onwards.”

Blok said he and King Willem-Alexander of The Netherlands had spoken with Zwartendijk’s son and daughter.

“In doing so, there was great admiration for the actions of their father in 1940,” he wrote.

The research into the treatment of Zwartendijk is part of a Dutch-language book published this month on his actions, titled “The Righteous” by biographer Jan Brokken.
The Thriving AI Landscape In Israel And What It Means For Global AI Competition
China is beating the US in AI and Europe’s AI experts are challenging both US and China, but a new contender for AI leadership is rapidly emerging. The startup nation of Israel is targeting today’s hottest tech sector by deploying its expertise in cutting-edge data analysis, software and hardware engineering talent, and proven entrepreneurial skills.

According to analyst Daniel Singer, Israeli AI startups (using technologies such as machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing, robotics, and speech recognition) have raised close to $2 billion in 2017, an increase of 70% over 2016, and have already raised $1.5 billion this year. An average of 140 startups have been created annually over the last 5 years and there are now over 950 active Israeli startups utilizing or developing AI technologies. (See here for an interactive version of the infographic above).

It’s good to be a member of this exclusive club. Over the last five years, AI startup exits averaged $121 million per deal, selling for 5.6 times their total funding at the date of exit. This multiple has climbed to 8.3 times so far this year. And there are notable success stories—of which VC dreams are made of—such as Intel’s $15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye and Salesforce’s more than $800 million acquisition of Datorama.

“What makes AI really hot now, is that there are hundreds of new markets and use cases that have recently been opened for disruption due to the advances in AI and data science,” says Shuly Galili, cofounding partner at UpWest Labs. “Most Israeli entrepreneurs have strong military background which means that on average they have more hands-on experience working with AI, image processing, data science, etc. than entrepreneurs from other countries.”
Technion and Intel open Center for Artificial Intelligence
The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and Intel Corporation inaugurated the Center for Artificial Intelligence on October 8. The new center will support research projects of Technion faculty members engaged in computational learning and artificial intelligence together with Intel researchers.

Natural language processing, deep learning and hardware optimization for different learning algorithms are among the areas of interest for applications in fields including healthcare, autonomous vehicles, smart environments and home and industrial robots.

“The Technion is the leading university in Israel in the field of artificial intelligence and is one of the top 10 universities in the world in the field,” said the center’s director, Prof. Shie Mannor from the Technion’s Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering. “The Technion has about 20 faculty members whose main field of research is computational learning and another 40 [researchers] are working in related fields.”

“I have no doubt that we will achieve breakthroughs that will lead to significant developments in the coming years. Intel has always maintained a close cooperation with Israeli academia,” said Intel Israel CEO Yaniv Garty.
Nvidia to set up AI research center in Tel Aviv
Nvidia Corp., a US gaming and computer graphics giant, said on Thursday it is planning to set up a research center in Israel that will focus on artificial intelligence.

The center will be led by Prof. Gal Chechik, a former senior official at Google’s AI division, the company said in a statement.

“Despite being a small country, Israel is a huge force in the artificial intelligence industry,” said Bill Dally, the chief scientist of Nvidia, as he announced the appointment at the firm’s developer conference in Tel Aviv, attended by some 2,800 developers, investors and entrepreneurs.

Dally said he was continually “amazed at the quality of the research, the researchers, and the market hunger for new ideas” he sees in Israel.

Chechik will be in charge of establishing a research division in Israel and will recruit a team of researchers specializing in artificial intelligence. He joined Google in 2007 and was previously an affiliate at the Stanford AI lab. He is also a faculty member at the Interdisciplinary Center for Brain Research at Bar-Ilan University.
Israeli companies to secure UN forces in Africa
In a move deemed by Israel as a vote of confidence, the United Nations recently signed purchase agreements worth tens of millions of shekels with Israeli companies specializing in security and water services.

In light of the deteriorating security situation that has severely affected UN aid workers operating in dozens of locations in Africa—just last year 61 UN peacekeepers have been killed in the continent, the highest figure listed in the past in 25 years—the organization decided to launch an emergency tender in order to purchase defense systems for UN bases.

The organization has approached a number of companies from around the world that specialize in defense sensors that can detect precision-guided weapons such as missiles and mortars. Three out of the five companies contacted by the UN were Israeli.

Ultimately, the Israeli company MER was chosen. The UN recently signed an $8 million deal for the next three years, with the option of another five years.

Furthermore, the Israeli water treatment technology company Odis won a UN tender worth $42 million.

In addition to these purchase agreements, other deals were signed between UN institutions and Israeli companies over the past year.
Israel ranks 7th in global life expectancy rankings for 2040
With global life expectancy on the rise, Israelis in the year 2040 are projected to live among the longest, on average, on the planet, according to statistics released Wednesday.

At an expected 84.4, Israelis will be ranked seventh in the world in longevity, moving up from their current 13th place spot (82.1).

Meanwhile life expectancy for Palestinians is expected to drop the most out of any country in the next 22 years, sinking from 114th in 2016 (at 71.9) to 152nd place (at 72.2) in 2040.

Researchers at the University of Washington found that life expectancy in 2040 is set to rise at least a little in all nations, but the rankings will change dramatically, with Spain taking the top spot while China and the United States trade places.

For the world as a whole, the researchers’ study, published in The Lancet, projected a five-year gain in lifespan, from 73.8 in 2016 to 77.7 in 2040.


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