Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Anti-Semitism and the Intellectuals
George Eliot was at the peak of her renown in 1874 when John Blackwood, her publisher, learned that she was at work on “Daniel Deronda, ” a new novel. As a literary man, he was in thrall to her genius. As a businessman with an instinct for the market, he valued her passionately dedicated readership. But an early look at portions of her manuscript astonished and appalled him: Too much of it was steeped in sympathetic evocations of Jews, Judaism and what was beginning to be known as Zionism.Historic Video Unearthed: The Arab American Plan to Defeat America’s Jews
All this off-putting alien erudition struck him as certain to be more than merely unpopular. It was personally tasteless, it went against the grain of English sensibility, it was an offense to the reigning political temperament. It was, in our notorious idiom, politically incorrect. Blackwood was unquestionably a member of England’s gentlemanly intellectual elite. In recoiling from Eliot’s theme, he showed himself to be that historically commonplace figure: an intellectual anti-Semite.
Anti-Semitism is generally thought of as brutish, the mentality of mobs, the work of the ignorant, the poorly schooled, the gutter roughnecks, the torch carriers. But these are only the servants, not the savants, of anti-Semitism. Mobs execute, intellectuals promulgate. Thugs have furies, intellectuals have causes.
The Inquisition was the brainchild not of illiterates, but of the most lettered and lofty prelates. Goebbels had a degree in philology. Hitler fancied himself a painter and doubtless knew something of Dürer and da Vinci. Pogroms aroused the murderous rampage of peasants, but they were instigated by the cream of Russian officialdom. The hounding and ultimate expulsion of Jewish students from German universities was abetted by the violence of their Aryan classmates, but it was the rectors who decreed that only full-blooded Germans could occupy the front seats. Martin Heidegger, the celebrated philosopher of being and non-being, was quick to join the Nazi Party, and as himself a rector promptly oversaw the summary ejection of Jewish colleagues.
Stupid mobs are spurred by clever goaders: The book burners were inspired by the temperamentally bookish—who else could know which books to burn? Even invidious folk myths have intellectual roots, as when early biblical linguists mistranslated as horns the rays of light emanating from Moses’ brow.
Around 1990, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, traveled to Jordan to raise interest in his plan to undermine the Jewish community in America by organizing the Left here against Israel’s “oppression” of Palestinians.
Zogby saw the power of framing Israelis as “white oppressors” of innocent, indigenous, darker-skinned Palestinians. And he saw the possibilities of mobilizing left-leaning ethnic, racial, and religious groups against “Israeli oppression.”
The prescient Zogby understood how the Jewish left could easily become the willing lynchpin of his strategy.
Zogby’s initiatives, which were likely funded with petro-dollars, promoted Jews as privileged “whites.”
Today, 30 years later, one sees the power of this concept: Jews in the United States, like those in Israel, are now viewed by a generation of progressives as “oppressors.” Indeed, radicals today are erroneously connecting American police officers being trained by Israeli police to American officers’ treatment of black Americans — as Jewish leaders sit paralyzed and bewildered.
Watch Zogby pitch his plan to a skeptical Jordanian TV interviewer, who doubts him: “But please, Mr. Zobgy! How can you possibly defeat the Jews in America? They control the media, the cultural institutions, the academy, and the politicians?” Zogby tells him exactly how it will be done. He understood that demonization along racial lines would provide cover for anti-Semitism, while it would morally confuse progressive Jews.
Daniel Pipes put it this way: “Who, a hundred years ago, would have believed that the Jews would make the best soldiers and the Arabs the best publicists?”
Melanie Phillips: The barbarians inside the gates
And in The World Turned Upside Down (2010), I wrote about the “totalitarianism of virtue” which in certain respects had put modernity itself into reverse.
None of this analysis has made any difference. The barbarians are inside the gates and have been camped there for years.
Enough.
The philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, himself a direct victim of this cultural auto-da-fé, said shortly before he died that, while university science departments should remain, the humanities departments should be shut down as the source of this civilisational rot.
In Tablet, Liel Liebowitz sharpens the point. He asks what could have motivated the two lawyers who were arrested last month for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a police car in Brooklyn during the protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. After all, they were “poster children for all that is right in America” who “worked hard, overcame adversity, and reaped the kinds of rewards that most of us can only dream of”. So why, then, did they “harbor such hate for the very same system that elevated them so quickly and so high?”
He gives a one-word answer. College.
“At Princeton and NYU, at Harvard and Columbia and Brown, no subject is worth studying unless it somehow leads to the inevitable conclusion that the land of the free is nothing more than a cruel colonialist cabal of exploiters and profiteers, happily raping the people and the land. Steep in such fetid ideological waters for four or six or eight years, and you, too, may eye a cop car and immediately reach for a bottle of Bud Light and a gasoline-soaked rag.
“Here, then, is a modest proposal: Stop hiring college grads”.
There’s now a direct correlation between those with higher education and ideas that are amoral, illiberal and socially destructive. Whether by defunding humanities departments or hiring for preference those who have not had their minds twisted by a university education, the west must now put cultural distance between itself and the source of this contagion.
Chelsea Handler Calls Farrakhan Video 'Powerful'
Actress Chelsea Handler shared a video of Louis Farrakhan discussing racism on her Instagram page on June 14 and called it “powerful.”
The video is a clip of the nation of Islam leader taking questions from the audience during an appearance on “The Phil Donahue Show” on an unspecified date. During the clip, Farrakhan discusses issues of racism and white supremacy.
“I learned a lot from watching this powerful video,” Handler wrote on her Instagram page.
One Instagram user responded in the comments section, “Based on this logic, if you find a video of Hitler saying something positive and powerful, will you feel equally compelled to share it? You gave hate credibility and a large platform today.”
In the comments section, Handler defended posting the video.
“Hitler was responsible for killing millions of lives,” she replied. “Farrakhan is just responsible for his own promotion of anti-Semitic beliefs. They are very different.”
Another commenter praised Handler for posting the video, stating: “Truth is truth, regardless of who it comes from and whether you like them.”
Handler responded, “Agreed. The message should stand alone.”
@chelseahandler what exactly were you + other Americans supposed to learn from a leader who is a life-long anti-Semite who called Hitler a great man who refers to Jews as insects who spews hatred of LGBTQ people, whose Research Group luridly links Israel to deadly Coronavirus? pic.twitter.com/8Uq6gChWSV
— SimonWiesenthalCntr (@simonwiesenthal) June 15, 2020
Israel Advocacy Movement: The celebs are pushing Farrakhan again
Raleigh NC Imam Oliver S. Muhammad: The Image of a White Jesus Is a Subliminal Message that Feeds White Supremacy, Injustice All over the World pic.twitter.com/6WbrTJnN4W
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) June 16, 2020
Can someone point me to @everytown @momsdemand statement on this? https://t.co/R0LdYG9ZDC
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) June 15, 2020
Comparing biblical names, epigraphs back Book of Jeremiah’s historicity
A comparison between the names mentioned in the biblical book of Jeremiah and those appearing on archaeological artifacts from the period when the prophet is believed to have lived – around the sixth to seventh centuries BCE – offers support to its historicity, said Mitka R. Golub, a research fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Diaries reveal overwhelmed British officials in Palestine wanted to go home
Over the decades, uncovering ancient inscriptions featuring names appearing in the Bible has been considered by scholars an important tool to shed light on the historicity of its narratives. In the past few years, Golub has broadened the concept of what names can teach researchers by focusing her analysis not on specific ones, but on their general characteristics and trends.
However, as she explained in two papers on the topic recently published in the journals Biblical Archaeology Review and Israel Exploration Journal, her studies also shed light on cultural differences between the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah that seem to contradict the scriptural tale, which sees them as two entities descending from one nation.
“Archaeology is my second career,” Golub told The Jerusalem Post. “I previously studied and worked as a computer scientist. When I decided to devote myself to archaeology, I thought that I could bring my knowledge of statistics to apply quantitative and statistical methods to analyze the data.”
The researcher explained that she decided to focus on names.
“We have found evidence of many names dating back to the First Temple Period, also known as Iron Age II, and they provide us with a lot of data,” she said. “My approach was not simply to highlight that a specific name on an artifact that was also mentioned in the Bible, but to look into the knowledge offered by a collection of names.”
Golub examined collected names from excavated artifacts published in journals, corpora and books to gather as many names as possible. She registered features such as their geographical origin, political affiliation and dating, as the type of artifact – pottery sherds, jars, seals and so on.
When the League of Nations appointed Great Britain as the mandatory power for Palestine in 1922, it required Britain to “place the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home,” and to “safeguard the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.”When Rosie met Jim: the anti-racism picture that wasn’t
The British officials in charge of Mandatory Palestine should have been highly skilled, seasoned colonial administrators well-equipped to deal with the growing conflict between Zionism and Palestinian Arab nationalism. Some, such as Field Marshal Lord Plumer, who served in 1925-1928, presided over periods of relative calm, earning the respect of Arabs and Jews alike. Others, however, met with less success.
Sir John Chancellor led Palestine from December 1928 through September 1931, a period of tremendous tension at the Western Wall that began on the Yom Kippur holiday on September 24, 1928, and culminated with the Hebron massacre on August 24, 1929. Chancellor’s top deputy was chief secretary Sir Harry Charles Luke.
Both Chancellor and Luke kept meticulous diaries, recording their observations and commentary on the conflict between Palestinian Arab nationalism and Zionism.
The diaries provide an extraordinary, contemporaneous window into the two officials’ private thoughts regarding the Arabs, the Jews, and the conflict. The diaries also lay bare the enormous stress they experienced during and after the August 1929 violence in Jerusalem and Hebron.
After last weekend’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, a heart-warming picture emerged on the internet. A kind-faced, suit-clad, elderly white man with a sign saying, ‘Racism is a virus, we are the vaccine’, sat deep in thoughtful conversation with a young Black woman. The image went viral on Facebook and Twitter garnering millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes and shares. An apparent beacon of hope against racism.
One minor issue. That kindly, elderly man? His name is Jim Curran, an Irish nationalist and regular attendee at meetings of the Far Right/Left crossover group, Keep Talking. This extremist organisation was recently exposed by the CST and Hope Not Hate. They detailed how extremists from across the political spectrum (ex-Labour members Elleanne Green and Peter Gregson, Gill Kaffash and Tony Gratrex formerly of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and convicted Holocaust Denier Alison Chabloz and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke compatriot, James Thring) met to obsess over antisemitic conspiracy theories: from the ‘Jews did 9/11’ to outright Holocaust denial.
Of course no-one can be expected to know that from seeing the picture. But what happened when it was brought to their attention? That’s where things got really alarming.
Curran’s identity been brought to my attention by antisemitism researcher, David Collier, I tweeted at two top accounts who were sharing the picture to explain Jim Curran’s background.
Their response? To block me. And not just me, but everyone raising the issue.
Meanwhile, when I tweeted the woman in the picture, Rosie Smith, she said: “He is an activist and a beautiful man. Spoke some real deep truths”. And then – chillingly – “His words brought me to tears. He said the genocide the news [sic] went through, was nothing on slavery and what black people endured and are still enduring”.
It seems Jim Curran had literally been dripping Holocaust denial into her ear, at an anti-racism rally.
.@BestForBritain, a civil society campaign, boosted the photo of the Holocaust-denier & his student-of-color mentee. When his racist "antiracism" was brought to light, they were agreeable: "It is worth appreciating that two different generations have found some common ground..." pic.twitter.com/4rq7K2f3d7
— John-Paul Pagano (@johnpaulpagano) June 16, 2020
Ahead of a probe into his conduct, Bristol professor resigns from Labour blaming 'the Zionist movement'
Professor David Miller has resigned from Labour blaming “the Zionist movement” only weeks after he was suspended from the party over allegations that did not involve antisemitism claims.
The Bristol University sociology lecturer confirmed in a statement he had received two letters from Labour’s Governance and Legal Unit outlining allegations which meant he “may be in breach” of party rules.
But announcing his decision to resign ahead of the conclusion of the investigations into his conduct, Mr Miller wrote that he believed his suspension “has much to do with my record of evidence-based research on the Zionist movement and its influence on the British left and British politics more widely”.
He added that “my work shows the Zionist movement is an actually existing transnational network of organisations, which work tirelessly to justify Israel’s ongoing dispossession of the Palestinians. It works in collaboration with the leading Western imperial powers, most obviously the US and UK.”
I think the Wannsee Conference had fewer antisemites in attendance. https://t.co/jue2M7Z1Q9
— AZ is social distancing (@americanzionism) June 16, 2020
Settlement boycott bill left out of new Irish government’s plans
The draft program for the new Irish government for the next five years, published this week, does not include promoting a bill to outlaw the sale of products from Israelis in the West Bank, Golan Heights or east Jerusalem.Spanish Balearic Islands adopts IHRA definition of antisemitism
However, it would push for the EU to have an "appropriate response" should Israel apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank.
The plan was published this week as Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party moved toward finalizing a new government. Like in Israel, parties that were previously on opposing sides have formed a coalition together, and there is a rotation for the position of Taoiseach, who is prime minister and head of state. Micheál Martin of Fianna Fáil will take on the role until December 2022, at which point Leo Varadkar of Fine Gael would return to the post.
Fianna Fáil said in its election platform that it will “progress the Occupied Territories Bill,” but the legislation is not mentioned at all in the 126-page government program.
That bill seeks to impose fines of up to €250,000 on merchants in Ireland who sell products from the West Bank, Golan Heights or east Jerusalem, or sentence them to up to five years in prison. The legislation passed several votes in the Daíl, Ireland's lower house of parliament and the Seanad, or senate.
Varadkar’s Fine Gael opposed the bill, arguing that it is in contravention of EU trade rules and that Ireland would incur major fines should it become law.
Despite apparently dropping the settlement boycott bill, the government of Ireland, one of Israel’s biggest critics in the EU, does not plan more broadly to let Israel off easily on the matter.
Spain's Balearic Islands adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.StandWithUs Condemns SJP for Defending Antisemitic Exploitation of the Holocaust at Florida State
The legislation, which passed on June 6, also classified the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as an act of "discrimination."
The Spanish Balearic Islands include Ibiza, Mallorca, Menorca and Formentera.
The senior counsel of the Lawfare Project in Spain, Ignacio Wenley Palacios, who was involved in moving the bill forward, stated that “boycotts by public institutions have all the attributes of the most intolerable discrimination. They deny relations and the provision of public services to individuals not because of their behavior, but because of something they cannot change nor avoid: their country of origin,” according to JNS.
The IHRA definition of antisemitism, drafted in 2016, states that “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
The working definition also includes examples of anti-Israel rhetoric and bias that "may serve as illustrations" of antisemitism - including "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor," "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" or "holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel." (h/t NormanF)
StandWithUs strongly condemns Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Florida State University (FSU) for launching a campaign to defend blatant antisemitism on campus. SJP is trying to shield one of its members, the new FSU Student Senate President, from accountability for a long record of antisemitic statements. Most notably, the Senate President has repeatedly equated Israelis with Nazis, exploiting the Holocaust for personal and political gain. The Student Senate will discuss this issue in a meeting on Wednesday, June 17th.Argentine Journalist Slammed for Bracketing ‘Zionism’ With ‘Nazism’ and ‘Stalinism’
"As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, I will never accept anyone promoting vicious lies that equate the Jewish state with those who murdered my family and millions of other Jewish people," said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs. "While countless Palestinians and Israelis have suffered trauma due to the conflict, this is never a legitimate excuse to exploit other people's pain and spread more hate. SJP and everyone who signed their statement should be utterly ashamed for defending this blatant antisemitism."
The Senate President was initially criticized for a recent social media post saying "#f***israel". He responded with an instagram video defending this post, and while claiming to oppose antisemitism he equated Israelis with Nazis and Palestinian experiences with the Holocaust. It later emerged that he had previously created an entire website devoted to this antisemitic lie, along with a number of other highly offensive social media posts.
StandWithUs applauds students at FSU who are standing up for their community and speaking out against this hate. We will continue to work with FSU students, ICC, Hillel, and our other partners to empower Jewish and pro-Israel voices on campus.
An Argentine journalist was under fire on Monday for an article in which he bracketed Nazism with Zionism — a few days after the Argentine government formally adopted a definition of antisemitism that rejects such a comparison as antisemitic.Polish State TV Uses Jewish Property Restitution Issue to Attack Opposition
In an article for La Gaceta de Tucumán — a newspaper serving Argentina’s northwestern province of Tucumán — staff writer Federico Türpe referred to “great propaganda apparatuses” of the previous century, “such as those of Nazism, Zionism, Stalinism or Peronism.”
Responding to the article, Pablo Yedlin — who represents Tucumán in the Argentine parliament — pointed out that Türpe’s grouping of Zionism with the National Socialist ideology that dominated Germany under Hitler was antisemitic according to the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), adopted by the Argentine government on June 7.
Among the manifestations of antisemitism identified by the definition is the “[D]rawing (of) comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
Polish public television has raised the sensitive issue of Jewish property restitution during the country’s presidential campaign by accusing the main opposition candidate, Rafal Trzaskowski, of putting foreign interests first.BBC News ignores Gaza terrorists’ threats and balloons
Poland was home to one of the world’s biggest Jewish communities until it was almost entirely wiped out during World War Two by the Nazis who set up death camps such as Auschwitz on Polish territory.
Jewish former property owners and their descendants have been campaigning for compensation since the fall of communism in 1989. But the nationalist ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) says Poland itself was also a victim of Nazi Germany and that it is for Berlin to compensate former Polish Jews.
The prime time news show on state-owned TVP suggested on Sunday that Trzaskowski, presidential candidate of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), would use public money to compensate Jews for their losses and fail to defend national interests if he beat the incumbent, Andrzej Duda, in the June 28 vote.
President Duda is close to PiS.
TVP quoted a 2015 interview with Trzaskowski saying Poland “needs to talk with Jewish communities and try to solve this problem (of property restitution).” It also suggested Trzaskowski’s “thinking is not based on Polish interests.”
Notably, BBC audiences have still not seen any meaningful reporting on the issue of the Israeli civilians being held by Hamas.Police considering hate crime motive as man charged with attempted murder over stabbing of rabbi in Stoke Newington
The context to that green light apparently has more to do with cash than “emotions”.
“If Israel does not allow Qatari aid money to reach the Gaza Strip, Hamas could soon act to end the calm which has prevailed in recent months and renew nightly operations as soon as next Friday, Palestinian sources told Kan news on Saturday.
The source further told Kan that if the condition was not met in two weeks, Hamas would start sending units to “penetrate” the Gaza border fence and potentially enter Israeli territory. […]
It was not immediately clear why Hamas was blaming Israel for the delay in the funds’ arrival.
Mohammed al-Emadi, the head of the Qatari Gaza Reconstruction Committee, had been anticipated in the Gaza Strip this week to distribute $150 million in financial aid, Ynet reported last week. Al-Emadi had not traveled to the Strip since late February, citing health concerns linked to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.”
Kan 11’s Palestinian affairs correspondent Gal Berger cited a Palestinian website’s report according to which the Qatari envoy clarified that the reason for the delay of the cash transfer is the Covid-19 pandemic rather than the target of the threats made by Hamas, Israel.
Unsurprisingly given their record, the BBC’s Jerusalem-based staff have to date shown no interest in reporting the return of the use of balloons to terrorise Israeli civilians or the threats made by Hamas.
The Metropolitan Police Service has confirmed that it is considering a hate crime motive after charging a man with attempted murder following the stabbing of a Hasidic rabbi, who is a father of six, in Stoke Newington last Friday.Jewish cemetery in Poland vandalized with spray-paint
Stanley Francis, 44, who is local to the North London neighbourhood where the incident took place, has been charged with attempted murder and possessing an offensive weapon in a public place. His fist scheduled court appearance was at Thames Magistrates’ Court today.
The suspect was held down at the scene by brave nearby builders and passersby until the police arrived.
The victim, a father of six in his 50s, is a renowned teacher in the Satmar charedi Jewish community. He was admitted to hospital with stab wounds but was able to return home over the weekend to convalesce.
DS James Tipple said: “We’re conducting extensive enquiries into this attack and have been gathering evidence. However I know many people saw this attack and, if anyone has any footage or information about this incident, please come forward and tell us what you know.”
One witness present at the scene said: “The person who stabbed a charedi [orthodox Jewish man] got off a bus, he crossed the street, he went to the line which was waiting outside to get into the bank, there were ten people, this one was charedi, and he went straight and stabbed only the charedi. Why didn’t he go for anyone else? My assumption is 100 percent it was a hate crime.”
A wall of the Jewish cemetery in Tarnow, a city in southern Poland, was spray-painted with the letters “AJ,” likely meaning “Anti-Jude,” or anti-Jewish.German church reinstates antisemitic ‘Jew-sow’ sculpture
The wall’s Star of David was painted over as well. Police are investigating; there are no suspects.
According to the cemetery keeper, Adam Bartosz, because the wall is brick, removing the spray-paint will not be easy, and scraping the paint will leave traces.
“Maybe we’ll leave it as a testimony of stupidity,” said Bartosz, who was quoted by Krakow Radio.
Tarnow Mayor Roman Ciepiela condemned the act and posted on Facebook that town residents should “do everything to make the language of violence and contempt for others disappear once and for all from Tarnow’s public space.” Tarnow, which is about 45 miles from Krakow, has a population of over 100,000.
Last July, the cemetery was vandalized just after an $800,000 renovation.
Established in 1581, the cemetery was added to the registry of protected monuments in 1976.
A German medieval church has reinstated an antisemitic sculpture depicting a Jewish male in an obscene pose with a pig after a local authority ruled that the object had protected status.
The church, in the town of Calbe, 45 miles northwest of Leipzig, is one of 30 religious buildings in Germany to have a Judensau – ‘Jew-sow’ – sculpture which dates back to the Middle Ages, when antisemitism was rife in the country.
After the carving was taken down to be restored, the parish decided in March that it was too offensive to return to the buttress and should be hung elsewhere.
But this move has been shelved after the listed buildings authority in the Salzland district decided the sculpture was part of the history of St Stephen’s church history.
In a compromise, the sculpture was restored to its perch, but will remain covered up until the authority decides what to do with it.
Alfred Reichenberger of the Saxony Anhalt office for monument protection said: “Of course everyone involved is entirely clear that this is an abusive caricature that needs to be dealt with critically.
“There just seems to be disagreement about how to do that.”
In an attempt to restore my faith in humanity, the same police officer who helped stop the Poway synagogue shooter repelled down into the ocean this weekend to save two girls whose father tried to kill them when he drove his truck off the cliffs. https://t.co/i0LYWrbIsJ
— Sweet Meteor O'Death (@smod4real) June 14, 2020
Taking cue from lightning, Tel Aviv University team creates power from humidity
Israeli scientists have already learned how to produce water from air. Now they may be poised to create power from humidity.Israel's Arava Region Marks 30 Days of 100% Daytime Solar Use
The research — led by Prof. Colin Price in collaboration with Prof. Hadas Saaroni and doctoral student Judi Lax, all of Tel Aviv University’s Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences — is based on the knowledge that electricity is generated by the interaction of water molecules and metal surfaces.
“We sought to capitalize on a naturally occurring phenomenon — electricity from water,” explained Price. “Electricity in thunderstorms is generated only by water in its different phases — water vapor, water droplets, and ice. Twenty minutes of cloud development is how we get from water droplets to huge electric discharges — lightning — some half a mile in length.”
In the nineteenth century, English physicist Michael Faraday discovered that water droplets could charge metal surfaces due to friction between the two. A more recent study showed that certain metals spontaneously build up an electrical charge when exposed to humidity.
Building on the findings of earlier discoveries such as these, the researchers set out to test the possibility of making a tiny low-voltage battery that uses nothing but humidity in the air.
They exposed two different metals to different levels of humidity, while one was grounded.
Christians help 1,000 Jews immigrate to Israel since start of coronavirus
A new flight bearing 57 new immigrants from the former Soviet Union arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport Tuesday morning, the latest in the ongoing efforts of aliyah organizations to keep new olim coming despite the COVID-19 pandemic.World Economic Forum names six Israeli start-ups as tech pioneers
The flight was organized by the Jewish Agency and paid for by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, a pro-Israel Evangelical organization, which has helped bring approximately 1,000 new immigrants to the country since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Israel in February.
The new arrivals came from countries of the former Soviet bloc, and in total took nine connecting flights, before embarking on the final leg of their journey to Israel.
They will need to remain in quarantine for 14 days due to COVID-19 restrictions on all those entering the country.
Immigrants assisted by the ICEJ have come from Ethiopia and the countries of the former Soviet Union on 85 flights, including connecting flights.
The World Economic Forum on Tuesday named six Israeli start-ups to its 20th cohort of Technology Pioneers, identified as cutting-edge companies poised to have a significant impact on business and society.
The 100 start-ups chosen annually by the WEF are invited to participate in the Switzerland-based organization’s workshops, events and high-level discussions.
The Israeli start-ups joining the Technology Pioneers community are factory digitalization firm 3d Signals, slaughter-free meat developer Aleph Farms, cybersecurity team Morphisec, mass-transportation mobility platform Optibus, plant vision-technology start-up Prospera and industrial artificial-intelligence company Seebo.
All the start-ups selected from the Middle East and North Africa by WEF are based in Israel.
“This year’s class of Technology Pioneers are improving society and advancing their industries around the world,” said Susan Nesbitt, head of the WEF’s Global Innovators Community. “These are the companies that think differently and stand out as potential game-changers. We’re looking forward to the role they’ll play in shaping the future of their industries.”
More than one-quarter of the 100 chosen start-ups are female-led, a WEF statement emphasized, representing more than double the industry average.
A long list of past entries into the Technology Pioneers program have “gone on to become household names,” including Airbnb, Google, Kickstarter, Spotify, Twitter and Wikimedia.
