Proctor and Gamble loves Israel

It is not only high-tech companies like Google and Intel who invest heavily in Israel. Proctor and Gamble, the consumer products and pharmaceutical powerhouse, also looks to Israel for innovation. From Forbes:

I visited P&G office in Tel Aviv. Lital Asher-Dotan, who established Procter & Gamble first R&D hub in Israel called “P&G Israel House of Innovation”, explained why P&G calls Israel a “startup nation.”

 Image of P&G office in Tel Aviv by Shannon Reaudeau

In the entry lobby of P&G office, which is 20 minutes away from Google’s office in Tel Aviv, there are a few samples of different products sold by P&G in Israel. Among the usual health and beauty brands (Head & Shoulders, Pantene, Oral B, Gillette, Tampax, Pampers …) and brands of household cleaners (Ariel, Lenor, Swiffer, Tide …) there were also different prizes and trophies P&G Israel has received for the development of innovative products. However, what surprised me the most was that besides all these products and prizes there was a copy of the acclaimed book Startup nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer.

Procter & Gamble takes Research and Development  seriously: it invests $2.8 Billion annually and has 9,300 employees in R&D worldwide. The Israel House of Innovation (IHI) was created five years ago by CEO Bob McDonaldand one of the key goals is to create alliances between P&G and Israeli innovators.

Procter & Gamble’s Israel House of Innovation collaborates with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NASDAQ: TEVA; TASE: TEVA), the largest generic drug manufacturer in the world; the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which carries out more than 1/3 of all academic scientific research in Israel;Powermat, which has only 70 employees and is developing wireless battery rechargers. By the way, Jay-Z participates in the JV with Powermat and P&G  not only as a spokesperson but also as an investment partner.  P&G  has also signed on bilateral agreement with Israeli Chief Scientist providing Israeli start ups that collaborate with P&G favorable access to governmental funding.

Present in over 180 countries and with total revenues of about $80 Billion, P&G is the world’s largest Multinational consumer goods company. Procter & Gamble has promised to deliver 3-6 % of growth per year or about extra $5billion in annual revenue. Open innovation is the key to this growth: the giant established in 1837 aims to have 50% of all innovation (not only on new products but also on internal systems) having elements from outside of the company. Jeff Weedman, P&G Vice President, External BD:

            Our JV with TEVA represents the lessons learned that we need better access to Innovation and global abilities while we can provide the in-depth consumer knowhow.”

Read the whole thing.

Read More

French news site publishes Arab street theater as IDF abuse

Here is a screenshot from L'Express from last month:

It is captioned "Palestinian prisoner" and appears to show an AFP photo of IDF soldiers abusing a Palestinian Arab.

However, it was no such thing.

As the French IDF blog notes, the "soldiers" were not wearing standard IDF uniforms or helmets.

In fact, this photo was taken at a demonstration on Land Day in Lebanon! The actual caption from AFP read:

Palestinian refugees pose as Israeli soldiers arresting and beating a Palestinian activist during celebrations of Prisoners' Day at the refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh near the coastal Lebanese city of Sidon on April 17, 2012.

L'Express silently removed the photo with the offending caption from its website without an apology.

Par for the course.

More here.

(h/t Rudi)

Read More

More intra-Arab fighting gets downplayed

From Al Arabiya:

One person was killed and five were wounded on Thursday in fresh clashes between pro- and anti-Syrian regime districts in the north Lebanon port city of Tripoli, a security official said.

“Sporadic clashes involving the use of rockets and machineguns began at around 4:00 am (0100 GMT) between the neighborhoods of Bab al-Tebanneh and Jabal Mohsen,” said the official, who requested anonymity.

Battles first erupted on Saturday between residents of the rival neighborhoods after security forces arrested Shadi al-Mawlawi, an Islamist, on alleged charges of belonging to a terrorist organization.

Mawlawi’s supporters say he was targeted because of his help for Syrian refugees fleeing to Lebanon.

Some 500 of them blocked a main road leading into Tripoli on Monday and said they would leave only after Mawlawi was released.

A total of ten people, including a soldier hit by sniper fire, died in the port city and dozens were wounded in the fighting.

When you think about the Middle Eastern countries where the most Arabs are being killed, Israel is pretty far down the list. Just ask people from Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Algeria and Bahrain, as well as Lebanon, all of where Arabs have been killed over the past month by government forces.

But according to PCHR, not a single Palestinian Arab was killed by the IDF in the same time period.

Read More

"Israel among countries with most negative global influence"

The BBC published a new Globescan poll and, as usual, most news media are misunderstanding it.

Ha'aretz gets it almost right but is still not quite there:

Israel has been ranked in the top four countries that most negatively influence the word, according to a global public opinion poll conducted by the BBC.

The poll, which surveyed citizens from 22 countries around the world, places Iran in first place, with 55 percent of those surveyed rating it as a negative country. Pakistan ranked second with 51 percent, and in joint third place were Israel and North Korea, with 50 percent of respondents negatively evaluating both countries.

The broad international survey was an initiative of the BBC World Service, and carried out by GlobeScan, in collaboration with the the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland – Program on International Policy Attitudes. Over 24,000 people from 22 countries took part in the poll, which was conducted from December 2011 to February 2012.

The survey’s findings on global attitudes toward Israel are worrying indeed. Last year’s survey already that attitudes toward Israel were negative, but the situation has become more serious this year: Some 47 percent of participants in the 2011 survey had negative views of Israel’s influence on the world, but this year the number has gone up to 50 percent.

The problem with the articles about this is that they don't notice the countries that are not in the survey.

Only 16 countries, plus the EU, were subjects of the survey. No Arab countries were asked about. Neither was Turkey.

Only two Muslim countries were in the questionnaire - and both of them were at the bottom (Iran and Pakistan.)

Also, the poll found:

Fifty per cent of Americans have a favourable view of Israel in 2012, and this proportion has increased by seven points. At the same time, the proportion of negative ratings has gone down six points to 35 per cent and, as a result, the US has gone from being divided in 2011 to leaning positive in 2012. These are the most positive views on Israel’s influence expressed in the US since tracking began in 2005. Apart from the US, the most favourable views of Israel are found in Nigeria and Kenya, where views have also shifted since 2011. A majority of 54 per cent of Nigerians (up 23 points) rates Israel positively, and the country has moved from being divided to leaning positive in 2012 (54% positive vs 29% negative). In Kenya, negative ratings have fallen ten points (to 31%), while positive views have risen by 16 points (to 45%), shifting the country from leaning negative in 2011 to leaning positive in 2012.

At least YNet didn't repeat last year's mistake when reporting on this poll.

This is not to say that the poll isn't worrying. It generally reflects the media bias against Israel in the same countries surveyed, and that disproportionately negative coverage is the engine driving these results. People's  attitudes reflect their exposure to information, and if the information is bad, their opinions would follow suit.

Here are the main results for countries' attitudes towards Israel's influence in graphical format.

Read More

Oh, by the way, Iran's leader said he wants to destroy Israel

And defeat the US, too.

From Israel HaYom:

Israel has, for years, cautioned against Iran's intentions and the dangers of its nuclear ambitions, but on Wednesday former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar gave the world yet another reason to heed those warnings. Aznar, speaking to a crowd in Jerusalem, recalled a meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he expressed his intention to destroy Israel.

"In a private discussion we held in Tehran in October of 2000, Ali Khamenei told me that Israel must be burned to the ground and made to disappear from the face of the Earth," Aznar told the audience. The former Spanish prime minister went on to say that Iran's spiritual leader also said that "Iran's war against the United States and Israel is inevitable."

Aznar was in Israel as a guest of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, currently headed by former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dr. Dore Gold.

Gold asked him, "When Khamenei was talking about wiping Israel off the map, was he referring to a gradual historical process involving the collapse of the Zionist state, or rather its physical-military termination?"

Aznar answered, "He meant physical termination through military force." The former Spanish leader also told the crowd that Khamenei described Israel as "an historical cancer, an anomaly," and said that he was "working toward Iran defeating the United States and Israel in an inevitable war against them."

This is only surprising to Juan Cole's acolytes, who won't believe it anyway.

Read More

Abbas targets corruption - but only of his enemies

Ma'an reports:

A former adviser to late President Yasser Arafat is accused of embezzling tens of millions of dollars, the head of the PA anti-corruption commission said Wednesday.

Rafiq Natsheh told Ma'an his commission sought an international arrest warrant for Muhammad Rashid after he failed to respond to earlier summons by the foreign and justice ministers.

Rashid, who was an economic adviser to Arafat, is accused of embezzling money from the Palestinian Investment Fund by setting up front companies.

Corruption in the Palestine Investment Fund? That rings a bell:

[T]he Palestine Investment Fund [is] a sovereign wealth fund that Abbas controls through a board he handpicked and whose by-laws he rewrote. Since 2006, the PIF has awarded contracts exclusively to Abbas’s cronies, including his sons, Yasser and Tareq. The PIF-backed Wataniya cellular phone company, which drew on international-donor funding, inked a lucrative advertising contract with Tareq, while his brother Yasser sat on its board.

The Abbas family is now said to be worth millions, with lavish property holdings and investments throughout the Middle East.

Moreover, the Abbas machine quietly enriches Hamas as it enriches itself. According to a former Palestinian Authority adviser, Yasser Abbas staffed the Karni Crossing cargo terminal in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip with the stated purpose of ensuring that goods and aid reached Gaza without reaching Hamas. But the customs and border unit at the crossing is not on the Palestinian Authority payroll, and it abuses its monopoly on Gaza’s only cargo terminal to pocket fees and kick them back to Hamas.

The pieces all fit together when you read Challah Hu Akbar's great reporting of the issue:

In February I reported that the Palestinian Authority was targeting Mohammad Rashid, a former advisor to Yasir Arafat. At the time Rashid was being targeted for his alleged ties to InLightPress, a website critical of the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas, which the Palestinian Authority blocked access to along with a number of other websites.

However, the targeting of Rachid has been ongoing for a number of years.

Mohammed Rashid is an Iraqi Kurd, who was Yasir Arafat’s senior economic adviser. He was formerly the head of the Palestine Investment Fund, however, he resigned in October 2004.  In March 2008, Ahmad Al-Mughani, the Attorney General of the Palestinian Authority, began an investigation into Rashid’s finances.

It isn't that the PA is rooting out corruption. They are only going after people who are already on their enemy list and using corruption as an excuse. (Not that Rashid isn't corrupt - he probably is. But so is Abbas.)

Read More

Latest nonsense from Shlomo Sand - "The Land of Israel is a myth"

Shlomo Sand, the academic with no background in history who wrote an absurdly ridiculous book  "The Invention of the Jewish People" to much acclaim by anti-semites, has now come out with a new piece of fiction masquerading as scholarship.

And the anti-Zionists are lapping it up.

I don't have the book, titled "The Invention of the Land of Israel," but Yossi Gurwitz's worshipful  review at 972mag shows enough to prove that this book is as absurd as Sand's previous work (and that Gurwitz is as much of a fraud as Sand is.)

As with the previous book, when Sand makes a blanket statement as fact, all one needs to do is provide a single counterexample to prove that he is a fraud. And as with his previous work, it is trivial to do exactly that.

The heart of Sand’s thesis is the intentional confusion in Zionism between the Halachic – Jewish law – concept of Eretz Israel (“The Land of Israel”, EI) and the concept of a place which is under Jewish sovereignty, and yearning for such a place. “Eretz Israel” is, originally, a Talmudic concept – not a biblical one – which delineates it as a territory that imposes extra religious obligations on Jews living in it, which Jews living outside of it are unburdened of.

Really? There was no concept of Eretz Yisrael in the Bible? It originated in the Talmud?

Tell that to Ezekiel, who quoted God as using that exact term when delineating the borders of the Land in Ezekiel 47.

The term is also used in Ezekiel 40:2, in 1 Samuel 13:19, and in 2 Chronicles 34:7.

Of course, for much of the times of the Prophets, it was divided into two kingdoms - Israel and Judah. The latter phrase is used another half dozen times in the Bible. Moreover, the phrase "Kingdom of Israel" was used a number of times, as it was more specific designation than "Land of Israel."

Is that enough to show that Sand is just making stuff up? Well, there's more:

The rabbis came up with the Three Vows, which forbade Jews from massively emigrating to Eretz Israel, forbade them from rebelling against the nations of the world (it’s worth noting the rabbis, servitors of the emperors, gave divine sanction to their rule), and the third vow is directed at the nations: “That they should not enslave Israel too much.” Rabbinical Judaism left Eretz Israel behind. Sand quotes some later rabbis who opposed emigrating to EI since the Halachic demands on those living in it are very high, and failure to meet them would make the land impure.

The Three Oaths are based on a Midrash and it is far from clear that they are legally binding. But even here Sand is being deceptive, because the relevant oath was not against Jews "massively emigrating to Eretz Israel" but against "storming the wall." What that exactly means is not clear but it probably means forcibly returning to Israel by war.

The Talmudic discussion about this Midrash was referring to the desire of a single rabbi to move to Israel, not a "massive emigration."

It was clearly not forbidden for Jews to move to Israel, because many of these rabbis who Sand say ignored the Land did in fact make aliyah. Encyclopedia Judaica gives details:

During the time of the Second Temple there were many immigrants to Ereẓ Israel. A famous example is the aliyah of Hillel, who went from Babylonia (Pes. 66a) poor and without means, and later became the head of the Sanhedrin (Suk. 20a), founding a long line of nesi'im (see *nasi). One of the high priests appointed by Herod was Hananel ha-Bavli, i.e., of Babylonia. Aliyah, mainly from Babylonia, did not cease after the destruction of the Second Temple (70 c.e.). Sources cite many immigrant scholars who achieved a prominent place in the Jewish community of Ereẓ Israel. In the third generation of tannaim after the destruction of the Temple (110–135 c.e.), Hanan ha-Miẓri ("of Egypt"; Yoma 63b) and Yose b. Dormaskos, who went from Damascus (Sif. Deut. 1), are mentioned. The next generation (135–170 c.e.) included R. Johanan ha-Sandelar of Alexandria (tj, Ḥag. 3:1, 78d) and R. Nathan ha-Bavli, who was the son of the exilarch in Babylonia. Among the fifth generation of tannaim are (170–200) R. Ḥiyya the Great, the disciple and colleague of Judah ha-Nasi (Er. 73a), and Issi b. Judah (Pes. 113b), both of whom emigrated from Babylonia, and Menahem the Gaul (i.e., France; tj, Ber. 4:4, 8b).

Aliyah from Babylonia did not cease in the amoraic period, despite the fact that the great centers of Jewish scholarship were located there. Of the first generation of amoraim (220–250), R. Ḥanina b. Ḥama, a disciple of Judah ha-Nasi and one of the greatest amoraim in Ereẓ Israel, emigrated from Babylonia (tj, Pe'ah 7:4, 20a). In the second generation (250–290), Eleazar b. Pedat, rosh yeshivah in Tiberias (Ḥul. 111b), R. Zakkai (tj, Shab. 7:1, 9a) and R. Ḥiyya b. Joseph (Ḥul. 54a), who emigrated from Babylonia, and Ḥinena Kartigna'ah (of Carthage; tj, Shab. 16:2, 15c) are mentioned. The latter attests emigration from Africa. Two amoraim called Rav Kahana also emigrated from Babylonia (Zev. 59a). There was a particularly large aliyah among the third generation of amoraim (290–320), some of the immigrants forming the leadership of the Jewish community in Ereẓ Israel. Prominent among them were: R. Abba (Ket. 112a); R. Avina (tj, Shev. 4:2, 35a); R. Oshaiah and his brother Hananiah (Sanh. 14a); R. Assi, the colleague of R. Ammi, who was rosh yeshivah of Tiberias (mk 25a); R. Zera, a central figure of both Talmuds (Ket. 112a); R. Ḥiyya b. Abba (Shab. 105b); and R. Ḥelbo (Yev. 64b; tj, Ta'an. 2:1, 65a); R. Yudan of Gaul (Lev. R. 20:4); R. Jeremiah, who later became rosh yeshivah at Tiberias (Ket. 75a); R. Samuel b. Isaac (tj, Ber. 3:5, 6d); R. Samuel of Cappadocia in Asia Minor (Ḥul. 27b); R. Simlai (tj, Pes. 5:3, 32a); and others. In the fourth generation (320–350) the well-known immigrants included: Ray Huna b. R. Avin (tj, rh 2:2, 59a), R. Haggai (mk, 25a), R. Yudan of Cappadocia (tj, Ber. 3:1, 6a), and R. Kahana (tj, rh 2:6, 59b).

So far from Sand's thesis that the rabbis abandoned Israel and discouraged aliyah, many prominent members of their ranks actually moved to Israel themselves. If the Land of Israel was unimportant in Talmudic times, why would they do that?

Oh well, Sand is proven a liar again. And his selective quoting of "some later rabbis" discouraging aliyah is shown to be more of an anomaly than a mainstream view, and proves that he is using sources selectively.

As the article goes on to say, it was Christian persecution of Jews in Israel that slowed aliyah down dramatically after this, not any supposed "oath" based on a non-halachic midrash. Indeed, Maimonides himself - who counseled the Jews of Yemen not to rebel against their rulers based on his interpretation of the three oaths - moved to Israel himself, and Nachmanides declared moving to Israel to be obligatory.

All of this of course predated Zionism by the better part of a millennium.

So Sand is again shown to be an academic fraud, cherry picking sources that he pretends proves his point and even taking them out of context when it suits him.

The only people who take him seriously are those who desperately want to believe him, because they have already made up their minds that Zionism is the world's biggest evil.

Read More

Israel's space program (Scientific American)

Pretty cool:

The Israeli space program is a minuscule operation compared to NASA or the European Space Agency—not surprising for a nation with about the land area and population of New Jersey. “The Israeli Space Agency does not have its own industries,” Hershkowitz says. “It’s just a very small body that coordinates in the activities of the other industries, and also coordinates between the civilian and the military applications.” To do that, he says, the agency has an annual budget of about $50 million. Israel’s presence in space is defined primarily by a network of Earth observation, communication and reconnaissance satellites. But Hershkowitz notes that his nation takes the overall enterprise of scientific research quite seriously. Israel leads the world in terms of percentage of GDP spent on research and development, and he notes that by some criteria its space program is fairly advanced:

"In fact, nowadays Israel belongs to the very exclusive club of about 10 countries in the world that have all capabilities in space. When we say all, I mean producing satellites, both the bus and the payload, launching them and communicating with them. There are only about 10 such states in the world, and Israel belongs to that exclusive club."

Hershkowitz estimates that “close to half of what we invest nowadays in space has to do with scientific applications and civilian applications,” such as monitoring water pollution and soil conditions for agriculture. But he acknowledges that Middle East turmoil will ensure that reconnaissance remains a top priority:

"I think that Israel will continue to be in a leading position in observation satellites, and that’s because of our strategic needs. With observation satellites, of course I would focus on the TecSAR satellites, which are based on radar. This is today the cutting-edge technology; Israel is very much in a leading position. Some of the abilities are still even secret, because you don’t want to reveal the ability of what you can see through."

This is about Israel's official space program. It doesn't even cover the Israeli entry for the Google Lunar X Prize competition. Here's their webpage, although I don't see any recent updates.

(h/t Brian at Israellycool)

Read More

Iranian physicist sentenced to prison for spying with no evidence

From Nature:

Omid Kokabee, an Iranian graduate student who has been imprisoned in Tehran for the past 15 months, was sentenced to 10 years on Sunday for allegedly conspiring with foreign countries against Iran.

Judge Abolghasem Salavati of Branch 15 of Tehran's Revolution Court — who is famous for his harsh sentences — tried 10 to 15 people in the same trial, under the collective charge of collaborating with Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.

Kokabee, a graduate student who previously worked on the physics of optics at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona, Spain, and more recently at the University of Texas in Austin, was arrested in Tehran in February 2011 on charges of “communicating with a hostile government” and “illegal earnings” (see 'A year in jail without trial for Iranian student accused of spying').

Close contacts of Kokabee in Iran have lamented the fact that no proof was presented at the trial to justify the sentence. Whereas other prisoners in the group declared themselves guilty in a television broadcast on the evening before the trial, the physics student has consistently denied all charges and refused to speak in court. (Faces are obscured in the broadcast, but Kokabee may be the person who appears at 24 seconds in a blue shirt.) He plans to appeal the sentence, according to his contacts.

International concern

Since Nature first highlighted Kokabee's case (see ‘Missing physicist may have been jailed in Iran’), various organizations have written to the Iranian authorities asserting his innocence and asking for a fair trial — including the Committee of Concerned Scientists, a human-rights group based in New York; the American Physical Society in College Park, Maryland; and a group of four international optics organizations. His case has been included as a cause for concern in the report of Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran.


In an open letter written while in prison, Kokabee claimed that the authorities were trying to obtain his “collaboration” through threats to him and his family; in another, he insisted that he was not a political activist, something that his friends confirm. Kokabee’s friends speculate that his frequent trips to Iran — totalling four or five in 2010 — may have aroused the suspicions of the Iranian authorities.

“This will send chills through the Iranian higher-education system, particularly scholars and students who seek to enhance and expand their horizons abroad,” says Hadi Ghaemi, a physicist previously at City University in New York and director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, an association that has recently promoted an initiative for imprisoned students.

Maybe he should try a hunger strike. I'm sure that would be effective in an enlightened government like Iran's.

(h/t L. King)

Read More

Former PA Mufti says Jerusalem not holy to Jews

From Al Arabiya via MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from an interview with former PA Mufti Sheik Ikrima Sabri, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on May 11, 2012:

Interviewer: Do you agree that in Jerusalem, there are places that are holy to the Muslims, the Jews and the Christians?

Ikrima Sabri: No, not to the Jews. I didn't say to the Jews. Omar Ibn Al-Khattab didn't find any synagogues of the Jews. There weren't any.

Interviewer: So in your opinion, today there are no places whatsoever in Jerusalem that are holy to the Jews?

Ikrima Sabri: No, none. They build new synagogues, but there are no archaeological remains [pertaining to the Jews]. For many years, they have been digging for archaeological remains, but they haven't found anything. How can we acknowledge something when they themselves admit that they have found nothing?

Except for this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this....

And that's only from the past couple of years.

Read More

Why peace is impossible, reason #6350

Two articles in the mainstream Arabic press about yesterday's "Nakba Day" prove that as long as Israel exists in any form, Arabs will not accept it. No matter what.

The first comes from the popular pan-Arab Al Quds al Arabi site. The title is all you need to know: "The 64-Year Occupation of Palestine." If the "occupation" is 64 years old, that means that even if Israel accedes to all the current PLO demands, there will still not be peace.

The second comes from Jordan's Addastour site, which is titled "Palestine Nakba is a dagger in the side of the Arab nation." It goes through a ridiculous history lesson (did you know that one reason Arabs fled Palestine is because the Jews stole their water?) but the main point is that Israel is a dagger that must be removed for the Arab people to be healed.

This is a critical point that Westerners cannot quite grasp. The conflict is not solvable. The Arab masses, brought up on generations of hate, are not going to accept Israel peacefully. The best anyone can hope for is a series of tactical truces and long term management of the conflict. And it is Israeli strength, not Israeli concessions, that is a prerequisite to having the Arab nations (including the PLO) grudgingly accept that Israel cannot be defeated and learn to deal with it.

Read More

Gaza export totals this season

From Israel's COGAT:

During the current season, more than 600 tons of strawberries, 250 tons of tomatoes, 50 tons of pepper and approximately 10,000,000 flowers, were exported thus far.

This is besides the 2000 sweaters exported yesterday to England and the furniture exports earlier this year.

If you are famous fact-challenged academic Juan Cole, this adds up to "zero."

Read More