Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Bennett turns to cartoons in effort to spread word of Iran dangers
Two-minute animated YouTube clip released by Diaspora Affairs Ministry warns against signing bad nuclear deal with Tehran.
The Diaspora Ministry on Tuesday released a two-minute animated YouTube clip mapping out what it says are "the pitfalls" of the nuclear agreement which western powers are currently negotiating with Iran over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.
The movie was sent out to hundreds of Jewish leaders and organizations in an effort to raise awareness of the danger Iran will continue to pose, even with an agreement in place, the ministry stated.
In a letter accompanying the film, Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett wrote, “Now is the time to speak up and take action to stop a bad deal from being signed that will allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.”
From jpost.com
Monday, May 19, 2014
One of The Greatest Tours of Jerusalem you Will Ever See
This video will really help you connect to Jerusalem, especially to the
ancient Jewish sites. It helps you really understand Eastern Jerusalem
strategically, and it actually helped me connect on the deepest level.
It’s amazing seeing sites that have come to life after thousands of
yers. Awesome!
Love Israel? Check out our
page.
Love Israel? Check out our
page.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Lisa Kudrow’s Son Had a ‘Drive-By Bar Mitzvah’
Impromptu rite of passage performed while he was shopping at the mall
By Stephanie Butnick for Tablet Magazine
He wasn’t invited, Kudrow explains, because no one was invited. The Jewish actress wasn’t even there when it happened. It was what she calls a “drive-by bar mitzvah.”
A drive-by bar mitzvah, it turns out, is both less and more frightening than it sounds. Her 15-year-old son was at the mall one day when he was approached by what Kudrow guesses were Chabad representatives, who asked if he was Jewish. He said half, they asked which half, he said his mother’s side, and they asked if he had been bar mitzvahed. He hadn’t. Did he want to? Sure.
Kudrow describes the exchange with a mix of amusement and incredulousness, explaining that the men put tefillin and a yarmulke on him, had him recite a prayer, then took a picture for him to show his mother.
While I’m not entirely certain this constitutes a bar mitzvah (Don’t you have to be called to the Torah? Aren’t there usually giveaways?), Kudrow seemed to be fine with the whole thing. The best part of the story, though, is that when Kudrow told her relatives about the impromptu rite of passage, they started sending her son checks. Back to the mall he goes.
Watch video with Conan O'Brien
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Submission: Ethics statement contains double standard
By Luba Ismakov and David Nusbaum for The Daily Bruin
Over
the past several weeks, we have witnessed the emergence of a troubling
double standard targeting Jewish and pro-Israel students and
organizations. While cloaked in the language of “ethics,”
“marginalization” and “human rights,” this initiative is actually about
denying our narrative and represents a frontal assault on dialogue,
education and constitutionally protected rights.
During the recent Undergraduate Students Association Council elections, a coalition of student groups including the Muslim Students Association, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace led an initiative asking candidates to sign an “ethics statement.” The statement asked candidates to pledge to refrain from taking trips with certain pro-Israel organizations, based on claims that these groups “marginalize” communities on camps.
Further, in an article published on May 6, the editorial board of Al-Talib targeted an individual running for USAC, demanding that he condemn and publicly disassociate himself from a pro-Israel organization that sponsored his educational trip to Israel. While these demands seem legitimate on the surface, they are blatantly hypocritical.
For example, numerous USAC representatives and student leaders are affiliated with the UC Student Association and the US Student Association. Both of these organizations have taken positions or actions that marginalized student communities. In 2012, the UCSA passed an anti-Israel resolution on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. They failed to notify Jewish and pro-Israel students in advance or give them any opportunity to raise concerns. The same year, the USSA published a position paper called “Fund Education, Not Oppression,” which contained direct references to the anti-Israel BDS movement, as well as offensive fallacies about Israel.
While the authors of the “ethics statement” make the claim that the aforementioned trips to Israel are problematic because the sponsoring organizations have “marginalized” students, the same argument can be made regarding sponsored trips to UCSA and USSA conferences.
No attempt, however, was made to address those organizations – only pro-Israel groups were targeted.
The groups that circulated the joint statement of ethics are calling for the effective blacklisting of only Jewish and pro-Israel organizations from campus life and politics.
Continue reading.
Over
the past several weeks, we have witnessed the emergence of a troubling
double standard targeting Jewish and pro-Israel students and
organizations. While cloaked in the language of “ethics,”
“marginalization” and “human rights,” this initiative is actually about
denying our narrative and represents a frontal assault on dialogue,
education and constitutionally protected rights.During the recent Undergraduate Students Association Council elections, a coalition of student groups including the Muslim Students Association, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace led an initiative asking candidates to sign an “ethics statement.” The statement asked candidates to pledge to refrain from taking trips with certain pro-Israel organizations, based on claims that these groups “marginalize” communities on camps.
Further, in an article published on May 6, the editorial board of Al-Talib targeted an individual running for USAC, demanding that he condemn and publicly disassociate himself from a pro-Israel organization that sponsored his educational trip to Israel. While these demands seem legitimate on the surface, they are blatantly hypocritical.
For example, numerous USAC representatives and student leaders are affiliated with the UC Student Association and the US Student Association. Both of these organizations have taken positions or actions that marginalized student communities. In 2012, the UCSA passed an anti-Israel resolution on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. They failed to notify Jewish and pro-Israel students in advance or give them any opportunity to raise concerns. The same year, the USSA published a position paper called “Fund Education, Not Oppression,” which contained direct references to the anti-Israel BDS movement, as well as offensive fallacies about Israel.
While the authors of the “ethics statement” make the claim that the aforementioned trips to Israel are problematic because the sponsoring organizations have “marginalized” students, the same argument can be made regarding sponsored trips to UCSA and USSA conferences.
No attempt, however, was made to address those organizations – only pro-Israel groups were targeted.
The groups that circulated the joint statement of ethics are calling for the effective blacklisting of only Jewish and pro-Israel organizations from campus life and politics.
Continue reading.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
The 10 most anti-Semitic countries
And the 10 least anti-Semitic, according to a new global ADL survey
By Marissa Newman for The Times of Israel
The
results are in: Of the 101 countries plus the West Bank and Gaza
included in the Anti-Defamation League global survey released on
Tuesday, anti-Jewish sentiment was found to be most prevalent in the
Middle East and North Africa, with a staggering 74% of respondents
harboring anti-Semitic views. All 10 of the world’s most anti-Semitic
territories, indeed, are in the Middle East and North Africa.Below are the top 10 most and least anti-Semitic countries, culled from the survey, which based its findings on surveying 53,100 people from 100 countries worldwide.
1. West Bank and Gaza: The Palestinian territories were found to be the most staggeringly anti-Semitic in the world with a 93% overall index score. Among specific age groups, 92% of those between the ages of 18-49 were shown to have anti-Jewish views, and the figure jumped to 98% among those 50 and older.
2. Iraq: Trailing closely behind, Iraq reached an index score of 92%. While 10 of the questions on the 11-question survey measuring negative stereotypes were answered affirmatively by over 70% of respondents, only a third (33%) believed “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.”
Continue reading.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Israeli Apartheid? To Arabs, It’s a Model Democracy
Evelyn Gordon in Commentary
Yesterday, I wrote about a crucial legal fallacy behind the “Israeli apartheid” canard. But you don’t actually need to know anything about the Geneva Convention or international law to know how ridiculous this slur is; it’s enough to ask yourself one simple question: How many black Africans in other countries spoke admiringly about South African apartheid as a model they’d like their own countries to follow? The answer, of course, is not many–and if Israel really practiced apartheid against Arabs, Middle Eastern Arabs would respond similarly to an equivalent question about Israel. Yet in fact, Arabs throughout the Middle East persistently cite Israeli democracy as the model they’d like their own countries to adopt.
Back in 2011, when the Arab Spring revolutions were at their height, Haaretz correspondent Anshel Pfeffer reported being stunned to hear from demonstrators in both Tunis and Cairo–neither of whom knew he represented an Israeli newspaper–that they wanted “a democracy like in Israel.” Just two weeks ago, the Middle East Media Research Institute published excerpts from articles in the Arab press over the last year that held up Israel as a model Arab states should learn from–in some cases, because of its economic, scientific, and democratic achievements, but in others, because of its democracy and even its morality.
Even the Palestinians themselves consistently voice admiration for Israeli democracy. From 1996-2002 (the last year the question was asked), Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki conducted annual polls of what governments Palestinians admired. “Every year Israel has been the top performer, at times receiving more than 80 percent approval,” the New York Times reported in 2003. “The American system has been the next best, followed by the French and then, distantly trailing, the Jordanian and Egyptian.” And that’s not because those years, in contrast to today, were a time of progress and optimism in the peace process: They were the years of Benjamin Netanyahu’s first government (1996-99), the collapse of the Camp David talks (2000) and the height of the second intifada (2000-03).
Continue reading.
Yesterday, I wrote about a crucial legal fallacy behind the “Israeli apartheid” canard. But you don’t actually need to know anything about the Geneva Convention or international law to know how ridiculous this slur is; it’s enough to ask yourself one simple question: How many black Africans in other countries spoke admiringly about South African apartheid as a model they’d like their own countries to follow? The answer, of course, is not many–and if Israel really practiced apartheid against Arabs, Middle Eastern Arabs would respond similarly to an equivalent question about Israel. Yet in fact, Arabs throughout the Middle East persistently cite Israeli democracy as the model they’d like their own countries to adopt.
Back in 2011, when the Arab Spring revolutions were at their height, Haaretz correspondent Anshel Pfeffer reported being stunned to hear from demonstrators in both Tunis and Cairo–neither of whom knew he represented an Israeli newspaper–that they wanted “a democracy like in Israel.” Just two weeks ago, the Middle East Media Research Institute published excerpts from articles in the Arab press over the last year that held up Israel as a model Arab states should learn from–in some cases, because of its economic, scientific, and democratic achievements, but in others, because of its democracy and even its morality.
Even the Palestinians themselves consistently voice admiration for Israeli democracy. From 1996-2002 (the last year the question was asked), Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki conducted annual polls of what governments Palestinians admired. “Every year Israel has been the top performer, at times receiving more than 80 percent approval,” the New York Times reported in 2003. “The American system has been the next best, followed by the French and then, distantly trailing, the Jordanian and Egyptian.” And that’s not because those years, in contrast to today, were a time of progress and optimism in the peace process: They were the years of Benjamin Netanyahu’s first government (1996-99), the collapse of the Camp David talks (2000) and the height of the second intifada (2000-03).
Continue reading.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Israeli Students Develop An Electronic ‘Guide Dog’ For The Blind
By NoCamels Team
Despite
the constant advancement in cutting edge technology, most blind people
still use low-tech aids like a cane or guide dog. Combining both high
and low tech, three undergraduate students from the Faculty of
Electrical Engineering at the Technion have decided create an electronic
guide dog for the blind.
“The idea came to me while I was driving, where right before me I saw a blind man having trouble crossing the road,” undergraduate student Tzahi Simkin recalls. “I thought that if I could only describe to him, through technological means, a snapshot of the surrounding area, I would make it much easier for him and build his confidence in getting better oriented with his surroundings. I wanted to combine technological development with social assistance, and this is how this product was born.”
Simkin partnered up with two undergrads, Gal Dalal and Danny Zilber, and together the trio began working on the project. The device is based on a Kinect camera (also developed in Israel), a mobile phone application and headphones. The app deciphers the images captured by the Kinect camera and gives the user audio feedback through the headphones, warning them of obstacles and even recognizing cetain pre-programmed objects.
“The technological advantage of the Kinect camera lies in its ability to take very good depth images and that it is relatively cheap,” added Simkin. “This field is continually evolving, with cameras becoming smaller and less expensive all the time. Our project connected the depth images received from a smartphone application, to guide the blind within a given space.”
Continue reading.
Despite
the constant advancement in cutting edge technology, most blind people
still use low-tech aids like a cane or guide dog. Combining both high
and low tech, three undergraduate students from the Faculty of
Electrical Engineering at the Technion have decided create an electronic
guide dog for the blind.“The idea came to me while I was driving, where right before me I saw a blind man having trouble crossing the road,” undergraduate student Tzahi Simkin recalls. “I thought that if I could only describe to him, through technological means, a snapshot of the surrounding area, I would make it much easier for him and build his confidence in getting better oriented with his surroundings. I wanted to combine technological development with social assistance, and this is how this product was born.”
Simkin partnered up with two undergrads, Gal Dalal and Danny Zilber, and together the trio began working on the project. The device is based on a Kinect camera (also developed in Israel), a mobile phone application and headphones. The app deciphers the images captured by the Kinect camera and gives the user audio feedback through the headphones, warning them of obstacles and even recognizing cetain pre-programmed objects.
“The technological advantage of the Kinect camera lies in its ability to take very good depth images and that it is relatively cheap,” added Simkin. “This field is continually evolving, with cameras becoming smaller and less expensive all the time. Our project connected the depth images received from a smartphone application, to guide the blind within a given space.”
Continue reading.
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