[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] 12/05 Links Pt2: How the World Turned Against Israel; Prosor: Jewish Refugees Deserve Justice

From Ian:

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Here's How the World Turned Against Israel

Joshua Muravchik is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies and a contributor to this magazine. He is also author of 11 books, including the recently published Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel. I spoke with Muravchik about how Israel went from underdog to pariah, and the chances of that changing back anytime soon.
Lee Smith: Is there any way for Israel to turn it around and win the world's affection again? Or, would it be different if Israel was led by a left-wing rather than a right-wing government?
Josh Muravchik: An Israeli government of the Left would be cut more slack than the current one, but the difference would not be large. The second intifada erupted in 2000 during the premiership of the Labor Party’s Ehud Barak. Yet this was the moment at which the decisive turn against Israel became manifest, with harsher criticism being directed at Israel for self-defense than at the Palestinians for their terrorist war of aggression. The 2008-09 Gaza war that occasioned the infamous Goldstone Report was conducted by the Olmert administration, not of the Left but not of the Right either. And in this summer’s Gaza war, Netanyahu took no steps that were not supported by the main Israeli parties of the Left. In other words, with a government of the Left, Israel might be more restrained in regard to settlements and thus evoke less condemnation on that score, but at any moment that Israel felt impelled to act in self-defense—and those moments recur with heartrending frequency—it could count on the world’s opprobrium whoever was in office in Jerusalem.

Prosor at the UN: Jewish Refugees Deserve Justice

To a thronging crowd in the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Chamber in the UN’s headquarters in New York City, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor declaimed Wednesday that the 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries who fled in the aftermath of Israel’s creation in 1948 “deserve justice – and we [Israel] will not rest until they get it."
In what has become an annual event, the Israeli government sponsored a special event entitled: “The Untold Story of 850,000 Refugees, The Tale of Ancient Jewish Cultures in Arab Countries.”
Prosor went on to state:
"Eight hundred and fifty thousand Jews were forced to flee from Arab lands – and while they went on to raise families and have successful careers and give to their new communities – they never forgot the pain and humiliation of being torn from their homes.
“From this podium, in the heart of the Family of Nations, I call on the Secretary-General to appoint a Special Representative to establish a center of documentation. Collect the evidence to preserve history, document their firsthand accounts, and tell the story of the 850,000 Jews who were persecuted and expelled at the hands of the Arab nations.
“The United Nations cannot erase the pain and humiliation endured by the Jewish refugees, but it can help to make amends.”

UN Watch Watchdog urges U.N. chief and Samantha Power to investigate UNRWA for breach of neutrality agreement

According to Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, “UNRWA’s call to boycott an Israeli newspaper is a markedly political act that is inconsistent with the neutrality requirements applicable to all humanitarian agencies, and specifically negates provisions of UNRWA’s just-signed agreement with the U.S. State Department.”
“UNRWA’s boycott call also stands in stark contrast to its utter silence in the face of genocidal anti-Semitism published by Hamas and PA media, not to mention its inaction in regard to the anti-Jewish online postings of its own staff.”
In the 2015 UNRWA-U.S. Framework for Cooperation, an agreement just signed on November 17th between UNRWA commissioner-general Pierre Krahenbuhl and the U.S. State Department, the agency committed to “ensure adherence to principles of neutrality,” and specifically “the neutrality of UNRWA’s staff.”
Under the new agreement, UNRWA is obliged to complete a checklist confirming its adherence to obligations under the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act, including the staff’s “appropriate behavior consistent with UNRWA’s neutrality rules/regulations,” and the “prompt initiation of investigations upon receipt of credible information about alleged staff/personnel misconduct.”

Palestinian Human Rights Activist Calls for Major Overhaul of UNRWA (INTERVIEW)

Bassam Eid, a prominent Palestinian human rights activist, has issued an urgent plea for a serious overhaul of UNRWA, the UN agency tasked with caring for the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war in which Arab armies failed to prevent the creation of the State of Israel.
Eid, the Director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, is currently visiting London, where he addressed a meeting at the British parliament organized by the Henry Jackson Society, an international relations think-tank, entitled “Perpetuating Statelessness? UNRWA, Its Activities and Funding.” In that presentation, Eid, who was raised in the UNRWA refugee camp in Shu’afat, east of Jerusalem, harshly criticized the agency for perpetuating the plight of the refugees as well as for its political relationship with Hamas.
“Sixty-six years after it was created, UNRWA is still promising Palestinians that they will return to their homeland,” Eid told The Algemeiner by telephone. “In my opinion, causing five million Palestinian refugees to suffer more and more under the umbrella of the ‘right of return’ is a war crime. They are being used as pawns in a war strategy.”

Author Eli Amir Criticizes UNRWA


Indyk's insidious analysis

The disbanding of the Israeli government this week is breathing new life into dead arguments from the American Left about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
One example worth noting is Christiane Amanpour's "interview" with Brookings Institution foreign policy director Martin Indyk on Wednesday. The reason for the quotation marks is that the exchange between the two celebrities, who owe their careers to the promotion of a twisted view of the Middle East, was more like a victory volley than a question-and-answer session on a serious topic about which each is touted as an expert.
It is hard enough for Israeli voters to stomach the internal scramble for Knesset seats that will dominate the public sphere for the next three months without the added cacophony from abroad.
That the noise from overseas is going to play into the hands of the Israeli Left, which is as adept at twisting the truth about the Jewish state as its international counterparts -- makes it even more unbearable.

Are Palestinian Terrorists Immune From Extradition?

It is one of the great mysteries of American foreign policy that while terrorists from around the world are routinely extradited to the U.S. to be prosecuted for attacks on Americans, there is one class of killers that seems to be immune from extradition: Palestinians.
More than 100 Americans have been murdered by Palestinian terrorist attacks, mostly in Israel but sometimes in other countries, in the last several decades. Yet not a single Palestinian terrorist involved in those attacks has ever been brought to trial in the U.S.
Not one.
Think about that. If there had only been a few such attacks, and just a few American victims, one could understand why there had been no extraditions. But more than one hundred Americans killed, and many others wounded, means that at least several hundred Palestinian terrorists have been involved. And the U.S. government has been unable to bring even one of them to trial? Not even one?

Terror Bank Scrambles To Limit Liability for Aiding Hamas

Arab Bank plc, which was found liable this year for hundreds of claims against it for aiding the terrorist organization Hamas, appealed to the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New York on Tuesday to dismiss thousands of new claims.
Reuters reports:
A lawyer for the Jordan-based bank asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to uphold a lower court’s dismissal last year of lawsuits by foreign victims of attacks attributed to the Islamist militant group in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Kevin Walsh, Arab Bank’s lawyer, argued that corporations cannot be sued under the Alien Tort Statute and its New York branch’s dollar-clearing activities were not enough to overcome a presumption against applying the law to foreign conduct.

Shmuley Boteach: Telling the Truth About Israel on College Campuses

On Wednesday night, my son Mendy held a demonstration inside an event held by the Students for Justice in Palestine. They were screening a documentary by Israeli filmmaker (or should I say anti-Israeli filmmaker) Lia Tarachansky, called On the Side of the Road. The description of the film is “This is the story of those who fought to erase Palestine and created an Israeli Landscape of Denial.” The event sought to smear Israel’s name by placing the Palestinian refugee crisis in a vacuum, showing only cruel Israeli militias single-handedly forcing the native population out of their homeland.
There was another side to this story. The NYU students deserved to see it.
When the SJP organizers saw him and the other students protesting the event, they were outright shocked. “Is this allowed?” asked the director. It was, and Mendy had the papers to prove it. The director was at a loss for words, and just stared at the display. In the decade that the SJP has been operating, they had never seen something like this inside the walls of their very own event.
Some members of the SJP walked over and looked at the demonstration. They combed the signs searching for something to fight about. But there were no slogans and no opinions that they could take on. Every sign held only the coldest, hardest facts. Mostly facts they never knew, and would certainly never learn through the propaganda fueled activities of the SJP.

Professor: Israel used Gaza as field experiment and reaped profits from war

Swiss professor Riccardo Bocco, a professor of anthropology and sociology for the Graduate Institute in Geneva, claimed Israel had an economic motive in killing Gaza civilians during Operation Protective Edge during a lecture he held at "Peace Week," an event held by the Geneva Peace Building Platform. According to Bocco's claims, the security industry used Gaza as a field experiment and reaped a $7 billion profit as a result.
"The killing of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip during Operation Protective Edge had a clear economic motive – the Israeli security industries are the ones who prospered from Protective Edge," said Bocco.
Bocco's lecture was recorded by an Israeli representative at the conference, and a report was handed over to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem as part of a mission to track anti-Israel activities with an emphasis on those which receive sponsorship from international and academic institutions.
The said event went under the title "Geneva Peace Week" and included lectures by several other professors. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Office of University of Toronto's Anthropology Chair promoting anti-Semitic Israel boycott

Yet despite its obvious evil and the depraved hate behind it, the toxic virus of anti-Semitism of which Canada's Prime Minister spoke continues to spread across Canadian campuses. Today, the office of the Chair of the University of Toronto's Anthropology Department sent out an email advertising support for another attempt at one of the anti-Semitic boycotts of which Stephen Harper spoke.
There are those who are moving to oppose the anti-Israel boycott, but the anti-Semitic anthropologists are trying to rally against them. Among the crackpot assertions these hatemongers make is that, "the anti-boycott resolution’s sole operative clause is a bankrupt endorsement of the status quo. It uncritically endorses “peace talks” that have led only to deepening colonization and human rights abuses in Palestine, and claim that the boycott movement is based in negativity. In reality, it is this resolution that is negative: it offers no ideas, no solutions, no contributions, but simply echoes US government policy. In contrast, we view the boycott as a means for anthropologists to stand up to US policy and its unconditional support for Israel’s actions."
That's exactly how demented and wrapped up in their own vacuous echo-chamber of bigotted self-affirmation those people are. They oppose U.S.-sponsored peace talks and claim that their efforts to eliminate the middle east's only liberal democracy is not "negative."
The American Anthropological Association meeting they plan to infest with their hatred takes place tomorrow (Friday) in Washington D.C.

Pro-Israel Activists Launch Novel Campaign: Buy Israeli and Help the Homeless

Sussex Friends of Israel, a group based in Brighton on England’s south coast, is calling on consumers around the country to buy Israeli products and donate them to homeless charities to mark what it is calling “IsrAction Day” on December 21st, the fifth day of Chanukah and four days before the Christmas holiday, traditionally a time of charitable giving.
The idea for IsrAction Day crystallized over the summer, when Sussex Friends of Israel countered BDS demonstrators outside the Israeli-owned Ecostream store in Brighton. As part of their strategy of engaging passersby, the group handed out free snacks, donating the leftover food to a local homeless shelter.
Now, working with similar groups in Manchester, Nottingham and Birmingham, Sussex Friends of Israel intends to implement a local strategy on a national level. Boosting this aim, the long-established Jewish Chronicle newspaper today announced that it was “proud to lend its support” to the initiative in a cover story.
Sussex Friends of Israel is encouraging pro-Israel groups in the US and elsewhere to follow their example.
“This is a simple initiative that can be implemented anywhere in the world,” Sussex Friends of Israel spokesperson Fiona Sharpe told The Algemeiner. “It can be supported by large organizations or by individuals. The message is the same – buy Israeli produce, give it to homeless shelters and food banks. While our support for Israel is always foremost in our minds, we must also remember those in need in our own communities.”

Masked Protesters Storm Pro-Israel Event

Anti-Israel protestors stormed an event at the University of Pittsburgh on November 24th requiring police intervention and leaving event organizers shaken.
Roughly a dozen people stormed into the event featuring Rebecca Shimoni Stoil, a former deputy commander of combat medics in the Eshet Battalion of the Armoured Corps with signs readings “Ferguson, Pittsburgh, Gaza, Fight Back” according to the Jewish Chronicle. Stoil was lecturing on the role of gender dynamics in war and the event sponsored by the Jewish National Fund and Hillel Israel Education Committee among others.
Students testified that they were shaken and police were called in order to restore the peace:

American Muslim Group Encouraging Support for Terrorism in US

A well-known and influential Muslim-American organization featured speakers justifying the actions of the internationally recognized terrorist organization Hamas and lecturing attendees on how to “navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism,” according to a report by the Daily Beast.
American Muslims for Palestine’ 7th annual “Conference for Palestine” took place from November 27-29 and provides some telling insights into mainstream allegedly pro-Palestinian activism.
According to the Daily Beast one speaker justified the murder of innocents at the hands of Palestinian terrorists and blasted Israel as “the largest terrorist of all.” He also advised the audience on how to avoid directly financing terrorism:

Spreading Hatred on our UC Campuses is Harmful to Peace Efforts

Furthermore, union leaders have not taken a democratic or transparent approach in their advocacy for the BDS movement. They have quietly endorsed BDS activities and presented only pro-BDS perspectives to members while suppressing alternative perspectives.
At an event sponsored by the “UAW 2865 BDS caucus” (see video linked above) at UC Berkeley on November 12, panel speaker Lara Kiswani told the audience “Bringing down Israel really will benefit everyone in the world, and everyone in society.” As for those who don’t share this belief, she later added, “As long as you continue to be on that side, I’m going to continue to hate you.”
Is this the kind of environment we want on our campus? No, it is not, and why it is imperative that UC grad students vote no on BDS Dec. 4.

Hating Jews at Berkeley

Ironically, Kiswani, is the director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which is funded by the Tides Foundation, an organization that allegedly supports peaceful solutions to international conflict, and seeks to protect the Constitution from the intrusion of organizations with an authoritarian agenda. Apparently, in this case, the Tides Foundation made an exception that human rights and peace do not apply to Jews.
Kiswani’s Youth Director Sharif Zakout yearns for the day his people will return to “Palestine” and rebuild it, begging the question of what he will do with the seven million Israelis and the modern, high-tech society they have created. Perhaps, he would prefer a society that both looks and is run like Gaza or Ramallah.
Kiswani wants to silence voices and manifest hatred, but she should neither be silenced nor hated. She is an authentic, unblemished voice that should be heard loud and clear. Perhaps then some of our so called Jewish leaders, with their diaspora (galut) mentality, will ask her what they can do to solve the problem. Her answer would be telling.
It would probably be the most honest conversation they have yet had on the issue.

Israeli Legal Advocacy Group Urges IRS to Strip Presbyterian Church of Non-Profit Status

A prominent Israeli legal advocacy group is urging the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to investigate the Presbyterian Church USA for engaging in what it describes as “a range of prohibited activities under U.S. tax law” that are focused on the vilification of the State of Israel.
Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center,) a group which combats anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activities through legal action, is seeking the revocation of PCUSA’s tax-exempt status.
“It’s high time that the IRS investigated the PCUSA,” Nitsana Darshan- Leitner, Director of the Israel Law Center, told The Algemeiner. “They present themselves as a religious body, but they act as a political organization, working against Israel by, for example, meeting with the terrorists of Hezbollah and promoting the anti-Semitic BDS movement.”

IsraellyCool: Video: British (Jewish) MP Gerald Kaufman: “You Cannot Appeal To The Israelis’ Better Nature, Because They Do Not Have One”

And there’s more lies and bile spewing forth from the odious Kaufman, including his statement of fact that an Arab bus driver who was found to have committed suicide was actually tortured to death (based on the palestinian’s view, because, well, they never lie).

IsraellyCool: Spotlight On Terrorist Supporter And Antisemite: Shukeel Chohan

One of the disadvantages of running a popular pro-Israel blog is receiving despicable comments from the dregs of humanity.
A major advantage is possessing excellent Google “juice”, meaning I can expose the aforementioned dregs to anyone doing a Google search of their name.
Call it a public service.
Today’s subject is Shukeel Chohan, rabid antisemite and terrorism supporter, who’s first mistake was leaving this comment on the blog:
Shukeel Chohan
Deception and theft is a typical Jewish trait. Just like the scorpion, they can’t help it
His second mistake was leaving his Facebook profile open to all and sundry..
Which reveals more antisemitism:
And terror support:

How Anti-Israel Activists Capitalized on Ferguson Protests

What is ironic about the anti-Israel takeover in Ferguson is that the outrageous accusations being leveled against Israel by pro-Palestinians are actually the legitimate grievances of the Jewish people.
It’s Israeli civilians who have to fear being murdered because of their “ethnicity.” The massacre of Jews is the goal of Hamas. And Palestinians who oppose the Hamas government in Gaza will find themselves with a bag over their head at their public execution. The only thing they have to fear from the Jewish State is being used by Hamas as human shields to protect Hamas’ craven leaders and their weapons.
A legitimate sign would read:
“The Jewish people know what it means to be blown up and massacred because of your ethnicity #Israel #neveragain.”

Shilling for Islamic Terrorists

In an audience packed with pro-Palestinian activists, held at SEIU headquarters in Washington, DC, a panel on the “Legal Assault on Palestinian Rights Activism” began. It was moderated by Khalid Rashidi, an activist of Palestinian descent, whose views are so skewed that the ADL accused him of manipulating history and distorting reality to the point where it is “unrecognizable.” His views on Palestine go well beyond mere support for “oppressed” Palestinians. In past talks, he identified with the PLO so strongly that he repeatedly included himself by stating “we” when discussing the PLO’s agenda. But that didn’t stop Columbia University from making him the head of its Middle East studies division and giving him a professorship teaching classes to unwitting students. Not surprisingly, Rashidi is also good friends with President Barack Obama.
Rashidi started the two hour seminar by asserting that “those who oppose Palestinian rights have a hard time when the story gets out. No one wants to be an advocate of colonization, unequal rights and oppression.” The pro-Palestinian view is exploding in churches, unions, and most of all, on college campuses. According to Rashidi, it is only “ignorance”, “disinformation and misinformation” that leads Americans to hold a “Zionist viewpoint.”

Political messaging and inaccuracies in BBC Radio 4’s ‘Terror Through Time’

In other words, BBC audiences are left with the message that suicide bombings are undesirable not because they are morally wrong or abhorrent, but because they do not serve the strategic interests of Palestinian public relations. They are also told that Israeli public opinion is ‘unified’ around “the most extreme right-wing positions in Israeli politics” – a claim not borne out by the results of the 2013 elections or those which went before them. Khalidi also erases the fact that Arafat’s campaign of terror actually coincided with an increase in foreign donor contributions to the Palestinian Authority and that continuing terrorism cannot be said to have had a detrimental effect upon the provision of foreign aid funding.
Ostensibly, Fergal Keane set out to explore in this programme “how Israeli society reacted to a wave of suicide bombers”. What he actually achieved was – once again – uncritical amplification of political messaging from the Rashid Khalidi show.

Putin Calls Crimea Russia's 'Temple Mount'

According to Putin, the historic landmarks of Crimea are sacred for Russians, and are as important to them "as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for those who profess Islam and Judaism."
The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism, whereas Muslims list it third among holy sites and pray facing Mecca. It has been noted that Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran, and Muslim Arab rioters have attacked police frequently on the site recently, desecrating it as well through soccer games and dumping trash.
Putin said Crimea is "strategically important," and in elaborating the historical connection said "it was here in Crimea in ancient Khersones or Korsun as the chroniclers called it, that Count Vladimir was baptized (in the 10th century) to then baptize the rest of Rus."

Polish firm to keep making Nazi toys

A Polish toy maker announced it would keep producing Nazi-themed toys, arguing that it was a “fun” way for children to learn about history, the Daily Mail reported.
“We believe that through good fun we can teach history and we will continue this line in the future,” said Cobi Toys CEO Robert Podles.
“We cannot separate this from history,” he added. “Our history, our whole European history, unfortunately has imbibed this Nazism from the Second World War and we cannot escape from that.”

'Anti-Nazi' app to thwart far-right protests in Berlin

Marzahn-Hellendorf, a district in Berlin, was supposed to be the site of a large, far-right demonstration on November 22, but it never happened.
"There were four events by anti-Nazi supporters, so [right-wing supporters] avoided it," says Jessica Zeller at the Association for Democratic Culture in Berlin.
She told DW the "Nazis" couldn't hold their protest because the anti-Nazi movement was able to rally enough support to thwart them. The anti-Nazis used Web technology to find out the route that the Nazis were going to take in order to block their protest.
Now, Zeller and her team recently released a free app that will allow the anti-Nazi movement in Berlin to get push teasers on their phone to help them thwart right wing extremist events. The Android version of the "Gegen Nazis" (Anti Nazis) app was released on November 30, and the iOS version is slated for release on December 5.

PreOccupied Territory: Green Activists Lament Unused Space In Nazi Mass Graves (satire)

The Greens do not dispute the conservation-friendly approach governing that decision, but they note that the mass-grave strategy used mainly in Poland, the Baltic states, and the Soviet Union was not implemented in such a way that efficient use of space was ever considered.
Even when the Nazis shifted to a much more efficient killing method, they neglected to fully exploit the remaining space available in existing graves. “The train lines crisscrossing that part of the continent could have been used to transfer the bodies of dead Jews to fill the remaining space in existing mass graves,” says Maikmor Dedjiws of the Dutch Green Party. “They basically left it to us to find Jews to fill that extra space.”
To that end, the Greens in several European countries have teamed up with Muslim Immigrant groups similarly concerned with ecological efficiency and limited resources. “It’s a natural alliance,” says Wafa Nesses of the Netherlands-based migrant advocacy organization North-Africa-to-Zealand Immigrants (NAZI). “I hope we can diligently and efficiently pack those graves to capacity.”

Seeing is believing in nanotechnology

Israeli scientists, together with researchers in the UK, are working on perfecting a technique that could one day form the basis of a prosthetic retina to help people suffering from eye damage or degeneration.
Using nanotechnology, the light-sensitive film, composed of nerve cells, converts images to electrical impulses and sends them to the brain, where they get converted back into images — shapes and shadows, at minimum — that are then transmitted to the optic nerve, which then “sees” what the eye is looking at.
“It’s like seeing from the inside what you can’t see from the outside,” said Nir Waiskopf, a Hebrew University graduate student working with research leader Professor Uri Banin on the project.

At Israel’s MIT, Arab women (and men) are suddenly thriving

Here’s a little-told success story: Israeli Arabs, women in particular, have made huge strides over the past decade at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, better known as Israel’s answer to MIT. Among both men and women, Arabs’ share of the Technion student body is now equal to their share of the overall population, an impressive achievement considering that more than half of Israeli Arab children live below the nation’s official poverty line.
I spoke today with Yosef Jabareen, an Arab professor of urban planning who spearheads the Technion’s effort to recruit and graduate Arab students. He shared a recently updated report he’s done and explained what he called “a dramatic change” in outcomes for Arab students. “For me, as an Arab professor, it’s fantastic,” said Jabareen. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Technion, completed his education in the U.S. with a master’s from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (America’s answer to the Technion), then returned to his alma mater and five years ago was named assistant to the senior vice president for minorities.

Could an Arab Muslim Woman Become the Newest Jewish Home MK?

It may be called the “Jewish Home” party, but a distinctly non-Jewish Israeli – Anat Haskia, a Muslim Arab resident of northern Israel – hopes to join the party as a Knesset candidate. The party will be holding primaries at the beginning of January, and Haskia is petitioning members of her community to join the party in order to be eligible to vote for her.
Haskia, whose three children served in the IDF, announced her candidacy – and her signup project – on her Facebook page Thursday.
“As you know,” she wrote, “I have decided to join the Jewish Home party. In order to get on the list of candidates I need you to join. Together we will fight against the incitement emanating from the Arab community, and encourage more young Arabs to identify with the state of Israel.”
Haskia said that by sending her kids to the army and placing herself in the public spotlight as a solid supporter of Israel, despite the disapproval from many quarters of the Arab community, she had “proven herself” - and that the Israeli public should do the same. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

France looking to attract Israeli students and researchers

The French Embassy in Israel is set to hold an Information Day on Friday to inform and encourage potential students about the numerous study and research opportunities in France.
“There is a real lack of attractiveness for France among Israeli students and we wondered why this is and realized it was simply a lack of information,” said Baudier.
Currently France is one of the top countries attracting international students with some 300,000 students from around the world attending French universities and colleges.
Unfortunately, explained Baudier, there are some 15,000 Israeli students studying or conducting research abroad and only 150-200 of these students choose to study in France, and a majority of them have French origins.
In response to the question of whether Israeli students avoid studying in France due to the increasing anti-Semitism in the country, Baudier responded that he did not believe this to be a consideration.
“Of course we have anti-Semitism but this by itself it does not explain the low interest in studying in France,” he said.

Magen David Adom Gets Record $4.5 Million at Star-Studded NYC Gala

Headlining the event hosted by the American Friends of Magen David Adom (AFMDA) was former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, NBC’s Willie Geist and journalist Barbara Walters, who was presented with the AFMDA’s Humanitarian Award for her “dedication to philanthropy and humanitarian causes.”
“This award matters because the honor comes from an organization which has made such an impact on people’s lives whether in Israel, a country that has a special place in all of our hearts, or other places around the world suffering from other disasters,” Walters said, in accepting the award.
The MDA is at the frontlines of many of Israel’s national tragedies, including the recent spate of terrorist attacks in Israel. MDA paramedic Akiva Pollack, who was a first emergency responder on the scene of the Jerusalem synagogue attack in Haf Nof last month, addressed the audience on his actions that day.

‘The Red Tent’ hits the small screen in new steamy setting

Surely the Torah’s redactors never imagined that their Dinah — voiceless daughter of Jacob and Leah, rape victim avenged by her brothers — would one day be portrayed on the small screen as a lusty young midwife’s apprentice who takes her romantic fate into her own hands.
Anita Diamant’s 1997 novel “The Red Tent” took the shards of Dinah’s story, told in a fairly short chapter of Genesis, and recast them as a layered tale of sisterhood, friendship and love. The book sold 3 million copies and has been translated into more than two dozen languages. Now it’s been adapted into a Lifetime miniseries.
The two-part series, to be broadcast in the United States Dec. 7-8, stars the Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson as Dinah, Minnie Driver as Leah and Morena Baccarin (Jessica Brody from “Homeland”) as Rachel. The Scottish actor Iain Glen (Sir Richard Carlisle on “Downton Abbey”) plays Jacob, and the Israeli actress Hiam Abbas bears a setting-appropriate accent in her portrayal of Queen Re-Nefer.
Lifetime’s vehicle draws heavily from Diamant’s wildly successful novel, which would ultimately help pioneer a new literary genre based on Bible stories.

PM, president, honor 'godfather' of Israeli army

The ashes of a British commander who fought in World War I were reburied in central Israel on Thursday in a ceremony attended by his grandson as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin.
Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson was born in 1867. During the war he commanded the Jewish Legion and later rose to fame as a lion hunter in Africa and a supporter of the Jewish state.
Netanyahu's office said the remains of Patterson and his wife, Frances Helena, were brought to Israel in honor of the colonel's request to be buried in the Holy Land at Moshav Avihayil, where other legion soldiers are buried and where the Jewish Battalions Museum is located.
Netanyahu then paid tribute to Patterson and said that by establishing the Jewish Legion, the basis for Israel military force, he could be considered the "godfather" of the Israeli military.
"It is no exaggeration that your grandfather, Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson, was the commander of the first Jewish fighting force since the days of Bar Kokhba [1,900 years ago]. And as such he can be called the godfather of the Israeli army," the prime minister told the crowd at the Jewish Battalions Museum.

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Posted By Ian to Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News at 12/05/2014 04:00:00 PM