RUTHFULLY YOURS

Boycott efforts did not deter 250 British researchers from 33 institutions across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland from attending BIRAX Conference with their Israeli counterparts.Some 350 leading British and Israeli medical researchers are currently meeting in Oxford for the third annual BIRAX Conference organized by the UK-Israel Science Council. The large event is taking place as bilateral science cooperation thrives despite calls to boycott Israel.

BIRAX, a joint UK-Israel research initiative tackling some of the world’s most debilitating diseases, has invested over £7 million in bilateral research since it was founded in 2011. The 15 joint research projects funded by BIRAX so far include the use of heart cells to restore damaged heart muscle; and the use of breath tests for the diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease. BIRAX was initiated by the British Council and the British Embassy in Israel, the Pears Foundation and UJIA.

The conference will showcase the latest developments in regenerative medicine, including joint research by UK and Israeli researchers to fight diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, heart conditions, and other global health challenges. The conference is also aimed at creating more opportunities for scientists from both countries to collaborate.

The Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union on Monday voted to move to expel the Knesset from the international IPU due to the “racist laws”’ it allegedly legislates.

The IPU is an international organization for parliaments from all over the world, which works in collaboration with the UN.

The Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union is a regional organization composed of Arab lawmakers as well as members of Shura councils in the Arab world. It was established in June 1974 to promote Arab collaboration through political institutions.

The anti-Israel resolution, submitted by Kuwait’s National Assembly speaker Marzouq al-Ghanim, was adopted during the 23rd conference of the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union in Cairo on Monday, with the participation of lawmakers from all over the Arab world.

The closing statement of the conference included Ghanim’s proposal as well as a recommendation to form a parliamentary committee chaired by Ghanim to support the steadfastness of the Palestinian people.

The conference, attended by 15 delegations of Arab parliaments, called on all Arab parliaments to support Palestinian efforts to hold an international peace conference to end the “Israeli occupation.”

When I entered college in 1972, the ’60s generation of activists had eliminated all but two requirements to graduate: one semester of a physical science and two semesters of Western civilization. Fortunately for me, the science requirement was dropped my sophomore year, leaving Western civ as the only course mandated by the school.

Even the left realized the value of studying our roots as a civilization – at least the left of 45 years ago. But the creatures who call themselves leftists today carry no such intellectual baggage. It has been drummed into their tiny brains that Western civilization – a civilization that created the modern world with all its grevious faults and stupendous successes – isn’t worth examining.

So say the overwhelming majority of students at Stanford University, who voted down a proposal to require two semesters studying our roots by a 6-1 margin.

Daily Caller:

The ballot initiative was promoted by members of the school’s conservative-leaning Stanford Review. If passed, it would have called for Stanford to require that all freshmen complete a two-quarter course covering “the politics, history, philosophy, and culture of the Western world.” Stanford once possessed a similar requirement, but eliminated it after a student campaign in the 1980s that denounced it as fostering racism, sexism, and other perfidious -isms.

Supporters managed to collect 370 signatures on their petition, enough to include it as a ballot measure for Stanford’s spring student government election.

But it turns out Stanford has no enthusiasm for requiring the study of Western civilization. In election results released Monday, the proposal failed by an overwhelming margin, with 342 votes in favor and a whopping 1992 votes against.

In contrast, over 90 percent of students voted in favor of an initiative requiring the school to administer a new campus climate survey designed to find the rate of sexual assault on campus. The school already administered such a survey in 2015, but it outraged activists by finding a sexual assault rate of just 1.9%, which they deemed far too low.

The Hoax of “Countering Violent Extremism” — on The Glazov Gang This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Stephen Coughlin, the co-founder of UnconstrainedAnalytics.org and the author of the new book, Catastrophic Failure. Stephen discussed The Hoax of “Countering Violent Extremism”, revealing how the Muslim Brotherhood is directing our foreign policy and […]

The American families who were victims of terrorist attacks in Israel in the early 2000s should not have been allowed to bring a lawsuit in the U.S. against the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization, lawyers for the Palestinian groups told an appeals court Tuesday.

The Palestinian groups’ lawyers are appealing a multimillion-dollar award won by 10 families in Manhattan federal court early last year. After a seven-week trial, jurors found the PLO and Palestinian Authority liable for supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004 and ordered the groups to pay the families $218.5 million, an amount that was automatically tripled to $655.5 million under a U.S. antiterrorism law.

Tuesday’s appeal in the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan focused on whether the families’ lawsuit, which was filed in 2004, should have been allowed to proceed in the U.S.

Mitchell Berger, a partner at Squire Patton Boggs who is representing the Palestinian groups, said the U.S. doesn’t have jurisdiction in this case, arguing that although the attacks overseas killed and injured Americans, they were directed at Israel, not the U.S. He said the Palestinian groups weren’t waging a “global terror campaign against the U.S.”

The families brought the lawsuit under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows American citizens who are victims of terrorist attacks overseas to sue in U.S. federal court.

U.S. Circuit Judge Christopher Droney asked Mr. Berger: “How is the [Anti-Terrorism Act] ever enforced…when your only option here is to go to Ramallah?”

Mr. Berger responded that victims could sue in the U.S. if they can show “specific jurisdiction” exists, meaning the overseas attack was expressly aimed at the U.S., which he said wasn’t the case here. The attacks at issue included suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem, which left 33 dead and more than 400 injured.

“The brunt of the injury has to be committed against the United States,” Mr. Berger said.

Kent Yalowitz, a partner at Arnold & Porter LLP who is representing the victims and their families, said there was “extensive evidence” that the intent of the attacks was to intimidate the U.S. government and influence U.S. policy, pointing to Palestinian propaganda around the attacks that said “a divine blow will be dealt soon to the U.S. and Israel.” CONTINUE AT SITE

How’s this for an irony? As state attorneys general gin up a fake securities-fraud case against oil companies over climate change, starting with Exxon Mobil Corp. , the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a real securities-fraud investigation of the nation’s biggest solar power company.

SunEdison ’s sin: allegedly exaggerating its amount of cash on hand to resist an impending bankruptcy.

A little history is in order to appreciate the cynical nadir of climate politics in the U.S. You wouldn’t know it from media coverage, but the closest the U.S. Congress came to passing a serious (if still ineffectual) cap-and-trade program was during the George W. Bush administration in early 2007. Then, within days of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, Al Gore announced a revelation: the “climate crisis” no longer required such unpleasant, de facto energy taxes. The problem could be solved with painless handouts to green entrepreneurs.

Hooray! Everybody loves a handout. The activist duo Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus noted that the shift in Mr. Gore’s thinking was “highly significant.” “He knows that cap-and-trade, and most any new regulation, would raise energy prices—a political nonstarter during a recession.”

A proposed oil tax swiftly disappeared from the Obama transition website. With control of all three branches of government in hand, the imminent climate threat to humanity suddenly appeared not so urgent after all—passing a “signature” health-care law did.

Democrats, it turned out, were in favor of climate root canal only when Republicans were in charge.

OK, this is old hat, but what should be striking is how thoroughly the climate lobby has played along. Its main function today has become stringing up apostates as a distraction from Democratic unwillingness to propose policies costly enough that they would actually influence the rate of increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Take the Exxon prosecution, promoted by the attorneys general of New York and California and a host of their Democratic brethren. Though the case is never meant to be adjudicated in a courtroom, suppose it were and suppose a jury somehow found for the plaintiffs. How would Exxon pay a securities-fraud judgment? By selling oil and gas.

Attacking Exxon is not climate policy making; it’s a distraction. Its purpose is to foster an atmosphere conducive to the Gore-Obama green pork-barrel strategy. CONTINUE AT SITE

Forget the alphabet soup acronyms of a thousand organizations. The pro-Israel community has only three elements.

There’s the anti-Israel side of the pro-Israel community. This misnomer calls itself Liberal Zionism even though, like the Holy Roman Empire, it is neither liberal nor Zionist. Instead illiberal anti-Zionist groups such as J Street provide a comfortable pathway from the pro-Israel community to the anti-Israel left by selling the illusion that it is possible to be pro-Israel while opposing the survival of Israel.

These illiberal anti-Zionists, like most domestic abusers, claim to be providing “tough love” by pressuring the Jewish State to make the “tough decisions” it needs to make in order to “end the occupation”.

These “tough love” and “tough decisions” though all translate into appeasing and aiding terrorists. The only people that the illiberal anti-Zionists, who clutch fistfuls of dirty Soros cash while hiding behind the blue skirts of the pro-Israel community, are willing to get tough on are Jewish victims of Islamic terror.

Somehow Abbas and Hamas never seem to come in for any tough love from these lovers of Israel who instead relish showing their tough love by kicking and beating the Jewish State at every opportunity.

And then there’s the great center of the pro-Israel community, which is not quite anti-Israel nor quite pro-Israel. Instead it hovers moderately and indecisively in the glorious middle. The center of the pro-Israel community is not really pro-Israel. Instead it’s for a two-state solution. It’s for Israel and for the PLO. It wants foreign aid for both. It wants peace. And no amount of terrorism will change its mind.

The marshmallow center of the pro-Israel community is the best recruiting ground for the anti-Israel left because its worldview is hypocritical and incoherent. It lobbies for arms for Israel and yet insists that peace is inevitable. It concedes that both sides have good arguments, but that Israel’s argument is slightly better. Or perhaps slightly less worse. It evades the issues to talk up Israel’s tech sector or the gay bars in Tel Aviv. It believes in boosterism, but not in Israel’s right to finally end terrorism.

The best and brightest culturally liberal youth naturally see through this nonsense and leave. And why shouldn’t they? On campuses they hear from one side that Israel is the devil while their side tells them that Israel is flawed, but basically means well because it is tolerant enough to concede most of the arguments of the other side. You don’t need to be a debate champion to see the trouble with this.

When its younger crowd is through singing “Shalom, Salaam”, it will go either left or right.

The center of the pro-Israel community is actually liberal and Zionist, but it is too liberal to be Zionist and too Zionist to blend well with the left. And so it is a walking contradiction that stands for nothing. It calls for tolerance and applauds its own humanism. It raises money for Israel, but it lacks all conviction when it comes to defending Israel. It is not pro-Israel in any way that truly counts.

Finally, there is the pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community. It is a testament to the perversity, neurosis and insecurity of the Jewish establishment that the pro-Israel wing is the smallest part of the pro-Israel community. The pro-Israel wing is easily overshadowed by the anti-Israel wing which lunches at the White House and the organizational behemoth of the center which pretends that it doesn’t exist.

The pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community consists of far smaller groups such as EMET, ZOA, AFSI and many others. It relies heavily on volunteers like the elderly men and women who spent years protesting the PLO deal, gathering in small groups on street corners and handing out fliers in the rain.

It is unglamorous. It is obscure. It is mostly unheard. And it will still save Israel.

My previous post tells of the adoption of a Palestinian activist’s play by the powers that decide the curriculum in the Aussie state of Victoria, aimed at teenagers. Quite a coup, leading to enormous satisfaction on the anti-Israel mob’s part.Where has the Aussie Jewish “leadership” been meanwhile?

Have they protested? Have they been fobbed off with the fact that also on the VCE playlist for 2016 is a play that uses an Aboriginal leader’s 1938 protest to the German Embassy over Nazi persecution of Jews as a peg on which to hang its themes? If so, they are woefully mistaken, for the latter play is in no sense a trade-off.

Soon to be launched, in Adelaide, is a novel by pro-BDS stalwart Professor Emeritus Stuart Rees of Jake Lynch’s Peace Centre.

Like the Palestinian activist’s play, Rees’s novel would appear to have a love story as hook on which to hang a political message.

The book is to be launched in May by Adelaide barrister Paul Heywood-Smith QC, a founding member of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA).

For Palestinian Christians, the destruction of the ancient Byzantine church ruins is yet a further attempt by Palestinian Muslim leaders to efface both Christian history and signs of any Christian presence in the West Bank and Gaza, under the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. A growing number of Christians feel they are being systematically targeted by both the PA and Hamas for being Christians.

Bulldozers were used to destroy some of the church artifacts; some Palestinian Christians accused both Hamas and the PA of copying ISIS tactics to demolish historic sites.

“Where are the heads of the churches in Jerusalem and the world?… Where are the Vatican and UNESCO? Where are the leaders and politicians who talk, talk, talk about national unity and the preservation of holy sites? Or is this a collective conspiracy to end our existence and history in the East?” — Sami Khalil, a Christian from the West Bank city of Nablus.

The plight of Palestinian Christians does not interest the international community. That is because Israel cannot be blamed for demolishing the antiquities. If the current policy against Christians persists, the day will come when no Christians will be left in Bethlehem.

Palestinian Christians are up in arms over the destruction of the ruins of an ancient Byzantine church that were recently discovered in Gaza City.

The protest, however, failed to win the attention of the international community, especially United Nations agencies such as UNESCO, whose mission is to secure the world’s cultural and natural heritage.

The ruins of the 1800-year-old church were discovered in Palestine Square, in the Al-Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City, where Hamas is planning to build a shopping mall. The dramatic discovery of the antiquities did not seem to leave an impression on the construction workers, who removed artifacts and continued with their work at the site.

Three momentous events mark 1979 as the year in which modern jihad, having evolved over the course of the century, emerged as a global movement: the establishment of a theocratic regime in Iran, the siege of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. While the conditions for an Islamist explosion had existed for a long time, these events were the spark.

On April 1, 1979, following the overthrow of the shah and the return of the fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini from exile in France, the Shiite populace of Iran voted in a national referendum to become an Islamic republic. A new constitution outlined the central role of divine revelation in determining Iran’s laws, which would be based on the Koran and the Sunnah, the traditions of Islam. Then on November 4, a crowd of student protesters who were loyal to Khomeini and committed to taking their revolution to the “great Satan,” America, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans hostage. Most of them would remain in captivity until the day Ronald Reagan took Jimmy Carter’s place in the White House. Focused on rescuing their imprisoned countrymen, Americans had a poor understanding of the broader picture in Iran. The elderly Khomeini was not seen as a serious alternative to the royal Pahlavi family, who were friendly to the United States. But the revolutionary cleric and his new guard of religious fanatics were able to exploit the ancient Persian reserves of pride and resilience, quickly imposing a Shia version of theocracy in which Islam and politics were totally reintegrated. The mullahs of Tehran became the center of political as well as religious power in Tehran.
Mideast Two Revolutions

Demonstrators hold up a poster of exiled Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini during an anti-shah demonstration in Tehran in 1978 / AP

The Shia of Iran thus demonstrated to the world—including the Sunnis, many of whom would be envious—that the theocratic caliph- ate was viable in the modern world. It also demonstrated that Muslims not only should but could reject the Western separation of politics and faith. Modernity’s separation of Allah’s writ and governance could be reversed.

Just as important, the success of the Iranian revolution and the embassy attack proved that the United States, and by inference all other great powers, was not invulnerable. The Muslim world did not have to be the powerless victim of Western machinations, such as interference in Iran’s domestic affairs and overarching control of the geopolitics of the Middle East.