[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] 02/22 Links: Syrian rebel leader thanks Israel for medical help; Israeli Vodka in Oscars Gift Bags

From Ian:

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Syrian rebel leader thanks PM for standing by wounded

Speaking from Istanbul, Badie thanked those working to assist the Syrian people in their struggle.
He added that Netanyahu’s pubic presence near the Syrian wounded was an “important message.”
On Tuesday, Netanyahu spoke at an IDF base where injured Syrians are receiving medical care. He said Israel’s humanitarian efforts to help the Syrian wounded highlighted the difference between Jerusalem and Tehran, which backed Assad. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Chloe Valdary: Judith Butler & our will to survive

Butler states that authentic Jewishness is “itself an anti-identitarian project…” She has the audacity to believe she can speak for all of world Jewry and define something which she claims has no definition. She suggests that an ethnic group is merely a blob devoid of all identity.
The abject irony is that to assert that a people’s identity is meaningless and vile is itself expressing discrimination against that people. It is in essence saying that they as a distinctive people do not matter. That she would try to even speak at a museum labeling itself “Jewish” is to contradict the central premise of her treatise.

Judith Butler scraps museum talk over BDS support

Butler, who teaches comparative literature and critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley, was set to speak at an event on March 6 about the writer Franz Kafka.
But supporters of Israel took issue with the museum’s decision to invite her, the Forward reported Thursday. The opponents cited her support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement, or BDS, and harsh criticism of Israel.

ABC [Australia] has a case to answer for allowing anti-Semitic comments to remain online

The purpose of this article is not to critique the program itself, which has already been done by others, but to highlight the toxic nature of many of the responses to the heart-wrenching scenes portrayed in the program and the accompanying commentary.
Four Corners created six posts related to the program. These posts elicited more than 470 comments. About 100 of these comments were overtly anti-Jewish in one way or another. Several comments referred to Jews as a cancer and called for Hitler to return.
Some of the comments were deleted or edited by ABC moderators. However, many anti-Semitic comments have remained online for more than a week, spewing forth the gamut of traditional anti-Semitic themes.

On Jews & Nazis: The hateful tweets of Irish “journalist” Frank McDonald

And, based on a series of recent Tweets by the “environmental journalist”, not only isn’t he too fond of Israel, but he’s not above engaging in ugly smears regarding the Jewish state’s alleged similitude with Nazism which are indistinguishable from what’s leveled by antisemitic extremists.
Indeed, among the most malevolent lies spread by anti-Zionists is that Israelis today are behaving like Nazi Germany did during the Holocaust.
There’s been much written about this insidious moral inversion – a charge made with varying degrees of explicitness recently by two British MPs – but there are two dynamics worth noting, leaving aside for the moment that such charges are deemed antisemitic by the EUMC Working Definition on Antisemitism.

Ha'aretz Corrects: Black Students Enrolled in Herzilya Center

CAMERA's Israel office has prompted a correction to a Ha'aretz Op-Ed which falsely implied that black students do not attend the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilya. The falsehood appeared in Kobi Niv's Op-Ed making the absurd argument that "The real goal of Zionism is . . . to show the European goyim, those collaborators with the anti-Semitic Jew-murdering Nazis, that they were wrong about us. That we Jews are not really dark ugly rats worthy of extinction, but that we are actually blond, cultured and anti-Semitic Europeans, like all the goyim"

NY Times Corrects: Wrong to Call Atarot "Occupied Palestinian" Territory

The New York Times has corrected an article that had described a Jerusalem neighborhood as "occupied Palestinian territory."
CAMERA had informed The Times that the neighborhood, Atarot, was a Jewish owned farming village before 1948, when Jordan occupied the area and destroyed the village's homes. Atarot is in sovereign Israeli territory as part of the country’s unified capital, although Palestinians claim it as their own.

Jewish, Quaker groups launch BDS summer camp

A Quaker peace group this week began advertising a summer camp for students hoping to become Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists at their schools.
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) launched the “BDS Summer Institute” program, geared towards students “inspired by divestment victories,” in conjunction with a Jewish organization.
The workshop, set to take place between August 10-14, 2014, in northern California, was touted as a “five-day intensive program” providing “a fun, comprehensive training program for campus activists.”

Jerusalem rabbis petition Knesset to increase Jewish sovereignty over Temple Mount

A group of rabbis and yeshiva heads submitted a petition to the Knesset demanding legislation to increase Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount, according to a report on Friday by Israel Radio.
Riots broke out again on Friday on the Temple Mount in response to growing tensions on the matter.
The petition comes ahead of a Knesset deliberation on policies regarding the Temple Mount, due to begin in the middle of next week. The meeting will review a proposal by MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud) to place the Temple Mount under Israeli supervision.

Al-Aqsa is a 'Red Line', Warns Sheikh

Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, the Imam of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, warned Israel on Friday against “harming” the mosque.
Sabri, head of the Supreme Muslim Council, declared in a conversation with a Gaza-based news agency that Al-Aqsa was a “red line” for Arabs, adding, “We will not give up even one grain of earth (at the Al-Aqsa Mosque), since the Jews have no connection to it whatsoever.”

Gazans use gum and cookies as cash

A severe shortage of coins in the Gaza Strip has prompted some Palestinians to use chewing gum, pens, cigarettes and cookies as a substitute for small change.
The shortage has come about because, in an attempt to overcome an Israeli ban on copper importation, many Gazans have resorted to melting currency, specifically half-shekel and 10-agorot coins, in order to make use of the molten metal for electric wires and cables.
Widespread employment of this technique has made Israeli coins scarce in the Strip.

IAEA finds - again - Iran not in compliance with its nuclear non-proliferation obligations

On February 21, 2014 the UN nuclear agency IAEA released a report on Iran's nuclear capabilities and its compliance with the interim agreement signed in November with Western powers entitled "Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran". The report includes the following findings of Iranian non-compliance with its nuclear non-proliferation obligations and other violations of international law. Such findings are rendered meaningless, however, by the Obama administration's deal with Iran which prioritizes never-ending negotiations over serious consequences for non-compliance.

Iranian Officials Ban Reformist Newspaper, Send Managing Editor to Notorious Torture Prison

Iranian officials on Thursday raided a reformist newspaper just days after its launch, banning the outlet and arresting its managing editor over published comments that described Islam’s eye-for-an-eye vengeance doctrines as “inhumane.” Abbas Bozorgmehr had already been forced to walk back his statements – the editor had declared to Iranian media that the description was an “unintentional mistake” – but he was nonetheless arrested and dispatched to Iran’s notorious Evin prison.

Iran Parliament Speaker: Israel is a ‘Malign Tumor’

Speaking on the sidelines of a Tehran meeting of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation Inter-Parliamentary Union, Larijani said that Iran had close ties with Israel under the Shah’s regime, before 1979, but, after the Islamic Revolution, the relationship was ended in favor of deeper relations with Muslim countries.
Today, he said, “The West is working to save the Zionist regime as a malign tumor, while the regime has been weaker than ever now.”

Syria submits 100-day plan for removing chemical weapons, after missed deadline

Syria failed to meet an OPCW deadline of Feb. 5 to move all of its declared chemical substances and precursors out of the country. The final deadline under the OPCW plan is for all of Syria's declared chemical materials to be destroyed by June 30.
"The Syrian 100 day plan for removal of the chemicals, on which we have been briefed, is not adequate," Philip Hall, head of the British Foreign Office Counter Proliferation Department, told the OPCW, according to a copy of statement.

Report: Turkey Financing Top Global Terror Groups

Turkey, a key U.S. ally, “has turned a blind eye” to terror financing and is potentially on the verge of crossing the line to becoming an official state sponsor of terrorism, according to the Friday report, which cites the Erdogan government’s close ties to some of the world’s top terror organizations and operatives.
The report comes just a day after 84 U.S. lawmakers and former government officials urged President Barack Obama to confront Erdogan over his harsh repression of political opponents.
As Turkey’s support for terrorism expands, the Obama administration has remained silent out of fear of offending Erdogan, whom the White House considers a strategic asset, according to the report authored by FDD’s Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Treasury Department.

Muhammad’s birthplace to be razed

Bulldozers are set to demolish a building in Mecca situated right above the site believed by scholars to be the birthplace of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
The Saudi Binladin Group, which is charged with redeveloping the historical area, plans to raze a small library on the site in order to build a modern complex which would include a presidential palace and imam’s residence.

From small-town mayor to pro-Israel congresswoman

Six years ago, Marcia Fudge was the mayor of a small, overwhelmingly African-American town in Northern Ohio when she first came to Israel at the invitation of the AIPAC-affiliated American-Israeli Education Foundation. This week, she returned, as a congresswoman and the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and as an avowed supporter of the Jewish state.
“I’ve been impressed, obviously, with what Israel has done over the years, as it related to technology, agriculture, research in general,” Fudge, a lifelong Democrat, told The Times of Israel Wednesday evening, right after she and several other caucus members concluded a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. “I find the country fascinating and certainly want to learn more about it.”

Straight teeth without wires

Israeli orthodontist and dentofacial orthopedic specialist Dr. Orit Nadav determined to find a way to deliver desired results without all the hardware. She and a team of 12 orthodontists, engineers, industrial designers and dental technicians spent eight years developing Aerodentis, a groundbreaking, high-tech alternative to braces for patients of any age.
Aerodentis earned the European CE Mark and has been on the market since January 2013. About 100 units have so far been sold to dental professionals in Israel, Switzerland and Spain. US Food and Drug Administration approval is expected within two years.

EasyJet launches Hebrew homepage

easyJet, the fastest-growing airline in Israel, has launched a Hebrew homepage.
Customers using the new homepage will see content translated into Hebrew along with information about flying with easyJet.
Earlier this month the airline launched new services between Tel Aviv and Berlin.

El-Al Signs Agreement Providing More Routes into Canada

Canadian passengers will have more options to travel to Israel and back, according to Shalom Toronto, due to a new business deal between Porter Airlines and El Al Israel Airlines.
The airlines will use their operations at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, as the connecting point between Tel Aviv and Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport.

2 Israeli hotels on 'coolest hotels' list

Two Israeli hotels have made it into Travel + Leisure magazine's 2014 It List, which introduces the 70 most promising new hotels in the world: The Ritz-Carlton in Herzliya and Alma Hotel & Lounge in Tel Aviv.
According to the magazine, the $180 million Ritz-Carlton opening, five years in the making, has "upped the ante on luxury in Israel’s Silicon Valley, delivering a level of white-glove service that’s seldom found in the Holy Land…

Israel's representative at the Oscars: Vodka

A bottle of the Israeli vodka Aviv 613 will be included in the gift bags - known as swag bags - of Oscar nominees at the awards, which are scheduled for March 2 in Los Angeles.
“We are very excited to share Aviv with Oscar nominated actors and actresses,” said Marc Grossfield, Founder and Chief Executive Officer in a press statement.

Miss Israel Pays Surprise Visit to Philadelphia 76ers, Shows Off Dribbling Skills (VIDEO)

Miss Israel, Yityish “Titi” Aynaw, stopped by a Philadelphia 76ers practice session this week to greet players, pose for photos and even show off her dribbling skills.
The 22-year-old, who told an NBA reporter she is a basketball fan and played for fun when she was in high school, watched the 76ers at work and later showed off her own talents on the court.

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Posted By Ian to Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News at 2/22/2014 07:00:00 PM