01/22 Links Pt2: The BBC Palestinian propaganda machine at work; Saving The Forgotten Jews ~ EoZ

From Ian:

David Collier: The BBC Palestinian propaganda machine at work

These Tweets are from the 9th October, at the time of clashes on the Gaza border between Israelis and Palestinians. They are several tweets announcing that there have been clashes, that the casualties are arriving at the hospital and everyone is on high alert. The tweets cover a full hour. He carried on posting beyond this. Does anyone else know of a doctor working in such conditions, who at the height of the clashes, at the very point that the injured get brought into hospital, spends his time on Twitter? He received photos, uploaded them and posted them at the same time as the dead and dying were waiting to be treated in his hospital?
The empty claims from his Twitter feed are incessant. But so is his support for the terrorists.
Most of the faces in this picture are of people who walked down streets armed with a knife, looking for vulnerable civilians to murder. The Doctor calls them the ‘stars who light the dark nights’. And then of course there is Dr-Abu Rayan Ziara’s LinkedIn Page
Our good doctor is a PR man. Below is a screenshot of another of his campaigns. Raising money to help him become a doctor in Germany. One wonders where the money for such campaigns end up.
There are 1000’s of activists such as this online. Their activity is as full of lies as it is relentless. This one is particularly prolific and innovative. Reading his timeline, Dr-Abu Rayan Ziara is clearly part of the factory that outputs the anti-Israel propaganda. And at sometime on the 12th January, he had an idea. He scrawled a note on a piece of paper, grabbed a couple of his friends, picked up a camera and sent out the tweet in the hope that someone, anyone would be stupid enough to pick it up. And along came Mario Cacciottolo from the BBC, from the pen of a Hamas PR man to the pages of the BBC website.
The damage has been done. A terrorist supporting propagandist, has elicited more sympathy for the Palestinian cause simply because the BBC have become willing and blind accomplices. They fell for a PR trick and spread the work of a PR man for the Palestinian cause, undiluted. The ‘reporters’ who regurgitate the spin do not perform even the most cursory of background checks. Our taxes funded unfiltered Hamas propaganda without the BBC even blinking.

Vox Distorts History In 10-Minute Video About Arab-Israeli Conflict

Vox.com, which purports to “explain” things, has turned its attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The results are not pretty. Truth takes a backseat to revisionism and a combination of ignorance and propaganda forces out knowledge.
Here’s the video, but be sure to read the explanation below as to how it misleads:
In general the content can be divided in two: anything that makes Israel look bad or the Palestinians sympathetic is described in (often incorrect) detail; anything that makes the Palestinians (or Arabs generally) look bad is described only generally. Israel is active; Palestinians are passive.
Another way this is manifest is that in the post-1967 portion of the video, Vox uses the term “terror” once, but some form of the word “occupy” six times. (It’s true that the video acknowledges that Hamas seeks to destroy Israel, but the term “terror” is used once.)
The video starts one hundred years ago and it talks about how Arabs in what is now Israel and its surroundings were starting to develop a national identity as political Zionism started to gain currency among the Jews in Europe. Immediately you see the way its framed: Indigenous Arabs vs. European usurpers.
Of course what this doesn’t tell you is that at that time the area now called Israel was called Palestine, and the Palestinian identity of the time was not an Arab one.

The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history

On the Logic and Illogic of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions

In a recent essay titled “The Logic of the Beneficiary,” my Columbia colleague English professor Bruce Robbins, wreathes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement with laurel leaves, but while making a spotty argument he does succeed in clarifying some of what’s at stake.
Robbins notes that a few American academic associations—small left-wing ones, as he doesn’t note—have passed academic boycott resolutions. (More accurately, as Jeff Weintraub has noted, what they call for are blacklists.) Robbins observes that some Israeli companies that manufacture on the West Bank have either relocated inside the Green Line or announced their intention to do so. He rejoices that some entertainers consider Israel the only nation in the world so vile as to warrant refusing to cross its border to bestow their in-person gifts. (Whether they turn down royalty checks for Israeli purchases of movies and music I do not know.)
Robbins shrewdly refrains from a straight-out defense of BDS’s evasive and purposively disingenuous core principles. He is committed to a version of BDS that he can support, so he overlooks the purposive slipperiness of the group’s founding principles, which operate on a false syllogism that goes something like this: a) Israel oppresses Palestinians (true); b) many Palestinians oppose a two-state solution (true); therefore c) everyone should join BDS in its equivocation about whether the Israeli state of 1948 is legitimate.

Building the Future in Israel

Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv is always bustling. Youngsters, families and tourists fill its shops, cafes and bars. On Jan. 1, this boulevard became the site of another terrorist attack on Israelis. First, two young men were gunned down in a bar; then, as he fled the scene, the terrorist killed a taxi driver. Several others were injured.
A week later, after a long pursuit, the terrorist, an Israeli-Arab citizen named Nashat Melhem, was encircled by security forces in his hide-out in the town of Arara, and was shot dead after he had opened fire at his pursuers. Nashat Melhem’s rampage in Tel Aviv was not his first attempt at terror, as he had a 2007 conviction for assaulting a soldier and trying to seize his gun.
A vast majority of Arara’s residents are law-abiding Israeli citizens, men and women who go about their daily lives peacefully and have nothing to do with terrorism. But not far from Arara, and less than an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv, is the headquarters of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
In line with other radical Islamists throughout the region, the northern branch of the Islamic Movement’s followers preach an extremist message, seeking to sow discord among Jews, Christians and Muslims. Over the years, the organization, under cover of freedom of speech, began to abuse its democratic privileges by inciting violence. That was why I was among those in the government who led the move to ban it.
Attacks like the one in Tel Aviv threaten the already complex and delicate relationship between Israel’s Jewish population and its Arab minority, a group that accounts for 1.7 million of our more than eight million citizens. At such moments of heightened tension, Israel’s government has clear responsibilities.

French pro-Palestinian Jew: Kippa signals ‘allegiance to Israeli policies’

French Jews have condemned a prominent Jewish pro-Palestinian activist who said that the act of wearing a kippa is a sign of allegiance to the policies of the State of Israel.
Jerusalem-born Rony Brauman, a former president of Doctors Without Borders, made the statement last week during an interview on the Europe1 radio station about the Jan. 11 stabbing of a devout Jew in Marseille, allegedly by a 15-year-old boy who told police he assaulted the victim as part of the jihad of the Islamic State terrorist group.
“We have to wonder about the significance of wearing a kippa — not for that person,” Brauman said of the victim in Marseille, “as I have no reason to suspect him, but in society in general.” In addition to an affirmation of faith, Brauman said, wearing a kippa is “an affirmation of loyalty to the State of Israel, why not after all, but also, and this is much more problematic, a sign of a kind of allegiance to the policies of the State of Israel.”
According to the Tribune Juive daily, both CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish communities, and French Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia condemned this statement. André Mamou, the paper’s editor-in-chief, wrote in an op-ed that, “what made this left-wing physician venture so far into self-hatred is incomprehensible.”

Families Of Two Paris Jihadists Sue France For Their 'Murders'

The family of Hasna Aitboulahcen, a cousin of alleged Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud who helped him on the run and died with him in a police raid, have filed a murder complaint, their lawyer said.
The young woman was killed on November 18, five days after the attacks, in a raid on an apartment in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, where they found Abaaoud and fellow Belgian-Moroccan Chakib Akrouh, who blew himself up.
Aitboulahcen, 26, had found and negotiated rental of the safe house for the two jihadists.
Her mother, sister and brother filed a complaint against persons unknown for terrorism and murder on January 13 with Paris anti-terrorist judge Christophe Teissier, according to a copy of the complaint seen by AFP.
“I consider that Hasna Aitboulahcen is a victim,” the family’s lawyer Fabien Ndoumou said Wednesday.
“She was under pressure from her cousin who threatened her family and the families of her friends,” he said.

State of Emergency Should Remain Until Total ISIS Defeat: French PM Valls

France’s state of emergency, declared in response to the attacks in Paris in November, should continue until the “total and global war” against militant group Islamic State (ISIS) is over, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the BBC.
More police presence and a ban on mass public gatherings are just some of the methods used by the French state to help it hunt down suspects and prevent further attacks. The state of emergency expires in February, but Valls believes the measures should be extended until ISIS, the group behind the November attacks, is defeated.
Speaking to the BBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Valls said France is “at war,” and that it is right to use “all means in our democracy under the rule of law to protect French people.”
When asked how long he believes the state of emergency should stay in place, Valls said: “The time necessary. We cannot always live all the time in a state of emergency.”
“As long as the threat is there,” he said. Referring to ISIS by its Arabic acronym, Valls said France has to maintain its state of emergency “until we can get rid of Daesh.”

Paris attacks: France's state of emergency is imposing 'excessive' restrictions on human rights, UN says

The United Nations has warned that the state of emergency imposed by France in the wake of the Paris attacks is imposing “excessive and disproportionate restrictions” on fundamental human rights.
Special rapporteurs on freedoms of opinion, expression, assembly and privacy were among those raising concerns with the Francois Hollande’s government.
“Ensuring adequate protection against abuse in the use of exceptional measures and surveillance measures in the context of the fight against terrorism is an international obligation of the French State,” they said in a joint statement.
“While exceptional measures may be required under exceptional circumstances, this does not relieve the authorities from demonstrating that these are applied solely for the purposes for which they were prescribed, and are directly related to the specific objective that inspired them.”

Syrian migrant in Germany exposed as Al Qaeda kidnapper

A Syrian suspected of being among jihadists who kidnapped a UN peacekeeper in Damascus in 2013 has been arrested over the "war crime", Germany's federal prosecutor said Friday.
The 24-year-old man named as Suliman A. -S. is believed to be a member of a branch of the Al-Nusra Front jihadist group, the prosecutor said.
Investigations found that he had participated in the kidnapping on February 17, 2013 and was "involved in guarding the kidnapped victim between March and June 2013".
He is "suspected of an attack during Syria's civil war against a person, who was involved in a peacekeeping mission under the United Nations Charter, and was therefore entitled to protection," said the prosecutor.
"The arrest warrant against him is on suspicion of a war crime against a humanitarian operation," the prosecutor added.
The peacekeeper with the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the Golan Heights, whose nationality was not revealed, managed to free himself in October 2013. It was unclear why he had been in Damascus.
Two groups of UNDOF peacekeepers were also abducted in the same year in the Golan Heights ceasefire zone, the first comprising of 21 soldiers, and the second four. All were Filipinos and subsequently freed.

Barry Shaw: British Academia 2016: Anti-Israel lies, intimidation and violence

The dogma of unreasoned hate pervades the atmosphere in seats of higher learning and research as campaigners for an end to Israel make dangerous inroads into the once hallowed hallways of British academia.
The beginning of 2016 saw the nadir of freedom of speech at King College London, a once proud bastion of open debate and intellectual honesty.
When Ami Ayalon, former director of Israel’s Shin Bet and currently a left-wing pro-peace activist, began his talk in a small room on the UK campus on January 20, protesters set off fire alarms, broke a window, threw chairs and physically assaulted a female attending the talk as they screamed abuse.
They interrupted an event organized by the Kings College Israel Society designed to find a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestinian problem with chants of “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” clearly indicating that their cause is not peace but an end to Israel.
Amazingly, although a heavy police force was required to put down the violence, no arrests were made.
This type of intimidation and violence is becoming increasingly common on campuses as intolerant radicals close down thought and debate that conflict with their agenda. There is little colloquy left in academia for Israeli advocates.

Why college students who fight for social justice should support Israel

Jewish college students growing up in the American Reform movement bring the movement’s passion for social justice with them to campus; for many it defines their Judaism. On campus, they naturally come into the company of other social activists, some of whom despise the very existence of the Jewish State of Israel.
It is difficult for these Jewish students to differentiate between social activists who support a Jewish state but are troubled by the “occupation,” or don’t like its current leaders, from those who want Israel to entirely disappear, partially because the more clever among the latter, mortal enemies of the Jewish state soft-pedal their agenda, claiming to object only to settlements.
It is cool to be anti-Israel on campus, especially when Israel is portrayed as an occupying, human-rights-abusing, racist, apartheid state that colonized a territory and ethnically cleansed its indigenous inhabitants. The problem is compounded by the fact that the anti-Israel far Left is disproportionately represented among college professors, who naturally command the respect of their students.
To combat these peer and mentor sources of anti-Israel propaganda, a strategy must be created that creates space and time for these kids to hear all the arguments, and to understand how their passion for social activism can be channeled in a positive pro-Israel way.

Campus Watchdog Finds ‘Clear Relationship Between Anti-Israel Activism and Targeting of Jewish Students’

There is a “clear relationship” between anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions activism and the targeting of Jewish students on college campuses across the US, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the head of Jewish student advocacy group the AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.
“The more BDS activity there is,” she said, “the more likely it is we’re going to find Jewish students and Jewish events suppressed or shut down.” These events have mostly been political in nature, she said, and related to Israel, such as when Israeli soldiers speak on a campus.
There is a “whole new campaign directed against Birthright programs” — free trips for American Jews to Israel — and there is heckling at lecturers, such as happened when Hebrew University Prof. Moshe Halbertal spoke at the University of Minnesota late last year.
Rossman-Benjamin’s comments came as her group released a database chronicling some 302 acts of antisemitic incidents at 109 college campuses across 28 states, over the past academic year. Rossman noted that most incidents fell into one of two categories: attacking Jewish students with discriminatory treatment, defamation or racism, and “defamation of the Jewish state.”

Jewish Human Rights Group ‘Horrified’ By British Doctors’ Request to Revoke Israeli Membership From World Medical Association

An international Jewish human rights organization expressed horror at a request made to the World Medical Association (WMA) by a large group of UK doctors that Israel’s membership be revoked.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) sent a letter to WMA President Sir Michael Marmot to protest.
SWC Director for International Relations Dr. Shimon Samuels warned that “the very mission of the World Medical Association (WMA) ethics programme is about to be impugned by a group of 71 British physicians intent on expelling the Israel Medical Association from your membership.”
Samuels noted that the WMA was established shortly after World War II, when “Nazi doctors and nurses committed inhuman experiments on children, exterminated the handicapped and murdered over six million Jews and countless others,” adding that it is “inconceivable to discriminate against the state of the Jewish victims and survivors.”

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Will Hillary Clinton repudiate Israel-hating Max Blumenthal?

Hillary is running for president, and her recent forced email exposure provided disquieting revelations about whom she chooses as advisers on Israel, particularly her lifelong friend Sidney Blumenthal and his son Max, one of America’s most disturbed Israel haters.
Sidney was shown to be feeding Hillary a steady stream of far left anti-Israel articles while promoting a number of Max’s vitriolic anti-Semitic writings while she was Secretary of State. Hillary valued the vitriol of Max Blumenthal’s troubled anti-Israel mind so much that she forked over $120,000 a year to his father to keep the flow of information coming.
Mrs. Clinton’s emails praising Max’s work are more explosive.
Throughout this entire email scandal, both Max and his father have been silent. One might assume the Hillary campaign sees they have a Jeremiah Wright problem and have done everything to muzzle Max, who normally trolls pro-Israel writers like me all over the Internet.
In my recent column in The Huffington Post I publicized Max’s history of anti-Semitism, in particular his repeated comparisons of the Jewish state to the Nazis in his book “Goliath, Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.” The chapters in “Goliath” bear titles such as “The Concentration Camp,” “This Belongs to the White Man,” “How to Kill Goyim and Influence People” and “The Night of Broken Glass.” The book uses the well-known technique of hiding behind the quotes of others to say things he is too cowardly to say himself.

How Intersectionality Makes You Stupid

As I write this, ISIS is hunting gay men to toss from the rooftops of Raqaa, and nearly 80 countries proscribe homosexuality. Yet for a 36-hour period earlier this week, the National LGBTQ Task Force chose to ally itself not with the one country in the Middle East that guarantees and protects the human rights of LGBTQ people, but with those who hang them from construction cranes.
On Sunday, the Task Force announced that it had canceled a post-Shabbat service reception at its annual Creating Change conference organized by the San Francisco-based nonprofit A Wider Bridge, which builds connections between LGBT communities in North America and Israel. Headlining the evening were representatives from Jerusalem Open House, an LGBT community center that serves a diverse array of constituencies, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs among them. Caving to pressure from a handful of anti-Israel extremists, the Task Force withdrew its sponsorship and kicked A Wider Bridge off its program.
“We canceled the reception when it became clear to us it would be intensely divisive rather than the community-building, social atmosphere which is the norm for Friday night at the conference,” Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey said in an emailed statement. Tyler Gregory, Deputy Director of A Wider Bridge, told the Washington Blade that the Task Force “recommended we either cancel [the] event, or ensure that our event speakers condemn the Israeli government in their remarks,” though which aspects of Israel’s government the Task Force expected A Wider Bridge—which receives no Israeli government funding—to “condemn” were left vague. Refusing to comply with either demand, A Wider Bridge was forced to move its event to a different hotel.

IsraellyCool: Typo’s Typo. Israel Replaced With “Palestine” On Globes

Australian office supply retailer, “Typo”, operated by parent company Cotton:On is selling a globe with a rather peculiar error.
Due to its diminutive size, the globe has represented Israel as a number “2”.
But look what word the globe did have room for:

Aside from the fact that “Palestine” has more letters than “Israel” and therefore harder to fit it over such a small space, it also doesn’t exist.

The New Israel Fund Is Threatening the Jewish State From Within

And what are some of those programs and what threat do they present to the Jewish State? A recent comprehensive study by the Zionist organization Im Tirtzu focused on foreign agent organizations operating in Israel and working against the interests of the state. Twenty organizations were examined, of which 15 received support from NIF. Of these, 13 showed a confluence of interest with radical Palestinian foundations. Four of the organizations legally defended terrorists or families of terrorists, some of whom killed and maimed Jews in the recent wave of lone-wolf terrorism.
The strength and influence of the NIF in Israel itself is reflected in the fact that four of these organizations qualify for national service, meaning that in the Jewish state today, one can perform the national service obligation by working for a foreign agent organization whose goals are to defend terrorists and their families, file charges against Israeli soldiers, and defame Israel in the United Nations and on the American campus.
The NIF is a fundamental challenge to the very existence of the Jewish state. Surrounded on all sides by enemies that would exterminate its people, Israel is also besieged from within, not just from knife-wielding terrorists, but worse, by the NIF’s assault on its very legitimacy and survival.

B’Tselem and Ta’ayush Have Made Me Ashamed to Be Israeli

I’m actually shocked. I probably shouldn’t be. I have long felt that some of the human rights organizations working in Israel are deeply misguided and biased. But I have to admit, I never expected to hear that these organizations were intentionally funding violent riots in which people are regularly injured and even killed. I never expected to hear that a group claiming to be defending human rights was actually an accessory to the murder of innocents.
Even more disgusting is that these organizations are entirely unrepentant. Rather than disavowing the individuals involved, these organizations have defended them, and even stated their support for these acts.
Let’s be honest. The organizations involved in this fiasco represent “human rights” about as much as “Jews for Jesus” represents Judaism. Indeed, they represent pretty much the exact opposite of human rights. By their actions, they are contributing to ethnic discrimination and bigotry, working against coexistence and peace, and doing violence to the human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Special Report: Globe and Mail Bias Against Israel Continues Unabated

What our media report today, often times becomes foreign policy tomorrow. In Canada, the Globe and Mail, our country’s “paper of record” prides itself as being a broadsheet of influence whose reporting and commentary platforms are observed by our nation’s thought leaders and policy makers.
Though duty bound at being impartial, fair, accurate and balanced, in the past couple months, the Globe has produced problematic content with an overt anti-Israel slant and has failed to remedy its journalist shortcomings.
Here are just five recent examples of Globe and Mail media bias against Israel:
1) Globe gives platform to incendiary Michael Bell commentary
Writing in the Globe and Mail on December 14, Michael Bell, former Canadian ambassador to Israel and co-director of the Jerusalem Old City Initiative, excused Palestinian terrorism while baselessly charging that a “Judaization” of Jerusalem exists. In truth, Bell’s op-ed was just another example of Palestinian incitement.
Without substantiation, Bell claimed Israeli “zealots” are attempting to change the Temple Mount’s status quo while seeking the destruction of the Al Aqsa Mosque, efforts which Bell claimed are prompting Palestinians to commit terrorism.

Antisemitism in 2016: Global Challenge Lacks a Global Strategy

Here’s why. The debate should not be about which countries Jews can safely emigrate to. It should be about what is causing antisemitism in the societies where they live now—and that means explicitly identifying Islamism, Islamists and their fellow travelers on the left and right as the root of the problem. In Europe, ironically, they are more willing to do that than in America, where the Obama administration is still selling the nonsense that using the word “Islamist” is an insult to all Muslims, but there is still a lack of coherence about why antisemitism persists and what to do about it.
In my view, the two most robust answers to antisemitism are sovereignty and democracy. Sovereignty takes the form of the State of Israel, which has always been and will continue to be a haven for Jews experiencing harassment and persecution. As for democracy, the argument here is a little more complicated, but it boils down to this: a polity like Russia can never be a true haven for Jews as long as it remains an authoritarian state that cracks down on dissent. Fighting antisemitism effectively requires a broader commitment to democratic rights, and an explicit acknowledgement that a culture of liberty is a necessary condition for a flourishing Jewish community.
Vladimir Putin will never understand that. The current crop of Western leaders don’t seem too bothered by it. That’s why, like I said, nothing really changes.

Hungary slaps Holocaust denier with 3 years' probation

A Budapest court on Thursday sentenced a Hungarian man to three years' probation for publicly denying that the Holocaust happened.
The case stems from a June 2012 speech in which Ferenc Oroshazi read excerpts from "Fatelessness," a semi-autobiographical novel by Hungarian Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize-winning author Imre Kertesz, and said they proved that the Holocaust did not happen.
"Fatelessness" narrates the experiences of a 14-year-old boy, Gyuri Koves, in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald death camps. Kertesz drew upon events from his own life for the book.
In one excerpt, Koves is asked about the gas chambers upon returning from the death camps and says that he did not see any although he heard about them. Oroshazi claimed that showed that the Holocaust did not take place.
An earlier request by Oroshazi to have Kertesz take the stand at the trial was rejected by the court.

Israeli Billionaire Creates Industrial Jobs to Foster Peace Between Jews and Arabs

An Israeli billionaire has been investing serious resources in creating industrial parks he believes will foster peace between Jewish and Arab Israelis, Bloomberg Business reported on Tuesday.
Stef Wertheimer — who sold his metal-cutting company Iscar Ltd to American billionaire Warren Buffett in 2013 for $6 billion — builds these parks in predominantly Arab areas of Israel that are suffering economically, according to Forbes magazine. The third richest man in Israel opened his latest park in 2013 in Nazareth.
Wertheimer’s industrial parks employ both Jews and Arabs, and he believes that if people are busy working and making money, they will not have time to fight each other.
“It’s not a Jewish story; it’s a story of all people living together,” Wertheimer, who is worth $5 billion, told Bloomberg Business. “Copy Switzerland, copy Germany, copy South Korea and then you have peace in this area.”

Israel to Host Major Cyber-Security Expo Next Week

Israeli cyber startups notched a very profitable year in 2015 and this upcoming year’s cyber arena looks ripe for even further growth. According to a new report, Israel exported at least $3 billion worth of products and services last year.
Israel Export Institute figures show that Israel is a cyber superpower. New cyber technology startups – being formed and making exits – proves the country’s stronghold in the global cyber arena.
In fact, state leaders and international cyber experts are heading over to Israel for the January 26-27 CyberTech in Israel convention.
Hundreds of delegations from across the globe will attend CyberTech — the second largest exhibition of cyber technologies worldwide — including a large delegation from Japan, a US delegation led by the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, a delegation from developing countries organized by the World Bank, as well as a Canadian delegation comprising senior executives of Canada’s central banks.

Argus, Check Point team up to prevent car hacking

Argus Cyber Security, one of the first – and still one of the few –companies in the world to provide solutions for car security, is teaming up with cyber-security giant Check Point to provide security systems for cars, the company announced Wednesday.
“Argus’s mission is to promote car connectivity without compromising on safety, security and privacy,” said Yoni Heilbronn, Vice President of Marketing at Argus Cyber Security. “Partnering with the world’s leading cyber security vendor emphasizes Argus’s commitment to achieving that goal. By bringing together Argus’s innovative in-vehicle intrusion detection and prevention capabilities and Check Point’s unmatched expertise in providing secure connectivity solutions we can now provide a joint offering that answers current and future cyber security needs of the automotive industry.”
Nearly all models offered today by companies like GM, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota offer connection options, and come equipped with Wi-Fi (using 3G and 4G data connections), allowing drivers and passengers to use the Internet in their vehicles to get directions, tune into cloud-based music services, and much more. But connected cars aren’t just convenient for drivers: Many cyber-experts believe they will be the Next Big Thing in hacking, providing hackers with challenges that will give them a whole new venue to conquer.

Pollard to speak with Jewish leaders — report

Freed spy-for-Israel Jonathan Pollard reportedly will speak to Jewish leaders and has received a more Shabbat-friendly electronic monitoring bracelet.
Pollard will speak to members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations next week in New York, the Forward reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources informed about the event, at a meeting that will also include US Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Eliot Engel, both New York Democrats. The meeting will discuss, in part, efforts to ease Pollard’s parole conditions, in which the congressmen have been actively involved, the report said.
Notice of the meeting does not appear on the website of the Presidents’ Conference, which reportedly informed member organizations of the event by phone rather than by the usual email. This may have been done to prevent news about the meeting from being leaked, an unnamed official told the Forward.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the conference, did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment on the meeting.

13-Year-Old Israeli Girl Develops Satellite System for Producing Oxygen in Space

A 13-year-old Israeli girl has invented a system for the production of oxygen in space, the Hebrew youth paper Ma’ariv L’Noar reported on Thursday, along with an interview with the budding tween scientist from Ramat Hasharon.
The recent winner of the “Satellite Is Born” award from the Israel Space Agency, Roni Oron developed BioSat “to solve a problem for astronauts trying to prove that life on Mars is possible.”
Oron said her satellite is “built like a large bubble on one side of which there is a mirror and the other is transparent, enabling the penetration of sunlight. In the middle there is a capsule, which will be made of a membrane through which air can pass but water cannot. Inside of it there will be water and algae, and outside there will be carbon dioxide. Through a process of photosynthesis, the satellite will produce oxygen. There will be additional mirrors inside the satellite that will enable sunlight to reach the capsule, but not by direct radiation, which would harm the algae.”

Haifa Holocaust survivor, 112, may be world’s oldest man

A Holocaust survivor in Haifa is believed to be the oldest man in the world.
Yisrael Kristal, 112, achieved that status this week after Yasutaro Koide of Japan, also 112, died, Haaretz reported Thursday.
Kristal’s grandson, Oren, received an email this week from the Gerontology Research Group, an international organization that tracks the world’s over-110 set, alerting him that the Polish-born Auschwitz survivor was up for the honor.
Upon hearing the news, Kristal said in Yiddish: “The joy of my old age.”
To be officially certified as the oldest living man, Kristal must present documentation from the first 20 years of his life. However, Haaretz reported, the earliest official document Kristal possesses is from when he was 25.

Houston, we have an ally

This week, Israel-U.S. relations hit some turbulence. After U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro criticized Israel's settlement policies and was backed by the administration, U.S. State Department Spokesman John Kirby declared at a press briefing that the U.S. did not consider the recent EU decision to label settlement products an anti-Israel boycott.
Jerusalem did not love these remarks, to say the least. But perhaps because we needed a reminder that there are other voices in the U.S., and that America is not just the Obama administration, Greg Abbott, the pro-Israel governor of Texas, arrived in Israel this week on his first visit.
The governor, confined to a wheelchair since an accident in 1984, came to see Israel but also to promote Israel-Texas relations. In an interview with Israel Hayom he described his impressions from his visit, remarked on the week's current events and on the upcoming presidential election in the U.S.

LA Jews honor ex-diplomat who saved 10,000 from Holocaust

Los Angeles Jews are celebrating the life and moral courage of a devout Catholic with the world premiere of an oratorio and an exhibit honoring the late diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes.
In 1940, Mendes, who was serving as Portugal’s consul general in Bordeaux, France, saved the lives of some 10,000 Jewish refugees by issuing entry visas to his country.
He did so in defiance of his government and paid for his humanitarian “disobedience” by losing his position and standing and dying in poverty. Descendants of Jews, and of some 20,000 non-Jews similarly saved by Sousa Mendes, will attend a series of special events organized by the Sousa Mendes Foundation and coordinated with International Holocaust Memorial Day.
On Sunday, the American Jewish University will host the world premiere of the oratorio “Circular 14: The Apotheosis of Aristides,” composed by Neely Bruce and produced by Marilyn Ziering. The title’s “Circular 14” refers to an order issued by Portuguese wartime dictator Antonio Salazar to deny visas to all refugees seeking to escape Nazi-occupied Europe by way of Portugal.

Saving The Forgotten Jews - BBC News

30 years ago 2 remarkable mass movements transported this community to the modern State of Israel and now the festival has once again become recognised, much like the Ethiopian Jews themselves, as an authentic part of the wider Jewish tradition. This year as Sigd approaches we explore how this community came to arrive in the state of Israel. It is an incredible story of espionage, heroism and unyielding faith that led to tens of thousands of people leaving their homes and risking their lives. We join both those who were instrumental in the operations themselves and members of the Ethiopian Jewish community to explore how these so-called miraculous events happened and what they mean today.

WATCH: Nestle brews legal battle in Israel over Clooney clone

Would the real George Clooney please stand up?
The “Gravity” and “Monuments Men” star is the focus of an Israeli lawsuit filed by food giant Nestle Corporation against Espresso Club, a small Israeli company whose ads spoof Nestle’s Nespresso coffee commercials.
Clooney stars in a line of Nespresso commercials which Espresso Club parodied with a Clooney look-alike. Nestle demanded NIS 200,000 ($50,000) and that Espresso Club remove the ad starring David Segal. After losing the case, Nestle on Wednesday appealed the Tel Aviv District Court’s ruling.
The real Clooney markets the Nespresso brand and his persona carries the company’s reputation, Nestle argued in a lawsuit filed at the Tel Aviv Magistrate Court two years ago. The court rejected the claim, and ruled that Nestle should pay Espresso Club NIS 58,500 ($14,700) in damages to cover the cost of the lawsuit.

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