01/30 Links Pt2: Arabs are torch-bearers for Nazi anti-Semitism; Ken Livingstone Marks Holocaust Memorial Day Debating Whether It Happened on Press TV ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Arabs are torch-bearers for Nazi anti-Semitism

On the day that the world commemorated the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, the U.K. liberal newspaper The Guardian declared in an editorial :

“The Arabs, meanwhile, cannot be blamed for feeling that Europe’s blood debt to the Jews was paid with what they see as their territory.”

The Arabs, like other third-world peoples, are only ever seen as victims of Western oppression and colonialism. They cannot themselves be guilty of oppressing others.

The West self-righteously deplores the old European anti-Semitism of the “far right.” But a new Green-Brown-Red anti-Semitism—encouraged by an alliance of the Far Left, the Greens and Islamist sympathizers—is studiously downplayed, ignored by the media, or blamed on Israel.

Truth be told, the virus of Nazi anti-Semitism was exported to the Arab and Muslim world as early as the 1930s. It gave ideological inspiration to Arab nationalist parties like the Ba’athists in Syria and Iraq and paramilitary groups like Young Egypt, founded in 1933. Anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are the central plank of the totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, and their ideological cousins, Islamic State, who sought to impose Allah’s kingdom on Earth through jihad and forced conversion of non-Muslims.

The Holocaust was, in the words of author Robert Satloff, as much an Arab story as a European. In spite of efforts to trumpet the stories of individual “righteous” Muslims who rescued Jews (particularly in Albania), scholars continue to uncover evidence of Arab sympathy and collaboration with Nazism.

Orthodox Jewish journalist goes undercover in the 'silent jihad'

Tomorrow at 21:00, a new series will be broadcast by News 10's Arab Desk head Tzvi Yehezkeli.

Entitled False Identity, the series is presented by Yehezkeli, who impersonated a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer seeking to contribute to and join the organization.

Yehezkeli received close consultation from intelligence companies, as well as the Shin Bet internal security agency, and the Mossad. To perfect his identity, he obtained a genuine Syrian passport, a Palestinian Authority passport for backup, and an Internet signature of an active business in Jordan with a website and verification address.

Under the name "Sheikh Abu Hamza", Yehezkeli went equipped with quality photographic equipment disguised in a garment button and camera glasses deep into the state of affairs that he calls the "silent jihad".

Yehezkeli, who has become Torah-observant in recent years, sees added value in the fact that he surveyed the field and encountered Islam as a religious person. "Once a person serves the Creator he becomes more sensitive to forgeries. On the one hand, it helps me know the material and identify with believers, although I disagree with their way. The fact that I'm religious allows me to open my eyes even more, I can't be swayed by this aspect." Yehezkeli also adds that part of his rapprochement with the religious world may have been due to his preoccupation with his coverage: "They opened a door for me to enter in a more real side."

"But Islam needs a deep understanding of itself," says Yehezkeli, and hopes that there will be a reform in Islam as is happening in Saudi Arabia. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Irish bill to boycott Israeli settlements runs afoul of US laws

A bill to be considered by Ireland’s Senate on Tuesday would criminalize trade with Israeli settlements. If enacted, it could put leading U.S. companies with Irish subsidiaries to a choice between violating the Irish law or violating the U.S. Export Administration Regulations, which require U.S. firms to refuse to participate in foreign boycotts that the United States does not sanction.

In addition to running afoul of U.S. federal law, the bill would subject companies to U.S. state-level sanctions, violate European Union and international law, threaten Ireland’s vital economic links to the United States, and hinder the prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The bill, titled “Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018, would make it a violation of Irish criminal law for Irish persons and companies to import or sell items, or to provide services, produced in the Israeli settlements. It would punish violators with up to five years in prison. The senator who introduced the bill, Frances Black, previously signed a letter calling for a boycott of all Israeli products and services.

While the bill does not mention Israel or Palestine by name, Black and its other sponsors have announced that it was designed to effectively prohibit Irish transactions relating to Israeli settlers and settlements, including in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights. The bill would punish Irish citizens and residents, as well as companies incorporated in Ireland, which engage in such transactions, regardless of whether the violation occurs in or outside Ireland. While there are several contentious occupations closer to Europe — including Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus, Armenia’s occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, and Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara — its sponsors suggest that the Irish bill is carefully drafted to apply only to territories occupied by Israel.

To this author’s knowledge, no such law criminally prohibiting trade with Israeli settlements has been enacted in any other European country. Indeed, the Irish bill, if enacted, would be inconsistent with EU and international law. For example, the EU has exclusive competence for the common commercial policy and member states are not permitted to adopt unilateral restrictions on imports into the EU.

The bill is also inconsistent with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the international agreement covering trade in goods. As Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, accurately put it in June 2017:

Ken Livingstone appears in Iranian propaganda show debating whether Holocaust commemoration has become an industry “exploited” by “Zionists”

Ken Livingstone, who was investigated but only lightly punished by the Labour Party for his repeated claims that Hitler “was supporting Zionism”, has participated in a special programme on Iranian propaganda station Press TV. Press TV was stripped of its broadcasting licence by Ofcom but Mr Livingstone was invited onto a show disseminated via social media, apparently to coincide with Holocaust commemoration ceremonies.

The programme began with a sickening propaganda introduction by presenter Roshan Muhammed Salih, who asked callers to call in and debate whether the Holocaust has become a weapon used by Israel, “with the accusation of antisemitism regularly thrown at its enemies”, or whether “the memory of the Holocaust has been exploited for political or financial gain” and “corrupted Jewish culture”.

Callers repeatedly claimed that Holocaust commemoration is used as a clever political device to distract from the supposed oppression of the Palestinians and to benefit “Zionists” without being challenged.

One caller from the UK, Maisoon, said that the word “Holocaust” had been “manipulated by the Jews”. She berated Mr Livingstone for talking about antisemitism because she accused him of failing to “mention the fact that Palestinians and Arabs are Semites”. Mr Livingstone only challenged her when she said that she did not distinguish between Jews and Zionists, at which point Mr Livingstone told her about the large number of anti-Zionist Jews that he said he knows.

Asked by Mr Salih why there are so many films about the Holocaust and not about the Palestinians, Mr Livingstone claimed that “anyone doing a film about that is going to be announced [sic] antisemitic”.

In a repetition of his previous claims, Mr Livingstone also said that when he was suspended by the Labour Party for claiming that Hitler “was supporting Zionism”, he “couldn’t walk down the street without Jewish people coming up to [him] and saying ‘We know all this is true, what is all this about? Don’t these MPs read their history?’ It’s not about antisemitism, it’s about political struggle inside the Labour Party.”

PressTV: Has the Holocaust been exploited to oppress others?

The truth about Iran is now of little importance to Jeremy Corbyn

If any further evidence was needed about the disingenuousness of Jeremy Corbyn and the dangers a government led by him might pose internationally – not just for Britain but also for Britain’s Nato allies – it is worth watching Corbyn’s interview on Iran with the BBC’s Andrew Marr yesterday.

‘You’ve been very reluctant to condemn the government of Iran. Can I read you what Amnesty International has said about Iran… ?’ began Marr yesterday, to which Corbyn interrupted him with the extraordinary response:
‘I think that actually, if I may say so, you’re spending too much time reading the Daily Mail, do you know that?’

Having failed to read Corbyn passages from Amnesty’s report, Marr then turned to the issue of his generously paid appearances on the Iranian regime’s propaganda channel Press TV.

‘You took money from Iran. You took money from Press TV events,’ said Marr.

Corbyn responded: ‘A very long time ago I did some programmes for… Yes, I did some programmes for Press TV. I ceased to do any programmes when they treated the Green Movement the way that they did.’

Contrary to what Corbyn said (and unfortunately Marr didn’t follow-up on it), this is not true.

Corbyn continued to take money from Iran’s regime through his appearances on Press TV well after the reformist Green movement was ruthlessly put down in 2009 and hundreds of pro-democracy campaigners were killed and thousands imprisoned or driven into exile.

Corbyn was reportedly paid as much as £20,000 for his appearances on Press TV between 2009 and 2012, according to his register of interests, on the House of Commons database. He was even paid to appear on Press TV after the channel had its license revoked and was banned from broadcasting in the UK for its part in airing the forced confession of Newsweek’s Iran correspondent, Maziar Bahari.

Corbyn Lies On Iran

George Galloway says he will sue Momentum Chair Jon Lansman who accused him of antisemitism, and claims he will call his friend Jeremy Corbyn as a witness

In a fiery exchange on Twitter, George Galloway, the former Labour and Respect MP has threatened to sue Momentum Chair and Labour National Executive Committee member Jon Lansman for calling him out over a now-deleted tweet aimed at Jewish comedian David Baddiel. Mr Galloway had initially tweeted at Mr Baddiel that “There will be no supporter of the Palestinian people marching behind vile Israel-fanatic ‘comedian’ David Baddiel. There will be no opponent of Imperialist wars marching behind Stella Creasy [Labour MP for Walthamstow]. #JustSaying.” This appears to be in reference to a planned protest of Donald Trump’s visit to the UK later this year, which Mr Baddiel and Ms Creasy have both shown support for.

Mr Baddiel took issue with this, pointing out that he has not shown much sympathy for Israel, and that the targeting of him as a Zionist could be based on his Jewish identity, firing back: “Since I’ve always made it entirely clear that my attitude to that country [Israel] is entirely meh, I think we can only conclude that by ‘Israel-fanatic’ George just means Jew. Vile Jew. And that therefore he is an antisemite. Now let him come at me with his stupid f***ing lawyers.”

“Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations” is antisemitic under the International Definition.

Mr Baddiel received a plethora of support, including from The Sun when it reported on the row, at which point Mr Galloway accused Mr Baddiel of defaming him: “Badiel has repeatedly defamed me as an antisemite on Twitter and Facebook long before The Sun reported his vile falsehood today. Such slander or the violence it can encourage (I could show you my scars) will not silence me. The last word on my lips – G-d willing – will be Palestine”.

RANK HYPOCRISY: Maxine Waters Calls Trump A Racist. Guess Who Hugged Jew-Hater Louis Farrakhan.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), who has had no problem labeling President Trump a racist, had no problem hugging one of the worst racists on the planet in 2006 as she joined members of the Congressional Black Caucus to meet virulent anti-Semite Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Farrakhan’s history of vehement Jew-hatred was amply illustrated by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on Monday, as he castigated the press for their double standard in condemning politicians who have countenanced KKK leader David Duke but not members of the CBC for meeting with Farrakhan.

But in 2006, as Jeryl Bier of The Wall Street Journal reports, Waters and members of the CBC met with Farrakhan after Hurricane Katrina, three years after the CBC met with Farrakhan, and Barack Obama, then a state senator, posed smiling with the racist minister. Bier writes that after the January 2006 hearings of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity regarding the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, at least four CBC members headed to St. Augustine Church to meet Farrakhan. A video posted to YouTube in 2009 shows Reps. Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee of California, Al Green of Texas and William Jefferson of Louisiana hugging and shaking hands with Farrakhan as they conversed about public responses to Katrina.

Here's @RepMaxineWaters greeting @LouisFarrakhan in New Orleans in 2006 to talk strategy. I write about the meeting in Tuesday's @WSJopinion: https://t.co/Z3w9cpLTnf pic.twitter.com/DvVJqBCDf9
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) January 30, 2018

Edgar Davidson: More on a typical British debate on Israel

Following on from my post yesterday, here is a further simple summary. There's really no need to ever listen to, or watch, a 'debate about Israel/Palestine' as it always follows this pathetic route. The 'trembling Israelite' response and what it should be.

Advocacy Groups: Federally-Funded Mideast Studies Centers Being Misused for Anti-Israel ‘Indoctrination’

Fourteen prominent Jewish and advocacy groups urged a key Senate committee to reform the Higher Education Act (HEA), which they claim is being “misused to promote biased, one-sided, and anti-Israel programming in our nation’s Middle East studies centers.”

In a letter sent to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and ranking member Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) on Wednesday, the coalition of signatories accused Middle East studies programs funded in dozens of universities under the law’s Title VI statute of amounting to “unbalanced and biased efforts at indoctrination.”

Title VI programs were first introduced in 1958 as a way to cultivate American expertise in foreign languages and different world regions during the Cold War era. The frequent exclusion of “scholars with diverse perspectives” harms these objectives, and violates a requirement put forth by Congress when it reauthorized an amended version of the HEA in 2008, the groups claimed.

“Biased professors have leveraged Title VI funds to cement their control over both their programs and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the principal academic organization for scholars of the region,” charged the coalition, which includes the American Jewish Committee, American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and Endowment for Middle East Truth, among others.

Rather than fostering objective scholarship, MESA “now empowers an intellectually corrupt elite and encourages polemical politicized work that has transformed Middle East studies centers into a source of anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda,” they continued.

Michael Lumish: The Latest Reem's Vigil

The latest Reem's vigil was a success.

Our numbers significantly increased so that we were not out-numbered by a factor of four to one, as has been the case in the past.

Matt Finkelstein and Susan George took point in front of the opposition while our lead organizer talked to the press.

I understand that there were concerns about staying on message, as well as organizational discipline.

I think that those are reasonable and necessary concerns depending on what we want to accomplish going forward.

But, needless to say, this should not prevent those of us with a different take from expressing our opinions.

What I found most interesting about the recent action was the fact that Susan and Matt clearly demonstrated the illiberality of the other side.

From my perspective, this is not about progressives versus conservatives.

This is about liberals versus anti-liberals and, make-no-mistake, anti-Zionism is decidedly anti-liberal.

Michael Lumish: This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Burd and Alan Freedman are back for 2018 this week, and start with an interview with Israeli activist May Golan who has been campaigning the government to address the crime problem from illegal African immigrants into Israel.

They then chat with Australian Conservatives leader Senator Cory Bernardi on how some politically correct musicians objected to him including their songs in his Australia Day favourites list, and catch up with Senator James Paterson on Australia's voting performance on contentious UN resolutions.

The fellahs also speak with Keith Buxton from Bridhes for Peace on a petition he initiated requesting that Australia moves its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and find out the view from Jerusalem from Isi Leibler on the latest happenings.

German city cuts ties to banks that enable Israel boycotts

The deputy mayor of the city of Frankfurt announced on Monday that the municipal government will end all commerce with banks that conduct business with organizations that support a boycott of the Jewish state.

In a statement sent to The Jerusalem Post, Deputy Mayor Uwe Becker wrote that “we will shortly only work together with banks, peoples’ banks, and Sparkassen (public saving banks), who do not maintain business relations with organizations of the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement or affiliated groups.”

Frankfurt is the first German city to sanction banks and financial institutions for providing services to the BDS campaign targeting Israel. The Frankfurt decision to penalize financial entities could have far-reaching implications for the scores of BDS organizations that operate in Germany.

Frankfurt, with a population of nearly 720,000, is located in the state of Hesse and is considered the banking capital of Germany.

Becker said that he planned to forward letters to banks about the new anti-BDS policy.

Frankfurt’s anti-BDS policy also applies to credit institutions and companies that conduct business with the city of Frankfurt.

IsraellyCool: Fraud Lauren Booth Undone By Fraud

It has been a while since I posted about antisemite Lauren Booth, but she’s back in the news for having her dishonesty catch up with her.

Lauren Booth, sister of Cherie Blair, has been removed as a trustee of Islamic charity Peacetrail.

Ms Booth set up the charity in 2013 after converting to Islam in 2010.

A Charity Commission investigation has found a series of failings, including a failure to account for “at least £92,110” of the organisation’s total expenditure.

Ms Booth, the daughter of late actor Tony Booth and half-sister of Cherie Blair, says the report is “incorrect” and that “completed accounting was provided”.

The report states that about £40,000 of charity funds had been withdrawn at cash machines and by cashing cheques, with no paperwork provided to back up its use.

USF Student Government Tries to Push Resolution Condemning Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

University of South Florida student government senators attempted last week to push through a resolution condemning the Trump administration's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, with the support of a network of external pro-Palestinian activists.

The text of the "Hands off Resolution" was promoted on Palestinian community social media nearly two weeks before student government representatives were informed that the resolution would be brought for a vote.

The student resolution, co-authored and co-sponsored by senators Andrew Pitts-Nordera and Yousef Afifi, asked the senate to declare it "refutes the Israeli justification for Palestinian occupation under the religious context of a ‘promised land' that is repeatedly provided."

Their motion also condemns the Balfour Declaration, the British statement in support of the creation of a Jewish State, whose centennial was marked last year. The students erroneously dated the statement to 1916 and mischaracterized the informal letter as an "act" issued by the UK government.

The text of the motion appeared in full on Jan. 13 on the Palestinian American Congress Facebook page, a 10,000-member forum that regularly pushes anti-Israel rhetoric, including celebrating Palestinian terrorist leaders.

LA Times Ignores Correction Request

On January 21, LA Times White House correspondent Brian Bennett covered US Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Israel in an article that includes the following:

We contacted the LA Times and Bennett himself pointing out that, in fact, there are 18 Arab Knesset members spread among a number of different parties, including members of the governing coalition.

The 12 Arab members and one Jew whom the story refer to are the members of the Joint List, just one party grouping. Therefore, in addition to a factual error, the LA Times gives the incorrect impression that all Arab MKs were to boycott the Pence speech, which was not the case.

With no correction issued, we contacted the LA Times Readers’ Representative, Deirdre Edgar.

But there’s still been no response.

After Ignoring Extremist Language by Palestinian President, NPR Focuses on Netanyahu's Wife

Is Sara Netanyahu's temper more newsworthy than Mahmoud Abbas's hateful language?

What's with NPR's news judgment?

In December, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said, in reference to Jews, that "there is no one better at falsifying history or religion than them," and in case there was any doubt about who he meant by "them," quickly followed up with a verse from the Koran that casts Jews as distorting and deceiving people. NPR's Daniel Estrin covered Abbas's speech, but altogether ignored the anti-Jewish remarks.

In early January, Abbas delivered a lecture which he rewrote Jewish history, claiming, among other things, that Oliver Cromwell in 1653 meant to deport Europe's Jews to the Middle East, and that Jews during the Holocaust preferred slaughter over life in Palestine. The Jewish community, left, center and right, forcefully condemned the outlandish speech, with many concluding that it revealed Abbas is not a partner for peace.

NPR was unimpressed. One brief paragraph, buried toward the end of a segment about the American vice president, referenced the televised speech — but avoided any mention of Abbas's rambling conspiracy theories and wild fabrications.

But yesterday, NPR and its correspondent in Jerusalem did find some remarks worthy of detailed exploration. Ten years ago, the wife of Israel's prime minister was recorded losing her temper during a phone call with one of her aides. In the recently released recordings, Sara Netanyahu briefly screamed in fury about how she was characterized in a gossip column. It is the kind of embarrassing story that might itself appear in a gossip column. On NPR, though, Daniel Estrin made sure to translate nearly every word of the leaked recording.

German car makers spark outrage with exhaust tests on humans

Public criticism of the German auto industry has escalated on reports that diesel exhaust tests were carried out on both monkeys and humans.

The tests were reportedly carried out by a research group funded by major German auto companies. The German government on Monday condemned the experiments and Volkswagen sought to distance itself from them, with its chairman saying that “in the name of the whole board I emphatically disavow such practices.”

The tests from German companies are particularly striking, as during the Holocaust the Nazis killed people by pumping exhaust gas into sealed “gas vans.”

Revelations of the tests add a twist to the German auto industry’s attempt to move past Volkswagen’s scandal over cheating on diesel tests and the resulting questioning of diesel technology across the industry.

Volkswagen Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said the tests must be “investigated completely and without reservation,” the dpa news agency reported.

MI6 honors British spy for saving 10,000 Jews from Nazi Germany

In a rare acknowledgement of its secretive work, Britain's MI6, officially the Secret Intelligent Service, honored late British intelligence officer Major Frank Foley on Tuesday for saving an estimated 10,000 German Jews in Nazi Germany prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.

The most senior spy in Berlin, stationed in the German capital's British Embassy, Foley issued thousands of visas to German Jews seeking to flee Nazi persecution - an act of heroism that was never acknowledged during his lifetime.

MI6 honored Foley, who died in 1958, with the unveiling of a bust at the agency's London headquarters. The ceremony was attended by family members and the Holocaust Education Trust.

Foley's cover story for his espionage activity in Germany was his work as a passport control officer at the Berlin embassy, moving to Berlin in 1920 to report on the changes taking place in the country.

Visas issued by Foley, who was described as "the Scarlet Pimpernel" at the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, enabled German Jews to "legally" emigrate to Britain or Palestine.

Despite not being protected by diplomatic immunity, Foley risked arrest and even his life by entering concentration camps, including Sachsenhausen, to present camp authorities with visas issued for Jewish prisoners, enabling them to escape.

Foley also hid Jewish families fleeing from persecution in his home.

Did Marcel Marceau Save Hundreds of Jewish Children From Nazis?

nternational Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed annually on 27 January (the date the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated in 1945), is an occasion not only for commemorating the millions who died during the Holocaust (1933-1945), but also for acknowledging the heroic efforts of those who helped European Jews escape the clutches of the Third Reich.

One of those acknowledged heroes was the internationally acclaimed pantomime artist Marcel Marceau (1923-2007), whose work as a young man with the French underground was celebrated in a Facebook video posted on 26 January 2018:

The same story is told in this excerpt from an unattributed article widely shared on social media since 2015:

Louvre displays art looted by Nazis, hopes to find rightful owners

The Louvre Museum is putting 31 paintings on permanent display in an effort to find the rightful owners of those and other works of art looted by Nazis during World War II.

The Paris museum opened two showrooms last month to display the paintings, which are among thousands of works of art looted by German forces in France between 1940 and 1945.

More than 45,000 objects have been handed back to their rightful owners since the war, but more than 2,000 remain unclaimed, including 296 paintings stored at the Louvre.

“These paintings don’t belong to us. Museums often looked like predators in the past, but our goal is to return them,” Sebastien Allard, the head of the paintings department at the Louvre, told The Associated Press in an interview on Tuesday.

“The large majority of the retrieved artworks have been plundered from Jewish families during World War II. Beneficiaries can see these artworks, declare that these artworks belong to them, and officially ask for their return.”

‘Touching History’: Holocaust-Era Artifacts Tell Story of Jewish Refugees in Shanghai

As the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, a recently unveiled exhibit at a Holocaust museum in Brooklyn tells the largely untold story of Eastern European religious Jews who fled the Nazis — and found refuge in Shanghai.

Last October, the Amud Aish Memorial Museum launched “A Precious Gift: Escape to Shanghai,” featuring original artifacts that give a glimpse into the lives of Orthodox Jews starting from their time in Eastern Europe, through their travels to Shanghai and ultimately their religious life in China — before they found a permanent home elsewhere. The exhibit also highlights the heroic efforts of worldwide government officials who risked everything to help Jews. The exhibit also explains how Shanghai was a safe haven because it did not require entry visas, and maintained open borders for all immigrants until the late 1930s.

The many artifacts on display in the exhibit include a transit visa issued by the Japanese Vice Consul in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, who disobeyed orders from his superiors and authorized travel papers for Jews; sacred religious texts printed by Jewish refugees in Shanghai; candlesticks with Chinese writing on them, bought by a Polish Jew in Shanghai; and a marriage contract from a Jewish wedding that took place in China after the war.

Small group workshops, specifically for middle school students, accompany the exhibit, and focus on the individual story of a Holocaust survivor. One such workshop explores the experience of Judith Cohn-Goldbart, a Jewish girl whose family left Berlin for Shanghai shortly after Kristallnacht in 1938. Judith remained in Shanghai until years after the war, and was a teacher at the religious girls’ school established there. Participants in the group workshops are given the opportunity to examine copies of original artifacts from Shanghai, such as a Jewish student’s report card.

Israel’s Wizcomtech designs pen to make reading easier for kids with dyslexia

Modiin-based Wizcomtech one of the largest producers of pen-shaped handheld scanning translators, said it has clinched a $5 million deal with a US distributor to sell a new pen that helps children with dyslexia.

The company’s Quicktionary translation pens, available in more than 24 languages, are already being used by students in English classes and matriculation exams in junior high and high schools in Israel, as well as by students in the UK for their foreign language studies. The electronic pen-shaped scanners immediately translate text, from and to a variety of languages, onto an LCD screen set within the pen.

Now, the company is turning its sights to the dyslexia market.

“We saw a demand in the market for a slightly different product than our existing translation pens and developed a pen which offered a solution for children with dyslexia,” said Dror Drukman, CEO of Wizcomtech.

The reading pen scans text and breaks words down into syllables using a digital voice, and gives students synonyms for the words they are reading so that they can better understand and remember them in the future.

Israeli App for Diagnosing Brain Diseases Wins U.S. Artificial Intelligence Prize

An Israeli startup specializing in neurological disorders is the winner of Henry Ford Health System’s first-ever artificial intelligence (AI) challenge.

Montfort (Mon4T)’s real-time brain monitor leverages smartphone technology to conduct, record and analyze data from a set of digital tests from patients with conditions like Parkinson’s disease and normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH).

Henry Ford Innovations, established in 2011 to support the health system’s technologies, issued the challenge last fall as part of a program in Israel designed to bring Israeli technologies to the US healthcare market. Montfort was chosen winner out of a pool of 50 applicants.

With more than one billion people suffering from neurological diseases worldwide and several thousand patients per neurologist, Montfort’s solution developed out of a need for more personal care and feedback.

“If we can come to depend on machine learning solutions to ease the burden involved with a lot of these routine tests and diagnostics, then that leaves more time for patient care,” said Mark Coticchia, Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer for Henry Ford Health System.

Montfort’s “master app,” available for both iOS and Android, is installed on the patient’s smartphone and links to all of the device’s integral sensors including touchscreen, microphone, and accelerometers. Indicators are provided in three dimensions: motor, cognitive and affective.

Melanie Phillips: Guardian Angel

I’m delighted to tell you that my personal and political memoir, Guardian Angel, is published today.

Through the prism of my often painful struggle to separate from both my political and biological families, I tell the story of the onslaught against British national identity and the values of the western nation – which provoked in turn the popular uprising which expressed itself in Britain as the vote for Brexit and in America as the election of President Donald J Trump.

Britain’s former Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, has written about the book:

“Melanie Phillips has been one of the brave and necessary voices of our time, unafraid to speak the language of moral responsibility in an age of obfuscation and denial. This searing account of her personal journey is compelling testimony to her courage in speaking truth to power

Memories of Salute to Israel Parade, NY, 1970

They are from the Salute to Israel Parade. Marching are members of the NCSY Dance Group which had performed in Felt Forum, Madison Square Garden that year. I was group leader. It was the first time the Israeli Folk Dance Festival had performed there.

Previously it had been in Carnegie Hall, which has, or had, an ambience all its own. But festival director, Fred Berk had been itching for a more genuine folk dance festival feeling. He hated the stage and curtains in the illustrious concert hall. When I took his Leadership and Choreography course in 1967-68, he always stressed that true folk dance required dancing onto the performance area and dancing off of it. NO CURTAINS raised and lowered.

At the 1970 festival we all sat around the performance area, getting up to dance on and off when it was our group's turn. Then at the very end of the show, all of the groups and dancers danced together in separate circles.

A couple of months later, at the parade, my dancers and I donned our costumes and danced up Fifth Avenue. We had sewn the skirts the year before for the 1969 festival, but then we added white trim on the bottom plus the "belts" in 1970. And we wore our own white blouses. For the festivals, we danced barefoot, but of course that wouldn't work on the NYC streets.

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