Stan Lee's final essay, about the Holocaust
Note: Legendary comic book creator Stan Lee, who passed away this week, took a strong interest in the Holocaust in recent years. His final published essay appeared as the introduction to the recent book We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust, by Neal Adams, Rafael Medoff, and Craig Yoe (IDW / Yoe Books, 2018). We Spoke Out features Holocaust-related comic book stories, including superheroes from Stan Lee’s Marvel Universe such as Captain America, the X-Men, and Captain Marvel. Arutz Sheva reviewed its predecessor, How Cartoonists Fought the Holocaust.David Collier: Simone O’Broin: The white supremacy of the Palestinian cause and BDS
INTRODUCTION TO “WE SPOKE OUT: COMIC BOOKS AND THE HOLOCAUST”
People don't usually associate so profound and forbidding a topic as the Holocaust with the costumed superheroes and bombastic villains who inhabit the world of comic books. But the truth is that those colorful characters aren’t the only residents of the comic book universe, and comic books can serve more purposes than entertainment alone.
Amidst all the thrilling tales of superheroes foiling evil villains, my colleagues and I have more than once used the pages of comic books in an effort to educate readers about real-life topics. When I wrote the storyline about drug abuse for three issues of Amazing Spider-Man in 1971, and when Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil created stories about drugs, racism, pollution, and other hot-button subjects for Green Lantern/Green Arrow from 1970 to 1972, we were no longer just comic- book creators. We were also teachers.
I’m very proud that comic creators have taught about the Holocaust, too.
Sometimes we forget that talking about the Holocaust is a relatively new thing for most Americans. Sure, thirty-five states now require teaching the Holocaust in public schools. But the first of them, Illinois, adopted that policy as recently as 1990. There were very few opportunities for young people to learn about the Nazi genocide during the years before that, although comic book creators made an effort to fill that gap.
As far back as 1955, Al Feldstein and Bernard Krigstein created the astounding comic story "Master Race," about an encounter between a Holocaust survivor and a Nazi war criminal. To this day, that story gives me chills. As far as I know, it was the first attempt by comic creators to address the Holocaust and, appropriately, it is the first story in this volume.
The white supremacy of the Palestinian cause and BDS
The expletives deflect from the important element of the video. Simone O’Broin comes across as a racist, clearly displaying a white supremacy mindset in the words that she hurls at the Air India employees. She mentions her credentials as an ‘International Human rights Lawyer for the Palestinian people about a dozen times. A snippet:
you’re the Captain aren’t you. I am working for all ‘your’ people…. don’t get any money for it by the way….I’m leader of the f..king boycott movement, if I say boycott Air India – done….do I not have the right f..king clothes on? rich Indian ‘f**king money grabbing bastards…I’ll turn you f**king inside out…
This happens far too often to be a coincidence. Racists attached to anti-Israel activism. Many put it down to simple old-school antisemitism, but it is deeper than that. If you listen to activist-academic Ilan Pappe closely, you’ll hear desperation in his voice when he talks about Palestinians not ‘leading the way’. Pappe clearly knows what needs to be done. He looks ‘white’ and is ‘clever’. In the video it seems that Pappe is implying that people like himself in the west created BDS and gave it as a present to the Palestinians because they are not capable of directing themselves. I’ve seen Pappe speak dozens of times, he often appears to treat Palestinians as incompetents who need help.
Raw racism
But the raw racism in the Air India rant leaves little for doubt. Simone O’Broin is a ‘white person’ who gives her time to help ‘non-whites’. Those who are ‘not white’ should be thankful. She clearly expects them to do her bidding. She is ‘white royalty’.
BDS, Palestinianism and anti-Israel activity is loaded with such messaging. A racist movement that views Palestinians as lesser people who have no agency and are incapable of improving their situation without ‘white man’s’ help. The truth is that BDS was designed that way. It was built to feed from antisemitism and the white- supremacist, imperialist nature of the west. Think about it. BDS wants to impose it’s own value system and redraw borders of a far-off landscape against the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants. BDS may as well just call itself Sykes-Picot 2.
All the Palestinians have to do is sit at the table and negotiate with Israel. But some feel this is clearly beyond them. The leaders of the Palestinian cause in the west tell them not to negotiate. They tell them who to talk to, when to talk and what to say. More people wave the Palestinian flag at the Labour Party conference than the Arabs do in Ramallah. How brutally obvious is this?
Antisemitism comes into play because the enemy is the ‘Jewish people’. Those poor Palestinians have no chance against the ‘chosen’ – the untrustworthy, manipulative people who secretly control the world. How can those ‘lesser-people’- possibly do it on their own. In this fashion the Palestinian cause (Palestinianism) has attracted a whole host of antisemites and white-supremacists, all willing to attack Israel in the name of ‘human rights’. Don’t believe me? Just give one of them too much to drink.
UN Watch: UN to condemn Israel 9 times, rest of the world 0
United Nations General Assembly committee is set to adopt nine resolutions against Israel tomorrow, and zero on the entire rest of the world.
The texts, obtained by UN Watch, condemn Israel for “repressive measures” against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, reinforce the mandate of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and renew the mandate of the UN’s “special committee to investigate Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the Occupied Territories.” (Click here for the nine draft resolutions.)
All 193 UN member states belong to the Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee) that each year adopts the text with large majorities. Countries’ votes tomorrow are then repeated when the GA plenary formally ratifies the texts in December.
“The UN’s planned assault on Israel with a torrent of one-sided resolutions is surreal,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental watchdog organization.
“Days after the Hamas terrorist group assaulted Israeli civilians with a barage of 460 rockets — while the UN’s General Assembly and Human Rights Council stayed silent — the world body now adds insult to injury by adopting nine lopsided condemnations, whose only purpose is to demonize the Jewish state.”
Condemnations to be adopted today & over next month at UN General Assembly:
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) November 16, 2018
🇮🇱 Israel 20
🇮🇷 Iran 1
🇸🇾 Syria 1
🇰🇵 NKorea 1
🇷🇺 Crimea 1
🇲🇲 Myanmar 1
🇺🇸 US 1
🇩🇿 Algeria 0
🇨🇳 China 0
🇮🇶 Iraq 0
🇵🇰 Pakistan 0
🇶🇦 Qatar 0
🇸🇦 Saudi 0
🇸🇴 Somalia 0
🇹🇷 Turkey 0
🇻🇪 Venezuela 0
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe 0
Haley: U.S. to oppose UNGA call for Israel to return Golan Heights to Syria
The United States is expected to reject a United Nations General Assembly resolution that calls on Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria.Israel Thanks U.S. for Voting Against Condemning Israel
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said that in past years the US has abstained when this cyclical resolution comes for a vote.
“However, given the resolution’s anti-Israel bias, as well as the militarization of the Syrian Golan border, and a worsening humanitarian crisis, this year the United States has decided to vote no on the resolution,” Haley said.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 war and has since annexed it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the Trump Administration to recognize that the Golan Heights is part of sovereign Israel.
President Donald Trump has not publicly responded to that request by US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has told the media he expects that the Golan Heights would remain in Israeli hands forever.
Late Thursday night, Haley said, “The United States will no longer abstain when the United Nations engages in its useless annual vote on the Golan Heights. If this resolution ever made sense, it surely does not today.”
Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon welcomed the US decision to vote against a U.N. resolution that condemns Israel's presence in the Golan Heights on Thursday.Abbas continues push for recognition; to join UN agency, 10 int’l conventions
" I thank Ambassador [Nikki] Haley for her continued steadfastness with Israel and the truth," Danon said, " It is time for the world to distinguish between those who stabilize the region and those who sow terror."
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has stepped up his push for international recognition for the Palestinians, signing forms on Thursday to join the Universal Postal Union, a United Nations agency that coordinates international postage, and 10 international protocols and conventions, the official PA news site Wafa reported.Israeli president slams Hamas in Vatican meeting with Pope Francis
Abbas signed the documents at a Palestine Liberation Organization meeting at the PA presidency’s headquarters in Ramallah.
Omar Awadallah, a PA foreign ministry official, said in a phone call the signed documents will be formally submitted to the relevant UN agency and protocols and conventions next week.
“The President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas signed…11 forms to join international organizations and conventions,” the Wafa report said.
The US government has long asked the Palestinians not to join UN agencies because American law requires it to cut off funding to any UN organization that grants the Palestinians full membership.
President Reuven Rivlin condemned Hamas on an official visit to the Vatican and Rome, Thursday.Merkel urged Romanian president to not move embassy to Jerusalem
In a private meeting with Pope Francis at the Apostolic Palace, Rivlin said, "Hamas has repeatedly led to a severe escalation time and again, while callously exploiting the plight of the residents of the Gaza Strip."
He said, "Israel does not want an escalation or to hurt innocent civilians, but will not stand by while Hamas undermines stability and our civilians are harmed."
Rivlin was referring to the firing of over 460 rockets and mortar shells on Israel's south starting from Monday afternoon and continuing overnight to Tuesday morning, killing one person and wounding 55 in the worst flare-up in the area since 2014.
In response, the Israeli Air Force struck 160 Hamas assets and over a dozen Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza, including Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV headquarters in Gaza City, and the group's intelligence headquarters and internal security building, as well as several weapon arsenals.
Rivlin said that before any agreement could be reached with the terrorist organization, Hamas must first return the two Israeli civilians it is holding captive and the bodies of two IDF soldiers killed in 2014's Operation Protective Edge.
In an effort to stop Romania’s government from relocating its embassy to Jerusalem, German chancellor Angela Merkel called Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis in April, urging him to stop Bucharest’s declared announcement to move its diplomatic building to Israel’s capital.Australian Treasurer slams Malaysia’s PM over anti-Semitism amid embassy spat
A Western source told The Jerusalem Post that Merkel lobbied the Romanian president to put a halt on the relocation of its embassy to Jerusalem. It is believed that Merkel called other European politicians as part of a campaign to block the relocation of European embassies to Jerusalem.
The president of Romania’s Chamber of Deputies and a member of Romania’s governing party, the social democratic politician Liviu Dragnea, told the television station Antena 3 in April that the “government adopted a memorandum deciding to start the procedure to effectively move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”
The dramatic and apparent anti-Israel intervention by Merkel, who proclaimed in a Knesset speech in 2008 that Israel’s security interests are “non-negotiable” and part of Germany’s raison d’être, was not denied by the governments of Romania and the Federal Republic.
A spokesperson for the Romanian ministry of foreign affairs wrote the Post on Friday by email that “Regarding your question, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cannot comment on alleged discussions between Angela Merkel and the Romanian President. We would advise you to contact the Presidential Administration should you need to have further information.” Iohannis’s office did not immediately respond to a Post query.
A top Australian official seized Friday on past comments from Malaysia’s prime minister seen as anti-Semitic, amid a diplomatic war of words over the possibility of Canberra moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.UN Palestinian refugee agency says it’s overcoming Trump funding cuts
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad raised the potential embassy switch in a meeting with Australian counterpart Scott Morrison in Singapore on Thursday, later telling reporters such a move could increase the threat of terrorism.
“I pointed out that in dealing with terrorism, one has to know the causes,” Mahathir said. “Adding to the cause for terrorism is not going to be helpful.”
Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg responded Friday, saying Canberra would make its own decisions. Frydenberg, the son of a Holocaust survivor, also pointed out past comments that the leader of Muslim-majority Malaysia has made about Jewish people.
“He has called Jews ‘hooked-nosed people.’ He has questioned the number of people that have been killed in the Holocaust. He banned ‘Schindler’s List’ as a movie being shown,” Frydenberg told reporters in Melbourne.
In an interview with the BBC last month, Mahathir said “the problem in the Middle East began with the creation of Israel,” and he defended his description of Jews as “hook-nosed” in his book, “The Malay Dilemma.”
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees has nearly overcome a crippling funding crisis caused by US President Donald Trump cancelling the US aid contribution, agency chief Pierre Kraehenbuehl said Thursday.Author: Criticizing Israel’s Existence, Denying Its Right to Exist Is Modern Anti-Semitism
The organization, known as UNRWA, had counted on a budget of $1.2 billion (1 billion euros) for 2018 but faced a gap of $446 million when the Trump administration announced it was cutting support.
UNRWA responded to its “unprecedented” financial pressures by seeking support across UN member-states and raised an additional $382 million, bringing the shortfall for the year down to just $64 million, Kraehenbuehl told reporters in Geneva.
He said he hoped the gap could still be trimmed further in the coming weeks.
“I’ll be very honest in saying, I don’t think many people believed that we would be able to overcome a $446 million shortfall at the beginning of the year,” said Kraehenbuehl, who took charge of UNRWA in 2014.
He credited the European Union and especially four Gulf countries with increasing support.
Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi explained Monday why criticism of Israel’s existence was a modern adaptation of an ancient hatred.
Halevi spoke at an event at DePaul Law School in Chicago where he described a question from a student asking about the ethics of "humanizing" Zionists.
In response the students question, Halevi explained how anti-Semitism throughout history blames Jews for the day’s ills, turning the Jew into an execrated "symbol of whatever it is that a given civilization defines as its most loathsome qualities." Whether the "Christ-killer" of pre-Holocaust Christianity, the "capitalist" of communism, or the "race-polluter" of Nazism, the Jew took the shape of society’s most hated idea.
Today, Halevi argued, "the most loathsome qualities are racism, colonialism, apartheid. And lo and behold, the greatest offender in the world today, with all the beautiful countries of the world, is the Jewish state." Those who refuse to "humanize" Zionists, to humanize supporters of Israel’s right to exist, mark a "classical continuity of thousands of years of symbolizing the Jew."
He said that while "criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism," denying Israel's right to exist was another story. "Criticism of Israel’s existence, denying Israel the right to exist, calling Israel the ‘Zionist entity,’ that is anti-Semitism," he said.
Halevi argued that those spouting anti-Semitic language today include the far left, white supremacists, Islamist extremists, and many others. But according to Halevi, "all of those groups converge on one idea: the Jew remains humanity’s great problem."
Amazon’s Algorithm Has an Anti-Semitism Problem
In the wake of the Pittsburgh massacre, I invited my followers on Twitter to send me their inquiries about anti-Semitism. The response was overwhelming, and ran the gamut from questions about specific aspects of the prejudice to requests for advice on how to help fight it. One reader asked for more information about the Rothschild family, the Jewish banking dynasty that is a favorite bogeyman of anti-Semites and is typically used as a stand-in for the Jewish conspiracy that purportedly controls world affairs. He explained that some in his circle of friends regularly make bigoted remarks about the Rothschilds and their vast power and he wanted to set them straight. I’d written a report about the Rothschilds in school years ago, but figured there was probably better, more up-to-date material out there. So like anyone else, I went to Amazon.com and plugged in “history of rothschilds.” To my surprise, this is what I got:Kentucky Becomes 26th State to Enact Anti-BDS Measure
Rather than direct me to serious scholarship on the Rothschilds, like historian Niall Ferguson’s multivolume history on the family, Amazon first recommended blatantly bigoted content.
This isn’t the only instance of Amazon’s algorithm feeding intellectually bankrupt content to intellectually curious readers regarding fraught subjects.
Kentucky became the 26th state on Thursday to enact an anti-BDS measure, prohibiting awarding state contractors who partake in the anti-Israel movement.ADL Joins With Leading Scholars to Urge New Policy on Faculty Recommendations Following Recent University of Michigan BDS Scandals
Republican Gov. Matt Bevin signed the executive order during a ceremony at the state’s capitol with Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer and Consul General of Israel to the Southeast United States Judith Varnai Shorer.
“The State of Israel is an important friend and trading partner to the Commonwealth,” said Bevin. “We will not allow state resources to benefit entities that intentionally engage in discriminatory practices to harm the sovereignty and economic prosperity of any ally nation. Today’s executive order makes it clear that Kentucky condemns the BDS movement and that we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our friend, Israel.”
Jewish and pro-Israel groups applauded the move.
Matthew Goldberg, director of community relations for the Jewish Federation of Louisville, remarked: “Boycotting Israel is immoral, as it specifically targets the only democracy in the Middle East, a staunch ally of the United States for decades. Everyone in the Commonwealth of Kentucky should be proud that we are now on record as officially opposing the demonization of Israel.”
“BDS is economic terrorism. It is a movement intended to do with boycotts, divestments and sanctions what terrorists seek to do with bombs, missiles and bullets: destroy Israel. But just like all antisemites who’ve come before them, the BDS movement will fail,” said CUFI Founder and Chairman Pastor John Hagee.
University administrations in the US are being encouraged to adopt explicit guidelines that would prevent academics from refusing to write study-abroad recommendation letters for students based on their political or ideological beliefs.Yisrael Medad: Quaint Qumran Bothers the BDSers
The decision to craft a “model policy” — drawn up by the Anti-Defamation League in cooperation with the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), which brings together scholars opposed to the anti-Israel BDS campaign — was triggered by the recent refusal of two academics at the University of Michigan to write recommendation letters for students wanting to attend universities in Israel.
In both cases — one involving cultural studies Prof. John Cheney-Lippold and the other involving graduate instructor Lucy Petersen — support for the academic boycott campaign targeting Israeli universities was cited as the reason for refusing to supply the requested recommendation letters.
In a joint statement, former University of California President Prof. Mark Yudof, who now chairs the AEN advisory board, and Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s chief executive, highlighted the lack of existing policies to guide university administrators as the primary reason for their initiative.
“After the University of Michigan incidents, it became obvious that there were gaps in university faculty handbooks regarding writing or refusing requests for letters of recommendation,” Greenblatt said. “This policy makes clear that a professor’s personal politics should never interfere with the academic freedom of their students.”
In an Al Jazeera piece attacking tourism that, supposedly, brings tourists to visit "an illegal settlement", that is, Qumran, and that "only six mention or imply that one will be outside Israeli territory" and that "Thomas Cook, Collette and On the Go Tours, for example, make stops at the Ahava Visitor Center without telling tourists they are leaving Israel", you can read this:Trudeau breaks silence on anti-Semitic attack in Toronto
For the unsuspecting visitor, it is not easy to tell that one is no longer within the internationally recognised borders of Israel, but in the occupied West Bank, in an Israeli settlement, illegal under international law.
The same goes for nearby Qumran, a popular tourist attraction where a Bedouin shepherd once found the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.
Notwithstanding it being situated in the West Bank, Israel now controls the site,
And someone really wants to threaten these tourists:
According to John Dugard, professor of international law and former UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, the travel agencies' customers are unknowingly "aiding and abetting" the crime of establishing illegal settlements.
"In theory, this exposes tourists to prosecution for having purchased illegal goods," said Dugard, who added that although holidaymakers are not going to be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court for such an offence, travel agencies should be warning tourists that they are about to commit a crime.
Dugard is a long-time opponent of Israel's rights to its historic national homeland. And some international law he gets wrong. And he's been called a 'racist'.
Let's start with "internationally recognised borders".
Israel had none.
About 24 hours after being called out for not denouncing an alleged anti-Semitic attack, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke his silence.Art dealer’s heirs decry ‘ransom demand’ for Degas stolen by the Nazis
And on Sunday’s alleged attack on four Jewish teens in Toronto, which included physical assaults and taunts that “Hitler is coming back,” he joined other leaders in condemning it.
“We must be on constant guard against this troubling resurgence of anti-Semitism, here at home or anywhere else,” Trudeau tweeted late Wednesday. “We thank Toronto Police for their work and send our full support to the young students affected.”
It is true his tweet came 48 hours after Mayor John Tory, Premier Doug Ford, Chief Mark Saunders, B’nai Brith CEO Michael Mostyn publicly expressed their outrage, and 24 hours after federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.
The Rosenberg family’s decades-long effort to recover hundreds of works of art stolen from them by the Nazis in 1940 reads like a movie script. In fact, elements of it were indeed turned into a 1960s film, “The Train,” starring Burt Lancaster and Paul Schofield.
But, for the Rosenbergs, there is — as yet — no Hollywood-style ending in their search for justice and restitution. Instead, they are now embroiled in a bitter and frustrating tug of war, started over three decades ago, to recover a Degas pastel which they rightfully own.
The plot involves a German art dealer who stands accused of knowingly peddling a looted Nazi painting, allegations of ransom demands by a mysterious Swiss collector, and secretive attempts to sell the pastel which have spanned the globe.
The story begins in June 1940 in the town of Floirac, close to Bordeaux in southwest France, where Paul Rosenberg, a prominent Paris dealer in modern art who represented, among others, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse, had rented a home.
With the Nazis’ relentless advance and the fall of France imminent, however, Rosenberg was soon forced to flee his homeland. Alongside his wife, Marguerite, and daughter, the dealer made first for Lisbon in Portugal and then to safety in New York. The couple’s son, Alexandre, fled to Britain where he answered General de Gaulle’s call for his fellow countrymen and women to resist the German occupation and joined the Free French Forces.
Basel Jews to get police protection on Shabbat and holidays for first time
The Swiss canton of Basel-Stadt looks set to provide state resources for the protection of the Jewish community in the region, for the first time in Switzerland.Ambassador: Israel to Invest $60 Million in Angola, Including Solar Power Plant
The governing council of Basel-Stadt drafted and presented a series of security measures at the end of October which it will provide for the Jewish community in the city Basel, including providing police personnel to secure communal sites in the city.
There are currently two functioning synagogues in Basel which will be secured every Shabbat and on Jewish Holidays, while another two Jewish community sites may also be protected under the security measures.
The proposals come as a result of negotiations conducted by the Jewish Community of Basel with the governing council, and says it is confident that the Grand Council will approve the measures.
The Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, the umbrella body for Swiss Jewry, has been seeking to secure federal support for the costs of security measures for Jewish communities in the country since 2015, owing to the high financial burden such requirements have placed on the community in recent years given the heightened terror threat on the continent in general.
Israel has allocated $60 million to invest in projects in the southwestern African nation of Angola, including the construction of a solar power plant in the coastal province of Benguela, the Jewish state’s envoy in Luanda revealed on Wednesday, according to an AllAfrica.com report.NASA solar probe’s imager was made by Israeli company
Ambassador Oren Rosenblat made the announcement after a meeting with Benguela Governor Rui Falcão.
Rosenblat noted the building of the 50-megawatt plant was part of a broader initiative carried out over the past five years to promote sustainable growth in Africa, the report said.
The Israeli diplomat also pointed out that his country had invested $300 million in Angola’s agricultural sector since 2014.
Onboard NASA’s breakthrough Parker Solar Probe mission is a high-performance CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) imager made by Israel-headquartered TowerJazz in collaboration with nonprofit research center SRI International of California for the US Naval Research Laboratory.Israeli scientists develop implanted organs that won’t be rejected
Parker Solar Probe launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida three months ago on a mission to better understand how the sun affects our solar system. It will swoop to within four million miles of the Sun’s surface, facing heat and radiation like no spacecraft before it.
The radiation-resistant CMOS imager, manufactured in TowerJazz’s fabrication plant in California, is included among four instrument suites integral to this mission.
CMOS sensors can capture high-resolution images of the sun’s atmosphere (corona), including coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar wind. The images, expected in December, may help forecast space weather events that can affect communications, power and other essential technologies on Earth.
Israeli researchers report that they have invented the first fully personalized tissue implant, engineered from a patient’s own materials and cells. The new technology makes it possible to engineer any kind of tissue implant, for the spinal cord, to the heart, or brain, from one small fatty tissue biopsy.Israeli device lets wheelchair-bound groom stand under chuppah
“We were able to create a personalized hydrogel from the materials of the biopsy, to differentiate fatty tissue cells into different cell types and to engineer cardiac, spinal cord, cortical and other tissue implants to treat different diseases,” said lead researcher Prof. Tal Dvir of Tel Aviv University’s Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology.
“Since both the cells and the material used derive from the patient, the implant does not provoke an immune response, ensuring proper regeneration of the defected organ,” Dvir explained.
The research was conducted by Dvir’s postdoctoral researcher, Reuven Edri, and doctoral students Nadav Noor and Idan Gal, in collaboration with Prof. Dan Peer and Prof. Irit Gat Viks of TAU’s Department of Cell Research and Immunology and Prof. Lior Heller of Assaf HaRofeh Medical Center in Israel. It was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials.
Forty days before his marriage, a wheelchair-bound Israeli man named Adir wrote to UPnRIDE Robotics sharing his dream to stand under the chuppah (wedding canopy) with his bride, Liat.
CEO Oren Tamari invited Adir to company headquarters in Yokne’am Illit to try the UPnRIDE 1.1 mobility device, now in transition from research-and-development to market.
“We saw he managed well with it, and we arranged for him to use the device during his wedding” on November 12, Tamari tells ISRAEL21c.
The next day, Adir posted on UPnRIDE’s Facebook page: “Thank you all for [the] wonderful experience and magnificent night. Our chuppa was so amazing, people cried when [they] saw me standing and praying. My wife and I just want to say that you made our night as close as possible to perfection!!!”
.@City_of_David excavations affirm millennia-old connection of Jewish people to #Jerusalem as historical fact, despite @UNESCO’s shameful efforts to declare otherwise. W/ Jerusalem as #Israel's capital, all faiths have freedom to access our shared history pic.twitter.com/6bmcxZGS5O
— Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (@RosLehtinen) November 15, 2018