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Quietly, the German pharmaceutical and tech firm has emerged as a major international player in Israel

With more than 300 employees at four sites throughout Israel, Merck KgaA, a multifaceted chemical and technology company, has quietly emerged as one of the major multinational firms with a significant presence in Israel.

The company announced this week that it was furthering its stake in Israeli tech by signing a new framework agreement with the Weizmann Institute to research new solutions in the area of biotechnology and cancer research.

“We have focused our healthcare research activities on the highly promising fields of immuno-oncology, immunology and oncology, as we’re striving to deliver new solutions to respond to unmet medical needs,” said Stefan Oschmann, deputy CEO and vice chairman of the executive board of Merck. “We’re excited that the new framework agreement will cover the first two of these three areas, and we are already looking forward to the proposals of the distinguished Weizmann scientists.”

As part of the new framework agreement, Merck will fund each of the two research areas with up to € 1 million per year over the initial three-year period.

Merck (there are actually two separate companies called Merck; Merck KgaA, which operates everywhere except the US and Canada, where an independent company called Merck and Co. operates) is no stranger to the Weizmann Institute. Merck is best known for its drugs, but less well known is the strong connection the company — established in 1688 — has with Israel, where it has been active since 1978.

On a recent visit to Israel, Karl-Ludwig Kley, CEO of Merck KgaA, said that “15 percent of our products have an Israeli background, many of them researched at the Weizmann Institute. We have strong working relationships to develop products with all of Israel’s research institutes.

On Thursday afternoon, two 14-year-old Palestinians went on a stabbing spree in a supermarket in Samaria (the West Bank), killing 21-year-old IDF Staff Sgt. Tuvia Yanai Weissman, the married father of a 4-month-old baby, and moderately wounding another Israeli man.

Weissman, like the shoppers who subdued the terrorists with their shopping carts, was not on duty; he was simply at the store buying groceries for his family.

This kind of scenario has become a tragically familiar part of the Israeli landscape since the beginning of the current surge in Palestinian terrorism in September. Though commonly referred to as the “Knife Intifada,” it is also characterized by the use of rocks, Molotov cocktails, guns and vehicles as weapons with which to murder Jews.

Because the average age of the terrorists is young, when they are neutralized (tackled, beaten or shot) — whether by members of the Border Police or armed civilians — the customary rumbling from abroad about Israel’s use of “excessive” or “disproportionate” force is always soon to follow.

As shameful as this double standard is in relation to the Jewish state in general and its response to life-threatening acts of aggression in particular, it is at least held by Israel’s ill-wishers. It is against these propagandists that Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely and others have been working tirelessly and painstakingly to combat in the battlefield of ideas.

Imagine our dismay, then, when the top Israeli official commanding the actual war arena provides ammunition to the enemy.

About 10 miles northeast of Jerusalem sits the Israeli community of Ma’aleh Michmas. To the international community, this place is a “settlement” (emphasis on the “sssss”). In the Bible, it is mentioned in 1 Samuel, Isaiah, and Ezra. The ancient Israelites fought the Philistines there.

This week, a resident of Ma’aleh Michmas fought modern enemies, the Palestinians, at a market, in the homeland of his forefathers.

Tuvia Yanai Weissman, a combat sergeant with the Nahal Brigade, was stabbed to death by two Arab teenagers as he intervened in an attack. The 21-year-old leaves behind a wife and baby.

The demons that walk up and down in the earth today manifest in myriad ways. For Yanai and Yael, the fiends have stolen their future. When Yanai heard the commotion at the market, he left his baby daughter, Neta, with his wife. He was stabbed as he tried to save others. At his funeral, Yael pierced the veil now between them:

“Give me the strength to look Neta in the eyes and tell her that everything will be fine. I promise to take care of her as best I can. I am sorry that we did not have a chance to realize our dreams.

“I love you and I already long for you.”

The young husband and father was taken to a hospital, where doctors tried for hours to save him. Incredibly, his murderers (I couldn’t care less that they are both 14) are being treated in two Jerusalem’s medical centers; Sha’are Tzedek and Hadassah Ein Karem.

I wish they weren’t. I have to be honest.

I wish the Weissmans were able to return home and spend the next 60 years together.

Our deepest condolences for the death of humanity in the State Dept.’s alleged condolence note about a random attack on a random American in a random place.

Why is it that this U.S. Administration, including its leader, President Barack Obama, refers to the intentional murder of Jews in the most remote and passive of terms? No one murders Jews: an attack happens and later the unfortunate Jew dies.

No Jews are targeted because they are Jews: the victims – random ones, of course – just happen to be Jews.

And it’s gotten worse. Now the Israeli Jews, when they happen to die of some random attack, are not even Jews, but Israelis, unless they happen to live beyond the 1949 Armistice Line (the invisible Green Line) in which case they are neither Jew nor Israeli, but simply the maligned “settler” or, sometimes, only referred to as the other half of their dual nationality, such as American – as if they have no connection at all to the Jewish people or Israel, and as if those connections had nothing to do with their random death.

Take, just as the latest example, yesterday’s stabbing and murder.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s position on this is well known ever since he stated as much last year, in the run-up to the Israeli elections.In a recent Knesset debate, despite the customary efforts of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Labor opposition leader Isaac Herzog to differentiate their political positions, it emerged that actually both oppose creating a Palestinian state under prevailing conditions.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s position on this is wellknown ever since he stated as much last year, in the run-up to the Israeli elections that confirmed him in office, but Herzog’s statement was new. Herzog said, “The vision of two states is not dead, but it won’t happen tomorrow, surely not as long as you and [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] are afraid to make a move.”

Two aspects of this statement are noteworthy.

First, Palestinians are not reconciled to the idea that a Jewish state can and will exist alongside a Palestinian one. This is reflected in Palestinian polling. A June 2015 Palestine Center for Public Opinion poll found that 49 percent of Palestinians seek a Palestine in place of Israel, while only 29% seek one alongside Israel – and even many of those who seek a neighboring state do not accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state: 88% of Palestinians say Jews have no rights to the land at all.

Conservative author David Horowitz has long written about the “Unholy Alliance” that exists between Islamic extremists and the American Left. Now, a new series of photographs of campus propaganda posters reveals how this unholy alliance plays out on American campuses where students are incited to join the Islamic war against the Jews of Israel with appeals to their sense of “social justice” and desire to address historic wrongs such as racism, colonialism and the mistreatment of women.

Many naïve Jewish students are seduced into joining these anti-Israel coalitions out of a desire to help the oppressed but find themselves ensnared in a Hamas-directed campaign to commit genocide against the Jews themselves.

Campus leaders of the Hamas campaign are two groups: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), as well as its less outwardly political counterpart, the Muslim Students Association (MSA). Both were created by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi has called on Muslims to finish the job that Hitler started. The Brotherhood is godfather to the anti-Israel terror group Hamas, whose charter calls for the extermination of the Jews. SJP and MSA conduct annual anti-Israel hate-fests known as “Israeli Apartheid Weeks” during which they erect mock “apartheid walls” plastered with Hamas propaganda, including claims that Israel is an “apartheid” state which seeks to shed the blood of Palestinian children. A near-omnipresent image on these walls is a series of four false and genocidal maps purporting to show the Jewish infiltration and colonization of the Arab nation of “Palestine” from 1947 to the present.

If there is anything more predictable than the sun rising of a morning it is Big Chalk’s immediate response to any and all discussions of standards. ‘Give us more money,’ unions and lobbyists demand, thereby demonstrating either a gross failure of comprehension or a willingness to mislead
The Australian Education Union and the Labor Party, when justifying the additional billions of dollars needed to fully fund the Gonski Report’s school funding model, argue that Australia’s education system is inequitable. Government school advocate Trevor Cobbold from Save Our Schools is also in no doubt that Australia’s education system is inequitable when he argues, “Clearly, Australia is at the bottom end of OECD countries in terms of equality in education outcomes”. Alan Reid, from the University of South Australia, in a report commissioned by the Australian Government Primary Principals Association argues in a similar vein when he says, “Australia is near the bottom of OECD countries in terms of equity and education”.

All argue that students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, the majority of whom are in government schools, consistently underperform as a result of being disadvantaged and only increased funding will improve outcomes and raise standards. Based on their belief that Australia’s education system is unfair and that government school students are the most adversely affected, both Cobbold and Reid go on to argue that governments must redirect funding from so-called privileged Catholic and Independent schools to government schools.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that Australian schools do not reinforce disadvantage and, based on research carried out by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, our education system is ‘high-equity’.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/02/19/the-case-of-mohammed-and-aisha-on-the-glazov-gang-3/

A recent bill in Pakistan sought to ban child marriage, but it miserably failed — after a prominent religious body declared the legislation “un-Islamic.” The UN also recently voiced alarm at the growing number of forced child marriages in Iran. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child denounced laws permitting sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine — and it urged Iran to “repeal all legal provisions that authorize, condone or lead to child sexual abuse.”

In response to these developments, The Glazov Gang is running its special episode with Louis Lionheart, a scholar of Islam who came on the show to discuss The Case of Mohammed and Aisha, dealing with the prophet of Islam’s marriage to a 6-year-old girl, and his “consummation” of that marriage when she was 9. Louis discusses the Islamic theology and texts that describe this marriage and how the Islamic and non-Islamic world has dealt, and not dealt, with the Islamic reality of this case.

Don’t miss it!

http://www.wsj.com/articles/majoring-in-anti-semitism-at-vassar-1455751940

Anti-Israel sentiment mixed with age-old anti-Semitism has reached a fever pitch at Vassar College. It is time that faculty and administrators take a stand against this toxic brew on behalf of academic values.

The campus of this private liberal-arts college in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., has experienced more than its share of anti-Israel activity. In the spring of 2014, the boycott of a course in the International Studies Program—because it involved a trip to Israel—included heckling students and picketing the class. During the fall of 2015, attempts were made to boycott Sabra hummus because the maker of this popular food is partly owned by an Israeli food company.

The most recent incident was a talk on Feb. 3 by Jasbir Puar, a Rutgers associate professor of women’s and gender studies. The address, “Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters,” was sponsored by eight Vassar departments and programs, including Jewish Studies and American Studies. READ MORE AT SITE

In a move uncharacteristic of U.S. policy as it has been carried out for decades, the Obama administration recently endorsed Europe’s version of a soft Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) campaign targeting Israeli merchandise.

In late January, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency changed its policy on imports from the West Bank, imposing, in effect, a sanction on such goods.

The penalty states that products must no longer be labeled “Made in Israel,” because the United States views the West Bank as territory illegitimately controlled by Israel.

Europe adopted such a labeling policy in November. Since then, the United States has chartered a zigzag course through the product demarcation debate. When asked in November if labeling constitutes a boycott, Mark C. Toner, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman, said: “It’s a—it could be—it could be perceived as a step on the way.”

Just last month, however, Toner’s boss, spokesman John Kirby, announced: “We do not view labeling the origin of products as being from the settlements a boycott of Israel. We also do not believe that labeling the origin of products is equivalent to a boycott.”

The United States, like the European Union, goes to great lengths to insist that demarcating Israeli products from the settlements is not a boycott.