Pages

▼

Friday, July 09, 2021

07/09 Links Pt2: No safe haven for Diaspora Jews but Israel; Melanie Phillips: Media malpractice in the West has caused permanent harm to Israel

From Ian:

No safe haven for Diaspora Jews but Israel
The phenomenon of antisemitism is revealed in the world as a natural response designed to remind the people of Israel why it exists in the world. Our only option and shield for defending ourselves against hatred is the implementation of our role as "light unto the nations."

Therefore, the solidarity we feel with the Jews of Belgium should not be expressed by rushing to invest our money in safeguarding their institutions – a move that would be futile – but by explaining, both to ourselves and to them, the cause of the animosity against Jews, and what we must do to fix the problem for the world and ourselves.

If we do not start moving towards carrying out our role, we will find ourselves with no place to hide. As it is written, "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees and the stones and trees will say, 'O Muslim, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." (First extract, The Victory of Muslims Over Jews, Hadiths)

Our Jewish sources say that eventually all the Jews, including the Ten Tribes we lost along the way, will return to the Land of Israel to unite. Although there seems to be no place to absorb them all, there is plenty of room. The Book of Daniel calls the Land of Israel the "land of the deer."

As the Talmud explains, "Just as the hide of the deer has the capacity to encompass its body, but shrinks when separated from its flesh, so too can the Land of Israel expand to encompass its rightful inhabitants but shrinks when we are exiled from it."

As in this allegory, in the same way that the deer can expand its skin, we can accordingly expand our hearts to be as one, a safety net for the Jewish people and for peace in the world.
Melanie Phillips: Media malpractice in the West has caused permanent harm to Israel
This media malevolence against Israel is expressed not only through sins of journalistic commission but also the omission of reports about Palestinian Authority oppression. Last month, P.A. security forces arrested and allegedly beat to death the outspoken Palestinian Arab critic Nizar Banat, which sparked widespread Palestinian protests.

But there had been a crackdown on dissidents before Banat’s death, with dozens of Palestinian Arabs rounded up by Palestinian Authority security forces following Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to call off the P.A. election because he feared he would lose to Hamas.

On the Gatestone site, the Israeli-Arab journalist Khaled abu Toameh writes that until Banat’s death the Western mainstream media almost entirely ignored this Palestinian crackdown—because, he says, the media couldn’t blame Israel for the harassment, intimidation and torture of Palestinians.

Had the Western media and NGOs paid attention to these Palestinian Authority abuses, says abu Toameh, Banat might still be alive, and activists protesting his death might not have been beaten.

The effect of the invidious role played by the mainstream media in helping foment murderous rage against Israel and the Jewish people, while sanitizing the behavior of the Palestinians, is incalculable.

Not only has this turned many people in Britain, America and elsewhere against Israel (including a growing proportion of the Jewish Diaspora), but it also fuels murderous Arab and Muslim hysteria against Israel and the West.
Martin Peretz: Schumer the Shomer
Americans’ lack of knowledge about the nuclear deal is not an accident. Years ago Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser and the man in charge of selling the Iran deal to the public, admitted that, far from wanting Americans to know the details of it, “We created an echo chamber [in which the experts and reporters] were saying things that validated what we had given them to say … I mean, I’d prefer a sober, reasoned public debate, after which members of Congress reflect and take a vote. But that’s impossible.”

A “sober, reasoned public debate” on the Iran deal might have pointed to the mitigating factors that argued against it: Iran has been the main belligerent in the Middle East for 15 years; it funds violent Iraqi militias that bring disorder to the country; it backs both Hezbollah and Hamas, using the latter to attack Israel, the one democratic state in the region; it supports the genocidal dictator Bashar Assad in Syria; it receives support from Russia in exchange for helping disrupt American interests in the Middle East; it signs energy deals with an aggrandizing China; and it extends its support to repressive regimes like Venezuela, to which it tried sending weapons by boat only last month.

These are the facts, plain and simple. Still, facts have a habit of fading when put against ideology. So most Democrats will probably support the new deal, because in a soft ideological way, Democrats are, more or less, for “international obligations” of almost any type, which of course the Republicans are against, also more than a bit thoughtlessly.

If a treaty ever came before the Senate, it would almost certainly fail to secure a majority, so Biden’s deal will likely take the form of another nonbinding “political commitment.” In that event, Sen. Schumer could, if he has the courage of his convictions—and these are his convictions—stand up to the proliferation of nukes to the one Middle Eastern power that would actually use them, and bring a few Senate Democrats with him. After all, Schumer does not stand alone but has two self-determined senatorial colleagues, Democrats Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. And who knows? Maybe there are others.

So, back to my Schumerania: The question will be, will Chuck be willing to risk the wrath of the squad and high-up Democratic donors and operatives deeply invested in the Iran deal’s success by taking a stand? After all these years of winning, will he show us what winning is for?


Incoming! Watch out, Peter Beinart is Fighting the Good Fight (again)
Peter Beinart backed the US invasion of Iraq. He called it ‘the Good Fight’ and wrote a 2006 book about how the war would ‘Make America Great Again’, end the ‘war on terror’ and bring democracy to the Middle East. In 2021, in his essay ‘Teshuva: A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return,’ he has proposed another massive experiment in social engineering and state building in the Middle East. Joshua Brook, an attorney and former aide to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, argues that while Beinart has travelled far politically since 2006 he has learned little: he is still focused on moral simplicities while ignoring political complexities. He conflates Palestinian moral claims with legal rights, Palestinian historical memory with possible political solutions and the result is a simplistic, unworkable and dangerous proposal that does not advance Palestinian statehood one inch.

There is a point beyond which even justice becomes unjust. — Sophocles

In ‘Teshuva: A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return,’ (Jewish Currents) Peter Beinart uses the liturgy of Jewish historical memory to plead for empathy for displaced and dispossessed Palestinians and their descendants. His call is most welcome, for only by respecting the others’ historical narrative, acknowledging their pain, and taking responsibility for past and present wrongs can we begin to heal this century-old conflict. But by conflating historical memory, legal rights, moral claims, and political resolutions, Beinart’s essay obfuscates more than it illuminates. Respecting another people’s national memory should indeed evoke empathy, but it does not require wholesale adoption of their self-justifying narrative of blamelessness, nor accession to their maximalist political demands, particularly where those demands include national suicide. And Beinart’s implicit claim that only one party to this tragic conflict is due an historical reckoning is as unlikely to further the cause of peace and reconciliation as it is morally obtuse.

Beinart treats four distinct concepts — historical memory, legal rights, moral claims, political resolutions — as essentially one and the same, thereby creating a miasma of confusion and non-sequiturs. He reasons that since the Arabs of Palestine suffered a genuine human and societal catastrophe in 1947-48 (true) and because they are entitled to memorialise those events in a national narrative (also true), that therefore they have a moral and historical claim to ‘return’ (plausible) which equates to a legal right (false) to be able to settle seven million Palestinian ‘refugees’ inside Israel (also false). For the sake of clarity, I shall attempt to untangle these distinct concepts in a way which, I hope, respects the Palestinian narrative without erasing the Jewish one, and which points the way toward a more likely political resolution than the dangerous, extreme, and unworkable position advocated by Beinart.

Part 1: Beinart Confuses Legal Rights and Moral Claims
Beinart believes that since Palestinians feel a historical attachment to the land they lost in 1948, that they therefore have a moral claim to ‘return’ to those lands and reclaim their lost property, and that this moral claim is enshrined as a right in international law. But the conclusion does not flow from the premises.

Morality is absolute and also highly subjective, but a legal system must balance conflicting interests and provide objective rules to govern conduct, the application of which may result in substantive injustices, but which are a necessary consequence of a rules-based system. Most, if not all, legal systems distinguish between moral claims and legal rights, and provide a variety of remedies where rights are violated. For example, restitution for even the most outrageously immoral conduct may be barred by a statute of limitations, in both criminal and civil contexts. And under the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, a person cannot be compelled to give testimony against himself, even if withholding it leads to injustice. With this in mind, we can distinguish between the moral and historical claims of Palestinians and their legal rights.


Israel link keeps leftist Jewish groups from planned DC antisemitism rally
Israel will feature large in a Jewish organizational rally against antisemitism, with the goal of uniting the Jewish community following a wave of attacks.

But the rally’s messaging on Israel has led a number of left-leaning Jewish groups to demur from participating. It’s a signal of both how fraught an issue Israel remains in the American Jewish community, and of how divided the community is regarding whether and when to classify attacks on Israel as antisemitism.

Elisha Wiesel, son of the late Holocaust diarist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, was instrumental in bringing together a wide array of groups for the rally Sunday, which will be held outside the United States Capitol in Washington, DC The rally is called “No Fear: A Rally in Solidarity with the Jewish People.”

Wiesel said it was critical to make attacks on Israel, and not just antisemitism, a focus of the rally. The antisemitic attacks in US cities that occurred during and after Israel’s conflict with Gaza in May bound one into the other, he said.

“Bombs were falling on our brothers and sisters in Israel, and we were being attacked on streets in New York and restaurants in Los Angeles,” Wiesel told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I made a vow to myself, the next group that raised their hands, I would call them and offer to raise funds.”

The group that approached him was a new and relatively unknown one, Alliance for Israel, founded in 2019 by Melissa Landa, a pro-Israel activist and former education professor.

Landa, who declined a request for an interview, at first had only a handful of groups, mostly from the right, signing on to join the rally. Wiesel was key to recruiting mainstream Jewish groups. The organizers also brought on Steve Rabinowitz, a public relations specialist with deep experience working for Democrats, Jewish groups and progressive groups.


Three Lord and Lady Justices agree with CAA, dismissing Tony Greenstein’s appeal in “notorious antisemite” case as bankruptcy hearing looms
Three Lord and Lady Justices sitting at the Court of Appeal have dismissed an appeal by Tony Greenstein against aspects of a High Court ruling, deciding in favour of Campaign Against Antisemitism.

The High Court had struck out Mr Greenstein’s libel claims against us, ruling that it was permissible for us to call him a “notorious antisemite” in articles on our website, in an example of litigation humiliatingly backfiring.

Mr Greenstein’s attempt to appeal our successful defence over references to him as a “notorious antisemite” failed earlier this year when the Court of Appeal refused him permission to appeal. They did, however, allow him a hearing to argue that his claim that Campaign Against Antisemitism’s reference in one of the articles to his string of spent criminal convictions was made out of malice. That appeal has now been dismissed as well.

The Court of Appeal’s decision adds to Mr Greenstein’s financial woes. The High Court had ordered Mr Greenstein to pay £67,886 to Campaign Against Antisemitism, of which £10,000 had stayed pending the outcome of the appeal. Now that the appeal has been dismissed, the £10,000 is now payable, along with £13,968 of additional costs relating to the failed appeal, making a total of £81,854.

Mr Greenstein now faces being made bankrupt at a hearing on 14th July after he failed to comply with a court order to send us payment, leading us to petition the High Court to appoint an Official Receiver in Insolvency to take control of Mr Greenstein’s assets and pay our costs from them.


UK Labour activists suspended over antisemitism lose court petition
Eight members of the UK Labour Party that were suspended or expelled from the party over allegations of antisemitic remarks have lost a High Court claim against the party's disciplinary process.

The eight alleged that the Labour Party had acted procedurally unfair by failing to close investigations or revoke suspensions or expulsions after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found the disciplinary procedure unfair.

The EHRC stated that there was a “a lack of a clear and fair process for respondents” after the eight faced allegations of antisemitism. The eight deny they have made antisemitic remarks and comments.

Diana Nelson, who was dealt a formal warning, and Colin O'Driscoll, who had his membership cancelled for 18 months argued that Labour acted unfairly by handling the cases under a code of conduct that was not published.

High Court Judge Mr. Christopher Butcher dismissed the claimants' case.

According to Morning Star, he said, “The party’s statements that it accepted the findings and recommendations of the (EHRC) report did not amount to an acceptance that use for existing complaints of the current system … was unfair."

He added, “It is no part of this case, or this judgment, to determine whether any of the allegations of antisemitism made against the claimants are or are not well-founded.”


Stephen Pollard: Time for direct action on social media
As someone who, for reasons best known to the psychiatrist I probably need, is addicted to Twitter, the sheer volume of Jew-hatred can seem overwhelming. As you might suppose, antisemites are drawn to the editor of the JC like… well, use your imagination for the analogy.

Twitter is worse than useless in dealing with it. More often than not it seems as if it is keener to ban the victims of bigotry than the perpetrators themselves.

But this column is not a moan. It has a happy ending (well, happy is not quite the word). Because I am here to tell you that you can take things into your own hands and, with a bit of persistence, show the antisemites that their actions can have consequences.

A few weeks ago, I came across a tweet by @Ruralmaestro. This charmer told his followers that I was a “lifelong hard right racist”. I had a look at his Twitter biography and was intrigued to see he is a conductor — and the founder of the Bristol Classical Players (BCP). “Tom was born in 1980 and read English at Jesus College, Oxford”, reads his bio on the BCP’s site. I searched his name, mainly because I am a classical music enthusiast and wanted to see what sort of conductor tells lies about me online. What emerged immediately was a link to his day job: “Director, Private Client Tax Services for Smith and Williamson”, a blue blood firm which declares that “for over a century, we have managed the financial affairs of private clients and their business interests.”

This no ordinary schlemiel, I realised.

So it would be worth a look at his timeline to see what else he had to say. What I found was a man with what might best be described as an obsession with Jews, with Jewish communal bodies and with denying the existence of Labour antisemitism.
To Fight Holocaust Denial, Facebook Searches of Key Words in 12 Languages Will Prompt Authoritative Info
Facebook users searching for information about the Holocaust in 12 languages, including German, Arabic and Chinese, will now be directed to authoritative information on an educational website.

The initiative was first launched on January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, for social media users searching in English for terms associated with the Holocaust and the denial of it. Upon typing any related search terms, Facebook users are prompted to visit AboutHolocaust.org to learn about the history of the Holocaust.

As of today, users searching in Arabic, French, Polish, Russian and Spanish for Holocaust-related terms will be prompted to visit the site. Later this month, the education initiative will also be available in Chinese, Farsi, German, Hebrew, Hungarian and Portuguese, while Facebook may add more languages at a later stage.

The site was developed by the World Jewish Congress together with UNESCO, the United Nation’s education, scientific and cultural organization. It provides visitors with facts about the genocide of European Jewry and the mass killings of other national, ethnic, political groups by Nazi Germany and its accomplices during World War II. The online tool also includes easy to read testimonies from survivors, to counter misinformation circulating across social media and other online forums.

Jordana Cutler, Facebook’s Public Policy Director for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora, said, “During this time of rising antisemitism, I am proud that Facebook partnered with the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and UNESCO to ensure that people around the world will be directed to credible information about the Holocaust and hear survivors’ stories. By expanding this tool to reach more people in more languages, Facebook is taking an active role to fulfill the promise of ‘Never Again.’”
French court orders Twitter to reveal efforts to stop hate speech
A French court ordered Twitter to give activists full access to all of its documents relating to its efforts to fight racism, sexism and other forms of hate speech on the social network.

Six anti-discrimination groups had taken Twitter to court in France, accusing the US social media giant of “long-term and persistent” failures in blocking hateful comments from the site.

The Paris court ordered Twitter to grant the campaign groups full access to all documents relating to the company’s efforts to combat hate speech since May 2020. The ruling applies to Twitter’s global operation, not just France.

Twitter must hand over “all administrative, contractual, technical or commercial documents” detailing the resources it has assigned to fight homophobic, racist and sexist discourse on the site, as well as the offense of “condoning crimes against humanity.”

The San Francisco-based company was given two months to comply with the ruling, which also said it must reveal how many moderators it employs in France to examine posts flagged as hateful, and data on the posts they process.

Twitter said it was studying the court order.

“Our absolute priority is to assure the security of people using our platform,” the company told AFP, adding: “We commit to building a safer internet, to combatting online hate and to improving the serenity of public discourse.”
BBC report fails to provide full context to Israeli citizenship law
That relevant context is completely absent from the BBC’s report, which goes on to unquestioningly promote a second-hand quote from a person affected by the law:
“An Israeli Arab who attended a protest outside parliament on Monday said his family had been confined to a “continuous prison” as a result of the law.

“I am asking for rights that the state owes us… for my wife to have Israeli ID, residency rights and freedom of movement,” Ali Meteb told AFP news agency.”

The BBC’s article made no effort to clarify that other countries – including Britain, as it reported in 2017 in the case of Prince Harry’s then fiancée – do not grant the ‘right’ of automatic citizenship to spouses of their own citizens, not least those from enemy territories.

Such context is obviously essential, especially in a report which promotes allegations of ‘controversy’ and ‘discrimination’.
Prosecution adds hate crime charges to suspect in stabbing of Boston rabbi
A man already charged with stabbing a rabbi outside a Jewish school in Boston now faces additional hate crime offenses, prosecutors said Thursday.

Khaled Awad, who is originally from Egypt, arrived in the United States with biased views against Jews, Christians and American culture, Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Margaret Hegarty said during a court hearing.

Witnesses who knew or interacted with Awad told investigators he would become angry if his views were challenged, she said.

“The witnesses also noticed that the suspect would stereotype various differences in racial groups and behavior, which included whites, blacks, and that he was especially harsh on Jews,” the prosecutor said.

Awad, 24, who has been living in Boston, was charged Thursday with a civil rights violation, causing injury and intimidation with bodily injury, prosecutors said. He has already pleaded not guilty to assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and six other charges in connection with the July 1 stabbing of Rabbi Shlomo Noginski outside the Shaloh House in the city’s Brighton neighborhood.

“We believe this was rooted in antisemitism,” District Attorney Rachael Rollins said outside the courthouse.
Jewish man attacked in hate-fueled NYC incident, cops say
A man spewed anti-Semitic hate at a Jewish passer-by before punching the victim in the chest and tossing a piece of furniture at him in Brooklyn, cops say.

The 25-year-old victim was walking on Martin Luther King Jr. Place near Marcy Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant wearing traditional Jewish garb at 11:35 a.m. Monday when a stranger approached him and snarled, “F–king Jew, why are you coming into my neighborhood?”

Video released by police late Thursday shows the suspect grabbing a piece of furniture left on the street, smashing it on the ground and picking up a broken fragment as the victim walked behind him on the sidewalk.

The attacker is then shown turning around and running toward the victim before the clip cuts off.

The suspect punched the victim in the chest and chucked the furniture fragment at his back, cops said. The attacker bolted after the attack and remains at large.
Swiss court sentences French comedian for anti-semitic sketch
French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala has been fined by a Geneva court for racist content during performances in Switzerland, including denying the existence of Nazi gas chambers.

Having found the comedian guilty of the charges on Thursday, the court set the penalty at CHF170 francs for 180 days – a common method of setting financial sanctions in Switzerland.

The complaint was brought by the Coordination against Antisemitism and Defamation (CICAD) organisation in 2019. During his “En Vérité” shows (which means “In Truth” in English) in western Switzerland, Dieudonné performed a sketch in which he denied the existence of Nazi gas chambers, thus violating Swiss criminal laws on racism and anti-Semitism.

“We don’t want Switzerland becoming a playing field for anti-Semites and racists,” CICAD secretary general John Garfinkel told Swiss public television in 2019.

The comic has a string of convictions for inciting hatred against Jews and is the inventor of the controversial “quenelle” hand gesture. In France and Belgium he has had to pay tens of thousands of euros in fines for racial slander, defamation and hate speech.

In 2015 the European Court of Human Rights, ruling against Dieudonné, deemed that negationist speech could not be equated with freedom of expression.
Antisemitic Vandals Use Blowtorch to Deface Holocaust Memorial in French City With Swastikas
Antisemitic vandals defaced a memorial to the Holocaust in the French city of Grenoble by engraving swastikas into its metal plate using a blowtorch.

The grisly act was discovered on Wednesday morning on a plaque commemorating deportees to the Auschwitz concentration camp, local media outlets reported.

Police have opened an investigation into the vandalism.

The Jewish community in Grenoble, located in the south of France, has not been spared the increasing violence and harassment that has targeted Jews in Paris and other cities around the country.

In May this year, the city’s municipal authorities were strongly criticized by CRIF, the representative organization of French Jews, for issuing a declaration of solidarity with the Palestinians during the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Yves Ganasia, CRIF’s representative in Grenoble, charged the city council with displaying “visceral antisemitism” for echoing Palestinian propaganda against Israel whilst remaining silent on more egregious human rights abuses in China and other countries.

In an interview with a national broadcaster more than two years ago, Grenoble’s rabbi warned that antisemitism was taking its toll on the local community.
Pennsylvania ends security funds less than 3 years after synagogue shooting
The Orthodox Union blasted Pennsylvania’s Republican-led legislature for cutting security funding for nonprofits to zero.

The General Assembly budget passed last month effectively ended a five-year fund the state established in 2019, just after the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh, to secure nonprofits.

The fund has so far distributed $10 million in grants of between $25,000 and $150,000 to organizations designated by the FBI as likely targets for hate crimes, including synagogues, churches and mosques.

A gunman killed 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue complex in October 2018, the worst attack on Jews in US history. White supremacist activity has only increased in the Pittsburgh area since then.

“Jewish community leaders across the commonwealth are disappointed with the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s decision to defund security support for at-risk groups last week,” the Orthodox Union said in a statement Tuesday. “Although authorized to fund the nonprofit grant program through 2024, the legislature has now curtailed the five-year directive, zeroing out a resource demanded by the biased crimes and violence rampant in the country.”


Former Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen Appointed as SoftBank Representative in Israel
The former director of Mossad, Yossi Cohen, has been appointed as the representative of SoftBank’s investment fund in Israel. Cohen will likely initiate investments from the Japanese conglomerate’s new Vision Fund 2, which has already invested in several Israeli companies, including AnyVision and Redis Labs.

Earlier this week it was announced that SoftBank was leading a $235 million Series C investment in Israeli recognition artificial intelligence (AI) company AnyVision. Earlier this year, database software developer Redis Labs completed a $110 million series G round with participation from SoftBank. Last month, Vianai Systems, a human-centered AI platform and products company, announced that it had raised $140 million in Series B financing from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and several notable industry names.
Technion Ranked No. 1 in Europe in Artificial Intelligence
The Technion’s efforts to advance the field of artificial intelligence have positioned it among the world’s leaders in AI research and development. CSRankings, the leading metrics-based ranking of top computer science institutions around the world, has ranked the Technion in first place in the field of artificial intelligence in Europe, and 15th worldwide. In the subfield of machine learning, the Technion is ranked 11th worldwide. The data used to compile the rankings is from 2016 to 2021.

One of the innovations that is part of the framework of the Technion’s AI prowess is the Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems (MLIS) research center, which aggregates all AI-related activities.

Technion currently has 46 researchers engaged in core AI research areas, and more than 100 researchers are in AI-related fields: health and medicine, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, industrial robotics, cybersecurity, natural language processing, FinTech, human-machine interaction, and others. Two leading AI researchers co-direct MLIS: Professor Shie Mannor of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor Assaf Schuster of the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science.

According to Prof. Mannor, “for years the Technion has maintained its position as the leading research institute in Israel and Europe in core AI areas. The Technion has a unique ecosystem that includes tens of researchers from various faculties, research centers, and a number of undergraduate and graduate programs in the field.”
Drug-delivery robots deployed at Israel’s largest hospital to cut chemo wait
Robots are to start whirring around Israel’s largest hospital, racing drugs from the pharmacy to wards the moment they are needed.

From next month, as soon as Sheba Medical Center’s oncology department needs chemotherapy drugs, which must be prepared in the pharmacy, small Israeli-produced robots will take them straight to the nurses who ordered them, and help save patients hours of waiting time.

They will shuttle the drugs to departments utilizing a network of maintenance tunnels that already exists under the hospital, and also use corridors, walkways and elevators alongside staff and patients.

Sheba hopes to eventually expand the system, and have robots constantly making drug-delivery runs to all departments.

“This is very exciting as we’re moving from needing humans to transport drugs to a solution that uses robots to increase speed and efficiency,” Ronen Loebstein, director of clinical pharmacology at Sheba, told The Times of Israel.

This is the first deployment of robots by the Israeli startup Seamless Vision, which hopes to now start selling internationally.

The company’s CEO, Amir Nardimon, said that while some robotic drug delivery systems already exist, his is more advanced than others because the robots are able to operate even in the most crowded areas, and able to negotiate in outdoor spaces with relatively flat surfaces, as well as indoors.
Israeli nanotech may use body’s energy to generate power for pacemakers and more
New Israeli nanotechnology will “harvest” energy in the human body and turn it into electricity to power medical devices like pacemakers, researchers said.

“In the future, we’ll make it possible for all sorts of medical devices in the body, including pacemakers, to run without batteries, and instead use mechanical energy transformed to electricity in the body,” Dr. Sharon Gilead of Tel Aviv University, part of the team behind the innovation, told The Times of Israel.

“We are going to actually be able to use electricity that has been generated inside the body.

“It’s exciting, and will have real benefits for many people who currently need procedures every few years to remove their pacemaker and change the battery. This just won’t be necessary,” Gilead said.

The nano material, packaged in a very thin film, can harness any movement in the body, even the mechanical energy from the outside of veins as blood moves through them, and generate an electrical charge that can run devices.

The idea of piezoelectricity, accumulating electrical charge in solid materials, is not new, but until now scientists have been unable to create materials that are both nontoxic, making them suitable for implantation in the body, and able to generate enough voltage to power devices.
Israeli expertise brings closure to Surfside disaster in matter of days
The operation to search for survivors and bodies in the rubble of the collapsed Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside, Florida, a suburb of Miami, has been ongoing for two weeks. Sixty-four people have so far been confirmed dead and 76 are officially still missing. (Additional bodies have been recovered but authorities have yet to add them until their families are notified.)

On Thursday, June 24, at roughly 1:25 am Eastern Daylight Time, the 12-story building collapsed suddenly, with some reports stating that long-term degradation and structural issues were to blame for the incident.

By Friday, an Israeli task force was onsite, sifting through the upper layers of rubble in 12-hour shifts. The Israeli government conveyed offers of help from the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command search and rescue team, which has become a world-leading expert after assisting in many other disasters around the world.

The IDF’s National Search and Rescue Unit, along with members of the Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit of United Hatzalah, an Israeli emergency medical services organization, arrived in Surfside on Sunday morning. With them were volunteers from ZAKA, the Israeli emergency response organization that specializes in gathering body parts for Jewish burial. It was known that many Jewish residents, including 20 Israelis, were among the missing.

Col. Golan Vach, commander of the IDF Home Front Command’s National Search and Rescue Unit, spoke to The Media Line from the site of the building collapse at Surfside. He said it was one of the worst disasters he had ever seen. “The mission is very difficult. We’re finding a lot of people dead, extracting them, pulling them out, finding memories, furniture, toys … all smashed.”

Asked about the cause of the collapse, Vach said it did not matter to search and rescue efforts. “What is important to us is the current situation.”
Piercing animated retelling of ‘Anne Frank’ reminds world she was once a girl
“Anne Frank Bridge. Anne Frank School. Anne Frank Theater.” This is a mantra said by Anne Frank’s imaginary friend Kitty once she is summoned to life and escapes the confines of her surroundings, the Anne Frank House. The repeated, rhythmic phrase speaks to the larger story — one of the larger stories — in Ari Folman’s brilliant and essential new film “Where is Anne Frank.” When you spend so much time turning someone into a symbol, you can forget that they were also once a human being.

Folman, the Israeli director whose previous animated films include “Waltz With Bashir,” which investigated repressed memories and Israel’s 1982 Lebanon War, and “The Congress,” a near-indescribable hallucinogenic inquiry into the nature of identity, was approached by the Anne Frank Fund to make this film eight years ago.

This new project — debuting at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — is not, simply, “the diary as a cartoon,” but an imaginative story firmly rooted in the work of the celebrated author who died at 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It is appropriate, even designed for, early teens to watch, and while the subject matter is certainly upsetting, Folman pulls his punches on the explicit horrors and violence. This is more of a break than Anne ever got.

We begin on a stormy day in modern Amsterdam, outside the Anne Frank House, when a lightning strike causes the ink of the famous red-checked diary, Anne’s 13th birthday present, to come to life. Soon, a fair-skinned, red-headed girl is wandering around the museum.

This is Kitty, the imaginary girl to whom Anne’s diary entries have been addressed, and, with a “Peter Pan” or “Pinocchio”-like wonder, she’s on a mission to find her friend. As Kitty explores the world of today she encounters tourists, police, street punks, and migrants at risk for deportation. She also nicks the diary (giving the film’s title a second meaning) and reads from it, offering us flashbacks.

But the scenes from the past are immersed in the imagination we’ve come to expect from Ari Folman. Images toggle between strict naturalism to exaggerated expressionism, sometimes in the same frame. An advertisement for Opekta, the fruit preserve company Otto Frank ran, is rendered in classic Walt Disney form. Nazis marching through Amsterdam look like Chas Adams drawings, and the Frank family’s eventual train deportations are imbued with Hellenistic motifs, as per Anne’s fascination with Greek myths.







at