About that Hamas tunnel work accident...

From Ma'an:

The military wing of Hamas, al-Qassam Brigades, said Monday evening that a fighter affiliated to the group had been killed in a tunnel collapse in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.

Al-Qassam Brigades identified the fighter as 25-year-old Mahmoud Adel Ghaban from Beit Lahiya.

A number of fighters in Gaza have been killed by accidents during military training exercises in recent years, and the tunnel networks, which are largely used for smuggling in the coastal enclave's south and military purposes in the north, are notoriously dangerous.
A tunnel in the northern Gaza Strip? Where would such a tunnel be going to?

Chag Sameach!

I wish all of my readers who celebrate Passover to have a happy and healthy holiday!



I'll still be posting for a few more hours, but I wanted to make sure that my readers in Israel and Europe get the message. I will not be posting anything during the first two days of the holiday, until at least Wednesday night.

Islamic Jihad says it is too moral to use chemical weapons

Palestine Today writes that Said Abu Ahmed, spokesman of Al-Quds Brigades, military wing of Islamic Jihad, said that the Palestinian "resistance" groups would never use chemical weapons because of the ethics of the "resistance" and their Islamic religion which would prohibit their use.

In other ethical news, the same Islamic Jihad praised the murderers of Ben Yosef Livnat, returning from prayers at Joseph's Tomb, this morning, saying it was a natural response to the provocation that Jews do. By praying, I guess.

Triple Crown hopeful owned by Orthodox Jewish family from Egypt

From the Jewish Standard:

It took American Pharoah barely more than two minutes and two seconds to win the 2015 Kentucky Derby.

For Joanne Zayat of Teaneck, whose husband, Ahmed, owns American Pharoah (and yes, that is how it is spelled), those two minutes and barely more than two seconds stretched out and then blurred and bore little relation to regular time as it usually passes.

There she was — really, there they were, Ahmed and Joanne Zayat, their four children — all Orthodox Jews — and a small crowd of friends and relatives, in one of the owners’ boxes at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, on a glorious flowering spring Shabbat, watching as their horse won America’s most iconic horse race.

How did they get there?

It’s an unusual story.

Although most Jews in Egypt left the country in the 1950s — when its ruler, Gamal Abdel Nasser, made it clear that their lives were likely to be longer, healthier, and happier were they to live them elsewhere — “some affluent Jews stayed, for various reasons,” Joanne Zayat said. That group included Ahmed Zayat’s family.

Mr. Zayat, born in 1962, grew up in Maadi in suburban Cairo. “It was a very mixed neighborhood, with a lot of ex-pats,” Ms. Zayat said. “It looked a lot like here.” To foreshadow a bit — among his pastimes was riding horses at his country club.

When he was 18, Mr. Zayat came to the United States; he went to Harvard, graduated from Yeshiva University, and then earned a joint master’s degree with Harvard and Boston University. A natural entrepreneur, he worked in a number of fields. Among his companies was Al Ahram Beverages, which eventually he sold to Heineken. He did very well.

About 10 years ago, Mr. Zayat retired — or so he said. “He decided he needed to stop traveling,” his wife said. “He wanted to be home with my kids.

“But everyone who knows my husband knows that he can’t be retired for more than 15 seconds. So he decided to take his passion and turn it into a business.”

What did he love? Horses!

“There is a phrase — if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life,” Ms. Zayat said.

“So he decided to go into the horse business.”

...

What is it like being Orthodox Jews at the Kentucky Derby? “There is no conflict,” Ms. Zayat said. “Most of our big races are on Saturdays, so we walk to the track.”

They stay at a hotel in Louisville, which is an easy walk on race day, and get kosher meals, including full Shabbat dinners, from a caterer, “but for the Preakness and the Belmont we can’t walk from any hotel, so we rent a trailer.” It’s not just a regular old RV; “It is 45 feet long, has two bathrooms, has a full kitchen and dining area, and sleeps six to eight people.

“Shabbes is still Shabbes. You are still getting gefilte fish for dinner,” she said.

“I think that when you are true to yourself, and you have a strong value system, people respect it.

“This is a free country, and people get that.”
Read the whole thing.

(h/t Irene)

Saudi airstrike kills 5 in humanitarian aid office. You must have missed the headlines.

Different building hit by Saudi airstrikes
From IBTimes:

Shelling from Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces hit an international humanitarian aid office in Yemen on Thursday, killing five Ethiopian refugees and wounding 10, a local official said. The news comes amid growing concern about the Saudi-led military offensive's impact on Yemen’s civilians and infrastructure.
If you want to know the up-to-date statistics of how many civilians were killed since Saudi Arabia started their airstrikes, good luck. You won't find a scorecard attached to every story about the fighting the way that reporters in Gaza loved to include in their stories.

Also unlike Gaza, when civilians are killed it is assumed that not all of them were killed by the Saudis, while in Gaza all of the people killed were assumed to be from Israeli fire, even though well over a thousand Hamas rockets fell in civilian areas.

In fact, while reporters flocked to cover the Gaza war, secure in the knowledge that Israel wouldn't bomb the areas where they stayed, no reporters are trying to sneak into Yemen to file first-person reports. With rare exceptions, reporters aren't even trying to do anything original in their reporting.

The Gaza reporters happily accepted the Hamas talking points as fact, but no one (outside of Iranian media) is viewing the Houthi version of the story from Yemen as having any legitimacy.

Another point that is roundly ignored by the media is that the Saudis are relying on US intelligence when they choose their targets. NGOs that eagerly asserted with no evidence that Israel was engaging in indiscriminate bombing in Gaza based on civilians being killed are not pointing their fingers at any failure of US intel.

The double standards are clear to anyone who cares to look. Which doesn't, of course, include the media.

Mother of accused Itamar murderer denies everything

Hamas' Palestine Times newspaper quotes the mother of one of the youths who were arrested for the Fogel family murders.

[The mother stated] that her son was asleep with his brothers at 9:30 PM, i.e., during the operation, and he is not linked to any political party or organization, and he is a student in high school who only travels between home and school.

She added: "My son was arrested, on April 4th, about two weeks ago, and when the families went to inquire of their status, one of the soldiers told me there we want to conclude the investigation of this crime, even if we have to fabricate the charge against any person from the village."
Yeah, that sounds believable.

Of course, it will be considered not only believable but gospel truth to the Mondoweiss crowd. Every other statement attributed to the IDF are lies, of course, but a mother of a murderer claiming that an IDF soldier freely admits that they arrested her son for no reason will be swallowed whole.

Galloway calls killing Bin Laden "illegitimate" (UPDATE: it was a hoax)

Last night I jokingly tweeted if Human Rights Watch would denounce the US killing Bin Laden because he was a civilian (he didn't wear fatigues, did he?)

I guess I got the human rights issue wrong.
Pro-Palestinian campaigner George Galloway has denounced the killing of the world's most wanted man as "illegitimate".

Speaking hours after President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been captured and killed in a US operation in Pakistan, the former Respect MP said it was always illegitimate to somebody in somebody else's country.

He added: "No state which carries out [extra judicial killings] can remotely be described as democratic."

President Obama said in his address that bin Laden had been responsible for thousands of deaths, but Mr Galloway denied this was justification for the US' actions.

He said: "We can't allow our foreign power to send out death squads to assassinate whoever they see fit. That must be illegitimate.

"They could have kidnapped him and taken him for trial, couldn't they. To murder someone in somebody else's country has to be...an absolutely illegal series of acts."
It will be interesting to see if other far left terror supporters start taking up this line of reasoning.

UPDATE: I had originally gotten this from TheJC (forgot to include the link) but they have corrected the story:

A hoax video has been posted on YouTube claiming that George Galloway described the death of Osama bin Laden as illegitimate.

The video, based on old footage about a different matter, was posted this morning and circulated around the internet and on Twitter.

A spokesman for the former MP said they were urgently contacting YouTube to have it removed and that the issue was in the hands of Mr Galloway’s lawyers.

Israel to give tax revenue to Jihadist Palestinian Authority

From UPI:
Israel, following the intervention of U.S. officials, will transfer about $89 million in tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority, Israeli officials said.

The unnamed officials said the funds would be transferred next week, Haaretz reported Monday.

On Sunday, senior U.S. officials sought clarification of Israel's plans to temporarily suspend the transfer of funds to the P.A.

The officials sought the clarification after Army Radio reported Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz had decided to halt the transfer of the tax revenues to the P.A. in response to the Fatah-Hamas unity, the newspaper said.

The American officials met with members of the Treasury Department and the prime minister's office to discuss the issue and demanded a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials to arrange the transfer, Haaretz said.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office denied a decision had been made to stop the transfer of funds, the newspaper said.
Israel should absolutely freeze handing money over to an entity that includes Hamas in its government, just as it did in the past.

It is more than troubling that the US is pressuring Israel to do otherwise.

In 2006, when Israel imposed a similar freeze, it was with the full knowledge and cooperation of the US (and probably the Quartet.) So what has changed?

A tweet from Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt exposes, in this case, how insanely anti-Israel some European diplomats are:
Worried by reports that Israel government will steal tax money from Palestinian Authority. Unacceptable.
He is calling a freeze on the funds, where they will not be touched, "stealing." One would expect that a diplomat would be more circumspect in his language, but sometimes hate trumps acting like an adult.

(h/t Marcus)

A small incident in Gaza

From PCHR:

At approximately 20:00 on Wednesday, 27 April 2011, dozens of Palestinian civilians, including women, spontaneously gathered in the Unknown Soldier Yard, in support for reconciliation efforts between Fatah and Hamas movements declared in the Egypti... At approximately 20:30, 4 police vehicles arrived at the area, and immediately many police officers, some of whom were wearing civilian clothes, stepped down. They violently beat, insulted and chased the participants. They also arrested 5 of the participants, including Mr. Jamal Farawana, a defender of prisoners’ rights, who was violently beaten, and Mr. Talal Abi Zarifa, a leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

And what was the spontaneous demonstration for?

To support the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah!

05/12 Links Pt2: Holland To Restore Shoah Survivor's Pension; International Hummus Day!

From Ian:
Holland To Restore Shoah Survivor's Pension, Issue New Rules for Others Living in West Bank
The spokesperson said that the woman shouldn’t be penalized since she didn’t know the consequences of her actions, but said that her government would “soon publish a modified policy regarding pension beneficiaries in the territories occupied by Israel.” She indicated that the policy would only apply to new cases.
The Dutch foreign minister was one of 16 EU foreign ministers who last month signed a letter to Federica Mogherini, the new EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, “urging her to move swiftly to ensure the labeling of settlement products.”
The report last week of the 90-year-old survivor prompted former Labour MK Colette Avital, who heads an organization that supports Holocaust survivors, to say, “It is hard to accept such harassment of survivors, whose welfare needs to be sacrosanct in the eyes of the Dutch authorities.”
When the ICRC Feels It Must Apologize for Telling the Truth
The ICRC has produced its share of Israel-haters, but De Maio certainly isn’t one of them. Not only does he realize that Israel isn’t the Great Satan it’s generally portrayed as by “human rights” activists, but he’s even willing to say so occasionally – which makes him far braver than many of his colleagues. Yet even this braver-than-average member of the human rights community feels so intimidated that whenever he does say something positive about Israel, he feels the need to apologize. So you get astounding statements like this tweet from last November: “It may seem provocative, but I would contend that humanitarian access in Israel & OT is, comparatively, outstandingly good.”
The mind simply boggles. It’s “provocative” to state the simple fact that Israel, like any Western democracy, allows humanitarian aid groups relatively unfettered access? In his next tweet, De Maio added, “I can think of no other context where we operate worldwide where access for humanitarian organizations is as good as it is here.” Yet if that’s the truth, why should it be “provocative” to say so? Shouldn’t it be as natural for human rights organizations to praise countries for enabling their access as it is to criticize them for not doing so?
But of course, when it comes to Israel, it isn’t. After all, in the “human rights” community to which De Maio belongs, the loudest voices are people like Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth, who famously criticized Israel last month for sending the world’s largest medical team, 30 percent of all foreign medical personnel, to help victims of Nepal’s earthquake. In a world where “human rights activists” slam Israel even for providing humanitarian relief – though Roth has yet to explain how he thinks the world would be a better place had Israel failed to do so – it’s clearly not a given to praise it for enabling humanitarian access. So De Maio apologizes for telling the truth. And untold numbers of his less courageous colleagues choose the easier route of not telling it at all.
Nor is it Israel alone that pays the price for their silence – something else De Maio understands quite well. “Why is there so much more focus on Israel than on Syria [and] other places where many more civilians are dying?” he demanded in December. “In other ongoing wars, more civilians die in one week than in Israeli wars in a full year.” Yet even the braver-than-average De Maio made that statement at a conference in Israel, the one place it’s relatively “safe” to say such things. And untold numbers of his less courageous colleagues will never say it at all.
Ben-Dror Yemini: Using Bedouin issue as an anti-Israel propaganda tool
The discussion of the Bedouin issue is legitimate. Different countries have dealt in different ways with the recognition of native populations' rights. The Scandinavians had the Sami people (the Lapps), the Australians had the Aboriginal people and the Americans had the Indians. Each democratic state adopted its own solution.
One thing is clear: The arrangement offered by Israel is probably the most generous and decent arrangement, compared to other countries. Israel is offering every Bedouin family in one of the unrecognized communities generous solutions, which include both a piece of land and infrastructures.
But the coalition of incitement and deception – which includes Adalah, Balad, rights movements and the Islamic Movement – is unhappy with these solutions. This coalition also has the Haaretz newspaper, which is fanning the flames, at its service.
It should be clarified that there is a huge difference between a critical stance against the state's conduct and major deception, which has one result: Lies and incitement. There is no need to mention that the coalition of incitement and deception chose the second option – not a battle for the Bedouins, but another opportunity for an anti-Israel campaign.
How This Jordanian Arab Became an Ardent Zionist
Abe Haak, an Arab born in Irbid, Jordan and raised to hate Israel, has undergone an incredible transformation over the past 37 years. He has now become an ardent Arab Zionist.
His parents back in Jordan don't know how far he has wandered. But they will soon, as he 'comes out' for Israel and expands his speaking engagements.
An adjunct instructor in Arabic and in Arab journalism, Haak has residences in both Minnesota and New York, where he teaches at NYU. He studied international studies in Vienna, Austria, and is married to a German Lutheran woman, who is raising their child as a Christian.
“I am unaffiliated - I am a seeker, not a believer,” Haak told the Jewish Review during an extensive interview following his appearance at the University at Buffalo last week. It was sponsored by the Paul Dosberg Foundation and Stand With Us, which helps Jewish students deal with anti-Zionism on college campuses.
“I have not arrived at a doctrine that I can announce that I believe in at this point,” he continued. “But I believe I see God's works in the world, and Israel is one of those works. The rebirth of the State of Israel is one of the greatest miracles I have seen. It is not only a spiritual miracle, it is a physical miracle.”
After moving to America as a teenage, Haak had not met an Israeli until attending a Christmas party with friends at the University of Chicago in 1977.



Isi Leibler: Global anti-Semitism continues to escalate
This week the Foreign Ministry and the Diaspora Affairs Ministry are jointly sponsoring the 5th Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism. It will be opened by the prime minister and a host of prominent global leaders will participate and passionately condemn anti-Semitism. It will also be a gathering of activists from all over the world, who will hear depressing reports of the growth of anti-Semitism in all countries and pleas for intensified action to curb the venomous hatred.
Unfortunately, aside from some limited media coverage and making participants feel good, this conference will merely be a talk fest and have negligible impact.
The world’s oldest hatred has reached surrealistic levels.
Whereas most Western governments are inclined to condemn anti-Semitism, on a popular level the situation is terrifying and even worse than in the 1930s, when at least liberals and the political Left spoke up for the Jews. Today they are frequently at the vanguard of the Jew-baiters.
The fusion of traditional anti-Semitism and its more current expression – demonization of the Jewish state – is rampant in most countries other than the US, Canada and Australia although even there, it has emerged as a poisonous force on campuses.
Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism 2015
“The Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism (GFCA) is the premier biennial gathering for assessing the state of Antisemitism globally, and formulating effective forms of societal and governmental response. The GFCA is an active coalition of public figures, political leaders, heads of civil society, clergy, journalists, diplomats, educators and concerned citizens dedicated to the advance of tolerance towards the other in public life and the defeat of Antisemitism and other forms of racial and ethnic hatred. The Forum serves as an important meeting place for exchange of knowledge and for formulating the global work plan for combating Antisemitism.
The 5th Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism will focus on two main themes:
The Oldest Hatred in the Newest Vessels: Confronting Antisemitism and Hate Speech on the Internet and in Social Media
Honest Reporting: Fighting Anti-Semitism in the Media
As a long-time member of the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism’s Working Group dealing with Anti-Semitism on the Internet and in the Media, HonestReporting Managing Editor Simon Plosker will be presenting at the 5th Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism that opens Tuesday evening in Jerusalem.
Prominent examples of recent anti-Semitism in the media that HR has dealt with include:
- An anti-Semitic cartoon implying Jewish control over the U.S. government in The Economist.
- Israel depicted as a demon by a German newspaper.
- The Independent’s headline referring to a “Jewish lobby” and a description of this lobby being “multi-tentacled.”
- The BBC’s Tim Willcox stating that “Palestinians suffer at Jewish hands” while covering the aftermath of a terrorist attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris.
The GFCA is the premier biennial gathering for assessing the state of anti-Semitism globally, and formulating effective forms of societal and governmental response. The GFCA is an active coalition of public figures, political leaders, heads of civil society, clergy, journalists, diplomats, educators and concerned citizens dedicated to the advance of tolerance towards the other in public life and defeat of anti-Semitism and other forms of racial and ethnic hatred.
Think tank fumes as diplomats skip anti-Semitism event
An Israeli think tank on Monday kicked off an initiative to make anti-Semitism an international crime by launching a convention it hopes will be adopted by many states across the globe. Not a single foreign diplomat attended the event, much to the dismay of the organizers.
All 160 diplomatic representations in Israel were invited to the launch of the “International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Anti-Semitism,” held in a West Jerusalem hotel, but not one showed up.
“It makes me sad and depressed,” said Alan Baker, a former senior Israeli diplomat, who authored the convention.
Will International Soccer Kick Out Israel?
The PA has actually been a member of FIFA since 1998 but its move against Israel has more to do with political timing than the currency of their complaints. Their case for expelling the Israelis rests on the notion that the Jewish state must give anyone who calls himself a soccer player the right to move between the Fatah-run West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza. That doesn’t take into account the security issue and the fact that the Palestinians have waged an off-and-on terror campaign against Israel. Since the Palestinians have always prioritized the struggle against Zionism over the demands of sport, it’s a bit much for them to expect Israel to do the same. But that, like their insistence that Israel shouldn’t allow clubs based in Jewish communities in the West Bank to compete, is a mere pretext, not a serious argument.
FIFA’s members include some of the worst tyrannies in the world. Its 2018 World Cup will be held in Russia. No thought is given to expelling Russia for its aggression against Ukraine. In 2022, it will be held in undemocratic and terror-supporting Qatar and other Gulf States, a result that may have been obtained by bribing of the FIFA selection committee. But given the current international climate; will anyone be very surprised if FIFA decides to expel Israel?
To put the soccer dispute into context, it should be remembered that in international tournaments such as the World Cup, Israel has been forced to play in regional competitions in Europe rather than Asia because Arab and Muslim countries won’t play against them. This violates the conventions of international sport but it has been allowed to continue because prejudice against Jews is always tolerated.
DC Think Tank Says Saudi Arabia is New Israeli-Style ‘Aggressor’
A left-wing foreign policy think tank criticized on Sunday Saudi Arabia for becoming the “Israel of the Gulf” because of its regional “aggression.”
Writing in the Huffington Post, the policy director of Just Foreign Policy, Robert Naiman [a Flotidiot], wrote that Saudi Arabia has become a “habitual aggressor in its neighborhood, enabled in its aggression by the United States,” apparently just like Israel.
The author said Saudi Arabia may actually be a “more dangerous aggressor than Israel,” because Saudi Arabia’s military action in Yemen this year and in Bahrain to assist in suppressing anti-government demonstrators in 2011 went largely without protest in the international community, perhaps unlike Syria or Iran in 2009.
Saudi Arabia has been leading a coalition of Arab countries in attacks against Shia rebels in Yemen, who Yemen claims are backed by Iran.
Israel’s best friend in Europe is now a given
To grasp just how far Israeli-German relations have developed since formal diplomatic ties were established 50 years ago on Tuesday, contrast the following.
On August 19, 1965, three months after ties were established with West Germany, Bonn’s emissary Rolf Pauls arrived in Jerusalem to submit his credentials to the president.
Rioting broke out in the streets of Jerusalem, and his car was pelted with rocks and bottles.
Just a few months earlier, in a Knesset debate on whether to formally establish ties, Herut head Menachem Begin, then an opposition MK, said “every German deserves to die... their hands are covered with Jewish blood... Therefore, there is neither absolution nor forgiveness, and no normal relations will ever be possible between us.”
Then-prime minister Levi Eshkol took the opposite position in the Knesset, defending the move and saying that “reason must prevail over sentiment.” He argued that the country “must seize every opportunity we have to fortify the nation in its new homeland.”
Israeli, German presidents condemn rise in anti-Semitism
The presidents of Israel and Germany warned Tuesday of growing anti-Semitism as they marked half a century of diplomatic ties, 70 years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust.
“I am very worried. Worldwide anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish slogans are on the rise,” said President Reuven Rivlin, who was on a state visit to Berlin to mark the anniversary of bilateral relations.
“In the entire free world — and especially in Europe, given its not too distant past — alarm bells should be ringing,” he said in comments to Germany’s Bild daily and Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
Rivlin’s German counterpart, Joachim Gauck, shared in the joint interview concern about rising hate speech against Jews and the state of Israel, both in his country and elsewhere in Europe.
Why does Germany’s young generation hold negative views of Israel?
The peerless Middle East historian Bernard Lewis wrote nearly 30 years ago in his groundbreaking book Semites and Anti-Semites that German guilt after the Holocaust contributed to the positive response to the founding of Israel. However, he warned presciently that “such feelings are a dwindling asset to Israel, and must inevitably die away as the memory of Nazi crimes recedes into the past.”
Lewis’s words carry great urgency for today’s 50th anniversary of diplomatic reconciliation between Germany and Israel. In an email to The Jerusalem Post, Israel’s Ambassador to Germany Yakov Hadas Handelsman said the “young generation will stand in the center of this year’s anniversary.”
Putting aside the scores of articles about young Israeli artists living in Berlin as an implied sign of Jewish forgiveness for the Shoah, there is a growing lack of reciprocity from the German side. According to an October Bertelsmann Foundation study, a majority of Germans in the important 18-29 age group holds a negative view of Israel. In stark contrast to the Bertelsmann finding, a January Konrad Adenauer Foundation study showed 81% of Israelis desire closer relations with Germany.
How does one interpret this disconnect? Zvi Rex, an Israeli psychoanalyst famously remarked with piercing sarcasm that the “Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” While pathological Holocaust guilt surely plays a factor in the negative view toward Israel, the young generation has also been inculcated in a radical pacifist culture.
Flotilla ahoy! A refresher on the background to another anti-Israel publicity stunt
One of the various vessels’ passengers will apparently be Moncef Marzouki who has collaborated in the past with Hamas-linked groups in Europe and their associated personalities involved in the organization of previous flotillas.
Readers can refresh their memories regarding ‘peace activist’ Dror Feiler here and find archive background material on the organisers of previous such publicity stunts here.
The coordinator of the ‘International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza’ – which partners the ‘Freedom Flotilla Coalition’ (along with ‘Miles of Smiles’ and the IHH) – is Hamas-linked UK-based activist Zaher Birawi who was also involved in the ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ in 2012.
Anti-Israel Groups Lobby to Derail Anti-BDS Measure
A leading pro-Israel lawmaker is pushing back against lobbying efforts by anti-Israel activists to derail a piece of legislation that would work to prevent U.S. trade partners from supporting economic boycotts of Israel.
Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.) blasted a coalition of anti-Israel organizations, including the left-wing group J Street, for seeking to kill a new bipartisan measure that would fight back against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on an international scale.
The legislation, co-authored by Roskam and Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.), was unanimously passed as an amendment to a larger trade bill currently up for consideration in Congress.
The amendment would counter global BDS efforts by requiring the United States to pressure its European trade partners to reject anti-Israel boycotts as part of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a massive trade deal between the United States and the European Union.
While the measure has received widespread support from Democrats and Republicans in Congress, a coalition of anti-Israel activists has launched a lobbying blitz to derail the amendment.
Left wing groups such as Americans for Peace Now (APN), the pro-boycott Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and J Street have begun pressuring lawmakers to oppose the amendment both in the press and behind the scenes.
Government Calls Neil Macdonald Israel Boycott Story a “Bizarre Conspiracy Theory”
In an HRC complaint sent this morning to Marissa Nelson, Managing Director of CBC.ca, we asked if CBC can prove that the Federal Government has “threatened” hate crimes charges against boycott Israel advocates? Can the CBC even cite one such example? The article itself does not contain anything to substantiate this charge except conjecture and Mr. Macdonald’s deductive reasoning, along with his forming conclusions based on some statements made by senior officials like Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and his spokespersons.
In fact, Mr. Macdonald only says that “The Harper government is signalling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel.” This may or may not be the case, but there’s a marked difference between signalling intentions and claiming outright that the government has already “threatened” those who boycott Israel.
Global News reports that “The federal public safety minister’s office flatly denied a report that it has intentions to apply hate crime laws against Canadian groups encouraging Israeli boycotts. ‘This story is inaccurate and ridiculous. These laws have been on the books for many years and have not changed,’ said the spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney. ‘We won’t dignify this bizarre conspiracy theory with further comment.’”
The Return of Academic Anti-Semitism
The rise of anti-Semitism in U.S. colleges has alarmed conservative groups for quite some time, yet it was largely ignored by the liberal media until recently. The turning point was a spate of shocking, high-profile incidents involving student government bodies, normally bastions of political correctness and darlings of the radical left, which were covered by the New York Times, CNN and other news outlets. Forced to address this seemingly awkward issue, the media offers two rationalizations. The first argues that the Jewish students make up a largely successful group, and therefore, are not on the list of “protected species.” This argument is rather weak. Indeed, the Chinese students make up an even more successful group, but no public expression of anti-Chinese sentiments would be tolerated.
The second justification links the rise of anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses to the Arab-Israeli conflict. This theory is more to the point. However, the link between anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism is not a simple cause-and-effect relation. Rather, the two mutually reinforce each other, forming a vicious circle. Furthermore, the students do not live in a vacuum. They pick up their cues from many sources, but particularly from their professors, who show their bias with impunity.
‘Unintended Consequence of Out of State Tuition: Antisemitism’
An “unintended consequence” of bringing in greater numbers of out of state and foreign students who pay higher tuition into the University of California school system is a spike in antisemitism on campus, argued syndicated columnist Thomas B. Elias in an article published last week.
Elias drew a correlation between the number of reported antisemitic incidents on campus over the past few years — including student government votes over anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions measures — and an increase in the number of students the UCs have accepted from countries such as Iran, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.
The rise in antisemitism “makes some wonder whether the upsurge of campus anti-Semitism is linked to greater numbers of students from strongly anti-Israel countries, including Malaysia, which sent 164 undergraduates to UC last fall,” he wrote.
The New York Times and campus debates about Israel
No, what we see is more — a negation, a sharp denial, a stripping away from Jewish students of their basic sense of being in the world, which to many is wrapped up with being in solidarity with other minority struggles, in achieving and protecting equal rights for all before the law, and in a special sense of mission rooted in distinctive Jewish history. The freshman at Stanford who spoke about proponents pretending that “history didn’t happen” was quite prescient in comprehending what was taking place on that campus. So too the UCLA student who observed “part of what they are hating is central to who I am and what I stand for.”
“Get over it,” the writers seem to say that most divestment proponents respond. “Check your privilege.” Jews are whites. Jews are privileged. Jews have money. In addition, the fault lines of whiteness and color are blithely claimed to track seamlessly on the fault lines of Israel/Palestine. Divestment proponents have mostly never encountered Israeli diversity. Instead, oppression here is like oppression there. One model fits all. We are all one in solidarity with others. The amazing thing is how little recent and current events in Europe seem to spill over into the discussion of Jews or the Jewish fate on these particular campuses. One wonders what kinds of work university Jewish Studies programs are doing when these debates arise. One wonders what contributions Jewish Studies faculty make to such debates. How privileged can any people be when at varied times and places members of that group risk being thought of as pariah outsiders who should go or take leave or be driven out, or worse, be targets for justified violence and murder?
But, to return to the opening claims in this essay, this is happening not everywhere but mostly on select university campuses – largely in the California universities, including Berkeley and UCLA, and the California state system, including Riverside, San Diego, and Santa Cruz, in select private colleges here and there, including Stanford, Northwestern, Toledo, Oberlin, and Loyola of Chicago, and in several Ivy League universities, including Columbia and Princeton. Efforts are stirring at the University of Pennsylvania and possibly at Dartmouth. Yet outside California, I know of no state university where a divestment campaign has achieved significant traction – here at the University of Michigan it was turned down twice and at Michigan State University there has been no campaign at all. Southern universities appear to be absent from any list of divestment campaigns. Even most campuses in the Ivy League are untouched by this nonsense.
For Israel boycott movement, racial tension is a feature, not a bug
NY Times covers BDS-inspired racial tensions on campus, but misses the big picture.
For years we have been documenting how stirring racial tensions on campus is one of the tactics employed by the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The methodology is to tie unrelated movements into the fight against Israel by portraying a common enemy — in their terminology, “white settler colonialism.” Israel and the U.S. are lumped together in that theory, so that whatever goes wrong in the U.S. from a racial standpoint is tied to Israel.
So problems at the Mexican border are used by BDS groups on campus to bring Mexican-American student groups into the BDS fight; police problems in Ferguson or elsewhere are used in movements such as “Ferguson2Palestine” to blame Israel; the BlackLivesMatters movement is brought into the fight against Israel in the same manner.
BDS rears its ugly head (again) at the Park Slope Food Coop
The fact that some people spoke up stridently against the boycott didn't sit well with BDS proponent Ann Schneider, who lamented in a post at the Indypendent:
"I talked to my friend, another long-time member, Carol Lipton. She reminded me that the Coop had a membership drive in the 90's and reached out to Borough Park, rather than Red Hook, Sunset Park or Brooklyn's Chinatown.
"While we have worked for four decades to create a community based on cooperation, equality, diversity, organic farming and sustainability, ‘we've incorporated members whose core values are the antithesis of ours, except for the common denominator of concern for healthful and cheap food,' Lipton said."
In other words: Those damn Borough Park Jews ruined everything.
It doesn't take a lot of effort to see the dark core of anti-Semitism in the heart of the BDS movement.
  Israel Air Force Mother’s Day Post of breastfeeding pilot trolls haters big time
If there is one thing Israel-haters hate more than anything, it’s being reminded of how well women are treated in Israel compared to the surrounding Arab countries.
So when the Israel Airforce posted a Mother’s Day greeting of a female IAF pilot breastfeeding her child, it was major league trolling
 Honest Reporting: Photo Abuse, Damaging Headlines, and Anonymous Sources
HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl joins VOI’s Josh Hasten to review this week’s media coverage of Israel: A child from Gaza is saved by Israeli medics, but an award-winning journalist takes his picture and claims his injuries are the result of Israeli atrocities; the Times of London uses a headline to indicate that a bill before the Israeli legislature would silence human rights critics — and HonestReporting gets the headline corrected. Finally, the media have a field day with a story based on anonymous sources that bash the Israeli military’s conduct in the Gaza conflict.
Will anti-Semitic literature at Arab book fairs aid recruitment to terrorism?
Arab book fairs give us a unique insight into the obsessive-compulsive nature of anti-Semitism.
This is particularly the case for the Saudi and Gulf State fairs of the past weeks, as these governments find themselves in a tactical “engagement” with Israel against the common threats from Iranian nuclear designs,Tehran-sponsored Shi’ite mayhem, and Sunni radicals.
In cooperation with its director, we began 12 years ago by monitoring the Frankfurt Fair, the largest book fair in the industry. Back then, most problematic were neo-Nazi texts “indexed” (banned) by German law. Their stands had become magnets for skinheads and their leaders. Very quickly, we discovered growing anti-Jewish incitement at Arab and other Muslim states’ stands. Our reporting such stands, on the grounds of violation of the exhibitors’ contractual commitments with the fair, would be followed up by police confiscation and the banning of recidivist publishers.
Each year, we would announce a “Worst Offender Award.” Turkey won the award for three years, but despite its constant anti-Israel rhetoric, Ankara has cleaned up its act. For the past two years, its over 30 stands have remained hate-free.
Iran, another of our “laureates,” is delinquent not just for anti-Semitism but for glorification of jihad and martyrdom on children’s literature stands.
Israeli-made exoskeleton faces barriers in Japan
The product was one of the Israeli technologies highlighted with much fanfare as a symbol of flourishing commercial ties when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during Abe’s visit to the Middle East earlier this year. It was also highlighted during US President Barack Obama’s 2013 trip to Israel.
It is already available in parts of Europe, and just received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for individual everyday use. But despite Japan’s prowess in robotics, ReWalk advocates say its wider application here could be stymied by convoluted bureaucracy.
“It’s a wonderful tool for people who sincerely want the joy of standing up,” said Moriyasu Marutani of Kanagawa Rehabilitation Center, who works with Imahata to use ReWalk.
“Safety is the biggest concern for winning its approval for medical use, as well as presenting data that work as scientific evidence of its health impact,” he said. “Approval tends to take many years here, and so the hurdle is pretty high.”
The effort is going far more smoothly in places such as China than Japan, said Yaskawa spokesman Ayumi Hayashida.
Infosys beefs up operations in Israel to tap into country’s start-up ecosystem
Infosys has quietly started beefing up its operations in Israel to tap into the country's innovation-rich startup ecosystem, ranked among the world's top hubs for emerging technology businesses.
Shortly after the firm bought Israel-based automation technology startup Panaya for $200 million (Rs 1,200 crore) in February, chief executive Vishal Sikka plucked out yet another of his former top lieutenants from SAP, Jake Klein, and tasked him with overseeing startup investments and acquisitions in Israel, a person directly familiar with the matter said, declining to be identified.
Klein had a similar function at SAP, where he was a senior vice president overseeing startup investments and helping SAP Ventures expand in Israel.
At Infosys, he has been appointed as vice president of corporate development in Israel. Infosys, India's second-largest software exporter, has set aside at least a quarter of its $500-million Innovation Fund for investments in countries like India and Israel, ET reported in March.
Israel-Canada relations get a tech boost
When Israelis speak of “America,” it’s usually the United States they have in mind. But there’s another country in (North) America that has worked hard to develop strong tech ties with Israel.
Much of the work in fostering ties between Israel and that country — Canada — is being done by the Canada-Israel Industrial Research and Development Foundation (CIIRDF). And this week, the group announced that it has established a new program to foster joint projects between Israel and the Canadian province of Ontario.
To help the project along, Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation Reza Moridi is currently visiting Israel. This week he met with top figures in Israel’s high-tech ecosystem, as well as with government officials, including Chief Scientist Avi Hasson.
“Our government recognizes that Ontario’s capacity to compete internationally and to create the jobs of tomorrow depends on collaboration,” said Moridi at a meeting with Hasson Monday. “That is why we welcome this continued partnership with Israel. Connecting companies and researchers in Ontario and Israel will help both jurisdictions become more innovative and productive in a highly competitive global economy.”
Israel is for Lovers.
Think of it as Birthright for Honeymooners.
Honeymoon Israel is a private 501c3 offering highly subsidized, 9-day trips to Israel for couples 25-40, with opportunities for social action, fun and adventure. It is completely inclusive and open to LGBT and interfaith couples. Spaces are filling up quickly- in Los Angeles, 85 couples applied for 20 spots.
Check out the itinerary from the Phoenix trip.
From the website of Honeymoon Israel
Honeymoon Israel's agenda is for you to have fun, experience all that Israel has to offer and meet other young couples from your community.
Our organization's agenda is to expand the definition of Jewish life in America and to offer enjoyable experiences for couples to connect with one another and to the Jewish community in whatever way works for them. Honeymoon Israel does not have a specific agenda or prescription for this but rather seeks to support couples in their own exploration and to foster the organic development of community.
Israel gears up for International Hummus Day
May 13th has been a day to be dedicated entirely to an international celebration of a staple of the Israeli diet: hummus.
With endless varieties available for purchase at every grocery store, it is hard to imagine that there are still new combinations, flavors and styles of hummus being conceived of and produced for the masses.
International Hummus Day is easily celebrated by doing the obvious: eating hummus.
For most Israeli's this does not come as a challenge. Hummus is consumed by the ton across Israel on a daily basis. Hummus style restaurants, known as hummusiot, can be found all across the country, serving the creamy spread in different styles and flavors, with warm bread or the traditional pita.
Hummus was first recorded in ancient cookbooks found in Egypt and the Levant. While not a native Israeli dish, Jews immigrating from Arab countries brought their food culture with them, turning hummus into a national food symbol.
Hummus map shows off Israeli tech, and taste
Fans of hummus, the Middle Eastern chickpea-based dip, as well as fans of Israeli tech, have something to celebrate Wednesday when “International Hummus Day” is held around the world.
Don’t bother looking up the day on a calendar, though. Hummus Day is an invention of Israeli start-up entrepreneur Ben Lang, CEO of MapMe.com. To celebrate the day, the site has produced an international hummus map, showing exactly where fans can get their hummus fix in Israel, the US, Canada, the UK, and even India. “We opened up the map on Monday night, and in the space of less than 24 hours we got over 20,000 hits,” said Lang. “Hummus is clearly an international favorite.”
That it was an Israeli entrepreneur – albeit an immigrant from the US – who came up with the map is a testimony to both the popularity of the dish in Israel and to the technological prowess of Israelis. Lang, now 21, immigrated to Israel when he was 18, and recently completed a stint in the IDF. Before joining the army, he developed MappedInIsrael, a site that displays a map of the thousands of start-ups throughout the country. More than just a map, though, the site provides contact information for companies, who can list their open jobs on the site as well. The jobs, said Lang, are “real” ones – since they are posted by the companies – and the site is free to use.
So successful was MappedInIsrael that Lang and several partners decided to take the tech he developed to build the site for a mapping platform, called MapMe.com. The platform is still in beta, but has proven extremely popular with all sorts of people. “We have over 100 maps in 30 countries showing where people can find vegan restaurants, bitcoin cash machines, Ukraine start-ups, and many more. We’ve gotten hundreds of applications for access, and in the coming months we expect to be able to open the platform for all users.”