RUTHFULLY YOURS

Samsung Global Innovation Center (GIC), part of Samsung Electronics, opened on Sunday a branch in Tel Aviv to invest in Israeli start-ups and entrepreneurs with a focus on software development.

Called Samsung Next, the Tel Aviv office follows similar ones set up in South Korea, San Francisco and New York by the South Korean conglomerate in an effort to stay ahead of competition by entering into early-stage technologies.

“In Israel you have perhaps the greatest amount of talent per square foot than anywhere in the world,” said Kai Bond, the general manager of Samsung Next New York at the opening of the offices at Tel Aviv’s Sarona complex. “If you want to leapfrog competition you can’t wait to play in an established market.”

Samsung Next Tel Aviv will invest and work with start-ups at every stage of development through incubation, investment from seed to Series B, acquisition and partnership, Eyal Miller, Managing Director and CEO of Samsung GIC Tel Aviv, said at a press conference. The idea is to get projects off the ground, help them grow and get them ready for an acquisition by Samsung or any other exit that best suits the companies, he said.

Samsung Next in Tel Aviv will focus primarily in such areas as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, virtual and augmented reality technologies, the Internet of Things, and big data technologies.
Samsung Next’s Eyal Miller in Tel Aviv (Courtesy: Tomer Flutin)

Samsung Next’s Eyal Miller in Tel Aviv (Courtesy: Tomer Flutin)

“Samsung is known for its hardware,” Miller said, “but we want to build a significant center for investments in software.”

The company believes that its way forward will be by combining its hardware activities with software, he added.

There is no limit to the budget or number of start-ups the company can invest in, said Miller, and investments will be made according to opportunity. Typically, the division will support Israeli companies in the seed and early stages with a range of investment programs providing funding from $250,000 to up to $3 million on a “case-by-case basis,” he said. Samsung will then either acquire the successful companies and incorporate them into its product lines, or help them raise funds to grow further, he noted.

A market place for horse breeding and a platform to ease the recruitment of new employees were just some of the projects presented at a demo day of the Hybrid program, an accelerator that aims to promote start-ups in the Arab sector.

The projects were the first ones to originate from the first cycle of the accelerator program, which aims to promote start-ups with one or more Arab, Druze or Bedouin founders. They work in cooperation with the 8200 Alumni Association, an organization that represents graduates of the top technology unit in the Israeli Army.

“In the Arab sector we have talented entrepreneurs but we have a lack of knowledge on how to take ideas and scale them up,” said Fidi Swidan, the director of the Maof Nazareth Business Incubation Center, part of Israel’s Ministry of Economy and Industry which is a backer of Hybrid. The aim of the program is to provide the necessary support to allow for these initiatives to grow, he said.

Eitan Sella, the director of Hybrid, said the idea is to expand the benefits of start-up nation from Tel Aviv to the rest of the country, to all of Israel’s citizens.
Fadi Swidan and Eitan Sella (left) at Hybrid’s demo day in Tel Aviv (Courtesy)

Fadi Swidan, right, with Eitan Sella at Hybrid’s demo day in Tel Aviv (Courtesy)

One start-up that took part in the program is Horse Mate. The company looks to create a horse breeding market place using data, breeding simulation, artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable horse breeders find the best match for their horses. Horse Mate is already in touch with five Arabian horse associations worldwide to compile an accessible pedigree database.

Skillinn, another start-up, wants to make use of crowd wisdom to match the right professional to the right job, using artificial intelligence. The company has tested its system with dozens of HR departments and is currently running its first paid pilot with one of the biggest IT companies in Israel, the entrepreneurs said.

Also to present at the Hybrid demo day was CleverPark, a company that has developed a screw-looking prototype that can be inserted into roads and combines hardware and software to enable cities and malls to get real-time data about parking lots to optimize parking resources. Each product can be built for under $10, about 80 percent cheaper than competing alternatives, the team said.

The president of Northwestern University told students on Monday that anyone who opposes “trigger warnings” or who ridicules the pain of those “microaggressed” is an “idiot” and a “lunatic.”

In his convocation address on Monday, NU President Morton Schapiro took a firm stance against censorship, but said he disagreed with University of Chicago Dean of Students John Ellison, who recently told first-year students they should not expect “safe spaces” in which to escape from ideas that make them uncomfortable.
“Schapiro does not take kindly to uncomfortable ideas,” notes the Weekly Standard’s Alice B. Lloyd:

Author of many a pro-“safe space” op-ed, he suggests he’ll also use his day job as a platform to promote the code of campus political correctness, now that the semester’s begun.

“The people who decry safe spaces do it from their segregated housing places, from their jobs without diversity — they do it from their country clubs,” Schapiro said. “It just drives me nuts.”

[…]Calling people who deny the existence of microaggressions “idiots,” Schapiro said he clearly remembers every microaggression he has experienced.

Microaggressions “cut you to the core” and aren’t easily forgotten, he said.

Hailing the new 10-year, $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Israel on U.S. security aid, President Barack Obama couldn’t pass up the opportunity to chastise the Jewish state for failing to secure a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The U.S. commitment to Israel’s security, Obama said in a prepared statement as officials from both countries signed the agreement last week, “has been unwavering and is based on a genuine and abiding concern for the welfare of the Israeli people and the future of the State of Israel. It is because of this same commitment to Israel and its long-term security that we will also continue to press for a two-state solution … despite the deeply troubling trends on the ground that undermine this goal.”

Obama’s statement, and some of the terms of the memorandum, reflect everything that Israel’s supporters find so irritating about the administration – its condescension toward Israel, its confusion about the region and its ill-advised efforts to reshape U.S. relations with regional allies and adversaries.

Any new 10-year security agreement between the United States and its closest ally in that turbulent region should herald warm feelings and a hearty sense of accomplishment in both capitals, but the atmospherics around this agreement are fueling lots of resignation, bitterness and second guessing.

At first blush, the memorandum reflects the close ties between Washington and Jerusalem that long predate Obama. At $38 billion, or $3.8 billion a year for 10 years starting in 2018, it surpasses the $31 billion of its expiring predecessor and represents the single largest U.S. security package ever proffered for any nation.

But dig below the top-line numbers, and you find terms and restrictions that belie the boasts of Obama and other top U.S. officials about “unwavering” commitments and “genuine and abiding” concerns.

For starters, the new agreement includes $500 million a year for missile defense, which Washington has been providing outside its current package, not as part of it. If you add the $500 million to the current $3.1 billion annual payment, total annual U.S. security aid to Israel is $3.6 billion. Thus, the $3.8 billion annual payment under the new agreement represents only about a 5 percent increase – and that doesn’t account for inflation.

A handout given to students in a Gonzaga University gender studies class warns that “asking an Asian person to help with a math and science problem” is a “microaggression.”

According to the handout, asking that question is a problem because the “message” of it is that “all Asians are intelligent and good at math/science.”

Um#..#no it isn’t. Asking an Asian student for help with math and science is saying that you think that that particular Asian student is good at math and science, which could obviously be for reasons other than his or her race. Doesn’t Gonzaga consider the possibility that perhaps one student might want to ask an Asian classmate for help because that classmate always knows the answers to the questions in class? Should other students not ask that person for help just because that person also happens to be Asian? Sorry, but that’s absurd.

A picture of the handout was posted on Twitter on Tuesday by freshman Ben McDonald. In an email to National Review, McDonald said that one of his classmates had shown it to him after receiving it in his feminist-theory class.

Other no-nos listed on the document include asking an Asian or Latino American person, “Where are you from?” (because that’s really saying, “You are not American”), telling a “person of color” that he or she is “so articulate” (because that’s really saying, “It is unusual for someone of your race to be intelligent”), “asking an Asian American to teach them words in their native language” (because that’s really saying, “You are a foreigner”) and saying that “everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough” (because that’s really saying, “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder”).

Obviously, this is ridiculous. Sure, there are times when saying, “You are so articulate” to a person of color could be a sort of passive-aggressive slight, which is insulting and obviously something you should avoid. But I’ve described particular people of all different races for being particularly “articulate.” I’ve said it about white people; does this handout mean that it’s something I should only say to white people? That “articulate” is a compliment that cannot be given to people of other races? Because that doesn’t seem all that fair.

Context makes all the difference in these situations, and context is exactly what lists like this ignore. In fact, without considering the role of context, such a list actually runs the risk of inhibiting communication — it can freak people out about saying things that they really don’t have to be freaked out about saying. Discussions about sensitivity are one thing, but making definitive claims that a particular phrase always has a particular meaning is not the way to deal with something as nuanced as language.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.

This morning I took a look at this video, Israeli settlements, explained in 8 minutes by Johnny Harris. I found it to be a very dangerous mix of truth and fiction.

Colors show Areas A, B and C

First of all, it begins its narrative rather late in History, 1948, crediting the United Nations with trying to help Great Britain to solve the problem between the Jews and the Arabs. It totally leaves out the very necessary/important/crucial fact that Britain was mandated/instructed/given the areas by the League of Nations in 1922, on the condition that they, the British, facilitate the establishment of a Jewish State there, Transjordan- the area on both sides of the Jordan River. No surprise, but no mention is made of that fact and the British invention of Jordan* which was stage one of how the Brits sabotaged the assignment.

Another term/fact left out is that the Jordanians illegally occupied the so-called west bank after the 1949 ceasefire. It was only recognized by two countries, Britain and Pakistan.

Also, Johnny Harris skips the crucial fact that the 1967 Six Days War was a result of coordinated Arab threats and aggression against Israel by an alliance of four Arab countries, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, with the cooperation of the United Nations. He gives the impression that it was initiated by Israel. And of course he leaves out the background of constant terror against Jews by Arab even before the establishment of the State of Israel. According to International Law and historical precedent, border changes due to a defensive war are legal, and that is how the 1967 ceasefire lines should be seen.

In addition, the various villages, towns and cities where Jews live in Judea, Samaria, also the Golan and Jordan Valley (which Harris does not mention by name–another example of how he simplifies) were approved and/or established by the State of Israel.

Harris does mention that Arabs can drive on the new modern roads, but he leaves out that Jews are forbidden to drive on “Arab” roads. Also, he gives the distinct impression that only Arabs have to go through “checkpoints,” when all vehicles are stopped/checked, Jewish, too. We wait on the same lines. And those checks are to prevent terrorism and uninspected agricultural products from entering. Remember that if going into the USA, you can’t bring even an apple from abroad.

I do not have the time to go over every single false or misleading statement in these eight misleading minutes Harris has produced. I invite you to add more in the comments here. So, please do, thanks.

*British invention of Jordan- rule of this new invented country called Jordan was given to the Hashemites from Mecca, Saudi Arabia. There was no history of such a country/people until Britain created them to block Jewish settlement of the area.

“It is essential to talk about Israel/Palestine, considering that Israel is the world’s largest recipient of US aid…

I dream of a binational secular democratic state in Israel/Palestine that provides equal rights to all citizens and inhabitants of the Holy Land (Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians and Muslims) regardless of ethno-religious affiliation.

I believe that we can and will realize this within our lifetime.”
[Emphasis added, here and below]

The words are those of Swarthmore College visiting professor in Peace and Conflict Studies (and class of ’06 graduate) Sa’ed Atshan [pictured], quoted in the Summer 2016 Swarthmore College [alumni] Bulletin that I finally got around to reading today, having flicked through the class notes a fortnight or so ago.

It’s on a profile of Atshan on page 8 by one Michael Agresta, demonstrating how Atshan, an Arab Quaker who attended Ramallah Friends School, “balances scholarship and peace activism”.

Inter alia:

“Atshan’s most recent foray beyond the ivory tower is the inaugural Swarthmore College Israel/Palestine Study Trip, but he has long worked to build bridges from academia to the front lines of social justice and peace activism. As a graduate student at Harvard, he organized a similar spring break study trip to Israel/Palestine; the program has endured and is in its eighth year. He has also partnered in projects with Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees….’

On page 15 is a cross-referenced report by one Carrie Compton headed “Trip of a Lifetime”. Illustrated, as you can see here, by, respectively, “Rainbow in Jericho; Palestinian potter; Lunch in Hebron; Dome of the Rock”, it tells us:

‘Over winter break, 19 students from Sa’ed Atshan ’06’s Israeli-Palestinian Conflict class spent 10 days in that region of the Middle East, meeting with top humanitarian figures on all sides of the conflict. The journey was free for the entire class, thanks primarily to funding from an anonymous donor.

Though the trip occurred during a break in the academic year, the students found it as demanding as any other Swarthmore experience.

Moshav Hagor is located in the center of the country.

Successive IDF chiefs of General Staff, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Dan Halutz and Lt. Gen. (ret.) Gabi Ashkenazy hail from the farming community established in 1949 by veterans of the Palmach.

Along with their neighbors in Moshav Yarchiv, for the past decade, the farmers of Hagor have been subjected to the continuous desecration of their communal cemetery by their Muslim neighbors from Jaljulia, a Muslim town of ten thousand located between the two moshavim.

Adjacent to a school in Jaljulia, Hagor’s cemetery has been subjected to abuse of all kinds. Residents regularly find animal carcasses at the entrance to the cemetery. Garbage is routinely dumped on graves.

Human and other feces are frequently smeared across headstones.

One night, all the headstones on all the graves at the cemetery were broken.

Residents mourning their dead are harassed.

After a decade of constant abuse, Hagor’s residents despaired of ever restoring the security to their cemetery and decided to take matters into the own hands. With the halachic approval of then chief rabbi Shlomo Amar, they built an alternative cemetery in another area of their moshav. Families paid thousands of shekels to reinter their loved ones at the new site. Today the only bodies remaining in their original graves are the ones with no living relatives to pay to move them.

Several years ago, Moshav Yarchiv’s cemetery was rezoned to become a new neighborhood in Jaljulia.

An attempt by Yarchiv’s residents to fence off the cemetery failed.

The day after they installed the fence it was stolen.

The rabbinate has refused on halachic grounds to permit Yarchiv’s residents to exhume and reinter their dead. But even if they had rabbinic permission, they have nowhere else to bury them. Due to bureaucratic hurdles, Yarchiv hasn’t been able to find an alternative burial ground.

Jaljulya once had good relations with its Jewish neighbors. But over the past decade, the town has become a hotbed for Islamic radicalism. Residents built a new massive mosque in the town. Despite repeated complaints from their Jewish neighbors, the mosque’s loudspeakers, which face Hagor, deliberately blast the call to prayer in the middle of the night.

Last October, Nedal Salah of Jaljulia paraglided into Syria from the Golan Heights and joined Islamic State. Following Salah’s action, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) discovered a cell of six more town residents who had transferred their loyalties to Islamic State, which they intended to travel to Syria to join.

This article is excerpted from a longer piece in the Tower.

When Arielle Mokhtarzadeh arrived at University of California, Berkeley, to attend the annual Students of Color Conference, she had no way of knowing that she would be leaving as a victim of anti-Semitism.

The conference has maintained a reputation for 27 years as being a “safe space” where students of color, as well as white progressive allies, can discuss issues of structural and cultural inequality on college campuses.

For Mokhtarzadeh, an Iranian Jew at UCLA, her freshman year was punctuated by incidents of anti-Semitism that were both personal and met with national controversy. She was shocked during her first quarter in school, when students entered the Bruin Cafe to see the phrase “Hitler did nothing wrong” etched into a table. Months later, Mokhtarzadeh’s friend Rachel Beyda was temporarily denied a student government leadership position based solely on her Jewish identity, an event that made news nationwide.

The campus was supposed to be her new home, her new safe space — so why didn’t she feel that way? She went to the conference hoping for some answers.

[So you’re a Jew and you’re starting college? Prepare for anti-Zionism.]

But on the first day there, she was horrified when the discussion became an attack on Israel — and soon devolved into attacks on the Jews.

“Over the course of what was probably no longer than an hour, my history was denied, the murder of my people was justified, and a movement whose sole purpose is the destruction of the Jewish homeland was glorified. Statements were made justifying the ruthless murder of innocent Israeli civilians, blatantly denying Jewish indigeneity in the land, and denying the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered,” she said. “Why anyone in their right mind would accept these slanders as truths baffles me. But they did. These statements, and others, were met with endless snaps and cheers. I was taken aback.”

Mokhtarzadeh walked out on the verge of tears. “It was in that moment, during that conference, that I realized that every identity and every intersection of identity was to be welcomed and championed in progressive spaces — except mine.”

President Obama and his defenders are trumpeting the new aid agreement with Israel as proof that he is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. In fact, it’s a bad deal and should be treated the same way Obama treated prior agreements he didn’t like: It should be forgotten by the next president. The White House may be saying this is the greatest deal ever, but in Israel many observers are saying that Obama did no favors for the Jewish state. That’s the conclusion Israeli journalists have all reached. They’re right.

The current aid agreement is for $3.1 billion a year. The new one is for $3.8 billion, but the increase is almost entirely illusory. Congress already appropriates hundreds of millions of dollars beyond the base $3.1 billion level for Israel’s missile defense, so the current aid level is actually about $3.5 billion. That means the total increase is roughly $300 million a year. But given inflation in the costs of military items, and the greater threat to Israel due to Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, the net result is at best continuation of the current aid agreement.

But Obama imposed two additional conditions that had never existed before and are absent in the aid agreement George W. Bush made with Israel in 2007. First, Israel must spend every dime in the United States after a phase-in period, meaning it cannot use the funds to purchase any military equipment made in Israel. Second, Israel has agreed that it will not go to Congress to seek additional funding under any circumstances.

The latter condition is a big deal and is why Sen. Lindsey Graham is so opposed to what Obama has wrought. It’s “not binding on the Congress,” he said this week. “I’m offended that the administration would try to take over the appropriations process. If they don’t like what I’m doing, they can veto the bill. We can’t have the executive branch dictating what the legislative branch will do for a decade based on an agreement we are not a party to.” And Speaker Paul Ryan’s spokeswoman said, “We will continue to appropriate the funds that we determine are necessary to meet the needs of our shared security interests in the Middle East.”

There is another condition in this agreement that is more absurd, and belies Obama’s claims of deepest friendship for the Jewish state. As the price for concluding the deal, Obama forced Israel to agree that if Congress appropriates additional funds in 2017 or 2018, Israel will not accept the aid and will return the money. This is a first in American history and constitutes a deliberate undermining of the constitutional power of Congress to determine foreign aid levels.