Displaying posts published in

2016

The ADL Turns Anti-Israel Whitewashing BDS and ignoring anti-Semitism. Daniel Greenfield

A few years ago, the Syrian American Council sponsored a tour by Sheik Mohammad Rateb al-Nabulsi who had called for the murder of all the Jews.

“Allah has made it a duty to fight them and wage Jihad against them,” he had declared. It was not “permissible under Sharia” to make peace with the Jews. Instead the Muslims were obligated to “fight them, to shed their blood, and wage perpetual Jihad.”

“All the Jewish people are combatant,” he ranted. They could all be killed.

The chairman of the SAC, Hussam Ayloush described Jews as “Zionazis” and refused to condemn Hamas.

Despite that, HIAS allied with the Syrian American Council in its push for the migration of Syrian Muslims. And the ADL chose to invite Omar Hossino of the SAC to speak at its National Leadership Summit.

The ADL is no stranger to strange alliances with Islamist groups through its Interfaith Coalition on Mosques which harasses local communities into acceding to the construction of Islamist institutions. But under its new leader Jonathan Greenblatt, an Obama associate, the organization has also been opening doors to anti-Israel groups across the spectrum.

When radical anti-Israel hate group If Not Now targeted Jewish charities for harassment, the ADL told the stealth BDS group, which has ties to open BDS group JVP, that “there’s more we agree on than disagree on.” A follow up ADL tweet was openly directed at a JVP member. Greenblatt’s press release described members of the anti-Israel hate group as “part of our community” and claimed once again that If Not Now and ADL shared the “same goal”. No less a figure on the left than Eric Yoffie, a persistent critic of Israel, had written that, “IfNotNow is not a pro-Israel organization. It does not deserve the support of left-leaning American Jews.” And that was coming from a J Street supporter.

CAIR’s Dawud Walid: Civil Rights Champion or Radical Hiding in the Open? by M. Zuhdi Jasser

With his March 25 Facebook post, CAIR’s Dawud Walid cemented his position as a preacher of hate and radicalism. He has already become known to many Muslims as an extreme figure, who bullies anyone who disagrees with him, maligns dissidents, harasses gay Muslims, and foments anti-American sentiments.

It is beyond denial to ignore the fact that Muslims such as Walid are leading radicalizers of American Muslims, and their efforts are dedicated to pushing vulnerable Muslims away from integration and reform against Islamist movements.

Dawud Walid is the longtime executive director of Michigan’s chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). His Twitter profile currently bills him as a “human rights advocate and political blogger,” and his blog sells him as an imam who lectures on topics such as how to maintain your manners when dealing with hostile people (the irony of this will soon become abundantly clear), and how to address the very real problem of anti-Black racism within the Muslim community.

To anyone less familiar with Walid’s persona — especially online — he could easily appear to be a champion of civil rights, a man before his time in terms of addressing intra-community problems as well as hostilities between Muslims and non-Muslims. A more comprehensive review of his activities — or even just a cursory review of his commentary on one of the days he has chosen to lash out at anyone with whom he disagrees — reveals a more sinister, even cruel, man. Further, his true aim seems not to be civil discourse and community cohesion, but rather the furtherance of a particularly malignant, vicious strain of political Islam.

I have seen Walid demean, bully, and slander other Muslims for years. He has actively worked to silence discussion of critical issues, by working to shut down screenings of Honor Diaries, a film addressing the mistreatment of women in the name of “honor” culture; instigating online hate campaigns and witch hunts against dissidents — women in particular — and pushing Muslims to ostracize those with whom he disagrees. While this behavior has been abhorrent and has brought significant distress and even potential danger to those he has targeted, the broader public has paid little mind.

His most recent tirade on social media, however, may — and should — wake the public up to his real agenda.

On March 25 of this year, Walid took to social media to talk about the Easter holiday, and how he believes Muslims should treat Christians on this day. Rather than using the opportunity to offer best wishes to Christians and condemn the slaughter of Christians by ISIS, Walid urged Muslims not to “encourage infidels” by wishing Christians a “Happy Easter.” His comments were at best hateful, at worst incitement. His is the kind of thinking that leads to attacks such as the one against Christians in Pakistan over Easter, or when the Pakistani Taliban blew up a crowd of mostly women and children of Ahmadi Muslims, or when Asad Shah, stabbed 30 times, was assassinated recently in his store in Glasgow, Scotland, for wishing Christians a Happy Easter.

French Political Gymnastics and How to Help the Palestinians by Shoshana Bryen

“I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreements with Israel, Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence.” — President George W. Bush, 2002.

The Palestinians do not have “a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty,” but erasing Israel evidently remains their goal.

Rather than offering the Palestinians no-cost recognition, the French should demand a few changes first.

The French government seems to be falling over itself to undo its craven vote in favor of a UNESCO resolution accusing Israel — referred to as the “Occupying Power” in Jerusalem — of destroying historic structures on the Temple Mount:

Prime Minister Manuel Valls apologized. “This UNESCO resolution contains unfortunate, clumsy wording that offends and unquestionably should have been avoided, as should the vote.”
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve apologized. [I do] “not take a supportive view of the text.” The resolution “should not have been adopted” and “was not written as it should have been.”
President François Hollande apologized. [The vote was] “unfortunate,” and, “I would like to guarantee that the French position on the question of Jerusalem has not changed… I also wish to reiterate France’s commitment to the status quo in the holy places in Jerusalem… As per my request, the foreign minister will personally and closely follow the details of the next decision on this subject. France will not sign a text that will distance her from the same principles I mentioned.”
Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault did not quite apologize: “France has no vested interest but is deeply convinced that if we do not want to let the ideas of the Islamic State group prosper in this region, we must do something.”

It sounds as if they thought they had made a mistake. But the vote was not a mistake. Underestimating the depth of Israel’s anger about it might have been a mistake, but not the vote. The French — who, according to their foreign minister, have “no vested interest” but need to “do something” about Islamic State — could not have thought that a UNESCO resolution that offended Israel would do anything to slow ISIS “in the region” or in Europe. There is no way it could; the two are not connected.

Leftist groups silent as 51 Islamic states seek to block gay and transgender groups from attending UN AIDS meeting By Thomas Lifson

It’s another case of the silence of the shams, as the usual suspects for decrying discrimination clam up when Islam is involved. Reuters reports:

A group of 51 Muslim states has blocked 11 gay and transgender organizations from attending a high-level meeting at the United Nations next month on ending AIDS, sparking a protest by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Egypt wrote to the president of the 193-member General Assembly on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to object to the participation of the 11 groups. It did not give a reason in the letter, which Reuters saw.

Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote to General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft and said the groups appeared to have been blocked for involvement in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy.

“Given that transgender people are 49 times more likely to be living with HIV than the general population, their exclusion from the high-level meeting will only impede global progress in combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic,” Power wrote.

Keep the Feds Out of Your Children’s Bathrooms By James Lewis

Obama has asserted, by pure fiat, on no legal, medical, scientific, or commonsense grounds whatsoever, that he can dictate how children use school bathrooms around the country. This is an obnoxious and dangerous abuse of federal power, and it looks suspicious. What is Obama’s motivation?

Adults may not remember the deep shame and embarrassment children often feel, as early as age four, around toilet training. Sibling rivalry can get pretty intense. Being called a “poopy kid” by your brother or sister might look pretty harmless to parents, but young children can experience it as a sink-through-the-floor feeling of overwhelming shame. Getting bowel control is a learning process, and losing bowel control feels like a world-shaking catastrophe to a young child.

Bathrooms are built for privacy because they are surrounded by fear and shame, even after a hundred years of “progressive” theories. Childhood shame around potty training occurs long before the even bigger ups and downs of puberty, another enormously sensitive time “down there.”

Sexuality is an enormous psychic force, not some parlor game. Sexual politics has reshaped generations of young people in Western schools, and from there sexual politics has swept the culture. You can see the results with your own eyes.

Liberals have a long, long history of trivializing the emotional tempests of childhood and adolescence via the myth of “progressive parenting.”

But human biology wins that battle every single time they try to fiddle with the facts of life.

Wise parents just don’t interfere with a child’s turbulent emotional growth; nature is much, much wiser than we are. We can protect children by giving them privacy and emotional support when they ask for it. The growing child is the only judge of what feels comfortable during the most vulnerable years. Leave it to nature. CONTINUE AT SITE

Progressivism’s Macroaggressions The goal of postmodern progressives isn’t universal truth, but power, which is presented in the guise of equality and social justice. By Michael Warren

In 2014 students and faculty at Rutgers University protested the planned commencement address from Condoleezza Rice. The protesters claimed that the first black woman to serve as secretary of state, national security adviser and Stanford University provost was an unsuitable speaker because of her association with the administration of George W. Bush. In the collective mind of the campus left, Ms. Rice was, at best, an enabler of a serial warmonger. In the end she bowed out, writing, “commencement should be a time of joyous celebration” and the school’s “invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time.”

Two years later not even Democratic female secretaries of state are considered speech-worthy. Students and professors at Scripps College, an all-female liberal-arts school in Claremont, Calif., protested the selection of Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, to deliver this year’s address. The liberal feminist icon is, according to the protesters, a “war criminal” and a “genocide enabler.” Some 28 professors signed a letter saying they wouldn’t attend the ceremony. To her credit, Ms. Albright didn’t bow to the pressure. “People have a right to state their views,” she said. “I also think they have a duty to listen to people that they might disagree with.”

To those familiar with the customs of contemporary leftism, Ms. Albright’s response sounds positively outdated. The 78-year-old diplomat’s conception of liberalism isn’t simply divorced from today’s “postmodern left”—it’s in direct opposition to it.
ENLARGE
Photo: wsj
The Closing of the Liberal Mind

By Kim R. Holmes
Encounter, 362 pages, $25.99

How did liberals become so hopelessly illiberal? In “The Closing of the Liberal Mind,” Kim R. Holmes suggests that “the loss of historical memory as to what liberalism was is actually a key to understanding what it is today.” Mr. Holmes, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, does an admirable job of reminding readers of that intellectual history, drawing a line from the political philosophy of John Stuart Mill to the original progressive spirit of Herbert Croly and Woodrow Wilson to the Third Way liberalism of John Rawls and Bill Clinton that synthesized Wilsonian progressivism with Mill’s classical liberalism.

A Medicare Experiment With a Grim Prognosis Congress should stop this venture in bad medicine and flawed economics. By Jeffrey L. Vacirca

Federal bureaucrats announced earlier this year that they plan to upend the way Medicare Part B pays for drugs. The goal? To save money by getting doctors to alter their treatment choices. That’s bad medicine, flawed economics and destructive public policy—and Congress should pass legislation to stop this ill-conceived experiment.

Medicare plays a crucial role in the lives of more than 55 million Americans. It is the only way some seniors can get access to the drugs that keep them alive. The new policy from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will jeopardize this access by inserting the government between doctors and patients in an unprecedented way.

The idea is to use financial incentives to push doctors to make “value-based care” decisions and prescribe cheaper treatments. Unfortunately, modern-day medicine isn’t as black and white as the administration seems to think. Take cancer care, my specialty. There are very few instances when the substitution of a less expensive cancer drug is appropriate or safe for patients. After all, there is a reason the newer, more advanced drugs—such as those that helped former President Jimmy Carter put his cancer into remission—are considered groundbreaking.

Moreover, it’s hard for doctors to accurately assess what bureaucrats deem to be “valuable,” because no details have been published. How will the government determine if patients can receive drugs or what prices are acceptable? We don’t know. But we are still being asked to allow the experiment to move forward. Don’t worry, bureaucrats say, the government will get things right and won’t leave cancer patients fighting for access to treatment.

More than 300 cancer clinics have closed over the past decade, as Medicare has shrunk payments for cancer care, according to the Community Oncology Alliance. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Miscarriage of Justice Department A federal judge slams U.S. lawyers for deceiving the courts on immigrant deportations.

The constitutional challenge to President Obama’s executive action on immigration keeps getting more remarkable. A federal judge has now exposed how the Justice Department systematically deceived lower courts about the Administration’s conduct, and he has imposed unprecedented legal measures to attempt to sterilize this ethics rot.

On Thursday District Judge Andrew Hanen of Texas found that Obama Administration lawyers committed misconduct that he called “intentional, serious and material.” In 2015 he issued an injunction—now in front of the Supreme Court—blocking Mr. Obama’s 2014 order that rewrote immigration law to award legal status and federal and state benefits to nearly five million aliens.

When 26 states sued to block the order in December 2014, Justice repeatedly assured Judge Hanen that the Department of Homeland Security would not start processing applications until February 2015 at the earliest. Two weeks after the injunction came down, in March, Justice was forced to admit that DHS had already granted or renewed more than 100,000 permits.

Justice has also conceded in legal filings that all its lawyers knew all along that the DHS program was underway, despite what they said in briefs and hearings. One DOJ lawyer told Judge Hanen that “I really would not expect anything between now and the date of the hearing.” As the judge notes, “How the government can categorize the granting of over 100,000 applications as not being ‘anything’ is beyond comprehension.”

Justice’s only explanation is that its lawyers either “lost focus on the fact” or “the fact receded in memory or awareness”—the fact here being realities that the DOJ was required to disclose to the court. The states weren’t able to make certain arguments or seek certain legal remedies because the program supposedly hadn’t been implemented, leaving them in a weaker legal position.

More to the point, an attorney’s first and most basic judicial obligation is to tell the truth. Judge Hanen concludes that the misrepresentations “were made in bad faith” and “it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.” Many a lawyer has been disbarred for less. CONTINUE AT SITE

Video #12: The number of 1948 Arab refugees fabricated : Amb.(Ret) Yoram Ettinger

YouTube 6-minute-video seminar on US-Israel and the Mideast

1. “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. It would please God, history and religion,” incited the top Palestinian Arab leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, in a March 1, 1944 Arabic broadcast on the Nazi Berlin Radio. “Drive the Jews into the sea… and never accept the Jewish State,” instigated the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, as reported by the New York Times on August 2, 1948.

2. “In 1948, the Arab Liberation Army told Arabs in British Mandate Palestine to leave their homes, and return a few days later, so it could fulfil its mission [against the Jews],” reported the Palestinian daily Al Ayyam on May 13, 2008.

3. According to Mahmoud Abbas, during an interview on Palestinian TV, July 6, 2009: “People were motivated to run away [before the war], fearing Jewish retribution for the 1929 events” [which included Arab massacres of Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and other mixed towns].

4. The US Ambassador to Israel, James McDonald: “The refugees were on [Arab leaders’] hands as a result of a war which they had begun and lost….”

5. How many Arab refugees resulted from the Arab attempt to annihilate Israel? 800,000 Arabs (according to inflated British Mandate numbers) were in “pre-1967 Israel” before the 1948/9 war. 170,000 Arabs remained at the end of the war. Of the 630,000 Arabs who left, 100,000 were absorbed by Israel’s family reunification gesture; 100,000 middle and upper class Arabs left before the war, absorbed by neighboring Arab countries; 50,000 migrant laborers returned to their Arab countries of origin; 50,000 Bedouins joined their brethren-tribes in Jordan and Sinai; and 10,000 were war fatalities (compared with 6,000 Jewish fatalities). Thus, the total number of Palestinian refugees could not exceed 320,000.

6. What is the global context? According to Elfan Rees, Advisor on Refugees Affairs to the World Council of Churches: During the 1950s, there were 36 MN refugees in Europe, Africa and Asia [less than 1% were Arabs]. All, but the Arabs, have been integrated into their new societies.

7. 100 MN refugees were created by wars since WW2. 79 MN refugees were created from 1933-1945. All of them integrated.

8. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2014 there were 38 MN refugees in their own countries in addition to 15 MN “ordinary” refugees.

9. 90 MN Chinese refugees during the 1937-1945 war against Japan; 15 MN Hindus, Sikhs and Muslim refugees on the altar of the 1947 creation of India and Pakistan; 12 MN German refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia following WW2; 9 MN Korean refugees as a result of the 1950-1953 war; 7 MN Syrian refugees caused by the current civil war; 5 MN Sudanese refugees; 3 MN Polish refugees following the 1939 USSR occupation; 3 MN refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia following the US withdrawal in 1975; 3 MN refugees from Afghanistan; 2 MN Greek and Turkish refugees from the 1919-1922 war; 1 MN Libyan refugees since 2011; 800,000 Yemenite refugees from Saudi Arabia in 1990; Over 500,000 Christian refugees from Lebanon; 300,000 Palestinian refugees from Kuwait in 1991; Over 200,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria; 50,000 Palestinian refugees from Iraq; etc..

10. “In demanding the return of the Palestinian refugees, the intention is to exterminate the Jewish State,” revealed Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Muhammad Salah al-Din Bey (reported by the Egyptian daily Al Misri, Oct. 11, 1949). Thus, attempting to de-legitimize the Jewish State, the Palestinian claims of dispossession fail every reality test, dramatically misrepresenting circumstances and numbers.

Israel: A Medical Device Powerhouse? A look at Israel’s medical device sector. by Vivian Diniz

Israel has proven itself a hotbed for technology. From being a force to be reckoned with in the cybersecurity sector, and a leader in the with nanotechnology it should’t be surprising that the country is also an innovator in the medical devices field.

In late 2015 Steven Schoenfeld, founder and chief investment officer of BlueStar Global Investors LLC, a New York-based firm that specializes in the Israeli capital markets told the Globe and Mail that “Israel, for 30, maybe 40, years has been a leader in basic medical research. They have some of the best practical operating hospitals and research hospitals in the world. They have pioneered all sorts of techniques. The speed of innovation from laboratory to practice is strong.”

In a 2015 study from Israel’s ministry of industry, trade and labour, the country had 725 medical device companies in operation that were leading the country’s growth in the medical devices field. Driving the country’s position in the medical devices field is “a lot of willingness to experiment which doesn’t tend to exist in other societies,” Guy David, a professor of healthcare management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School said.

Medical device companies in Israel benefit from several options including government support. As MDDI Online highlights, the country’s Office of the Scientist, now the Innovation Authority, provides financial support for research and development programs in all technology fields. The government provides support through incubator programs, which is geared at attracting global expertise to support local start ups.

Likewise, in being a hub for technological innovations, medical technology companies operating in Israel also benefit greatly from medtech giants looking at the country’s enterprise sector for “innovative engineering and medical talent” MDDI Online reports. That said, many established medical technology companies like Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Becton Dickinson (NYSE:BDX)

and GE Healthcare (NYSE:GE) are active in Israel’s medical space, with several even setting up local research and development centers within the country.
Finding funding in Israel for medical devices

For early-stage medical device companies, finding funding in Israel can sometimes be a challenge, as with any market. That said, companies looking for funding do have several options available to them.

Angel investing is quite prevalent in Israel. MDDI Online writes that angels are likely to be successful serial entrepreneurs who bring added value to companies. Likewise, companies always have the venture capital and public market routes to take. And of course, acquisition.