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Anti-Israel demonstrations are in danger of morphing into anti-Semitism by Simon Schama

Posted By on February 21st, 2016

Much of the student left has “some kind of problem with Jews”, said
the bravely decent Alex Chalmers last week in his resignation
statement as co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club following a
vote in favour of Israeli Apartheid Week.

Labour’s national student organisation is launching an inquiry but the
“the problem with Jews” on the left is not going away. In January a
meeting of the Kings College London Israel Society, gathered to hear
from Ami Ayalon, a former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic
intelligence service, who now champions a two-state solution, was
violently interrupted by a chair-hurling, window-smashing crowd.

Last summer the Guardian columnist Owen Jones made a courageous plea
for the left to confront this demon head on. Since then, however,
criticism of Israeli government policies has mutated into a rejection
of Israel’s right to exist; the Fatah position replaced by Hamas and
Hizbollah eliminationism. More darkly, support in the diaspora for
Israel’s right to survive is seen by the likes of Labour’s Gerald
Kaufman, who accused the government of being influenced in its Middle
Eastern policy by “Jewish money”, as some sort of Jewish conspiracy.

The charge that anti-Zionism is morphing into anti-Semitism is met
with the retort that the former is being disingenuously conflated with
the latter. But when George Galloway (in August 2014 during the last
Gaza war) declared Bradford “an Israel-free zone”; when French Jews
are unable to wear a yarmulke in public lest that invite assault, when
Holocaust Memorial day posters are defaced, it is evident that what we
are dealing with is, in Professor Alan Johnson’s accurate coinage,
“anti-semitic anti-Zionism”.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Young and the Economically Clueless Millennials are flocking to Sanders, and in the GOP they favor Trump. Why are young people voting against their own interests? By Daniel J. Arbess

Posted By on February 21st, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-young-and-the-economically-clueless-1455924699?mod=trending_now_4

B ernie Sanders, the 74-year-old self-described democratic socialist, is surprising even himself with his primary-season success against Hillary Clinton, fueled by a staggering 83% majority of the under-30 vote in New Hampshire and 84% in the Iowa caucuses.

As this newspaper reported on Tuesday, voters in the millennial bracket, 18- to 34-year-olds, will for the first time equal the baby-boomer share of the electorate, at 31%. These young voters appear to be falling headlong for the Vermont senator’s plaintive narrative of economic “unfairness.” His throwaway prescriptions for redistributing income and wealth are being echoed by an increasingly nervous Mrs. Clinton—despite such policies’ having been jettisoned during her husband’s administration in the 1990s.

Then again, Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s vague promises that he will “make America great again” aren’t much more comforting—except to the masses of Americans responding to his populist diatribes against free trade and immigrants. He too scored well with the young in New Hampshire, though, winning 38% of the 18-29 support, more than double his closest competitor for that group, Ted Cruz, at 17%.

These young voters seem not to realize that the economic policies they find so resonant are the least likely to promote the growth and the social mobility they desire. They deserve to be lead from the discredited backwater of equalizing outcomes, forward with policies that instead help eliminate barriers frustrating their access to opportunities. READ MORE AT SITE

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A Better Britain Outside the EU Brexit—a British exit from the European Union—would give the U.K. self-determination and free it from the dysfunctional European project By Tim Montgomerie

Posted By on February 21st, 2016

Margaret Thatcher predicted that it would end in tears. She described “the drive to create a European superstate” as “perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.” The late British prime minister knew the lesson of the past: When politicians try to impose grand designs on peoples of different histories, languages and cultural allegiances, the edifice totters and collapses.

Once devoutly pro-European, Thatcher had come to worry by the late 1980s that grand projects emerging from Brussels, like the effort to create a single European currency, would centralize power and create a vast bureaucracy. She saw that democratic accountability would be impossible across a wildly polyglot European Union. And she feared that the sort of cronyism and collusion among big business and politicians that she had dismantled in the U.K. would re-emerge in Brussels. Almost every one of her fears has been vindicated.
Britain will soon have the opportunity to decide whether or not to remain a part of the European project that it joined in 1973. After EU leaders agreed late Friday to several key British demands, including a so-called emergency brake to let the U.K. restrict welfare benefits for EU migrants, a nationwide referendum is likely to be held in June, fulfilling a promise made by Prime Minister David Cameron at the last general election. Polls suggest that the outcome of the vote is too close to call, but a British exit—or “Brexit”—is a real possibility. It would also be a wise choice, for the U.K., for Europe and for the U.S.

Prominent Conservative politicians, including Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Gove, are expected to campaign for Brexit, endangering the unity of the government. But Mr. Cameron, most of his top ministers, the leader of the opposition Labour Party and the country’s largest businesses will hold firm with the EU. They will argue that Britain should not walk away but should remain at the EU’s highest table, helping to fix the continent’s problems. They worry that if Britain leaves the EU, London won’t be able to influence the rules that govern the world’s richest single market, with more than 500 million people. READ MORE AT SITE

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Greatest Democratic Judicial Hits What Republicans learned from Harry Reid and Barack Obama.

Posted By on February 21st, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/greatest-democratic-judicial-hits-1455925914

Senate Democrats haven’t made much progress shaming Republicans into yielding on President Obama’s upcoming Supreme Court nominee, and no wonder. As much as they’re trying, they can’t erase their own abusive history of double and sometimes triple standards in confirmation politics.

Earlier this week we chronicled New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s faked alibi for his categorical 2007 demand that Democrats reject any George W. Bush nominee if a vacancy had emerged in his last 18 months in office. But there is so much more to recall:

• When Democrats ran the Senate from June 2001 to January 2003, they denied even a hearing before the Judiciary Committee to 32 of Mr. Bush’s nominees. When Republicans regained a 51-49 majority in the next Congress, Democrats broke the then-longstanding Senate norm of granting nominees an up-or-down vote. Before 2003, only one judicial nominee had been blocked with a filibuster, and that was the bipartisan 1968 rebellion against promoting the ethically challenged Justice Abe Fortas to Chief Justice.

Democrats applied the higher 60-vote standard to a rainbow coalition of Bush nominees, judging them not by traditional measures like experience or temperament or even “diversity.” They simply didn’t like their politics.

The targets included Priscilla Owen (a woman), Janice Rogers Brown (a black woman) and Miguel Estrada (a Hispanic). The 28-month Estrada filibuster was especially egregious because Democrats feared the smart young attorney’s ethnic background might make him formidable Supreme Court material if he served on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

• When Mr. Bush nominated Samuel Alito to the High Court in 2005, Democrats attempted to give him the same treatment. Some 25 Senators voted to support a filibuster, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, John Kerry, Pat Leahy and Mr. Schumer. READ MORE AT SITE

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A recent survey suggests growing American public divides over Israel, yet also strategies for Israel to win American public opinion.Andrew Harrod

Posted By on February 21st, 2016

A recent Brookings Institution survey presented at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. indicated a growing American partisanship toward Israel and the Middle East. But an analysis of an online survey taken in November suggests strategies for Israel’s friends to counter growing Democratic Party estrangement with Israel amidst an enduringly pro-Israel and Philo-Semitic American population.

Survey director Shibley Telhami said that Israel is dramatically becoming what fellow panelist and Brookings expert Tamara Cofman Wittes called a wedge issue. As Telhamiwrote in “Politico,” the Republicans’ pro-Israel base is an indicator that “GOP candidates are principally catering to an evangelical base that has become Israel’s biggest support base in American politics.” A survey press release noted that while Evangelical Republicans make up only 10 percent of the American population, 23 percent of all Republicans and 77 percent of Evangelical Republicans want the United States to favor Israel. In all, 40 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of self-identified evangelicals “say a candidate’s position on Israel matters a lot,” compared to 22 percent for Independents and 14 percent for Democrats.”

Telhami pointed out that, by contrast, the biggest story of all was the 49 percent of Democrats who said that Israel has too much influence on American politics; 14 percent said too little, and 36 percent said about the right amount. The striking partisan divide of this key finding impressed him, as the corresponding survey results among Republicans for too much, too little, and appropriate Israeli influence were respectively 25 percent, 22 percent and 52 percent. The overall American breakdown is 37, 18 and 44 percent, while 39 percent of evangelicals said that Israel has too little influence (23 percent too much and 38 percent the right amount), and views of too little Israeli influence increase with age.

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GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on February 21st, 2016

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Breakthrough leukemia cure is “Israeli”. I was suspicious of the BBC’s report on the “innovative” US immunotherapy that cured 27 of 29 “no-hope” leukemia patients. Sure enough, the genetic modification of T-cells was developed by Weizmann Institute Professor Zelig Eshhar, and the US researchers accredited him.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/breakthrough-cancer-cure-has-deep-israeli-roots/#.VsSHARjfTx8.email

Positive trials for treatment of Graft vs Host disease. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Kamada has reported positive interim results from a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of its proprietary alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) to treat steroid-refractory Graft Versus Host Disease (GvHD). Subjects responded well to treatment in the small study.
http://www.kamada.com/news_item.php?ID=217

Patent for kidney cancer test. (TY Atid-EDI) Israeli biotech Rosetta Genomics has been granted a US patent for its gene signature method of distinguishing four different types of kidney cancer. The molecular diagnostic test recognizes the profile of 29 microRNAs that are expressed in patients with renal cancer.
http://www.rosettagx.com/files/press_releases/2016/012516_ROSG_Kidney_Tumor_Classification_Patent_FINAL.pdf

Watching memory at work. Tel Aviv University Professor Itzhak Fried has completed his study of how memory neurons behave in real time when they are “remembering.” He will present his findings at an upcoming Jerusalem symposium. These have important implications for understanding dementia such as Alzheimer’s.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/doh-how-homer-simpson-helps-researchers-understand-memory/

ReWalk is medically necessary. (TY Dan) A US surgeon, confined to a wheelchair following a spinal cord injury, has successfully won his case to be reimbursed by his health plan for a ReWalk exoskeleton. The ruling will help make ReWalk available to all eligible patients. http://rewalk.com/rewalk-robotics-exoskeleton-deemed-medically-necessary-by-independent-medical-review-organization/

Hospital search engine wows Russia. Russia’s most dominant email service Mail.Ru is integrating the database of Archimedicx. Health Mail.Ru is one of the most popular health portals in Russia. Israeli Moni Milchman (see here) developed ArchimedicX, the world’s first search engine for information about hospitals.
http://www.geektime.com/2016/02/16/belgian-israeli-archimedicx-to-feature-its-listings-on-russian-mail-ru/

Israel-California biotech agreement. Israeli Science, Technology and Space Minister Ofir Akunis signed a biotechnology agreement with the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Its focus is stem cell research and breakthroughs in treating diseases such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and HIV-AIDS.
http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2016/2/10/israel-and-california-sign-biotech-deal-with-emphasis-on-stem-cell-research

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Great Power Realignment – To Russia? by Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on February 20th, 2016

As the Russians insist that the Assad government is the only legitimate government, all anti-Assad fighters — ISIS, al Qaeda-related, or U.S.-backed or Turkish-backed “moderates” — are, by definition, terrorists.

Russian — and in particular Syrian — tactics are appalling. Washington would rather not be associated with them, but has a horror of the vacuum that might emerge if Assad is swept aside. Mainly, the U.S. has hung its hat on the International Syria Support Group. The U.S. is muddled, as usual, without a clear goal, clear allies or fixed positions beyond support for a “political process.”

The U.S. is looking less and less relevant, as historic Great Powers do what they have historically done best — fight for their national interests as they define them. President Obama appears to be conceding the lead to Russia and Russian aims.

The shelling of Syrian soldiers by the Turkish military is one more step back into Great Power politics — historic Turkish-Russian enmity played out over Kurds and Syrians. The U.S. appears to believe 21st century wars cannot be won by military force and that battling parties can be induced to set aside their national and religious aims for a negotiated “peace.” Meanwhile, the parties to the conflict are using their armies to pursue victory.

Last week, Turkey attacked Kurdish fighters who were struggling to connect Kurdish territory in northern Iraq with a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria along the Turkish border. The Kurds, backed by Russian air power, want to oust Turkish-backed Syrian rebels from the Azaz region, in order to create contiguous territory from northern Iraq to Syrian Kurdistan, and prevent the Syrian rebels from being resupplied by Turkey. The net effect is to boost Kurdish-Russian cooperation; to provide relief for Assad’s army in the north; to increase Turkey’s hostility toward Russia; and possibly to put Turkey on a collision course with the U.S. — if Ankara believes its position in NATO will protect it from Russian fallout. (It should be noted that although Turkish troops attacked Syrians, they stayed clear of threatening Russia directly.)

The U.S. has urged both Turkey and the Kurds to decrease hostilities, but Turkey dismissed U.S. calls for a ceasefire. Attacks on the Kurds continued as Turkey began to fire on Syrian forces, and Turkey’s President Tayyip Recep Erdogan did not rule out a ground attack inside Syria.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: HONORABLE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS VISIT HEBRON

Posted By on February 20th, 2016

These three representatives recently visited Israel, but they did not just go to the politically “safe” areas- they went to the West Bank to Hebron the ancient capital of the Jewish people and the cradle of the Jewish faith. rsk

Congressman Jeff Miller R- Florida District 1 https://jeffmiller.house.gov/

•Rated -5 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record.

Congressman Greg Harper of Mississippi R- Missisipi District 3 http://harper.house.gov/

•Rated -3 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record.

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler R- Missouri District 4 https://hartzler.house.gov/

•Rated -6 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

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MELANIE PHILLIPS: TWO CHEERS FOR BRITAIN’S BDS BAN

Posted By on February 20th, 2016

New government guidance will prevent any public body from imposing a boycott on a member of the World Trade Organization to which Israel
belongs.

The British government has done something in support of Israel, and
the progressive intelligentsia is in shock. Prime Minister David
Cameron is taking action against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement.

New government guidance will prevent any public body from imposing a
boycott on a member of the World Trade Organization to which Israel
belongs.

Local boycotts breach the WTO Government Procurement Agreement, which
demands that all suppliers are treated equally.

The guidance aims at preventing publicly funded bodies such as
municipal councils or National Health Service trusts from boycotting
goods produced by what they believe to be “unethical companies,” such
as firms involved in arms trading, fossil fuels or tobacco products as
well as companies based in Israel.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Why a Rock-Ribbed Conservative Like Me Supports Donald Trump 100% by Joan Swirsky

Posted By on February 20th, 2016

I’m watching the fierce South Carolina primary contest among the six remaining candidates for POTUS and a few things strike me as astounding.

The first is that all the seasoned politicians on stage––Governors Bush and Kasich, Senators Cruz and Rubio––have been relegated to straggler status by the non-politician in the race, billionaire businessman Donald Trump. (Dr. Ben Carson, the other non-politician, is hanging in there but not lighting any fires).

Second is that only Mr. Trump is raising the biggest issues facing our country, among them:

Closing our borders, which are being flooded with un-vetted illegal aliens who number, by now, into the millions
Bringing both corporations and jobs back to America
Fixing our Mt. Kilimanjaro of debt and Mt. Everest of unemployment
Strengthening our military
Third is that he is challenging our longtime and ridiculous policy of military intervention for the purpose of nation-building in exchange for…nothing! Why haven’t we taken our enemy’s oil or exacted other prices for the blood we’ve spilled and the honor we’ve spent?

Fourth is that he is saying out loud what most Americans have been thinking and feeling for almost eight years, specifically that as a result of our thunderously ineffective “leadership,” we have utterly failed to destroy ISIS and the other Islamic terrorists who spend every waking hour figuring out how to obliterate America, which they call “the great Satan,” and our staunchest ally, Israel, “the little Satan.”

ISIS has about 50,000 adherents, maybe even 75,000. In one week, the American military could obliterate this murderous sect from the face of the earth. But Barack Obama seems to have a peculiar aversion to fighting the enemies of America, hence the rise of this homicidal cult and the escalating threat it poses to our country.

And fifth is the degree to which Mr. Trump is already negotiating with both domestic and foreign leaders. He is letting American politicians know that deals can and will be made but that all of them must benefit America! And he is telling the entire world that the vacation that overseas leaders have had from true American leadership will be over the very second he enters the Oval Office.

All the while, Mr. Trump’s competitors and critics carp and whine about his “bluster,” “naiveté,” and “crudeness.” Wasn’t President Teddy Roosevelt accused of bluster? Wasn’t President Ronald Reagan accused of being naive? Wasn’t the liberals’ hero LBJ accused of crudeness? These are trifling criticisms, as are the accusations that Mr. Trump is “not a true conservative” and that in the past he was, gasp, a liberal. Well, we’ve given the self-described conservatives the entire House and Senate and they’ve failed us, so it’s time to give a born-again conservative a chance!