01/15 Links Pt2: Wiesenthal Center calls on Obama to hold anti-Semitism summit; Why BDS can't win ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Rabin Would Not Have Supported the Positions of Today’s Israeli Left

What would have happened if Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hadn’t been murdered? Would history have been altered?
Not according to former IDF Intelligence chief and Labor Party frontbencher Amos Yadlin, who said the following last week. “He would have lost the elections in any event to Binyamin Netanyahu in ’96. The public atmosphere in the country was that the Oslo process failed, the terror attacks of [Islamic] Jihad and Hamas were unacceptable and Rabin himself would have reconsidered Oslo. I have no doubt that he lost his trust, if he even had it, in Yasser Arafat.”
Yet, whether or not Yadlin is correct — and he might well be — Rabin’s murder actually did alter history. It created a mythology on which subsequent Israeli leaders have acted, or felt obliged, to act.
One need only read the pronouncements of some avowedly left-wing American Jewish groups last November on the twentieth anniversary of Rabin’s murder to see that mythology in full flight.
For example, J Street: “We stand for the legacy of Yitzhak Rabin — responsible leadership, bold vision, pursuit of peace. The current Israeli government has ignored that legacy.”
Indeed, J Street, American Friends of Peace Now, the New Israel Fund, Ameinu, T’ruah and Partners for Progressive Israel, and Living Rabin’s Legacy produced a ‘Statement of Principles,’ calling upon American Jews and Israelis to “recommit to carrying out Rabin’s legacy.”
This legacy was not defined by the Statement’s framers, but there is little mystery surrounding their meaning: the cause of creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Wiesenthal Center calls on Obama to convene anti-Semitism summit; releases top 10 list

The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Friday called on US President Barak Obama to convene a summit on anti-Semitism during a press conference as the center unveiled its annual Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Incidents of the year for 2015.
In a statement issued Friday, representatives of the organization, along with "13 diverse New York elected leaders," expressed their commitment to battling "against history's oldest hate" while invoking "the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to inspire a new coalition" of community leaders as the anniversary of the civil rights figure's birthday approaches.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in the statement that “Last year was a disastrous year. We are confronting an unprecedented and toxic combination of terrorist threats, an online sub-culture of hate and theologically and ideologically fueled anti-Semitism."
He added, "To defeat anti-Semitism, we need to build new coalitions. Today’s remarkable turnout representing the full diversity of the great City of New York, is an important step in the right direction, but we need to do more… we call on President Obama to convene a summit on anti-Semitism in the coming months.”
New York political figures also joined the press conference, expressing their solidarity with the Jewish community.

Sailing body: Malaysia won’t be punished for excluding Israel

World Sailing has declined to punish the Malaysian Sailing Federation after two Israeli athletes withdrew from last month’s Youth World Championship due to conditions imposed by government authorities.
World Sailing says an investigation found that requirements by the Malaysian government breached World Sailing’s “no-discrimination” regulations.
World Sailing officials say they “deeply regret” the Israeli sailors were unable to compete.
The governing body says that in the future, it can sanction national governing bodies for breaches of the “no discrimination” regulations.

British anti-semitism: Powered by British fits of morality

We live in an age where Europe’s long tradition of anti-Semitism has found fertile ground among a generation that tried to make sense of the world as it is now. A generation that sought to identify who the bad guys and the good guys are in all of that has happened over the last century. A generation that, as British writer Francis Wheen points out in Strange Days Indeed, no longer trusted the “official narrative.” Many of them have gone on to become the lecturers at our institutions of higher learning, legislators, political leaders and the executives of our media, effectively taking charge of opinion, thinking and even morality. They know what is wrong with the world today, and if you do not repeat after them, you are part of what is wrong with the world today too.
Maybe this process of anti-Semitism finding regeneration in the fertile ground is an unintentional consequence of this paradigm shift in Western societies, like the weeds that grow on a compost heap. However, the fact still remains that we recognised years ago that anti-Semitism is evil. The logical conclusion of that recognition is that we should remain vigilant for any latter-day manifestations of anti-Semitism, and confront them with the same fervour with which we would all the other social evils, like racism in general, sexism etc.
Natalie Bennett of the Green Party is another such leader whose stated policies provide anti-semitism with the oxygen it needs in our society.
Yet, this is not the case. British Jews have become the proxies on which members of the public can vent their outrage over all the bad things in the world they think Israel is responsible for. Since this is projected as part of fighting the good fight, then such attacks are perfectly justified.

Saddam’s Scuds: 25 Years Later

This weekend marks twenty-five years since scud missiles began raining down upon Israel. It was a frightful time when gas masks and sealed rooms were required in response to the asphyxiating fear that the rockets might contain chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein calculated that if he could remind Gulf States aligned against him of their common foe, perhaps even provoking retaliation by Israel, then he might shatter the coalition amassed against him.
Consider how history has changed over this quarter century since January of 1991. Today common strategic interests and ferocious new adversaries find many Arab States cooperating militarily with Israel. Moreover, Israel’s existence is no longer seen as the primary cause of regional destabilization and bloodshed. Indeed despite contempt for Israel’s handling of the plight of Palestinians, the Nation State of the Jewish People is now widely valued as a force for regional stability.
Sometimes it is our vantage point which impairs our view and misdirects our choices.

Why BDS can't win

Israeli hi-tech exits generated more than nine billion dollars in 2015, according to the IVC Research Center.
This is one of the reasons why NASDAQ, the world’s second largest stock exchange announced a joint venture with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) to build a private market for Israeli companies who are not yet ‘ripe’ enough to go public. This will greatly assist Israeli companies as they grow from start-ups to fully-fledged enterprises and IPOs.
If the aim of BDS was to ruin Israel economically, the nail in their coffin came with the official announcement that Israel’s debt burden fell to below 65% in 2015.
The debt burden compares how much a country owes its creditors to the size of its economy. The debt burden drops when economic growth is larger than its budget deficit. Israel’s deficit came out at 2.15% of GDP.
Israel’s debt level is far below that of most advanced economies which average above the 100% debt-to-GDP level.
The improving strength of Israel’s economy is bad news for BDS.
For all the money and effort they are putting into attacking Israel economically with their boycott Israel campaigns, this is the clearest indication yet they are losing their strategic economic battle against Israel.
BDS is for idiots!

Ryan Bellerose: Judaism: Indigenous Mode Of Spirituality, Identity, Ethnicity And Nationhood

I am going to go on a rant.
When I started talking about indigenous status for Jews, it wasn’t so some asshats who don’t even understand the basics about what that means could use it as an excuse to be asshats. It was to help Jewish people advocate for their indigenous rights and stand in solidarity with other indigenous peoples struggling for recognition and human rights.
It was to help Jews understand that their identity no longer has to be viewed through a white European colonialized lens, that their so called religion is not a religion but an indigenous mode of spirituality that is intertwined with their identity, ethnicity and nationhood. It was to help them take back what is theirs, their identity.
It’s really simple: for two thousand years Jews have resisted assimilation. They NEED to understand what got them through was their identity, their connection with their identity which was forged in the Levant, Israel and beyond. Its not simply the religion – religion is a white European concept. Judaism – Jewishness is bigger than that.
So listening to people who do not get that being indigenous is a responsibility as much as a benefit, is annoying to me. If you do not want to be seen as white, privileged, entitled asshats then you have to stop acting like that. You will have to understand that YOU have to get involved.

UN's "International Decade for People of African Descent" Hijacked by Palestinians

A panel display at UN Headquarters in New York meant to highlight the work of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for "Human Rights" and focus on peoples of African Descent, has instead been used to draw attention to the UN's favorite "victims," the Palestinians.
Though the Palestinians are not from a part of the African continent, the FIRST of only seven photos in an exhibit meant to depict "People of African Descent" depicts a Palestinian woman. It is the only panel with a first-person quote (rather than captioned image), which states: "I am a Palestinian of African Descent with Roots in Brazil."

Israel said scrambling to counter new EU decision on settlements

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has this weekend begun an emergency effort to halt plans by European Union member states to intensify their distinction between Israel and the territories it captured in the 1967 Six Day War, the Haaretz daily reported Friday.
The paper quoted senior Israeli officials and European diplomats as saying that the decision could lead to new sanctions against the Jewish communities in the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
The decision is scheduled to be announced on Monday, Haaretz said, at the end of a monthly meeting of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council. According to the report, the statement had been expected to be “relatively moderate,” but in the wake of discussions on the issue at the EU headquarters on Thursday, senior Israeli officials said there had been a significant intensification of the censure of Israel in the draft proposal.
According to Haaretz, the draft stresses that the EU sees a clear distinction between Israel and the settlements.

US Defense Official: Israel ‘Cornerstone’ of Our Mideast Policy

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon met on Thursday with US Under Secretary of Defense Robert Work, Israel’s Army Radio reported.
“The US has always stood with Israel and always will,” said Work, from Ya’alon’s Tel Aviv office at the Defense Ministry.
“Israel is a cornerstone in our policy and strategy in the Middle East,” he said, adding that the security of the Jewish state is important for the US government, the American military and for Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, whose last visit to Israel occurred shortly after the announcement of the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in July.
Ya’alon told Work that Israel, too, considers the US the cornerstone of its security, and expressed gratitude for the relationship between the two countries.
Work also met with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at his Jerusalem residence, according to Times of Israel.

Mike Huckabee Wants to Know Why Obama Doesn't Care About Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes

During Huckabee's answer, he touched on several points that hit home about Islam, Judaism, and religious intolerance:
"The first responsibility of the President of the United States is to protect America and protect Americans. We have a president who seems to be more interested in protecting the reputation and image of Islam than he is of protecting us. And I'm going to be very clear that when this president makes comments like he did the other night that we have to be so careful because we don't offend Muslims, he needs to read his own FBI crime stats from last year, which would show him that of the hate crimes in the country, over 5500, about 1100 were religious hate crimes. And of those, 58% were directed toward Jews. Only 16% directed toward Muslims.
"Maybe what the President should have talked about the other night is how we ought to be more careful in the anti-Semitic comments that are going toward American Jews than toward Muslims because by three times as many, they're being targeted for religious hate crimes."
President Obama and Democrats in general (not to mention the media) are loathe to talk about religious oppression or religious hate crimes as they pertain to Jews and Christians, while they preach endlessly about some phantom wave of "backlash" against Muslims.
Gov. Huckabee is right that we should pay attention to the increasingly acceptable anti-Semitism that grows not only among Muslim immigrants, but among our media and cultural elite as well. It's actually real, and as we have seen in history, very dangerous.

Navy dentist with family in Israel wins appeal to work in Saratoga Springs

An American dentist whom the Defense Department deemed a security threat for having family in Israel will keep his job with the Navy after the federal government, in a striking reversal, granted him security clearance to work in the military.
A Navy commander informed Gershon M. Pincus by email last week that security officials had completed a required investigation into his background and decided the 62-year-old civilian did not pose a threat and could continue working on sailors from West Milton at a naval dental clinic on West Avenue in Saratoga Springs, said Avi Schick, Pincus' attorney in Manhattan.
"I'm overjoyed with it," Pincus said Thursday in response to the decision that he could stay. He had no hard feelings, Pincus said, but didn't want others to experience what he did.
Pincus said Thursday that he wanted to work 10 more years at the West Avenue clinic

Israel’s Shift from West to East — and the Implications for American Jewry

For some time, Diaspora Jewry has played a far less central role in managing Israel’s political and economic connections in the U.S. Where once American Jewish philanthropy was the centerpiece of Israel’s foreign income and investment, today a fundamentally different economic model is in place, and it is generating a broad spectrum of international trade and investment with the Jewish state. As American Jewish philanthropy becomes more internally focused, and where one finds significant changes in patterns and priorities of giving, the Israeli government may be merely responding to the economic and social realities that are playing out inside the Jewish community.
But does this decision to shift Foreign Ministry operations reflect something more? Has the Israel-Diaspora connection with American Jewry run its course? Israel’s political leadership may well have made a conscious decision that it must grow its political and economic relationships elsewhere. As American society itself undergoes significant demographic change, Israel’s focus will be increasingly responsive to these developments by building new partnerships and growing its base of connections with Hispanics, Asians and others.
More directly, Jerusalem no longer anticipates that it can generate support from the American Jewish progressive community, realizing how that sector holds deep and significant differences over policy and practice with the present government. While Israelis maintain a solid base of support from American Jews from the center-right constituencies, the Israeli government is pursuing a new set of political relationships and financial connections within the US and beyond. A new constellation of Israel allies and economic partners is being created in America.

Analysis: Putin closest thing to a friend Israel has ever had in Moscow

Love him or hate him, Russian President Vladimir Putin's military intervention in Syria unquestionably upended Middle Eastern politics. Putin supported Syrian President Bashar Assad, established several military bases in Syria, created a de-facto Russian-Shi'ite axis, confronted Turkey and forced the West to re-engage with him.
While all the region's major players feel the influence of Russia's military campaign, one country overlooked by commentators analyzing Russia's Syrian campaign is Israel. Israel's interests vis-à-vis Russia run wide and deep and are impossible for Jerusalem to ignore.
The history of the Israeli-Russian relationship is complicated, to say the least. The Soviet Union supported the creation of Israel in 1948, but then tilted towards the Arab world in the early 1960s and even threatened to attack Israel in both the 1967 Six Day War and 1973 Yom Kippur War.
With the emergence of Putin, though, Israel found the closest thing to a friend it's ever had in Moscow. Israel and Russia share a common fear of terrorism, and in 2014 Putin was one of the few world leaders to support Israel's Operation Protective Edge against Hamas, saying "I support Israel's battle that is intended to keep its citizens protected." In 2005, Putin became the first Russian president to ever visit Israel, visiting the Western Wall - Judaism's holiest site - as well as Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, where Putin observed a moment of silence. The Russian president even reportedly purchased an apartment in Tel Aviv for his then-84-year-old Jewish German teacher. Putin returned to Israel in 2012 as the guest of honor at a state dinner and to inaugurate a monument to the Red Army soldiers who defeated Hitler in World War Two.

Egyptian lawyer sues Netanyahu for ‘1967 war crimes’

An Egyptian lawyer has filed a civil lawsuit against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s alleged violations during 1967’s Six Day War, the Egyptian daily Al-Youm Al-Sabi reported on Tuesday.
According to the report, the lawyer, Ismail Labib, filed the lawsuit against the Israeli prime minister in a court in Cairo, demanding that Netanyahu pay him compensation of 100 million Egyptian Pounds for the killing of Egyptian captives by Israel during the 1967 war.
Labib stated that he decided to sue Netanyahu on behalf of his brother, Mohammad Labib Mohammad, who was among the Egyptian soldiers who were captured and killed by the IDF during the Six-Day War.
The Egyptian lawyer emphasized that the crimes committed by Israel against Egyptians captured during the Six-Day War are considered war crimes according to UN treaties and they do not become invalid as time passes.

Lapid asks EU's Mogherini to take action against BDS

Yesh Atid chairman MK Yair Lapid on Wednesday met with the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, as part of a series of meetings in Brussels with EU officials.
The purpose of the meetings is to lead a wide-ranging move against the activities of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the phenomenon of boycotts against Israel.
Lapid asked Mogherini to issue a statement along with the foreign ministers of the EU saying that the EU rejects the activities of the BDS movement.
He also asked her to lead an initiative by which all the foreign ministers of the EU will issue a joint declaration on the issue, a statement from his office said.
Mogherini told Lapid that she would act on the BDS issue and stressed that she objects to the BDS movement, as does the entire European Union.

Edelstein: EU must not fund NGOs who send Palestinians to their deaths

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein urged the European Union to be more cautious in funding Israeli NGOs, during a meeting with European Parliament President Martin Schulz in Berlin Thursday.
"The EU has to be very careful," he said. "It's very good to support human rights. It's very good and positive to support dialogue...I participated in dialogue with Palestinians and Palestinian legislators."
However, Edelstein added, "supporting people who are sending Palestinians to death, because of their ideology, is not something that is doing any honor to any organization."
The Knesset speaker was referring to the case of Ezra Nawi, a far-left activist who was arrested after being shown on an investigative journalism TV program last week boasting about how he helps Palestinian security forces find Palestinians who sell land to Jews.

Daphne Anson: "The West Decides to Pretend That Radical Islam Doesn't Exist" (updated)

I like this astute and brave young American guy, Ben Shapiro.
Yesterday, in relation to the latter problem confronting the West, and the all too common denial voiced by world leaders including Angela Merkel and Barack Obama, Ben Shapiro wrote, inter alia:
'Last year, there were 452 suicide terror attacks across the world. Four hundred and fifty of them were committed by Muslims. Last month, Muslims pledging allegiance to ISIS murdered 14 people in San Bernardino, California. Last week, thousands of Muslims around Europe, from Germany to Sweden to Switzerland, sexually assaulted hundreds of young women on New Year's Eve. Just days ago, a Muslim man shot a Philadelphia cop at point-blank range and declared that he did it in the name of Islam.
In response, Hillary Clinton declared, "Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam." ...The mayor of Cologne, Germany, told young women not to walk within "arm's length" of young Muslim men, and leftist commentators explained that the wave of sexual harassment resulted from some generalized, nonspecific religious patriarchal attitudes. The mayor of Philadelphia said that the attack on the police officer had nothing to do with "being a Muslim or the Islamic faith," and that instead, we ought to focus our attention on the pressing issue of gun violence ....
If the West keeps this up, there won't be any West of which to speak.

Ben Shapiro explains: BDS and Israel

US academics deal BDS a critical blow

In yet another blow to the BDS movement seeking to economically assault the Jewish state with international boycotts, the Association of American Universities (AAU) on Thursday issued a statement affirming it rejects academic boycotts of Israel.
The statement began by noting how the American Anthropological Association in November approved a resolution calling to boycott Israeli academic institutions, paving the way for a vote on the resolution this year.
"In light of these developments, the Board of Directors of the Association of American Universities reaffirms the Board’s opposition to such boycotts and today reissues the 2013 statement on this subject by the then-Executive Committee of the association," read the statement.
Quoting its 2013 rejection of the boycott, the AAU wrote: "any such boycott of academic institutions directly violates academic freedom, which is a fundamental principle of AAU universities and of American higher education in general.”
The statement also added that the AAU "strongly opposes a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Three U.S. scholarly organizations have now expressed support for such a boycott. Any such boycott of academic institutions directly violates academic freedom, which is a fundamental principle of AAU universities and of American higher education in general."

The Moral Vacuity Of The Anti-Israel Professoriate

Seeming to give proof to Orwell’s observation that some ideas are so stupid they could only have been thought of by intellectuals, yet another academic association – this time the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) – RECENTLY the lead of the American Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, the Asian Studies Association, and several others by ignobly voting to approve another academic boycott of Israel.
With the characteristic pseudo-intellectual babble that currently dilutes the scholarly relevance of the social sciences and humanities, the NWSA’s recommendation to approve a boycott announced that “As feminist scholars, activists, teachers, and public intellectuals we recognize the interconnectedness of systemic forms of oppression” – that “interconnectedness” no doubt justifying the singling out of Israeli academics for their particularly odious role in the oppression of women in the Middle East.
“In the spirit of this intersectional perspective,” these moral termagants continued, “we cannot overlook the injustice and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, perpetrated against Palestinians and other Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, within Israel and in the Golan Heights, as well as the colonial displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba.”
Apparently, this “intersectional perspective” has not enabled NWSA members to notice the injustice and violence currently being meted out against Israelis, either as a result of the shower of some 12,000 Hamas rockets launched from Gaza since 2005 with the intention of murdering Jewish civilians, or as part of the ongoing “knife Intifada” being carried out by psychopathic Palestinians wielding knives, guns, rocks, and automobiles used as weapons.

Anti-Israel Jewish Students Have a Twisted Moral Clarity

It takes a certain kind of moral distortion to stand against Israel nowadays — the kind of moral distortion that comes with rebellious youthfulness, an overinflated ego, and misplaced progressive values.
Jewish students, ones who come from pro-Israel homes with pro-Israel parents, announce with pride that they have “overcome the pro-Israel media bias” and have “come to see the conflict objectively,” meaning that they have rejected their parents’ political views and have fallen prey to hateful anti-Israel rhetoric.
Friends and colleagues succumb to the campus religion of human rights, and consequently, join the movement to protest alleged Israeli violations thereof. They pride themselves on their newfound progressive “objectivity” that allows them to make rash, uninformed judgements without ever having done any research.
Aside from trigger warnings, safe spaces, and microaggressions, the new fad is human rights and objectivity. Young people love to feel enlightened — and as typical privileged university students, the world affords us that indulgence.

Israeli influences going global (whether you like it or not)

When BDS advocate for Israel boycotts using Israel tech, and can't even get Israeli vegetables banned, you know it's hopeless
It’s no secret in the 21st century that when large audiences and businesses take to an idea or a concept, more often than not something strange happens - the concept drives the success of new ideas that in themselves are based on the original plan. Although this sounds confusing, the Israeli economy and creative industries are a microcosm for this phenomenon.
Countless ideas, product concepts and prototypes have been thought up and their first generation built in Israel. From Intel technology to anti-virus software and even much of the technology that powers car insurance comparison platforms, innovative technology is very often born in Israel and raised abroad.
There will always be those from movements like the BDS, who will try and turn the world’s economies and markets away from everything Israeli. Often this is ironically attempted using Israeli technology in the first place; using the likes of Facebook, Apple products smartphones. However, while movements like the BDS unsuccessfully attempt to stifle the spread of overtly Israeli goods and services such as fruits and vegetables and university lecturer appearances, Israeli technology and inspiration is growing hugely.

How would the UK media cover a Labour Party official who ‘flirted’ with Nazism?

In fact, Milne, a longtime Guardian editor prior to joining team Corbyn, didn’t merely “lean towards Marxism”, but worked for a publication (Straight Left) which was “a hard-line anti-reformist pro-Soviet faction within the Communist Party”.
Indeed, there is little to suggest, persuasively argued Michael Mosbacher in a December article in StandPoint, that Milne has moved away from his old political sympathies. (For instance, whereas Straight Left supported the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan in the 60s and 70s, Milne often rails against the West’s “imperialist” wars in the Middle East.)
It’s important to put this in perspective. Milne didn’t ‘merely’ support the ideology of Marxism in theory. He supported its expansionist totalitarian manifestation in practice, an ideology which led to terror, repression and genocide on a scale which is arguably on par with Nazism.
And, herein lies the point. A media and political figure in British life who ‘flirted’ with Nazi ideology, or worked for a pro-Nazi publication, would almost certainly be disqualified from working for a respectable media outlet or from holding office within a non-extremist political party.

Impartiality fail from BBC’s Barbara Plett

Why Ms Plett found it necessary at this time to use her BBC branded Twitter account to resurrect an article unrelated to her field of reporting nearly three years after its initial publication remains a mystery. What is clear however is that the article promoted by Plett is about a study that is by no means “new” and which was shown at the time to be highly controversial.
The Israeli-Palestinian Textbook Study Fraud
The Palestinian Textbook Fiasco
The Whitewashing of Hate
Study on incitement ‘another Goldstone Report’
Giving incitement the stamp of approval
BBC editorial guidelines on “Personal use of Social Networking and other third party websites” state:
“Impartiality is a particular concern for those working in News and Current Affairs. Nothing should appear on their personal blogs or microblogs which undermines the integrity or impartiality of the BBC.”

Al Jazeera America to Shut Down, Citing “Not Enough Anti-Semites in U.S.” (satire)

Despite enjoying lavish funding from its Qatari owners, Al Jazeera America has announced that it will cease operations in April, blaming “stubbornly low rates of Jew hatred in the United States.”
Launched in 2013, Al Jazeera America (AJAM) promised to provide more serious reporting than other U.S. networks like CNN and Fox News. However, despite a massive budget from the Emir of Qatar that enabled it to recruit top journalists, AJAM struggled with persistently low ratings and was embroiled in multiple discrimination lawsuits amid accusations of anti-Semitism and sexism.
In a statement, CEO Al Anstey said: “The low rates of U.S. anti-Semitism make our business model unsustainable. While we did our best to boost Jew hatred with numerous unbalanced stories accusing Israel of causing all the Middle East’s wars, U.S. viewers just wouldn’t buy it. Instead, we will redirect AJAM’s budget to our global Al Jazeera English operation, with a special emphasis on Europe, where thriving rates of anti-Semitism make it an ideal market.”

Israeli study uses gold particles to ‘seek and destroy’ artery blockages

Israeli researchers are developing a novel method to treat life-threatening blockages in arteries, using gold nanoparticles to “color” potential problem areas, and possibly even to treat them.
A recent study by scientists at Bar-Ilan University examines the use of gold nanorods to help treat atherosclerosis — a vascular disease in which artery walls thicken over time due to build-up of plaque in the blood vessel. These fatty blockages can eventually cause heart attacks and strokes.
One of the major problems with treating atherosclerosis is the identification of the disease. Researchers are tackling this problem by taking advantage of one of the chief characteristics of atherosclerotic build-ups: they are rich in macrophages, a type of white blood cell that ingests foreign substances. Gold nanorods, meanwhile, have unique optical properties that allow them to be detected using laser scanners.
When injected into the body, the nanoparticles are absorbed by macrophages, essentially lighting up problem areas and allowing a fast, low-risk, non-invasive diagnosis, after which doctors can decide how to best proceed with treatment.

Israeli start-up keeps bad bugs at bay, no poison needed

Farmers face a major crisis today — a “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” crisis. Farmers need to keep their fields free of insects that eat crops and destroy their livelihood.
However, the pesticides that are effective against those insects are causing major environmental damage, killing off not only pests, but helpful insects such as bees.
Studies have linked the disappearance of bees around the world, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, to the overuse of pesticides. Because bees are the effective pollinators of fruit trees — scientists believe that as much as one-third of human nutrition is due to bee pollination — fewer bees means less food. But without pesticides, bug infestations would rise significantly, causing just as many crop losses.
Fortunately, an Israeli start-up has developed a middle way — a system that enables farmers to protect their crops, while avoiding the use of environment-destroying pesticides. And a new study conducted by that start-up, EdenShield, showed just how effective are the company’s natural pesticides, which have been developed from plants and herbs.

Hadassah clinical trials for new ALS treatment ‘very encouraging’

A new treatment tested at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and developed by an American-Israeli biotech company appears to significantly slow the progression of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
According to the findings of initial clinical trials published Tuesday in the medical journal JAMA Neurology, the treatment, which uses a stem cell infusion protocol, is safe and offers “possible clinical benefits, to be confirmed in upcoming trials.”
Hadassah: The Women’s Zionist Organization, which owns Hadassah Medical Center, said in a news release issued the same day that the clinical trials began in 2011 and use an “innovative” treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in which stem cells are harvested from the patient’s bone marrow before being injected into the cerebrospinal fluid. Twenty-six ALS patients participated in the trials of a treatment developed by BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics.

When the world’s newest Islamic republic honors the Jewish state

A month after Gambia declared itself an “Islamic Republic,” its longtime ruler this week warmly hosted the ambassador of the world’s only Jewish state.
Israel’s Ambassador Paul Hirschson on Tuesday inspected a presidential honor guard in the capital Banjul before he handed his letters of credentials to Vice President Isatou Njie Saidy. The next day, he sat down for an hour-long chat with President Yahya Jammeh, who has been leading this tiny West African nation since taking power in a 1994 coup.
Gambia made headlines in early December when Jammeh officially changed his country’s name to the “Islamic Republic of the Gambia” in what he explained was a bid to better reflect the country’s religious identity. More than 95 percent of Gambia’s 1.9 million citizens are Muslims. Unsurprisingly, Banjul sympathizes with the Palestinians, but it has maintained cordial relations with Jerusalem over the years.
“They were warmly welcoming of my presence,” Hirschson said Thursday after concluding a three-day visit to Gambia, the smallest state on continental Africa. (Hirschson is based in Dakar, Senegal, and has ambassadorial responsibility for several countries in West Africa.) “They have good relations with the Palestinians and with the entire Arab and Muslim world, but they’re not shy to put a headline in the newspaper saying that the new Israeli ambassador was here and presented his credentials to the president.”
Hirschson, who was born in South Africa, was interviewed twice by local television stations during this week’s visit, and his photo appeared in several newspapers, including one front page.

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