[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] 03/30 Links Pt2: The Gideon Levy Travelling Hate Show; Sabeel and Desmond Tutu; LATMA Ep8 ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Ryan Bellerose: The Gideon Levy Travelling Hate Show

Then he showed anyone with critical thinking ability he is clueless, when he stated that 5 weeks would be enough to create a peace, if only Israel was committed to it, that Israel wouldn’t be able to create it in 5 years because Israel is racist and antidemocratic. He said “For people like me, nothing is as important as ending the occupation.” Then he named groups such as Breaking the Silence, B’tselem, and Anarchists Against the Wall as “brave Israeli organisations.” He used the phase “people like me” several times, but I hope to the creator that there are not many “people like him” because frankly, he was ridiculous. He continuously referred to peace groups being delegitimized in the Israeli media. Then he said that Israelis don’t see Palestinians as human beings, that he chooses his words carefully, that the Jews believe as “chosen people” that they do not have to respect anyone else’s human rights, which seems odd to me given the involvement of Jews in EVERY SINGLE SIGNIFICANT HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN THE WORLD. I could go on – I could tell you about how he said he doesn’t care if Israel is a Jewish state, and that the Jews who are frightened should blame themselves for not supporting a 2-state solution. I could tell you that he said “Do you ever hear Israelis talking about palestinians’ security” as though Jews were randomly sneaking into Arab villages and beheading babies. But the crowning moment was when he said he looked at South Africa as an example – that the change in South Africa happened without bloodshed. I wonder if he really is in another world.
I believe that the only reason people like Levy are dangerous is because a majority of people are ignorant and prefer that blissful ignorance to actually learning. His entire raison d’etre is to travel around attacking Israel. Let me be clear, he is not a self hater. He clearly is in love with himself, to the point where he tries to glorify himself at the cost of his people. It’s all about Gideon and his moral clarity. I have no doubt he thinks the money he is given to sell out his people is his just due as “speaking the truth,” even when his truth is obviously not anything of the sort.
Levy appeals to the Jews who want to believe that they should sell out their people for security. I have no doubt he would be welcome at any JVP or JStreet meeting. But to anyone who is even slightly knowledgeable, he is laughable. The issue is making sure people hear the ridiculousness of what he spreads. After all, groups like CJPME and SPHR do not want peace for two peoples – they are all about the destruction of Israel, and if they brought him here, why do you think that is? (h/t Yenta Press)

Christian Icons of Propaganda - Sabeel and Desmond Tutu

The troublesome truth is that there is no apartheid in Israel. Israel allows Arabs and Muslims full human and civil rights in all areas of life, including as full members of Israel's Parliament, the Knesset.
To brand Israel as an apartheid state when none of these restrictions exist is not only defamatory propaganda but, according to the black South African Reverend Kenneth Meshoe, trivializes the real suffering of blacks under apartheid.
While Tutu et al discuss Israel the "oppressor," Israel's surrounding enemies seek to obliterate it in accordance with their genocidal charter. Given the silence of Tutu et al on that subject, apparently an agenda of genocide is not seen by them as an injustice.
Tutu also disregards the countless Christians being slaughtered in Muslim states; that black slaves are still being held in Muslim states such as Mauritania; the forcible taking of "infidel" slaves by Boko Haram and ISIS; the racist genocide in Darfur and the 10 million Muslims slaughtered by other Muslims since 1948.
Critics of Sabeel suggest that it actually seems to be a political organization promoting anti-Israel propaganda while driving Church policy toward destroying Israel through BDS.
Why are Desmond Tutu, Sabeel and the anti-Semitic Churches that support BDS so tolerant of the persecution of Christians, global Islamist terrorism, the perpetual threat of Israel's obliteration and the fact that Muslims have driven Christians out of Bethlehem, the very place of Jesus's birth?
These calumnies and misrepresentations have nothing to do with peace and even less to do with justice. They are even more unacceptable coming from church groups or a man of the cloth.

LATMA: We'll be the Judge, episode 8

The Eight episode of the Israeli satire program "We'll be the Judge," from the creators of Latma's Tribal Update, Israel Channel 1, March 26, 2015.

Douglas Murray: UK: Whatever Happened to that Muslim Brotherhood Review?

The former head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, has described the Muslim Brotherhood as "at heart a terrorist organization."
Officials who are soft on extremism hope that both the extremism strategy and the Muslim Brotherhood review are not merely being kicked into the long grass but will, in fact, never see the light of day.
This is, it must be said, politics at its very worst. The Muslim Brotherhood has wreaked havoc for decades. Its desire to carry our coups and to rule Middle Eastern countries according to the rule of a hardline interpretation of Islamic law is not ancient history — it is very recent history.
Britain has for some years now been the major global hub of for these revolutionaries to fundraise, organize and dip in and out of whenever they are in or out of power.
When countries harbor Britain's enemies, we rightly regard those countries as less than friendly toward us. If Britain fails to publish the Muslim Brotherhood review, it will not just show that the country is unreliable to its friends and even to its own citizens.

European Anti-Semitism Isn’t Muslim Alone

Twenty years ago, being a Jew in Europe meant that what non-Jews acknowledged and remembered best about you was your Jewishness, as when a Swiss man I’d met at a party once greeted me at another event some four years later with “Oh, right – you’re the Jewish girl.” When we’d first met, we’d not talked about Jewishness; we’d spoken about art, and the articles I was writing at the time.
These days, the “otherness” of Jews is even more pronounced, as with the well-heeled Dutch woman who told me, at a dinner in 2013 that she could see I was Jewish from my appearance: “You know,” she said. “Large nose, brown hair.” Neither she nor her other elegant friends at the dinner party could comprehend why I took offense.
Or the Swiss woman who acknowledged, a few months back, that yes there had been a Holocaust; but Jews, she said, exaggerated its horrors: “only” 600,000 Jews were killed, not six million. She’d read it on the Internet. (As if 600,000 murdered Jews was somehow, then, okay.)
But unlike the time when my friend left Amsterdam, anti-Semitism in Europe no longer stops with such comments, which usually (though not always) are more a factor of ignorance than actual hate. As a recently released Pew study showed, in 2013, attacks on Jews in Europe reached 76 percent of European cities – the highest of any world region.

Pesach in Jerusalem 1920: Tragedy and Challenge

During the Passover holiday on April 4, 1920, local Arabs were primed for confrontation in Jerusalem. Tensions had already been escalating since the battle of Tel Chai in the Northern Galilee, and demonstrations against the Yishuv (Jewish community Palestine) which followed. Near the Jaffa Gate outside Jerusalem’s Old City, thousands had gathered brandishing weapons.
It was also the Muslim holiday of Nebi Mussa which drew crowds to Jerusalem. Araf el-Aref, the editor of the Arab nationalist newspaper, Al-Surria al-Janubiyya (the Southern Syria) whipped up the crowd, warning that if force is not used, “We will never be rid of the Jews.” The crowd responded that they “will drink the blood of the Jews.” Local Arab leader, Musa Kazim Husseini, shouted that, “The Jews are our dogs,” adding, “The Muslim religion was born with the sword.”
The riot soon began as the mobs entered the Old City and set upon the terrified Jewish community. Pillaging, abuse, and murder, ensued while the British police stood by with minimal reaction. When they did respond and made arrests, the rioters were allowed to attend prayer services the following morning, and then released while the violence continued. Synagogues were desecrated, shops were looted, and homes were ransacked. When members of the recently disbanded Jewish Legion attempted to intervene, they were arrested. Following almost three days of mayhem, five Jews were murdered, and two hundred and eleven were wounded, some critically.
The authorities did arrest one of the instigators, Amin Al-Husseini, but he managed to escape to Syria. Otherwise, British policy in the immediate aftermath showed little change. They rejected the Jews’ demands to dismiss the Arab police who participated in the pogrom. The British authorities would not even allow over 30 people to accompany remains of victims for burial.

Anti-Semitic Blood Libels Fuel Middle East Conflict

Along with the libel, an Arabic translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery of a global Jewish conspiracy, was also introduced into the Muslim world in the 1930s. There it was disseminated by powerful political and religious figures, and today remains widely read and reprinted across the region.
Long before Israel’s independence, one of the most influential Arab Palestinian notables of the time—Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the grand mufti of Jerusalem—disseminated this Jewish conspiracy tract, instigated pogroms against innocent Jews in Hebron and Jerusalem and (eventually deported by the British) sat out the war years in Berlin, where he produced Arabic radio broadcasts for the Nazis.
Today, the Protocols’ central message reappears regularly in a diverse array of Middle Eastern art and cultural forms that portray it as historical fact. The Protocols also feature explicitly in Hamas’s 1988 charter—a document that reads like a Nazi screed. To this day Hamas refuses to repudiate this founding document.
In his path-breaking 2013 book, historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen argues that anti-Semitism also has a basis in Islamic text. He shows that Jew-hatred didn’t only enter the Middle East from the outside, in the form of imported European myths, but is “practically an article of faith”. Here anti-Semitism “has at its core the notion that Jews are the prophet Muhammad’s enemies and impediments to Islam’s triumph”.
In the midst of today’s global explosion of anti-Semitism, it’s become fashionable to highlight historical periods of Muslim-Jewish coexistence while playing down these theological justifications for anti-Jewish hatred.

Meet the radical prof behind America’s first accredited Muslim university

The co-founder of the nation’s first accredited Muslim college wants you to know that Islam does not become compatible with capitalism “by putting bismillah [a blessing] at the beginning and alhamdulillah [‘thanks be to God’] at the end of a contract.”
“Militarism is not divine,” either: The point of the military-industrial complex is to “stimulate” the economy. And Muslims must be careful not to “replicate imperial structures” even as they fight against them.
So said Hatem Bazian, whose co-founding of Zaytuna College earlier this year was preceded by more than a decade of activism against Israel. The remarks were made to a group of Muslim Student Association members at UCLA on March 11, according to tweets by the group.
The association described Bazian’s message as how Islam “informs us of our responsibility to fight for social and economic justice in our societies despite the stigma of being labeled ‘political’ or ‘radical.’”
The University of California-Berkeley professor’s soothing and stirring words about Islam’s concern for social justice, “dignity” and stamping out “oppression,” however, belie his inflammatory statements in favor of intifada and whipping students into a rage against Israel’s very existence.

Preview of Americans for Peace & Tolerance's New Film on Students for Justice in Palestine's Ties to Terrorism

Americans for Peace & Tolerance has released a nine-minute preview of their new film on Students for Justice in Palestine which exposes the organization's links to Islamic terrorism and it's commitment to the destruction of Israel.

Daphne Anson: The Swedish Disease

Significant elements in several Western countries – especially the United States, Great Britain, and Israel – believe their own governments to be repositories of evil, and see terrorism as just punishment for past sins. This "we have met the enemy and he is us" attitude replaces an effective response with appeasement, including a readiness to give up traditions and achievements....
Self-hating Westerners have an out-sized importance due to their prominent role as shapers of opinion in universities, the media, religious institutions, and the arts. They serve as the Islamists' auxiliary mujahideen.
How the contagion continues to spread. In Sweden, for example,
'Many former Marxists have become passionate Multiculturalists, so much so that we need to analyze what these doctrines have in common. How come so many white Marxists are aggressively hostile to their own civilization and almost seem to derive pleasure from the idea of wiping out their own people? Is Globalist Multiculturalism on some level a replacement Communism or is it in fact a direct continuation of Communism? In traditional Communism the “oppressive class” should be forced out of power, stripped of their assets and perhaps physically eliminated. If we assume that whites, and by that I mean people of European stock, are seen collectively as the “global oppressive class” who uphold the capitalist system and prevent a just world order, breaking down whites becomes the road to implement equality. Perhaps if traditional Communism put its emphasis on economic differences, this new form of Communism puts emphasis on breaking down cultural and genetic differences in order to achieve global equality. It could thus be thought of as cultural and genetic Communism.
If we assume that the ideology of Globalist Multiculturalism has totalitarian tendencies, we should remember that totalitarian ideologies usually have a Villain Class, a group of evil oppressors that can be blamed for all the ills of society. If the ruling ideology falls somewhat short of producing the Perfect Society it has promised, this will be followed by even more passionate attacks on the Villain Class, be that the Jews, the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, etc. The Villain Class of Multiculturalism seems to be European culture and persons who happen to be born with a white skin. Any problems will automatically be blamed on “white racism.” One of the hallmarks of a Villain Class is that its members can be verbally or even physically abused with impunity. The Villain Class is subject to public scorn and has de facto or de jure less legal protection than other groups.

Philadelphia to Allow 'Jew Hatred: It's in the Quran' Ads

Philadelphia's transit system will allow a number of pro-Israel ads to appear on its buses, as per a judge's order, the Associated Press reported.
Deciding against an appeal, the Southern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) said Thursday that a group requested the advertising space before a policy change allowed the authority to reject ads it deems offensive.
The ads are sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, also known as Stop Islamization of American, which was founded in 2010.
One features a 1941 photograph of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler with "staunch ally" Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and known anti-Semite, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
Carrying the tagline, "Jew Hatred: It's in the Quran," the ads call on the United States government to "stop the hate" and "end all aid to Islamic countries."

Pro-Israel groups express criticisms of BDS movement during Israel Peace Week

Israel Peace Week this year offered a pro-Israel narrative to counter what zionists allege is anti-Israel propaganda.
Many people have expressed concern over the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement which has made considerable gains over the last decade.
Over three hundred students are petitioning York over SAIA’s Israeli Apartheid Week, claiming that one of their guest speakers, Steven Salaita, is anti-Semitic.
“SAIA is lying when they say Palestinians support the boycott movement against Israel,” says Willem Hart, fourth year social science student.
Last year, anti-Israel activists campaigned against Soda Stream for its factory in the disputed territory, adds Hart.
Despite the fact that the Palestinians hired by Soda Stream made the same hourly wage as the employees who commuted from Israel, says Hart, and even despite the fact that the factory had built a mosque on-sight to facilitate the Islamic prayer sessions that went on throughout the day, the factory in the West Bank was still the target of boycotts and condemnations.
Hart says all the boycott accomplished was renewed unemployment and economic insecurity of hundreds of Palestinian workers.
Hart cites a number of Palestinian activists who stand against BDS, such as Bassem Eid, the founder and former director of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group.

As Antisemitism Heats Up, So Does Fuel For Truth

Harris, 30, from Brooklyn, is one of 20 in the current class that meets once a week in Fuel For Truth’s midtown office. Israel’s conflict with Hamas has spawned anti-Israel sentiment on social media, and antisemites in Europe have used it as an excuse to target Jews there. The antisemitism has hit closer to home, too: on the Upper East Side, a Jewish man was attacked, comedian Elon Gold was harassed in Los Angeles and a student at Temple University was allegedly assaulted by an individual with Students for Justice in Palestine.
“Being pro-Israel today is a scary thing,” said Ron Wasserman, 35, who runs the boot camp. “Young Jews are afraid to be pro-Israel. That’s one of the biggest problems we face. Why are they afraid? Part of it is they don’t have the facts. Also, the other side seems very confident and is intimidating. Unless you have a baseline of knowledge you won’t have the backbone to come out in support of Israel. We do role-play; it’s live-action fire so people will be prepared.”
Wasserman said those selected for the 10-week Boot Camp examined articles and discussed their online encounters. One focus has been dismantling the notion that Israel deliberately targets civilians. The group is comprised of both Republicans and Democrats, he added.

Support for NIF is Support for the Southampton Anti-Semitic Conference

The university's website advertising the conference notes that the event will “question the both the legal and moral right of the state of Israel.” That is what anti-Semites do – they hate Jews and they hate Israel.
While it is worth condemning the countless Jew-haters who are participating, I believe more condemnation is due to the Jewish leaders who support – even tacitly – heinous activities like these.
Speakers at this event will discuss the end of Israel as a Jewish State, and the need to boycott Israel. And participating speakers also include at least one organization which is funded by the New Israel Fund (NIF).
Donors to the NIF are therefore responsible, as events like this cost money.
Sawsan Zaher, Senior Attorney at Adalah, which received $1,673,634 in funding from the NIF between 2008-2013 will speak at the anti-Semitic conference. Adalah maintains a “Discriminatory Laws in Israel” database on its website, and supported a 2008 “lawfare” case against Israeli officials. Zaher has stated that Israel’s discriminatory laws constitute “apartheid.”
In response to criticism, NIF’s spokesperson, Naomi Paiss, tweeted that NIF-funded organizations have the right to make their own decisions.
Indeed they do, but the donors to NIF also have the right to stop funding this anti-Semitic behavior.

Northeastern Rejects BDS Referendum Request

Pro-Israel students at Northeastern University and Boston’s Jewish communal leaders expressed relief and pride after the school’s Student Government Association rejected a resolution that would have brought a referendum to the entire student body asking the university to divest from certain companies doing business with Israel.
Northeastern’s SGA senators voted on Monday, March 16, to reject the measure, with 25 senators opposed, nine in favor and 14 abstaining.
The resolution, which was proposed by the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and supported by Jewish Voice for Peace Boston, would have placed a referendum question of divestment before the entire student body of approximately 15,000 undergraduates.
The text submitted by SJP reads in part, “In accordance with International Humanitarian Law, human rights protocols and the values of the Northeastern community, we ask the Northeastern trustees to divest from companies engaged in the violence in Palestine. We ask that Northeastern withdraw all investments that it may have in Caterpillar, Raytheon, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard.”
The SGA vote followed some two hours of passionate debate, according to Dylan Abraham, a student senator and former executive vice president of the school’s Hillel chapter, which coordinated campus efforts to defeat the measure.

Steven Salaita Brings His War on Civility to Stanford

Salaita claimed this "hierarchy" is spellbound by the "whims of donors" and, worse, "boards of trustees [who] come from the business or legal world." "If they are given the authority to begin meddling," he added, "we will see an inevitable decline of academic freedom." He defined the latter as the "need to protect faculty who deal with controversial ideas from administrative, social, or cultural recrimination," because "a functional education will always involve a disruption of preconceived ideas." Therefore, he concluded with a bit of sophomoric insight: "If you leave college holding the same ideas and ethics that you had when you entered into college, you did not get educated."
Regarding his hate-filled Tweets, Salaita said, "I don't actually teach the Israel/Palestine conflict. . . . I got caught up on this because of things I was tweeting." (Or perhaps because of what he has written: all of his six books deal with modern Arab studies, Arab Americans, or Israel, a fact that makes his would-be appointment in American Indian Studies peculiar.) He conceded that, "Twitter is a kind of a cesspool of anger and racism," but applied this judgment only to "people who are calling me horrible racist names on Twitter," never to himself.
Salaita displayed his moral relativism when he addressed "the matter of civility," which he called a "sprawling and ambiguous word . . . that has a moralistic undertone" and is "not inherently neutral." "To be called uncivil is automatically a bad thing," he admitted, before emptying the term of meaning by asserting, "Civility like any other discourse or vocabulary doesn't arise in a vacuum, but in particular historical and political and cultural conditions."

Stop Al-Quds Day #StopAlQudsDay

Q: What is Al-Quds Day?
A: Al-Quds Day” is an annual event created by the late Ayatollah Khomeini calling for the destruction of the Jewish State. It first began in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution in Iran and is held on the last Friday of Ramadan.
Q: Why is it important to take action?
A: The hateful nature of this event at Queen’s Park has been well documented since 2009 and there is no reason to believe this year will be any different. We cannot allow groups or individuals to continue radicalizing Canadians on the grounds of our legislature any longer.

Germany Warns Visiting Sports Delegation Not to Visit Ma’aleh Adumim

The German Embassy in Tel-Aviv attempted to prevent a delegation from visiting the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement bloc, east of Jerusalem, citing as its reason that it was Palestinian territory, Israel’s NRG reported on Sunday.
The incident occurred during the visit of the “Turbina Potsdam” women’s soccer team to Israel two months ago. The visit was organized by the B’nai B’rith International Jewish organization as part of the celebrations over fifty years of relations between the two countries. Among the events planned was a friendly match with the Israeli national young women’s team.
According to the report, the German Embassy tried to have a players’ fitness training session that was to be held in Ma’aleh Adumim canceled. That day, the delegation had intended to visit Masadah, and Ma’aleh Adumim was a convenient spot to hold the players’ daily training session.

Honest Anti-Zionist Also Questions Own Right To Exist (satire)

Unlike most of his peers, Hassan Dirani does not limit his accusations of illegitimacy to the Zionist Entity to the south; he applies the same critical eye to his own life on this mortal coil, and openly wonders whether he, or anyone for that matter, can justly claim the right to exist.
The 45-year-old car repair entrepreneur accepts the common perception in the Arab and Muslim worlds that the State of Israel is an illegitimate entity born of the usurpation of Palestinian land, and must be dismantled or destroyed if justice is to be served. He also maintains that stance with regard to himself, admitting that his very arrival in this world was fraught with violations of other people’s space, dignity, and possessions, and that his continued existence has only made the situation even more complicated.
“The Zionists stole Arab land and have no claim to it,” says Dirani. “By the same token, I have no right to exist, either, having foisted myself upon my mother’s uterus and demanded her very lifeblood for my own nourishment and growth, never having gained her consent to occupy that space.”
“At no point did I ever accept that I was essentially an interloper in my parents’ relationship and home, no matter how successful or happy my existence may have made them,” he continued, “much in the way the Zionist project does not suddenly become legitimate or admirable for having transformed a backwater province of the decaying Ottoman and British Empires into a linchpin of the global economy and a bastion of democracy and equality – it can never become legitimate.”

Honest Reporting: Reporter in Gaza 'Didn't Have Time' to Explore Hamas War Crimes

HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl joins VOI’s Josh Hasten in-studio to discuss this week’s media coverage of Israel: A reporter writes that he "didn't have the time" to examine the evidence of Hamas war crimes in Israel; and a columnist for the Independent with a history of anti-Israel bias writes that Israel is "more wicked and dangerous than Hamas."

UK Columnist: ‘Israel Now More Wicked and Dangerous Than Hamas’

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a columnist for The Independent, has much a long history when it comes to poisonous diatribes against Israel and Jews who support the state. She regularly describes Israel as a “racist” and “apartheid” state yet claims that some of her best friends are Jewish.
Her latest screed continues in this vein with some particularly disturbing comments even by her low standards. Chief among these is this statement:
Hamas is a wicked and dangerous force in the Middle East. But Israel is now more wicked and dangerous.
A look at the evil and anti-Semitic Hamas Charter, not to mention Hamas’s deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians as recently as last summer, is enough to demonstrate that the real wickedness on display here is Alibhai-Brown’s despicable claim that Israel is more virulent than a vicious terror organization.
But that is only one of many issues with Alibhai-Brown’s piece. She begins by praising Time magazine columnist Joe Klein for criticizing Israel even though he is, according to her, a “loyal Zionist all his life.”

Richard Millett: Wonderful Welsh Army invades Israel.

Israel lost 3-0 at home to Wales on Saturday night at the Sammy Ofer Stadium in Haifa and I was there in the away end with 1000 singing Welsh fans courtesy of Swansea City-mad Michael Plosker.
It was a dreadful result for Israel’s Euro 2016 qualifying campaign but for two hours I was entertained by the warmth, humour and courtesy of the Welsh travelling army.
Speaking to some Welsh fans after the game they said they loved coming to Israel eventhough they had been apprehensive at first due to the way Israel is reported by the British media
Meanwhile, they sang self-deprecating songs throughout the match and another song that I have not been able to shift from my head all day the words of which are:

Israeli researchers devise precise measurement of Saturn’s rotation

Saturn’s day is 10 hours, 32 minutes and 44 seconds long, according to a new method devised by Weizmann Institute of Science and Tel Aviv University researchers that offers insight into the internal structure of the planet, its weather patterns, and the way it formed.
“We cannot fully understand Saturn’s internal structure without an accurate determination of its rotation period,” said Dr. Ravit Helled, Senior Lecturer in Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University.
Tracking the rotation speed of solid planets, like the Earth and Mars, is a relatively simple task: Just measure the time it takes for a surface feature to roll into view again. But giant gas planets Jupiter and Saturn are more problematic for planetary scientists, as they both lack measureable solid surfaces and are covered by thick layers of clouds, foiling direct visual measurements by space probes.
The new method, by Helled and Drs. Eli Galanti and Yohai Kaspi of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, is based on Saturn’s measured gravitational field and the unique fact that its east-west axis is shorter than its north-south axis.

Forget the Milky: Berlin and Tel Aviv grow tech relationship

Although smaller and less experienced in the start-up business than the Tel Aviv area — including the city and its suburbs — Berlin is considered, along with London, one of the two hottest start-up scenes in Europe. Almost 750 start-ups call the city home, in areas such as media, music, games, e-commerce, and financial technology, among others. The city also has 16 tech hubs and numerous venture-capital firms.
The deal will allow entrepreneurs from both places to access work space in the other location for free, as well as visa process assistance and one-on-one mentoring with experts.
The announcement took place today at the Axis 2015 event at the Peres Center for Peace, during a dedicated panel honoring the 50th anniversary of Israeli-German diplomatic relations and the flourishing, internationally recognized start-up ecosystems of both Berlin and Tel Aviv.
This partnership is part of the Berlin campaign initiated by Berlin Partner in order to develop global cooperation between Berlin’s start-up ecosystem and other innovative cities including Washington DC, New York, London — and now, Tel Aviv.

The Israeli start-up that beat Disney at its own games

In the cartoon business, Disney is hard to beat. The California-based creator of so many of the cartoon characters that are deeply embedded in popular culture, from Mickey Mouse to Cinderella, more or less owns the kids’ cartoon space. Challengers find their popularity short-lived; sooner or later, the kids return to Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and the dozens of other characters that have become synonymous with childhood entertainment.
Unless those challengers are the ones created by Israeli start-up TabTale. And while it’s hard to believe that characters like Dog Walker, My Emma, Cave Girl, and others from the TabTale drawing board could be more popular than the likes of Ariel the Mermaid and Simba the Lion King, TabTale creative director Dori Adar has the download numbers – from the App Store and Google Play Android store – to prove it, with over 600 million downloads for its 350 games since 2010. In 2014 alone TabTale had over 300 million downloads – nearly twice that of Disney’s electronic gaming app division.
“We are able to go head to head with Disney, and we have been consistently beating them in downloads,” said Adar. “We have a lot of loyal users, and even though the star power of the Disney characters is very big, we get a lot of repeat customers for our games who download new ones as we release them because of their experience playing our games.”

The best kept secret behind Israel’s top medical devices

Israeli inventors have dreamed up many of the world’s most revolutionary medical devices. About 1,000 medical-device companies – 200 new ones each year – put Israel second only to the United States in this fast-growing sector.
And yet, nobody could strap on the ReWalk robotic exoskeleton, have a tumor removed non-surgically by InSightec’s ExAblate or get a painless neurological treatment with the Brainsway helmet if not for the design team that took a genius concept and made it function as expected, at a realistic price in a user-friendly form.
ISRAEL21c recently visited the Tel Aviv offices of Taga, the award-winning design and engineering firm behind those three and other pioneering healthcare products. According to CEO Amit Barak, Taga is Israel’s leading firm for medical-device design, which makes up more than half its business.

Richard Gere makes Hollywood arrival in Israel

Richard Gere is in Israel this week, both to be a guest of the Peres Peace Center and to film the new Joseph Cedar movie, Oppenheimer Strategies.
In between the film shoots, Gere is set to meet with former president Shimon Peres and the Peres Center’s “Young Ambassadors,” a group of 25 Jewish, Muslim and Christian high school students from Jaffa.
“Richard Gere is a close, personal friend of former president Peres, and he is an enthusiastic supporter of Peres Center for Peace initiatives since the center was founded in 1996,” the Peres Center said. “During Gere’s previous visit to Israel in 2003, he met with children to encourage their activities promoting co-existence.”

Knesset unveils solar field on roof

The Knesset unveiled on Sunday a solar field on its roof and those of surrounding buildings that will be able to produce up to a third of the Israeli parliament’s energy.
During a ceremony announcing the beginning of the field’s operation, Knesset Speaker MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud) said “what we see here is truly exciting, a real revolution.
“It is not only a revolution of energy and economic use of it, but a turning point in all that relates to the change in awareness for the past two years,” he added.
The ceremony was hosted by radio personality Avri Gilad, who said the solar field was “an opportunity for a new beginning at the entry point to the heart, imagination and creativity of all citizens of the state and especially youths. The Knesset has a garden and large roof, as well as employees with a big heart – all these things make it the greenest place in Israel, and this heralds good things for Israel.”

Israelly Cool: Past Israel In Color