RUTHFULLY YOURS

In video call to Microsoft Israel’s annual big bash, co-founder says he’s ‘very impressed’ with Israel’s R&D

A special guest virtually joined over 2,000 people at the Microsoft Israel R&D Center’s annual Think Next event in Tel Aviv Thursday – the man who started it all, Bill Gates.In a rare public comment on the value of MS Israel’s work in helping make the company what it is, Gates said that Israeli developments tech areas like analytics and security were “improving the world.”

This year marked the eighth Think Next event, where MS shows off its best and brightest new technologies, many developed in Israel. Gates doesn’t call in every year, but with this year being the 25th anniversary of the Microsoft Israel research and development center, he told the Tel Aviv audience in a video call from the US that he was “very happy to wish the R&D center a happy birthday.”

The center, he said, “started in 1991, when some of the Israeli engineers at Microsoft wanted to return home but continue working at Microsoft. We decided to open the center – it was our first one outside the US – and I think the technology they have produced over the years more than justifies our decision.”

Speaking live at the event was current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier Thursday to discuss cyber-security and other matters. In their meeting, Nadella noted Microsoft’s commitment to Israel, “its investments in the local market and its commitment to the continued growth of the high-tech and innovation industry in Israel which finds expression in assistance programs for start-ups, introducing advanced technologies to all sectors of the economy, promoting science and technology, and education in computers and mathematics,” the Prime Minister’s Office said.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Ice-tech could end organ shortage. (TY UWI) Currently it is not possible to freeze organs in order to preserve them for later transplant. Now researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have studied ice-binding “antifreeze proteins” that protect frozen cells from expansion damage when they thaw out.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/hebrew-u-ice-tech-could-end-organ-transplant-shortage/
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/29485

Cancer pre-dates the modern era. Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered evidence of colon cancer in the mummified remains of an 18th century Hungarian corpse. The mutation of the Adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene is the earliest recorded case of colorectal cancer.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/02/25/hungarian-mummy-offers-clues-to-cancer-mystery.html
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147217

Merck and Weizmann sign medical agreement. US giant Merck has signed a new framework agreement with Israel’s Weizmann Institute to research new solutions in the area of biotechnology and cancer research. Merck has more than 300 employees at four sites throughout Israel.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/merck-weizmann-institute-sign-strategic-deal-on-cancer-research/

Portable ultrasound device demonstrated. (TY Hazel & JBN) Here is a video to demonstrate the power of the portable ultrasound device developed in the laboratory of Israel Technion’s Professor Yonina Eldar.
(see Feb 2016 newsletter) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ol_qj9i2Jw

The 19-year-old neuroscientist. Israel’s Amir Goldenthal began his PhD when he was 16 and just one year into his first degree. Now 19, his doctoral dissertation involves breakthroughs in the understanding of neurological diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Amir won a prize at the Nobel Laureates Conference in Japan for best research paper. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4772307,00.html

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

US Ambassador in driverless car in Jerusalem. US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro tried out Israeli company MobilEye’s driverless car on Jerusalem roads – and was impressed. Shapiro said, “it’s probably safer than if a driver was in control of the vehicle, because drivers can be distracted but this vehicle cannot.”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-envoy-takes-a-ride-on-israeli-driverless-car/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8POjQGJOiU

“Israeli technology is improving the world.” The 2,000 people at the Microsoft Israel’s “Think Next” event in Tel Aviv, including CEO Satya Nadella, had a video call from the man who started it all, Bill Gates. Gates said that Israeli developments in tech areas like analytics and security were “improving the world.”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/bill-gates-israeli-tech-changing-the-world/ http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Tech/Microsofts-Nadella-in-Israel-to-mark-25-year-cooperation-446062

Another Israeli airport safety system. (TY Dan) Israel’s Controp has teamed up with USA’s Pharovision to develop the Interceptor and Sentinel detection systems. They are designed to warn of potential collisions between airplanes and either airborne birds or foreign object debris on the ground.
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/singapore-israeli-companies-market-debris-and-wildl-421925/

Now an app can learn about humans. (TY Dan) Israel’s SimilarWeb has launched SimilarWeb Portrait – smart software that builds up a (non-identifiable) profile of a human computer user. This allows app developers to tailor their apps to give a friendlier user experience, from the moment they are installed.
http://www.martechadvisor.com/news/similarweb-launches-similarweb-portrait-to-empower-app-developers-with-instant-audience-insights/

It’s that time of year again—Israel Apartheid Week. This “week” starts in Europe in February and spreads to North America in March. It’s an arm of the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel) movement, which is in turn an arm of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Israel Apartheid Week is essentially an invasion of Western universities by Middle Eastern terrorism. Its aim is to abet the destruction of a country, Israel, by poisoning the minds of a whole generation against it. Its cri de coeur is “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” In other words, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea—no “two-state solution,” no compromise, no Israel.

One way to further that aim is to spread the “big lie” of Israeli “apartheid.” The Israel Apartheid Week activists know that it’s a lie, as does anyone—that is, anyone not blinded by ideological hatred—who has ever spent time in Israel. Here’s an Israeli Arab Supreme Court justice. Here’s an Israeli Arab brigadier general. Here’s an Israeli Arab leader of a parliamentary faction. Class, can you point to equivalents among blacks during apartheid South Africa?

It’s not only, though, that “apartheid” is a ludicrous lie to toss at Israel. It’s also that—as grim, hate-ridden Israel Apartheid Week plods on—Israel is increasingly a blessing not only to its Arab citizens but to the Arab world as a whole.

To start with the Israeli Arabs—as Evelyn Gordon notes, a poll in 2015 asked them:

“If you had the opportunity to become a citizen of the United States or any other Western country, would you prefer to move there or to remain in Israel?” Fully 83.4 percent said they would rather remain in Israel—virtually identical to the proportion among Israeli Jews (84.5 percent).

Israeli Arabs know, of course, that Israel gives them a level of freedom, democracy, and economic advancement that the surrounding Arab countries can hardly match. It’s very possible that if Israel had not become Israel, it would now be Southern Syria. The poll didn’t ask if Israel or Southern Syria would be a better place to live, but one can imagine where the responses would fall.

Peak warmism has already hit, and the global warming movement is now on its long glide path through loss of government funding, budget and hiring cuts, less media attention, on the way to unfashionability, embarrassment, and eventually obscurity, a historical footnote like phrenology (which was once the rage in elite academic circles). In retrospect, the December 2015 Paris Climate Accord, which was still able to draw heads of state but which could accomplish nothing substantive other than promise money, may well be seen as the definitive moment at which the movement began its official decline.

Now elite institutions, which always have their antennae attuned to the ebb and flow of the concerns of the world’s power elite, are acting out the consequences of decline. If you are a university president responsible for raising mega-donations by convincing the holders of wealth that they can achieve prestige and maybe a little immortality by funding your Good Works, then you have to be aware of their changing concerns.

Only a few years ago, global warming seemed like a sure winner to Yale’s then-president Richard C. Levin, when he announced in 2009 the establishment of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute and secured Rajendra K. Pachauri as its first head. Pachuari was the head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the major force pushing global warming as a central battle to be fought to save humanity, and he was to serve both the U.N. and Yale at the same time, locking them together as leaders of the fight to rescue us all from doom.

During several sleepless nights, watching loops of 24-hour news broadcasts devoted to the U.S. presidential race, I noticed certain themes that otherwise might have escaped my attention. One was the claim that first-time voters are “too young to remember” the scandals surrounding former president Bill Clinton and wife Hillary’s behavior during the period that the couple occupied the White House.

This assertion was like a hidden key to unlocking another phenomenon related to Americans in the age group under discussion and the surrounding culture’s attitude toward them. I am talking about the latest “radical chic” on campuses across the country — fever-pitched anti-Israel activism.

At both Ivy League and state schools, accusing the Jewish state of war crimes against the “oppressed Palestinian people” is the current ticket to peer acceptance. Campaigning for boycott, divestment and sanctions against “Israeli apartheid” is so popular that anything from complaints about high tuition and student loans to criticism of professors and guest lecturers has become part and parcel of the movement.

The response of university administrators and faculty has been to cower and hold meetings with student-body representatives to discuss free speech. So rampant has this scenario become that alumni are starting to wake up and take measures, among them threats to cease donating money to their alma maters.

I raised one that has long been bothering me – whether Western secular values were undermining the ability of the Jewish people to survive.
At Jewish Book Week in London a few days ago, I took part in a panel discussion about the most pressing questions facing Jews today.

I raised one that has long been bothering me – whether Western secular values were undermining the ability of the Jewish people to survive.

Across the West, there has been a terrifying rise in anti-Jewish feeling. This is fueled by an unprecedented campaign of lies and libels against Israel aimed at destroying it through delegitimization.

This campaign displays the same signature motifs of classic Jew-hatred that go back through the centuries.

A Connecticut College professor has told colleagues that his school has grown so hostile toward Jews that he can no longer recommend Jewish students or professors study or teach at the college.

“In my opinion, this harassment of Jews on campus in the name of fighting for social justice should end; immediately,” wrote Spencer J. Pack, an economics professor, in a faculty-wide email.
His comments were triggered by the smear campaign that pro-Palestinian students successfully waged against a pro-Israel professor, resulting in his indefinite leave from campus, and a more recent push to malign Birthright (a program enabling student travel to Israel) by plastering the campus with posters. The posters reportedly intimidated Jewish or pro-Israel students and faculty, while attempting to poison the minds of uninformed students and faculty with vicious falsehoods about Israel. The posters were put up by Conn Students in Solidarity with Palestine (CSSP), whose faculty adviser, Eileen Kane, runs the school’s Global Islamic Studies program.

Kane’s Global Islamic Studies program also invited Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi to speak at Connecticut College on April 12. Kanazi, who is scheduled to give a “poetry performance,” is on the organizing committee of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and listed among its endorsers. His strategy has been to connect anti-Israel politics with popular urban struggles.

Israel’s highest-ranking Muslim soldier has described how he endeavours to make his service a source of pride to his father, despite many treating him as a traitor.

Growing up in the village of Reineh in the Galilee – where many believe he has betrayed Arab-Israelis – Major Alaa Waheeb said he never imagined he would be part of the Israeli Defence Forces, let alone go on to become its most-decorated Muslim.

The major was speaking while in Britain for a tour of communities organised by the grassroots group Zionist Federation.

But the soldier, who has served as a platoon commander and was an operations officer in the Gaza brigade during the disengagement in 2005, could not even speak Hebrew until he was 18.

At his high school, he was told that “serving in the IDF is not the way of the Muslim religion”. He said it was only the intervention of his father which caused him to perform “a 180-degree change from where I was,” and join the army.

“If there’s one thing that I want to say, it’s that my dad was the one who wanted me to join the IDF. My dad always told me to be a soldier.

“He was born in Syria and brought to Israel as a small child. He and his family lived in Yavne’el, a small town with many religious Jews. That’s why he had so many Jewish friends, why he then joined the Israeli police, and why he told me to join the army.

“I was wondering, ‘what does he want from me?’ and I told him: ‘I have nothing to look for in the IDF’.”

But eventually, at the age of 18, Major Waheeb was convinced. Nearly two decades later, he said his decision was still unpopular with some.

‘No education toward 2 states in Palestinian textbooks,’ report finds

Israel is routinely left off maps, Israeli cities are said to be in Palestine, martyrdom is celebrated, and there is not a single mention of the Holocaust in more than 70 official Palestinian Authority textbooks, Israel Radio reported Tuesday.

The state radio’s Palestinian affairs correspondent, Gal Berger, said he looked over textbooks for grades 1-12 with a diverse range of subjects, including history, geography and Islamic studies, and found what he indicated was a systematic blurring out of Israel’s existence.

“In the textbooks of the Palestinian Authority,” he said, “there is no education towards two states or a Palestinian state [alongside Israel] within ’67 lines.”

In the Palestinian history books for grades 10-12, there are full chapters dedicated to World War II but no mention of the Holocaust, Berger reported. “For a student in this [Palestinian education] system,” said Berger, “it is as if the Holocaust never happened.”

In his examination of the Islamic studies textbooks, Berger found excerpts that celebrated martyrdom, including a fourth grade textbook that invites the children to write about a Palestinian martyr of their choice.

The messages from Washington ahead of Vice President Joe Biden’s arrival in Israel next week show President Barack Obama’s hostile policies toward Israel will maintained until he leaves office.

In recent weeks, the administration has warned various government ministers that any construction of housing for Jews in Jerusalem will be viewed with hostility by the administration. In contrast, the administration is pressuring Israel to permit construction of homes for Arabs in its capital city and harshly opposes all moves by the government to destroy illegal construction in Arab neighborhoods and in Judea and Samaria.

In other words, it is the Obama administration’s policy to deny Jews our civil and property rights while it demands that Israel not assert its sovereignty over non-Jews.

Whether or not Obama’s anti-Israel policies will survive his tenure in office depends on who succeeds him. If Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is elected to serve as the next president, there is no question that they will survive him.

During her four years as Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton was a full partner in Obama’s hostile policies toward Israel. Moreover, as her internal emails have shown, all of Clinton’s close advisers are hostile to Israel. The good news for Israel is that Clinton’s chances of election are not as great as they seem from the polls.

First of all, there is every reason to believe that in the coming weeks, the Republicans will unite.

Either party leaders will back front-runner Donald Trump, or his main competitors, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, will join forces and win the nomination.

The latter alternative, which is gaining traction among Republican leaders and political commentators, involves Cruz, who is more popular with the party’s rank in file than Rubio, and has secured primary victories in four states whereas Rubio finished first only in Minnesota, leading a joint ticket.

But even if the GOP remains fractured, Clinton may still be too weak to win the White House in November. This is first and foremost the case because of the FBI investigation of her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.