Monday, January 14, 2019
NGO Monitor: EAPPI: The World Council of Churches’ Training Camp for Anti-Israel Advocacy
Executive Summary Click Here for Full Report [pdf]World Council of Churches trainees use antisemitic rhetoric, advocate BDS
- EAPPI, the World Council of Churches’ flagship project on Israel and the Arab-Israel conflict, has brought 1,800 volunteers to the West Bank to “witness life under occupation.” The World Council of Churches does not run similar activities in other conflict zones. By singling out Israel, EAPPI embodies antisemitism, as defined in the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s working definition.
- Despite marketing itself as a human rights and protection program, EAPPI places significant emphasis on political advocacy before, during, and after the trip. When volunteers return to their home countries and churches, they engage in anti-Israel advocacy, such as BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns and comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany.
- Participants are selected by country-specific non-governmental organizations (NGOs) known as “National Coordinators.” The National Coordinators are also active in BDS and other delegitimization campaigns against Israel.
- EAPPI receives funding from a variety of sources, including the WCC and National Coordinators. Funding from different governments is directed to EAPPI through the National Coordinators and via UNICEF.
- EAPPI contributes to a UN “Working Group” consisting of a number of UN agencies and NGOs that collaborate on and coordinate politicized anti-Israel campaigns in the West Bank. In this capacity, EAPPI does “a lot of administrative work which is fed into UN systems.”
- EAPPI partners with a number of political NGOs in the region, including groups that support BDS campaigns against Israel and/or that accuse Israel of “war crimes.”
- The significant problems with EAPPI, as laid out in this report, should be seen in light of the antisemitism1 and demonization that emerges from EAPPI’s parent body (World Council of Churches), partners, and affiliated staff.
WCC leadership and EAPPI volunteers have repeatedly made comparisons of Israeli actions to those of Nazi Germany in their advocacy sessions. For example, WCC general secretary Dr. Olav Fyske Tveit said: “I heard about the occupation of my country during the five years of World War II as the story of my parents. Now I see and hear the stories of 50 years of occupation.”Caroline Glick: The New York Times' War on Israel and Jews Who Support It
In 2017, an observer Rev. Gordon Timbers of the Presbyterian Church of Canada gave a presentation. When an audience member asked if “Jewish people who go in to see...the model of the gas chambers” see similarities between that and the West Bank, Timbers responded that “there are similarities,” including the use of identification papers.
South African EAPPI activist Itani Rasalanavho said during an “Apartheid Week” event in his home country that “the time has come to say that the victims of the Holocaust have now become the perpetrators.”
In a presentation by Rev. Joan Fisher, an EAPPI activist, she quotes a Palestinian cleric as saying: “We are sympathetic to the suffering of our Jewish brothers and sisters in the Holocaust, but you don’t deal with one injustice by creating another injustice.”
The IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitsm states that “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism.
The WCC supports boycotts and divestment from settlements, but EAPPI activists have called for a boycott of all of Israel.
The EAPPI publication “Faith Under Occupation” called in 2012 for “sanctions and suspension of US aid to Israel,” to “challenge Israel in local and international courts” and “economic boycotts.”
EAPPI National Coordinator in South Africa Dudu Mahlangu-Masango signed a letter to then-president Jacob Zuma calling “on our government and civil society to instigate broad-based boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel” in 2012. She repeated this call in a 2018 television interview, calling for “total sanctions” on Israel.
Following the 2016 presidential election, Weisman wrote a book which purported to be about anti-Semitism titled, (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.
Weisman did three things in his book. He used the presence of antisemitism on the right as a means to castigate the entire Republican party and conservative movement as antisemitic. He ignored and dismissed antisemitism on the Left. And finally, Weisman attacked Judaism, Jews who observe Judaism, and Jews who support Israel.
Weisman accused pro-Israel American Jews of disloyalty to America, arguing, “The American Jewish obsession with Israel has taken our eyes off not only the politics of our own country, the growing gulf between rich and poor, and the rising tide of nationalism but also our own grounding in faith.”
Weisman’s January 4 article in the Times was an amplification of the arguments he made in his book. Again he ignored left wing anti-Semitism. He regurgitated Goldberg’s allegations of Israeli moral infirmity. He defended Tlaib and Omar and their hatred for Israel. And thne, Weisman insisted that American Jewry should forget its ties to Jewish tradition and to the Jewish people and instead embrace an identity based entirely on leftist ideology and propaganda.
In his words, “American Jewry has been going its own way for 150 years, a drift that has created something of a new religion, or at least a new branch of one of the world’s most ancient faiths.”
It is hard to know how influential the Times‘ ever-escalating campaign against Jews will be on the American Jewish community. Survey results and other data indicate that the vast majority of American Jews are not buying the claim that Israel is morally infirm, incapable of discerning its national interest, and deserving of hatred and destruction.
Most American Jews don’t think that American Jews should tell Israel how to handle the security and other challenges it faces. And even as anti-Israel groups in the American Jewish community receive adulation and attention disproportionate to their small numbers, they do not seem to have built major inroads into the Jewish community. This explains why their efforts are directed towards weakening existing Jewish institutions rather than building their own. Their constituencies are too small to support them.
But whether the New York Times succeeds or fails in its campaign to mainstream leftist antisemitism, shame pro-Israel American Jews, and detach the Jewish community in the U.S. from Israel and the rest of the Jewish world, it is worth taking note of, and condemning, what the newspaper is attempting to do.
Douglas Murray: Lessons We Seem Unwilling to Learn
As part of their efforts to reassure local Jews of their good nature, the Golders Green mosque had planned to show an exhibition which would highlight the role that some Muslim Albanians played in helping to protect some of their Jewish neighbours during the Holocaust. Britain and Albania are, of course, are a continent apart. It is also probably safe to say that Albanian affairs, even extremely recent ones, are rarely a priority for residents of the UK. Obviously, the twin purpose of such an exhibition would simply be to show Muslims that there were heroic Muslims in the past -- as today -- who are willing to make a stand against the worst inhumanity, and also to remind Jews that, as well as there being people from the Muslim community who have always had a deadly intent towards their people, there have also been others who have been allies and friends. It is hard to see who could object to such a message.Revealed: Third Reich’s secret plan to divide S. America into 4 Nazi territories
Except, of course, that there are. Among the Islamist-oriented groups in Britain is one revolving around a website called '5 Pillars'. Its editor, Roshan Salih, also works for the Iranian state broadcaster Press TV, which had its broadcasting license in the UK removed after it showed forced confessions of prisoners inside Iranian jails in the wake of the uprising crushed by the Iranian government in 2009. Since news of the exhibition emerged, Salih has led a campaign to boycott it. The reason he and '5 Pillars' claim as their excuse is that the Holocaust exhibit is coming from Yad Vashem, and Yad Vashem is Israeli. Those -- including Muslims -- who have criticised the exhibition's critics have been dismissed by Salih as simply 'Zionists'.
Now the exhibition has been scrapped.
There are the usual saving-something-from-the-rubble noises from communal leaders about the need to 'continue working together'. But little will actually be learned. For the same reason that there has been little focus -- outside of the Jewish community press in Britain -- on this whole story. The reason is obvious.
Perhaps the mosque leadership in Golders Green are good. Perhaps they were motivated by more than short-term fence-building in deciding to hold an exhibition about the Holocaust. The question to ask is why are there so many people in the Muslim community who would object to such an exhibition and why these extremists have so much sway (as opposed merely to being an embittered fringe) that they can actually get their way. If a church in Britain put on an exhibition about the Holocaust, it would not be forced to cancel it under pressure from any Holocaust-denying Anglicans. Far from it. If such an unlikely event were to occur, the entire direction of the ire would be towards anyone trying to stop such an event. The exhibition would go ahead without anyone flinching. So what is it about the fragility, and vulnerability of the Muslim community to the dictates of extremists that we can learn from an episode such as this one?
Quite a lot, I would suggest. Which is one of the reasons why there has been so little focus. Because what can be learned from such events are lessons that, as a society, we still seem distinctly unwilling to learn.
As much of Europe, Africa and Asia fell under the control of the Axis Powers in 1941, United States president Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced a chilling discovery — an alleged German map of postwar plans for South America, in which the continent’s nations would be replaced with four Nazi territories.What is it about J.K. Rowling that brings out the worst in the far-left?
Soon obscured by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that resulted in US entry into World War II, this document nevertheless indicates that Latin America played a more important role in the conflict than many think. It’s one of many revelations in a new book, “The Tango War: The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds and Riches of Latin America During World War II,” by journalist Mary Jo McConahay.
Those enlisted in the “struggle” of the book’s subtitle include leaders such as FDR and entertainers including Walt Disney, who traveled to the region to make films that would create a cinematic bridge between US and Latin American audiences. Disney’s first such film, “Saludos Amigos,” featuring Donald Duck, Goofy and a Brazilian parrot named Jose “Joe” Carioca, was released in the US 76 years ago this February.
McConahay also discusses the only Latin American unit to fight in Europe during the war — the 25,000 Brazilian “Smoking Cobras” who distinguished themselves in Italy in 1945, piercing the formidable Gothic Line and capturing thousands of prisoners.
There are uncomfortable moments in the story: the region’s underwhelming response to Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, including the doomed ship St. Louis; a secret US program that kidnapped ethnic Japanese and Germans in Latin America — including Jews — to exchange for Americans imprisoned by the Axis; and the Ratlines that helped Nazi war criminals escape to South America.
McConahay’s interest in the region was sparked by her late father, who served there with the US Navy and shared reminiscences. She became an award-winning journalist while covering Latin American wars. After writing two memoirs of her time there, McConahay decided to tackle the region’s role in WWII.
This precedent-setting project posed challenges.
“I could find no book in English that could talk about the whole arc of experience of WWII in Latin America,” McConahay said. “Are there some academic tomes? Yes, there are. But there’s nothing for the general reader — perhaps a reader who is not even particularly interested in Latin America but maybe in WWII. Or a reader who is interested in Latin America but not WWII. Or just the reader who wants a good read for an airplane ride.”
Regardless of motivation, readers might be in for some surprises about the vast, mainly Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking region that stretches from the Rio Grande to the southern tip of Argentina.
If hell is other people, Twitter is the Devil’s noticeboard. Occasionally, though, its asteroid-inviting awfulness unearths a little insight into human nature, specifically when our instincts clash with our ideology. Take J.K. Rowling, author of the Cormoran Strike series who has also dabbled a little in children’s fiction. The Scottish novelist is a well-kent supporter of left-of-centre causes and has backed up her conscience with her coin. Her broadsides against Donald Trump and Brexit have made her an enemy of the intemperate right. Far more perplexing is that strain of leftist that bears ill-will towards someone whose politics are barely distinguishable from Neil Kinnock’s and who — I do so hate to be vulgar — has expended a good chunk of her treasure funding their movement.Women’s March co-founder grilled on ‘The View’ over Farrakhan ties
Rowling’s tweets criticising Jeremy Corbyn’s support for Brexit and the Labour Party’s toleration of anti-Semitism attract extraordinary opprobrium from the far-left. Jeremy Corbyn does support Brexit and, when it comes to Jews, the Labour Party is a racist endeavour. Corbynistas of all standing regularly have a go at Rowling, from the lowliest Momentum grunt all the way up to Dr Aaron Bastani PhD.
There is also this line of argument, which I reckon a great many Corbynistas sincerely believe, if for no other reason than to rationalise away progressives who oppose Grampa Jesus:
If Rowling is a secret Tory, she’s hella deep undercover. Twice in the past decade she has helped saved Labour’s hide. The first time came in 2008 when she donated £1m to the party ahead of its annual conference.
Mallory said that “just because you go into a space with someone that does not mean that you agree with everything that they say,” but Hostin immediately pushed back, asking, “Why call him the greatest of all time?”
“I didn’t call him the greatest of all time because of his rhetoric. I called him the greatest of all time because of what he’s done in black communities,” Mallory said.
The show’s conservative voice, Meghan McCain, quickly jumped in.
“I would never be comfortable supporting someone who (said) … ‘I’m not anti-Semite, I’m anti-termite. It’s the wicked Jews, the false Jews that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality” McCain said, quoting Farrakhan.
McCain then said that reporters feel there is anti-Semitism surrounding the Women’s March.
“A lot of people, by a lot of people I include me in this, think you’re using your organization as anti-Semitism masked in activism and that you’re using identity politics to shield yourself from critiques,” McCain said. “You’re talking about all women being invited to that march? I’m pro-life. We were not invited.”
A fired-up McCain then added that all women, including Jewish and conservative women, should be welcomed. Mallory was joined by Women’s March co-founder Bob Bland in Monday's segment, which didn’t feature co-hosts Abby Huntsman or Joy Behar, who gave up their seats on the show for the Women’s March leaders.
“Those allegations are not true,” Bland responded.
“So the journalist I spoke to was lying?” McCain asked.
Bland then accused the journalist of receiving untruthful insight and said the Women’s March “unequivocally condemns anti-Semitism.”
McCain then asked if she condemns Farrakhan’s remarks about Jewish people.
“Yes, and we have repeatedly,” Bland said as Mallory remained stone silent. “We condemn any statements of hate.”
McCain, visibly annoyed, said she was confused as she continued to read controversial, hateful quotes attributed to Farrakhan.
Palestinian Activist Who Believes Israel Is ‘Terrorist Entity’ Attends Private Dinner With Tlaib
Abbas Hamideh, a "Palestinian right of return" activist with a history of calling Israel a "terrorist entity," attended a swearing-in ceremony and private dinner with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.).
Hamideh, executive director of the U.S.-based Palestine Right to Return Coalition, has equated Zionists to Nazis, said Israel has a "delusional ISIS-like ideology," and called the creation of the country a "crime."
He tweeted out a picture of himself holding a painting of Tlaib and standing beside the newly sworn-in congresswoman on Saturday.
"I was honored to be at Congresswoman @RashidaTlaib swearing in ceremony in #Detroit and private dinner afterward with the entire family, friends and activists across the country. #Palestine #TweetYourThobe #RashidaTlaib," Hamideh tweeted.
Within hours of the tweet, several pro-Israel activists and conservative reporters pointed out some of his old tweets that showed disdain for Israel.
"Criminal Zionism will eventually die just like Nazism. No racist and supremacist political ideology should maintain itself. This is why you’re covert and financed by @AIPAC," Hamideh tweeted on Sunday.
Inviting a Hezbollah fanboy to your private dinner is a bold move pic.twitter.com/Z21htJ2bnh— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) January 14, 2019
Would Honoring Angela Davis Be a Dishonor to Rosa Parks?
Davis exploded into prominence in the early 1970s when, as a UCLA professor, her support for the violent Black Panther Movement and the imprisoned Soledad Brothers, including Jonathan Jackson, turned tragic. A courtroom escape attempt resulted in the kidnapping and death of a judge. Davis ended up on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List and, after a period in hiding, turned herself in for pre-trial imprisonment; she was eventually acquitted by an all-white jury for alleged involvement in the courtroom bloodbath.Lewisham Labour Party Goes Full on Conspiracy Theory
But Davis has never rethought her support of the Black Panthers’ violent gospel, or her endorsement of hard-line communist regimes from Cuba to East Germany and North Vietnam. She enthusiastically embraced the UN’s 2001 Durban “Anti-Racism Conference” that turned into an anti-Israel and anti-US hate fest, and today is a fan of Palestinian terrorists Marwan Barghouti and Rasmea Odeh.
As a UC Santa Cruz professor, she developed a lecture, entitled “From Ferguson To Palestine,” that encapsulates her anti-Israel take on the Black Lives Matter Movement. Though Angela Davis has lived long enough to have been a contemporary of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., she chose to walk instead with the Black Panthers.
I do not believe that Angela Davis ever was, or is today, an antisemite, at least in her own mind. She is an ideologue, blinded by her dogmatic faith in the hateful and anti-Israel Black Power Movement.
I am appalled by the seeming amnesia of The Forward to the warning published in its own pages a few years ago by distinguished civil liberties and civil rights scholar Jerold S. Auerbach to the dangers posed by the embrace of Davis’ delusional radical thought.
Angela Davis is part of 20th century history. She should be studied, but not resurrected as a political heroine and guru for today’s young.
This from Euan Philipps of Labour Against Antisemitism:
Seriously, WTF are @LewDeptLabour on? Have they bothered to read the IHRA?
— Euan Philipps (@EuanPhilipps) January 12, 2019
“Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy”.
Worrying. https://t.co/VGHUn3OTP4
This is the motion they passed:
IsraellyCool: The Forward Goes Full Antisemite
For a while now, I have documented the Israel-bashing escapades of the Jewish Forward (and its staff). And true, they have set foot in to antisemite territory on occasion (see the banner to this article for example). But I don’t recall seeing something quite as blatantly antisemitic as this piece: The 15 Women You’ll Meet When You Date Jews In New York.German city removes antisemitic BDS event notice from its website
It is hard to believe anyone thought this was a good idea.
Here’s a sample (screenshots since I assume they will delete the article).
This is the simply one of the vilest things I have seen from a Jewish publication since the Tablet’s infamous The Specifically Jewy Perviness of Howard Weinstein.
There is more than enough Jew hatred in the world, without Jewish publications adding to it. I will repeat my call for the Forward to call it a day and disappear in to the night.
After outrage on social media and from anti-BDS activists, the city of Bonn in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia deleted on Thursday an advertisement for a pro-BDS event.An overview of BBC reporting on Operation Northern Shield
The Ruhrbarone news outlet first reported that “On [the] website of the city of Bonn, an event with the activist Shir Hever is advertised with classic antisemitic statements, which is scheduled to take place in late January in the German-Kurdish cultural house.”
Bonn wrote in response that: “We regret the entry very much and apologize for that. The event calendar is not filled by us. Organizers can independently enter appointments in the calendar.”
Ruhbarone’s journalist Stefan Laurin, who is recognized as being an expert in new forms of German antisemitism, listed some of the alleged antisemitic statements from the advertisement.
“Israel has systematically violated international law for more than 70 years, with more or less open support from the US and Europe. Israel’s apartheid and colonial policies [have support from] strong Jewish lobby organizations in the USA.”
Another alleged antisemitic statement says: “Up until now, the most effective weapon of the ‘Israel lobby’ was ‘antisemitism.”’
In addition to Razia Iqbal’s unwarranted questioning of the purpose of the tunnels and the promotion by both her and Ritula Shah of the baseless notion that the operation was motivated by political considerations, audiences saw three main characteristics throughout the BBC’s reporting on this story.BBC News framing of Iranian forces in Syria
In all but the first BBC News website report – where the information was added later – audiences were not given an accurate portrayal of Hizballah’s designation as a terror organisation by numerous countries and bodies. The subject of Iran’s funding and supplying of the terror organisation was grossly downplayed in the two written articles and ignored in the three audio reports.
In all of the reports the crucially relevant topic of UN Security Council resolution 1701 was either completely ignored or inadequately presented. Not one of the five BBC reports gave audiences an accurate explanation of that resolution or how it has been repeatedly violated by Hizballah for over twelve years. Moreover, in the second BBC WS radio report listeners were inaccurately led to believe that the only violation of that resolution comes in the form of tunnels that cross into Israeli territory.
Relatedly, BBC audiences were not given the full picture of the UN peacekeeping force’s failure to identify cross-border tunnels dug over a significant period of time literally under its nose and its serial failure to prevent violations of the UNSC resolution. In the second BBC WS radio report a UNIFIL spokesman’s statements went unchallenged.
Martin Patience: “Israel has accused the United Nations peacekeeping force which patrols the border area of turning a blind eye to the movement but Andrea Tenenti, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force, says that the troops are doing their job.”
Not only was it suggested to audiences in forty percent of the BBC’s reporting that Operation Northern Shield was actually a cynical politically motivated exercise but the corporation failed throughout six whole weeks to produce even one item which would provide its funding public with the full range of background information necessary for proper understanding of the story of a complex operation which, had it been managed and executed less efficiently, could have sparked a major conflict.
Most versions of that report go on to include a section headed “Why did Pompeo mention Iran?” in which BBC audiences are told that:AP Corrects ‘Palestine’ Terminology
“Iran, alongside Russia, has been supporting the Syrian government in the Syrian civil war, providing arms, military advisers, and reportedly combat troops.”
The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the word ‘reportedly’ is as follows:
“According to what some say (used to express the speaker’s belief that the information given is not necessarily true)”
Apparently therefore we can conclude that the BBC is of the opinion that the articles in British papers such as the Telegraph and the Guardian along with reports from media outlets in other countries and agencies such as Reuters about the presence of Iranian troops and militias in Syria are not necessarily true.
Apparently too the BBC believes that statements made by France’s foreign minister on that issue and a 2016 report by Human Rights Watch are not necessarily true.
In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, the Associated Press Thursday corrected an article which incorrectly referred to Palestine. The Jan. 10 article (“Muslim group sues to block ‘No Boycott of Israel’ measure“) had stated:Teachers of 'Nazi salute' class raise money for Auschwitz museum
The groups’s suit claims the order has an unconstitutional chilling effect on First Amendment-protected political advocacy supporting Palestine.
CAMERA noted that the reference to the West Bank or to Palestinian-controlled territories as “Palestine” is not consistent with AP usage, and is misleading. The AP commendably updated the article, and replaced the reference to Palestine with the word Palestinians.
CAMERA’s timely action vis-à-vis Thursday’s AFP article underscores the value of the organization’s work monitoring and responding to wire stories in the same news cycle as they appear. With this preemptive work CAMERA helps prevent misinformation from appearing in media outlets around the world.
The teachers at the Wisconsin high school whose students made what appears to be a Nazi salute in a junior prom photo raised money for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.Exhibit of diplomats who saved Jews during Holocaust to be displayed at UN
The teachers’ union at Baraboo High School agreed to donate to the institution after the school district decided that the students would not be disciplined due to their free-speech rights, the Baraboo News Republic reported. The Auschwitz museum was one of the first to level public criticism about the photo, and also the first to offer to help educate the district and the students.
The teachers made up and sold 180 T-shirts in a variety of colors with the message “No room for hate. This classroom. This school. This community. This state. This country. This world.” They raised $2,100.
The staff members all wore their shirts on Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7, in a sign of unity.
“I think, as a union, we’re just really supportive of all the efforts that the … community, the county leadership, the city leadership, the district leadership is doing to try to — to try to make all of this right,” Kari Nelson, president of the Baraboo Education Association, told the newspaper. “We just hope this is another piece of the puzzle.”
They plan to sell more shirts to the general community.
An exhibition on diplomats who saved Jews during the Holocaust will be on display in the United Nations to commemorate International Holocaust remembrance Day on January 27.Deri: Hungarian minister promised to find Jewish remains from Holocaust
A memorial wall was dedicated last February at the Foreign Ministry commemorating 36 diplomats from 21 countries recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
According to the Israeli mission in the UN, the exhibit will present the story of foreign service personnel from many countries who used their roles and status in Europe to save Jews at the risk of their own lives. Some of them helped Jews by issuing foreign passports, transit permits, or building shelters and other roads.
The exhibition will be opened in the presence of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the grandchildren of diplomats from Peru and Portugal who saved Jews.
Of the 36 names on the Yad Vashem list, six were Swedish diplomats, five were Swiss, four were Spanish, and there were two each from Portugal, Romania and Brazil.
One Portuguese diplomat, Aristides Mendes, said “I prefer to stand by God and not against those who stand against him.” Mendes was the consul general in Bordeaux and decided not to obey his government's orders and issued visas to thousands of Jews trying to escape prior to the German invasion in 1940. He will be featured in the exhibit at the UN.
The most well know diplomat who saved Jews is Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Budapest who saved tens of thousands of Jews by issuing protective passports or sheltering them in buildings designated as Swedish territory.
The Zaka organization will begin a search of portions of the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary to locate the remains of thousands of Jews, who were murdered during the Holocaust and were thrown there by Hungarian forces in 1944.IsraAID Establishing Network to Train Disaster Response Professionals in U.S.
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri announced on Monday that the Hungarian government would provide resources to assist with the search.
Some 80,000 Jews were massacred on the banks of the river between October and December 1944 by Hungarian forces under the fascist government of the Arrow Cross Party, according to Yad Vashem.
Zaka said that no systematic search for the remains of those killed in these massacres has ever been conducted.
Several years ago, relatives of the murdered began efforts to try and recover any remains, and approached Zaka three years ago – which specializes in recovering Jewish remains from terrorist attacks, accidents and natural disasters – to undertake the task.
The organization began preliminary investigations into whether or not any remains could still be found, especially in light of the recovery of some remains that were found in 2011 during the renovation of the Margit Bridge. Those remains were later buried in a Jewish cemetery in Budapest in 2016.
For the last three years, Zaka has been working towards conducting a meeting with Hungarian and international officials in order to obtain the requisite permits for the search.
The need to train health, mental-health and engineering professionals in disaster response for quick deployment around the world is behind the Los Angeles launch of the new IsraAID Humanitarian Professionals Network(IHPN).Israeli woman with cerebral palsy graduates Technion medical school
Founded in Israel in 2001, IsraAID is a non-governmental organization that provides lifesaving emergency relief and long-term, sustainable solutions for populations affected by natural disasters, epidemics and post-conflict situations. To date, IsraAID has helped 2 million beneficiaries in 49 countries.
Trained IHPN teams “will leverage Israeli innovation, work in full collaboration with local partners, and educate the public and professionals on disaster prevention and relief,” said Seth H. Davis, Executive Director of IsraAID (US) Global Humanitarian Assistance, an independent 501c(3) organization.
Following a kickoff event January 10 in Los Angeles and another at the end of February in the San Francisco Bay Area, IHPN members from the target professions will enter a one-year IsraAID disaster-response training program in order to equip them with the skills and knowledge to deploy to disaster zones locally and globally as needed.
“We are bringing Israeli know-how to people in need in the world,” says Farah Shamolian, IHPN program director. Born and raised in LA, Shamolian has a master’s degree in public health and took part in IsraAID relief missions to Greece and Guatemala last year.
Hodaya Oliel, a 27-year-old woman with cerebral palsy, has fulfilled a lifelong dream to become a doctor after graduating from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.Israeli device seeks to protect swimmers from drowning in pools
“I dreamed about this all my life,” Oliel told Hadashot television news on Saturday.
Oliel was born three months premature and weighed a mere 930 grams (2.0 pounds) at birth, after which she dropped to only 760 grams (1.7 pounds).
As a child, Odiel was hospitalized in the orthopedic ward, but “the other half [of the ward] was the children’s neurology ward, and that always interested me.”
“The entire time I thought to myself, between my own [operations], that I want to be a doctor and I want to be a pediatric neurologist.”
Her parents were adamant that Hodaya, diagnosed with cerebral palsy, would grow up as normally as possible.
Hadas Odiel, her mother, said she would not let anyone convince them their daughter required a special education.
Israeli startup Coral Detection Systems unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week a product that it says is able to quickly detect drownings in swimming pools and alert rescuers.Linkin Park singer coming to Israel
The product, Coral Manta, which the company calls “the first of its kind,” is a hexagonal-shaped device — the same shape as the large flattened manta ray fish it’s partly named after — powered by solar panels covering its surface. When positioned at the edge of a swimming pool, the device monitors the pool via a built-in underwater video camera that uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to detect movement.
The device monitors the pool 24/7 and uses artificial intelligence to analyze real-time video captured by the camera. In case of drowning or dangerous circumstances, the device sounds an alarm to alert people in the vicinity to help the victim and simultaneously sends an alert to the pool’s owners via their smartphones.
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Immediate response is essential, since four to five minutes without oxygen can cause irreversible brain damage for children, and for adults that time decreases to three to four minute, the company’s website explains. In most cases, when people drown they sink to the bottom quickly, just seconds after they have stopped breathing. Coral Manta is programmed to identify such situations and sets off escalating alarms within seconds, the website says.
After the death of his friend and Linkin Park bandmate Chester Bennington in 2017, singer and guitarist Mike Shinoda threw himself into music, releasing his debut solo album Post Traumatic.Tom Jones returning to Israel
Now, Shinoda is bringing his Post Traumatic Tour to Tel Aviv for a concert on March 25 at Hangar 11. He will be joined there – and throughout the upcoming European leg of his tour – by Israeli drummer Dan Mayo and multi-instrumentalist Matthias Harris.
Bennington joined Linkin Park back in 1999, and they released their critically acclaimed debut album, Hybrid Theory, in 2000. The band continued its success for many years, releasing six more albums and winning two Grammy Awards. Bennington and Shinoda often traded vocals during their songs, with Shinoda handling the rapping and hip-hop elements. Their biggest hits included “In the End,” “Numb” and “What I’ve Done.”
Bennington was found dead in July 2017 at age 41 after taking his own life.
The singer’s death inspired many of the songs on Shinoda’s first solo album.
“I just feel like art has played such a great, therapeutic role in the whole thing,” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone last year. “Part of the intention of the whole thing is to show our fans that we all know what happened and what I went through, and now [I can] walk out of that blaze and be OK. I hope it helps other folks do the same.”
Tom Jones just can't get enough of Israel. This summer, the Welsh singer will return to Tel Aviv for a show on July 3 at the Menorah Mivtachim Arena.IsraellyCool: Morgan Freeman “Lords” It Up For Israeli Commercial
Jones has performed in Israel several times in the past, including in 2013 and 2017.
With smash hits like "It's Not Unusual," "Delilah," "She's a Lady" and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," Jones has been a household name for decades. In more recent years, the recording artist has become known as one of the coaches on The Voice UK.
In 2013, after performing in Israel, Jones said he is opposed to boycotting the Jewish state: "I think entertainers should entertain. They should go wherever – there shouldn’t be any restrictions... I don’t see why anyone would mix up the two things – entertainment and politics.”
Jones rocketed to fame in the 1960s - winning a Grammy in 1966 - and since then has released 40 studio albums and toured the globe. In 1989 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 2006 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his services to music.
We may have missed out on Lorde, but we got Lord.
Actor Morgan Freeman was recently in Israel, supposedly as part of his work on National Geographic’s “The Story of God” (for which he was also here in 2016).
But it looks like he may have also found time to do an advertisement for Israeli air conditioning company Tadiran.
That’s enough to give the BDS-holes the chills!
