[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] 05/26 Links Pt2: Truth under siege from Artists for Palestine; Israel is a global cyber superpower ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: How Anti-Israel Incitement Backfires

It is worth noting that PA officials regularly encourage Muslim worshippers to intercept Jewish visitors to the holy site. But last year, Habbash, who also serves as religious affairs advisor to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, was forced to flee the Temple Mount after angry Palestinians attacked him with shoes, stones and eggs.
Still, officials from the PA and Jordan do not seem to have learned the lesson -- mainly that their incitement against visits by Jews will ignite a fire that will also consume them. Both Habbash and Sheikh Helayel found themselves in the same situation as Jews who are confronted by hecklers during their visits to the Temple Mount.
Palestinian and Jordanian officials who incite their people against Israel on a daily basis should not be surprised when their constituents spit in their face, throw shoes at them or expel them from a mosque.
Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel, while the PA is conducting security coordination with the Israel Defense Forces. That is enough for their people to turn against them and accuse them of "collaboration" with the "Zionist enemy."
Anti-Israel incitement has once again proven to be counter-productive. But will the Palestinian Authority and Jordan draw conclusions from their mistakes and start educating their people about tolerance and peace with Israel? Sadly, that is unlikely to happen, at least not in the near future. The anti-Israel rhetoric has made it impossible even to talk about the possibility of peace with Israel.

Truth under siege from Artists for Palestine

It is saddening that someone like Rylance should have so little credibility on issues concerning Israel. In rejecting the protests against The Siege, he forgot his own shameful behavior in April 2012 when he and Churchill were among the 37 personalities in the British theatrical world who called for the banning of a performance of the Israeli Habima Company, the most well known and respected Hebrew language company in the world, at the Shakespeare Festival at the Globe Theater in London.
By inviting the Habima Company, Rylance and his fellow stalwart advocates of freedom asserted, the Globe, that had also invited China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia among others to the Festival, was associating itself with policies of exclusion practiced by the Israeli state and endorsed by its national theater company.
He also forgot that while the protest in London against The Siege was peaceful and respectful, in contrast pro-Palestinian activists had disrupted the actual Habima performance by shouting and displaying banners of Palestinian flags.
The pro-Palestinian group also forget the many occasions when the reality of censorship, as well as the sprit of hatred and violence, has erupted in London and other cities against favorite targets, Israeli performers.

Witnesses to Iraq’s Farhud

Over the first two days of June 1941, countless numbers of Jewish women in Baghdad were raped, more than 2,000 Jews were injured — many of them mutilated — and 900 homes, as well as 586 Jewish-owned businesses, were looted. All told, according to Iraqi-born historian Elie Kedourie, 600 Jews, including children and infants, were slaughtered. This Nazi-inspired pogrom is known as the Farhud, which in Kurdish means violent dispossession, and it marked the beginning of the destruction of the Iraq’s 2,600-year-old Jewish community, which beforehand had numbered more than 75,000 in Baghdad and 120,000 throughout Iraq.
The Nazis’ influence in Iraq can be traced back to 1933, when Hitler first came to power, which was just a year after Iraq gained its independence from Britain. Excerpts from “Mein Kampf” began appearing serially in Iraqi’s newspaper Al-Alem Al Arabi (The Arabic World), which had been purchased by Germany’s ambassador to Iraq, Dr. Fritz Grobba. A youth organization, Al Fatwaa, similar to the Hitler Youth, was formed, and Radio Berlin began to broadcast anti-Semitic propaganda in Arabic.
Pro-Nazis had taken power of the Iraqi government just two months before in a coup staged by Gen. Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and four generals, called the Golden Square, with support from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Nazi collaborator in exile in Baghdad. They overthrew the former, pro-British government and exiled the young King Faisal II and his regent, Prince Abdul Ilah.
Al-Gaylani, intent on controlling Iraq’s oil fields for Germany, staged the takeover, in league with the Nazis and the Grand Mufti. But Britain, dependent on Iraq’s oil, returned fire by sending in additional troops, and, after a month of fighting, emerged victorious. The British army then stationed itself outside Baghdad, and on May 30, al-Gaylani, his generals and the Grand Mufti fled the country.

Anti-Semitism: 2,000 years of scapegoating the Jews

The scapegoating of Jews has been a widespread phenomenon for over two thousand years. Probably its most damaging example is the claim by many Christians that all Jews throughout the centuries are responsible for the death of Jesus, the alleged son of God. This early scapegoating was partly fueled by the apostle Matthew who introduced the notion that the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus claimed responsibility for his death by saying, “His blood shall be on us and on our children!” Such an extreme accusation meant that in these Christians’ eyes, Jews were the embodiment of absolute evil: they were both capable and guilty of committing deicide. The accusation of Jews being the embodiment of absolute evil has, in turn, become the core motif of anti-Semitism over the millennia.
It has provided the infrastructure for a variety of other forms of scapegoating the Jews, with contemporary versions including the scapegoating of Israel, and for an unlimited array of false accusations. Over the centuries, it has also led to massive pogroms, expulsions and many other forms of discrimination of Jews.
Much of the theoretical basis for analyzing the scapegoating phenomenon was laid several decades ago by the French-born philosopher Rene Girard.
He wrote, “The victim or victims of unjust violence or discrimination are called scapegoats, especially when they are not punished for ‘the sins’ of others, as most dictionaries assert, but for tensions, conflicts, and difficulties of all kinds...Scapegoating enables persecutors to elude problems that seem intractable.” Girard’s definition covers many aspects of the scapegoating of Jews and Israel.
Part of the contemporary scapegoating of the Jews and of Israel is based on the mutation of recurring old hate motifs. A few examples will illustrate this.

Edgar Davidson: The anti-semitism v anti-Zionism question revisited

Streetwise is an organisation whose website says that it "works nationally with Jewish schools and Community organisations, enhancing the personal safety and personal development of young Jewish people to support their safe, physical, and emotional wellbeing." All very well meaning. But last week at a Jewish school in London the Streetwise 'training' told pupils that "anti-semitism was completely different to anti-Zionism". This suggests Streetwise is part of the problem, not the solution and it prompted me to produce below an updated version of a posting I did a while back.
I have written to Streetwise asking "In what way are you preparing Jewish students, for example, for the tsunami of hatred they will face when they go to University given that 100% of the hatred will be dressed up as anti-Zionism rather than what it really is?"

Edgar Davidson: Money for starving Africans or convicted Palestinian terrorists?

I have reported many times on the scandal of Britain's funding of the Palestinian Authority going to pay salaries of convicted terrorists. Finally, some of the main stream media is waking up to the story - as you can see from this report in today's Daily Express.
Cash for terrorist salaries from the Foreign Aid budget is by no means the only scandal relating to British payments to the 'Palestinian cause'. Millions more per year goes to NGOs based in Israel and the PA which are dedicated solely to the deligitimization of Israel. The idiots at the Foreign Office claim these payments will ultimately support a 'two-state solution', whereas these organisations actually do nothing other than incite hatred and violence.
And of course there is also the millions from hard-working Brits paid every year to charities like Oxfam, Christian and Comic Relief which ends up directly funding Palestinian Jew-hatred.

Quora: Is It Taboo To Talk About The Mideast Conflict?

The longer version of the question being:
Among other reasons such as discussing ‘mild racism’ and child molesters, Louis CK’s monologue for the season finale of Saturday Night Live seemed to have offended quite a lot of people, partly because he likened the arguments that his two daughters have to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Is this a taboo subject to bring up and joke about in America.
I liked this question, because Ryosuke is obviously trying to understand American culture from an outsider’s perspective, which means he isn’t brainwashed by the media and is receptive to making up his own mind once in possession of the relevant facts. Here is my response:
No, such discussion is not taboo. And a discussion of the Middle East conflict is not what caused offense here. What did cause offense was Louis CK’s misrepresentation of the conflict.
The comedian portrays the “Palestinians” as the subject of continuous abuse (getting “rocks in the face”) by Israelis with the tacit consent of the world, while the Israelis are portrayed as mere whiners (he “burned all my dolls”) who can be placated by promising to give them stuff.
People were likely offended at the idea that the conflict, which has led to so much bloodshed, is just a squabble between two immature entities. But the truth is, that is not what is so offensive here. What is really offensive is that Louis CK takes sides in a very sneaky way, making it look as though Israelis are the abusive villains, their victims the Arab “Palestinians,” while Israel isn’t really suffering or being hurt on a personal level by the “Palestinian” Arab enemy.

NY Post Ed: The disgraceful drive to kick Israel out of FIFA

Israel grants full rights to its Arab citizens — indeed, they have more rights than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East. The Palestinian grievance: Israel won’t join a “peace settlement” that would spell its doom.
Any FIFA vote to bar Israel would be a statement of power and prejudice, not justice — and would leave the sport open to endless “grudge” resolutions.
FIFA chief Sepp Blatter wants the Palestinians to drop the proposal and instead play a peace match with the Israeli team.
FIFA might do better to just vote down the Palestinian proposal and tell the world to leave diplomacy to the diplomats and sports to the athletes.

Soccer officials step up bid to head off Israel expulsion vote

FIFA leaders on Tuesday stepped up efforts to head off a vote called by the Palestinians to expel Israel from soccer’s world body claiming unfair treatment of its players.
“Negotiations are still going on but they are very complicated,” a top FIFA official told AFP.
“There may not be a solution until the final hours,” added the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter has held talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a bid to prevent the politically charged vote at a FIFA congress on Friday.
FIFA would not discuss the talks. But a spokeswoman for the governing body said “only Palestine can withdraw the demand to suspend Israel from the agenda.”

PA's Rajoub Rules Out Compromise on Israel Bid at FIFA

The head of the Palestine Football Association (PFA), Jibril Rajoub, on Monday ruled out reaching a compromise with regards to his efforts to have Israel ousted from FIFA, The Associated Press (AP) reported.
Rajoub stressed he would press forth with his bid to oust Israel despite efforts from FIFA president to diffuse the crisis adding he “will not withdraw the motion and will not accept any compromise and any side deals.”
Rajoub has been leading a drive to have Israel suspended from FIFA, claiming Israel discriminates against Palestinian Arab players and restricts their movement.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter was in the region last week on a self-described “mission of peace” to resolve tensions between the two sides.
Blatter has recently spoken out against suspending the Israeli Football Association but the PFA was able to get the request placed on the agenda for the FIFA Congress to take place on May 29.

Israeli NGO Seeks Expulsion of PA Official from FIFA

FIFA's congress is due to discuss the motion this Friday, and FIFA President Sepp Blatter - who recently met with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to discuss the Palestinian campaign - is reportedly working with other FIFA officials to strike down the motion.
But while Israeli political and sporting officials have sought to defend their country's record in the face of the accusations, Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center has taken a decidedly more proactive approach.
The Tel Aviv-based legal NGO announced on Tuesday that it has petitioned FIFA to expel the President of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA), senior PA official Jibril Rajoub, based on gross violations of FIFA's code of conduct, including advocating the killing of Israeli civilians living in Judea and Samaria and the use of nuclear weapons against the State of Israel.
Aside from his role in the PFA, Rajoub serves as Deputy Secretary of the Central Committee of Fatah - the parent organization of the arch-terrorist group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is responsible for attacks causing countless deaths and injuries among Israelis, said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Founder and President of Shurat HaDin.
In a letter to FIFA President Joseph Blatter, Darshan-Leitner emphasized that Rajoub's remarks constitute grave breaches of his obligation to comply with FIFA's statutes and rules prohibiting discrimination, intimidation and violence against individuals and groups.

Wind in the sails of Jibril Rajoub’s anti-Israel campaign from BBC WS WHYS

In addition to the context-free promotion of Jibril Rajoub’s latest sports related assault on Israel’s legitimacy recently seen on the BBC News website, listeners to the BBC World Service radio programme ‘World Have Your Say’ were also treated to a dose of unhindered propaganda from the head of the Palestinian Football Association on May 21st.

With no intervention from presenter Chloe Tilley, the segment opens with almost two full minutes of a diatribe from Rajoub which is replete with distortions and falsehoods, including accusations of “humiliations” and “racism”. When Tilley does finally interject, it is to ask Rajoub whether he thinks FIFA understands “those pressures on Palestinian teams, on players, on fans?” and once again Rajoub uses the opportunity to promote the inaccurate notion that the underlying issue is Israeli “racism”.
Listeners also hear a contribution from a partly identified football fan from Dubai who, in addition to promoting his own context-free, cherry picked claims, states – with no challenge from Tilley – that it is hard to be a fan or a player “in the context of the occupation and the apartheid”.

BBC frames anti-Israel delegitimisation campaign as a sports story

On May 20th another report on that topic appeared in the website’s Sport section under the title “Fifa: Israel football faces possible suspension vote” and in addition that article was also promoted on the BBC News website’s Middle East page on May 20th and 21st.
Neither of the reports provides BBC audiences with the all-important context of past and present cases of Palestinian football players with connections to terrorist organisations.
“There are numerous examples of Palestinian soccer players who have been publicly acknowledged by terrorist groups to have been members of their organizations. Jabalia Youth Sports Club player Ayman Ahmad al-Kurd was a member of the Qassam Brigades (which acknowledged his martyrdom on their website) and was wearing combat gear when he died during Operation Cast Lead. PIJ admitted—to Reuters, no less—that Wajih Mushtahi, a member of the Palestinian Olympic team who also died in Cast Lead, was a fighter in their organization. Shadi Sbakhi, who played for al-Nuseirat and once earned a spot on the national team, was not just an operative in the Qassam Brigades, but a commander.

Hatem Bazian's Islamophobia Conference Sparsely attended.

Hot off his Censoring Palestine event at UC Berkeley, which reportedly attracted any where from 8 to 25 participants,
Hatem Bazian is at it again.
According to Cinnamon Stillwell and Rima Greene, reporting in CampusWatch , The University of California, Berkeley's recent Sixth Annual International Islamophobia Conference—organized by the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project was also sparsely attended, drawing anywhere from 20 -50 participants.

University Of Sydney Lets Lynch Off Lightly

You may recall BDSHole Jake Lynch, who was a member of a disruptive protest against fabulous British Colonel Richard Kemp, during which he waved money in the face of an elderly Jewish woman. He claimed he was merely threatening to sue the woman, and was exercising restraint. Nevertheless, he was to be investigated by the University of Sydney.
That investigation has ended, and the result is unsatisfactory.
ASSOCIATE Professor Jake Lynch will not be dismissed from his post at the University of Sydney following an investigation into possible breaches of its code of conduct, The AJN can reveal.
The university launched an investigation into incidents at an anti-Israel protest in March, which saw more than a dozen pro-Palestinian protesters storm a public talk by Colonel Richard Kemp.
Lynch, director of the university’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, and five students, two contractors and five members of the public, were under investigation by the university over their conduct during the protest on March 11.

The Lynch mob: baying for for a genocidal bloodbath

Lynch declares that this tumultuous onslaught by anti-Israel protesters took him “completely by surprise”. Yet a photograph taken shortly before the start of the Kemp address shows Lynch immersed in a convivial chat with the same leftist radicals whose invasion of the lecture hall was imminent. In fact, one may be excused for counting him among the ranks of the protesters because he appears in this snapshot holding up one end of the squad’s Israel-phobic banner.
But in view of Lynch’s professed dedication to the principle that contentious issues should be “respectfully discussed”, perhaps he was using this opportunity to provide instruction on the finer points of civil debate. Indeed.
In his statement Lynch asseverates that his support for an academic boycott of Israel “does not make me anti-Israeli, much less anti-Semitic”. But this assertion makes sense only if one accepts the dubious proposition that there’s nothing anti-Jewish about hostility towards the world’s only Jewish state.
Lynch goes on to aver that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement seeks only “an end to the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip”. Yet the movement’s global umbrella body, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, makes no bones about its more ambitious objective — the eradication of Israel as we know it.

Brooklyn Food Fo-op Becomes BDS Battlefield

Monthly general meetings at the Park Slope Food Coop are usually staid affairs. Roughly 200 of the 16,500 members typically attend to discuss routine matters and get credit for the shift everyone is required to work. But last month's meeting was different.
With a discussion on boycotting Israeli company SodaStream on the agenda, around 400 members showed up. Boycott advocates began a slide show with pictures of Israeli soldiers intimidating Palestinians. Then a melee broke out, with some co-op members shouting “lies!” Others chanted “let it stay,” and a few eventually rushed the stage to unplug the projector.
The chaos lasted nearly 45 minutes, with co-op leaders repeatedly trying to restore order. In 2012, co-op members voted 1,005 to 653 against holding a membership-wide referendum on boycotting Israeli products. That meeting garnered international attention, and now boycott, divestment and sanctions advocates are bringing the issue to the fore once again.
The Park Slope Food Coop, which last year generated close to $50 million in sales, is one of the largest such entities in the United States. In its newspaper, its letters to the editor arguing for and against boycotting Israeli products are so dominant the paper recently imposed a brief moratorium on their publication.
Leafy, gentrified Park Slope is a famously tolerant Brooklyn neighborhood, but apparently nothing arouses the passions of co-op members as much as boycotting Israel. The April meeting marked the first time in the group's 42 years that members ever rushed the stage, general manager Joe Holtz said in an interview afterward.

Honest Reporting: Green Lines, Jewish Hands, Terror Tunnels

HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl joins VOI’s Josh Hasten to review the week’s media coverage of Israel. Newsweek admits erring when it referred to the “green line” as the border of a Palestinian state. HonestReporting will be appealing the BBC’s defense of reporter Tim Willcox’s “Jewish hands” comment, and you can help. Is the purpose of Hezbollah tunnels to hide weapons, to turn Lebanese villages into military targets, or both?

CAMERA Prompts Jerusalem Post Correction on U.N. Resolution 242

CAMERA's Israel office has prompted correction of a Jerusalem Post article which erroneously reported that U.N. Resolution 242 "calls for Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 lines."
In fact, the drafters of the resolution were very careful not to call for a withdrawal to pre-1967 lines. The resolution itself calls for "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." Significantly, the resolution does not call for withdrawal from "the territories," thereby leaving the extent of the withdrawal to be determined in negotiations.
Lord Caradon, chief architect of the resolution, said, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial. After all, they were just the places where the soldiers of each side happened to be on the day the fighting stopped in 1948. They were just armistice lines. That’s why we didn’t demand that the Israelis return to them."
George Brown, Britain’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in 1967, stated in 1970 "The proposal said, ‘Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied,’ and not from ‘the’ territories which means that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories."

BBC’s ECU upholds complaint from the UK’s pro-Hamas lobby

Yes – Fraser Steel apparently accepts that it is “controversial” to state self-evident, provable facts about the Palestinian Authority’s political system. That of course is all the more bizarre given the BBC’s frequent description of Hamas as “the democratically elected” ruling body in the Gaza Strip.
Ironically, on numerous occasions in the past the BBC has failed to conform to its own editorial guidelines on impartiality when interviewing both Amena Saleem and other members of the opaquely funded anti-Israel, pro-Hamas lobbying and campaigning group with which she is associated.
For some time now the nature of the BBC’s relationship with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been a topic of interest and the corporation’s swift capitulation to political pressure following the publication of an article last summer about Hamas-supplied casualty figures and the subsequent ‘top-down’ dictated alterations made to that article – along with additional ‘damage control’ – brought the issue further into public view.
In addition to further highlighting that subject, the upholding of this blatantly politically motivated complaint by the head of the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit also serves to indicate yet again the inherent flaws in the BBC’s self-regulating complaints system and the urgent need for that topic to be addressed.

Hundreds honor four killed at Brussels Jewish Museum

The mayor of Brussels led tributes Sunday to the four people murdered at the Jewish Museum a year ago as he sought to reassure Jews about their future in the Belgian capital.
Mayor Yvan Mayeur also renewed his condemnation of the attack allegedly carried out by an Islamist extremist, as he spoke outside the museum to a crowd of several hundred people, including Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.
“Brussels is Jewish because all Jews have their place in Brussels,” Mayeur said from a makeshift podium in the closed-off street guarded by four Belgian soldiers and at least a dozen police officers.
Mayeur was seeking to reassure Belgian Jews who are increasingly worried about their safety and considering leaving the country following not just the attack but what they say is an increase in anti-Semitic acts in the last 15 years.

'With All The Security, You Can be Killed Here for Being a Jew'

"What happened here was a real shock to the Jewish community," said Serge Rozen, who organised the tribute as head of the Coordination Committee of Belgian Jewish Organisations.
"I think probably for the first time they realized that even with security measures already in place for a long time in Belgium, you could be killed here in Brussels or Belgium because you are a Jew or presumed Jew," Rozen told AFP before giving a brief speech.
European Jewish Congress chief Moshe Kantor has repeatedly emphasized that Jews were on the frontline of an Islamist terrorist war against democracy itself, telling AFP in a recent interview: "the situation for the Jews of Europe hasn't been as bad since the end of the Holocaust."

Polish home that hid Jews from Nazis to become museum

A private entrepreneur plans to establish a museum in a house in southeastern Poland in which Jews hid from the Nazis.
The house, located on Tatarska Street in Przemysl, hid 13 members of the Diamant family during the Holocaust. Beginning in 1942, the orphaned Catholic sisters Stefania and Helena Podgorski, ages 16 and 9, hid the Diamant family in the attic of their home. Stefania had worked in the Diamant family’s grocery store before the Nazi invasion of Poland.
The Diamants remained in the attic for two-and-a-half years and survived the Holocaust. In 1979, the Podgorski sisters were honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
The 1996 film “Hidden in Silence,” directed by Richard A. Colli, was based on their story.

After Decades of IOC Silence, Slain Israeli Olympians Headed for Recognition

In time for the Rio Olympics in the summer of 2016, a first-ever IOC-supported official memorial telling the story of the Munich Massacre will be erected in Munich, on the grounds of the Olympic stadium. The memorial, whose groundbreaking ceremony will take place this summer, is being constructed at the initiative of the Bavarian government to bring a sense of closure to this 43-year drama.
Likewise, it was recently announced that the new president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, will erect an official site at the Rio Olympics for people to go and reflect on the loss of anyone who was hurt or killed in the Olympic Games—including the 11 Israeli victims.
In anticipation of the memorial, the Foundation for Global Sports Development (GSD) will release a new documentary examining what is widely considered the first act of modern terrorism. The film, “Munich 1972 & Beyond,” will for the first time unravel why and how the attack happened, its aftermath, and its importance in 2015 and beyond. Produced by Dr. Steven Ungerleider, author of “Faust’s Gold,” and GSP President David Ulich, the film will offer new research and information—some of which Romano says she has never seen herself.
“The IOC jumping in is the biggest symbolic step at this point,” Ulich tells JNS.org, noting the 40-plus year controversy about the IOC’s level of support—or lack thereof—in remembering the victims. The IOC is among the lead sponsors of the memorial and is supportive of the film.

Iconic Britpop band Suede returning to Israel

The 1990s are sending another musical icon to Israel: English alternative rock band Suede, which will perform at the Menora Mivtachim Arena in Tel Aviv on July 30.
This will be the group's fifth performance in Israel. Suede, which is extremely popular among the Israeli audience, last performed in the country in 2011. Its lead vocalist, Brett Anderson gave a solo concert in Israel in 2008. The band will arrive in Israel this summer as part of a tour promoting its upcoming new album.
Suede is one of the most important bands to come out of Britain in the 1990s. It is considered one of the pioneers of the Britpop movement, a subgenre of alternative rock.
The group made its breakthrough upon the release of its first album, "Suede," in 1993. At the time, it was the fastest-selling debut album in British history and won the 1993 Mercury Music Prize.

Israel emerges as global cyber superpower

Israel has emerged as a cyber superpower, with Israeli companies accounting for an estimated 10% of global sales of computer and network security technology, figures released from the National Cyber Bureau over the weekend showed.
Israeli companies sold some $6 billion of cyber technology last year out of total global sales estimated at $60 billion. Israeli sales accounted for 8% of total cyber turnover globally in 2013, meaning Israeli companies’ growth outpaced their rivals overseas.
Moreover, Israeli research and development spending in cyber accounted for 15% of the global total last year and the pace grew in 2015, according to the bureau, which is a unit of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Germany Donates Funds to Restore Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus-Style Buildings

Germany said it will donate 2.5 million Euros ($2.86 million) over 10 years for the preservation and restoration of Tel Aviv’s famous “White City” of Bauhaus-style buildings.
The White City, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, is home to the world’s largest collection of buildings in the German Bauhaus style. The buildings were mostly designed by German Jews who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
“We will help the city of Tel Aviv preserve this significant cultural legacy,” said German Construction Minister Barbara Hendricks, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
“We plan as a first step to create a preservation center for the White City,” she said. “In this way we will create a platform for the future restoration of the buildings. I look forward to a fruitful partnership between German and Israeli authorities in all areas of construction.”

Meet an Israeli Doctor Saving Syrian Lives and Limbs

I traveled to the Ziv Medical Center in Safed (Zefat), Israel. Ziv is the major trauma center serving the northestern part of the country from the Upper Gallile to the Golan Heights.
Because Ziv is only 11 kilometers from Lebanon, Ziv was targeted by Hezbollah rockets during the 2006 Lebanon War. It has undergone, and still is undergoing, a process of creating reinforced operating room theaters and patient facilities to protect against future rocket attacks.
Ziv is only 30 kilometers, a 40 minute drive, from the Syrian border.
Ziv has received some publicity the past two years for its treatment of Syrians. While some of the Syrians seeking help are not direct casualties of the fighting, such as expectant mothers, almost all have traumatic wounds as a result of the war.
Almost all of them are men of fighting age, but it is a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as far as the hospital goes. The decision whether to admit people into the country for medical treatment, whether to treat them at the border, and whether to transport them to a place like Ziv is a decision made by the military.
When the military does bring a wounded person to Ziv, the person is treated as any other patient.

A baby from East Timor, an Ethiopian doctor and an Israeli charity come together

Crossing boundaries, mending hearts: Israeli organization brings children from all over the world
At first glance, with her bright black eyes and wide smile, Lisa appears to be a perfectly normal baby girl. But she has hardly gained any weight since her birth six months ago due to a heart defect impeding her growth. Last Wednesday, baby Lisa and her mother made the arduous voyage from a small village in East Timor to Israel so that she could undergo a life-saving medical procedure.
When Lisa was born, her parents noticed that she was not growing as a normal infant would. After visiting the small hospital in their village, which provides only the most basic of health services, the doctor who examined Lisa said that everything looked fine, despite her having gained only six grams since her birth. Her illness remained undiagnosed and her parents began searching for answers.
Despite the considerable costs and their limited means, the family continued searching for medical professionals who would be able to provide their infant with the necessary medical care. Almost 40 percent of the population in East Timor, located in Maritime Southeast Asia, lives on under $1.25 per day.
“Specialist doctors in East Timor are very limited,” says Lisa’s mom, visibly exhausted from her long voyage, noting that she had to visit five doctors before being referred to SACH - Save a Child’s Heart and Gift of Life International.

Robert Wistrich addresses Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism

Prof. Robert Wistrich, Head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, one of the participants and speakers at the 5th Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, died several days later in Rome, on May 19, after suffering a heart attack. He was scheduled to address the Italian Senate on the rise of antisemitism in Europe. We mourn his passing.
Prof. Robert Wistrich was the Neuberger chair for Modern European History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has been Head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism 2002-2015. In 2013 he was awarded a prize for Lifetime Achievement by the New-York based Journal for the Study of Antisemitism which described him “as the leading scholar in the field of antisemitism study today". Among his books are: Hitler and the Holocaust (Random House, 2001), which has been translated into 25 language. His 1,200 page book A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, appeared in 2010, and From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel was published in 2012.