04/16 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Israel has made it, now it needs to grow up; Melanie Phillips: Isi Liebler's moral courage; Eventbrite Removes SFSU Webinar With Leila Khaled

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel has made it, now it needs to grow up

At independence, Israel was little more than a spark of light – a tiny spark – in the Jewish world. From a total of 11.5 million Jews alive on the 5th of the month of Iyyar in the Jewish year 5708, (May 14, 1948), only 650,000, or 6% lived in Israel. In contrast, the day Israel was founded, some five million, or 43% of world Jewry were living in the United States.

Fast forward 73 years and that little spark of light is now the sun in the Jewish solar system. With 6.9 million Jews out of a total of 14.9 million, not only is Israel the largest Jewish community in the world by far with 47% of world Jewry living within its boundaries, by 2030, the majority of world Jewry will be living in the Jewish state.

As for America, although half a million Jews immigrated to the US since Israel was founded, the total number of Jews in America stands today at a mere 5.7 million. American Jewry has been reduced to just 38% of the world Jewish population. The implications are straightforward. Since 1948, virtually all of the growth in the Jewish world population has happened and is continuing to happen in Israel.

Israel's transformation into the center of the Jewish world isn't just a question of demographics. Most Torah learning that is happening in the world is happening in Israel. Most Jewish literature is being written in Israel. Jewish advances in everything from medicine to economics and business, to science, engineering, culinary arts, visual arts and more are happening in Israel. Jewish history is being researched in Israel and is being made in Israel. Israel is the present of the Jewish people and the future of the Jewish people.

Aside from everything else, this state of affairs exposes the manifest stupidity of the claim that anti-Zionism is anything other than antisemitism.

Although Israel's position at the center of the Jewish world is undeniable, it has gone largely unnoticed by most Israelis. Most of the Israelis who are engaged with Diaspora Jewry continue to act as though Israel – with a per capita GDP higher than Japan's – is an underpopulated, impoverished backwater that cannot survive without the support of our wealthy and more secure brethren in America, Australia or France.

So too, most Israelis are unaware of the revolution the country has brought to Judaism itself. In the space of three generations, Israelis have taken their grandparents' practices from the ghettos of Europe and the melachs of North Africa and Arabia and turned them into a dynamic, eclectic living, breathing creed. Judaism is the rhythm of life in Israel. In every neighborhood, village and town, the Judaism that is lived in Israel has an electric vibrance. Israeli music, fashion, customs, prayer, settlement, religious studies, agriculture, and cooking are separately and together expressions of a spiritual renewal the likes of which no one imagined, or planned.

It is the organic outgrowth of the reunification of the people of Israel and their faith in their land. Few have noticed any of this or considered its spiritual and cultural significance, let alone recognized its potential.

The reformation of Jewish life is not Israel's only huge achievement that has been largely overlooked and underappreciated by the people of Israel. They have also largely missed the transformation of Israel's global position. The ongoing domestic debate regarding the goal of Israel's policies in relation to Iran's nuclear program is a testament to this lack of national self-awareness.

Melanie Phillips: Isi Liebler's moral courage

The death in Jerusalem of Isi Leibler at the age of 86 has robbed the Jewish world of one of its towering figures at a time when it is particularly ill-equipped for such a loss.

Leibler, who was head of the Australian Jewish community before he immigrated to Israel, became a multi-millionaire global Jewish leader who was influential for decades on the international stage. His efforts helped pave the way for diplomatic relations to be established between Israel and China and for full diplomatic relations between Israel and India.

Counting Benjamin Netanyahu as a personal friend, he didn't flinch from criticizing Israel's prime minister in public – and reportedly to his face – when he thought Netanyahu was getting things badly wrong.

He gathered round his Shabbat table like-minded thinkers, writers, academics and public figures who could help supply his voracious need to inform himself ever more widely, as well as bolster what increasingly felt like the resistance movement of the Jewish people against a world spinning off its moral and political compass.

Leibler is perhaps best known for his seminal role in the campaign to free Soviet Jewry and his single-handed battles against the World Jewish Congress.

In 1959, he launched a press and lobbying campaign that brought the plight of Soviet Jewry first before the Australian parliament and then to the United Nations. Arguably, no other individual made a more significant contribution to the eventual exodus of the Soviet Jews some three decades later.

Eventbrite Removes San Francisco State University-Sponsored Webinar With Palestinian Terrorist Leila Khaled

Eventbrite has removed a San Francisco State University-sponsored event featuring Leila Khaled — a member of US-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — from its platform for violating its terms of service.

The move comes after The Algemeiner reported that SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicity and Diaspora Studies (AMED) program was planning an April 23 Zoom webinar, facilitated by the Eventbrite platform, featuring Khaled as a speaker.

“Eventbrite is committed to empowering event organizers to gather for their chosen purpose, so long as they don’t violate our Terms. Due to one of the speaker’s affiliation with a foreign terrorist organization, this event violates our Terms of Service, so we have removed it from our platform,” an Eventbrite spokesperson wrote in an e-mailed response to The Algemeiner.

The April 23 event, “Whose Narratives? What Free Speech for Palestine?”, is co-sponsored by SFSU’s AMED program and moderated by the university’s Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, who has previously been criticized by Jewish groups for her rhetoric against pro-Israel students. It marks the second attempt by the organizers to host an event with Khaled as a speaker. In September 2020, an online seminar featuring Khaled — who took part in the hijacking of a Tel Aviv-bound commercial flight in 1969 — was dropped by Facebook and the videoconferencing provider Zoom, and was taken down from YouTube after partially airing.

Asked about the April 23 event, a Zoom spokesperson told The Algemeiner that the company was “reviewing the facts of this event to determine if it is consistent with our Terms of Service and Community Standards and will decide on an appropriate course of action after that review.”

Abbas to address J Street confab as group seeks to top DC’s Israel lobby scene

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will address J Street’s national conference on Sunday as the once marginal left-wing, pro-Israel group seeks to position itself as the leading lobby on Middle East policy in the post-Trump era.

Abbas’s remarks will be pre-recorded and played for the more than 4,000 registered attendees at the virtual confab’s first day.

Confirming the address, J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami told The Times of Israel: “Just as we engage with a wide range of voices from Israeli politics and civil society, J Street has always seen it as important to also help promote and facilitate more meaningful dialogue between the American Jewish community and the Palestinian people, including their leadership.

“We’re pleased to host President Abbas at our conference this year, as the Palestinians seek to move on from the nadir of the Trump era and repair the bilateral relationship with the United States under President Biden,” Ben-Ami added. J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami addresses the liberal Zionist group’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. in October 2019 (Courtesy)

The PA president’s office confirmed the planned address but declined to comment further.

Abbas plans to use the opportunity to express his continued support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while also expressing his frustration over what he views as steps taken by Israel to make reaching such a resolution more unlikely, including settlement construction, a J Street staffer said.

Amnesty International chief retracts ‘Israel murdered Arafat’ claim

Amnesty International has sought to distance itself from a tweet by its new secretary-general that suggested Israel murdered the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Agnès Callamard, who became the organisation’s secretary-general last month, made the remarks when sharing a 2013 New York Times interview with Israel’s then-president Shimon Peres.

“NYT Interview of Shimon Perres [sic] where he admits that Yasser Arafat was murdered,” she wrote, adding the hashtag #Israel.

But the lawyer and human rights activist Hillel Neuer said Callamard’s words were “a casual smear”.

The New York Times interview in fact quoted Peres as saying he did not believe Arafat should be assassinated because “I thought it was possible to do with business with him. Without him, it was much more complicated.”

“Who else could have closed the Oslo deal?” Peres is reported to have said.

Arafat, who led the Palestine Liberation Organisation for 35 years, died in a French military hospital in November 2004, weeks after he was airlifted in ill health out of his compound in the West Bank.

Several Palestinian officials, including Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas, have suggested he was the victim of an assassination, but have never offered evidence.

Israel has always denied having a role in the PLO leader’s death.

Amnesty International said in a short statement: “The tweet was written in haste and is incorrect. It does not reflect the position of Amnesty International or Agnès Callamard.”

The tweet was still available on Callamard’s account on Thursday morning despite calls for her to delete it.

Hillel Neuer said Callamard’s tweet “exemplifies the modus operandi of Amnesty when it comes to Israel”.

Human Rights Watch parts with general counsel for N-word use during Columbia class

The international advocacy group Human Rights Watch parted ways with its general counsel last week after she repeatedly used the N-word during a class she teaches at Columbia University.

Dinah PoKempner, an adjunct professor, used the term 11 times in half a minute while recounting a conversation to students during an April 1 Zoom session, the Columbia Spectator reported.

The decorated attorney, who is white, was discussing legal implications of hate speech at the time, according to the report.

During the lesson, PoKempner relayed an anecdote that included dialogue between a Ku Klux Klan member and a lawyer associate of hers.

“Unfortunately, the voices of the lawyer and his deponent were graven in my memory, and I did not edit as I spoke, using the original racist term,” she told the Columbia Spectator. “Students were understandably shocked, and they explained eloquently and patiently why they objected to use of the word.”

Some students objected to her language during the class and the matter was discussed, according to the site.

During a break in that exchange, PoKempner left her mic on and was overheard using the term again while relaying the incident to someone in her home.

A group of students who had been present in the class convened afterwards to discuss how they would address the matter and have since filed formal complaints with Columbia administrators.

Another perfect illustration of how Wokeism is simply Marxism with class swapped out for race. As always, the rules the revolutionaries demand you obey don't apply to them, whether they're the Politburo in Moscow or the leaders of BLM in Topanga Canyon. https://t.co/LRHDH7zURy

— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) April 16, 2021

Jewish Voice for Labour official previously accused of denying antisemitism is invited to chair Party disciplinary panel on antisemitism

A Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) official once labelled an “antisemitism denier” chaired a Labour disciplinary panel on antisemitism last week. JVL is an antisemitism-denial group and sham Jewish representative organisation.

Stephen Marks chaired a panel comprising three members of Labour’s National Constitutional Committee (NCC), the Party’s highest disciplinary body, on 8th April, to review claims by the former Mayor of Haringey and current Labour councillor, Sheila Peacock, of bullying and antisemitism against Cllr Vincent Carroll.

Cllr Peacock, who is Jewish, alleged that Cllr Carroll threatened and bribed her to leave the Labour Party over a dispute regarding her postponement of a meeting. She claims that Cllr Carroll texted her to say that she would be “physically removed from office.” She says that he also offered her money to leave the Party and alleged that the monetary incentive was antisemitic as it was made because she was Jewish (an allusion to the classic antisemitic trope connecting Jews and money).

Cllr Peacock then reportedly texted Cllr Carroll, saying: “Money unlike for some is not my God,” to which Cllr Carroll reportedly responded, “Yes it is. You either move the AGM or be disciplined by the Party.”

After hearing the case, the NCC reportedly cleared Cllr Carroll of any wrongdoing, which left Cllr Peacock “distraught”.

There was reportedly some controversy amongst senior Labour officials regarding the inclusion of Mr Marks on the panel.

Mr Marks has a history of controversial behaviour. In 2017, he signed a petition in support of Jackie Walker, a former Vice-Chair of Momentum and one of those exemplifying the institutionalisation of antisemitism in the Labour Party. Ms Walker was repeatedly suspended by Labour and finally expelled in 2019. She has persistently claimed that complaints of antisemitism are part of a plot to destabilise the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and has rejected the International Definition of Antisemitism.

The Week Takes Down ‘Ludicrous’ Star of David Graphic After Social Media Uproar

After drawing widespread outrage from Jewish leaders and observers, The Week magazine removed a graphic Thursday evening that depicted a blue Star of David encircling and covering the eyes of US President Joe Biden, which had accompanied a column criticizing Israel’s efforts to prevent a US return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The opinion article — entitled “Israel is testing Biden,” written by The Week national correspondent Ryan Cooper — said that Israel “clearly thinks it can interfere with America’s pursuit of its strategic interests,” taking issue with the attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz that has been attributed to Israel, as parties to the 2015 deal meet in Vienna for talks to revive it.

Before it was swapped for a straightforward illustration featuring President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Week’s graphic drew a sharp rebuke from many readers, who said it drew on classic antisemitic tropes.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Algemeiner that the image suggested that Israel was “boxing in, or controlling, or even imprisoning the President of the United States.”

“The assumption here is that Israel controls America, or controls the president; it’s very convenient,” Cooper said. “The only possible reason that they can think about the US maybe doing something or hesitating to make a move on Iran is because it’s dictated by Israel — it’s ludicrous on its face.”

Cooper said the graphic would “enthrall … antisemites, conspiracy theorists, and — first and foremost — the Iranians and their acolytes here in the United States” and elsewhere. “This visual’s going to be a keeper, it’s going to do damage to us,” he said.

Anger at BBC joke saying Israel ‘ignores the Arab population’ on vaccines

A complaint has been lodged to the BBC after actor David Tennant read out a comment on a popular comedy show, saying Israel “ignores the Arab population” when it comes to vaccinations

The actor read out the remarks on ‘Have I Got a Bit More News For You’ on Friday 9 April, as Israel’s embassy insists the country offers a jab to all its citizens, and has even run campaigns to encourage vaccination take-up for minorities.

During the clip, Tennant said: “According to the current roadmap, Britons will only be able to travel to countries with ‘a similarly high level of vaccination rate’.”

Displaying a list of the most vaccinated countries, which has Israel at the top on 61 percent and Britain second on 46 percent, he said: “As you can see Israel have populated 61 percent of their population which is pretty much everyone there if you ignore the Arab population, which they do. So they’re done.”

Criticising the segment, an Israeli Embassy in London spokesperson said: “Israel offered vaccines to all of its citizens above the age of 16, regardless of their religion, ethnicity or social status. Arab citizens in Israel have been offered vaccines and special campaigns in Arabic have targeted these communities in order to prevent misinformation and address any concerns that they may have in order to increase uptake.”

This comes after Israel announced it is to welcome the return of vaccinated UK holidaymakers from next month, amid its world-beating vaccination programme.

A BBC spokesperson said: “The comments were satirical and in keeping with audience expectations of this well-established topical entertainment show.”

US report names European countries failing to tackle antisemitism

Nearly a dozen European countries are "insufficient" in their efforts to meet the challenges of anti-Semitism, a report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom found.

"Sadly, 2020 was another difficult year for global antisemitism" between COVID-19 unleashing an "avalanche" of antisemitic propaganda to physical attacks on Jews worldwide, said Gary Bauer, a commissioner with the organization, as well as president of the American Values think tank.

His comments came during an hour-long briefing on the just-released "Antisemitism in Europe: Implications for US Policy" from the commission, a US government body established by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

"Even dead Jews were not allowed to rest in peace," said Bauer, noting that Jewish cemeteries were frequent targets for graffiti and vandalism with headstones overturned.

The report examined antisemitism in 11 European countries – Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom – and sought to answer the fundamental question of: "Are Jews able to live openly and freely as Jews, in whatever manner they wish?"

The sizes of the Jewish communities ranged from 1,500 in Norway to 448,000 in France, and found that in 10 out of 11 of the countries featured efforts to meet the challenges of antisemitism remain "insufficient."

The only country to avoid this designation and "exceed" efforts to combat antisemitism was Norway, which has a comprehensive national plan to combat the scourge, as well as sufficient funds for security measures to protect the Jewish community, among other positive measures.

Appointment of Hardline Nationalist to Auschwitz Museum Council Intensifies Fears Over Polish Government’s Holocaust Commemoration Policies

The appointment of a hardline nationalist politician to the Polish government’s advisory council for the Auschwitz concentration camp triggered the resignations of three experts on the Holocaust from the same body this week, alongside a warning that Poland’s right-wing leaders plan to “Polonize” the museum and memorials at the site where more than one million Jews were murdered by the Nazis during World War II.

The resignations followed the appointment of former Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło, a top member of the ruling Law and Justice Party, to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Council — a nine-member body composed of Poles that meets annually to advise the director of the museum. Critics asserted that the presence of Szydło, who is now a member of the European Parliament, was a potentially fatal step towards “politicizing” the museum’s content in tandem with the government’s wider campaign to muzzle historical research into collaboration between the occupying Nazis and Polish citizens in the extermination of the Jews.

Prof. Stanislaw Krajewski, who resigned from the council on Tuesday, explained that during the eight years he had served on the council, a politician had never been appointed as a member.

“The fear is that this would be another move in the direction of making also the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum part of [the government’s] historical policy,” Krajewski, a historian and leading member of the Warsaw Jewish community, told the AP news agency on Friday. “I don’t want to be on the same council with a major politician of the ruling party today.”

While she was serving as Prime Minister of Poland in 2017, Szydło — who hails from Oswiecim, a city adjacent to the Auschwitz site — initiated the creation of a new museum named “The Museum of the Righteous from Auschwitz.” Its goal, she said at the time, was to provide “testimony about heroes and good and decent people. It is up to us to remind the world about who was the executioner, who was the victim, who was the torturer, and who was the hero.”

3 resign from Auschwitz council over right-wing Polish politician’s appointment

Three members of an advisory council for the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum in Poland have resigned after the government’s appointment of former Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, a top member of the country’s right-wing ruling party, to serve on the council.

Culture Minister Piotr Glinski recently appointed Szydlo to a four-year term on the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Council, a nine-member body made up of Poles who meet once a year to advise the museum’s director. It is separate from the International Auschwitz Council, which includes Holocaust survivors and international experts.

The first advisory council member to resign was philosopher and Jewish leader Stanislaw Krajewski, who said he took the step Tuesday to protest what he called the “politicization” of a group so far made up of experts. He was followed by historians Marek Lasota, who also belongs to the ruling party, and Krystyna Oleksy, a former deputy director of the Auschwitz Museum.

Krajewski, who was about to begin his third four-year term, told The Associated Press on Friday that he does not remember a politician ever being named to the council and did not feel comfortable with the step, particularly given the policies of the populist and nationalist Law and Justice Party.

Revisionist Historian Who Glorifies Nazi Collaborators Is Nominated as Head of State-Sponsored Genocide Center in Lithuania

A historian lionized by far right groups in Lithuania for glorifying collaborators with the occupying Nazis during World War II is set become the new director of the country’s state-sponsored Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Center (LGGRTC).

Dr. Arūnas Bubnys was nominated for the post on Wednesday by Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, the Speaker of Lithuania’s parliament, the Seimas.

According to the biography of Bubnys on the LGGRTC’s website, the “most important trends of his work” focus upon “anti-Nazi resistance in Lithuania in 1941–1944, the Polish underground in Lithuania in WWII, and holocaust (sic) in Lithuania.”

However, experts on the slaughter of nearly 200,000 Jews in Lithuania — the overwhelming majority — during the Nazi Holocaust decried the appointment of Bubnys, charging him with glorifying the pro-German puppet regime that ruled following the Nazi invasion of 1941, as well as deliberately minimizing the role played by Lithuanian collaborators during the Holocaust.

“For years Dr. Bubnys has participated in the glorification of the outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust on 23 June 1941,” observed the website Defending History, which closely monitors the politically-charged environment around the study of the Holocaust in Lithuania and other eastern European countries.

In June 2020, Bubnys addressed a public meeting in which he effusively praised Jonas Noreika, a Lithuanian independence advocate and military general who participated in the mass murder of Jews in the summer of 1941, and Kazys Škirpa, a founder of the wartime-era Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) whose writings advocated the ethnic cleansing of Lithuania’s Jewish citizens. The two men are among the many anti-Soviet, nationalist politicians of that period whose reputations have been rehabilitated by the Lithuanian government over the previous 20 years.

Australian watchdog slams ‘perverse’ auction of Hitler’s personal items

A number of items purportedly owned by Adolf Hitler have been put up for auction in Australia, with an anti-Semitism watchdog charging that their sale glorifies the Nazi leader.

Among the objects JB Military Antiquities put on the auction block were a cigarette box, decanter, ice bucket, gravy boat and hairbrush, a number of which it touted as “exceptional and extremely rare.” Bidding is set to close on Sunday morning.

The cigarette box and hairbrush were the most sought after items with over 20 bids each, with the former fetching an asking price of AUD 11,500 (nearly $8,900).

The Anti-Defamation Commission, which has been pushing to outlaw the sale of Nazi memorabilia, denounced the “perverse and twisted” auction.

“If Hitler was alive today, he would be thanking JB Military Antiques and applauding their lurid trade, delighted that his legacy is being mainstreamed and promoted in Australia,” ADC chair Dvir Abramovich said in a statement Friday.

“The extermination and dehumanization of millions should not have a tag price and be offered to the highest bidder. The perverse and twisted sale of these blood-stained items that belonged to a monster tramples on the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and is a spit on the graves of the valiant diggers who sacrificed their lives to defeat this evil tyrant.”

He also called the auction “a kick in the stomach” to Holocaust survivors.

Abramovich called for the auction house to immediately pull the items and for the premier of Western Australia, where JB Military Antiquities is located, to ban the sale of Nazi memorabilia.

Armani Removes From Sale Blazer Resembling Holocaust Concentration Camp Uniform

The Italian high-end fashion house Giorgio Armani recently removed from sale a blazer that resembled a Holocaust concentration camp uniform following a request by the pro-Israel organization StandWithUs.

Roz Rothstein, CEO and co-founder of StandWithUs, first shared a photo of the “offensive” black-and-white vertically striped jacket on April 4 on Twitter, after being displayed outside an Armani store in Beverly Hills, Calif.

A photograph of the blazer, part of the fashion label’s spring-summer 2021 Men’s Collection, was also shared on Armani’s official Instagram page.

Rothstein called on Armani to apologize and remove the item for purchase.

StandWithUs said on Facebook about the “distasteful” item: “This is an awful look for anyone who cares about Holocaust memory or for anyone with their own personal memory of Nazi concentration-camp uniforms that prisoners were forced to wear. Georgio Armani should rethink and withdraw this insensitive ‘style.’ ”

The organization announced on Tuesday that Armani had responded to its request by pulling the item. The photo of the jacket on Armani’s Instagram page was also deleted.

Israeli scientists say they’ve paved way to turn off the brain’s ‘hunger switch’

New Israeli research may pave the way for drugs that “turn off the hunger switch” in the human brain with minimal side effects, scientists say.

A receptor in the brain, melanocortin 4 (MC4), is known to control the urge to eat. It has been dubbed the “hunger switch.”

A genetically inherited malfunction with this receptor is believed to be the most common cause of obesity that is triggered by a single gene mutation, impacting an estimated 5 percent of early-onset childhood obesity.

Now, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have conducted research that they say could bring about easy manipulation of the receptor among people with such a mutation.

They say it could even be used to help people who don’t have a genetic condition that directly impacts the MC4 in their efforts to lose weight, by treating the receptor as an “override” switch. When “turned off,” they say, it could suppress regular hunger.

Their research involved building a detailed 3D model of the receptor, giving unprecedented insight into how it functions, in a peer-reviewed study that was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

“It’s a switch activated by a hormone that our body secretes, which can be turned on and off,” said Dr. Moran Shalev-Benami of Weizmann Institute. “We’ve shown exactly what it looks like and outlined all of its molecular details.”

Israeli startup's clean algae technology could revolutionize beauty industry

Marine biologists at Israeli marine biology startup Yemoja have introduced a new environmentally friendly method of deriing a bioactive ingredient from red algae, a component widely used in the beauty industry for its anti-inflammatory and rejuvenating properties.

The company has come up with a natural, chemical-free method to derive the ingredient, named EPS-Revive, which the cosmetics and beauty industry can use for its antioxidant, moisturizing, and anti-aging properties.

The demand for natural products increases each year, driving discovery and research of new natural compounds in the marine biosphere. In recent years, the sea environment has been increasingly recognized as a promising source of skin-health benefits due to its rich biological and chemical diversity.

"More and more companies are working to create an 'all-natural' brand by using plant-based or algae-based substances, with emphasis on 'green' processes and chemical-free end products," CEO of Yemoja Erez Ashkenazi said.

"We cultivate only natural wild-strain algae through an automated, fully controlled, and contaminant-free downstream process. We use no chemicals or solvents, and we do not exploit any natural resources from the environment," Ashkenazi added.

Having completed research regarding the product's safety for topical use, Yemoja is now expanding into nutraceuticals and even dermatology.

Hindu American Foundation and StandWithUs Event Brings Together Hindu and Jewish Communities

The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and StandWithUs (SWU) held a virtual event “Indo-Judaic Ties: Ancient Cultures, Common Challenges, Modern Miracles” on Monday, April 12. The event brought together nearly 300 members of the Jewish American and Hindu American communities across the country.

HAF Co-Founder and Board Member, Mihir Meghani, kicked off the event with opening remarks, followed by a moderated panel led by StandWithUs Midwest Executive Director Peggy Shapiro.

“I have been doing joint programming with the Hindu-American community for many years. I always marvel at the history and values our communities hold in common, and I am inspired by what India and Israel, Jews and Hindus can accomplish when we join together in friendship and understanding.”

The panel featured a distinguished group featured diplomats and scholars, including Dr Nathan Katz (World-Renowned Scholar of Indo-Judaic Studies and Professor Emeritus, Florida International University), Matan Zamir (Deputy Consul General, Consul General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest), Adva Vilchinski (Consul for Public Diplomacy, Consul General of Israel in New York), Dr Anurag Mairal (Director, Global Outreach Programs at Stanford University Center for Biodesign), and Samir Kalra, Esq. (HAF Managing Director).

The panelists discussed a variety of topics including the millennia-long ties between Hindu and Jewish culture and civilization, the consequences of British colonialism on India and the formation of the state of Israel, the leadership role of women in both homelands, and cooperation between Israel and India in fields such as agriculture, biotechnology, cyber security, and medical innovation today.

#Israel embodies the resilience & ingenuity of humanity at its best. The story of Israel’s renaissance takes on special meaning in the present moment: Israel reminds us that it is possible to overcome & emerge stronger than ever & build back better. #YomHaatzmaut pic.twitter.com/OHykqE4N6z

— Rep. Ritchie Torres (@RepRitchie) April 16, 2021

The Life of Berthe Badehi | Episode 3 | Israeli Independence Day

This three-part series focuses on the life of Berthe Badehi, a remarkable woman who survived the Holocaust and went on to immigrate to Israel after World War II. Since first arriving in Jerusalem in 1956, Berthe has built a life for herself and has proudly raised her family here. Despite facing many struggles and losses, she survived to tell her story to the world. In the final installment of the Life of Berthe Badehi series, Berthe shares how her life was impacted by her move to Israel and what it means to become an Israeli.

Dirk Bogarde, the famous actor, was one of the first British soldiers to enter Belsen. He spoke about what he saw there in an interview given in 1986.https://t.co/NYQwfyqQpv

— Richard Armstrong (@_RGArmstrong) April 15, 2021

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