[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] 04/20 Links Pt2: EU To Combat ISIS Beheadings By Labeling Settlement Products (satire) ~ EoZ

From Ian:

European foreign ministers, who are acquainted with the challenges of balancing human rights with security needs – particularly in the wake of 2004 Madrid train bombings, the July 7, 2005, London public transport bombings, the 2012 Toulouse and Montauban shootings and the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher massacres, must understand that Israel cannot simply lift movement restrictions placed on Palestinians living in the West Bank as long as Hamas and Islamic Jihad operate in the area and the Palestinian Authority continues to glorify terrorists.
Using economic boycotts to punish and ultimately close down Jewish businesses located in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem also works under the assumption that only by making the entire West Bank judenrein can there be peace. These boycotts ignore the extensive economic cooperation that exists between Palestinians and Israelis.
Large proportions of Palestinians living in the West Bank are interested in various forms of cooperation with Israel, including economic. In a survey conducted in 2011 by pollster Geocartography Knowledge, 85 percent of respondents said they were interested in cooperation with Israel. Jewish businesses in Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem employ tens of thousands of Palestinians.
European nations are engaged in a struggle to protect their Jewish communities from predominately Muslim aggression. When EU foreign ministers issue declarations that are driven by bigotry and distortions, they are feeding into anti-Semitism disguised as criticism of Israel. They are helping to spread lies.

PreOccupied Territory: EU To Combat ISIS Beheadings By Labeling Settlement Products (satire)

Fresh on the heels of yet another brutal video clip featuring a mass-execution of “infidels” by Islamic State fighters, sixteen Foreign Ministers of the European Union decided to address the danger by voting to mark products produced in Israeli settlements.
IS militants in Libya conducted two mass executions this week, beheading one group of Ethiopians and Eritreans along the Mediterranean coast and shooting the other. Dozens of victims were killed in the two incidents, which were filmed and distributed to international media. In response, the EU ministers vowed to take measures to protect those threatened by IS barbarism, and determined that the best way to prevent recurrences of mass beheadings in Syria, Iraq, and Libya would be to apply a distinctive label to all products imported into EU nations from areas in the West Bank where Jews live.
“We realized just how precarious existence is for so many people in the shadow of the Islamic State, and elected to make an unequivocal statement in that regard,” said Federica Mogherini, the head of EU foreign policy who presided over the conference of ministers. “We can think of nothing better in our capacity as European leaders than this important measure.”

UN Watch: Ex-UN Expert Richard Falk Compares UN Watch to Goebbels, “Their Defamatory Attacks Damaged My Reputation”

In a new diatribe delivered before an April 10th anti-Israel gathering in Washington, DC, former UN expert Richard Falk lashes out at UN Watch for “defamatory attacks” that “damaged my reputation, referring to the exposure of his support of 9/11 conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic remarks. Falk compared the Geneva NGO’s practices to those of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels (see video 9:00 to 10:00).
In fact, those who joined UN Watch in condemning Falk’s poison included UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the U.S., the UK, Canada — and the Palestinian Authority, which famously tried to fire him. For a glimpse into Falk’s numerous statements supporting terrorism against America, the West and Israel, click here.
According to Falk, writing in prepared remarks, UN Watch was the “most aggressive” of organizations to take him on, and “with incredible persistence” gave voice “to their denunciation of my character and activities.”
Falk complains that UN Watch circulated “defamatory attacks” calling for him to be fired to prominent international personalities, “including high-ranking civil servants in the UN itself, such as the UN Secretary General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and a variety of ambassadors of countries friendly to Israel.”

Richard Falk compares UN Watch to Goebbels, says he was subjected to "defamatory attacks"

Phyllis Chesler: "Complicit": FDR's Refusal to Save the Jews on the MS St. Louis

Retired lawyer and filmmaker Robert Krakow was screening his film Complicit, which is about America’s and FDR’s refusal, in 1939, to allow the Jewish passengers on the German ship, the MS St. Louis, to enter the country. More than 900 Jews were on board the luxury liner that was sent back to the European death camps.
Only 278 would survive the Holocaust. And two of them were there last night: Eva Weiner and Judith Steel.
They say that these survivors, this precious remnant, are dying off, yet these two women were remarkably robust, alert, fashionably dressed, vital. They reminded me of the extraordinary film Woman in Gold, in which the great actress Helen Mirren plays Maria Altman, a woman who escaped the European Holocaust, and whose family owned many Gustav Klimt paintings—all expropriated by Austrian Nazis and kept thereafter by the Austrian government.
The MS St. Louis left Hamburg in 1939 bound for Cuba. The passengers had bought visas to enter Cuba but the country was closed to all but 28 of them. The consul who had issued visas had been dismissed and was, perhaps, now in disfavor. Jewish-Cuban relatives bobbed desperately in small boats on the water trying to see, speak to, or at least, rescue the children. They were not allowed to do so.
The kind German Captain was not a Nazi. He sailed north to southern Florida. And then—there they were, in plain sight of the lights and palm trees of Miami. But here they were surrounded by menacing Coast Guard cutters which prevented the ship from docking and any passenger from jumping ship and trying to swim to shore.

The WWII rebellion you never heard of

Mostly Jewish underground in Algeria facilitated one of the Allied forces' first victories against the Nazis
It all seemed like a Hollywood fairy tale: around midnight, a few hundred young men spread across the city, aiming towards governmental buildings and the army barracks. They were untrained, and most of them never held a gun before. Some of their rifles didn't even have bullets. Their target, no less, was to take over the city and neutralize the entire French army.
The date is November 1942 and the location is Algiers, where the American army is about to disembark in order to fight the German armies in North Africa. In the city itself, a coup d'état takes place by a Gaullist underground, comprised mostly of Jews, who tries to facilitate the American takeover of the city. In one of the more surreal chapters of World War II, a tiny and unorganized army of volunteers managed to fool 20,000 French and Axis soldiers.
The plan was simple: allied forces would land on the coast of northwestern Africa, controlled by Vichy France, and the underground would take care of paralyzing the regime's troops in order to hand over the city to the Allies. The underground presented fabricated orders from the Vichy General Staff, stating that soldiers in central institutions must be replaced by civil guards.

Netanyahu and Rivlin refuse to meet with Jimmy Carter

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin have turned down invitations to meet with former US president Jimmy Carter during his upcoming visit to Israel over his “anti-Israel” views.
Both the president and prime minister declined the invitations after consulting with the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council, Haaretz reported Monday.
A senior diplomatic official told Channel 10, which first broke the news, that Carter is “a disaster for Israel,” and that all Israeli leaders to refrain from meeting the former president, due to his “anti-Israel positions.”
The official was also quoted as saying that while Netanyahu and Rivlin refused to meet with him, Israel had approved Carter’s request to visit the Gaza Strip.

Data Shows Ron Dermer Persona Non Grata at White House

New data recently published by the U.S. government show the severity of the break between Israeli ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, and the White House. An examination of a million records of entry permits for visitors to the White House in the last year and a half indicate that there were almost no meetings between Dermer and President Obama’s advisers in 2014. The data also reveal some interesting Israeli visitors to the White House, like the prime minister’s son Yair Netanyahu, leader of the opposition Isaac Herzog, retired Ehud Barak, news anchor Yonit Levy and others.The data was presented by Haaretz.
On March 27, the White House issued a million records of entry permits for guests who came to meetings at the presidential compound and the National Security Council building from 2014. The database is used internally by the White House, but has been made public since 2012 following a petition by an NGO whose members are determined to keep ethics in government, especially with regard to big business and government relations.

Two Euros, National Dignity, and a Million and a Half dead Armenians

Some of the worst offenders though, are the Palestinians and their defenders, whose entire narrative is bogus. Sure, the Haganah and Irgun weren’t behaving in a gentlemanly manner during the 1948 war. It was a WAR, for crying out loud, and wars are always nasty and brutish. The Israelis have always acknowledged that.
But the Palestinians haven’t. Their narrative is that they didn’t have any weapons to speak of, their neighboring Arab armies never invaded…well maybe they got into Palestinian territory, by invitation, of course, but they made sure to remain within the ’47 partition lines, and they really didn’t try very hard…. and oh yeah, there were never any Jews living in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, don’tcha know.

People have always lied about history. That’s why anniversaries are important. It forces people to look at the past and think about it. The Assyrian/Armenian genocides were a full century ago. Everyone involved with it, but victimizer and victim, are long dead. Admitting that the ancestors are guilty doesn’t make the descendants so. The governments of the west should keep up the pressure. (h/t messy57)

Ryan Bellerose: Things Jews Are Bad At

Yom HaShoah just came to a close and I feel the need to reflect on all the lessons my people – the Native Americans – can learn from their Jewish counterparts. Lessons such as: how to maintain a culture despite displacement from our ancestral lands, how to resurrect a language that was thought to be dead, how to make the land whole again, how to maintain a moral compass in the face of great pressure, and how to carry on when it seems like the whole damn world would be happier to see you gone forever.
But then I got to thinking; I realized that despite the Jewish people’s many accomplishments, which are significant, even without considering their minority status – that despite Israel’s ability to survive it’s countless threats, even though it’s just a speck on the map – there are a few things the Hebrews are quite bad at. Really, really bad at.
Dear Jews. We all know that you control the media. I mean seriously, you guys are an omnipresent super-secret cabal that controls the ebb and flow of information, and yet, you do a terrible job of getting your puppets to say nice things about you. In fact, if one didn’t know better, one might thing that you didn’t control the media at all. Heck, the level of demonization you allow on your personal etch-a-sketch is either a brilliant cover, or you simply suck at twisting those little white nobs.

Ben-Dror Yemini: A message to Israel's left

The Israeli left, including the Labor Party, insists on doing the very opposite. It prefers to huddle under the wings of the left of J Street and Breaking the Silence and other Jewish and Palestinian guests who negate Israel's right to exist or think that its very establishment was a mistake, and cooperate, in silence only sometimes, with those involved in the demonization of Israel rather than criticism of Israel.
This left insists on committing suicide, and it continues to write the right-wing's election propaganda. I was invited more than 20 years ago to address a Peace Now conference. I remember just one sentence that I said to the Israeli left of yesteryear: Try to view the Mizrahim in the same way as you view the Arabs, and try to view the Arabs in the same way that you view the Mizrahim.
I'm not sure I would say the same these days. But as an exercise for the mind, I serve it up to the left, as food for

Argentina’s senate OKs compensation for AMIA victims

Argentina’s Senate unanimously approved a bill that offers one-time compensation to the families of the 85 people killed in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center.
Under the bill approved Wednesday without debate, the compensation will be about $170,000 for each fatality in the Buenos Aires attack.
Also, for those whose injuries were “extremely grievous,” the reparation is reduced to 70 percent of the amount, and those with “grievous” injuries will receive 60 percent of the amount.
The bill advances to the Parliament’s lower chamber. If it is approved there, it will become law.

Australian companies remove kashrut certifications over halal fears

A number of companies in Australia have removed kosher certification symbols from their packaging due to pushback over halal certification.
Rumors that money raised from halal certification helps fund terrorism are spurring the pushback, the general manager of the Kosher Australia certification, Yankel Wajsbort, told the Australian Jewish Times, and companies have called the Victorian-based kashrut certification authority and asked that the kosher symbols be removed.
The companies reportedly believe it is better to have no identifying religious certification at all.
The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre and the Australian Crime Commission both reject the halal-terrorist link rumors, saying there is no evidence to support them, according to the AJN.
“In the last three months we have probably received 10 requests from companies that say they support kosher and want to stay kosher, but how do they argue that it’s different to halal,” Wajsbort told the newspaper. “Of those 10, we have had four or five companies that have asked to remove our symbol.”

Jewish Woman’s Religion Again Becomes Student Government Issue

Two months after the student government at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) raised concerns over the Jewish background of Rachel Beyda, a candidate for the school’s student judicial board, an eerily similar incident has emerged at .
The Stanford Review reported that student senate candidate Molly Horwitz’s Jewish background was called into question by the Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) during an endorsement session for elections. An SOCC member asked Horwitz, “Given your strong Jewish identity, how would you vote on divestment?” Earlier this year, Stanford’s student senate passed a resolution calling on the university to divest from companies that support Israel in the West Bank.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sent Howe a letter expressing “serious concerns about treating individuals differently on the basis of their religion or ethnic affiliation.”
Howe responded to the ADL, explaining, “Sally Dickson, the Associate Vice Provost of Student Affairs, promptly spoke to the students directly involved in the interview session in order to hear their perspectives about the exchange. We learned that there are different accounts of what occurred. Regardless, we have reminded those involved that all candidates should be treated consistently and fairly and that questioning based on an individual’s ethnic or religious affiliation is inappropriate. We remain committed to working with our students involved in the elections to actively support a fair and respectful process. We will also continue to work directly with Molly in addressing her concerns.”
With the election beginning Wednesday night, it is unlikely that any final determinations will be made by the university before students begin casting their ballots.
Horwitz is embracing the situation, explaining why it may be a teachable moment.

Stanford Student Senate Candidate Scrubbed Support for Israel From Facebook Page Before Running

A student leader at Stanford University removed from her Facebook page all traces alluding to her support for Israel before beginning her campaign for student senate, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Miriam Pollock, a friend and campaign manager for Molly Horwitz, said that before starting to gather support for her campaign, they scrubbed all posts from Horwitz’s Facebook page that suggested support for the Jewish state, including a photo of a pair of shoes decorated to look like the Israeli flag.
“We did it not because she isn’t proud — she is — but the campus climate has been pretty hostile, and it would not be politically expedient to take a public stance,” Pollock said. “She didn’t want that to be a main facet of her platform. Of course she was going to be honest if she was asked about her stance on divestment.”
Horwitz had published Facebook posts against Stanford University divesting from Israel, an issue which was put to vote and approved in the university’s Undergraduate Senate in February.

Crude joke at U of Missouri

In the Fall of 2015, the University of Missouri will offer an “Honors Tutorials” called “Perspectives on Zionism.” George Smith, a Biology professor holding no degrees in Middle East Studies or any related field, will teach the class. Smith’s personal perspective is that the entire history of Zionism has been “shameful” and that the Jewish State needs to be destroyed. His perspective has been well documented because Smith has protested, written, and hosted events against Israel for years. It is impossible for the administration to claim ignorance of his beliefs, because Smith has even protested at MU. It seems fair to ask: is it ethically responsible to allow a professor of biology who calls for the destruction of Zionism to teach a course on Zionism? How about a man who protested a talk given by an Israeli eyewitness of terrorist attacks with a crude joke?
In 2013 “Mizzou Christians United for Israel” hosted Noam Bedein, an Israeli eyewitness to terrorists attacks in Israel. The poster for the event read, “Hamas has fired over 12,700 rockets, killing and injuring the people of Sderot (Israel) … Noam Bedein… presents stories of these victims.” Smith showed up and hand distributed a flier, which joked that these rocket attacks were justified because the average Palestinian has to “go through a checkpoint every time he has to take a sh*t.”
Smith has written numerous op-eds condemning Zionism. Although Smith has no degrees in history, Smith wrote an op-ed explaining the history of the 1948 War. Smith explained that even though “Zionist mythology paints the war of independence as a heroic epic in which a tiny Jewish nation fought desperately for survival against an onslaught of invading Arab armies. Well-documented facts tell a less flattering story.” According to Smith, the 1948 War and the creation of a Jewish State “are a shameful chapter in Jewish history.” Smith argued: “For Jews of good conscience everywhere, repudiating and resisting the injustice perpetrated in their name is an urgent mitzvah… even if it means an end to the ethnically exclusivist Jewish state.”

Honest Reporting: Does Fighting Anti-Semitism Provide Cover For BDS Activity?

There is a disturbing trend in the college “debate” over Israel, and unusually, it is driven not by Students for Justice in Palestine and their fellow travelers, but rather, by Jewish students.
I know that sounds odd, and what I’m about to say may sound even odder: the disturbing trend is resolutions condemning anti-Semitism.
It should be painfully obvious that I personally condemn anti-Semitism in the strongest terms, especially as someone who has experienced campus anti-Semitism, and equally obvious, that too little is being done about anti-Semitism around the world and on college campuses. Why then, am I so stridently opposed to Jewish students introducing resolutions to condemn anti-Semitism?
Join the Fighting BDS Facebook page and stand up against the delegitimization of Israel.
These resolutions have been passed by, among others, UC Berkeley and UCLA, and one was just passed, alongside a divestment resolution, at scenic UC Santa Barbara. They are driven by student activism in the Jewish community, and have been treated, where passed, as victories. They are passed with the best of intentions, and many of my personal friends were involved in the passage of the UC Berkeley one.
The first and most glaring problem with these resolutions is that they are being debated and passed by the very same bodies that are passing BDS resolutions. In the case of UCSB, the two were passed at the same time. I’ve previously argued that it is a grave mistake to try to debate or fight these resolutions before student governments, because it only legitimizes their false and bigoted position. The anti-Semitism resolutions do something far worse than create an impression of false balance – they give cover to the demonization of and assault on Israel.

George Galloway pulls a Jon Donnison while accusing Israel of engaging in mass murder of children

George Galloway, the pro-Hezbollah, pro-Hamas MP from Bradford West, recently retweeted this odious charge – from an Israel hater named Sabir Abu Maryam – accusing Israel of engaging in the mass murder of innocent children.
However, evoking Jon Donnison’s fauxtography scandal from 2012, this heartbreaking photo of a woman mourning her deceased son (retweeted to Galloway’s 239,000 followers) does not depict Palestinians. The photo is actually from Iraq in 2007, as these original photos from Getty Images demonstrate:
As you can see from the caption, the boy was shot by an unidentified sniper while riding with his family in a bus from Baghdad to Baquba.
Of course, the overwhelming majority of such civilian deaths in Iraq since the 2003 war are attributed to attacks by Islamist insurgents. In 2005, Galloway seemed to express sympathy towards such jihadists, referring to them as “martyrs”.

New York Times Accidentally Tells the Truth About the Palestinians

To read the New York Times, one would think that the situation in the Judea-Samaria (West Bank) region in 2015 is the same as it was in 1985 or 1975. Israel is “occupying the West Bank,” Palestinians are denied the right to vote, and Palestinian violence is inevitable because Israeli control makes them feel hopeless. That was more or less the theme of the Times‘ March 31 feature story on the situation in the territories today.
But every once in a while, a Times reporter accidentally lets the cat out of the bag, and a discerning reader discovers that the truth is almost the exact opposite of what the Times is trying to convey.
Correspondent Diaa Hadid began her lengthy March 31 article on what was (for her) a hopeful note, pointing out that “the United States and Europe seem ever more ready to pressure Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank.”
Then, in the 12th paragraph, Hadid mentioned a fact that must have been confusing to Times readers. The Palestinian Authority held “a presidential election in 2005,” she noted in passing.

PLC elections 5 years overdue, but BBC Capital touts Hamas as ‘democratically elected’

Those Editorial Guidelines include a section on accuracy and hence viewers of Jui Chakravorty’s video may have been surprised to hear her speak of “the democratically elected ruling party Hamas” and to see the same phrase used in the video’s synopsis.
That statement is obviously misleading to any member of the BBC’s audience not already aware of the fact that not only did Hamas gain control of the Gaza Strip by violent and decidedly undemocratic means but its mandate to govern expired long ago and elections are already more than five years overdue.

BBC responds to complaints about Jeremy Bowen’s interview with Khaled Masha’al

Obviously, nothing in that generic first stage response addresses the issues raised on these pages and others. As Tom Wilson writing in the Spectator noted with regard to Bowen’s interview:
“When journalists have the much sought after opportunity to interview the heads of states and organisations with appalling human rights records the very least we expect is to see such people given a thorough cross-examining. What we don’t expect is for heads of terrorist organisations to be provided with a platform from which to give the equivalent of a party political broadcast and to get away with it virtually unchallenged.“
Members of the public considering pursuing their complaint further may find the following links helpful.

German Minister Warns Against Xenophobia, 70 Years After Nazis

Germany's foreign minister warned Sunday against racism and xenophobia, at a ceremony marking 70 years since the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen near Berlin.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier joined Holocaust survivors and other guests at the site which was built while Hitler celebrated the 1936 Olympic Games, and where tens of thousands of Jews and other inmates died.
Steinmeier said Germany had an enduring responsibility not to forget its horrific past, which meant it must "stand against injustice, against any form of xenophobia and discrimination."
He pointed to recent anti-foreigner attacks, cases of arson of refugee centers and anti-Islamic street protests as the number of asylum seekers rises sharply. A damning report published last week also that anti-Semitism has risen by 38% in Europe since 2013, with Germany as one of the top countries with a spike in anti-Semitic activity.

SS ‘accountant of Auschwitz’ going on trial in Germany

Hedy Bohm had just turned 16 when the Nazis packed her and her parents onto a cattle car in May 1944 and sent them from Hungary to the Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland.
After three days and nights in darkness, crammed into the standing-room-only car with babies wailing, the doors were flung open. “An inferno,” is how she remembers the scene she saw.
“The soldiers yelling at us, guns and rifles pointed at us,” she recalled. “Big dogs barking at us held back on their leashes by the soldiers.”
One of the black-uniformed men on the ramp was likely SS guard Oskar Groening. Today 93, he goes on trial Tuesday in a state court in the northern city of Lueneburg on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder. Two of those deaths were Bohm’s parents, who are believed to have been killed in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival in Auschwitz.

Neo-Nazis Plan Second Rally Targeting London Jews

A coalition of neo-Nazis have threatened to hold a second demonstration against the Jewish community in London, following a similar rally held earlier this month.
The coalition - made up of a number of small splinter groups from the British far-right, as well as several Polish immigrant neo-Nazis - held a small demonstration on April 18 near the northeast London neighborhood of Stamford Hill, home to the largest Orthodox Jewish community in Europe, to protest what they called the "Jewification" of the UK.
In particular, the neo-Nazis focused their anger on the Shomrim, a volunteer community patrol manned by Orthodox Jews which works closely with police to help tackle minor crimes and antisocial behavior.
Among those involved were activists from the openly neo-Nazi National Front, as well as a far-right splinter group calling itself the "Racial Volunteer Force".

Hundreds march in Prague against anti-Semitism

Hundreds of demonstrators, many waving Israeli flags, marched in Prague to protest the rising levels of anti-Semitism in Europe.
The 12th annual event, titled “A March of Good Will,” was held Sunday in the center of the Czech capital. The demonstration was organized by the Czech branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, a Christian Zionist group.
The participants, many of whom also waved Israeli banners with slogans denouncing anti-Semitism, included several Holocaust survivors and some hundred young Germans who came to Prague for the occasion.
The march moved from the city’s Old Town across the Vltava River to the gardens of the Czech Senate, where the minister of culture, Daniel Hermann, along with the Israel’s ambassador to the Czech Republic and other officials addressed the crowd.

NY students’ anti-Semitic T-shirts spur unity gathering

Responding to anti-Semitic T-shirts worn to a party by its high school students, a suburban New York town will hold what is being called “A Night of Unity.”
Teens and their parents in Commack, on Long Island, were set to participate in the meeting on Sunday night planned by local Jewish leaders.
Photos taken last weekend and posted on the Internet showed two Commack teens at a drinking party wearing red T-shirts bearing hand-drawn swastikas over the word “Auschwitz” written in big letters. “Hit the showers” is written in smaller letters at the bottom of the shirts.
The unity event at the Chai Center in Dix Hills will include a presentation from local police on Internet safety, a video presentation on the Holocaust and a talk by a local Holocaust survivor.
The Commack School District on April 15 said it would investigate the T-shirt incident, but noted that since the activity did not take place on school grounds and was not school sponsored, it was limited in the actions it could take.

Roll up your TV screen when the show is over

Israeli nanotechnologists have invented a protein-based material that could be made into thin, transparent, and flexible screens for smartphones, computer monitors, tablets, televisions and other devices, according to a study published in March, in Nature Nanotechnology.
Their experiments suggest that a novel DNA-peptide structure can satisfy the demand for greater portability, providing a screen that can easily be rolled up and put away, rather than requiring a flat surface for storage and transportation.
“Our material is light, organic and environmentally friendly,” said Tel Aviv University Prof. Ehud Gazit, who conducted the bio-nanotechnology research project with doctoral student Or Berger in collaboration with Prof. Fernando Patolsky and Yuval Ebenstein.
“It is flexible, and a single layer emits the same range of light that requires several layers today. By using only one layer, you can minimize production costs dramatically, which will lead to lower prices for consumers as well.”

Google scion whiz kid hacks his way to IDF service

There’s lots of tech talent out there – some of it still in high school. So who better than a tech-savvy high school kid to bring some of that talent to the fore?
That’s what Michael Matias, a 19-year old Israeli recent high-school graduate felt – and why he organized Hacking Generation Y, a group that has so far organized three weekend hack events that brought hundreds of kids together in Silicon Valley, Jamaica, India – and in June, Tel Aviv – to develop new and innovative tech.
And it doesn’t hurt that he is also the son of Yossi Matias, director of Google Israel. “For me, he was a great inspiration,” Michael told The Times of Israel in an exclusive interview. “I never met anyone more passionate than my dad. When he talks he lights an inner fire in me.”
The younger Matias used that fire to organize a hacking event for high school kids during an internship in Silicon Valley over the past year.

Israel, UK in huge new scientific cooperation agreement

Israel and the UK have entered into yet another joint scientific research agreement – this one, a source told The Times of Israel, worth billions of pounds.
The agreement, between the British Royal Society, the world’s oldest and most prestigious scientific fellowship, and the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities will fund research in a number of scientific areas, as well as provide funding for 12-15 post-doctorate exchange fellows to study in each country.
The agreement was signed over the weekend by Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, and Professor Ruth Arnon, president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Helping to fund the fellowship program will be the Sir Ralph Kohn Foundation.
It was just the latest of a long line of scientific and research agreements between Israel and the UK, two countries that have hundreds, if not thousands, of science and medicine research projects going on at one time, according to UK Chief Scientist Sir Mark Walport.

IsraellyCool: The Mystery Of The Jews

I just watched a video that filled me with awe and pride. The Mystery of the Jews looks at the miraculous way the Jews came to be, their immense contribution to the world, and the unfathomable fact of their continued existence. There’s nothing here I didn’t know, but I guess it’s like compliments: we never get enough of them. And of course it’s always pleasant to be recognized, especially at a time like this when it seems the entire world is against us.
I had this clip stowed away in my “longer clips” file, but it’s not THAT long. Just short of 21 minutes. It’s well worth the time stolen from some other pursuit.
Enjoy!