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Thursday, March 1, 2018

From Ian:

1946 US report says ‘Poles persecuted the Jews as vigorously as did the Germans’
A US State Department report from May 15, 1946, found “evidence that Poles persecuted the Jews as vigorously as did the Germans” during the World War II Nazi occupation of Poland.

The declassified report was distributed Thursday by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the same day that a Polish law making it a crime to accuse the Polish nation of Nazi-era atrocities took effect. Also Thursday, senior Israeli and Polish diplomats met in Jerusalem in a bid to resolve differences over the law.

The report highlights Polish anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, and traces it back to a long history of Polish anti-Jewish legislation before World War II and anti-Jewish activities by Poles during the Holocaust.

The 1946 document “analyzes the policies of the Polish Government, the current anti-Semitic manifestations, and the possibilities for Jewish survival in Poland” in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust.

The report found that “native Poles” abetted the activities of the Germans during World War II.

The report, which was declassified in August 1983, speaks of anti-Semitism as “a traditional feature of Polish political and economic life,” saying that “the continuance of the conflict between the Government and the opposition in Poland is conducive to a resurgence of anti-Semitism, which is easily employed as a weapon in this conflict.”

The State Department conceded that following the Holocaust, “the government has made anti-Semitism a crime,” but, it said, “the outrages continue, although on a somewhat reduced scale.”
Despite uproar, contested Polish Holocaust law goes into effect
The controversial Polish law that criminalizes accusing the Polish nation of crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War II has gone into effect.

The law has sparked a crisis with Israel, where officials fear its true aim is to repress research on Poles who killed Jews during World War II, something Polish officials deny or minimize.

As the law took effect Thursday, the Polish and Israeli teams on the task force established to resolve the standoff over the law held their first meeting.

Poland's president signed the legislation into law last month, but also sent it to the constitutional court for review. Polish officials have said no criminal charges will be brought until the court has made its ruling, expected in several weeks.

But prosecutors are also already looking for now-criminal instances in which Poland is wrongly accused of wartime activities.
Polish sock brand sparks uproar with "Adolf Hitler" footwear
A pair of socks bearing the likeness of Adolf Hitler's face has caused quite a storm. According to the website of "Nanushki", the Polish brand responsible for the controversial footwear, the product was designed “to bring order to the socks drawer”.

Not everyone is so amused, with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum posting to their official Twitter account that Nanushki is using “one of the biggest criminals in history for marketing purposes”.

Following backlash, the socks were officially renamed as "Patrick" on the company's site, with the claim that Patrick is a businessman who loves cars and has a unique sense of dressing.



Farrakhan Discusses Ellison’s Prior Membership in Nation of Islam, Compares Him to Jesus’ Treacherous Apostles in Anti-Semitic Rant
Radical Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called out Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) for his prior membership in the organization and compared him to the Apostles who betrayed Jesus in an anti-Semitic speech on Sunday.

Farrakhan is known for making outlandish, anti-Semitic and racist comments, as well as promoting conspiracy theories. Ellison, a Muslim and the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, previously defended Farrakhan in the 1980s and 1990s before distancing himself when he first ran for Congress in 2006.

In recent weeks, he's dealt with reports he attended a private dinner in 2013 that also featured Farrakhan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Farrakhan claimed in 2016 he had recently met with Ellison in his hotel suite. Ellison has responded they have "no relationship" and the stories about the two are part of a smear campaign by his political opponents.

"Keith was in the Nation in 1995," Farrakhan said, calling him a "beautiful brother" who sold the Nation of Islam's The Final Call newspaper. "And, being in Minnesota … he wants to help his community. He's a lawyer so he wants to help his community, so he wants to become a congressman. "

Some in the crowd catcalled when Ellison's picture was shown, but Farrkhan said he wasn't there to "bash my brother."
In Anti-Semitic Rant, Louis Farrakhan Confirms DNC’s Keith Ellison Was In Nation Of Islam


Co-Founder Of Women's March Enthusiastically Attends Anti-Semite Farrakhan's Speech
On Sunday in Chicago, vehement anti-Semite Reverend Louis Farrakhan gave his “Saviours Day Address,” in which he poisonously attacked the Jewish people. You would think that people supposedly fighting for equal rights would shun such a hateful human being, but look who showed up:

As the ADL reported of Farrakhan, “He even mentioned the Women’s March, saying that while he thought the event was a good thing, women need to learn how to cook so their husbands don’t become obese. Tamika Mallory, one of the March organizers, was in the audience, and got a special shout-out from Farrakhan. Mallory posted two Instagram photos from the event, which Carmen Perez, another Women’s March organizer, commented on with 'raise the roof' emojis.”

Mallory is the national co-chair for the Women’s March; in May 2017 she tweeted this for Farrakhan's birthday:

Jewish Americans Deserve Better Than The ADL
It is true that Jews are most often the victims of the rare faith-based hate crimes in America. In 2016, the FBI reported that 21 percent of hate crimes were prompted by religious bias and, of those, 54.4 percent were victims of crimes motivated by an anti-Jewish bias. (The next closest is anti-Muslim crimes, at 24.5 percent.) This consists of 834 total hate crimes against Jews in 2016, the vast majority non-violent. That is 834 too many, of course, but also 834 of among tens of million criminal offenses. Those genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism don’t do anyone a favor by exaggerating the problem.

It should be pointed out, though, that there is a population that runs into anti-Jewish sentiment more than most. The ADL and its activist head, Jonathan Greenblatt, would have you believe that “white supremacy” is the leading cause of anti-Semitism on college campuses throughout the United States. The narrative must be fed, after all. The ADL tells us that from Sept. 1, 2016 to Feb. 1, 2018, “346 incidents” of Nazi types handing out propaganda on campus were recorded. This, according to the ADL, is the most disturbing trend on campuses.

As one of my Twitter followers correctly noted, “The idea that Jews are more likely to encounter white supremacists than aggressively anti-Israel bds groups is utter delusion.”

The BDS movement, for example, embraced not only by most progressive groups these days but also by some school administrations, specifically — and, for that matter, exclusively — targets businesses that deal with the ideologically diverse population of Jews. As the AMCHA Initiative, a group that tracks anti-Semitism on campus, puts it, “BDS campaigns are coordinated internationally by groups committed to the elimination of the Jewish state, including terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, that engage in and promote the murder of Jews worldwide.” How many “incidents” do you think are there on college campuses of the BDS spreading its message?

Unsurprisingly, this effort is associated with the uptick in anti-Semitism on campus. In 2016, researchers at Brandeis University conducted a study concentrating on Jewish undergraduate students at 50 U.S. campuses who had applied to go on the Birthright Israel trip. The study found that CUNY schools and University of California systems had become “hotspots” of hostility towards Jewish students. The more campuses were involved in BDS, the higher their rates of anti-Semitic harassment and hostility, driven by animosity toward Israel.

There is a long history of leftist anti-Semitism and a corresponding history of liberal Jewish groups belittling its importance. Jew hatred, of course, isn’t confined to one fringe. But Nazis and Klansmen remain stigmatized and excluded by the vast majority of political operators. On the other hand, terror-apologists like Linda Sarsour, a leader of the Resistance who claims Zionism is incompatible with feminism, are being increasingly welcomed into the fold of mainstream left-wing activism.

The idea of Zionism being an “inherently white supremacist ideology” has gained some popularity not only on campuses but among a growing group of progressives. While the ADL notes this trend — and it has to be stressed that the ADL does often note instances of anti-Semitism on the Left— it has a bad habit of burying that pertinent news to create a more convenient plot for political purposes.
Anti-Israel Protestors Fail to Stop Pro-Israel Event At University Of Virginia
According to video obtained by the Haym Salomon Center, approximately a dozen anti-Israel protestors stormed Clark Hall Thursday night on the University of Virginia campus, attempting to shut down an event featuring Reservists on Duty (ROD), an education group of Israel Defense Forces reservists.

Hosted by the Brody Jewish Center - Hillel at UVA, the group's Facebook page described the event as intended “to share their personal stories and answer tough questions from the university community. The idea behind the panel was to humanize the conflict, learn about Israeli society, and allow for honest conversation.”

The panel of IDF reservists, two men and two women, had barely begun their introductory remarks when the disruption broke out.

“We were so excited to get this panel started," explained ROD volunteer Asher Stern. “There were people in the crowd that wanted to learn, and some who already held dissenting opinions. But they were there to listen and dialogue.”

Clearly not interested in a conversation were the protestors. With megaphones, signs and flags, the anti-Israel activists stormed the room, chanting slogans such as “long live the intifada.”
Unilad should remove and apologise for promoting its David Icke video monologue to over a million people
The controversial viral social media site Unilad has produced a propaganda video for conspiracy theorist David Icke, whom Campaign against Antisemitism exposed in our own video last year.

The video, entitled “David Icke: Conspiracy, Illuminati & Lizards” is a ten-minute long monologue documentary which Unilad has promoted hailing Mr Icke as “the man whose life mission is to expose the nature of reality, inform on what is really happening behind the news headlines and who is really running the world. Full of conspiracy, the illuminati and lizards, we talk to him about his theories and incredible life story.”

The fact is that Mr Icke’s conspiracy theories are not harmless nonsense: they preach a world view in which the world is in the grip of a conspiracy run by the “Rothschild Zionists” who are the product of an alien “reptilian” bloodline. Mr Icke cites many prominent Jews around the world as evidence of “Rothschild Zionist” infiltration of global power structures.

His disciples believe his antisemitic theories about Jews and when we have drawn respectable venues’ attention to his views they have cancelled his appearances, but Unilad decided that he was worthy of a special video documentary.

Unilad’s video has been viewed 1.2 millions times on Facebook alone. It is atrocious that Unilad has decided to broadcast the repugnant views of Mr Icke to an even wider audience.
Dutch university shutters activists center that hosted Palestinian ex-terrorist
A Dutch university shut down an activists’ center for its hosting of a lecture by a Palestinian ex-terrorist, where Jewish journalists were not allowed to enter.

The Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam shuttered the Verrekijker Center, whose name means “binoculars,” on Wednesday, following the hosting there of a speech by Rasmea Odeh, from which reporters for the Jewish Dutch weekly, NIW, were refused entrance because they were Zionists, according to reports in the Dutch media.

Odeh spent 10 years in an Israeli prison for her role in a 1969 bombing attack at a Jerusalem supermarket that killed two Hebrew University students, Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe.

“The collective responsible for the use of the Verrekijker has been told to leave the premises and leave it empty,” read a statement by the university, which in the past has resisted pressure to ban the hosting of individuals deemed anti-Semitic or to be inciting violence against Israel.

But the university did not cite Odeh’s involvement in terrorism and repeated calls for violence as the reason for punishing Verrekijker, referencing instead the establishment’s failure to inform the university of the event in advance, which a spokesperson said was a violation of trust.
Arsenal must act after Robert Peston tweets he is “ashamed to be Arsenal supporter” after witnessing antisemitism at match
ITV news reporter, Robert Peston, has tweeted that he feels ashamed to support Arsenal after attending the club’s Carabao Cup Final match against Manchester City at Wembley on Sunday.

Mr Peston tweeted: “One of those moments when I am ashamed to be Arsenal supporter on way to Wembley because moron gooners [Arsenal fans] singing antisemitic song about how they have foreskins & Spurs fans don’t. Well many of us truer supporters are circumcised as is their/our hero Ozil (I assume). Shut the f up”.

Spurs, the nickname for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, has traditionally enjoyed the support of a large number of Jewish football fans and Campaign Against Antisemitism has reported previously about clubs such as Chelsea, Arsenal and West Ham using antisemitic chants against Spurs fans. The song that Mr Peston is referring to includes the lyrics: “I’ve got a foreskin, haven’t you? F***ing Jew!”

In another tweet, Mr Peston wrote that he felt “racially abused by alleged fellow supporters”.

A spokesperson for Arsenal said: “We absolutely condemn any form of antisemitism at the club. We work hard to encourage diversity and inclusion through The Arsenal for Everyone programme and will continue to drive forward this campaign to our supporters.”
McMaster University completes probe into anti-Semitic remarks
McMaster University has completed its investigation into numerous alarming tweets from students linked to a campus Palestinian rights group which lauded Hitler, supported terrorist organizations, and vilified Jews.

But McMaster officials refuse to say what penalties were imposed upon the culprits under the student code of rights and responsibilities.

Director of communications Gord Arbeau says it's not the university's practice to provide details about actions taken against individual students.

"The investigation is complete and the code has been applied to those individuals who are current McMaster students with regard to postings made during their tenure as students," Arbeau said by email, noting the university has no jurisdictions over former students.

Punishments for violating the code range from warnings, completion of specific tasks, restitutions, issuing of behavioural contracts, fines, loss of privileges, suspensions and expulsions.

McMaster became aware of the disturbing personal social media posts — which started in 2011 and continued into 2017 — via internet reports published in mid-December by anti-Semitic watchdog Canary Mission and Algemeiner.com, an American-based Jewish and Israel news service.

The tweets in question were linked to students allegedly associated with the campus group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR). Tweets included comments such as "Hitler should have took you all" and "Where is Hitler when u need one? I literally ask this every day."
Ryan Bellerose: Cry-bullies: Social Media in the Age of BS
When I was a kid there were two kinds of bullies, the big dumb kids who pushed you around and tried to take your lunch or your lunch money and the smaller sly kids who poked at you and then ran to an authority figure crying when you responded. The big dumb kids were pretty easy to deal with, you just punched them in the guts and usually they found smaller easier prey. The second were harder to deal with because if you did punch them you got punished severely. To deal with them, you had to expose them as the whining cry-bullies they were. The best way to do this is to draw attention to their BS, make certain that people can see what they are doing for themselves. In an age when everyone sides with the “little guy,” this can be tough.

Pro-Palestinian activists (actually anti-Israel activists) love to claim they are being persecuted and silenced on social media, they claim that their positions are unpopular because of “Jewish control of social media” which in itself is not only a ridiculous assertion but one that itself is based in antisemitic notions of some super Jewish conspiracy to silence dissent. Haters like Steven Salaita and Miko Peled have made careers out of being cry-bullies and claiming to have been “unfairly silenced,” but both of them are demonstrably antisemitic and they are the norm, not the exception.

Their claim of unfair persecution is an easily debunked assertion when one looks at the facts.
Fact: The Pro Pallywoodians who actually do get banned, ALWAYS openly flaunt their Jew hate, in order to actually get banned.

Their antisemitism must be beyond doubt and even then, often obviously antisemitic people are left unbanned. Obviously antisemitic Facebook pages and Twitter accounts are often left up even after being reported. David Duke, Hatem Bazian, BDS groups, and other purveyors of nonsense have been allowed to remain, despite some pretty obviously antisemitic posts.

Brian Ruhe, a mentally disturbed individual who claims that “Hitler is the messiah” and that Buddhism is compatible with Naziism. We also have Greta Berlin who reposted Holocaust denial videos “for discussion”, and Steven Salaita who was denied tenure for his obvious antisemitism with gems such as ” Zionism, making antisemitism honorable.” Ken O’Keefe, who has bragged in public about being “proud to be an antisemite,” is also allowed free rein on Twitter. Canary Mission and Aussie Dave have documented a plethora of open antisemitism and Hitler worship by pro Pallywood supporters on social media, so I will stop there or this blog will become too long. I am not talking about soft antisemitism which permeates social media either; I am strictly talking about hard, almost Nazi-like antisemitism.
Paris suburb rescinds symbolic recognition of ‘Palestine’
A month after its controversial “recognition” of “the state of Palestine,” the Parisian suburb of Gennevilliers has rescinded its gesture under pressure from local government.

The office of Mayor Patrice Leclerc, a Communist Party of France politician who, on January 21 made the so-called recognition in a document he then sent to other mayors, nullified the policy paper on February 14, the National Bureau Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, on Thursday said in a statement.

Leclerc’s recognition move was symbolic and has no bearing on French foreign policy. He nullified it following intervention by Pierre Soubelet, a politician for the France on the March! Party of President Emmanuel Macron. Soubelet, a former army general, heads the Hauts-de-Seine region, which includes Gennevilliers.

The mayor of the suburb of Bezons, Dominique Lesparre, a member of the communist party as well, also signed a declaration saying his municipality recognizes a Palestinian state. BMVCA has petitioned the Val d’Oise region to use its power to nullify the policy of the city council of Bezons.
French Court Denies 'Perverted Guru' Tariq Ramadan Bail, Citing Re-Offending Risk
Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan has been denied bail by a court of appeal after his arrest for rape, claiming that he is not only a flight risk but there is a possibility he may engage in the same type of behaviour he is indicted for.

Ramadan and his legal team have been attempting to get the Muslim scholar out of custody on bail for medical reasons after he was hospitalised for multiple sclerosis-related ailments earlier this month, French broadcaster RTL reports.

The scholar’s team argued for him to be released and allowed to reside at a Swiss Islamic association building with an ankle monitor, but the judges denied the proposition saying that Ramadan was too much of a flight risk.

Several women also testified at the hearing, denouncing the “brutal sexual behaviour” of Ramadan, leading one of the judges to add that even with an ankle monitor Ramadan could be expected to continue his behaviour and possibly commit further offences.

More than 100,000 supporters of Ramadan have signed a petition to have him immediately released and over 100,000 euros have been raised on the French crowdfunding platform CotizUP.

Supporters of Ramadan claimed last year on social media that the allegations were a “Zionist plot” before he was arrested in January by French police.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Obama Administration Fuzzy On Who Was Supposed To Stop Russian Meddling In 2016 Elections (satire)
Former officials of the previous presidential administration and public figures who accuse Russia of interfering in the last presidential election admitted their uncertainty over who was in power in the US at the time and therefore responsible for preventing or addressing the problem.

Cabinet and federal department heads expressed uncertainty today in separate interviews about who might have overseen systems lax enough to enable Russian operatives to manipulate public opinion to a degree that might have altered the outcome of the election. Journalists and pundits voiced similar bafflement, including the occasional idle observation that someone should have been responsible for protecting the integrity of the electoral process, but, well, who knows who that might be?

“It’s a crime that Trump is in the White House now, and it’s got collusion with Putin written all over it,” declared former FBI Director James Comey. “The fact that the Bureau doesn’t seem to be taking this thing seriously right now seems highly suspicious. At the very least, you’d think they would be interrogating the heck out of whoever was supposed to be in charge of the organization when this fiasco went down. It’s the FBI that’s responsible for monitoring enemy espionage and other activities in our domestic scene. That’s the guy who should be getting in trouble for all this.”

“There’s a ministerial responsibility issue, as well,” added former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. “It’s not just the FBI itself, but the whole Department of Justice that has to answer for this colossal failure. The person they had running the department should really be getting the third degree right now, and should have as soon as this episode came to light. I don’t know what everybody’s waiting for. It all makes it look like someone is covering for the people who are most at fault. That itself should be a major scandal, but you don’t see the media or government watchdogs pursuing the story. As an American I find it embarrassing.”
BBC Complaints claims anti-Israel slurs part of ‘legitimate debate’
As readers may recall, viewers of the January 27th edition of ‘Dateline London‘ saw panellist Nabila Ramdani promote a host of politically motivated falsehoods intended to delegitimise Israel that went completely unchallenged by the programme’s presenter.

Ramdani: “I think the only group that Trump expressed his usual venal prejudice towards at Davos was the Palestinians. And of course at the time he was sitting next to his ideological ally and close friend Binyamin Netanyahu. And he effectively said that he wanted to stop millions of dollars of aid to Palestinians because the Palestinian Authority showed disrespect – as he put it – towards Mike Pence, his vice-president, during his recent visit to Israel. So essentially Donald Trump accuses the Palestinians of not being polite enough as their land is stolen, as they are routinely murdered in their thousands, imprisoned in their hundreds and undergo in all manners, all manners of human rights abuses. And there was of course no mention of the incredibly provocative decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem while completely ignoring the Palestinian right to East Jerusalem as their capital. And what I found particularly disdainful was the way Trump threatened to wash his hands of the entire Israel peace process, making out that he’d had quite enough of the boorish Palestinians, again signalling that they should somehow accept their fate and also be polite towards the billions of dollars poured into Israel to ruin their lives.”

Just last year the BBC responded to a complaint concerning similarly inaccurate claims made by Nabila Ramdani on the same programme with the same presenter by saying that it had “spoken to the production team and presenter to remind them of the need to ensure that any contentious remarks are challenged and questioned, at whatever point they are made during the programme.”
The Media and Ahed Tamimi
Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi has been groomed from childhood by her anti-Israel activist parents, Bassam and Nariman, to violently provoke Israeli troops while being filmed. The purpose is to score propaganda points in the international media, targeting Israelis for opprobrium and creating celebrity for themselves, as well as to encourage other young Palestinians to follow her example of anti-Israeli violence.

Writing about a 2012 confrontation between Ahed and Israeli troops, CAMERA's Tamar Sternthal discussed the cynical exploitation of Ahed and other children put in harm's way by their parents. She observed:

Rather than keeping their children at a safe distance from the often-violent clashes, the parents encouraged their children to play highly visible roles in the confrontation with the army...

...the Tamimi girls pulled off a photographic coup, as their parents had hoped. For this, they were rewarded with a meeting with Laila Ghannam, the Palestinian Authority's Governor of Ramallah, and President Mahmoud Abbas, who congratulated them for their "bravery."

But what if next time their parents send them out into a violent confrontation they are injured, or worse? This would be tragic — but think of the pictures and articles incriminating Israel in the next day's paper.


Consider the most recent case of Ahed, now fully groomed at the age of 17 for dangerous confrontation, who has become a symbol to promote anti-Israel violence.

In December, Ahed was filmed by her mother, Nariman, as she slapped, kicked, shoved and shrieked at two armed Israeli soldiers who remained impassive throughout the attack. Her mother posted the video on her Facebook page, ending with Ahed's filmed appeal for other Palestinians to physically assault Israelis for political reasons. She urged:

I hope that everyone will take part in the demonstrations as this is the only way to achieve the result. Our strength is in our stones, and I hope that the world will unite to liberate Palestine, because [U.S. President] Trump made his declaration and they need to take responsibility for any response that comes from us, whether it is stabbings or martyrdom operations [suicide bombings] or throwing stones, everyone must do something and we unite in this way in order for our message to be heard that we want to liberate Palestine.
Neo-Nazi group targets Australian lawmaker with anti-Semitic poster
An anti-Semitic poster was hung in the window of an Australian national lawmaker.

The office of federal lawmaker Mike Kelly in the coastal town of Bega, New South Wales, was targeted with the poster printed by the neo-Nazi group Antipodean Resistance. The poster bears a large swastika and reads “reject Jewish poison.”

Mike Kelly’s wife is Jewish. Kelly represents the Eden-Monaro district.

Kelly on Wednesday morning during a Parliamentary session told his fellow lawmakers about the placing of the poster, which he called “a sophisticatedly produced poster by the fascist group Antipodean Resistance, with swastikas and caricature portraits of Jews, describing ‘Jewish poison.’”

Kelly noted: “Part of their program is to pursue the legalization of the killing of Jews. My wife is Jewish, of course, so that also added extra poignancy to it. This is happening in our country, as well as what we’ve seen manifesting overseas. We have to be very proactive and forceful on this.”
In reported breakthrough, Israeli tech can now unlock any phone
An Israeli company is now reportedly able to unlock any phone, making it easier for law enforcement agencies to gain access to files and prompting Apple to issue a security update.

Petah Tivka-based Cellebrite markets itself as a, “global leader in the digital intelligence market,” offering its services for law enforcement, military, and corporate investigations.

Forbes reported Monday that an iPhone X was, “successfully raided for data by the Department for Homeland Security back in November 2017, most likely with Cellebrite technology.”

Cellebrite, a subsidiary of Japan’s Sun Corporation, has not made an official statement about its capabilities, but a source told Forbes that, in recent months, the company developed tools to break into iOS 11.
Israeli breakthrough in noninvasive prostate cancer test
Scientists at Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, Israel, have reported a breakthrough of successfully detecting prostate cancer cells with high sensitivity using Micromedic Technologies’ CellDetect noninvasive diagnostic test, developed at Kaplan over the past two years.

The news comes less than a week after British actor and comedian Stephen Fry revealed he is being treated for prostate cancer, which afflicts nearly one adult male in nine sometime during his lifetime. Among many other celebrities who have battled prostate cancer are Robert De Niro, Mandy Patinkin, Harry Belafonte and Frank Zappa.

Current screening tests for prostate cancer deliver a high rate of false positive results (as low as 25% specificity), leading to unnecessary invasive diagnostic tests such as biopsies. In fact, for the past 10 years many experts have discouraged men without symptoms from undergoing an annual prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, commonly used for screening in the United States since 1994.

Trials of CellDetect, a new-generation cytopathological staining platform for accurate cancer detection, demonstrated successful detection of prostate cancer cells in urine samples with 91.3% sensitivity and 75% specificity.
Israeli unemployment rate lowest since early 1970s
Israel's unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest in nearly 50 years, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported this week.

On Wednesday, the bureau released figures for January, showing unemployment at 3.7%, compared to 4% the previous month, December 2017.

The unemployment rate in January was also lower than the annual average in 2017, which stood at 4.2%.

The last time unemployment was this low was in the early 1970s, before the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when it was 3.4%.

The CBS said that in January, for the first time since the 1970s, the number of people classified as unemployed dropped below 150,000, to 148,000.

Israel's labor force participation rate stands at 3.86 million and for the first time includes more women than men: 1.82 million men compared to 1.840 million women.

The rate of employment for people aged 25 to 64 was 80% (68% for women and 87% for men). Unemployment levels for men in that age range dropped to 3.5% (compared with 3.8% in December 2017), and for women in that age group fell to 3.9% (compared with 4.2% in December 2017).

Meanwhile, Israeli goods exports increased by 6% over the past year, with high-tech exports growing by 7.5%.
Argentina soccer team to visit Israel for World Cup warm-up
Argentina's national soccer team will play against Israel in a pre-World Cup friendly international match on June 9, the Israel Football Association announced on Wednesday.

The venue for the match is still to be set, the IFA said in its statement.

Since Israel abandoned the aging National Stadium in Tel Aviv, major international games have been played either in Haifa or Jerusalem.

"Discussions will continue in the coming days to finalize the contractual details for signing," the statement said.

Twice the world champion (in 1978 and 1986), Argentina has drawn Group D for the coming World Cup in Russia. It will open by playing against Iceland in Moscow on June 16, followed by games against Croatia in Nizhny Novgorod on June 21 and against Nigeria in St. Petersburg on June 26.
Israeli, US scientists detect signs of dark matter in glimpse of earliest stars
For the first time, astronomers have glimpsed the dawn of the universe 13.6 billion years ago when the earliest stars were just beginning to glow after the Big Bang. And if that’s not enough, they may have detected mysterious dark matter at work, too.

The glimpse consisted of a faint radio signal from deep space, picked up by an antenna that is slightly bigger than a refrigerator and costs less than $5 million but in certain ways can go back much farther in time and distance than the celebrated, multi-billion-dollar Hubble Space Telescope.

Judd Bowman of Arizona State University, lead author of a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature, said the signal came from the very first objects in the universe as it was emerging out of darkness 180 million years after the Big Bang.

Seeing the universe just lighting up, even though it was only a faint signal, is even more important than the Big Bang because “we are made of star stuff and so we are glimpsing at our origin,” said astronomer Richard Ellis, who was not involved in the project.

The signal showed unexpectedly cold temperatures and an unusually pronounced wave. When astronomers tried to figure out why, the best explanation was that elusive dark matter may have been at work.
IN PICTURES: Israel celebrates Purim with 'Adloyada' parades

When zeppelin fever came to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 89 years ago
On Purim 1929, a famed German airship dropped confetti on 80,000 coastal revelers as, on board, two prominent Zionists read the Book of Esther above the holy city

Dr. Hermann Badt and Dr. Wolfgang von Weisl were not the first people to hungrily feast their eyes on the stretch of land the pair, ardent Zionists, hoped would someday serve as a Jewish state.

But the two, a senior Prussian Jewish official and a Revisionist leader, Viennese physician and journalist, were undoubtedly among the first served up the sight in a majestic mahogany-lined dining hall suspended in the skies by millions of cubic feet of ferociously pulsating hydrogen, while drinking turtle soup.

It was the Jewish holiday of Purim, 1929, and the two were among the 28 passengers — including ministers from Weimar Republic and the daughter of Count [Graf] Ferdinand von Zeppelin himself — and 41 crew members on board the austere Graf Zeppelin for an Egypt-bound voyage from Germany.

In just a few years, the tail of the proud German dirigible would be irreversibly tattooed with a swastika. Its world famous commander, Hugo Eckener, would be declared a persona non grata over his outspoken criticism of the Nazis, though he would survive World War II. Von Weisl, five months after the flight, would be stabbed and left for dead in Jerusalem during the Arab riots of 1929, though he would later recover; Badt, demoted from his political position, would flee the Nazis’ clutches to the land he was gazing at from above.

And the captain of what was then the largest airship in the world, Ernst Lehmann, would die of burns he sustained when his ill-fated Hindenburg erupted over a field in New Jersey in 1937, all but putting the dream of intercontinental airship travel to rest.
PreOccupiedTerritory: US Tells Consulate Personnel To Avoid Purim Street Parties (satire)
otices went out to American diplomats and their families today to the effect that official business may not take place at any venue hosting a Purim party Thursday or Friday, citing safety concerns.

The notice, posted on the consulate’s web site and sent to its email distribution list, cautioned American citizens in general to refrain from visiting the trouble spots indicated, and if one must visit or pass through any of the party locations, to maintain vigilance and always be aware of one’s surroundings.

The message came on the heels of a similar warning Tuesday to the effect that American diplomatic personnel are barred from entering certain areas under Palestinian control as a result of planned violent demonstrations in response to the Trump administration’s expediting of the planned embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Noting similar sensibilities, the latter notice stressed the dangers Americans may face if they encounter an adeloyada, as the event is known in local parlance.

“Purim parties carry multiple dangers for US citizens,” read the message. “Beyond the typical risks associated with binge-drinking, loud music of questionable taste, unnecessarily lewd costumes, and general disregard for norms of behavior, the ‘Adeloyada’ confronts the US citizen with, inter alia, incomprehensible attire, clumsy attempts to strike up conversations in English, weird taste in beverages, and unpleasant smells.” The notice failed to clarify how this set of dangerous behaviors differs from encounters with local culture any other day of the year.



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 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column


Today was not the first time that I read something in Ha’aretz dripping with moral indignation, only to find myself wondering why Ha’aretz gets indignant about things that seem perfectly sensible to me.

The item in question is about the opinions of Alex Stein, a legal scholar who has recently been appointed to Israel’s Supreme Court, along with Judge Ofer Groskopf. Both are considered world-class jurists, but the Left, used to dominating the legal system in Israel, is nervous about Stein’s “conservative” leanings.

It seems that someone discovered that Stein once posted on Facebook his opinion that it would not contravene international law if Israel were to stop supplying Gaza with electricity. To me, it has always seemed reasonable that Israel shouldn’t provide the power to run the lathes that make rocket nozzles while Hamas is bombarding our civilian population with rockets propelled by said nozzles.

Here is the description of Stein’s positions that Ha’aretz finds so extreme:

Stein’s posts on Gaza were published during the 2014 Gaza war. He wrote that because Israel isn’t occupying Gaza, it’s [sic] only obligation while defending itself from rockets is to minimize harm to civilians. For the same reason, Israel isn’t obligated to provide electricity to Gaza, though it may choose to do so for humanitarian reasons.

His posts also criticized what he termed a misinterpretation of international law. The principle of proportionality dictated by international law must suit the reality of modern war and common sense, he argued. An interpretation which says that large countries attacking small countries must seek to maintain parity in the number of victims is ridiculous and unacceptable, he wrote, and it is not what the law intended.

These positions are not in the slightest bit controversial among those who actually understand international law rather than simply claiming that anything Israel does that they oppose violates it. Israel’s supposed “occupation” of Gaza is the only military occupation ever accomplished without a single pair of boots on the ground; limiting the importation of military-use materials and maintaining a secure border may not please the Hamas regime, but it isn’t “occupation.” And the principle of proportionality of attack in warfare means exactly what Stein said.

He also slammed the Supreme Court for its judicial activism. Among other things, he criticized its view that everything is justiciable, in contrast to the American doctrine which holds that courts can’t rule on “political questions.” While Israel’s Supreme Court rarely overturns laws, he continued, its rhetoric is imperial and it demands power under the guise of checks and balances.

Stein also quoted the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as saying that he read Israeli Supreme Court verdicts whenever he wanted to be truly shocked and to convince himself that the American court wasn’t so bad after all.

This is certainly “controversial” to a judicial establishment that is accustomed to a balance of powers between the branches of government biased heavily in its favor, but as an antidote to the putsch carried out by the Court under its former president, Aharon Barak, it is about time that it be administered. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that according to Barak, the court can rule on anything, and anyone has standing to bring a matter to the Court, even if he is not directly impacted. This doctrine has led to an erosion in the power of the Knesset – that is, the democratically elected representatives of the people, and to some very questionable decisions by the Court.

Unsurprisingly, the Left is unhappy with Stein’s appointment. There have also been personal innuendos thrown at him in an attempt to derail it. And the fact that Stein deleted his Facebook account before he was selected is somehow seen to imply that he is ashamed of or trying to hide his “radical” views.

At the same time (2014) that Stein was commenting on Facebook, another law professor, Avi Bell of Bar-Ilan University and the University of San Diego School of Law, wrote a legal opinion on the subject of Israel’s non-obligation to supply electricity and water to Gaza. This opinion so annoyed another Israeli professor, that he suggested – although he wasn’t prepared to argue the merits of Bell’s argument – that pressure be applied against him to disavow it, because of the “moral horror” inherent in it (Bell, incidentally, said that he did not favor Israel cutting Gaza off even though Israel, in his view, has a legal right to do so).

Legal principles are ultimately derived from moral ones. While I defer to Professors Stein and Bell regarding the legal issue, it seems to me that the moral question of whether it is permissible to cut off electricity to Gaza is not a hard one:

Hezbollah places its rocket launchers in civilian areas in order to deter Israel from attacking them. And the laws of war say that where one side holds its population hostage as human shields, that side bears the responsibility for injuries to such hostages. The moral principle that justifies this is that Hezbollah made the unforced choice to put its people harm’s way.

Similarly, Hamas’ unforced choice to divert resources of all kinds away from the welfare of its people – including the development of independent sources of water and electricity – and into obtaining weapons and building war-making infrastructure, makes the welfare of the population depend on Israel’s continuing to supply their needs. Because this is Hamas’ choice, Israel is not responsible for injuries that might result from a cutoff.

It’s often argued that cutting off electricity would be collective punishment, which is forbidden by the laws of war. Today the WWII bombing of German cities that did not contain military targets might be considered war crimes for this reason (among others, including proportionality). The argument against collective punishment depends on the premise that the civilian population as a whole is not responsible for the actions of the regime, and that innocent people (e.g., children) would suffer from such an action. But if an electricity blackout were – as it certainly would be – temporary, preceded by warnings, and conditioned on the Hamas regime agreeing to terms, then the responsibility for any injuries would fall on the Hamas regime insofar as it refused to submit.

Whether or not Israel should adopt the tactic of cutting off electricity from Gaza is an additional question, even if it is permissible from the legal and moral standpoints. Here I think that neither Stein nor Bell has advocated such a tactic.

Alex Stein and Ofer Groskopf are first-rate legal minds that would add both intelligence and balance to the rulings of a Supreme Court that could benefit from more of both of those qualities. Stein is not an extremist or immoral because he happens to have a point of view that is uncommon in North Tel Aviv. The Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, and the President of the Court, Esther Hayut, should be congratulated on reaching a compromise that will raise the status of the legal establishment in Israel at a time that it could definitely use some help.




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As I was reading the megillah this Purim, it occurred to me that the most resonant part of the story today is that Haman's hate for Jews was so irrational, although he pretended to justify it using weak arguments that people are more than willing to swallow to justify their own bigotry.

It is exactly the same today, as the Israel-haters are completely irrational. Their hate comes first, and their justifications come later. Answer their points and they will come up with others, because the entire basis of their antipathy to Jews is baseless, irrational hate.

The biggest lie they say is that they are "pro-Palestinian."

It just occurred to be that people who claim to be "pro-Palestinian" - like the entire staff at Electronic Intifada - are against any Palestinian being naturalized in any Arab country, and in fact they will say they are against Palestinians becoming citizens of any other country until they can "return" to destroy Israel. To these supposed lovers of all things Palestinian, they demand that millions of Arabs with Palestinian ancestry remain stateless, indefinitely.

What love they show!

But there is one recent exception where they fought mightily for a Palestinian to be a  citizen of another country.

Terrorist Rasmea Odeh, as they fought hard to allow her to remain an American citizen. And even that they tried to justify on the basis of whatever crazy legal arguments they could find to hang their love for a murderer of Jews on.

Purim teaches us that the haters of Jews and Israel aren't ever going to go away. All we can do is win, over and over again.





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From Ian:

Prince William to visit Israel this summer, in first official trip by UK royal
Prince William will travel to Israel this summer, in the first-ever official visit by the British royal family to the Jewish state, his residence declared Thursday.

While royals have traveled to Israel in the past, no member of the British monarchy has ever come to country on an official tour.

The official visit will be the first in Israel’s almost 70-year existence, during which time nearly every other country in the world has been visited by a representative of the Crown.

“The Duke of Cambridge will visit Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the Summer,” Kensington Palace‏ announced on Twitter.

“The visit is at the request of Her Majesty’s Government and has been welcomed by the Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian authorities,” the statement added.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the announcement of the upcoming trip by the second-in-line to the throne.

“This is a historic visit, the first of its kind, and he will be welcomed here with great affection,” Netanyahu added. “I have ordered the Foreign Ministry director-general to coordinate preparations for the visit to ensure its success.”

100 years after Balfour, Britain still shaping the region, say pair of authors
Since the release of the Balfour Declaration 100 years ago, Britain has repeatedly found itself in the middle of a Middle East tug-of-war between Arab and Israeli interests.

How this pull has shaped the relationship between Britain and Israel was the topic of discussion at a Times of Israel event with authors Azriel Bermant and Elliot Jager on Tuesday evening at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem.

The event was produced by the Sir Naim Dangoor Center for UK/Israel Relations and moderated by journalist Matthew Kalman.

The experts discussed the historical significance of British-Zionist relations based on research each conducted while writing their recently published books.

Author Elliot Jager’s book, “The Balfour Declaration: Sixty-Seven Words – 100 Years of Conflict,” is a look into the personalities and interests of the characters who brought about the short statement that legitimized the idea of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

Tel Aviv University lecturer Bermant’s book, “Margaret Thatcher and the Middle East,” reveals new findings on Margaret Thatcher’s relationship with Israel based on recently released British and Israeli documents.

Thatcher is often remembered for being the first British premier to visit Israel in 1986 and for her warm relations with the Jewish community. Bermant shared why a deeper look into Thatcher’s Middle East policy exposes a more complicated legacy.



Palestinians: The "Ugly Crime" of a School Curriculum
A recent study of Palestinian textbooks found that Palestinian children are being taught to glorify and value terrorism and violence. The Palestinian Authority and its Minister of Education, Sabri Saidam, want Arab schools in Jerusalem to teach the students why Muslims should be killing Jews.

"Within the pages of the textbooks, children are being taught to be expendable. Messages such as: 'The Volcano of My Revenge'; 'The Longing of my Blood for my Land'; and 'I Shall Sacrifice My Blood to Saturate the Land' suffuse the [Palestinian] curriculum. Math books use numbers of dead martyrs to teach arithmetic. The vision of an Arab Palestine includes the entirety of what is now Israel, defined as the '1948 Occupied Territories.'" — IMPACT-se.

How come the Arab citizens of Israel have never complained about the Israeli educational system? The answer is because they evidently like the education that Israel has been offering them. It teaches them to value life, freedom of speech and democracy, and Arab Israelis admire it. They love the education Israel offers them because it does not demonize any race or group of people. They love it because it does not teach them to kill Jews, but to live with them in peace and security. This is the truth that the Palestinian Authority does not want to hear. This is the truth that it does not want the rest of the world to hear.
Sohrab Amari: A New Low for the U.N. Dictator Club
The U.N. Human Rights Council is where some of the world’s most brutal regimes go to praise each other, whitewash their rights records, and take potshots at democracies—Israel, especially. On Tuesday, the council outdid itself by giving a platform to one of Iran’s leading torturers.

The speech from Justice Minister Alireza Avaei triggered a mass walkout of European diplomats, including Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley issued a strongly worded condemnation. Alas, the U.N. human-rights system and this council, in particular, are beyond shame.

Avaei used his speech to rail against the alleged Western domination of the U.N. Yet the fact that Avaei was permitted to address the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room in Geneva is proof that the world’s jackals and despots lord over the council.

The best guide to Avaei’s curriculum vitae comes via the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, a New Haven-based outfit that uses victim interviews and other documentary evidence to meticulously investigate rights abuses in the Islamic Republic.

An IHRDC report on the 1988 massacre of thousands of Iranian dissidents identifies Avaei as an “interrogator and torturer at a prison” in Dezful, in southern Iran. There, Avaei sat on the “death commissions” that carried out Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa ordering the regime to liquidate imprisoned leftists and members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK).
‘Nobody knows what peace plan is,’ White House says after report on framework
The White House on Wednesday dismissed a report claiming its Middle East peace plan might recognize a Palestinian State with its capital in East Jerusalem, saying the proposal had yet to take shape.

“As we have not finished our plan, nobody knows what it is,” a senior administration official told The Times of Israel. “There is constant speculation and guessing about what we are working on and this report is more of the same.”

London-based Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported Wednesday that US President Donald Trump’s diplomatic team tasked with brokering an accord was formulating a plan that might include US and international recognition of a Palestinian state.

It quoted “knowledgeable Arab diplomatic sources” in Paris who said the US was planning to present its plan through an international conference in one of the Arab capitals, most likely in Cairo.

The plan, the report said, calls for placing the Old City of Jerusalem under “international protection.”

It also said that the US would require the Palestinians to give up their “right of return” demand for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, who seek to return to their former homes inside Israel proper. Moreover, it said large settlements would remain in place, while small ones would be “relocated.”

White House spokesman Josh Raffel accused those behind the report of trying to sway critics against the administration.
Palestinians call for closure of US mission in Palestine
Scores of Palestinians demonstrated yesterday calling the US’ security, political, cultural and economic offices in Palestine to be closed down in protest against President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The protest was held outside America House in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, where demonstrators waved flags that condemned that US policy towards the Palestinian issue.

They called for the expulsion of American diplomats as well as the closure of the US mission.

Slamming Trump’s decision on Jerusalem, the protesters chanted “Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine” and “the US is the occupation’s [Israel] partner in the aggression.”

On the sidelines of the demonstration, the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouthi, told the Anadolu Agency that the continued operation of the mission is “unacceptable after its stance towards Jerusalem”.

We reject any American peace solution or proposal. The US is a partner in the occupation of our country

Barghouthi stressed.

“We call for the expulsion of all the American government workers from our homeland,” Barghouthi said.
Palestinians to U.N. states: ‘Don’t let settlers enter your country’
United Nations member states should deny Israeli settlers entry to their countries, Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told the UN Human Rights Council at the opening of its 37th session in Geneva this week.

The international community must do more to “confront the Israeli colonial settlement system” in the Palestinian territories, including east Jerusalem and the West Bank, Maliki said.

He called on the council to fully publish its so-called “blacklist” of companies doing business with the settlements.

The UNHRC announced last month that publication of the corporate database, originally scheduled for December 2017, had been delayed. No new date for publication has been set.

Maliki told the council that trade prohibitions with Israeli-controlled areas over pre-1967 border lines was not enough.

“Practical measures are needed against the settlers, including preventing them from entering your country,” Maliki said.
PA Foreign Minister urges Brazil to play key role in peace process
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki has called on Brazil to play a key role in a multilaterally mediated peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, the official PA news site Wafa reported.

Maliki made the statement during a meeting in Ramallah on Thursday with Brazilian Foreign Minister Aloysio Nunes.

Since President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December and initiated the relocation of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the city, Abbas has said the Palestinians will no longer work with an American-dominated peace process and has called for the establishment of a multilaterally mediated peace process to replace it.

In a speech at the United Nations Security Council last week, PA President Mahmoud Abbas called for an international peace conference in mid-2018, which he said should conclude with the creation of a mechanism for a multilaterally mediated peace process.

Israel has said it will only work with a US-led peace process.
European countries said to demand changes to US peace plan
European countries are reportedly attempting to persuade Washington to make changes to US President Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.

The countries are acting at the request of the Palestinian Authority, which is demanding that the plan include a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders and a recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state, the London-based Saudi newspaper Al-Hayat reported Thursday.

Western diplomatic sources are said to have confirmed the correspondence, while expressing doubt that the Trump administration would consider all the European demands, according to the Israeli news site Ynet.

On Wednesday, another London-based Saudi newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat, reported that the Trump administration plan may include US and international recognition of a Palestinian state.

The plan, the report said, calls for placing the Old City of Jerusalem under “international protection.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas speaking at the UN Security Council on February 20, 2018. (Screen capture/YouTube)

The report quoted “knowledgeable Arab diplomatic sources” in Paris as saying that the US was planning to present its plan in the framework of an international conference that would be held in one of the Arab capitals, most likely Cairo, with Israelis in attendance.

However, the sources did not say when the US administration would come out with its plan, the details of which remain under wraps.
U.S. slams UNHRC on Israel, Iran
The United States on Wednesday slammed the United Nations Human Rights Council for its biased treatment of Israel and for providing a platform to human rights abusers such as Iran.

“It is unacceptable that the HRC treats Israel differently from every other UN member,” US Ambassador Mary Catherine Phee said.

“The institutional integrity of the Council demands that the efforts to delegitimize and isolate Israel through such blatant bias must end,” Phee told the council as it met this week in Geneva for the start of its 37th session that ends on March 23rd.

Phee took issue with the UNHRC mandates that Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank must be debated at each session under Agenda 7 and that there must be a permanent investigator assigned to investigate such abuses.

No other country has such a permanent mandate. All global human rights abuses are debated under Agenda Item 4, including those in Syria and Iran. None of the countries who are considered to be serial human rights abusers have a permanent investigator assigned to them.

Such investigators have only temporary mandates that must be renewed.

“When it comes to human rights, no country should be free from scrutiny, including Israel,” said Phee who is the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of International Organizations. Israel, Phee told the council, must be held to an equitable standard that would apply to any other country.
The United Nations Human Rights Council Needs a Major Overhaul!
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) consists of 47 member states elected by the majority of members of the U.N. General Assembly and is the highest international body dealing with human right issues around the world.

The UNHRC’s mandate is to “promote and protect the enjoyment and full realization, by all people of all rights established in the Charter of the United Nations and international laws and treaties.” These rights include but are not limited to:

- The right to life, liberty and security of person.
- The right to be free from torture or any other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
- The right to be free from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
- The right to freedom of opinion and expression.

Ironically many of the members of UNHRC are states that deliberately and systematically violate those very rights that the Council is supposed to uphold and protect.

The Current members of UNHRC include Saudi Arabia, a state where expression of opinions are punished by arrest, long-term imprisonment and flogging, as is the case of well-known writer and activist Raif Badawi who has been sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment and 1000 lashes for creating the website “Free Saudi Liberals.”

China is another member state that is well known for its systematic human rights violations against its citizens. China has the highest rate of execution per capita in the world, systematically imprisons peaceful Falun Gong practitioners and is involved in the horrific practice of organ harvesting.

The list goes on and on, Afghanistan, “Democratic” Republic of Congo, Cuba, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria are all current members of UNHRC and well known human right violators.
Dore Gold: A Negotiated Route to Kurdish Independence
Dore Gold told the Valdai conference in Moscow on February 19, 2018: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the Kurds are deserving of self-government. The Kurdish quest for political independence began at the same time as the Jewish national movement. We both appear in the treaties after World War I, where the international community made commitments to Jewish self-government and to Kurdish self-government.

If I can give the Kurds some friendly advice, it is always tempting when you're frustrated to go the route of unilateralism. But a negotiated route to independence, as difficult as it is, is a far better course of action than doing it yourself.


Israeli group mints Trump coin to honor Jerusalem recognition
An Israeli organization has minted a commemorative coin bearing U.S. President Donald Trump's image to honor his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the organization announced Wednesday. The coin cannot be used as currency.

The Mikdash Educational Center said its "Temple Coin" features an image of Trump alongside King Cyrus, who 2,500 years ago allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem from their exile in Babylon. The coin also mentions the name Balfour, referring to the 1917 Balfour Declaration announcing the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people.

Rabbi Mordechai Persoff of the center said that Trump, like Cyrus, had made a "big declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of the holy people."

The organization says it has minted 1,000 half-shekel coins that can be purchased for a minimum donation of $50 each.

Mikdash bills itself as a nonprofit educational and religious organization. The donations will "help spread the light of Jerusalem and the spirit of the Holy Temple throughout the world," it said.

Israel has warmly welcomed Trump's Dec. 6 announcement, which angered Palestinians.

The Trump coin is likely to rile Iranians, who uniformly respect King Cyrus as an ancient Persian hero.
El Al seeking to fly over Saudi Arabia to India — report
Israel’s largest airline has reportedly appealed to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), requesting the body’s help in obtaining permission to access Saudi Arabia’s airspace for a direct flight to India This would mark a significant change of policy for the Arab state, which has never recognized Israel.

El Al newly appointed CEO Gonen Usishkin wrote a letter to Alexandre de Juniac, head of the trade association consisting of 278 airlines from 117 countries, asking to not be “discriminated” against compared with Indian airline Air India, Reuters reported Thursday.

It came in response to reports last month that Saudi Arabia had okayed the use of its airspace for Air India flights between Israel and India, reports that were quickly denied by Saudi officials. However, the El Al chief said slot information from the Israel Airports Authority indicated those flight are slated to begin on March 6.

The approval of the use of Saudi airspace for either Air India or El Al, which would cut hours off the flight route between the two countries, would be a first and mark a major milestone in Israel’s attempts to deepen ties with Gulf Sunni states.
Israeli-American teen indicted for bomb threats, hate crimes
The 19-year-old Israeli teen who has been accused of making threats against Jewish community centers in the United States in 2016 and 2017 was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday.

The teen, who holds dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship and whose identity is sealed by an Israeli court, was arrested in Israel last year after authorities discovered that he allegedly made thousands of threats from his apartment in Ashkelon, a coastal city in Israel.

The threats had affected airports, schools and Jewish centers in the United States in 2016 and early 2017. One threat against a Delta Airlines flight in February 2015 resulted in an emergency landing.

The teen was indicted by grand juries in Florida, Georgia and the District of Columbia, the Justice Department said. The statement did not say whether he would be extradited to the United States.

He allegedly telephoned the Anti-Defamation League with a bomb threat and emailed another such threat to the Israeli embassy in Washington, both in March 2017, the Justice Department said. The indictment also claims that he called police in January 2017 about a hoax hostage situation at a home in Athens, Georgia, which included a threat to kill responding officers.

The indictment also includes charges of "attempting to obstruct the free exercise of religion at the Jewish Community Centers when he made the bomb threats and active shooter threats," the Justice Department said Wednesday. "Although no actual explosives were found, many of the calls resulted in the temporary closure and evacuation or lockdown of the targeted facilities, and required law enforcement and emergency personnel to respond to and clear the area," the statement read.
Ground Forces to play a bigger role in next war
The IDF's Ground Forces Command has been developing new weapons systems that will reshape the battlefield for the infantry, armored corps, combat engineering units and artillery forces, as troops are expected to face a whole new series of threats on land, in the air and below ground.

The Command revealed this week a number of new weapons that are already being integrated into the IDF’s forward units, and others that will are still in development and will be integrated gradually in the coming years.

For example, maneuvering forces will be outfitted with an "Iron Dome" of sorts that can identify, warn, and even deflect threats directed by Hamas or Hezbollah at concentrated groups of IDF forces.

Threats include booby-trapped multicopter drones, "kamikaze drones," and short-range rockets that can hold half a ton of explosives. Intercepting such threats will be carried out in a number of ways, including interceptive rockets, laser beams and radio scrambling using electronic warfare.

It has not yet been decided whether the modern anti-aircraft units will be part of the reconnaissance infantry battalions, which are generally at the frontline of the battle, or as part of a new brigade based on conventional artillery units.

In addition, integrated fighting forces will receive lethal tactical firepower: company, battalion and brigade commanders will receive loitering munitions in the form of small UAVs carrying explosives that are able to attack a nearby target with an accuracy of up to one meter.
Hezbollah video claims to show bomb that killed Israeli general in 1999
The Hezbollah-affiliated television network station Al-Manar on Wednesday broadcast footage of what it claimed was a roadside bomb attack in which an Israeli brigadier general, two Arab-Israeli soldiers and a radio reporter were killed 19 years ago.

There was no independent confirmation that the video, with its blurred images of the aftermath of an explosion, was authentic.

Brig. Gen. Erez Gerstein — then head of the IDF’s Lebanon liaison unit, effectively the top Israeli military official in Lebanon — Imad Abu-Rish, Omar El-Kabetz and Kol Israel radio reporter Ilan Roeh died on February 28, 1999 when the armored vehicle in which they were traveling in an Israeli-controlled area of south Lebanon was blown up.

The four had left the northern Israeli town of Metullah that morning for a South Lebanon village where an IDF unit of Druze soldiers was stationed. After stopping off at the home of a South Lebanon Army fighter who had been killed in fighting against Hezbollah, they set off back towards the Israeli border at the head of a convoy.

The massive roadside bomb, disguised as a rock, exploded just 300 meters (roughly 1,000 feet) from a United Nations position.

Evacuation of the dead was complicated by the presence of additional, un-exploded bombs and gunfire from Hezbollah positions.

Israel and the SLA — a Lebanese Christian militia supported by Israel — fought Lebanese Muslim fighters led by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror organization for 15 years in a band of southern Lebanon along the border with Israel that Israel characterized as its “security zone” during those years.

Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.

The broadcast comes amid heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah in recent months.
Soldiers defuse explosives planted on Gaza fence by Palestinian rioters
The Israeli army on Thursday “neutralized” an improvised explosive device that had been set up on the security fence around the southern Gaza Strip, similar to one that injured four soldiers nearly two weeks ago, the army said.

“Earlier this morning, IDF soldiers neutralized an IED on the security fence in southern Gaza. It was set up to harm IDF soldiers stationed near the fence,” an army spokesperson said.

The Israel Defense Forces would not specify how the bomb was disarmed, but Gaza residents told Palestinian media that it had been blown up in a controlled explosion by military sappers.

An army spokesperson said the IED was apparently installed during a violent demonstration along the border two weeks ago, as it was the same type as the one that wounded the four soldiers on February 17.

In that Saturday incident, four IDF soldiers were injured when they attempted to remove the IED, disguised as a flag, from the Gaza security fence near the city of Khan Younis.

As they pulled the device off the fence, it was apparently detonated remotely.
Clifford D. May: Violence in Gaza justifies Israeli presence in the West Bank


Hamas and Abbas rival discuss forming joint Gaza government
Hamas was not ruling out the possibility of forming a “national salvation” government with deposed Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan, who is an archenemy of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas official was quoted on Thursday as saying.

A senior Hamas delegation headed by Ismail Haniyeh met in Cairo recently with representatives of Dahlan and discussed possible collaboration efforts.

It was unclear whether the Hamas officials had also met with the Egyptian-backed Dahlan personally.

The delegation, which also held intensive discussions with Egyptian government officials in the past three weeks, returned to the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

The discussions focused on ways to end the ongoing dispute between Hamas and Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction, as well as what many are calling a humanitarian crisis inside the Gaza Strip and security issues related to Egypt’s war against jihadists in Sinai.
Palestinian migrant gets life sentence for supermarket stabbing in Germany
A Palestinian asylum seeker and radicalized Islamist who killed one person and injured six others in a knife attack in a Hamburg supermarket in July has been sentenced to life in prison, a spokesman for a city court said on Thursday.

Hamburg residents threw chairs and other objects at the attacker - who had been known to authorities - helping police to detain him, but a 50-year-old man died of his injuries.

The asylum seeker could not be deported as he lacked identification documents and was psychologically unstable, Hamburg's Interior Minister Andy Grote said after the attack.

Grote also said he had been registered in intelligence systems as an Islamist but not a violent one as there was no evidence to link him to an imminent attack.

Germany has been on high alert ever since December 2016, when a Tunisian failed asylum seeker killed 12 people by driving a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.
Sweden, Jordan and Egypt planning conference to boost support for UNRWA
Sweden, Jordan and Egypt are slated to co-host a conference later this month to assist the UN Relief and Works Agency in overcoming a major funding gap, Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the organization, said.

The conference will take place on March 15 in Rome, according to Gunness.

UNRWA provides health, education, social welfare and other services to millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

“The purpose of the conference is to actively support a collective response by the international community to protect the rights and dignity of Palestine refugees,” Gunness said in a statement.

The announcement of the conference’s date comes some six weeks after US President Donald Trump’s administration said it would withhold $65 million of a planned contribution of $125m. to the agency.

US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert has said the Trump administration wants UNRWA to enact reforms and other countries to increase their funding to the organization.
Inside The 7-Year-Old Iranian Propaganda Machine Producing Fake BBC News
Russia isn't alone in its campaign to spread fake news. Iran was one of the early adopters in the world of made-up current affairs designed to spread disinformation and discredit legitimate media. One of its main targets in recent years has been the BBC. The news organization's journalists have faced harassment to the point the BBC filed a complaint with the United Nations last year. On Tuesday, an Israeli cybersecurity company claimed to have found a handful of websites that have been impersonating BBC Persian for seven years.

One is bbcpersian.net, which remains online today. The site's design is very close to that of the BCC, and some stories could, on the face of it, pass as real. Most stories, however, are anti-BBC articles or posts from other outlets that the BBC is accused of ignoring. It also includes original videos, alleging faults in news coverage by the Persian BBC. One example headline, translated into English from the original, reads, "The BBC 'weaving lies' in order to destroy Islam and the Islamic republic." Another read,"The BBC's important news: the divorce of two Hollywood actors."

The lead story on Wednesday is entitled, "The Persian BBC attack on the Hijab: beating a hollow drum." Accompanied by a cartoon of a devil-tailed television attacking a woman's hijab, the teaser reads, "As the Persian BBC is a British royal news agency and seeks to spread Western and colonial culture, it opposes and conflicts with any sort of original Iranian and Islamic culture."

According to Israel-based cybersecurity firm ClearSky, which detailed the fakes in a 52-page report Wednesday, the sites have been running since 2011. To spread the fake news further, Facebook and Telegram pages to support the counterfeit sites were set up, though they've been inactive in recent months.

So successful have the perpetrators been at promoting the fake sites, they appear high in search engine rankings. On the Persian versions of Google and Yahoo, for instance, the site is third highest in each. On the Iranian government-sponsored search engine Yooz, it's top of the pile.
Syria is now ‘a Shi’a colony of Iran,’ Damascus-born professor tells Israeli conference
Syria has become a "Shi'a colony of Iran," Bassam Tibi, Syrian-born professor emeritus of international relations at Georg-August University of Gottingen, told a recent conference at the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. "The Alawites of the Assad regime have killed our Sunni identity."

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran has been filling the vacuum "created by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Ever since, Iran has been expanding its power....The Saudis are unable to meet the Iranian challenge. Iran now controls Iraq, Lebanon and Syria."

Daniel S. Mariaschin, executive vice president and CEO of B'nai B'rith, who recently met with Persian Gulf leaders in the UAE, said, "Sunni eyes are opening to the fact that Israel poses no threat, but that Shi'a Iran...aspires to dominate far beyond its borders."

Professor Hillel Frisch, a member of BESA, said the term "Arab-Israeli conflict" is no longer relevant to describe the region. "It's basically an Israeli-Iranian conflict or an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The only Arabs that are confronting Israel today are proxies of Iran."

Frisch described Iran as "truly a radical imperial state. The best proof of that is that it's the only state in the Middle East...that projects power over 1,000 kilometers from its border," using it to attack Israel, which harbors no ill will towards Iran.
Iran wrestling head ousted after panning policy of lying to avoid Israelis
The head of Iran’s wrestling federation resigned on Wednesday after criticizing authorities for letting athletes pay the price for the ban on facing Israeli opponents.

Wrestling is a hugely popular sport in Iran where Rasoul Khadem, an Olympic gold medalist, was re-elected as president of the Wrestling Federation just two months ago.

But in a somewhat cryptic letter published on the federation’s website he suggested he had been forced from his post, saying “apparently it is not going to work out” because of “my awkward mentality.”

“I cannot lie. Sometimes the best way to take a stand is not to stand,” he wrote.

The councils for freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling announced they were resigning en masse along with Khadem, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

Khadem had recently criticized Iranian authorities for their approach to competing against Israeli opponents.
Islam Respects Right of Jews to ‘Live in Dignity,’ Muslim World League Chief Muhammad al-Issa Declares
As the keener readers of Jewish media outlets and social media feeds will doubtless be aware, there is an active bidding war going on right now between the rival Gulf Arab states of Qatar and Saudi Arabia for the hearts and minds of American Jews.

Over the last few months, several American Jewish figures of varying degrees of influence have flown to Doha to hear directly from the ruling al-Thani family about why they have been profoundly misunderstood regarding their embrace of the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas and the ruling regime in Iran. Meanwhile, the Saudis have seemingly upended decades of Salafi Islamist propaganda against the Jews by discreetly warming relations with Israel, explicitly identifying Iran’s rulers as the single greatest threat to the Middle East, and stoking political opposition to the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.

In this maelstrom of political consultants, PR flaks and advocacy leaders armed with talking points, the figure of Muhammad al-Issa is something of an incongruity. A former Saudi minister of justice, and presently the secretary-general of the influential, Mecca-based Muslim World League, al-Issa has, in recent weeks, been addressing the twin issues of antisemitism and anti-Judaism among the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims with an unprecedented candor.

Spending two hours with the methodical, scholarly al-Issa — as The Algemeiner did in Washington, DC, earlier this month — it is plain to see why, at this particular juncture, he is an asset to a Saudi government eager to convince the West that, finally, it stands resolute against both Sunni and Shi’a variants of Islamism, and is determined to establish Islam as a religion of peace and coexistence. Still, to reduce Al-Issa’s own message to a strictly political calculation would be a grave mistake, if only because its theological content needs to be heard irrespective of the political machinations in Gulf capitals.



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From Interesting Engineering:

A team of Opthalmologists at Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Bar-Ilan University’s Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials developed eye-drops that have been found to repair the corneas and improve short and long sightedness. The nanoparticle solution called as “nanodrops” was successfully used on pigs’ corneas.

Clinical trials on humans are expected to be carried out later this year, and if successful, this revolutionary invention could potentially eliminate the need for eyeglasses. According to Dr. David Smadja, leader of the research team, the eye-drops could revolutionize ophthalmological and optometry treatments of patients suffering from myopia, hyperopia and other refractory conditions.

The revolutionary breakthrough was revealed by Dr. Smadja on Wednesday at Shaare Zedek’s second biennial research day, which was held at Steinberg Auditorium in Jerusalem. He said that nanodrops could even be used to replace multifocal lenses and allow people to see object from different distances.

“This is a new concept for correcting refractory problems,” Smadja said. He, however, did not mention how often the drops will require being applied to replace eyeglasses completely.

According to the research abstract, the experiment led by Dr. Smadja and his colleagues involved analyzing refractive errors of pig eyes before and after instillation of nano drops filled with various concentration of synthetic nanoparticles. The results showed significant improvement in error correction for both myopic (near-sightedness) and hyperopic (far-sightedness) refractive error.

If the results in humans are successful, prospective patients will simply require a smartphone app to scan the eyes, measure their refraction, create a laser pattern and then “laser corneal stamping” of an optical pattern onto the corneal surface of their eyes.

The research from Smadja was one of the two chosen works by an impartial team of judges from 160 pieces of research carried out by Shaare Zedek physicians and nurses over the last two years. The hospital staff publishes around 330 articles every year in different medical and science journals through the Shaare Zedek Mada’it (Scientific), a research and development company established for hospital researchers.

The abstract says:
A mean correction of 2,24 +/- 0.07D has been achieved for myopic refractive error testing, whereas a correction of 1,96+/-0.2D has been achieved for hyperopic refractive error. No statistically significant changes have been observed in the corneal central keratometry. Encapsulated hypereflective nanoparticules of 0.58nm diameter on average were observed throughout the first 60microns of the corneal thickness. 
This sounds a lot better than laser eye surgery!

Apparently, the nanoparticles do not change the shape of the eye, but the refractive properties of the cornea. I found a 2016 video where Dr. Smajda discusses his research for a technical audience.


(h/t Yoel)






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Screenshot of Nasrallah speech, February 12, 2017, when he called Trump a fool


From the EU-funded Assessment of Media Legislation in Lebanon:

The Lebanese Penal Code punishes those who are found guilty of defamation crimes with fines and prison sentences that are highest (up to two years imprisonment) when the reputation of the Lebanese president or of the heads of other states are harmed (Articles 383 to 389 in the Penal Code, 17 to 23 in the Press Law). The informal title “the law of the kings and heads of state” given to libel provisions related to presidents and other world leaders dates back to the early 1960s. At the time, Arab heads of state who resented being criticised in the Lebanese press consistently pressured the Lebanese president to introduce amendments to the Press Law in order to shield them from criticism. Eventually, an amendment to the Press Law was introduced in 1965 by a special decree by President Helou.
 Yes, if an ordinary Lebanese citizen criticizes Trump or Bibi, they can get up to two years of jail time!

And Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called Trump an "idiot" (or "foolish") last year soon after he took office:

“So what if Trump comes? What’s new?” he asked.
“We are not worried, but very optimistic because when an idiot resides in the White House, this is the beginning of the release for the oppressed in the world,” he said. The Arabic word he used can also be translated as "fool."
Hassan Nasrallah has violated Lebanese law and should be arrested and jailed.

Calling Shurat HaDin....






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My headline may be funnier than this, but enjoy it anyway:



(h/t Yerushalimey)



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