Arabs in Israel’s Highlands

The Druze are a unique people living in northern Israel. Neither Jewish nor Muslim, they are Israeli citizens who have an interesting bond with the Jewish state.

There are 120,000 Druze living in Israel, as well as larger populations in Syria and Lebanon. They are Arabs who broke away from Islam in the 10th century, and they follow their own religion, revering Jethro as their main prophet.

Before 1948, the Druze were persecuted by Arab nationalists–and, during the Israeli War of Independence, they fought alongside Jewish soldiers. Since then, Druze serve in the Israeli army, with a higher percentage of officers than the general population. There are also currently five Druze members of Knesset.

The Druze exist as a closed society, neither accepting converts nor living with outsiders. One of the Druze community’s most high-profile visitors of late was Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who filmed a documentary in 2007, The Olive and the Tree: The Secret Strength of the Druze–in which she explored their culture, their relationship to Israeli Jews and Muslims, and the ways that they’ve managed to preserve their very private cultural identity (and secrets) in a world that leaves them very little room for either.

Outrage: Paris Museum Glorifies Palestinian Terrorists

by Simon Plosker for HonestReporting

An outrageous new “art” exhibit, which refers to Israel as a “colonial power” and Palestinian terrorists as “fighters” and “victims of the Israeli military,” has opened in a museum in Paris. Suicide bombers are referred to as “militants” who heroically set out to “assassinate Israelis.”
According to the JTA, the exhibition of 68 photos entitled “Death” by Ahlam Shibli opened on May 28 at the Jeu de Paume museum of contemporary art in Paris. The museum is subsidized by the French government.

The museum’s English description reveals (emphasis added):

This work is based on the demand for recognition that became apparent with the Second Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against the colonial power in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967. The Second Intifada lasted from 2000 to 2005 and claimed several thousand deaths on the Palestinian side.

Death exhibits some of the ways in which the ones who are absent become present again—“represented”: Palestinian fighters, who fell in the course of their armed resistance against the Israeli incursions, and victims of the Israeli military killed under different circumstances (Shaheed and Shaheeda); militants who carried out attacks which they knew would lead to their death, among them the men and women who detonated explosives on their own bodies to assassinate Israelis (Istishhadi and Istishhadiya), and the prisoners. The former are dead, the latter are alive, jailed for a large part if not the rest of their lives.

The representations designate any person who lost his or her life as a result of the Israeli occupation of Palestine: a martyr.

This exhibition justifies and  glorifies Palestinian terrorists.

The JTA continues:

According to CRIF, the umbrella body of French Jewish communities, the people commemorated in the photos are “mostly from the [Fatah-affiliated] al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades [of Hamas] and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” All three are designated by the European Union as terrorist groups.

One of the photos is of Osama Buchkar, a PFLP operative who killed three people and wounded 59 in a terrorist attack he carried out at an open market in Netanya on May 19, 2002. The caption to his picture says he “committed a martyr mission in Netanya.”

Continue reading.

Google is close to ending the speculation and buying Israeli Company Waze

Google is close to completing a $1.3 billion deal to acquire social mapping firm Waze — finally ending months of speculation about the startup — according to media reports out of its native Israel.

Globes, a leading online newspaper in the country, reports that Google is currently tying up final deals and ‘will soon’ announce that it has captured the much sought after startup — which both Apple and Facebook have been linked with in recent times.

Update: AllThingsD cites two sources close to the deal who verify Globes’ report, one estimates that the acquisition could be announced as soon on Tuesday.

The deal would be an interesting one that would pair Google’s vast expertise and data in the mapping space, with Waze’s engaged and growing community of drivers and map editors (see below for stats and data). Waze CEO Noam Bardin has spoken of the difficulty of competing with ‘vast players’, and linking up with Google would provide some serious steel and new resources for the service. You can also imagine Waze’s ‘socialified’ maps fitting well with Google Maps and Google+, while it would also be a defensive move to prevent the technology being acquired by Apple or other rivals.

Interestingly, Globes says — citing sources — that the key to the deal is Google’s decision to allow Waze’s senior management and core team to remain based in Israel, where the search giant has a growing presence of its own. That runs opposite to the issues that were said to have broken Facebook’s efforts to land Waze for a reported $1 billion.

Continue reading.

Israel Beats Honduras in Soccer Match

The two countries played a friendly game at Citi Field this weekend

By Matthew Fishbane

A sea of blue and white at Citi Field in Queens—but whose? By chance, Honduras and Israel, which played an international soccer friendly there Sunday, have strikingly similar flags. With an announced crowd of 26,170, nearly a quarter of the New York region’s estimated 60,000 Hondurans must have been in attendance, with customary soccer-fandom accouterments: horns, face paint, and flag capes. The motto for the Catrachos is “Ahora Sí Papá”—now we’re not kidding anymore, we really mean it. On the Israeli side: schools of overexcited boys, Long Island families, shirtless bald Israelis, and matching-T-shirted groups still buoyant from the earlier Celebrate Israel events in New York, which included an 8 a.m. run in Central Park and a midday parade down 5th Ave. One fan I met in the stands explained her presence by pointing to her young daughter—a curly-headed coffee-skinned cutie—and saying, “Her father is from Honduras, I am from Israel.” From behind first base a chant would take root and grow—HON-DU-RAS! HON-DU-RAS!—only to be countered from left center field by a less numerous, but no less boisterous EH RETZ IS-RA-EL! EH RETZ IS-RA-EL!—drowned out by breaching jumbo jets.

Out trotted Ido Aharoni, Israel’s Consul General in New York (wide applause), mostly to introduce the other Grand Pooh-Bah, Knicks forward Amar’e Stoudemire (huge applause), who seems to enjoy something of a mascot role for Israeli sporting causes. My friend, neither Honduran nor Israeli, was concerned that the Hondurans were warming up with passing drills, while the Israelis seemed to be doing nothing but IDF-inspired calisthenics.

Continue reading.

The Operating Room of the Future

Israel is at it again, leading the way in medical technology for non-invasive surgery.

3-year-old Israeli’s kidney saves Palestinian boy

Health minister praises Noam Naor’s ‘noble, inspirational’ family 

By AARON KALMAN for Times of Israel 

When three-year-old Noam Naor fell out the window and was pronounced clinically dead 10 days ago, his parents decided to donate his organs. One kidney was given to another Israeli child. The other saved the life of a 10-year-old Palestinian.

The operation, carried out Sunday at the Schneider children’s ward at Petah Tikva’s Beilinson Hospital, was deemed successful.

Health Minister Yael German on Sunday praised the Naor family for the life-saving act, which she called “an example” for everyone.

“In my eyes, Noam’s parents are noble and an inspiration to us all,” German said. At the hardest moment of their life, they made a difficult decision that their son’s death would bequeath life to a Palestinian child.

“Their donation is a source of pride and an example of humanity and kindness,” the minister said.

The Palestinian boy had been treated with dialysis at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center for seven years before the match was found. The Health Ministry’s transplant center contacted Noam’s parents, and asked them if they’d be willing to donate the kidney to someone who wasn’t Israeli — specifically, a Palestinian.

“It doesn’t matter who gets the kidneys, so long as fewer children need to undergo dialysis treatments,” News1 quoted Noam’s father as saying.

The father of the boy who received the donation told the site he had “no words” that could express his feelings, but wanted to thank the donor’s family who gave his son “a new life after years of waiting.”

 

A little levity to get your morning going

Enjoy!