RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hamas and Palestinian Authority (PA) officials have turned medical care into a business that earns them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This corruption has enabled top officials in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to embezzle millions of shekels from the PA budget.

In 2013, the PA spent more than half a billion shekels covering medical bills of Palestinians who were referred to hospitals outside the Palestinian territories. However, no one seems to know exactly how the money was spent and whether all those who received the referrals were indeed in need of medical treatment. In one case, it appeared that 113 Palestinian patients had been admitted to Israeli hospitals at the cost of 3 million shekels, while there is no documentation of any of these cases. Even the identities of the patients remain unknown.

Hajer Harb, a courageous Palestinian journalist from the Gaza Strip, says she is now facing charges of “slander” for exposing the corruption. She has been repeatedly interrogated by Hamas. The PA regime, for its part, is not too happy with exposure about the scandal.

Gaza’s hospitals would be rather better equipped if Hamas used its money to build medical centers instead of tunnels for smuggling weapons from Egypt to attack Israel.

Question: How do Palestinian patients obtain permits to receive medical treatment in Israeli and other hospitals around the world? Answer: By paying bribes to senior Palestinian officials in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Those who cannot afford to pay the bribes are left to die in under-equipped and understaffed hospitals, especially in the Gaza Strip.

Yet, apparently some Palestinians are more equal than others: Palestinians whose lives are not in danger, but who pretend that they are. These include businessmen, merchants, university students and relatives of senior Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas officials, who receive permits to travel to Israel and other countries under the pretext of medical emergency.

Many Palestinians point a finger at the PA’s Ministry of Health in the West Bank. They argue that senior ministry officials have been abusing their powers, in order to collect bribes both from genuine patients and from other Palestinians who only want medical permits in order to leave the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. Thanks to the corruption, many real patients have been denied the opportunity to receive proper medical care in Israel and other countries.

It was a customary political gesture, the welcoming of a foreign leader on Sept. 7 by local dignitaries in The Hague. Benjamin Netanyahu, on a two-day state visit to The Netherlands, was being introduced around the room, shaking hands with Dutch parliamentarians, when he reached Tunahan Kuzu, the Turkish-Dutch founder of the pro-immigration, pro-Islam Denk (“Think”) party. Directing his gaze straight at the Israeli president, Kuzu pointed to the Palestinian flag pin he sported on his lapel, and placed his hands pointedly behind his back.

Netanyahu nodded his understanding and moved on.

If Kuzu’s gesture was meant to insult the Israeli leader, it backfired. Instead, he came under fire from both fellow members of parliament and the press, who accused him of disrespect, lack of professionalism, and anti-Semitic behavior.

But his critics missed an even larger point: those like Kuzu, and gestures like the one he made, are becoming outdated. Rather, in the larger picture, even some of Israel’s most stalwart opponents are starting to change course, with some discouraging Western calls for economic sanctions (like the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction, or BDS, movement), and others even engaging in joint military exercises with the Jewish state.

Unsurprisingly, American politicians have taken the lead in this. Just days after the episode in The Hague, for instance, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi put the kibosh on a planned BDS event scheduled for Sept. 16 on Capitol Hill. Several U.S. states have passed anti-BDS bills throughout the past year, and in signing the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 in February, President Obama declared, “I have directed my administration to strongly oppose boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions targeting the State of Israel.”

But more unexpected have been the military cooperation exercises involving less Israel-friendly countries. In August, Pakistan and the UAE both joined Israel and the U.S. Air Force in exercises at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Israel and Jordan also recently participated in joint exercises with the U.S..

Much of this new military cooperation results from concerns within the region of the growing threat of Iran, Commander Jennifer Dyer, a retired naval intelligence officer, explained in a recent e-mail exchange. “Obviously, the joint participation with Muslim countries is a step beyond participating with NATO. Politically, it’s new territory,” she observed. “The growing concern in Sunni nations about Iran is, of course, the big driving factor.”

As an example, she noted that the chief of staff of Pakistan’s army warned in January that “Pakistan would ‘wipe Iran off the map’ if Iran threatened Saudi Arabia,” and that Sudan cut ties with Iran at around the same time. (For its part, Israel has since begun a campaign encouraging the U.S. and other Western nations to repair relations with the African country.)

While Iran’s regime continues to expand its nuclear facilities and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s war has caused a half million deaths, the Green parties in North America are bizarrely preoccupied with boycotting the Jewish state. The parties’ counterpart in Germany is, however, a vehement opponent of the anti-Semitic boycott movement. The German Greens should serve as a model for Canadian and U.S. Greens to revise their anti-Israel positions.

Last month, the Green Party of Canada became the country’s first party to endorse the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS) targeting Israel.

BDS claims to seek concessions from Israel to advance the cause of Palestinian statehood. The movement is actually against peace because it seeks to dismantle Israel and to impose a one-state solution, rather than two states for two peoples.

While Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May personally rejects BDS as polarizing, she was overridden on the issue by voting delegates at her party’s annual convention.

It is a topsy-turvy world when a political group devoted to protecting the environment prioritizes BDS over opposing Iran’s nuclear aims — which have the potential to devastate humanity and the environment — and the Assad regime — which, along with its sponsors Iran, Russia and Hezbollah — has engaged in a scorched-earth policy in Syria.

Iran’s Lake Urmia is drying up, Tehran is beset by major air pollution and one of its nuclear facilities — Bushehr — lies on an earthquake-prone area.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is the Eastern nemesis of the European elite. No one else in Europe except him speaks about defending “Christianity.”

“Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims … This is an important question, because Europe and the European identity is rooted in Christianity.” — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The last chance to save Europe’s roots might well come from the former communist members of the EU — those who defeated the Ottomans in 1699 and now feel culturally threatened by their heirs.

Cypriots know much better than the comfortable bureaucrats of Brussels the consequences of a cultural collision. Ask about their churches on the Turkish side of the island; how many of them are still standing?

Austria’s fate is now at stake.

Perhaps it was a coincidence that Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna and tipped to be the next Pope, chose September 12, the anniversary of the Siege of Vienna, when Turkey’s Ottoman troops nearly conquered Europe, to deliver a most dramatic appeal to save Europe’s Christian roots.

“Many Muslims want and say that ‘Europe is finished’,” Cardinal Schönborn said, before accusing Europe of “forgetting its Christian identity.” He then denounced the possibility of “an Islamic conquest of Europe.”

Waleed Al-Husseini is a Palestinian blogger and essayist, as well as the founder of the Ex-Muslim Council of France. He garnered international fame in 2010 when he was arrested by the Palestinian Authority, imprisoned and tortured for articles he posted, in which he criticized Islam. He has received threats and death threats. He is one of the most celebrated cyber-activists from the Arab world and now lives in France, where he sought refuge. He continues to be a defender of its secular, republican values.

“The world is changing, and more and more Muslims wish to live without the oppressing “tutelage” of Islam.” — Waleed Al-Husseini.

“I find it difficult to speak of Muslim integration in France. In fact, except for a tiny minority, they are not really looking to integrate themselves.” — Waleed Al-Husseini.

“The only ones who create stigmatization are the Muslims themselves… I cannot see one scintilla of evidence of a plot against Islam.” — Waleed Al-Husseini.

“In addition, more and more Islamists refuse to integrate into a society that they deem godless and that they wish to convert.” — Waleed Al-Husseini.

“Unfortunately, with rare exceptions, Muslims discreetly approve or at least try to justify the attacks.” — Waleed Al-Husseini.

“According to their speeches, the Islamists indeed have set themselves the goal of conquering and ruling the entire world. If they manage to do it, they will owe their success not to their intellectual power or their faith, even less to their military force, but to their adversaries’ cowardice.” — Waleed Al-Husseini.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Could you start by reminding us of the circumstances and motives of your dissent?

Waleed Al-Husseini: My atheism is the result of a long quest for the truth about what I saw happening in front of me. Obviously, nobody holds all of the truth, but during my research, I realized that religion in general, and Islam in particular, was highly incompatible with the values of human life. That was the beginning of my rejection of Islam. As time goes by, the horrors and crimes committed against mankind in the name of Islam seem to have proven me right. They have strengthened my conviction that it was the right choice to make.

The government of Canada has been calling for greater work towards identifying the causes of extremism and radicalization in Canada.

One source of extremism is clearly in educational institutions. If the government of Canada is truly serious about attacking extremism in Canada, then having a national level investigation into educational institutions would be a good place to start.

Canada’s so-called feminists have remained silent on the issue of wife-beating, inequality for women and the generally misogynistic views advanced in schools, universities and public groups such as the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). In certain circles, apparently, brown women’s lives do not rate as highly as white women’s lives. At the same time, the social justice warrior scale places Islam — even its Islamist variety — at the top of the protected scale. Therefore, feminists allow the advocacy of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and wife-beating while refusing to condemn those who advocate it, including Canada’s Minister for the Status of Women.

The government of Canada has been calling for greater work towards identifying the causes of extremism and radicalization in Canada. In an August 2016 statement, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale stated that, “We need to know how to identify those who could be vulnerable to insidious influences that draw certain people — especially young people — toward extremism leading to violence.”

One source of extremism is clearly in educational institutions. If the government of Canada is truly serious about attacking extremism in Canada, then having a national level investigation into educational institutions would be a good place to start.

Muslim children need to be stronger so they “won’t get mixed with the moral degeneration of the Canadian community.” At least this is the view of a teacher who explains why an Ottawa Islamic school uses the textbooks it does to keep Muslim youth firmly in the Sunni (Islamist) camp.[1] At York University in Toronto, the Muslim Student Association has handed out literature that says beating a wife is permissible and that some wives will enjoy the beating.[2]

Yoram Hazony’s “Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom” is a bold and fiery piece. In what follows, even as I intend to question and complicate his argument, I remain grateful for its genuinely refreshing spirit of intellectual combat. http://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2016/09/the-flaws-in-both-universalism-and-nationalism/

Hazony characterizes the idea behind modern nationalism, what he calls the “Protestant construction,” as at root a biblical idea. Although he doesn’t specifically mention it, I can’t help being reminded of the familiar story in Genesis of the tower of Babel (or “Baybul” as I was taught to pronounce it in the American South). That story perfectly encapsulates how I think about nationalism and universalism. On the one hand, the ambition of the tower’s builders was a noble one: they wanted to reach heaven. What could be a more appropriate human aspiration? On the other hand, that ambition challenged the majesty of God, trying to take for all mankind something that by right belonged only to the Creator, to the Transcendent.

The result of this human initiative is that God scatters the people into different nations and “confuses” their once-single language into many. Again: on the one hand, you might think of this as a kind of reward: independent nations, each able to determine its own unique identity and pursue its own purposes. On the other hand, you might—along with the displeased God of Genesis—see it as a punishment, and as a caution.

What this story powerfully suggests to me is that, as is often and perhaps usually the case in human affairs, we have here two alternatives—let’s call them, respectively, cosmopolitan universalism and national self-determination—and they’re both flawed. Really, deeply flawed: vulnerable not just to mistaken impulses but to vile and ugly deformations.

Thus, in the case of cosmopolitan universalism, you can get to the point where a king or emperor or supreme leader like Nebuchadnezzar decrees that anyone who doesn’t pay obeisance to the realm’s designated idol will be subject to punishment up to and including execution. That has surely happened more than once in human history, and there are significant numbers of people today who would like to make it happen again.

BERLIN—German Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted to her party’s latest electoral loss by sticking to her migration policy on Monday but acknowledging, more explicitly than before, that she had made mistakes along the way.

Ms. Merkel described her center-right Christian Democratic Union’s second-place performance in Sunday’s election in the city-state of Berlin as a “very unsatisfactory, disappointing” result. She acknowledged widespread public discomfort with the influx of more than a million asylum applicants to Germany this year and last and said that she heard voters’ concerns.

“If I could, I would turn back time many, many years to be able to better prepare myself and the whole government and all those in positions of responsibility for the situation that met us rather unprepared in late summer 2015,” Ms. Merkel said at a news conference at her party’s headquarters in the German capital.

Nevertheless, Ms. Merkel—whose steadfast refusal to close the German border to asylum seekers has become a focal point in the global debate over how to treat refugees—said she would stick to her current policy. She said she was guided both by a conviction that Germany has a duty to take in people in need but also that the sort of chaotic, mass influx of people as this country experienced last year had to be prevented.

The processing of asylum requests and deportation of those rejected needed to be sped up, she said, while conditions in Africa, Syria, and elsewhere needed to be improved to reduce the numbers of refugees.

“No one wants this to be repeated, and I don’t either,” Ms. Merkel said of last year’s refugee influx at Germany’s borders. “We have learned from history.”

The Alternative for Germany, an upstart, anti-immigrant party that took 14.2% in Sunday’s Berlin vote, has called for the country to turn away asylum seekers at the border and to limit immigration by Muslims. Ms. Merkel’s sister party in the state of Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, has sought an annual cap on how many refugees Germany accepts and called for precedence to be given to immigrants from Christian countries.
ENLARGE

Ms. Merkel rejected those calls in her remarks on Monday. Blocking all refugees or all Muslims, she said, would contradict not only “the German constitution and our country’s duties under international law, but also above all the ethical foundations of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and my personal convictions.”

The center-left Social Democrats won Sunday’s election in the city-state of Berlin with just 21.6% of the vote—the worst result for any winner in a state election in German postwar history. Both the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats, who came in second with 17.6%, saw their worst results in a Berlin state election and lost more than 5 percentage points compared with the previous Berlin election, in 2011. CONTINUE AT SITE

Long after I returned to the U.S. after living in Jerusalem I kept thinking about soft targets. The peak-hour commuter train that took me from Westchester to Grand Central. The snaking queue outside the security checkpoint at La Guardia Airport. The theater crowds near Times Square.

All of these places were vulnerable and most of them undefended. Why, I wondered, weren’t they being attacked?

This was in late 2004, when Jack Bauer was an American hero and memories of 9/11 were vivid. Yet friends who were nervous about boarding a flight seemed nonchalant about much more plausible threats. Maybe they expected the next attack would be on the same grand scale of 9/11. Maybe they thought the perpetrators would be supervillains in the mold of Osama bin Laden, not fried-chicken vendors like Ahmad Khan Rahimi, the suspected 23rd Street bomber.

Life in Israel had taught me differently. Between January 2002, when I moved to the country, and October 2004, when I left, there were 85 suicide bombings, which took the lives of 543 Israelis. Palestinian gun attacks claimed hundreds of additional victims. In a small country it meant that most everyone knew one of those victims, or knew someone who knew someone.

To this day the bombings are landmarks in my life. March 2002: Cafe Moment, just down the street from my apartment, where my future wife had arranged to meet a friend who canceled at the last minute. Eleven dead. September 2003: Cafe Hillel, another neighborhood hangout, where seven people were murdered, including 20-year-old Nava Applebaum and her father, David, on the eve of her wedding. January 2004: Bus No. 19 on Gaza Street, which I witnessed close-up before the ambulances arrived. Another 11 dead and 13 seriously injured, including Jerusalem Post reporter Erik Schechter.
Living in those circumstances had a strange dichotomous quality. Things were absolutely fine until they absolutely weren’t. Memories of bombings mix with other memories: jogs around the walls of the old city, weekend outings to the beach, the daily grind of editing a newspaper. The sense of normality was achieved through an effort of will and a touch of fatalism. Past a certain point, fearing for your own safety becomes exhausting. You give it up.

But it wasn’t just psychological adjustment that made life livable. Israelis recoiled after each bombing, mourned every victim, then picked themselves up. Cafe Moment reopened weeks after it was destroyed. CONTINUE AT SITE

A study led by Tel Aviv University’s Dr. Noam Shomron of the Sackler School of Medicine has discovered that delivery of a combination of genetic therapy with chemotherapy to a primary tumor site is extremely effective in preventing breast cancer metastasis.http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/israeli-scientists-discover-link-to-prevent-breast-cancer-metastasis/2016/09/19/

The research was carried out at TAU in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led at MIT by Dr. Natalie Artzi, and the students of both principal investigators. Data on human genetics were provided by Prof. Eitan Friedman of TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Chaim Sheba Medical Center.

In a TEDxTalk event in August of this year, Dr. Shomron discussed the study with a group of colleagues.

The findings were also published in the September 19, 2016 online issue of Nature Communications.

One in eight women worldwide are diagnosed annually with the disease. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among women.

Hana Levi Julian

About the Author: Hana Levi Julian is a Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition to her years working in broadcast journalism.