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Friday, March 12, 2021

03/12 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Meghan Markle and the Jewish question; UK Jews are fooling themselves; The Western cultural Stockholm Syndrome

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Meghan Markle and the Jewish question
The secular world, including many secular Jews, tells itself the opposite. It claims that the West’s most valuable achievements, such as science and the promotion of freedom and equality, come from having dumped the Bible as mere mumbo-jumbo involving punitive codes of behavior that destroy freedom.

On the contrary, these are values and achievements that could not have existed without Judaism and Christianity. And every one of the ideologies which has replaced the Hebrew Bible—ideologies that have helped extinguish freedom and equality and undermined scientific integrity—is anti-Judaism or anti-Israel.

Moral relativism denies the Mosaic moral codes. Egalitarianism denies the differentiation and distinctiveness that underpin the very idea of right versus wrong.

Environmentalism, which denies the superiority of humankind over the natural world, devalues humanity in favor of the planet. Materialism, or the belief that everything in the universe has a material explanation, denies the existence of God. Transnationalism dismisses the importance of the individual nation with its particular culture and laws, which is the very essence of Judaism.

Responsibility for the crisis in the West, however, doesn’t only lie with the liberals—and liberal Jews—who subscribe to these ideas. Conservatives have conspicuously failed to fight them.

After the fall of communism, conservatives thought their anti-Western fox had been shot. They turned instead to defending liberty against the state at home. But liberty shouldn’t be an end in itself. It should be the means to a more important end: how to live a civilized life and help create a civilized society.

The failure of conservatives to understand this, coupled with their tendency to view the world through the prism of economics, meant they were largely blind to the urgent need to defend the West’s core values of individual and collective moral responsibility.

When the culture war against the West morphed into a lifestyle free-for-all and the growth of identity politics, these so-called conservatives gave up and decided to go with the flow.

In general, observant Jews tend to be politically conservative. So are some religiously liberal Jews, but these are vastly outnumbered by politically liberal Jews who are either secular or are trying to refashion Judaism itself into a secular and liberal Golden Calf.

The challenge for Jewish conservatives is to find the language to reclaim and communicate Jewish values to both the Jewish and non-Jewish world, and to use these values to drive the defense of the Western nation and its culture against the forces that seek to obliterate it through the moral chaos we now see all around us.
UK Jews are fooling themselves
English Jews are experiencing a wrenching time. They struggle with anti-Jew hatred from migrants, knife attacks, vandalism to their synagogues and Jewish schools. The perfidious anti-Semitism in all its vizards once pervading the Labour Party gave it gravitas until the exorcism. It lingers in the larger society and on public display as pro-Palestinian activism.

Tenenbom wants to learn about Brexit but gets caught up in the Jewish questions. How pervasive is anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom? How are Jews responding? He takes to the streets and reports his findings in a new book.

Tenenbom chronicles his capers roaming through Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. He is more of a participant than a detached journalist. Anti-Semites, he reports, commonly disguise their positions as pro-Palestinian fulminations. Underneath it all lie traditional crude blood libels. For instance, a favorite indictment of the Jews is they purposely kill or support the killers of Palestinian Arab children.

Tuvia reports the findings in a solid, entertaining, and informative book, and best-selling e-book, titled The Taming of the Jew (Gefen Publishing, 2021/5781). His favorite theme is exposing the place of Jews living in free societies, in the age of tolerance, and how Jews respond.

Enjoy the humor and self-deprecation of Tenenbom’s writing. They are his hallmarks, but don’t give short shrift to the importance of his findings. He is genuine, remarkably sensitive to the surroundings, and insightful per Mead and Benedict, but funnier. Methods include driving the back roads, walking neighborhood streets, drinking in local pubs, eating in family restaurants, sleeping in off-beat hotels and engaging ordinary folk and influencers.

Tenenbom is relentless in questioning Christians about the Jews. He is no less relentless when talking with Jews about anti-Semitism. He presses everyone about the pro-Palestinian love affair promoted by politicians and NGOs.


The Western cultural Stockholm Syndrome
I spend a lot of time reading about and writing about worrisome cultural trends in what have traditionally been the liberal democracies of the West, including America, Canada, Australia, Israel and a weakening Europe.

I am saddened when I contemplate the extent to which our traditional free society has succumbed to:
1. an excessive tolerance of evil (which, in a book by the same name, I term “tolerism”);
2. a masochistic self-hatred, leading to threats to our fundamental liberties; and
3. ultimately a submission or surrender to what I call the Leftist-Islamist-Globalist alliance.
- We make compromises in our freedoms to accommodate fascist collusion among leftist Democrats, big Tech censorship, our education and university systems, and media that blatantly ignores stories that challenge their bias.
- We accept, even welcome, a totalitarian Islamist theocracy.
- We tolerate attempts from offshore to terrorize us, to make us submit to their values, instead of defending ours.
- We allow citizens of totalitarian states that regularly print anti-Semitic cartoons to dictate to us in our country not to print cartoons they find “offensive”.
- I have had, as far back as 18 years ago, a lecture shouted down by “Islamofascists” who said I had no “right” to speak if I disagreed with their views, and our civil liberties groups were silent.
- We cower in the face of threats that this policy or that policy may “inflame the Arab street” or Black Lives Matter.

Our tolerance and submission to Islamism has clearly paved the way for our tolerance and submission to Black Lives Matter, and the increasing number of violent domestic terrorists, who, despite media falsehoods, are predominantly on the left. As recently as last Saturday, the American city of Portland, Oregon was still seeing rioting in its streets.

We allow Big Tech censors to delete anything that offensive fascists say offends them. Our ideology of Tolerism combined with our ready adoption of the Stockholm Syndrome has laid down the path for large groups of our young people to respond to their alienation from a culture and economy that makes their prospects difficult by a great “transformation” or “re-set”.


Serious COVID caseload lowest in months; over 4 million get 2nd vaccine dose
Israel’s serious COVID-19 cases dropped Friday to the lowest tally since December, as the country’s vaccination campaign kept striding forward, with more than 4 million citizens receiving both doses.

Health officials have expressed optimism that Israel is turning the corner on the coronavirus pandemic, with officials quoted Thursday by Channel 13 news as saying the situation was “the most hopeful it’s been since the beginning of the pandemic” last year. The officials said that if the positive trajectory continues, Israelis will be able to celebrate Passover without limitations at the end of March.

Health Ministry data published Friday morning showed that 2,509 new cases were confirmed the previous day. The Ynet news site said more than half of them were under 19 years old, an age group in which serious cases are rare. The rate of positive tests stood at 3.1 percent, continuing the trend of low positivity.

Since the start of the pandemic, 815,562 Israelis have been confirmed to have the coronavirus. They include 35,576 active cases, of whom 613 are in serious condition — the lowest figure recorded since December 26. They also include 254 patients regarded as critical.

The total number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients dropped below 1,000 to 997.

The death toll was nearing the 6,000 mark and reached 5,975. The data showed 196 people died in the first 11 days of March. More than 1,400 died in January, with the rate appearing to slow down almost threefold.

The virus’s basic reproduction number, which represents the average number of people each carrier infects, dropped further to 0.83. A transmission rate below 1 means the outbreak is abating.
Pfizer CEO hails ‘obsessive’ Netanyahu for calling 30 times to seal vaccine deal
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Thursday praised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “obsessive” efforts to secure a coronavirus vaccine deal for Israel and predicted that children younger than 16 will soon begin receiving his company’s vaccine. “He called me 30 times,” Bouria said of Netanyahu.

Speaking with Israel’s Channel 12 news, Bourla said he believed it was “a question of weeks” until kids aged 12-16 could start receiving the vaccine, but stressed that it depended on FDA approval.

He also said he believes elementary school students will be eligible for the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine by year’s end.

Pfizer recently enrolled over 2,000 children between the ages of 12 and 15 for clinical trials and hopes to have results within a few months. The vaccine currently has emergency approval for use in people 16 and older.

Bourla’s comments came after the director-general of the Health Ministry estimated Israel will begin vaccinating children 12 and up against the coronavirus “around May-June.” Chezy Ley said the decision will depend on clinical trials being conducted by vaccine-makers, which he hopes “will be over around the end of spring, or beginning of summer.”

On Wednesday, a top Israeli health official said Israel has given some 600 children between the ages of 12 and 16 in at-risk groups the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and has seen no significant side effects from the shot.


Israeli company's new COVID test does away with uncomfortable nasal swabs
Tired of having Q-tips stuck up your nose? Israel's BATM Advanced Communications Limited has launched a new molecular COVID-19 diagnostics kit that uses self-collected saliva samples, the company announced Thursday.

The new kit consists of reagents that have been developed to accurately detect SARS-CoV-2 in saliva samples that are collected by an individual chewing a cotton ball for 30 seconds and then spitting it (or spitting directly) into a small plastic collector tube (a Salivette).

The reagents are based on the Group's existing COVID-19 antigen kit that tests samples collected via swabbing the upper (via the nose) and middle parts of the throat or fluid from the lungs, and which has five (4+1) gene discovery capability to enable detection even with a very low viral load. The company reports that its new test kits is 100% accurate for both specificity and sensitivity. This new kit, which is CE certified, is able to detect all known variants of COVID-19, including in people who are asymptomatic.

According to BATM, the new method significantly improves the sample collection process compared with existing swabbing methods while maintaining diagnostic accuracy using the RT-PCR technique.

BATM's new kit reduces processing time by eliminating the RNA extraction phase required for the existing swabbing methods. The new test can be executed by standard PCR equipment at a rate of 150-180 tests per hour.

Dr. Zvi Marom, CEO of BATM said the company was "extremely proud" to have launched the new test kit that eliminates the need for swabbing.


Head of Harvard University Hillel Blasts Student Petition Supporting Academic Cornel West as ‘Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theory’
The head of the Harvard University Hillel strongly criticized a petition in support of prominent Harvard professor Cornel West that echoes the scholar’s claims that he was denied tenure because of his attacks on Israel and Zionism.

The Harvard Crimson reported Thursday that Rabbi Jonah C. Steinberg, the executive director of Harvard Hillel, sent an email to Hillel affiliates saying the petition promulgated “an anti-Jewish conspiracy theory” and that West had “egged students on” in promoting it.

The petition — which has been signed by more than 1,800 people and endorsed by over 90 campus organizations — cited West’s claims that he was denied tenure because of his attacks on Zionism, which it listed alongside “white supremacy” and “racial capitalism” as targets of the professor’s work.

Steinberg said, “It is painful to see representatives of so many student organizations maneuvered into signing a petition that attaches itself to a long chain of demonizing anti-Jewish libels through the centuries.”

“Student leaders who have signed the petition likely do not realize how the words ‘Israel’s occupation of Palestine’ are used to suggest that the entire country of Israel is illegitimate, and perhaps they are not sensible of how eliding ‘white supremacy, racial capitalism, Zionism, and the military-industrial complex,’ as the petition does, is a dangerous ethnic slander,” he added.

A member of the student coalition that wrote the petition, Jeremy Stepansky, told the Crimson that the petitioners “vehemently reject the conflation of the Zionist state of Israel with the Jewish people.”

West reiterated his claims to the outlet, saying, “I do think the support of this critique of Israeli occupation is a plausible hypothesis” for the denial of tenure “given what I know about earlier candidates who have been denied.”

West said he wants to have a “public discussion about Israeli politics, Israeli occupation” with Steinberg, and said it should be “respectful.”
Jewish Groups Ask Homeland Security Chief to Maintain ‘Made in Israel’ Label Policy
Together with 24 pro-Israel Jewish and rabbinic groups, the Zionist Organization of America spearheaded a letter to US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday urging him to maintain the current US policy of labeling goods from Judea and Samaria as “Made in Israel.”

“This is not just a matter of some technical regulations in the Federal Register,” said the 11-page letter. “Real people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake. We would thus be happy to arrange for you to visit the Jewish communities, families, businesses and farms in Areas C and H2 so that you can see for yourself the real people who would be harmed if you rescind the current labeling regulations.”

The letter provided historical, legal, legislative and moral background information explaining why the current regulations should not be changed. It also included the assertion that the policy is “essential” for combating antisemitic discrimination and boycotts against Jewish products “made in the historic Jewish homelands of Judea and Samaria.”

It further explained that current labeling regulations“properly reflect “reality and relevant authorities” since Israel has had ownership of the referenced areas for the past 54 years.

The policy adopted by the US State Department on Nov. 19 states that products manufactured in Israeli-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria, or West Bank, should be labeled as “Israel,” “Product of Israel” or “Made in Israel” when exported to the United States.

The pro-Israel organizations also tried to appeal to Mayorkas on a “personal note,” saying: “We hope that your background as a Jew, as an immigrants’ rights activist and as the child of a mother [who] had to flee from Nazi-occupied Romania and Fidel Castro’s Cuba has given you compassion and consideration for your fellow co-religionists, and that you will not revert to the boycott facilitating regulations that were ultimately aimed at turning 500,000 Jews into refugees from their own historic homeland.”
UK Student Union President Receives Backlash for Joining Event With BDS Leader
The president of Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS) has sparked outrage for agreeing to speak alongside BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti at an event for Israel Apartheid Week.

Larissa Kennedy, elected last July, is listed as a speaker for an online debate on March 18 called “United Against Racism: Resisting Israeli Apartheid.” The event is hosted by the British group Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). Also scheduled to speak is William Shoki, an activist with the South African BDS Coalition, and PSC director Ben Jamal.

The event’s description stated: “Israel’s system of institutionalized racist discrimination amounts to the crime of apartheid under international law. This webinar, part of Israeli Apartheid Week 2021, will explore how Palestinians, and their allies around the globe, resist Israeli apartheid. … This webinar will also touch on how you can build the [BDS] movement in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality on your university campus.”

Both the Union of Jewish Students and the Board of Deputies of British Jews slammed the event and Kennedy’s expected participation in it.

Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl said: “We support the Union of Jewish Students, which has been forthright in its condemnation of the intention of the president of the NUS to appear at such a controversial event. Mr. Barghouti has made it clear that his activities and intentions are to bring an end to Israel as a country.”
Lawmaker Demands Investigation Into ActBlue
Rep. Tim Burchett (R., Tenn.) is demanding the Justice and Treasury Departments launch an investigation into the ActBlue charity platform following a Washington Free Beacon report exposing the organization's work with an anti-Israel group allegedly tied to multiple terror organizations.

Burchett, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says that ActBlue—an online donation portal that primarily services liberal and Democrat-aligned organizations—could be violating U.S. anti-terrorism laws by facilitating donations to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), an anti-Israel organization that plays a central role in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

PACBI continues to be listed as a partner organization on ActBlue's website, despite being alerted earlier this month of PACBI's ties to foreign terrorist organizations. The Zachor Legal Institute, a think tank that combats anti-Semitism, informed ActBlue's leadership that PACBI is "a hate group that is controlled by a coalition of organizations that the United States and other countries have designated as foreign terror organizations."

Burchett, in a Thursday letter addressed to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Attorney General Merrick Garland, said the Biden administration must uphold its repeated pledge to fight the BDS movement. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that the administration opposes the BDS movement and will not shift its stance on combating efforts to boycott the Jewish State. Blinken is just the latest senior Biden administration official, including President Joe Biden himself, to come out publicly against the BDS movement.

ActBlue's ongoing partnership with PACBI "is a flagrant violation of ActBlue's terms of service, but I am more troubled by the fact that PACBI works closely with the Palestinian BDS National Committee," Burchett wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Free Beacon. "The BNC is basically an umbrella organization for foreign terrorist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad."

Burchett said he is "worried that funds donated to PACBI via ActBlue are, through BNC, directed to foreign terror organizations."
California ‘Ethnic Studies Curriculum’ Proposal Gets Worse, Heavy On Critical Race Theory and Anti-Israel Activism
The saga continues: California’s Department of Education has released yet another iteration of its neo-Marxist-inspired, Critical Theory-based Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum for public schools. Even after five years of work (and who knows how much money) the latest (fourth!) version of the ESMC—to be voted on next week—has managed, somehow, to be worse than the last.

Last month, we detailed a litany of historical and epistemological problems with the neo-Marxist-inspired California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) in our post, California Proposed Ethnic Studies Curriculum A Subterfuge For Anti-American And Anti-Zionist Activism.

As we reported:
The [first two] drafts of the ESMC were, in the words of the Los Angeles Times,
an impenetrable melange of academic jargon and politically correct pronouncements. It’s hard to wade through all the references to hxrstory and womxn and misogynoir and cisheteropatriarchy.
…This curriculum feels like it is more about imposing predigested political views on students than about widening their perspectives.

In fact, as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal summarized:
Excluded from California’s model curriculum are the white ethnic groups (Italians, Irish, Poles and so forth) studied fruitfully by scholars such as Nathan Glazer, Daniel P. Moynihan and Michael Novak. Also largely excluded are groups like Jews and Armenians who were persecuted abroad and sought refuge in America. The groups that dominate the curriculum are African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and American Indians.

Perhaps worse, the first draft included fawning endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel (and only Israel), and echoed classic anti-Jewish stereotypes in its discussions of Zionism and the Jewish state.

At the root of the ESMC’s flaws is its foundation in neo-Marxist Critical Theory—which, as Bret Stephens recently pointed out, is “not multiculturalism. It is not a way of exploring, much less celebrating, America’s pluralistic society. It is an assault on it…It is less an academic discipline than it is the recruiting arm of a radical ideological movement masquerading as mainstream pedagogy.”


Greek Jews Slam Columnist for Comparing Life Under Present Government to Auschwitz Extermination Camp
Greece’s Jewish community has issued an angry response to an opinion columnist’s claim that life in the country under its present government is comparable with the Auschwitz extermination camp during World War II.

In a statement Wednesday, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) slammed writer Elena Akrita’s “shameful” analogy. Akrita made the comparison in an opinion piece that accused the Greek government of ruling through “humiliation and violence” during the protests that have rocked the country over the past month.

“We live in an Auschwitz,” Akrita wrote. “In a little while we will sew stars on the lapel of our coat so that they know who they are trampling on in this endless ‘Night of Crystals’ (a reference to the Nov. 9-10, 1938 Nazi pogrom against Germany’s Jewish community.)”

In response, the KIS said that it deplored “the unacceptable and non-existent parallel of Auschwitz with life in a democratic country like Greece.”

The statement continued: “In Auschwitz people did not live. They died every day, every hour, every minute, every moment, because in Auschwitz life had lost all value.”

Referencing the title of Akrita’s piece — “It Hurts, You Fools” — the KIS pointed out that “in Auschwitz, 1,500,000 people were killed who could not shout ‘It hurts.'”

However, Akrita doubled down on her comments on Thursday, telling the KIS that she had not mentioned “Jewish prisoners” in Auschwitz.
After NBC airs tone deaf episode of 'Nurses,' Orthodox Jews hold AMA
Greece’s Jewish community has issued an angry response to an opinion columnist’s claim that life in the country under its present government is comparable with the Auschwitz extermination camp during World War II.

In a statement Wednesday, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) slammed writer Elena Akrita’s “shameful” analogy. Akrita made the comparison in an opinion piece that accused the Greek government of ruling through “humiliation and violence” during the protests that have rocked the country over the past month.

“We live in an Auschwitz,” Akrita wrote. “In a little while we will sew stars on the lapel of our coat so that they know who they are trampling on in this endless ‘Night of Crystals’ (a reference to the Nov. 9-10, 1938 Nazi pogrom against Germany’s Jewish community.)”

In response, the KIS said that it deplored “the unacceptable and non-existent parallel of Auschwitz with life in a democratic country like Greece.”

The statement continued: “In Auschwitz people did not live. They died every day, every hour, every minute, every moment, because in Auschwitz life had lost all value.”

Referencing the title of Akrita’s piece — “It Hurts, You Fools” — the KIS pointed out that “in Auschwitz, 1,500,000 people were killed who could not shout ‘It hurts.'”

However, Akrita doubled down on her comments on Thursday, telling the KIS that she had not mentioned “Jewish prisoners” in Auschwitz.
Former ADL Director Abe Foxman Discovers Virulent Islamic Anti-Semitism
President Donald “Trump is a demagogue and his presidency threatens American democracy,” former Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director Abraham Foxman wrote on September 11, 2020, in opposition to Trump’s reelection. Yet review of Foxman’s 2003 book, Never Again: The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism, actually indicates that Jews such as him and others should have voted for Trump over Vice President Joe Biden.

Foxman himself had conceded in his editorial that his Biden endorsement uniquely broke with Foxman’s traditional abstinence from partisanship. “For more than half a century, I avoided public positions on electoral politics,” he noted. “Everyone knew Foxman was liberal, but he kept his personal views distinct from his work,” Alex Van Ness from the conservative Center for Security Policy wrote in 2016.

Yet in Foxman’s book tour d’horizon of antisemitism’s various ideological currents, Islam holds throughout center stage. Indeed, the book’s longest chapter is “From Hatred to Jihad: Anti-Semitism in the Muslim World.” “The fact is that virulent anti-Semitism is widespread throughout the Arab Middle East,” he wrote.

This danger was a revelation for Foxman. “For many years ADL and others at the forefront in the war against bigotry and hatred treated anti-Semitism in the Arab world as a marginal issue,” he wrote. In reality, “[a]nti-Semitism is tolerated or openly endorsed by Arab governments, disseminated by the media, taught in schools and universities, and preached in mosques.”
Antisemitic Outrages Cast a Pall Over The Hague’s Image as ‘City of Peace and Justice,’ Dutch Jewish Leader Says
A Jewish leader in the Netherlands has questioned whether The Hague can “decently call itself the city of peace and justice” amidst an upsurge of antisemitism locally.

The administrative capital of the Netherlands and its third-largest city, The Hague is home to most of the foreign embassies in the country as well as over 200 international organizations, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The city is the fourth major center for the United Nations after New York, Geneva and Vienna.

Speaking to a meeting of The Hague City Council on Wednesday night on the issue of tackling antisemitism, Ronny Naftaniel — the executive director of Dutch-Jewish advocacy organization CIDI — noted that in 2019, an antisemitic incident was reported in the Netherlands “on every other day and 8.25 percent of it came from The Hague.”

A total of 182 antisemitic incidents targeting Dutch Jews was reported in 2019 — the highest since record-keeping began and a disturbing 35 percent increase on the previous year.

Continued Naftaniel: “That is catastrophic and raises the question of whether The Hague can decently call itself the city of peace and justice.”

Judith Oudshoorn, a councillor for the center-right VVD Party, told the same meeting that “everyone should be able to feel safe and free in our city; unfortunately, this is not always the case.”

Oudshoorn asserted that “antisemitism is still very much alive, also in The Hague, and a specific approach to antisemitism is needed.” She stressed that the reluctance of some Jews to wear their kippot in public for fear of provoking physical assault was an unacceptable state of affairs.
History group drops plans to celebrate works of William Cobbett over antisemitism concerns
A history group has reportedly dropped plans to celebrate the works of a 19th-century political commentator after his books were found to contain a slew of antisemitic views, blaming the economic crisis of the time on “Jewish money”.

Hyde900, a history group based in Winchester, had planned to commemorate the writer William Cobbett (1763-1835) on the 200th anniversary of the publication of his book Rural Rides, but the group has pulled out.

The book chronicles his views on the agricultural crises of the 1820s England, which he blames on “Jewish money” in the City.

Founder Edward Fennell, said: “Within Rural Rides there were a number of gratuitous antisemitic and racist comments which seemed at odds with Cobbett’s generally ‘progressive’ opinions [and] organisers thought that they needed to be investigated further. As a result, it was decided that it could not be justified to hold an event which, as one person observed, ‘put him on a pedesta’.”
Architect sanctioned by Architects Registration Board after repeatedly comparing neighbours to Nazis and asking if they will put their “children in charge of the gas chambers” in property dispute
An architect has reportedly been found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct and sanctioned after she harassed neighbours with sickening antisemitic slurs over a property dispute.

Mail Online reported that Karin Reenie Elliott asked her neighbours if they would be “putting their children in charge of the gas chambers” and wrote in a message: “We are not in 1930’s Germany, we are not Jewish, we don’t wear yellow stars and you won’t crush us.” She repeatedly told the couple, who live next to her in Norwich, that they were “building concentration camps” when they began construction on a car port for their home and knocked down part of a fence.

Other messages included Miss Elliott telling her female neighbour: “No regrets then? For Krystallnacht 1917 [sic]? We will not be your victims anymore” and that “there wouldn’t be enough comfort food in Norfolk to make up for the emotional trauma caused to any woman that had to sh** your Nazi husband”.

Miss Elliot is a seasoned architect, with more than 25 years’ experience in the field and a plethora of respectable employers names on her Linkedin CV. As well as taking umbrage with the couple building a car port, she apparently sent similar messages to another set of neighbours when they rented a hot tub for a weekend. She told them: “You cannot instigate a one family Nazi regime to occupy our land and intimidate us off our property.”

At the hearing of a disciplinary panel of the Architects Registration Board, she said that she simply wanted her neighbours to know that she did not like them and regretted using “childish bad language”, but she then went on to state: “In mitigation, I would ask the members of the panel to understand what it feels like to be attacked. It’s hard not take it personally when strangers are smashing up your home”.

The panel found her guilty of unacceptable professional conduct and imposed a £2,000 penalty order to be paid within 28 days.
Bus-schedule planner Optibus raises $107 million to boost global reach
Optibus, a maker of a schedule-optimizing software for bus fleets and public transportation operators, said Wednesday it has raised $107 million in a Series C round, co-led by venture capital funds Bessemer Venture Partners and Insight Partners.

Optibus will use the funding to continue to expand its global presence and boost its product capabilities such as optimization and artificial intelligence algorithms that improve mass transit for passengers while increasing operational efficiency, the Tel Aviv-based startup said in a statement.

Optibus uses a combination of AI, advanced optimization algorithms and distributed cloud computing to performs deep analysis and number-crunching on anything that could affect public vehicle schedules: traffic, weather, drivers who call in sick, rock concerts that increase passenger loads, road closures. It also helps cut back on CO2 emissions as buses can be planned more effectively, the Israeli firm says.

The startup also received funding from existing investors including Verizon Ventures, Pitango, New Era Capital Partners, Dynamic Loop and Blue Red Partners. With this latest round, Optibus has raised a total of $160 million since its founding in 2014.
Israeli company making water from thin air comes to help Colombian state
Israel has donated two water extraction devices to help schools in Colombia's rural La Guajira state, amid an ongoing water crisis that has lasted for years.

The crisis has stemmed from the unique ecosystem in the state. Traditionally, the state has survived by planting crops using seasonal rains. But climate change has resulted in prolonged droughts, and the region has increasingly become more desert.

This has led to a severe rise in deaths caused by malnutrition.

These water extraction devices are the ideal solution.

Made by Watergen, the devices extract drinking water from the air itself, and can provide up to 800 liters of fresh water per day. The technology behind it has been widely lauded and has seen widespread use worldwide.

La Guajura Governor Nemesio Roys expressed his amazement at the technology, saying it represented a new and more efficient way to bring water to the state rather than being forced to drill into the earth.



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