EDUCATION Comments turned off

Ivy League absent from university presidents’ condemnation of Hamas Yeshiva University President Ari Berman marshaled his colleagues to sign a declaration denouncing the terror group.David Isaac

Posted By on November 6th, 2023

https://www.jns.org/ivy-league-absent-from-university-presidents-condemnation-of-hamas/

Stung by their colleagues’ half-hearted condemnations of Hamas and by on-campus anti-Israel protests in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre, more than 100 presidents and chancellors of U.S. colleges and universities appended their names to a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 28-29) condemning Hamas in no uncertain terms.

However, not a single Ivy League school signed onto the statement.

This, as student chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—an eliminationist slogan calling for the destruction of Israel—echo in every Ivy League courtyard.

At Dartmouth and Princeton, students chanted, “Israel is a terror state.” Yalies4Palestine justified Hamas’s massacre in an Instagram post, saying, “Breaking out of a prison requires force.” Thirty Harvard student groups held Israel as “the only one to blame” for the pogrom.

Nor has such sentiment been heard only from students. At Columbia, 144 faculty members signed an open letter justifying Hamas’s rampage as a “military action.” A Cornell professor told students that he found the attacks “exhilarating” and “energizing.” A Columbia professor called the attack “awesome” and “astounding.” A Yale professor said that “Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle.”

Meanwhile, Jewish students on these campuses say they don’t feel safe. At Cornell, a student was arrested for threatening to shoot up the school’s kosher dining hall. At Columbia, a student was beaten.

The reaction of Ivy League leadership has been notable for its limpness. Special ire has been directed at the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The war in Gaza; a wake up call to reality: Moshe Dann

Posted By on November 6th, 2023

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/flashes/618788

The Swords of Iron war has extracted a terrible price in Israelis dead and wounded,mostly on the day of Hamas’ surprise attack on southern Israel. But it accomplished what was not possible in any other way.

Until Hamas’s declaration of war, most people, including many Israelis, believed that PLO and Hamas terrorists could be bought off with economic, diplomatic, and territorial incentives, concessions and rewards. The world poured $billions into their coffers, no questions asked, despite constant terrorist attacks. Except for Arab and Muslim countries which support them (e.g. Iran, Qatar, Malaysia, Pakistan, etc), that delusional thinking has not stopped, but the world understands what Hamas is.

Until the war, many people believed that Palestinian Arabs were entitled to a state by international humanitarian laws, such as the right of self-determination, and promoted as “the two-state solution” (2SS). This was the basis of the Oslo Accords, the creation of the Palestinian Authority, and it became enshrined as a moral principle, regardless of the leadership and purpose of such a state.

Then-Israeli PM Ehud Barak used it to offer Yasser Arafat a state; then-PM Ariel Sharon used it to justify the expulsion of Jews from the Gaza Strip (the “Disengagement”); and then-PM Ehud Olmert used it to make even more generous offers to Mahmoud Abbas. They were rejected, as usual, since it required accepting Israel’s right to exist. Nevertheless, until the war, the 2SS was supported by the international community, the media, and many Israeli leaders.

That is no longer the case. No one who cares about Israel is talking about the 2SS.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Islamic Nazis They’re shouting their goals from the rooftops. by David Horowitz

Posted By on November 6th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/islamic-nazis/

Quiz: What is the difference between Hitler’s Nazis and Palestinian supporters of Fatah and Hamas? Both are national socialists, both have embraced the totalitarian oppressors of their respective peoples and elected them whenever they were given the chance. Both are driven by a demonic hatred to exterminate the Jews. Both deploy “Big Lies” to justify their malignant cause.

Answer: The main difference is that Hitler hid the “Final Solution” – the extermination of the Jews – because he feared that Germany’s citizens were too civilized to embrace such an inhuman and evil cause. By contrast every Palestinian leader has stated their intentions clearly, written them in their covenants and visions of a Palestine without Jews, boasted of their massacres of innocents down to the cradle, and even shouted them from the rooftops.

Why is this so? German Nazis were pagans. The genocidal goals of the Palestinian Nazis are religious in origin, emanating from the mouth of the prophet Mohammed himself. The head of Hezbollah has proclaimed the Muslim war against the Jews a “Holy War.” The call to murder the Jews – “every last one” – and to behead them as infidels, is part of the sacred texts of Islam. The Hamas Slogans “Gas the Jews” and “Finish the job that Hitler started” are just tributes to a secular monster who shared their evil goal.

For decades hundreds of American campuses have been targeted by university-supported and subsidized student groups that function much like the Hitler Youth. The most prominent among them is the Muslim Students Association, created by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is seconded by the more activist Brotherhood creation, Students for Justice in Palestine. Some 20 years ago, on a speaking visit to the University of Wisconsin, I was greeted by a poster created by the MSA caricaturing me as a Nazi with a hook nose standing in a garbage can. The cartoon reminiscent of the Nazi caricatures of Jews can still be viewed on the Internet today.

Students for Justice in Palestine, which turns a blind eye to the murder of gays by the Hamas dictatorship in Gaza, was created by a Berkeley professor and Muslim Brotherhood star, Hatem Bazian, who has notoriously called for a terrorist Intifada in America while retaining his professorship. Several presidents of the Muslim Students Association have gone on to the Middle East to become terrorist leaders in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, and Saudi Arabia.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

No, They’re Not ‘Protesters’ or ‘Peace Activists.’ They’re Antisemites Rick Moran

Posted By on November 6th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2023/11/05/no-theyre-not-protesters-or-peace-activists-theyre-antisemites-n4923649

There was a huge pro-Hamas protest in Washington, D.C., on Saturday afternoon that quickly degenerated into an orgy of hate against Jews and Israel.

Some estimates placed the crowd size at 100,000, although D.C. police refused to give any estimates. What was absolutely clear, however, was that there were very few “peace activists” in the crowd, given what they were chanting.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “Long live the Intifada” was frequently chanted by marchers. Another chant intoned that Israel “does not have the right to exist.”

These aren’t protesters. They’re calling for the blood of Jews. And anyone who says differently isn’t listening.

Marchers smeared red paint on the white stone gates of the White House, screaming “Allahu akbar…F–k Joe Biden,” a New York Post reporter observed. 

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

One of Glamour Mag’s Women of the Year Is, You Guessed It, a Dude Robert Spencer

Posted By on November 6th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2023/11/05/one-of-glamour-mags-women-of-the-year-is-you-guessed-it-a-dude-n4923642

You might think this game is getting tired, but the left is just getting started. Gracing the featured photo for Glamour magazine’s 2023 Women of the Year edition is someone who has no business being part of a Women of the Year feature at all, because he is not a woman. But in these halcyon days of the left’s hegemony, up is down and black is white and fantasy is reality, and so men are women, Hamas jihad terrorists are oppressed freedom fighters, and Joe Biden is a capable, competent chief executive.

Glamour didn’t just feature this guy in, you know, a glamor shot, doing his level best (with the help of an untold number of surgical procedures, tons of makeup, strategic lighting, and I shudder to think what else) to fool the world into thinking that he really is a woman. The venerable fashion giant also made him the subject of a lavish, two-thousand-word puff piece that was published Wednesday, all about how he has suffered from the stifling mores of hidebound traditionalists who insist on believing that men are men and can’t become women no matter how energetically they fantasize.

But at Glamour, as with the left in general, fantasy is the name of the game. The title of the puff piece is “Geena Rocero Is Writing Her Truth,” and there you have it: “her truth,” not the truth. The hubristic and godless left believes that it can remake reality any way it wishes, and if the facts don’t match its view of the world, then so much worse for the facts. 

And so the Glamour piece happily pretends that Geena Rocero is actually not only a woman, but a fashion model, with his accessories lovingly noted underneath each glamor shot: “Gucci look. Maria Tash earrings.” “Fendi dress. Maria Tash earrings. Cartier bracelet and ring. Giuseppe Zanotti boots.” “Area suit. Maria Tash earrings. Cartier ring. Jimmy Choo pumps.” Apparently “Maria Tash earrings” is akin to “There’s no place like home” in “The Wizard of Oz”: repeat it often enough, and presto! Geena will be a real woman.

HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The sordid 100-year history of the ‘Two-State solution’:Victor Sharpe

Posted By on November 6th, 2023

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe

With both friends and enemies of Israel still exercised over what we know as the “Two-State solution,” it’s worth remembering that the very first such solution was enacted in infamy 102 years ago.

In 1920, Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the geographical and non-state territory known as Palestine, with the express intention of reconstituting within it a Jewish national home. The territory in question stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the eastern boundary of Mandatory Palestine, a border that would separate it from what was to become the future British-created state of Iraq.

The League of Nations drew up a few articles to this end, which were in line with the original intent of the Balfour Declaration of Nov. 29, 1917. At the last minute, however, a new and ominous article was introduced by the British Colonial Office: Article 25.

At first the sudden addition of this article was not cause for alarm, but gradually it became apparent that its inclusion directly enabled Great Britain in 1921/22 to tear away all the territory of geographical Palestine east of the River Jordan and give it away to the Arab Hashemite family; the territory to become Transjordan, led by the emir Abdullah. That took place some 102 years ago.

Britain presented this gift to Abdullah, the son of the Sherif of Mecca, as a consolation prize for its awarding of the Hejaz territory and Arabia, which included Mecca, to the rival Saud family: That vast territory is now Saudi Arabia.

British officials also claimed that the gift was in gratitude to the Hashemites for their contribution in helping defeat the Turks. However, even T.S. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, later described the Hashemite role in derisory terms, as “a side show of a side show.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Goodbye to all that As Remembrance Weekend approaches, Britain mourns the passing of more than its military heroes Melanie Phillips

Posted By on November 6th, 2023

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/goodbye-to-all-that?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

What you are looking at is a table set up on Saturday in London’s Charing Cross station, where people could buy poppies to be worn as a lapel pin in the days leading up to Remembrance Weekend in a few days’ time. That’s when the country commemorates British service members who have died in two world wars and other military conflicts since the onset of World War I.

The group selling the poppies are typical of the British people for whom this weekend is a solemn rite of collective memory, an affirmation of the supreme sacrifice that so many have made to defend the nation and its values.

But surrounding them are the ugly faces of the new Britain, those who have poured onto the streets in their tens of thousands to bellow their support for the annihilation of  Israel and the murder of Israeli Jews — people who call the genocide of Israeli Jews “resistance” and Israel’s resistance “genocide”. 

Yesterday saw the fourth of these weekly demonstrations, which have brought out Muslim-led mobs onto the streets of Britain and other western countries exulting at the barbaric massacre of 1400 Israelis on October 7 and demanding a ceasefire — not by Hamas, which continues its war crimes by firing volleys of rockets every day intended to murder more Israelis, but by Israel which is waging war in Gaza to destroy Hamas and end its criminal onslaught.

The image of those people surrounding the poppy sellers, whose own faces are a picture of pained stoicism, is as obscene as it is frightening. For those demonstrators stand for the barbarism and depravity that the defenders of Britain who are being commemorated by the poppy died in the attempt to defeat. 

Indeed, on one of the posters behind the poppy sellers but out of shot in this picture was a swastika, the Nazi symbol which these mobs are so grotesquely trying to pin on the Jewish nation that arose from the ashes of the Holocaust. 

In this war against Hamas and Iran, Israel is fighting for its life and the lives of its people against Palestinian Arabs whose forbears allied themselves to Hitler in the thirties and pledged to wipe out every Jew in the Middle East. Today’s Palestinian Arab genocidists display the same depravity. The spectacle of their acolytes in Britain crowding out those who wish to commemorate the British heroes who fought Nazism and aggression against the free world is beyond sickening.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Why Stanford’s Leaders Tolerate Anti-Semitism Recall how Marc Tessier-Lavigne was ousted as president after bucking leftist orthodoxies.

Posted By on November 6th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-stanfords-leaders-tolerate-anti-semitism-free-speech-academia-professors-249819a5?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

After Hamas massacred some 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, many Stanford students marched in support of the terrorist group, chanting “2, 4, 6, 8, smash the Zionist settler state.” University leaders responded with a statement supporting “academic freedom,” including the “expression of controversial and even offensive views.”

This is the same university where administrators last year undertook an Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, which published a catalog of words and phrases to be removed from the school’s websites. Among the proscribed terms: “American,” “immigrant” and “blind study.”

Stanford’s motto is “let the winds of freedom blow,” but many administrators and faculty want it to blow only from the left. Denouncing anti-Semitic protests wouldn’t chill academic freedom on campus; it would serve as a desperately needed show of moral clarity amid a tempest of false equivalence.

But cowardly university leaders are afraid of provoking leftist professors and staff. Recall what happened to Stanford’s previous president. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist, announced his resignation in July following a series of reports in the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, that accused him of research fraud. Much of the reporting turned out to be inaccurate, but that didn’t matter. The die had already been cast against him.

On Nov. 29, 2022, freshman Theo Baker—whose parents, Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, are journalists at the New Yorker and the New York Times—reported that images in some of Mr. Tessier-Lavigne’s papers on Alzheimer’s disease appeared to have been manipulated and that his research was under “investigation for scientific misconduct” by the European Molecular Biology Organization Journal.

Mr. Baker subsequently wrote several stories based on anonymous sources who alleged that Mr. Tessier-Lavigne had tried to conceal fraud in his studies. Mr. Baker focused particularly on a 2009 Alzheimer’s study in the journal Nature that Mr. Tessier-Lavigne led while employed by the drugmaker Genentech.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Terrorism and Tax Advantages Universities and anti-Israel groups may find their nonprofit status under scrutiny. By Leslie Lenkowsky

Posted By on November 6th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/terrorism-and-tax-advantages-nonprofit-education-dark-money-hamas-6f649015?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Missouri Rep. Jason Smith denounced universities and student organizations for statements “celebrating, excusing, or downplaying” the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel. “Releasing such statements, or failing to condemn them,” he said last month, “is unforgivable and runs counter to our values as a nation.”

Mr. Smith’s comments have more weight than most because he is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy. That includes policies governing nonprofit organizations, including colleges and universities as well as groups issuing statements and staging rallies throughout the U.S. Statements celebrating Hamas’s violence, Mr. Smith adds, “call into question the academic or charitable missions they claim to pursue”—in other words, their tax breaks.

The U.S. has traditionally given charities and their supporters great leeway in handling controversial issues. Constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly protect their activities and require government to demonstrate a strong reason for restricting them. But Congress and the Supreme Court—as well as nearly three dozen states—have agreed that providing aid to terrorist groups like Hamas is a justifiable reason to forbid donors from supporting them.

Mr. Smith’s statement suggests the tax exemptions of organizations backing Hamas—or tolerating such activity—may be in for congressional scrutiny. Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares has launched an investigation of AJP Educational Foundation, aka American Muslims for Palestine. Mr. Miyares’s office said in a press release that it is looking into whether the group “used funds raised for impermissible purposes under state law, including benefitting or providing support to terrorist organizations,” as well as whether it was properly registered to solicit contributions in the state.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

SOME GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on November 5th, 2023

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

Israel fights for survival on the battlefield and for humanity and against its ills-famine, drought, disease, and epidemics in the myriad laboratories, hospitals, research and eleemosynary institutions. Michael Ordman details these amazing contributions which continue even during war.

rsk

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Civilians raise money for IDF. Our People is a new volunteer NGO of 100 people, primarily immigrants from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa. It has raised $3.7 million to purchase and deliver ceramic inserts for the standard combat vest that IDF frontline soldiers use.
https://www.jns.org/startup-on-steroids-civilians-raise-3-7m-to-equip-idf-troops/
 
Vegan meals for soldiers. The Israeli startups joining Israel’s Redefine Meat (see last week) to provide plant-based meats and dairy alternatives to the IDF include Green Butcher, More Foods, YoEgg! Foods and Creative Pea. JO-MO Chocolate also provided sweet treats.   https://www.jomo-chocolate.com/
 
Feeding preemies.  Magen David Adom National Human Milk Bank announces that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct 7, hundreds of liters of Israeli breast milk has been donated to feed premature babies and babies whose mothers have been killed, abducted, or injured, or who have been called up to military duty.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/magen-david-adom-says-over-600-liters-of-breastmilk-provided-since-start-of-war/  https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-milk-bank-overflows-in-response-to-victims-babies/
 
Sew important. 400 volunteer fashion designers, design students, lecturers, and graduates, at Tel Aviv’s Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, work in shifts to help complete IDF gear for reservist soldiers. They stitch pockets and straps that attach to the ceramic bulletproof vests worn by combat soldiers.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/designers-sew-for-combat-soldiers-pivoting-from-fashion-to-function/  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z42AUAKValY
 
A hotline for non-Hebrew speakers. The Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bar-Ilan University has recruited dozens of volunteers to help non-Hebrew speakers contact emergency responders and aid organizations. It aims to help callers with immediate medical, emotional and logistical needs.
https://www.israel21c.org/hotline-providing-interpreting-services-during-wartime/
 
Israeli Arab reservists fight fake news. Arab-Israelis who volunteered to serve in the IDF and are now in the reserves, are informing the Arab world of Israel’s case. Their main message is “Everyone was shocked by Hamas, which is against Islam.”  https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bkzwfzgg6
 
UK Ambassador volunteers. (TY Hazel) British Ambassador to Israel Simon Walters volunteered at Asif – Culinary Institute of Israel, that since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 has been functioning as a center for cooking, packing, and shipping food to families evacuated from their homes, hospitals, and more.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/10/31/916291/
 
Female fighters save lives. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Caracal Battalion, led by Lt.-Col. Or Ben-Yehuda and comprised mostly of female IDF combat troops, eliminated approximately 100 terrorists on Oct 7. Also, orthodox border police Superintendent Shifra Buchris, plus 3 from her unit, rescued many at the rave party.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-769134
https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/sj00o9xgp
 
All my sons. The story of Ruti, a mother of 12, who has 6 sons (5 married) and 4 sons-in-law serving in the IDF reserves. She also has 3 grandchildren in the IDF.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/mother-of-12-has-six-sons-4-sons-in-law-3-grandchildren-and-1-nephew-in-the-idf/  
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
The premier of Surgical Theater’s AR spine surgery.  (TY OurCrowd) Stanford Medicine performed the first spine surgery using the augmented reality technology from Israel’s Surgical Theater (see here previously). The successful tumor resection operation employed Surgical Theater’s SyncAR Spine platform.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/surgical-theater-announces-first-augmented-reality-spine-surgery-at-stanford-medicine-successfully-executed-with-syncar-spine-301962538.html
 
Great results in heart monitoring trials. (TY Atid-EDI) The SmartHeart monitoring system from Israel’s SHL Telemedicine (see here previously) is undergoing trials at Imperial College London. It has reduced ER visits by 27.5% and hospital readmission rates by 55%, surpassing expectations.
https://www.shl-telemedicine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/20230926_Mayo-Imperial-initial-results-Final.pdf
 
US approval for dialysis artery connector. The US FDA has approved the VasQ External Vascular Support from Israel’s Laminate Medical Technologies (see here previously). It follows a US 144-patients study. VasQ safely connects a patient’s arteries and veins to dialysis machines, by creating arteriovenous fistulas or AVFs.
https://vascularnews.com/laminate-medical-announces-fda-clearance-for-vasq-avf-creation-device/
http://www.laminatemedical.com/news-events/
 
US funds Israeli virus versus bacteria trial. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s MeMed (see here previously) has been awarded nearly $727,800 from the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to support a trial of its 15-minute MeMed BV test that distinguishes between bacterial and viral infections.
https://www.me-med.com/press_release/memed-awarded-us-barda-contract/
 
Devices to relieve stress. Israeli startups XRHealth (see here previously) and CalmiGo (see here previously) are donating their anxiety-relieving devices to hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities and mental health centers throughout Israel. XRHealth’s headsets and CalmiGo’s inhalers help relax worried citizens.
https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-firms-donate-anxiety-relieving-devices-to-citizens/