Displaying posts categorized under

ISRAEL

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

New York Times Exonerates Palestinian Arch Terrorist The ‘paper of record’ attempts to turn a Jew killer into the new Nelson Mandela.

By on April 20th, 2017

Reprinted from Mida.org.

The New York Times published an op-ed by arch-terrorist and convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti on Sunday. A respectable international newspaper giving a terrorist and a murderer an outlet to spread his venom and lies is detestable, but it’s also an affront to all those fighting terrorism worldwide. What the New York Times did to Israel is comparable to an international newspaper providing an outlet to Osama Bin Laden to spread his hatred and lies towards America.

But who is Marwan Barghouti and why is the New York Times’s willingness to publish his lies so repulsive?

Barghouti was the leader of the military wing of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, which between September 2000 – April 2002 carried out thousands of terror attacks against Israel, including suicide bombings. Furthermore, he served as Secretary General of Fatah in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, head of the Tanzim, and the founder of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – a designated terror organization by the U.S. – which has carried out a large number of deadly terrorist attacks killing scores of Israelis and wounding hundreds. Barghouti received large amounts of funds from different sources both inside and outside Israel to finance terror attacks. Among these sources was the Palestinian Authority and the specific allocations of these funds were authorized by Yassir Arafat. In addition, Barghouti provided weapons and logistical support for many terrorist attacks.

Barghouti was arrested during Operation Defensive Shield on April 14, 2002. In 2004, Barghouti was sentenced to five consecutive life terms and 40 years for the murders of of Greek Orthodox monk Tsibouktsakis Germanus; a shooting spree at the Tel Aviv Seafood restaurant killing Eli Dahan, 53, Yosef Habi, 52, and Salim Barakat, 33, and wounding 31; the killing of Yoela Hen, 45, gunned down at the entrance to the town of Givaat Zeev.

According to the IDF, the following are some of the more heinous terrorist activities which Barghouti is responsible for between the years of 2001 and 2002:

– Shooting attack during a Bat Mitzva celebration at a banquet hall in which six Israelis were killed and 26 injured.

– Shooting attack in the center of Jerusalem killing two Israelis and wounding 37.

– Shooting attack in the Jerusalem residential neighborhood of Neve Ya’acov, killing an Israeli policewoman and wounding nine.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinians: Hunger Strike or Smokescreen? by Bassam Tawil

By on April 20th, 2017

It is an integral part of the Palestinian strategy to undermine, isolate, delegitimize and destroy Israel.

It is not only Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas who is in trouble. Marwan Barghouti, too, knows better than to air dirty Fatah laundry. What, then, is to be done? The traditional diversionary tactic: Direct the heat towards Israel.

Stripped of its Western trappings, Barghouti’s “hunger strike” is actually a struggle between Abbas and yet another Fatah pretender to the throne. And once again, Israel — the state that supposedly so “mistreats” incarcerated Palestinian terrorists — takes the heat.

Palestinians have an old habit of settling internal scores by diverting their grievances and violence towards Israel. This practice is clear to those who have been monitoring developments in the Palestinian arena for the past decades. It is an integral part of the Palestinian strategy to undermine, isolate, delegitimize and destroy Israel.

Those less familiar with Palestinian culture and tactics, however, have difficulty understanding the Palestinian mindset. Officials in Washington, London, Paris and other Western capitals rarely meet the ordinary Palestinian, the “man on the street” who represents the authentic voice of the Palestinians.

Instead, these officials meet Palestinian politicians and academics from Ramallah — the “experts” who are actually accomplished con artists. Such Palestinians grasp the Western mindset very well, and use their understanding to twist Western officials any which way they want.

The Western reaction to the hunger strike declared on April 17 by Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails is a case in point. The strike was initiated by Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah official who is serving five life terms for his role in terror attacks against Israelis. Barghouti has been in prison for 15 years so far.

Remarkably, despite Barghouti’s long-term imprisonment, this is his first hunger strike, apparently despite the poor incarceration conditions that have supposedly driven him to this move. Or might there be some other factor behind Barghouti’s sudden acute discomfort?

The hunger strike is, in fact, completely unrelated to conditions in Israeli prisons. Rather, Barghouti’s hunger strike is directly linked to a power struggle that has long been raging inside his Fatah faction. More than a move against Israel, the hunger strike is aimed at Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas (who is also chairman of Fatah).

Continue reading →
EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Scientists Take a Stand Against Academic Boycotts of Israel How can scholars reconcile opposition to the Trump travel ban with blacklists aimed at the Jewish state? By Ruth R. Wisse

By on April 20th, 2017

More than 100 Boston-area researchers in health care and life sciences released a statement April 13 in defense of “the liberal ideals which have shaped our democracy” and in support of “the free flow of ideas and information” that is central to their work. Why affirm something so obvious? To stop academic blacklisting by the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement, which targets Israeli universities and scholars.

Attempts to isolate Israel and its educational institutions aren’t new. In 1945 the Arab League declared that all Arab institutions and individuals must “refuse to deal in, distribute, or consume Zionist products of manufactured goods.” The original boycott soon extended to entities that traded with Israel. This did great economic and political damage until the U.S. Congress in 1977 prohibited American companies from cooperating with it, as some were doing. Only U.S. prohibition of the prohibition had the force to guarantee free international trade.

In 2002, a group of professors from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were among the first academics to advocate divesting from Israel. Two years later the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was founded with the explicit purpose of isolating Israeli academics and institutions. Its goal was to deny Israeli scholars access to scholarly conferences, journals and employment opportunities. The boycott also includes keeping unwelcome speakers and information from campus to maintain Israel as the permanent object of blame.

The campaign’s efforts paid off in the U.S., where the American Studies Association and the National Women’s Studies Association approved boycotts in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Academic associations that have so far voted such resolutions down—the American Anthropological Association, Modern Language Association and American Historical Association—introduce new ones every year. Only through a concerted effort by school administration can universities remain free spaces. Jewish students should not be expected to bear the full brunt of attack by those who import the Arab-Muslim war against Israel into the American campus.

Researchers in science and medicine have a special interest in opposing a boycott that tries to destroy the benefits of shared ideas and knowledge. Although people in the sciences do not normally issue collective political statements, signatories of the recent letter cite the collaboration of Israeli scientists in lifesaving treatments as reason enough to protest the blacklist. Their statement condemns boycotts that contravene core democratic values and threaten “the free flow of information and ideas,” which functions as “the lifeblood of the academic world.”

The Boston group’s aim is similar to those of recent academic protests against President Trump’s temporary travel ban. A friend-of-the-court brief filed by 17 universities affirms that students from the six suspect countries could have much to contribute by “making scientific discoveries, starting businesses, and creating works of literature and art that redound to the benefit of others” far beyond university campuses.

If universities are willing to fight the government’s travel ban against students from Muslim-majority countries, why are members of their faculties fighting to prevent exchange with academic counterparts in the Jewish homeland? American academics ought to entertain pluralistic and multicultural perspectives and refrain from cutting themselves off from those with whom they disagree. Universities cannot pretend to be protecting the free flow of information while their faculty members try to prevent interaction with the most dynamic academic center in the Middle East.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION, ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Predictable BDS Win at Tufts Andrea Levin

By on April 20th, 2017

News that Tufts University was the latest to join an ignominious list of schools at which student governments have voted to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel prompted yet another round of shock and calls for action from parents and alumni.

In a particularly obnoxious move, Tufts’ Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter engineered the vote to occur just before Passover, thus blindsiding many Jewish defenders of Israel who had already headed home for the holiday. Those individuals were told to submit questions via Google if they couldn’t attend the proceedings.

The balloting — undertaken in notably secretive style, with photos and recordings prohibited to conceal the identities of individual delegates and their votes — wasn’t even close. Seventeen students voted in favor, with six against and eight abstentions.

With the vote, these Tufts students opted for punishing Israel — for allegedly being an apartheid regime — and called on several corporations to end their economic activity with the Jewish state.

Israel, of course, is flourishing economically — and not a single American college or university has acted on the recommendations of radicalized student governments to boycott the Jewish state. And the apartheid smear is a trope of global anti-Israel propagandists, which is belied by the realities of Israel’s diverse, democratic and progressive society.

But fairminded people are right to be dismayed by the bigoted BDS attacks against Israel, and their potential to poison the academic community with lies about the Jewish state. Therefore, defeating these attacks is important.

A key question is why such measures succeed on some campuses, but fail on many others — or never come up at all on the roughly 4,000 US college and university campuses. There have been (according to the AMCHA Initiative’s documentation) just over 100 such measures introduced in total over the last five years on 54 separate campuses, with slightly fewer than half passing.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

REMEMBERING BEN HECHT WHO DIED ON APRIL 18, 1964 BY LAWRENCE BUSH

By on April 19th, 2017

http://jewishcurrents.org/ben-hecht/

Ben Hecht, a writer of wide-ranging accomplishments and great fame and influence who became especially active in American Zionist efforts to save Jews from the Holocaust, died at 70 on this date in 1964. Hecht’s screenplays included The Front Page (1931), Scarface (1932), Gunga Din (1939), Angels Over Broadway (which he also directed, in 1940), several Hitchcock films, and dozens of other Hollywood classics, including Gone with the Wind, for which he was an uncredited screenwriter. Hecht also wrote some thirty-five books and a couple of Broadway plays. He was an anti-racist activist, active in campaigns against lynching and the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s. In the 1940s he collaborated with Hillel Kook (aka Peter Bergson) to raise funds for the Irgun in Palestine and to agitate for the rescue of European Jews from the Nazis’ predations. Their activism included a widely read article in Reader’s Digest testifying to the slaughter, and a Madison Square Garden pageant, “We Will Never Die,” produced by Billy Rose and Ernst Lubitsch. To hear Hecht interviewing Jack Kerouac in 1958, look below.

“Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.” –Ben Hecht

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Time To Ditch Israel’s Fake Friends Israel doesn’t need to appease J Street and BDS supporters in the American Jewish community. Lee Bender

By on April 19th, 2017

It’s getting terribly tiresome hearing and seeing some liberal American Jews complain and harp that Israel is not doing much of anything “to make peace with the Palestinians” and are not acting with “compassion and justice.” The constantly repeated refrain, including from groups such as J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other BDS supporters, that the status quo is unacceptable; that Israel, which is the much stronger party, and not the “poor” “victim” Palestinian Arabs, must urgently do something now; make concessions; withdraw from “occupied territories” for the sake of a Palestinian Arab state on its doorstep –- or else– is all too reflexive. And Israel will of course be isolated and vilified by the world and U.N. if it does not comply. After all, “we all know what this is going to look like in the end.”

Well, maybe not. Maybe it is about time for Israel to say, “thanks for your suggestions, but if it is a choice between placing Israeli lives at risk or your support, then later on.”

Israel is actually doing quite well with business and relations around the world these days. Israel has tremendously positive things to offer that the world is hungry for: high technology, computers, software, security systems, medical devices and treatments, agricultural, water, and other industry innovations. Israel is an open, democracy that upholds civil, women, minority, and gay rights, has a robust free press, independent judiciary, a parliament where Arab citizens are represented, an independent judiciary, educational opportunities and top health care. Is everything perfect? No. Can and must Israel do better? Indeed. But these “progressive values” are nowhere to be found in the Arab world. However, simply being a Jew who does not live in Israel does not give an automatic right to dictate terms to Israel’s generals and security officials as to “what is in Israel’s best interests.” That Israel is a sovereign democracy which elects its leaders is apparently of no consequence to some.

Placing the onus for peace squarely on Israel is wildly misplaced. The Arabs have rejected a state living side-by-side with Israel six times since 1937. The fact is that Israel has no true peace partner: the Palestinian Authority engages in “pay to slay”– paying salaries to those who murder Jews (or the families of murderers)– glorifies and names public squares for terrorist murderers; preaches hate and incitement of Jews in its schools, text books, mosques and media; refuses to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish People; fails to abide by its obligations under the Oslo Accords to stop terrorism, confiscate weapons, and teach peace; and has failed to retract their anti-Semitic charter.

Meanwhile, the PA leader, Mahmoud Abbas is 82 and has refused to hold elections for nine years. And don’t forget Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood) who rules in Gaza and whose charter calls not only for the eradication of Israel, but the murder of all Jews.

We do in fact “know what this is going to look like” in the vision of the elites:” First, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated, “If the Arabs lay down their arms, there will be no more war. If Israel lays down its weapons, there will be no Israel.”

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why Is the US Still Funding Palestinian Terrorism? (At Least Close the PLO Office in Washington) by Shoshana Bryen

By on April 19th, 2017

Jamil Tamimi, 57, knew that if he committed an act of terror, he would be lionized by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and — perhaps more importantly — that, if he were killed or sent to prison, his family would be taken care of financially.

“The PLO Commission was new only in name. The PLO body would have the ‎same responsibilities and pay the exact same amounts of salaries to prisoners… PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas retained overall supervision of ‎the PLO Commission.” — Palestinian Media Watch.

In 2016 Bashar Masalha, who murdered U.S. Army veteran Taylor Force and wounded several others, was hailed on official PA media outlets as a “martyr.” A few months later, Abbas said on PA TV, “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem…. With the help of Allah, every martyr will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.”

The U.S. government should let the PLO and PA know that we are onto their game. Disincentivizing terrorism by closing the PLO office in Washington would be a good first step.

British exchange student Hannah Bladon was stabbed to death on a Jerusalem light rail train last Friday. Her murderer was identified as an East Jerusalem resident who had previously been convicted of molesting his daughter and had tried to commit suicide. Failing at that, he apparently opted for terrorism, on the assumption that the police would kill him. They didn’t. “This,” the Shin Bet said in a statement, “is another case, out of many, where a Palestinian who is suffering from personal, mental or moral issues chooses to carry out a terror attack in order to find a way out of their problems.”

“Suicide by cop” is not unheard of, but the real incentives need to be spelled out.

Jamil Tamimi, 57, knew that if he committed an act of terror, he would be lionized by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and — perhaps more importantly — that, if he were killed or sent to prison, his family would be taken care of financially.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

The New York Times Calls a Convicted Terrorist a “Parliamentarian” by Elliott Abrams

By on April 19th, 2017

Today the New York Times ran an op-ed by Marwan Barghouti, and described him as “a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.”

Period.

In his op-ed, Barghouti states that he was first arrested at age 15, then again at age 18, and he alleges physical abuse by Israeli interrogators.

But nowhere does the Times tell readers what he was convicted of doing. Here is an account of the proceedings from the Washington Post in 2004:

Barghouti was found guilty of ordering attacks that killed a Greek Orthodox monk in the West Bank in 2001, an Israeli at the Jewish settlement of Givat Zeev in 2002 and three people at the Seafood Market restaurant in Tel Aviv in 2002. He was also convicted of one count each of attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization….

Television news footage of the trial showed Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian legislature, responding to the convictions in a low voice, saying in Hebrew, “This is a court of occupation that I do not recognize.”

“A day will come when you will be ashamed of these accusations,” said Barghouti, 44. “I have no more connection to these charges than you, the judges, do. The judges cannot judge on their own. They get their order from above.”

The three-judge panel said there was insufficient evidence to prove Barghouti’s guilt in another 21 deaths that were originally part of the indictment….

Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said, however, that the verdict “demonstrates the independence of the Israeli courts. The fact that in most of the accusations he is found not guilty is clear evidence that his case was given a fair trial.”

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz gave further detail:

The court ruled that Barghouti was directly responsible for a January 2002 terror attack on a gas station in Givat Zeev in which Israeli Yoela Chen was murdered. The attack, the judges said, was carried out at his direct order in revenge for the assassination of Raed Carmi. Barghouti had admitted his responsibility for this attack.
The attack in which a Greek monk was murdered in Ma’aleh Adumim on June of 2001 was also carried out at the instruction of Barghouti, the judges said.
The former Tanzim leader, the court ruled, also approved the March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv’s Seafood Market restaurant in which three people were murdered, as well as a car bomb attack in Jerusalem.

Didn’t Times readers have the right to know any of this? They did, and the by-line the Timesallowed Mr. Barghouti is a shameful abdication of responsibility to readers.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinians’ Real Enemies: Arabs by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on April 17th, 2017

The Arab heads of state and monarchs do not like to be reminded of how badly they treat Palestinians and subject them to discriminatory and apartheid laws.

It is not comfortable or safe to be a Palestinian in an Arab country. Scenes of lawlessness and anarchy inside Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank have also driven many residents to move to nearby cities and villages. Most refugees in the West Bank no longer live inside UNRWA-run camps.

Let us end where we began: with the Palestinian (non)leadership. What has it done to help its people in the Arab countries? Nothing. No Palestinian leader will urge an emergency session of the UN Security Council to expose the ethnic cleansing and killing of Palestinians in Arab countries. No Palestinian leader will demand that the international media and human rights organizations investigate the atrocities perpetrated by Arabs on their Palestinian brethren. We are sure to see more such criminal silence when Abbas meets with the president of the United States.

Palestinians living in refugee camps in the Arab world are facing ethnic cleansing, displacement, and death — but their leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are too busy tearing each other to pieces to notice or even, apparently, care much.

Between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, it looks as if they are competing for the worst leadership, not the best. Clearly, neither regime gives a damn about the plight of their people in the Arab world.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who is scheduled to visit Washington in the coming weeks for his first meeting with US President Donald Trump, spends most of his time abroad. There is hardly a country in the world that he has not visited since he assumed office in January 2005.

Hamas, for its part, is too occupied with hunting down Palestinians suspected of “collaboration” with Israel, and arming its members as massively as possible for war with Israel, to spend much time on the well-being of the two million people living under its thumb in the Gaza Strip. Hamas does have resources: its money is otherwise designated, however, to digging attack tunnels into Israel and smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip.

The globetrotting Abbas, treated to red-carpet receptions wherever he shows up, has no time to attend to his miserable people in the Arab countries. Abbas devotes more than 90 percent of his speeches to denunciations of Israel, uttering barely a word about the atrocities committed against his people in Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Iraq. The 82-year-old PA president is, as always, fully preoccupied with political survival.

Abbas’s real enemies are his critics, such as estranged Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan, and Hamas. Abbas is currently focused on undermining Dahlan and preventing Hamas from taking control of the West Bank. In the past few years, Abbas has also demonstrated an obsession with isolating and delegitimizing Israel in the international arena. For him, this mission is more sacred than saving the lives of Palestinians.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Extracting water from air, Israeli firm looks to quench global thirst By Shoshana Solomon

By on April 16th, 2017

Water-Gen, controlled by Russian-Israeli billionaire Michael Mirilashvili, eyes mass assembly of water-producing units by year end.

Water-Gen Ltd., an Israeli company whose technology captures humidity in order to make drinking water out of air, is not likely to experience the cash-flow squeeze many fast-growing companies are afflicted by.

That’s because Russian-Israeli entrepreneur and billionaire Michael Mirilashvili, who is also the vice president of the World Jewish Congress, bought control of the company last summer, and because it has high-profile advocates: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned it in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” about Israel’s high-tech prowess. At the AIPAC conference last month, Harvard Law professor and Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz took the stage to showcase its technology. In September, the company presented its solution at the United Nations.

Not bad for a firm that employs some 30 people, mainly engineers, in the central Israeli city of Rishon Lezion. It was set up in 2010 by Israeli entrepreneur Arye Kohavi, a former combat reconnaissance company commander in the Israeli Army who previously set up a firm that developed e-learning software.

“Whatever it needs, we will finance,” said Maxim Pasik, the executive chairman of Water-Gen in an interview at the Herzliya offices of Beer Itzhak Energy Ltd, when asked about financing options for the firm’s growth. “Water-Gen’s potential is endless. Water from air is the next source of water for the world.” Beer Itzhak Energy is the unit of Mirilashvili’s business that bought a 70 percent stake in Water-Gen.

Water covers 70 percent of Earth, but only three percent of the world’s water is fresh, and two-thirds of that is unavailable for use, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. As a result, “some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year,” the WWF says. At the current consumption rate, by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages, the WWF estimates. Roughly 1.2 billion people — almost one-fifth of the world’s population — live in areas of water scarcity, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Water from air, not from a stone

After the biblical exodus from Egypt, Moses made water for the people of Israel in the desert by striking a stone. Now Water-Gen is striking water from air.

The technology, developed by Kohavi with the help of engineers, uses a series of filters to purify the air. After the air is sucked in and chilled to extract its humidity, the water that forms is treated and transformed into clean drinking water. The technology uses a plastic heat exchanger rather than an aluminum one, which helps reduce costs; it also includes a proprietary software that operates the devices.

The atmospheric water generators developed by Water-Gen allow the production of 4 liters of drinking water (one gallon) using 1 Kilowatt of energy, Pasik said.

Other atmospheric water generating devices, by comparison, consume three to four times more energy, or effectively three to four times less water per energy unit, he said. This makes Water-Gen cheaper than similar solutions offered by other companies. The price of the water depends on the price of electricity.

Continue reading →