RUTHFULLY YOURS

The latest federal education reform sends more power back to states and local districts, but that poses risks to the extent they are captured by teachers unions. Witness New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo is retreating on teacher accountability.

In a bid to snag Race to the Top funds in 2010, New York adopted Common Core standards and required that 20% of teacher evaluations be based on student scores on state tests and another 20% on local objective measures of student learning. Student scores on the tougher new tests plunged. Proficiency dropped to 31% in reading and math in 2013 from 69% and 82%, respectively, in 2009.

Yet even as student measures plunged, local school districts in cahoots with the unions rigged evaluations to ensure that nearly all teachers got good marks. One tactic: Unions collectively bargained for easier local tests to be part of their evaluations. Lo, 96% of teachers statewide were rated “effective” or “highly effective” last year while only about a third of students passed state reading and math tests.

As humans, we instinctively root for the underdog. Movies and books exalt the underfunded, undereducated (and often underage) underdog in his fight against the polished grown-ups with their money, influence, and three-piece suits. From a young age, we imbibe the idea that those with money and power are always bad, leaving the “little guy” to save the day. Large organizations are generally viewed with suspicion, regardless of the actual character of the entity. Likewise, irrespective of the goals of the smaller group, the underdog more easily garners our sympathies.

The painful realization is that we, the campus pro-Israel movement, the ones fighting the “good fight” for democracy, human rights, and tolerance in the Middle East, are seen as the “big dog” — the suspect corporate entity. We have funds, and we use them. We are the distributors of shiny pamphlets, the orderers of beautifully arranged food, and the coaches of groomed speakers. We are the ever-present “Israel advocates.” And yet despite — or more aptly because of our well-funded arsenal of promotional tactics — pro-Israel advocates are more often than not on the losing end when put against the world’s newest underdog: the BDS movement.
Seemingly underfunded and representing an “oppressed” people, the BDS movement rarely, if ever, caters events; it hires somewhat radical (and often uncouth) speakers; and it never hands out glossy pamphlets with long words (other than “apartheid,” of course). And in order to critically appeal to the universalist biases of the poorly informed, BDS does not call its supporters “Palestine advocates” — it calls them “human rights activists.”

Israel is facing a grave “king” crisis. Never mind the Muslim terrorists stabbing, slashing and shooting any Jews in range. The real threat was uncovered by Shabak’s Jewish section, a gang of Jewish youths had plotted to “appoint a king”. It’s a lucky thing that Shabak had prevented the “return of the king” through the usual measures of planting informants and torturing detainees.

Just think, if they hadn’t arrested and detained those “right-wing extremists”, Israelis today might be forced to take orders from an undemocratic king instead of an undemocratic Supreme Court.

After Rabin’s death, Kikar Malchei Yisrael, the Square of the Kings of Israel, was renamed Kikar Rabin. The kings of Israel had to make way for the eternal celebrations of outrage for the murder of the Labor PM at the hands of a pawn of a Shabak employee. That killing led to the same ritual cries about the threat of “right-wing extremism” which was somehow worse than the “left-wing extremism” whose pandering to terrorism had killed over 100 Israelis since Oslo.

It’s a lot more than 100 today. And center-right prime ministers have come and gone with bold promises and only made things worse. The regular chants of “Insert name here melech yisrael” at political conventions don’t lead to any arrests. Though considering their tackiness maybe they should.

Still ex-Shabak boss Carmi Gillon has reemerged to cry “We’re at a worse point than before the assassination of Rabin.” Not in the sense that the terrorists set off by his old boss can now bombard Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. But in the sense that more “right-wing extremists” are noticing it.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

New molecule kills cancer cells. (TY Nevet) Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a molecule known as NT157 which targets metastatic human melanoma and colon cancer. The molecule has been licensed to Israeli startup TyrNovo for medical trials.
https://www.afhu.org/internationally-acclaimed-researchers-discover-a-double-anti-cancer-agent/news/

Software to stop that stutter. Israel’s Novotalk is the only app that includes a therapy aspect for stuttering intervention. Novotalk’s fluency shaping therapy has a 90% success rate. Approximately 1% of the world’s adult population stutters – approximately 70 million people. http://novotalk.com/
http://www.janglo.net/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=display&catid=99&tid=377059

Don’t let your blood sugar levels spike. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have published a study showing the danger to health from eating foods that cause the blood sugar level to rise quickly. These foods vary for each individual and Weizmann wants more Israelis to join its Personalized Nutrition Project.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/will-ice-cream-make-you-gain-weight-it-depends-on-your-gut-study-finds/
http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674%2815%2901481-6

Treatment for diabetics in China. Israel’s Oramed has signed a deal worth $50 million that gives China’s Hefei Life Science & Technology (HLST) the rights to Oramed’s oral insulin capsule ORMD-0801 in China, Hong Kong and Macau. ORMD-0801 will help treat the large and growing numbers of diabetics in China.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/oramed-inks-huge-50m-deal-with-chinese-pharma-firm/

Sleep is key to success of bone marrow transplants. A clinical study by Professor Asya Rolls of Israel’s Technion has shown that the donor needs to sleep well in the four hours prior to donating their stem cells. If not, the success of the transplant decreases by 50%.
http://pard.technion.ac.il/2015/11/04/sleep-well-for-stem-cells/

Non-invasive procedure wins $10,000 prize. Three students from Israel’s Technion, won the $10,000 first prize at the BizTEC Entrepreneurship Competition held at Microsoft’s Herzliya R&D center. Their product solves the major problem of collecting urine samples from millions of babies each year.
http://www.technion.ac.il/en/2015/10/peekaboo-group-1st-in-biztec-2015/

Keep your hair. A team of students from Israel’s Technion have developed a treatment for hair loss, without side-effects. It won them “Best New Application” at the 2015 international iGEM synthetic biology competition in Massachusetts.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/203768#.VnLYlFnn-Ug

Tech for first responders. The Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation has granted $12 million over the next 3 years to Israeli-American projects that develop advanced technologies for first responders. The “NextGen” collaboration is expected to produce many lifesaving solutions.
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/12/21/us-israel-to-co-develop-technologies-for-first-responders/

Highest birthrate, lowest C-section rate. The childbirth rate of Israeli women is the highest among the 34 OECD countries, while its rate of cesarean sections is the lowest. The Israeli birthrate of 3.0 compares to the OECD average of 1.7. The Israeli cesarean rate is 154.3 per 1,000 births whilst the OECD figure is 258.7.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Israel-has-lowest-C-section-rate-in-OECD-436014

I commented on a Daniel Greenfield FrontPage column of December 24th, “Muslim Immigration is Exactly What ISIS Wants.” In it, Greenfield argues that ISIS wants to send thousands of its “fighters” to Europe and especially to the U.S., for the purpose of establishing operational bases for terrorism.

Agreeing with everything said by Mr. Greenfield concerning ISIS’s tactics and overall strategy, a crucial question is: Because Obama wants to bring in tens of thousands of Muslim “refugees,” and knows damned well there will be scores of ISIS agents among them, is this what he wants? Is he acting as an agent for ISIS? …I can posit an answer, but this is a question which would naturally occur to anyone observing Obama’s actions and statements.

And that has been over the years, at least seven of them. In June 2008 I penned a five-part commentary on the rise of Barack Obama, “The Year of the Long Knives,” which is accessible here. (That series does not mention Islam or Muslims even once. It dwells chiefly on the mooning crush on Obama our decrepit “aristocracy of money” has exhibited.) In this column I am positing an answer. It is purely speculative.

Let me ask you a question.

Let’s say you are an authentically moderate Muslim. Perhaps you were born into Islam but have become secularist. Or perhaps you consider yourself a devout Muslim but interpret Islam in a way that rejects violent jihad, rejects the concept that religious and civic life are indivisible, and rejects the principle that sharia’s totalitarian societal framework and legal code must be imposed on the state. Let’s just take that as a given: You are no more inclined toward terrorism than any truly peaceful, moderate, pro-democratic non-Muslim.

So let me pop the question: Is there any insulting thing I could say, no matter how provocative, or any demeaning video I could show you, no matter how lurid, that could convince you to join ISIS?

Mind you, I am not asking whether, upon my insulting and provoking you, you would ever want to have anything to do with me again. I am asking whether there is anything that could be said or done by me, or, say, Donald Trump, or Nakoula Basseley Nakoula — the video producer (Innocence of Muslims) whom Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama tried to blame for the Benghazi massacre — that could persuade you to throw up your hands and join the jihad? Is there anything so profoundly offensive to Islam that we could conjure up that would make a truly moderate, peaceful Muslim sign up for mass murder? Torching and beheading? Killing children? Participating in systematic rape as a weapon of war?

JNS.org – State Department officials and Middle East “experts” are always warning us that if the Palestinian Authority collapses, Israel will be harmed because Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation will come to an end. But an incident in Ramallah this week makes one wonder if that “security cooperation” really exists at all.

The Palestinian news agency Ma’an boasted on December 22 that “Palestinian police ordered Israeli Border Police forces out of the Beituniya area of western Ramallah and threatened to use their weapons if they refused, local security sources.” And indeed a YouTube video of the incident appears to confirm Ma’an’s characterization of the episode.

Ramallah is the capital of the Palestinian Authority, and under the Oslo accords, the city is under the complete security control of the PA — as opposed to some other parts of the territories, where Israel has the responsibility for security. So what were Israeli Border Police doing inside Ramallah’s city limits?

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Islamic State has sanctioned the harvesting of human organs in a previously undisclosed ruling by the group’s Islamic scholars, raising concerns that the violent extremist group may be trafficking in body parts.
The ruling, contained in a January 31, 2015 document reviewed by Reuters, says taking organs from a living captive to save a Muslim’s life, even if it is fatal for the captive, is permissible.Reuters couldn’t independently confirm the authenticity of the document. U.S. officials say it was among a trove of data and other information obtained by U.S. special forces in a raid in eastern Syria in May.
“The apostate’s life and organs don’t have to be respected and may be taken with impunity,” says the document, which is in the form of a fatwa, or religious ruling, from the Islamic State’s Research and Fatwa Committee.

This past July, unknown assailants threw a firebomb into the home of the Dawabshe family in Duma. The mother, Reham and the father Saad along with their eighteen month old baby Ali were killed. Four year old Ahmed was critically injured.

Authorities immediately alleged that the assailants were members of a Jewish terrorist organization. The accusations were widely disregarded by members of the national religious camp, and by the Right, more generally. But following news that Jewish suspects were arrested for the crime earlier this month, those early allegations ring truer than before.

The Right had good reason to raise an eyebrow at the allegations. The IDF, the Shin Bet and state prosecutors have a long history of open discrimination against the Right.

Fourteen years before the Dawabshes were murdered, then attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein retracted five year old indictments against members of Eyal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas separately offered Christmas greetings to the world on Thursday. Because both leaders operate in the Middle East and neither is Christian, their respective messages are particularly worthy of note.

Netanyahu began his address by mentioning the festive nature of the holiday, calling it a “special opportunity to spend time with loved ones.”

He continued by expressing empathy for less fortunate Christians who are “experiencing violence, persecution and fear” in every part of the region except the Jewish state, where “religious freedom is a sacred principle” and “Christian citizens enjoy the full blessings of freedom and democracy, their equal rights enshrined in Israeli law.”

He ended by saying, “Let us remember the common heritage and values that unite us in the face of extremism and hatred, which we will never accept. From Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people, the city of peace, I join Christians everywhere, and especially those in the Middle East, in a common prayer for a more peaceful and tolerant world.”