Barry Shaw: JStreet lost
The question remains. Which side of history do the Jewish youth of JStreet, the putative friends of Israel who are no friends at all, wish to be on? Or that of Bnei Ami, the real heart and soul of the Jewish people.Melanie Phillips: The leftward movement of diaspora Jews
It is with us, the Israeli Zionists, where the Revolutionary Generation resides, forging beyond the despots that surround us, the shining star that guides the way to a better future whenever our neighbors will be capable of dropping their rancid hatred, a hatred that has troubled the world for far too long.
We Jews accepted a historic, a biblical, challenge to be exceptional. We are delivering on that challenge. From our success we demand of our neighbors to rise up to the challenge, as we have done. Pick leaders who can give you a better future. It is achieved by forging the 21st Century, not by being trapped in the past. Look at our liberty and freedom and follow our lead.
We are one of the countries with a sense of purpose in a jaded world .
While we fight for life, our detractors, such as JStreet arrogantly weigh our sins.
Israel’s sovereignty is questioned as in no other country on the planet. They demand justice for the Palestinian Arab but not for us. Nothing that we do will ever satisfy them. The angry thrust for justice and judgment fall on the collective Jew, never on our malevolent enemy that thirsts for our destruction. And these haters have recruited JStreet to sit on their jury against us.
We have a close knowledge of evil, and it is not us.
Are there any Arab intellectuals who disassociate themselves from the traditional religious and radical firebrands that whip up the street and the campus with their rhetoric of hate and rejection of the Jew in the Middle East? If there are any, they are a fearful and silent minority. Those that do speak up can be found in Israel. Arab intellectuals that agree with me are too frightened to remain where they are. For out of the street the next firebrand will emerge to harness old religious hatreds to a new rebellion. And so it goes on. A stalemate where liberal dreamers think they represent all that is liberating for a tradition that maintains a rigid dogma.
This clash solves nothing. It only increases the discord between two worlds leaving us isolated and in jeopardy. The malevolent rejectionists must be weakened, not strengthened. Sometimes it is kind to be cruel. Isn’t it always thus in war to achieve peace? It was with Germany, with Japan, where only total victory led to peace? Appeasing the Third Reich as it marched from Poland to France would never have achieved peace. To think that appeasing a violent and rejectionist Palestine Authority by scolding Israel will achieve peace is dangerous nonsense. Liberal, progressive, call JStreet what you want. It is an idiocy of a dangerous kind.
Israel, geopolitically, is a tiny state in the epicenter of a maelstrom of savage hostility.
In Israel. staying alive is a cause for joy and optimism. Isn’t that always the Jewish psyche? They came to kill us. We won. Let’s celebrate.
There is something perverse about the adoration by Jews of the killers of Jews. For JStreet, it has become an obsession.
Feeding the beast, as JStreet does, has achieved nothing. It never will.
JStreet lost.
Is there a leftward movement of diaspora Jews? I took part in a webinar organised by EMET, the Endowment for Middle East Truth, which does sterling work defending Israel against the calumnies that distressingly pass for received wisdom in so much of the west. At this webinar, which was attended by more than 430 people, Caroline Glick and I were talking about the state of the Jewish community in the US and Britain. We discussed the scourge of antisemitism, the contribution to this of left-wing politics and whether or not the leadership of the Jewish community was adequately confronting this. You can watch the webinar below.
Yisrael Medad: Book Review | Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality
The Two-State Solution Always Failed
The ‘paradigm’ Lustick has championed for decades had its origin in the Cairo Conference of March 1921. It was there that Winston Churchill, as newly-appointed Colonial Secretary, conducted deliberations with his staff and advisors and decided to adopt what is referred to in Middle East studies as the Sharifian Solution. That policy saw Great Britain as responsible for fulfilling, as much as possible, its war-time pledges to the Arabs as delineated in the McMahon-Hussein talks. The two sons of Sharif Ali ibn Hussein were set to become rulers of much of the former Ottoman Empire territory, with Abdullah becoming Emir and later, King, of newly-created Transjordan (although originally, the Foreign Office had not thought the Jordan River to be an adequate frontier) and Faisal was crowned as king of the new Kingdom of Iraq, formerly Mesopotamia, after losing Syria.
Later that month, in Jerusalem, Churchill confirmed this first two-state solution outline. Essentially, as Isaiah Friedman has noted, TransJordan would be carved out of ‘Historic Palestine’ and become a separate political entity. That policy was confirmed by the League of Nations in Article 25 of its 1922 Palestine Mandate decision although both territories, juridically, would be under the same administrative umbrella of the British Mandate for Palestine. In doing so, the two brothers would dissociate themselves from Palestine, and, in particular, Abdullah would recognise the legitimacy of the Jewish National Home policy. In fact, Abdullah did inform a local Arab delegation, who were protesting the essence of the Balfour Declaration for a reconstituted national Jewish home in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, that they had to accept the situation as offered, telling them ‘the Arabs must remember that the question of interests not only them and Jews, but Christendom as well’.
That suggested resolution did not work. Seventy-five per cent of the land-mass Chaim Weizmann demanded the 1919 Paris Peace Conference grant to the Jewish National Home was lost. In 1937, the remaining 25 per cent was subjected to a partition proposal with the hope that this second two-state solution concept would resolve the conflict the Arabs had with Zionism. It didn’t. Neither did the third proposal of a two-state solution of the UN in 1947.
This brief review of Mandate-era history is ignored by Lustick, which would have provided some qualifying historical context to his central argument. The truth is that the two-state solution was not ‘lost’ recently, but had been attempted, and had failed, and failed again, long ago. Lustick ignores this history.
Latma 2020, Episode 7
The democracy championship finals, Mandelblit praises Mandelblit who gives Mandelblit credit, Story Time about a torch that burned a little too much and more...
Israel records just 13 new virus cases over 24-hour period, lowest since March
The Health Ministry said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases grew by 13 between Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning, the lowest increase recorded over any 24-hour period since the beginning of the outbreak in March.Orthodox Jews Are Half of Covid-19 Plasma Donors, Doctor Tells New York Times
The ministry said the total number of cases was 16,539, up 10 from Tuesday night’s figure. So far, 12,173 have recovered from the virus, while 4,104 are still sick.
The country’s death toll from COVID-19 stood at 262, with two new fatalities reported since Tuesday night. There was no immediate information on the latest casualties.
According to the Health Ministry, 61 people infected with COVID-19 are in serious condition, 51 of whom are on ventilators. Another 46 people are in moderate condition and the rest have mild symptoms.
The data said 7,183 coronavirus tests had been conducted throughout the country on Tuesday. Initial figures for Wednesday said there had been 1,279 tests by 11 a.m.
Among those who have recovered is Holocaust survivor Feige Leibovitz, who turns 97 on Thursday, Army Radio reported Wednesday.
She recovered at Rambam hospital in Haifa and reunited with her daughter Sima for the first time in two months. “She is a tough survivor,” said Sima. “The coronavirus has nothing on her.”
Leibovitz is the second Holocaust survivor to overcome the virus in two days, after 99-year-old Sara Itzinger beat it and was sent home on Tuesday.
The number of new infections has slowed dramatically in recent weeks. Israel has gone ten days without seeing over 100 new confirmed cases in a single day.
The New York Times is drawing praise for an article highlighting the frequency of plasma donation in the Orthodox Jewish community.Can this Israeli corovavirus drug 'completely prevent' lung damage?
The plasma — a blood product rich in antibodies that may help Covid-19 patients — comes from Jews who had the coronavirus and have since recovered. Some of the donors traveled from New York all the way to Pennsylvania to donate.
The article, by Liam Stack, quotes a researcher at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Michael Joyner, who told the Times that Jews — who are considerably less than 5% of the US population — may account for more than half of the donors in his study.
Thousands of recovered Covid-19 patients nationwide have donated blood plasma in recent weeks, said Dr. Joyner, who is leading a study at the Mayo Clinic in the use of plasma to treat patients with severe Covid-19.
“By far the largest group is our Orthodox friends in New York City,” said Dr. Joyner, who noted more than 5,000 patients across the country had received plasma treatment so far. “I would be shocked if they were less than half the total.”
WhoWeAre, a social media campaign aimed at “Highlighting the kindness, unity & heroism in the Orthodox Jewish Community,” shared the article with the comment, “An eye opening article on the rush to save lives by the talented @liamstack who sheds light on the incredible lifesaving campaign.” (h/t Yerushalimey)
Bonus BioGroup has completed a preliminary study of a new drug it developed to treat acute and life-threatening respiratory distress in COVID-19 patients, CEO Dr. Shai Meretzki told The Jerusalem Post.Familiar names fill Democratic primary in Nebraska’s 2nd district
The drug MesenCure, which consists of activated Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (MSCs) that are isolated from the adipose tissue of healthy donors, was found to reduce inflammation, promote the regeneration of the diseased lung tissue and alleviate respiratory and other symptoms in laboratory and animal models.
Initial results show that subjecting the MSCs to various biological, physical and chemical conditions has changed cellular attributes, which may be associated with greater anti-inflammatory potential.
Meretzki shared a laboratory image of a healthy lung, a sick lung and lung treated with MesenCure.
“The treated lung looks identical to the healthy lung – complete healing, complete prevention of damage to the lung,” Meretzki said.
The company has been working with MSCs for a decade from its Haifa headquarters, where it developed a tissue-engineered bone graft that is also based on MSCs. When the coronavirus outbreak started, Bonus started investigating the potential of MSCs to possibly reduce the “cytokine storm” in COVID-19 patients.
Ashford met with Netanyahu on a trip to Israel with her husband as part of a 2016 congressional delegation. Describing the meeting in a June 2019 policy paper given to AIPAC, Ashford said the delegation’s discussion with the prime minister “helped me understand the United States’ relationship with Israel in a more concrete way than if I had read dozens of books on the subject.”Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and Bell RIbeiro-Addy share platform with Stop The War’s Lindsay German who denies Labour antisemitism and backed disgraced Chris Williamson
In conversation with JI, Ashford described the U.S.-Israel relationship as “one of our most important relationships in the world” but called for the U.S. to assume the role of an “agnostic facilitator of the two-state solution.”
“I think that in any help that we’re giving, we need to make sure [a two-state solution is] being pursued,” she said, adding that she opposes actions, including annexation of the West Bank, “that move us farther away from ever achieving that two-state solution.”
In a second position paper, this one dated February 2020 and shared with J Street, Ashford called the Trump administration “tone deaf” for cutting aid to the Palestinians and for opening the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem “at the same time as the Nakba, when Palestinians commemorate the expulsion and displacement of over 700,000 people at the time of Israel’s funding [sp].”
In the J Street paper, Ashford addressed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and pledged to “push to bring the US back into compliance with the JCPOA and regain our seat at the table.” She told JI that she thought the original deal could have been better, and would like to renegotiate it before rejoining, but would prioritize getting the U.S. back into the deal.
The former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, joined former Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott and fellow MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy on a platform with a controversial activist who has a history of denying antisemitism in the Labour Party and who backed the disgraced former Labour MP, Chris Williamson.The BBC once again shows why it needs to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism
Lindsay German has repeatedly denied Labour’s institutional antisemitism, describing the allegations as a “witch-hunt”, a line often used by Mr Williamson, whom she has defended, and his allies.
Ms German is a convener of the dubious group, Stop The War Coalition, which has appeared in the past to advocate war against Israel and whose marches routinely feature antisemitic tropes.
The online event comes only days after Sir Keir Starmer failed to take any action against Ms Abbott and Ms Ribeiro-Addy for appearing on a platform with former Labour members expelled from the Party in the wake of antisemitic incidents, despite his election pledge to suspend MPs and members caught doing so. The event was a grotesque attempt to promote the disingenuous, deplorable and divisive claim that addressing Labour antisemitism is somehow racist against the BAME community.
On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.
Over the years the BBC has repeatedly demonstrated that it has neither the authority nor the expertise – let alone the remit – to define antisemitism.Sign our petition calling on BBC, ITV and Sky News to get Prof. John “time for Jews to reflect” Ashton off our televisions
The fact that the corporation has a dismal record on preventing the appearance of antisemitic discourse in its own content, including on BBC-run message boards and phone-in shows has not prevented it from passing judgement on complaints concerning antisemitism or purporting to explain anti-Jewish racism from other sources to its audience.
If one imagined that four years of covering the UK Labour party antisemitism scandals would have raised awareness and understanding of that form of racism in BBC newsrooms, a recent letter from the Director of BBC News indicates that is not the case.
The Jewish Chronicle’s editor explains how a repeat BBC interviewee on the topic of public health was shown by his paper to have a past record of antisemitic statements.
“Some of his messages appear to be a clear breach of the internationally accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism. The examples cited by IHRA include: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” and “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.””
In response to a subsequent letter from Conservative Friends of Israel, the Director of BBC News, Fran Unsworth, (who has apparently been tipped as a future BBC Director General) wrote:
“I quite understand your strength of feeling about the views you have ascribed to Professor Ashton on Israel and Zionism…Professor Ashton did not, of course, make any comments of the kind that you describe in this programme and I hope you understand that I would have grave doubts about the impact on freedom of speech, and the BBC’s ability to report freely and impartially, if we were to ban contributors from speaking on the subject of their acknowledged expertise because of the political views they have expressed, however abhorrent some members of the audience may find them.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism has launched a petition calling on the BBC, ITV and SkyNews to stop featuring Prof. John Ashton, who has a long history of making antisemitic statements, in their programming.CAMERA: BACKGROUNDER The Intrinsic Antisemitism of BDS
The petition can be signed here:
https://www.change.org/p/bbc-bbc-itv-sky-news-get-prof-john-time-for-jews-to-reflect-ashton-off-our-televisions?recruiter=330393351&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition
The text of the petition is as follows:
We call on the BBC, ITV, Sky News and all other broadcasters to stop featuring John Ashton in their programming due to his long history of appalling statements.
He is regularly included as a contributor on the pandemic, but according to the Jewish Chronicle, Prof. Ashton’s statements have included:
“Sickening to see Zionists behave like Nazis.”
“The Nazi thing was not a distraction to the Jews in Europe. The Zionist thing is not a distraction to the Palestinians.”
“[the] way to get on in [the Labour] Party is to curry favour with Zionist donors.”
“Is it [Israel] now satisfied about how many children it has murdered? What price the Holocaust?”
“It’s very sad how intransigence of the Zionists has sullied the universal empathy for the victims of the Holocaust.”
“Can anybody begin to imagine the impact on the mental health of survivors of the Gaza Ghetto? Surely time for Jews to reflect.”
Calling Dame Louise Ellman, the Jewish former Labour MP, a “vile Zionist”
Saying when Jewish former Labour MP Luciana Berger raised the matter of food banks with the Government: “what about the Palestinians?”
“She [Luciana Berger] is from London and a Zionist. Full stop. Doesn’t fit with Liverpool’s universalism. End of.”
The anti-Jewish bigotry that characterizes the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has become even more apparent as BDS leaders and members seize upon the Covid-19 pandemic to fuel anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism with libels against Jews and the Jewish state. Statements by BDS leaders have ranged from accusing Israel of responsibility for Palestinian deaths that might arise from the Covid-19 virus to comparing Zionists themselves to the coronavirus to accusing Israel and Jews of deliberately spreading the virus in order to kill non-Jews. BDS’ latest campaign, which uses the hashtag #CoronaRacism falsely charges Israel with victimizing the Palestinians with racism in response to the pandemic – constituting the latest version of the medieval blood libels/conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic attacks that have nurtured and fueled anti-Semitism for so long.C4T Campaign4Truth: Caliphater Cogwar and Western Schools
CAMERA’s backgrounder documents the fundamental anti-Jewish nature of this movement and how it has become a haven for anti-Semites to indulge their racism.
The exposure of Palestinian Cognitive Warfare. Prof Richard Landes introduces the topic: Caliphater Cogwar and Western Schools
January 2020
‘Post’ exposé leads to Bundestag MP probe of ‘antisemitic’ diplomat
The Jerusalem Post’s exclusive disclosure in April, that a senior German diplomat used his Twitter feed to promote an allegedly antisemitic professor who supports BDS and has minimized the Holocaust, triggered a parliamentary inquiry.
Free Democratic Party MP Frank Müller-Rosentritt filed a formal questionnaire to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration, in which he asked: “How does the federal government assess the public-oriented defense of the invitation to the post-colonial theorist for the Ruhrtriennale 2020 from a person employed by the federal government on social media?”
On Wednesday, the Post obtained Müller-Rosentritt’s inquiry letter and the German federal government’s response.
The post-colonial theorist is South African prof. Achille Mbembe who called for “global isolation” of the Jewish state and promoted two Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) actions against professors from Ben Gurion University.
Müller-Rosentritt’s letter included the web address (URL) of a German-language translation of sections of a Post April article which reported that Andreas Görgen, director of the Foreign Ministry’s department for culture and communication, tweeted a series of articles in support of Mbembe.
The Vienna-based think tank Mena-Watch translated several paragraphs of the article and published them on April 27 under the headline, “Antisemitism: The Embarrassing Silence of the German Foreign Ministry.”
This is what real courage looks like.
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) May 13, 2020
Maleek, cousin… no akhi, jazak Allah. Thank you. It is people like you that will lead us to peace, those that change their mind and run to peace.
Thank you. https://t.co/GjffkUnNpZ
.@jdub_cc are you aware your good name is being tarnished by this account -> @johnwood20191 https://t.co/gPIjjbtHkc
— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) May 13, 2020
BBC News publishes fifth report on Israel and Covid-19 related phone tracking
Predictably, Bateman’s main focus is that of the “controversy” surrounding the phone tracking.
“But the unprecedented expansion of the Shin Bet’s powers has been the subject of controversy, including a Supreme Court challenge, questions over its accuracy, and accusations from doctors that it creates a distraction from testing for the coronavirus.
The agency, now acting as a tool of public health enforcement, is usually tasked with preventing attacks against Israelis and routinely monitors Palestinians in the occupied territories.” [emphasis added]
Bateman provided no support for the claim that the Shin Bet “routinely monitors Palestinians” – rather than those suspected of engagement in violence and terrorism.
His report includes an interview with a former Shin Bet officer and quotes the same researcher at Toronto University’s ‘Citizen Lab’ as was featured in Rory Cellan-Jones’ April 2nd article.
“Others believe mass surveillance programmes scrambled to deal with the pandemic are rife for abuse around the world. “What scares me is that, at least for now, the norm is suddenly changing,” says cybersecurity analyst John Scott-Railton of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.
“People who have been [quietly] doing these things which are highly questionable are suddenly saying: ‘Look, we’re your saviours here.'””
However Bateman provides readers with comparatively little information – once again – about the safeguards put in place.
This is same Daniel Barenboim (@DBarenboim) who also proudly played Wagner in Israel. He has seemingly lost the plot with this vile piece, that of course only @haaretzcom would deem fit to publish! pic.twitter.com/yWxoaZmAKb
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) May 13, 2020
British music site removes pejorative reference to Zionism
In a May 6th review of season 4 of HBO’s science fiction series West World in the British music and pop culture site NME, critic Christopher Hooton somehow managed to throw in this pejorative reference to Zionism:Danish Bible that removed Israel 'not antisemitic' argues columnist
You don’t need to know a thing about the show to realize that, in the mind of Hooton, Zionism is synonymous with hatred, conflict and violence.
We tweeted the journalist and emailed editors, who responded by removing the reference to Zionism.
Unfortunately, there’s no editor’s note, and no apology for the completely gratuitous smear against Israel and the overwhelming majority of diaspora Jews who are Zionists.
The Jerusalem Post columnist Liat Collins wrote of the translation: "Instead of making sure that readers understand the connection between Israel, the Jews and the Land of Israel of the Bible, they preferred to make an artificial separation.Ukraine Police Chief Orders Official Investigation Into Demand for ‘List of Jews’
"Taking a charitable approach, it’s possible to say that the Danish Bible translators did not see their changes as a political act, more an act of political correctness – trying to include all. But clearly something was lost in translation, as is evident to someone who reads the Bible in the original Hebrew. As B’nai Brith International tweeted: “... this surreal revision causes confusion and worse: whitewashing of history, identity, and sacred scripture.”"
But Mosaic Magazine's Philologos column, which focuses on Jewish language, has a different take on the matter.
"Its aim was disambiguation, not the delegitimization of the Jewish state," the column stated. "I find this explanation perfectly credible."
Philologos points out that ambiguities around the varying uses of the word 'Israel' within scripture can trip up Jewish as well as non-Jewish writers, given that there are at least five separate meanings:
- The people descended from the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, "with whose history and relationship with God the biblical narrative deals."
- The land also geographically known as Palestine.
- The Kingdom of Israel which ruled northern Palestine from the death of Solomon to its destruction by the Assyrians, and which was often at odds with the Kingdom of Judea to its south.
- The post-Biblical descendants of Judah, who became the Jewish people.
- The modern State of Israel, as established in 1948.
"Even Jews who see in the overlapping of these meanings an affirmation of the oneness of Jewish peoplehood and history often feel a need to distinguish among them," the column argues.
The head of Ukraine’s national police has ordered an official investigation into the widely-condemned demand by a regional police official for a list of members of the Jewish community in the western city of Kolomyia.CyberArk buys US firm IDaptive for $70 million
In a statement on Monday that suggested he was unaware of the mushrooming scandal until he read about it online, Sergei Klimenko — promoted to lead his country’s police force last September — promised a probe into the Feb. 11 letter sent by Mykhailo Bank, a senior police official in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine, to the head of the community of several hundred Jews in Kolomyia in which he demanded a copy of the community’s charter, together with “a list of community members with addresses and mobile phones” and “a list of Jewish students in universities of Kolomyia and Ivano-Frankivsk.”
In a statement carried by Ukrainian media outlets, Klimenko said: “As soon as this information appeared on the internet, I immediately ordered an official investigation into this fact, because any manifestations of xenophobia and antisemitism are unacceptable. I’m sorry that this situation happened at all. That is why an official investigation will be conducted as soon as possible, the main purpose of which is to find out the reasons for the need to send a letter about the collection of data from representatives of the Jewish community.”
Klimenko said he wanted to assure Ukraine’s Jews that “we will not allow any manifestations of persecution of citizens on national or other grounds. All police units work to prevent antisemitic hate crimes, and in the event of these being committed, they respond immediately and focus their efforts on their detection and investigation.”
Bank is the head of the Strategic Investigations Department of the National Police in the Ivano-Frankivsk region with a brief for organized crime. In his letter demanding the list from the Jewish community, Bank explained that his department was “engaged in the fight against transnational and ethnic organized groups and criminal organizations.”
However, Bank himself is the target of recently-leveled corruption allegations by Ukrainian parliamentarians.
Petah Tikva based CyberArk said that together with IDaptive, it will deliver the industry’s only identity platform with a security-first approach.Rock legend Little Richard was fascinated with Judaism
Israeli privileged access management company CyberArk Software Inc.(Nasdaq:CYBR) today announced it has acquired Santa Clara, California-based identity as a service IDaptive Holdings for $70 million cash. Petah Tikva based CyberArk said that together with IDaptive, it will deliver the industry’s only identity platform with a security-first approach.
CyberArk added that through the acquisition, CyberArk and Idaptive will deliver a comprehensive Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based, security-first approach to managing identities that is adaptive and context-aware, and architected on the principles of Zero Trust and least privilege access, to dramatically reduce risk. CyberArk will extend its ability to manage and protect identities with various levels of privileges across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, enabling customers to improve their overall security posture with a more efficient and seamless user experience, and address ever-increasing and complex regulatory requirements.
CyberArk founder, chairman and CEO Udi Mokady said, "With cyberattacks on the rise, organizations need modern, comprehensive solutions to make better, continuous access and authorization decisions for the broadest range of users. With Idaptive, CyberArk will offer customers a SaaS-delivered, security-first approach to managing identities - with Privileged Access Management at its core - that reduces risk, simplifies operations and improves business agility."
Little Richard, a founding architect of rock ‘n’ roll who died Saturday at 87, was fascinated with Judaism for decades — so much so that he might have even observed Shabbat.Israeli researchers unveil architecture secrets of ‘world's oldest temple’
As detailed in an article published in The Forward after the flamboyant singer’s death, Little Richard mentioned his interest in Judaism several times over the course of his career.
In 1972, he shocked a BBC interviewer by calling himself “a lil’ Jewish boy, black bottom, from Georgia.” While acting in movies in the 1980s and ’90s, he wouldn’t work on Fridays, the start of the Jewish sabbath.
A 1986 Florida Sun-Suntinel article claimed that the singer, born Richard Wayne Penniman in Macon, Georgia, had officially converted to Judaism with the encouragement of Bob Dylan. Little Richard told the paper that he had celebrated Rosh Hashanah while touring that year, and added that he “only missed going to synagogue one Saturday for the past year.”
Jewish director Paul Mazursky, who worked with Little Richard on two films, wrote in his memoir that he thought the performer’s claim about observing Shabbat “was a scam.” But when Mazurksy talked to Little Richard’s manager about it, he responded: “He really is Jewish …”
Little Richard grew up in a religious Christian family who attended AME, Baptist and Pentecostal churches. Following the peak of his musical career, he would become an ordained minister before returning to show business.
For the last quarter of a century, the Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey has been intriguing researchers for the size and complexity of its structure, which dates back about 11,500 years, and has been called the “world's oldest temple.” Two archaeologists from Tel Aviv University, PhD candidate Gil Haklay and his supervisor, Prof. Avi Gopher, have now unveiled new secrets of its sophisticated architecture, highlighting an intricate geometrical pattern that was conceived before humans had even discovered agriculture or pottery.
“It might be surprising but architectural planning started to develop already 15,000 years ago,” Haklay told The Jerusalem Post. “In the early Neolithic they were already able to plan and accurately build very large and complex projects.”
Göbekli Tepe, however, is different and unparalleled compared to any other site of the period because of its colossal size, he highlighted.
“We actually have another example of a large scale construction from this period and it is located in Jericho where a large tower is preserved in its full height with an internal staircase, but is not as monumental as Göbekli Tepe and required much less effort,” the archaeologist pointed out.
Discovered for the first time in the 1960s, forgotten and rediscovered in the 1990s, Göbekli Tepe features dozens of monolithic pillars four to five meters tall placed along at least 20 concentric rings, which archaeologists refer to as “enclosures." The pillars are decorated with remarkable reliefs depicting animals including gazelles, jaguars, Asiatic wild donkeys and wild sheep. It was a place of worship where many people, likely belonging to different communities, would convene and perform rituals.
The structure and size of the site also help to shed light about the life of those who built it and used it.
“We are talking about hunter-gatherers, but at the same time we see signs of a very complex social structure,” Haklay said, adding that it is not clear how long its construction took but it might have been centuries if not more, with different people initiating it and adding to it.
“The findings that we have suggest that the construction started at some point in the PPNA, Pre-Pottery-Neolithic-A, about 11,500 years ago, but a second layer dates back to Pre-Pottery-Neolithic-B which probably lasted until 9,000 years ago,” he explained. “However, we are talking about the very initial phase of the planning and the construction. From there, there is a very long history of enclosures that continued to develop and change through time.”
AS EXPLAINED in a paper recently published by the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, the Israeli researchers manage to unveil a specific geometrical pattern between several enclosures.
After a deadly earthquake shook #Nepal 5 years ago, the IDF sent a humanitarian aid delegation to help our friends in need.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 12, 2020
It isn’t about the distance,
it’s about how far you’re willing to go.
🇮🇱🇳🇵 pic.twitter.com/PHc36KP22n
Without agriculture, Israel has no independence. Starting this year's wheat harvest at Kibbutz Sa'ad. Yehuda the farmer even let me ride in his combine harvester! pic.twitter.com/YpIWibnfrC
— Reuven Rivlin (@PresidentRuvi) May 13, 2020