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Friday, September 24, 2021

09/24 Links Pt2: When will the ‘happy dhimmi’ myth be discredited?; 300 prominent Iraqis publicly call for full peace with Israel; Abbas demands Israel withdraw to 1967 'borders' within a year

From Ian:

Lyn Julius: When will the ‘happy dhimmi’ myth be discredited?
Colonial rule is considered by Western supporters of the myth to have disrupted this happy relationship. In practice, the colonial powers “liberated” non-Muslim minorities from their dhimmi status and granted them better education and security.

Israel became tarred with the brush of imperialism after the Suez Crisis in 1956 when Israel joined forces with Britain and France to invade Egypt. Further politicization followed when Israel became an “occupying” power after the Six-Day War in 1967. Beginning in the 1950s, Western intellectuals were so bewitched by Third Worldism that when Tunisian-Jewish writer Albert Memmi moved to France, he was astonished to have been almost congratulated by left-wingers for having been born in a country where racism did not exist.

Dhimmi-denial was mirrored in the attitudes of white Southerners who thought of themselves as upholding Christian values and even “high civilization.” After losing the cause of slavery in the American Civil War, they went to considerable lengths to praise slavery’s “benevolent features.” The master-slave relationship, they said, was amicable: “The only bonds were those of tender understanding, trust and loyalty.”

Pollack and Norwood argue that the “happy darkey” myth provided Southerners with a foundation to justify their “lost cause,” just as Arabs use the “happy dhimmi” to challenge Israel’s legitimacy.

Nowadays, as statues associated with slavery are being torn down, and any connection with slavery, however tenuous, is enough to make historical figures into non-persons, the “happy darkey” myth is thoroughly discredited.

How much longer will we have to wait until the “happy dhimmi” myth is consigned to the dustbin of history?
Abe Greenwald: Systemic Wokeness - Review of 'The Authoritarian Moment' by Ben Shapiro
Institution after institution has caved before this strategy and thereby been renormalized. Shapiro goes into great detail, offering separate analyses of the renormalizations happening in government, media, science, education, and the workplace. Given that he wrote the book during the COVID-19 pandemic, his section on the renormalization of science lands with a fierce immediacy.

He identifies two dominant elements in the current corruption of science: the Ultracrepidarian Problem and the Bleedover Effect. “The Ultracrepidarian Problem widens the boundaries of science beyond the applicable,” Shapiro writes. This happened, for example, when scientists came out en masse proclaiming racism a public-health emergency. By contrast, “the Bleedover Effect narrows the boundaries of science to the ‘acceptable.’” Such was the case when, in 2018, the American Medical Association renounced any definition of sex that referred to “immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.” Doctors, according to the renormalized AMA, “assign” sex. (Shapiro is never caught wanting for real-word events to bolster his arguments.)

Through the power and reach of American institutions, the radical left has managed to foist its oppressive agenda on the country in what seems like an overnight coup. But it merely feels as if it happened overnight. Shapiro lays out a valuable account of the revolutionary groundwork, a century in the making, that went into the establishment of the new dispensation. The American left, in his telling, has historically oscillated between dreams of utopia and a hunger for revolution. “But the two impulses are in conflict,” he writes. It was Barack Obama who finally tied the two together “by embracing the power of government—and acting as a community organizer within the system itself, declaring himself the revolutionary representative of the dispossessed, empowered with the levers of the state in order to destroy and reconstitute the state on their behalf.” This insight perhaps best explains Joe Biden’s clunky “Build Back Better” slogan. What the revolution has destroyed, the Biden administration will rebuild—along utopian lines.

Shapiro is famous, in part, for a rapid-fire speaking style that enables him to pack years of analysis into a single TV appearance. He manages something analogous in The Authoritarian Moment, conveying a door stopper’s worth of information in fewer than 250 pages (not counting notes). He is infamous on the left, however, as an emblem of right-wing nastiness. But that misunderstanding of Shapiro points to a paradox that gets at why the left truly detest him. He is a cool-headed and surgical expositor of complicated ideas—so cool-headed and surgical that his targets can only take their wounds for the work of a monster. He in fact models an alternative to political nastiness. What is his oft-repeated catch phrase—“Facts don’t care about your feelings”—but an admonition against excessive emotionality in discourse? In The Authoritarian Moment, Shapiro paints with a fine brush and makes a clear distinction between liberals (who respect free speech) and leftists (who do not). He throws powerful rhetorical bombs, but they’re smart bombs. “To be politically incorrect means to say that which requires saying,” he writes, “not to be a generic, run-of-the-mill jackass.”

The Authoritarian Moment says very much that requires saying. Shapiro is beloved—indeed, he is a phenom—among young conservatives because he can articulate the multitude of frustrations that most others can only groan or rage about. And he can do it more concisely than any human being alive. But, more than that, he dissects the actual mechanics of the current crackdown in a way that is undeniable. His new book is, in short, an argument-winner. Shapiro maintains that if conservatives and liberals are to resist the new reality, they must undo in reverse order the three-step authoritarian takeover. This means that they will finally have to win more arguments than they currently do. The Authoritarian Moment is, then, a vital step toward genuine normalcy.
Melanie Phillips: Review of The Legacy - My novel "weaves the true stories of our collective and tragic Jewish history"
Irene Lancaster has written a glowing review of my novel The Legacy in the magazine Christian Today. I am most grateful, and reproduce it here.

Review in Christian Today
Many would say that War and Peace, Tolstoy’s epic 1860s chronicle of the earlier Napoleonic invasion of Tzarist Russia, experienced through the lives and loves of a number of individuals, is his greatest novel – maybe even the greatest novel ever written.

At exactly the same time, that very English genius, George Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans), was writing what she herself considered to be her greatest novel, Romola, based on Florentine Renaissance history also seen through the private lives and loves of a number of individuals.

Both these books are, as you might expect, immensely difficult to read. The mind and heart are expected to concentrate on two disparate subjects simultaneously – with individual loves and the great events of world history panning out before us both in parallel and in tandem.

Not every reader succeeds in this endeavour and ends up having to choose one aspect as against the other, simply in order to get through the book. Not really what the respective authors – giants of the novelistic genre – would have wished of their readers.

It is therefore something of a miracle that England’s greatest Jewish journalist, Melanie Phillips (now living in Israel), has managed to pull off this exacting feat in her very first novel, entitled The Legacy.


Over 300 prominent Iraqis publicly call for full peace with Israel
Hundreds of Iraqi leaders and activists gathered in the country’s Kurdistan region on Friday to publicly call for full normalization with Israel.

The group, which includes Sunni and Shiites, youth activists and tribal leaders, said the next step after the dramatic announcement would be to seek “face-to-face talks” with Israelis.

The 312 Iraqi men and women issued their statements from a hotel in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region. The conference was organized by the New York-based Center for Peace Communications, which works to advance engagement between Arabs and Israelis, and to protect activists supporting normalization.

The Times of Israel is covering developments from the conference as they happen.

One of the speakers explained that the group believes in peace with Israel “so that we might live in a stable region that brings conflicts to an end. We believe in it because we want our region to be a peaceful one, in which Israel is an inseparable part of the panoramic whole, and in which all peoples have the right to live in security.”

“We demand that Iraq join the Abraham Accords internationally,” wrote Wisam al-Hardan, leader of the Sons of Iraq Awakening movement, in The Wall Street Journal on Friday. “We call for full diplomatic relations with Israel and a new policy of mutual development and prosperity.”

The Sons of Iraq formed organically in 2005 as tribal leaders in Anbar province and ex-Iraqi Army officers allied with US forces to fight al-Qaeda.

“Some of us have faced down ISIS and al-Qaeda on the battlefield,” wrote Hardan. “Through blood and tears we have long demonstrated that we oppose all extremists, whether Sunni jihadists or Iran-backed Shi’ite militias. We have also demonstrated our patriotism: We sacrificed lives for the sake of a unified Iraq, aspiring to realize a federal system of government as stipulated in our nation’s constitution.”
At General Assembly, Abbas demands Israel withdraw to 1967 'borders' within a year
In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas demanded that Israel withdraw to the 1967 boundaries within one year or else face repercussions.

While Abbas had initially announced that he would travel to New York for the diplomatic meet, he later opted to remain in Ramallah, citing travel concerns due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Israeli authorities have one year to withdraw from the Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem,” Abbas said in a pre-recorded video message.

During this year, the PA would be willing to work with Israel on borders and other issues necessary to resolve in any Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, Abbas said.

If Israel did not comply, Abbas said the Palestine Liberation Organization could withdraw its recognition of Israel within the 1967 borders. The PLO recognized those boundaries as part of the Oslo peace process in the 1990s.

“If this is not achieved, why maintain recognition of Israel based on the 1967 borders? Why maintain this recognition?” Abbas said.

Abbas also threatened Israel with action at the International Court of Justice should the current deadlock in the peace process continue. The International Criminal Court in The Hague is currently investigating both Israel and the Palestinians for war crimes committed since 2014.
What put the fear into Israel's radical Left?
Just a week ago, all of Israel's political establishment was in an uproar over a debate in the finance committee on a topic that would normally be totally technical and utterly devoid of interest: the reauthorization of eligibility for Clause 46 in Israel's tax laws which grants tax benefits for donations to a long list of NGOs, among them "Ad Kan! Young Israelis for Israel" (an organization the first two words of whose name is an idiom meaning 'enough is enough').

During the discussion, a previously unknown Member of Knesset from the Labor Party accused my organization of "trying to criminalize leftist activists by forging documents" and of "leading a hunting expedition armed with lies and dubbed soundtracks." Her stance led to the non-renewal of the eligibility of donations to "Ad Kan" for tax benefits of Israeli donors' income tax.

What the previously unknown MK said was unadulterated nonsense, and we hereby request that she give up her Knesset immunity long enough to be forced to defend her accusations in court – or, alternately, to apologize and return to her colorless anonymity.

But what is the reason the anti-Zionist Left is so afraid of "Ad Kan"? We have the feeling that they are simply afraid that you as well as others will learn the real truth.

Here are a few examples of that truth, selected out of many:
When we at "Ad Kan" saw how the NGO "Anarchists against the Wall" organizes violent riots against IDF soldiers, we turned to investigators of ours who had become members of that NGO and were able to bring filmed evidence proving participation in and organization of disturbances to the public order, including rock-throwing at soldiers and policemen. As a result, the anarchists were summoned to the courts and their leader (who writes for the Ha'aretz newspaper) was sent to prison.

When the NGO "Breaking the Silence" falsely accused IDF soldiers of committing war crimes during Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza and distributed a booklet filled with trumped up testimonies, we decided to research those "testimonies" and a team of our investigators spent over a year collecting documentation that proved that the accusations were slanderous. We even checked the clips taken by the cameras on IDF fighters' helmets in order to prove that not only were there no war crimes but that the soldiers actually endangered their own lives to take care of the civilian population in Gaza, in the midst of battle and despite clear and present danger to themselves. Armed with this documentation, we filed two suits for slander for the sum of 3.8million NIS against Breaking the Silence. Perhaps this is what is worrying the radical Left.
Texas Puts Ben & Jerry’s, Parent Company Unilever on List of Companies Boycotting Israel
Effective Thursday, Ben & Jerry’s and its London-based parent company Unilever have been added to the Texas state list of companies that boycott Israel, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced.

The action was taken in accordance with Texas Government Code Chapter 808 prohibiting the investment in companies that “boycott Israel” — defined as “refusing to deal with, terminating business activities with, or otherwise taking any action that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on or limit commercial relations specifically with Israel or with a person or entity doing business in Israel or in an Israeli-controlled territory.”

Including Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever, 11 companies are now on the Texas list of companies. The news comes a little over two months after the ice cream maker announced on July 19 that it would no longer sell its products in what it described as “the Occupied Palestinian Territory” because “it is inconsistent with our [company] values.”

Hegar said his office worked with research providers and “carefully reviewed statements and activities” by both Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever “before concluding that they are suitable candidates for the Texas list.”

He added, “Texas law is clear on this issue, and my office has long supported Israel through our Israel bond holdings as well as our lists of scrutinized companies with ties to Iran and those with ties to foreign terrorist organizations.”
Jewish man fired by Unilever for taking time off during Rosh Hashanah in 2019 - report
A Jewish man was fired from Unilever, the Ben & Jerry's parent company, for taking time off during the Rosh Hashanah two years ago, The New York Post reported on Thursday.

David Rosenbaum was working as a general manager at Unilever’s Englewood Cliffs at its New Jersey headquarters when he told Frank Alfano, his boss, that he planned to take days off for the Jewish holidays in 2019, to which his boss responded that he couldn't take time off for the Jewish New Year nor for Yom Kippur, according to Rosenbaum's lawsuit.

Unilever has been making headlines as of late for its decision to ban the sales of its ice cream in the West Bank.

Rosenbaum emphasized that his religion prevents him from working on those days and took the time off anyway, notifying his superiors at Unilever via email about the situation.

Rosenbaum was fired over the phone the next day.
Evil, crazy, or just plain stupid? Top 10 quotes from Middle East studies professors
The selections below were chosen on their individual merits, so to speak. Some are blatantly vile, others unintentionally comical, but all illustrate the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of Middle East studies in North America. Each speaker should recoil in shame when confronted with his own words, but we aren’t so naïve as to expect it.

Wading through the archives was rather like reading “Dante’s Inferno” or C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters,” but with an obvious difference of authorial intent. Whereas the poet and the apologist seek to persuade their readers to pursue virtue by illustrating vice, our professors spew vice while masquerading as purveyors of virtue.

Below we expose some of their most infamous statements – and have a little fun while we’re at it. The winners follow, with brief commentary, in chronological order:
1. “We really idolize somebody like Leila Khaled, somebody who actually stands up for herself, speaks for herself, actually goes to a plane and hijacks it.” Rabab Abdulhadi, professor in Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas/Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University. Goldengate Express, September 22, 2020.

Who doesn’t get misty-eyed recalling the grand old days of Palestinian airline hijackings? What better way to preserve that glorious legacy than teaching students to idolize the Queen of Terror at 30,000 Feet, Leila Khaled? Back in 1970, Khaled helped hijack an El Al flight but failed to blow it up when her grenade didn’t explode. A role model for the ages.
Michigan State University Jewish Studies Dept. Decries Spate of Antisemitic Incidents on Campus
The Jewish studies faculty at Michigan State University has condemned a string of three antisemitic incidents that occurred over a single weekend, calling for a swift investigation and education efforts.

In one incident, which took place during the weekend marking 20 years since the September 11th attacks, a 9/11 mural of an American flag captioned “Never Forget 2,977 Lives” was defaced to read “Israel Forget 2,977 Lives” — evoking the conspiracy theory falsely blaming the attacks on the Jewish state.

“This is a modern iteration of the centuries-old trope that Jews control world events,” said the school’s Michael and Elaine Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel in a Sept. 15 statement.

During the same weekend, someone with a profile picture of a swastika joined a biology class group chat promising to prove that “Jews are scum.” Later, someone using the same screen-name said “shut the hell up Jew boy” and “this is why you don’t trust Jews” in a group chat for an off-campus housing complex.

“These incidents make clear that antisemitism is a real problem that we need to address to realize our vision of MSU as an inclusive community for all its members,” the Institute said.

“We were already concerned about antisemitism on campus,” Serling Institute Director Yael Aronoff told The State News. “About five years ago, we heard about rising antisemitism on campuses and students started telling us more about their experiences, and that’s why, for the past five years, we’ve organized a forum for students to share their experiences on campus about antisemitism.”

“Each year on average we have about 25 students who share their experiences. Often the OIE Office [Office of Institutional Equity] says that every single one of those things should’ve been reported to OIE, most students, of course, don’t report.”
San Diego Community Colleges Address Union Resolution Condemning Israel, Offer ‘Sincere Thoughts’
The head of the San Diego Community College District responded on Wednesday to a controversial anti-Israel measure recently passed by its representative union, expressing “sincere thoughts to those who were offended by the resolution.”

The resolution, which accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, occupation, apartheid, and war crimes,” was passed on Sept. 5, by the 6,000-member American Federation of Teachers Local 1931 (AFT Local 1931).

Jewish organizations condemned its passage, with the Los Angeles-based advocacy group StandWithUs calling it part of a “dehumanizing campaign targeting Israel.”

San Diego Community College District Chancellor Carlos O. Turner Cortez addressed the criticism on Wednesday.

“As many of you know, there have been a number of statements publicized that denounce Israel and its actions in the Palestine conflict,” Cortez said. “We recognize that the opinions expressed by some groups, including the [AFT] Local 1931, are not embraced by many employees and students.”

“Further, we offer our sincere thoughts to those who were offended by the resolution,” he said.

He added that the District took no position on whether the AFT’s resolution was appropriate, describing it as an area of disagreement between the union’s local and national leadership.


Anti-Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Videos Rife on Facebook Despite Fake News Vows
Videos promoting Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terror attacks continue to be rife on Facebook on the 20th anniversary of the tragic events despite the social media giant's repeated pledges to tackle fake news.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously said the company would do more to address the issue of false information on the platform but some conspiracy videos have remained on the site for years.

A newly published report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center highlighted the problem of Anti-Semitic 9/11 videos and pointed out that in some cases the videos have been viewed tens of thousands of times.

That report, "September 11 Conspiracies: 20 Years Later," draws attention to one Facebook video posted by the "Anti Illuminati Alliance" which falsely claims that no planes were used in the attacks.

"Illuminati" is a term associated with Anti-Semitism, according to the American Jewish Committee (AJC)'s Translate Hate Glossary.

The video was still available on Facebook when Newsweek reviewed it on Saturday and has been viewed more than 68,000 times. The video was posted on March 1, 2021.
Guardian amends article alleging an IDF raid on Bethlehem art center
Last month, we complained to Guardian editors regarding an op-ed (“Our art deals with real injustices, some in Palestine: no wonder we faced opposition”, Aug. 20) by the anti-Israel NGO Forensic Architecture which included the following claim:
[IDF] Attacks extended also to art institutions: our close friend the Palestinian artist Emily Jacir sent us videos of Israeli forces raiding Dar Jacir, a vital independent artist-run space in Bethlehem.

First, the source embedded in the sentence doesn’t show the alleged video, and in fact fails to provide any proof of the Israeli ‘raid’ on the art space. Also, a New York Times article in July which included these same accusations quoted the IDF denying the claims. We contacted the IDF Spokesperson Unit to see if they still stood by their denial, and they affirmed that their position hasn’t changed. After a series of follow-ups with editors, they finally agreed to amend the sentence to include the IDF’s denial.
Historic step against anti-Semitism in Spain
The objective of the Proposed Bill emanated from the Madrid Assembly is to change current legislation to deny any public aid, contracts, or grants to entities that carry out discriminatory practices for reasons of birth, race, sex, religion, opinion, or any other personal or social condition or circumstance, especially insisting on anti-Semitism.

The initiative is the result of the exhortation of the European Union, which shows the existence of a serious problem of masked anti-Semitism. To stop it and fight against it the EU recommends every member state to adopt and apply the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

But the distinguishing fact of the project that makes it unique is that not only does it reflect the relevance of adopting the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, but that it also includes the necessary legal modifications for hatred, open or masked, not to find harbour in the public space.

For said fight to be effective, not only against classical formulations, but also against new formats, it is necessary to end the public financing of organisations that support delegitimising campaigns, such as BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel), which not only seek to discriminate against those who support the Jewish state, but its companies, citizens, to sum up, the disappearance of the Jewish collective represented by Israel.
French Court Hands Suspended Sentences to Defendants Convicted of Antisemitic Harassment of Beauty Queen
A court in France has sentenced eight defendants to a two-month suspended prison sentence after they were convicted for the antisemitic harassment of a beauty queen who revealed that her father is an Israeli.

Last December, April Benayoum, who won the title of Miss Provence 2020, was the runner-up in the Miss France 2021 contest. In social media posts after the competition, Benayoum noted that her mother is Croatian and her father Israeli, leading to a flurry of antisemitic replies. One tweet sent to Benayoum read, “Hitler forgot to exterminate you, Miss Provence.”

In its report of Wednesday’s decision at the Paris Criminal Court, the news outlet 20minutes observed that most of the eight defendants had expressed regret for their online outbursts. One of them, named as Ahmet I., told the court: “I am ashamed to be here, to be seen as an antisemite or a racist. I apologize to Ms. Benayoum for having made remarks like that.” Another, named as Rayanne M., confessed to “being ashamed that people have this image of me as an antisemite.”

In her address to the court, Benayoum said that while she accepted the apologies, her experience had been traumatic. “Forgiving will be more difficult, this is something that hurt me a lot and spoiled an exceptional adventure,” she commented.
Car Ramming Attack Attempted at LA Synagogue Sukkot Concert, Says Security Group
A Jewish congregation in Los Angeles was left in shock on Wednesday night after a man reportedly attempted to ram into a crowd of people as they were attending a Sukkot holiday concert.

According to Magen Am, a non-profit that provides security to Jewish institutions, the attacker allegedly accelerated down a one-way alley into a crowd of women and children as the concert at LA’s Shaarei Tefila synagogue was coming to an end.

The crowd of about 20 to 30 managed to jump out of the path of the vehicle before the assailant stopped short in front of a metal gate, yelled “f**k the Jews” and left, the group said.

The group also said that about 20 minutes prior, the man had “canvassed” the event and issued threats, saying, “I’m a real Muslim, I’ll show you what real terrorism looks like.”

The Los Angeles Police Department told The Algemeiner that officers responded to the scene at around 10:57 pm to a call of a possible hate crime, and completed a report for criminal threats. A victim of a possible assault with a deadly weapon declined to sign a report, the LAPD said.

A Magen Am security officer told The Algemeiner that the alleged assailant had first approached the synagogue, asking about the event, and soon after started making antisemitic insults and threats. After getting into an argument with another congregant who was reacting to the man’s remarks, the assailant threatened the Magen Am security officer, before ultimately being ushered away.
Pittsburgh Cops Arrest Man for Antisemitic Verbal Assaults on Jews
Police in Pittsburgh have arrested a 30-year-old man in connection with two verbal assaults on Jews in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood on Wednesday.

The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police said in a statement that two assaults involving antisemitic invective had been reported on Wednesday morning. Officers announced the arrest of Pittsburgh resident Tyrone Corell in connection with both incidents.

The first victim reported that he was verbally assaulted by an unknown male near the intersection of Murray Avenue and Nicholson Street at 6 am who yelled antisemitic abuse.

A second incident was reported around the same time, also on Nicholson, by a man who matched the description of the assailant in the earlier attack. The assailant yelled profanities at his victim but did not make any physical or verbal threats, police reported.

Corell charged with simple assault, harassment and ethnic intimidation, as well as charges stemming from his arrest that include making terroristic threats, disorderly conduct, aggravated assault and resisting arrest.
LG Acquiring Israeli Vehicle Cybersecurity Startup Cybellum for at Least $140 Million
Israeli vehicle cybersecurity startup Cybellum announced on Thursday that it is being acquired by LG Electronics. LG will assume an approximate 64 percent stake in the tech company valued at $140 million. The remaining shares will be acquired in the near future with the final valuation and total investment amount to be confirmed at that time. On top of this initial investment, LG committed to a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) to invest an additional $20 million in Cybellum upon the conclusion of the trading process in the fourth quarter. This will be LG’s first acquisition in Israel and in the cybersecurity domain in general.

Cybellum, founded in 2016, had raised just $15 million in total to date from investors including RSBG Ventures, Blumberg Capital and Target Global.

Cybellum was founded by CEO Slava Bronfman and CTO Michael Engstler, who both served in the elite Unit 81 of the Israeli military’s intelligence. Cybellum provides automotive OEMs and suppliers with a solution to identify and remediate security risks at scale, throughout the entire vehicle life cycle. Cybellum’s agentless solution scans embedded software components without needing access to their source code, exposing all cyber vulnerabilities. Manufacturers can then take immediate actions and proactively eliminate any cyber risk in the development and production process before any harm is done, while continuously monitoring for emerging threats impacting vehicles on the road.

Cybellum, which has partnerships with the likes of Jaguar and Nissan, employs 50 people, 35 of which are based at its R&D center in Tel Aviv.
Prof. Eliezer Rabinovici is the new President of the CERN Council
Professor Eliezer Rabinovici from Hebrew University was elected as President of the (European Organization for Nuclear Research) CERN Council on Friday morning, following a campaign run by the Foreign Ministry and the Israeli embassy in Geneva.

CERN is an international organization located in Geneva, Switzerland that focuses on the research of particles. The organization employs the world's leading physicists who conduct experiments and research with a particle accelerator in order to explore the theoretical side of particles and try to make them a reality.

The organization includes 23 countries, with Israel having joined in December 2013 as the only non-European nation. Until then Israel's role had been that of an observer.

Professor Rabinovici was the Israeli representative for the organization for ten years, ending his role in 2020. In that time he gained great professional and personal renown in CERN. He was also one of the leaders on the SESAME project that brought cooperation between the scientists of the Middle East. It is largely in thanks to his work that Israel was able to join the organization as a fully-fledgedd active member.

He will now serve as the president for the next three years.

The Israel in Geneva Twitter acount tweeted a video to introduce Professor Rabinovici to the world on Friday, in which he answered some questions regarding CERN and his role as the president of the council.


National Library of Israel Releases Rare Photographs of Sukkot During 1973 War
Nearly 50 years after the Yom Kippur War, the National Library of Israel has released a number of rare photos showing how the festival of Sukkot, or “Feast of Tabernacles,” was celebrated during the conflict, even as war raged in the Sinai and the Golan Heights.

Also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Yom Kippur War took this name because it broke out on the Day of Atonement, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Because of its name, many forget that Sukkot, which begins just a few days after Yom Kippur, also fell during the height of the fighting.

A biblical injunction commands Jews to sit in a temporary dwelling called a sukkah during the festival. Due to the circumstances during the war, the chief military rabbi had declared soldiers exempt from fulfilling this commandment, yet many soldiers built improvised sukkahs on jeeps and other military vehicles anyway, some even in enemy territory.

The photos include a number taken by the photographer Nathan Fendrich, a then-39-year-old American tourist who had come to Israel to document historical and archaeological sites. Stuck in Israel at the outbreak of the war, he decided to travel between the various fronts, armed with his camera.

Fendrich recently donated his collection, including hundreds of previously unpublished photographs, to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.