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Wednesday, October 28, 2020

10/28 Links Pt2: Holocaust Denial Not a Violation of Misinformation Policy, Twitter Boss Tells Skeptical Senate Committee; Ruthie Blum: Peter Beinart’s Assault on the Abraham Accords

From Ian:

Holocaust Denial Not a Violation of Misinformation Policy, Twitter Boss Tells Skeptical Senate Committee
Twitter boss Jack Dorsey sowed further confusion over the social media platform’s Holocaust denial policy during an angry grilling at the hands of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Wednesday.

Facing questioning from Republican senators who alleged that Twitter was censoring information from conservative outlets while permitting posts that deny the fact of the Holocaust, Dorsey appeared to backtrack on a statement issued by his company on Oct. 15, when a spokesperson for Twitter had condemned “antisemitism and hateful conduct,” emphasizing, “We also have a robust ‘glorification of violence’ policy in place and take action against content that glorifies or praises historical acts of violence and genocide, including the Holocaust.”

But at Wednesday’s hearing, Dorsey said that Twitter did not “have a policy against misinformation.”

He explained: “We have a policy against misinformation in three categories. That is all we have policy on for misleading information.”

He then added that tweets denying the Holocaust could be removed if they were considered to incite violence.

Dorsey’s answer infuriated Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), who countered by invoking Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s constant use of Twitter to engage in Holocaust denial.

“It’s strange to me that you’ve flagged tweets from the president [of the United States] but haven’t hidden the ayatollah’s tweets on Holocaust denial or calls to wipe Israel off the map,” Gardner said. “Millions of people died and that’s not a violation of Twitter?”

Responded Dorsey: “It’s misleading information, but we don’t have a policy against that type of misleading information.”


Jack Dorsey Defends Allowing Iranian Threats to Eliminate ‘Cancerous’ Jews: ‘Respecting Their Right to Speak’
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Wednesday said his platform allows Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to fulminate against “cancerous” Jews because he wanted to “respect” his “right to speak.”

“We believe it’s important for everyone to hear from global leaders, and we have policies around world leaders,” Dorsey said in testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee, responding to a question from Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) about the messages. “We want to make sure we are respecting their right to speak and to publish what they need. But if there is a violation of our terms of service, we want to label it.”

Wicker interjected to note the messages still appear on Twitter without a label. Dorsey said he found them permissible because Khamenei was threatening citizens of other countries rather than citizens of Iran.

“We did not find those to violate our terms of service, because we considered them saber-rattling, which is part of the speech of world leaders in concert with other countries,” Dorsey said. “Speech against our own people, or our country’s own citizens, we believe is different and can cause more immediate harm.”

Khamenei has used Twitter to write numerous messages that have drawn attention this year. He used the platform in July to promise a “reciprocal blow” to the United States for the January killing of Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and previously referred to Israel’s “Zionist regime” as a “cancerous tumor” that needed to be “eliminated.”


Ruthie Blum: Peter Beinart’s Assault on the Abraham Accords
That Beinart has made a career of blaming Israel for everything from Palestinian Authority (PA) intransigence to Hamas terrorism is not news. Nor is it surprising that many of his admirers in Israel and abroad are miffed that the Abraham Accords exposed the conventional wisdom about Mideast peace-making as folly.

But it takes a special kind of vicious creativity to concoct a universe in which peace, if forged by or with Israel, is evil. Beinart’s main method is to twist facts to fit his false version of reality. One such revision of history includes the idea of widespread Muslim-Arab support for the Palestinians. The latter would be the first to scoff at the notion that they have received much more than lip service from their Arab League “brethren,” particularly of late.

Nevertheless, Beinart concludes his piece by warning against the danger of additional peace deals with the Jewish state.

“In the coming months, Israel may succeed in normalizing relations with additional Arab states,” he writes. “Over the long run, however, its warming relations with oppressive regimes will likely provoke even greater hostility from the broader Arab public. In the past, Arab citizens mostly resented Israel for oppressing Palestinians. In the future, they may also resent it for helping their own governments to oppress them.”

For someone so concerned about oppressive regimes, Beinart is curiously silent about the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of their own corrupt and despotic leaders in Ramallah and Gaza. Indeed, he has nothing to say about the blatant human-rights abuses committed by Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas and his henchmen against critical journalists, academics, novelists, and even average social-media users.

Nor does he bother wasting ink on the absence of free speech or the persecution of gays that are the norm in the PA. No, if Israel can’t be called out as the culprit, Beinart’s not interested.

He can’t even pause to acknowledge the flurry of preparations being made in the Gulf for Israeli tourists, from kosher-catered airplane food to Jewish-holiday hotel packages. But then, doing so might cast a shadow on The New York Times-approved convictions that pay his bills.


Jonathan S. Tobin: Do Americans understand the anti-Semitism around them?
One of the best insights in the AJC survey was the fact that the general public was willing to ascribe anti-Semitism to the two political parties in equal numbers. The poll revealed that 42 percent of Americans believed “some” or “a lot” of Republicans “hold anti-Semitic views” with the exact same percentage believing the same about Democrats.

Fully 69 percent American Jews think Republicans are anti-Semitic, while only 37 percent think that about Democrats. The explanation for that discrepancy is obvious. About the same numbers of Jews generally vote for Democrats as they also think Republicans are anti-Semites.

Assuming that hate only comes from one group or ideological belief is false. The rise of anti-Semitism on the left, with its intersectional beliefs identifying Jews as “white oppressors” and support for BDS, hasn’t generated the same random violence; however, it does seek to delegitimize both Jews and Israel in ways that the isolated groups of white supremacists can’t. Nor should we underestimate the enormous influence of hatemongers like the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan in the African-American community.

The willingness of the mainstream media to treat politicians like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who promote anti-Semitism as legitimate figures to be admired rather than extremists to be despised, is a problem... The willingness of the mainstream media to treat politicians like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who promote anti-Semitism as legitimate figures to be admired rather than extremists to be despised, is a problem few even in the Jewish community are willing to address. The same is true of the anti-Semitism and support for Farrakhan among some in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Yet because most Jews identify with the Democrats and despise President Donald Trump, they have largely steered the debate about anti-Semitism into a sterile effort to blame it on the political right. The Anti-Defamation League, with its left-wing tilt and descent into partisanship under CEO Jonathan Greenblatt deserves much of the blame for this.

This kind of misguided analysis has also infected the thinking of even otherwise sober observers like New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who, while rightly pointing to anti-Semitism on both the left and the right, still claimed that conservatives who oppose illegal immigration or think unlimited free trade hurts American workers as somehow also connected to anti-Semitism—a position that is both untrue and deeply unfair.

Two years after Pittsburgh, Americans are still struggling to understand how to cope with the reality of the threat of violence to Jews without either inflating it out of proportion or to assign blame more on the basis of our political preferences than a coherent analysis of where the danger lies.

It ought to be possible to be wary of hate on the right and the left without treating all of our political opponents as being responsible for enabling Jew-hatred. Until we learn how to do that, the result of our ruminations on both the lessons of Pittsburgh and the sources of anti-Semitism will cause more confusion than understanding.
Antiracism, Anti-Semitism, and the False Problem of Jewish Success
On October 17th, the New York Times published an op-ed celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Million Man March that neglected to mention the anti-Semitic history of its organizer, Louis Farrakhan. In response, former Times editorial board member Bari Weiss tweeted that the institution had adopted “a worldview in which Jew hate does not count.” The author of the Times op-ed, Howard University professor Natalie Hopkinson, replied that “ppl who have become white”—that is, Jews like Weiss—“should not be lecturing Black ppl about oppression.”

Exposing and objecting to racial disparities became the purpose of the New York Times around August 2019, when executive editor Dean Baquet called a town hall meeting attended by the paper’s staff. He announced that, with the Mueller probe winding down, the paper needed to “regroup, and shift resources and emphasis” from Russiagate to the story of “race and class” and “what it means to be an American.” A few months later, the Times published “The 1619 Project” which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, and the paper’s editorial and ideological focus has been consistent ever since.

When Weiss left the Times in July 2020, she published a resignation letter on her blog in which she claimed that management indifference to harassment from progressive staffers had created an intolerable work environment. She has since argued that progressive ideology is increasingly hostile to Jews and other successful minorities because they undermine the narrative of systemic racism pushed by antiracist activists.

Jews came to America, often as refugees fleeing persecution, and were able to flourish here precisely because opportunities weren’t closed off to them on the basis of identity. The story of minority immigrant success is inconsistent with the progressive narrative of the United States as a country founded upon and organized around racism. If it is true that oppressed groups have had historically unprecedented access to opportunity in modern, liberal societies then it cannot also be true that pervasive oppression explains lingering disparities. So progressives have become hostile to successful minorities, and have begun speaking about them in ways that echo the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the far-Right.
Biden Touts Endorsement From Leading Anti-Semites
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden touted an endorsement from a group of leading Muslim officials who have accused Jews of dual loyalty to America and praised anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

A group of nearly 50 Muslim elected officials across the country expressed support for Biden in a late-July letter sponsored by Emgage, an anti-Israel Muslim-American group funded by liberal billionaire George Soros. Emgage has drawn scrutiny in recent years for defending terrorist groups and collaborating with Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations.

Biden, in a July video message to Emgage and its supporters, said he was honored to receive the endorsement and inspired by the group’s "one million Muslim voters" campaign, a nod to Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March on Washington, D.C. Biden also said he wished "we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith" during his video message.

The Emgage letter is signed by local, state, and federal officials who have endorsed Israel boycotts and come under fire for anti-Semitic rhetoric. This includes Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), who claimed that Israel and its American supporters have "hypnotized the world."

While Biden has vowed to govern as a pro-Israel president, the Democratic Party’s alliance with anti-Israel leaders has complicated Biden’s message, as evidenced by his pledge to confront Israel over the building of Jewish homes in disputed areas. The Washington Free Beacon reported on concerns Biden would be pulled left from pro-Israel voters earlier this month, when it was revealed that Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, worked with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of the nation’s top anti-Israel groups and advocates for boycotts of the Jewish state.

"With Joe Biden, we will have a seat at the table and will address and heal the deep wounds that fracture our country," the Muslim officials wrote in their letter to supporters of Emgage PAC, which claims to be the largest Muslim PAC in the country.


Florida State Student Leader, Tainted by Past Antisemitic Remarks, Ousted After Court Ruling
Ahmad Daraldik, a student government leader at Florida State University who had been criticized for making antisemitic statements, has been removed as Senate president after the Student Supreme Court voted to reinstate his predecessor in a ruling unrelated to Daraldik’s remarks.

Daraldik’s predecessor, Jack Denton, has been reinstated as Senate president as of Monday, following the student court’s finding that a June no-confidence vote in his leadership violated his rights under FSU’s regulations and the US Constitution.

Daraldik has appealed the decision to FSU’s Division of Student Affairs, he told the Tallahassee Democrat on Monday.

Denton had drawn ire from students after criticizing groups such Black Lives Matter and the American Civil Liberties Union in private comments to members of FSU’s Catholic Student Union. Denton sued Florida State University in federal court over his removal, alleging that the university failed to protect his First Amendment rights.

A federal judge ruled earlier this month that FSU did not need to reinstate Denton as Senate president, but had to continue paying him for the remainder of what would have been his term in office.

Daraldik had been serving as Senate president since Denton’s ouster. He has been harshly criticized by Jewish groups on campus and throughout the South Florida Jewish community for past antisemitic comments.

More than 10,000 people signed an online petition calling for Daraldik’s removal, citing social media posts that used the phrases “stupid jews” and “f**k Israel.”
Why Can’t Universities Define Antisemitism?
Aren’t academics supposed to be able to define a word? How is it then that university professors and administrators are incapable of defining “antisemitism?” They can’t do this — but also refuse to do it, because they would have to acknowledge the extent of antisemitism on their campuses.

The academic world cannot even manage to apply Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s “I know it when I see it” definition of pornography to antisemitism. Instead, they allow antisemites to determine the definition.

Moreover, unlike every other form of bigotry, the university permits antisemitism under the masquerade of academic freedom. The concept itself has been rendered meaningless by failing to require anything seeking this shield to be “academic,” and selectively applying this freedom based often on political correctness.

If the US Department of Education (DOE) announced it was going to be taking steps to crack down on racism directed at Blacks on campus, it would be applauded. When it focuses on antisemitism, however, hysteria ensues in large measure because of the inability and unwillingness to define the word.

The United Kingdom is taking a position long overdue in the US. That country’s education secretary accused universities of disregarding antisemitism and threatened to suspend funding if they do not adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s definition of antisemitism by the end of the year.

UK politician Gavin Williamson called out British universities for doing exactly what the Americans are doing, “dragging their feet” in responding to antisemitism on campus. He could have been speaking to administrators in the United States when he wrote, “The repugnant belief that antisemitism is somehow a less serious, or more acceptable, form of racism has taken insidious hold in some parts of British society.”
PMW: Lecturer at Hebrew University curses PMW: “You do not deserve to be counted as human beings, as part of mankind. If there existed a place like hell, I would have wished you to burn in hell.” Hebrew University Rector “strongly denounces” message as “completely unacceptable”
A lecturer who teaches at Hebrew University responded to a recent PMW report with the following curse sent by email:

“You do not deserve to be counted as human beings, as part of mankind. If there existed a place like hell, I would have wished you to burn in hell.”

The curse was sent to Palestinian Media Watch by Dr. Maya Rosenfeld from her Hebrew University email address.

Rosenfeld cursed PMW in response to PMW’s exposure of the PA’s hypocritical behavior, which causes significant suffering to the Palestinian population by prohibiting them normalization with Israel. Yet the PA permits its top official Saeb Erekat to receive medical treatment by Israeli doctors in an Israeli hospital, while the same has been denied ordinary Palestinians because it is “normalization.”

While everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions, no one should be spewing out evil hate speech and curses at people they disagree with.

It is unclear whether Rosenfeld’s curse was meant only for PMW’s senior analyst Nan Jacques Zilberdik who wrote the report, or whether Rosenfeld wishes for the entire PMW staff to “burn in hell,” (- of course only if hell existed, as Rosenfeld pointed out.)

While Rosenfeld’s curse directed at PMW is horrifying, it is all the more disturbing if this behavior is reflective of Rosenfeld’s treatment of students who express opinions different from hers in the classroom. If so, this is a tragic environment for the Hebrew University.
ZOA condemns ADL for 'despicable' defense of anti-Semitic 'human rights' groups
"The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) blasted the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a statement on Monday after the ADL condemned a State Department plan to label so-called 'human rights' organizations that routinely condemn Israel as anti-Semitic.

Last week, it was reported that the State Department was considering condemning several international 'human rights' NGOs that criticize Israel. It planned to ask other countries to stop supporting those groups' activities.

The groups included some of the biggest names in the 'human rights' game, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam.

In a surprise move, the ADL, which under the direction of its CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, has been accused of becoming a Democratic mouthpiece and abandoning its primary mission 'to stop the defamation of the Jewish people,' condemned the State Department decision.

In a press release, the ADL said 'applying the anti-Semitism label to these human rights organizations . . . is neither accurate nor helpful to the fight against anti-Semitism.'

'The ADL is frighteningly wrong on both counts,' the ZOA said..."
Bot, Troll Networks Attempt to Influence Israeli Policy, Reveals Strategic Affairs Ministry
Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry on Tuesday released its periodic report on the manipulation of social media networks to delegitimize the Jewish state.

The report, named “Manipulating Social Media: The effort to delegitimize Israel through coordinated inauthentic behavior online,” examines 250 suspicious Twitter accounts—170 of which were found to have carried out “inauthentic activities” with the aim of stirring anti-Israel sentiment online and manipulating the discourse against Israel.

According to the report, the findings indicate that anti-Israel operatives set up false Twitter profiles in preparation for an International Criminal Court ruling on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and the application of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, both of which were anticipated in July.

The investigation was first triggered by certain shared characteristics noted in a raft of anti-Israel social-media posts that month, according to the ministry. The hashtags included: #ICC4Israel, #ICCPalestine and #StopAnnexation.

The analysis examined major trends in the network—based on key hashtags—from mid-June to mid-August. The fake accounts were discovered through a combination of technological tools used to identify and analyze inauthentic activity online and examinations by experts.

At the height of their activities surrounding the ICC decision on Israel, more than 15,000 tweets were posted under the “#ICC4Israel” hashtag, with just 39 accounts creating at least 21 percent of the posts and reaching 180 times the engagement rates of normal accounts, according to the report.

The two large networks (30-plus users each) of fictitious profiles identified maintained strikingly similar behavior patterns, used profile pictures of young females and claimed to be volunteers in one of two Gazan NGOs.
New York Times Editors Want to Send $5 Billion More to Iran. Here Are Nine Reasons They’re Wrong.
The New York Times is seizing on the coronavirus pandemic to push the idea of easing American economic sanctions on Iran, notwithstanding Iranian interference in American elections.

A staff editorial the Times published earlier this month was headlined, “Iran’s Covid-19 Death Toll Is Rising. Show Mercy, Mr. Trump.” It argued for relaxing the sanctions against Iran, calling them “particularly cruel during a pandemic.” The Times followed up days later by publishing an opinion piece describing Iranians as “crushed” by “extreme US sanctions.” And by publishing a follow-up editorial inaccurately claiming “Sanctions against Iran are opposed by allies and threaten a humanitarian disaster.”

Here are nine reasons the Times editorial line is misguided:

1. It relies on a discredited expert. The Times editorial says: “Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, calls the American ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran ‘sadism masquerading as foreign policy.’” Slavin had to apologize in 2017 after being photographed making an obscene gesture to protesters against the Iranian regime. Back in January 2020, Slavin wrote a Times op-ed headlined “Qassim Suleimani’s Killing Will Unleash Chaos.” The chaos she predicted failed to materialize. The Times fails to mention that the Atlantic Council’s funders include foreign governments and foreign individuals, oil companies, a nuclear power company and undisclosed “anonymous” donors, some of which may want to do business in Iran or have commercial interests affected by the sanctions. The line about “sadism masquerading as foreign policy” is clever, but sending money to an enemy country, as the advocates of eased sanctions want to do, is masochism masquerading as foreign policy.

2. It would erode trust in government and thus undermine democracy. President Trump campaigned in 2016 as a critic of the Iran nuclear deal and has followed through on his promise to get out of it. The Times editorialists should like it when politicians do what they promise. When politicians say one thing and do another, it erodes trust in government. How are voters supposed to make rational choices when politicians abandon the policies they campaigned on? It’s one thing to urge a vote for Biden, as the Times has, in part on the grounds that Trump ripped up the Iran nuclear deal. It’s another thing to urge Trump to abandon the stance that got him elected and instead pursue a course that is the opposite of what he promised the voters who elected him.
Telegraph corrects article inflating stat on IDF bombing by factor of 4000
Often times when reviewing an article about Israel in the British media, a claim evokes a mental red flag not because we know for certain that it’s false, but because it just seems, on simply an intuitive level, to be extraordinarily improbable.

That was our reaction to the following sentence in a Telegraph article about efforts to locate and neutralise landmines and unexploded ordinances in Lebanon (“Deminers of Lebanon: Destroying explosives – and returning the land to its people”, Oct. 26) by Jessie Williams.

If the IDF dropped four million bombs on Hezbollah targets during the 34 day war, that would come out to an average of over 117,000 bombs each day!

Sure enough, after researching the matter, it seemed clear that the writer conflated two separate statistics – the number of (cluster) bombs dropped and the number of sub-munitions emanating from those bombs.

Even according to figures in a deeply flawed report by the anti-Israel NGO Human Rights Watch (that the writer evidently relied upon), the IDF dropped 962 bombs during that war, not over 4 million – an error by a factor of 4,000. The 4 million Human Rights Watch estimate relates to the number of sub-munitions – not the number of individual bombs.
CAMERA UK editors discus media bias at Glasgow Friends of Israel Zoom event
On Sunday, Oct. 25, CAMERA UK co-editors Hadar Sela and Adam Levick discussed British media bias against Israel during a live Zoom event hosted by Glasgow Friends of Israel.


VOA Corrects Israel Not Advancing 5000 Settlements
According to the settlement watch group Peace Now, additional communities over the Green Line (Israel’s pre-1967 armistice line with the West Bank) include Karnei Shomron, Einav, Peduel, Yakir, Ma’ale Shomron, Yitzhar, Efrat, Ma’ale Mikhmas, Nili, Psagot, Beit El, and Kerem Reim, Shim’a, Telem and others.

The VOA article itself goes on to acknowledge that the new plans apply to units in settlements, as opposed to settlements: “The U.N. said about 85% of the units are in settlements in outlying locations, deep inside the West Bank, and all are in areas that would impede the contiguity of a future Palestinian state.”

In response to communication from CAMERA, VOA agreed that a correction is in order, and noted that the error apparently originated in the editing process, and not with the reporter. Editors immediately amended the text to refer Israel’s “announcement that it is advancing 5,000 settlement housing units.” In addition, VOA commendably appended the following clarification to the bottom of the article:
First conviction in South Africa for antisemitic abuse
For the first time an individual in South Africa has been convicted in a criminal prosecution of antisemitic abuse.

Randburg Magistrates Court found Matome Letsoalo guilty of “crimen injuria” for threatening and abusive messages targeting the Jewish community in a verdict handed down last Friday.

Letsoalo was convicted for hateful messages he issued over Twitter towards the South Africa Board of Deputies (SAJBD). On June 21, 2018, Letsoalo tweeted “@SAJBD The #Holocaust Will be like a Picnic When we are done with all you Zionist Bastards. F*** All of You.”

The text was accompanied by an image of Holocaust victims.

Later that morning, Letsoalo sent a second message to the SAJBD, reading, “@SAJBD Must get Decimated. We Can’t have Scandanavian Rats, Fake Jews, Zionist Bastards Running our Economy,” and he continued towards Jewish community members who challenged him on Twitter following his initial outburst.

The SAJBD responded by filing charges against him.

SAJBD national director Wendy Kahn described the court’s ruling as a vindication of over two years of effort by the SAJBD and its legal advisers to call Letsoalo to account for his actions.

“This outcome sends a strong message that threatening and hate-filled attacks on our community will not be tolerated and that the SAJBD will do everything necessary to bring those responsible to justice, no matter how long it takes” said Kahn.


Lost interviews show Dylan worried about anti-Semitism when he changed his name
For nearly half a century, they were blowin’ in the wind: lost interviews that contained surprising new insights about celebrated singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.

Transcripts of the 1971 interviews with the late American blues artist Tony Glover — and letters the two friends exchanged — have surfaced at a Boston auction house. They reveal that Dylan had anti-Semitism on his mind when he changed his name and wrote “Lay Lady Lay” for singer and actress Barbra Streisand.

Some of the 37 typed pages contain handwritten notes in Dylan’s own scrawl, said R.R. Auction, which is selling Glover’s trove of Dylan archives. “My work is a moving thing,” Dylan scribbled in one spot. Elsewhere, he used a blue marker to strike through passages he evidently didn’t like.

“In many cases, the deletions are more telling than the additions,” said Bobby Livingston, the auction house’s executive vice president.

Dylan, 79, was close friends with Glover, who died last year. The two men broke into music on the same Minneapolis coffeehouse scene. Glover’s widow, Cynthia Nadler, put the documents up for auction, with online bidding to start Nov. 12 and run through Nov. 19.

The reclusive Dylan, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 2016 after giving the world “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and other anthems of the ’60s, was born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota. And his rambling chats with Glover help explain the name change.
Israel workplace management startup monday.com reportedly seeks Nasdaq IPO
Israeli startup monday.com, which has created a workplace collaboration and management platform, is planning an initial public offering of shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the first half of 2021, at a valuation of at least $3.5 billion to $4 billion, Calcalist reported on Wednesday.

The firm has requested international investment banks to set up meetings on the plan in November, the report said, though the board of directors hasn’t yet made a final decision on the matter.

With COVID-19 scattering employees to their respective homes, monday.com has seen a boost in activity as working teams try to maintain productivity, ensure accountability and avoid communication breakdowns.

The company has more than 100,000 paying customers across the world and, according to a Bloomberg report in May, saw its valuation jump from $1.9 billion to $2.7 billion during the pandemic.

The firm is expected to post revenues of some $250 million this year, Calcalist said, and by year’s end it is expecting to have over 700 workers, from some 600 today. In 2019 revenues came in at $120 million, and in 2018 they totaled $50 million.
Israel's Meat-Tech 3D confidentially files for U.S. IPO
Israel's Meat-Tech 3D MEAT.TA, a company that is developing technology to create 3D-printed meat, said on Tuesday it has confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering.

The company did not specify the size of the offering, and said in a filing that the IPO would commence when market conditions would permit, following a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission review. (prn.to/34xttd9)

Meat-Tech is developing an alternative to meat farming by producing industrially cultured meat, the company said on its website.

The filing comes amid increasing interest in the meat-substitute industry and scrutiny of traditional meat sources over ethical and environmental concerns.
Israeli breakthrough could help prevent leukemia spreading to the brain
A group of international researchers from Israel and Scotland have made a breakthrough that may improve the treatment preventing metastatic leukemia spreading to the brain.

Experts from Schneider Children’s Medical Center and Tel Aviv University, along with scientists from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the University of Glasgow discovered in their research, published in Nature Cancer, a drug that thwarts the production of fatty acids, used by leukemia to spread, thereby blocking the spread of the disease to the brain by only affecting the leukemia cells and not the brain cells.

Their research focuses on acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common type of cancer among children. Since one of the main risks of ALL is that the cancer will metastasize to the brain, children diagnosed with this disease receive a prophylactic treatment that protects the brain from metastasized cells.

Although the recovery rates for this disease are relatively high, the harsh treatment for this cancer - consisting of injecting chemotherapy drugs into the spinal fluid, and sometimes also radiation to the skull - carries the risk of side effects of damaged brain function that can persist for years after the patient is cured, since these drugs also harm healthy brain cells.

For the first time ever, the current research reveals that the solution lies in fatty acids, which are an essential resource for cells, especially leukemia cells. (h/t Zvi)
Ancient church found where Jesus said to tell Peter to establish Christianity
One of the earliest churches in Israel has been unearthed at the foot of breathtaking waterfalls in the scenic Banias Nature Reserve in Israel’s north. The rare circa 400 CE Byzantine church was build on top of a Roman-era temple to Pan, the Greek god from whom the park takes its name.

The 4th-5th century Christian builders adapted the Roman pagan temple to fit the needs of the relatively new religion, said University of Haifa Prof. Adi Erlich in a brief Hebrew-language video announcing the find.

Erlich hypothesizes that the church was built to commemorate Jesus’s significant interactions with Peter — who recognized his teacher as the Messiah — that are documented to have taken place in the area, called “Caesarea of ​​Philip” during Jesus’ time.

According to some Christian traditions, it is in this region that Jesus tasked Peter with establishing Christianity and said the famous phrase, “You are Peter and, on this rock, I will build my Church… I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven,” which is recorded in Matthew 16:18.

The location of the excavation is unique in that it combines a cliff, a cave, springs and a terrace created in ancient times from the collapse of part of the cliff on which the temple was built, according to a press release. Erlich said that in circa 3rd century BCE, worship of the god Pan began near the cave and the spring. The temple was built in circa 20 BCE. It became an important Christian center with its own bishop from 320 CE.
Yo-Yo Ma perform in ceremony honoring Pittsburgh shooting victims - watch
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed in a commemoration ceremony held in honor of the 11 people who's lives were lost on October 27, 2018, during an attack on three Pittsburgh synagogues: Congregation Dor Hadash, New Light Congregation/Tree of Life and Or L’Simcha Congregation.

Maggie Feinstein, director Healing Partnership, explained the purpose of having the ceremony despite the social distancing required as a way to reflect on the lives of the people who died and the impact the event had on the community itself.

Yo-Yo Ma spoke about what one should say during times of crisis, citing his friend Mister Rogers, who said: "When there's a crisis, you can always look to the helpers," before playing a song dedicated to those who've been helping others since the day of the shooting.

The ceremony also included several prayers, both for the souls of the deceases and for healing the community.

The event was held virtually on Tuesday, and was organized by the NGO Healing Partnership, which provides support for and connections between individuals and their loved ones who were impacted by the 2018 attack, as well as others suffering from similar hate-induced trauma.


Israel welcomes immigrant number 3.3 million
Some 240 immigrants arrived on an aliyah charter flight from Ukraine to Israel on Monday, which welcomed the 3.3 millionth oleh into the country since the founding of the state.

The flight was sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), which has been working heavily with the Jewish Agency for Israel throughout the coronavirus pandemic to bring Diaspora Jews to Israel.

The olim were met at the airport by the Aliyah and Absorption Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata alongside IFCJ president Yael Eckstein, who commemorated Aliyah Week with the newfound Israelis.

"During this Aliyah Week, we are proud to salute both new and veteran olim," said Tamano-Shata. "As Minister of Aliyah and Absorption, it is my privilege to welcome immigrant number 3.3 million, at this symbolic and essential time for Israeli society as a whole, including olim who make a significant contribution to the advancement and development of the State of Israel."

The 240 olim arrived on three separate Israir flights, marking a daily record since the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, and joined the dedicated class of 11,000 other new immigrants who moved to Israel amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Among the olim were Karina and Yevgeny Ushkov. Yevgeny proposed to Karina during a visit to the Western Wall while vacationing with local relatives about a year back.
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