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Facebook: Championing Blasphemy Laws

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On December 10, 2015, in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, wrote a Facebook post about making Facebook a "safe space" for Muslims. His post did not contain a word of condemnation of the terrorist attack, or allude to any of the widespread Islamic terrorist incitement that his social media platform hosts

Facebook, in cooperation with a British Muslim group, Faith Associates, recently launched a new “guide” developed especially for Muslims: “Keeping Muslims Safe Online: Tackling Hate and Bigotry”.

The launch of the guide was hosted on November 29 at the British Parliament, where Karim Palant, Facebook’s UK Public Policy manager, acknowledged “the partnership of Facebook with Faith Associates and said this was a first step in a line of activities being planned to protect the Facebook family”. Simon Milner, Head of Policy UK at Facebook, stated:

“We’re proud to be supporting Faith Associates in the development of their online safety guide. Facebook welcomes all communities, and there is no place for hate on the platform”.

It is curious that of all the groups Facebook could have chosen to “protect” — if one is to believe that Facebook intends to “protect” other groups as well — it chose Muslims. Are Muslims the most targeted group in the world today? In Canada, according to fresh statistics, hate crimes against Muslims have fallen while hate crimes against Jews have risen. In the United States, according to Gatestone’s A. Z. Mohamed:

“Since 1992… anti-Semitic incidents have been higher than those perpetrated against other groups… To this day, the greatest number of reported religion-based hate crimes have been directed at Jews, and the second greatest against Muslims… in 2015… there was a sharp rise in religion-based hate crimes, particularly against Islam and Muslims. Yet even then, Jews were 2.38 times more likely than Muslims to become victims of a hate crime.”

In the UK, anti-Semitic hate crimes were at the highest recorded level ever in 2016 — 1,078 offenses registered in 2016 compared to 938 in 2015. According to the Guardian, the Metropolitan Police (MET) recorded “1,260 incidents of Islamophobic hate crime in the 12 months to March 2017” in London alone. However, the MET police’s definition of “Islamophobia” — which the MET police claims is widely accepted, including by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights — is exceedingly wide. According to the definition, as described in the 2012 report, “Hate Crimes Against London’s Muslim Communities 2005-2012”, Islamophobia is present when:

  1. Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
  2. Islam is seen as separate and ‘other’. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
  3. Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.
  4. Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a ‘clash of civilizations’.
  5. Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage.
  6. Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand.
  7. Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society
  8. Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.

Not even Orwell could have made this list up.

Even if there is no statistical basis for Facebook’s new guide for Muslims, its creation should not come as a surprise. On December 10, 2015, in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, wrote a Facebook post about making Facebook a “safe space” for Muslims. His post did not contain a word of condemnation of the terrorist attack, or allude to any of the widespread Islamic terrorist incitement that his social media platform hosts. Zuckerberg wrote:

“I want to add my voice in support of Muslims in our community and around the world… After the Paris attacks and hate this week, I can only imagine the fear Muslims feel that they will be persecuted for the actions of others… If you’re a Muslim in this community, as the leader of Facebook I want you to know that you are always welcome here and that we will fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe environment for you.”

The guide appears to be one of the ways in which Zuckerberg has kept his promise. The recently released guide was “…produced in partnership with Facebook to empower you, as a Muslim user on the platform, with the tools, resources and knowledge to identify and deal with harmful content and keep you and your friends safe”.

What is “harmful content” according to the new Facebook guide for Muslims? “Islamophobia, anti-Muslim hatred, far right extremism and terrorist inspired violent extremist content”, which “all manifest themselves online and can have a detrimental effect on confidence and mental wellbeing”. The guide goes on to detail how “harmful content” should be reported to Facebook and in some cases even to the police.

The guide does not mention Islamic incitement to violence, which is rampant on social media and — unlike the other content mentioned — has deadly and tragic consequences in the real world, with thousands of people murdered in Islamic terrorist attacks. Most of those who perpetrate terrorist attacks in the real world are Muslims — not “Islamophobes”, anti-Muslims or right wing extremists. Nevertheless, the only — obfuscating and vague — reference to Islamic terrorism is at the very end of the guide:

“If you see someone sharing terrorist content and encouraging others to join extremist groups, report them and then make or share posts that show true Islamic messages of peace, mercy and tolerance”.

Zuckerberg has made no similar supportive statements in favor of Jews or Christians. So far, no guides have been released on how to keep Jews or Christians safe on Facebook, despite the fact that Jews are overwhelmingly targeted by Muslim anti-Semites and jihadists. Considerably more is at stake in these cases than “a detrimental effect on confidence and mental wellbeing”. Two ongoing legal cases against Facebook attest to this fact. One is Lakin v. Facebook, a lawsuit, representing 20,000 Israeli plaintiffs, which aims to stop Facebook from “allowing Palestinian terrorists to incite violent attacks against Israeli citizens and Jews on its internet platform.”

Facebook is acting out of a political concern to show Muslim countries that Facebook is willing to respect Islamic blasphemy laws. In July, Vice President of Facebook Joel Kaplan promised Pakistan — in a call with Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan — that Facebook will “remove fake accounts and explicit, hateful and provocative material that incites violence and terrorism”. Khan told the VP of Facebook:

“the entire Muslim Ummah was greatly disturbed and has serious concerns over the misuse of social media platforms to propagate blasphemous content… Pakistan appreciates the understanding shown by the Facebook administration and the cooperation being extended on these issues”.

Prior to the Pakistani government’s talk with Facebook management in July, Khan convened a special meeting of Muslim ambassadors to discuss “blasphemous content” on social media, and how effectively to “raise the voice of the entire Muslim world against the madness unleashed against Islam and holy personalities in the name of freedom of expression”. Khan also met with the secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on this issue specifically, before talking to Facebook management.

Enforcing Islamic blasphemy law is one of the OIC’s main causes. How convenient for the OIC that Facebook has decided to champion it.

By: Judith Bergman
(Gatestone Institute)

Judith Bergman is a columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

 

A Lot of Blood on a Lot of Hands Created The Iran Threat

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Also on Reagan’s watch took place the Iran-Contra affair of 1985-86, a plan to arm the Contras fighting the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and to ransom Americans held hostage by Iranian jihadist proxies in Beirut, by selling advanced weapons to Iran, both actions violating arms embargoes

Where is the punishment of the Mullahs for the American blood they have shed?

The mullocracy in Iran is bragging that it has crushed the demonstrations against the regime that broke out on December 28. Regime change from within still remains a forlorn hope, as the theocratic police state has employed its usual brutal violence and intimidation to deny the protestors any momentum. Burning identification cards and electrical bills seem the last recourse for those brave Iranians abandoned by the so-called “global community” that averts its gaze from the destruction of human rights it pretends to worship.

So it goes in the 40-year history of bungling, indifference, greed, appeasement, and sheer stupidity that have defined the West’s response to the most consequential jihadist movement in modern times. A lot of blood has stained a lot of different guilty hands.

Start with Jimmy Carter and our terminally blinkered state department. Carter’s foreign policy team completely misinterpreted the Iranian revolution of 1979. Trapped in the fossilized narrative of anticolonialist resistance, nationalist self-determination, and hunger for human and political rights, our foreign policy savants missed the profoundly religious motives of the resistance to the Shah. The clerical class and the revolution’s godfather, the Ayatollah Khomeini, were driven by hatred of the modernizing, anti-Islamic program of the Shah and his father, such as the relaxation of sharia laws governing women, popular culture, and religious minorities, a program that Khomeini called the “abolition of the laws of Islam” and an existential threat to Islam itself. And they were particularly angered at the subsequent weakening of the clerics’ power and authority over social, private, and political life.

Indeed, the revolution was in fact a classic jihad against those modernizing “apostate” Muslim leaders who whored after Western “idols,” a dynamic that polluted the purity of the faith with anti-Koranic “innovations” derived from infidel culture. A cursory knowledge of Islamic history could have shown our analysts that such violent conflicts have consistently characterized Islamic history and its clash with Muslim traitors influenced by Christian rivals, from the Kharajites of the 7th century to the Wahhabis of the 18th to the Muslim Brothers of the 20th and to al Qaeda and ISIS of the 21st. Instead, we reacted in terms of our modern Western models of the inevitable progress of human rights, secularism, economic development, and political self-determination. We assumed that after the revolution, liberals, leftists, and technocrats would take over and start creating a Western-style state and integrating it into the global community on the basis of “shared interests” and “mutual respect.”

But as Khomeini said, Islam is the “religion of blood for the infidels” and a “sword for crushing the traitors” who promote alien “innovations.” The goal of the revolution was not a Western nation-state that improves its people’s economic and political conditions––“We did not start a revolution to lower the price of melons,” Khomeini made clear. Nor was integration with the postwar international system a goal, a point Khomeini made clear when he authorized the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and the taking hostage of its personnel, graphically demonstrating his contempt for that system and its diplomatic protocols. Rather, the destiny of Islam is to fight the world “until all men say there is no god but Allah.” Hence the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran was just the beginning. “We shall export our revolution to the whole world,” Khomeini promised, a pledge his successors have kept for forty years.

Iran’s next repudiation of international norms and America’s power came in the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, at that time the largest terrorist attack against America in history. This murder of 241 U.S. troops was carried out by jihadist groups created, trained, and funded by Iran. It was an attack in Iran’s already declared war against the U.S., the “Great Satan” and infidel global hegemon standing in the way of Islam’s divinely sanctioned triumph. But still not grasping the context of the struggle, we did not retaliate against the jihadists, not even bombing the Beqaa Valley––the “Little Tehran” where Iran’s proxies were encamped, trained, and operated with impunity. Just as Jimmy Carter did not retaliate for the embassy seizure, the Reagan administration pulled out of Lebanon, demonstrating to the proliferating jihadist groups already inspired by Iran’s success that we were a “weak horse” too in love with our godless lives of pleasure and consumption to defend ourselves and our beliefs.

Also on Reagan’s watch took place the Iran-Contra affair of 1985-86, a plan to arm the Contras fighting the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and to ransom Americans held hostage by Iranian jihadist proxies in Beirut, by selling advanced weapons to Iran, both actions violating arms embargoes. This cock-eyed plan was also seen as a way to woo the mullahs from the Soviet Union: American emissaries brought to Iran a cake in the shape of a key, apparently a metaphor for “unlocking” the impediments to Iranian-American friendship. Once more our foreign policy gurus didn’t get the real nature of the Islamic Republic, which had already demonstrated its contempt for diplomatic outreach and the norms of international relations, using both only to extract concessions as it pursued its jihadist policy. The Reagan foreign policy team had not, as Khomeini said about Jimmy Carter after his disastrous attempt to rescue the embassy hostages, understood “what kind of people [they are] facing and what school of thought [they are] playing with. Our people is the people of blood and our school the school of jihad.”

Despite this long record of Iran’s jihadist nature and intentions, administrations from both parties have continued to do little to punish the mullahs for the American blood they have shed. Thousands of Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by munitions and weapons provided by Iran, and by jihadists financed, trained, and transported by Iran. Evidence of Iran’s nuclear ambitions has led only to endless diplomacy, weak sanctions, and cringing “outreach” manipulated by Iran, which has followed the North Korea playbook to extract concessions by making empty promises.

Yes, the Cold War and the need to respond to the 9/11 attacks dominated our attention. But there were no such excuses for Barack Obama and his disastrous agreement that if not abandoned, will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran in less than a decade. Despite Iran’s long track record of double-dealing and “weaponizing” negotiations, as a Johnson advisor said of the North Vietnamese, Obama gave the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror $1.5 billion and virtual carte blanche to develop nuclear-tipped missiles. Obama’s alleged reasons were to encourage Iran to join the family of nations, improve its economy, and normalize its aggressive foreign policy, preposterous goals for anyone aware of Iran’s history as a jihadist state, or even cognizant of Islam’s consistent 14 centuries of doctrine and aggression. This stubborn refusal to accept the futility of changing such a state’s behavior through negotiation, “outreach,” flattery, and bribes reveals how deeply engrained such blindness is in our institutional received wisdom.

By: Bruce Thornton
(Front Page Mag)

A Lot of Blood on a Lot of Hands Created The Iran Threat

0
Also on Reagan’s watch took place the Iran-Contra affair of 1985-86, a plan to arm the Contras fighting the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and to ransom Americans held hostage by Iranian jihadist proxies in Beirut, by selling advanced weapons to Iran, both actions violating arms embargoes

Where is the punishment of the Mullahs for the American blood they have shed?

The mullocracy in Iran is bragging that it has crushed the demonstrations against the regime that broke out on December 28. Regime change from within still remains a forlorn hope, as the theocratic police state has employed its usual brutal violence and intimidation to deny the protestors any momentum. Burning identification cards and electrical bills seem the last recourse for those brave Iranians abandoned by the so-called “global community” that averts its gaze from the destruction of human rights it pretends to worship.

So it goes in the 40-year history of bungling, indifference, greed, appeasement, and sheer stupidity that have defined the West’s response to the most consequential jihadist movement in modern times. A lot of blood has stained a lot of different guilty hands.

Start with Jimmy Carter and our terminally blinkered state department. Carter’s foreign policy team completely misinterpreted the Iranian revolution of 1979. Trapped in the fossilized narrative of anticolonialist resistance, nationalist self-determination, and hunger for human and political rights, our foreign policy savants missed the profoundly religious motives of the resistance to the Shah. The clerical class and the revolution’s godfather, the Ayatollah Khomeini, were driven by hatred of the modernizing, anti-Islamic program of the Shah and his father, such as the relaxation of sharia laws governing women, popular culture, and religious minorities, a program that Khomeini called the “abolition of the laws of Islam” and an existential threat to Islam itself. And they were particularly angered at the subsequent weakening of the clerics’ power and authority over social, private, and political life.

Indeed, the revolution was in fact a classic jihad against those modernizing “apostate” Muslim leaders who whored after Western “idols,” a dynamic that polluted the purity of the faith with anti-Koranic “innovations” derived from infidel culture. A cursory knowledge of Islamic history could have shown our analysts that such violent conflicts have consistently characterized Islamic history and its clash with Muslim traitors influenced by Christian rivals, from the Kharajites of the 7th century to the Wahhabis of the 18th to the Muslim Brothers of the 20th and to al Qaeda and ISIS of the 21st. Instead, we reacted in terms of our modern Western models of the inevitable progress of human rights, secularism, economic development, and political self-determination. We assumed that after the revolution, liberals, leftists, and technocrats would take over and start creating a Western-style state and integrating it into the global community on the basis of “shared interests” and “mutual respect.”

But as Khomeini said, Islam is the “religion of blood for the infidels” and a “sword for crushing the traitors” who promote alien “innovations.” The goal of the revolution was not a Western nation-state that improves its people’s economic and political conditions––“We did not start a revolution to lower the price of melons,” Khomeini made clear. Nor was integration with the postwar international system a goal, a point Khomeini made clear when he authorized the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and the taking hostage of its personnel, graphically demonstrating his contempt for that system and its diplomatic protocols. Rather, the destiny of Islam is to fight the world “until all men say there is no god but Allah.” Hence the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran was just the beginning. “We shall export our revolution to the whole world,” Khomeini promised, a pledge his successors have kept for forty years.

Iran’s next repudiation of international norms and America’s power came in the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, at that time the largest terrorist attack against America in history. This murder of 241 U.S. troops was carried out by jihadist groups created, trained, and funded by Iran. It was an attack in Iran’s already declared war against the U.S., the “Great Satan” and infidel global hegemon standing in the way of Islam’s divinely sanctioned triumph. But still not grasping the context of the struggle, we did not retaliate against the jihadists, not even bombing the Beqaa Valley––the “Little Tehran” where Iran’s proxies were encamped, trained, and operated with impunity. Just as Jimmy Carter did not retaliate for the embassy seizure, the Reagan administration pulled out of Lebanon, demonstrating to the proliferating jihadist groups already inspired by Iran’s success that we were a “weak horse” too in love with our godless lives of pleasure and consumption to defend ourselves and our beliefs.

Also on Reagan’s watch took place the Iran-Contra affair of 1985-86, a plan to arm the Contras fighting the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and to ransom Americans held hostage by Iranian jihadist proxies in Beirut, by selling advanced weapons to Iran, both actions violating arms embargoes. This cock-eyed plan was also seen as a way to woo the mullahs from the Soviet Union: American emissaries brought to Iran a cake in the shape of a key, apparently a metaphor for “unlocking” the impediments to Iranian-American friendship. Once more our foreign policy gurus didn’t get the real nature of the Islamic Republic, which had already demonstrated its contempt for diplomatic outreach and the norms of international relations, using both only to extract concessions as it pursued its jihadist policy. The Reagan foreign policy team had not, as Khomeini said about Jimmy Carter after his disastrous attempt to rescue the embassy hostages, understood “what kind of people [they are] facing and what school of thought [they are] playing with. Our people is the people of blood and our school the school of jihad.”

Despite this long record of Iran’s jihadist nature and intentions, administrations from both parties have continued to do little to punish the mullahs for the American blood they have shed. Thousands of Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by munitions and weapons provided by Iran, and by jihadists financed, trained, and transported by Iran. Evidence of Iran’s nuclear ambitions has led only to endless diplomacy, weak sanctions, and cringing “outreach” manipulated by Iran, which has followed the North Korea playbook to extract concessions by making empty promises.

Yes, the Cold War and the need to respond to the 9/11 attacks dominated our attention. But there were no such excuses for Barack Obama and his disastrous agreement that if not abandoned, will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran in less than a decade. Despite Iran’s long track record of double-dealing and “weaponizing” negotiations, as a Johnson advisor said of the North Vietnamese, Obama gave the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror $1.5 billion and virtual carte blanche to develop nuclear-tipped missiles. Obama’s alleged reasons were to encourage Iran to join the family of nations, improve its economy, and normalize its aggressive foreign policy, preposterous goals for anyone aware of Iran’s history as a jihadist state, or even cognizant of Islam’s consistent 14 centuries of doctrine and aggression. This stubborn refusal to accept the futility of changing such a state’s behavior through negotiation, “outreach,” flattery, and bribes reveals how deeply engrained such blindness is in our institutional received wisdom.

By: Bruce Thornton
(Front Page Mag)

New Book Chronicles the Transformation of Universities into Centers for Indoctrination

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Book VIII of David Horowitz’s Black Book of the American Left: The Left in the University, the newest release in Horowitz’s ten-book series of collected conservative writings.
David Horowitz speaking about his book C-SPAN TV

In November, an incident regarding freedom of speech on campus took place at Ontario’s Wilfrid Laurier University that galvanized the attention of Canadians and of those with an interest in this subject beyond our borders.

A graduate student in the field of Communications, Lindsay Shepherd, used a short segment in class from a debate on TVOntario’s nightly issues show, The Agenda, to illustrate to her students how linguistic terminology can become contested terrain in the realm of ideas. The presenting issue was freedom of speech; the vehicle for debate was the use of transgender pronouns. The segment Shepherd showed – without either approval or condemnation–included forceful pushback against “compelled speech” by Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto professor whose publicly avowed refusal to use constructed gender pronouns has in the past 18 months rocketed him, via a tsunami of vlogs and public appearances, from virtual obscurity outside the academy to continental celebrity.

A graduate student in the field of Communications, Lindsay Shepherd, used a short segment in class from a debate on TVOntario’s nightly issues show, The Agenda, to illustrate to her students how linguistic terminology can become contested terrain in the realm of ideas. The presenting issue was freedom of speech; the vehicle for debate was the use of transgender pronouns.

In short order Shepherd was summoned to a meeting with her supervisor, her department head and the director of WLU’s Gendered and Sexual Violence and Support program. What happened at that meeting – more like a Star Chamber interrogation – would have fallen into the historical oubliette, except for the fact that Shepherd recorded it and shared it with the media.

Ordinary Canadians who listened to this recording were stupefied at the overt intimidation and condemnation Shepherd was subjected to, including accusations of “transphobia,” a comparison of Peterson to Hitler and for good measure a sprinkling of demonizing “racism” and “ “white supremacist” to ensure the message took hold. All because she adopted a perspective of neutrality in presenting conflicting opinions to her class so that they could freely discuss the issue without her influence. This was an intolerable stance for her left-wing superiors.

The repercussions of this incident are still unfolding, and you can read a detailed account of it here. The most-used word by commentators writing about that fateful was “Orwellian.” And it was. In my own commentary on the affair, I ended with the suggestion that Canada establish “the Lindsay Shepherd Students’ Bill of Academic Rights.” I would like to say that the idea of such a bill was my own, but of course it isn’t. The timely reason it sprang to mind was that I had just finished reading Book VIII of David Horowitz’s Black Book of the American Left: The Left in the University, the newest release in Horowitz’s ten-book series of collected conservative writings. In this installment, Horowitz chronicles his crusade to establish such a bill in law.

Guest lecturers on North American university campuses who dare to express opinions that in any way contradict privileged leftist narratives have had their talks cancelled or have been violently protested. Even mildly dissenting professors have, aided and abetted by their pusillanimous administrations, been subjected to threats of violence.

The common denominator of all the articles in this volume is the appalling comfort of the academic community with the travesty of scholarship exemplified in the Shepherd affair, where an attempt by a young and intellectually uncorrupted colleague to embody the spirit of actual scholarly research by presenting both sides of an argument on a question of principle was attacked as an evil impulse.

In my own commentary, thanks once again to Horowitz, who references it frequently in Volume VIII, I adduced the 1915 American Association of University Professors’ “Declaration on the Principles of Academic Tenure and Academic Freedom.” It included this statement: “Faculty members are expected to present information fairly, and to set forth justly, divergent opinions that arise out of scholarly methodology and professionalism.” This is a tenet that was observed by my own university professors in the 1960s, but which has been honored almost completely in the breach thenceforth.

Today the AAUT seems more concerned with protecting the rights of teachers to indoctrinate students in their social justice shibboleths than to offer “divergent opinions” or to train them in the critical reasoning skills that will allow them to arrive at their own conclusions. As former AAUT head, Cary Nelson, put it, “all teaching and research is fundamentally and deeply political.” Given that understanding, academic freedom is not about a student’s right to a balanced education; it is about an academic’s right to promote his or version of social justice. In fact, academic freedom in the eyes of the AAUT has become what Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcus called “repressive tolerance,” the freedom to ignore and suppress the student’s right to learn in the service of political correctness.

Here is but one example Horowitz offers of a leftist academic’s view of her own right to academic freedom and her own privilege to teach students what, versus how to think: In his article “My Visit to Bates” (originally published as “Enemy of the People” in Salon.com in April, 1999), Horowitz describes his experience, while making the rounds of universities on a speaking tour to promote his Academic Bill of Rights, of auditing a political science course at Bates University in Maine.

The course, taught by an Indian woman educated in England, was based on a single 600-page anthology, Modernity, which, Horowitz discovered when he bought it, included viewpoints ranging “from classical Marxism to feminist Marxism to post-modernist Marxism.” When Horowitz admonished the professor after class for the one-sidedness of her teaching, she complacently replied, “Well, they get the other side from the newspapers.” (As an aside, Horowitz notes that Bates students’ parents pay $30,000 a year in tuition for their children’s indoctrination.) The book offers many more such outrageous transgressions of academic integrity, gleaned from personal observation and direct reports from students, and well repays the curiosity of anyone who wonders if concern over political correctness in the universities is exaggerated.

Horowitz’s tour occurred in the late 90s and early naughts. The situation is worse today. Rooting out incorrectness is carried on more aggressively. For example, it was established in an inquiry that Shepherd’s supervisor lied to her about there having been a complaint about her teaching method. There was none. But he clearly felt a lie was a small price to pay for an official opportunity to correct her thought crime. Such attitudes do not arise in a vacuum. They are internalized through cultural osmosis.

Indeed, sparked by increasingly emboldened leftist agitators, 2017 in general has been a year of extreme unrest on university campuses all over North America. Physical aggression in the name of social justice has become rampant. Guest lecturers who dare to express opinions that in any way contradict privileged leftist narratives have had their talks cancelled or violently protested, while even mildly dissenting professors have, aided and abetted by their pusillanimous administrations, been subjected to threats of violence. Some have even had to quit their jobs to retain their principles and ensure their physical safety, as in the case of Bret Weinstein of Evergreen State.

Here is a summary of what the Academic Bill of Rights would ensure:

  • Faculty would be hired for their competence and knowledge and granted tenure “with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives.
  • No faculty would be hired or fired or denied tenure “on the basis of his or her political beliefs”;
  • Students would be graded on the basis of “reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge,” not on the basis of political or religious beliefs;
  • Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences would “reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate.” Teachers are free to pursue to their own interests and perspectives, but “they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints”;
  • Faculty should not use their courses “for the purpose of political, ideological, religious or anti-religious indoctrination”;
  • Selection of speakers and allocation of funds for speakers programs should “promote intellectual pluralism”;
  • Given that an environment of civil exchange is essential to a university, “the obstruction of invited campus speakers, destruction of campus literature or other effort to obstruct this exchange will not be tolerated”;
  • Integrity of the research process and the professional societies formed to advance such research must be maintained. Thus, “academic institutions and professional societies should maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions within, or outside, their fields of inquiry.”

There is nothing in this proposed bill that should scandalize or alarm any reasonable observer. It is fair to say that no conservative would take issue with any of these statements, which allow for the free exploration of views conservatives find repugnant. All conservatives ask is that students be exposed as well to views that leftists find repugnant so that students may weigh both and assess them without undue influence. That is not the case today, and has not been the case for a very long time.

Horowitz is precise in defining what academic freedom is, and what it is not. Academic freedom is not ‘free speech.’ An academic is free to pursue his scholarship according to his profession’s standards, and she is therefore not free from constraints in sharing his opinions. If she were, history professors could deny the Holocaust ever happened. Horowitz writes, “If mere opinion qualified someone to be a professor, professors could be hired for much lower salaries than is presently the case. Opinion is freely available on talk radio and local street corners.” Horowitz wrote these words before the advent of Twitter, which of course is the local street corner exponentially magnified. “Academic freedom,” Horowitz declares, is “freedom within a professional discipline.”

There’s the rub, of course. Professionalism implies knowledge based in evidence, not in authority. Such lines are blurred in the era of identity politics and the normalization of pseudo-disciplines such as Gender Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, Fat Studies, Disability Studies, Chicano Studies and White Studies and Indigenous Studies, all of which are taught based on the “authority” of Marxism, and all of whose primary purpose is to demonize “oppressors” – the “patriarchy,” white “colonialists” and the U.S. in general – and to recruit activists for organized perpetuation of the identity grievance industry.

“Professionalism” is not a word that springs to mind when one thinks of these pseudo-disciplines and their promulgators, a perfect case in point being conspiracy theorist, cultural appropriator and bogus academic Ward Churchill, whose shameless academic trajectory is chronicled anew in this volume. Students today have been so conditioned to accept academy-laundered political activism as bona fide “disciplines” that most of them wouldn’t be able to articulate the quintessential difference between the science of astronomy and the belief system of astrology.

It is fortunate that Horowitz does not succumb to the kind of cynicism I have just voiced, for it is thanks to his refusal to concede anything to the zeitgeist in standing up for the principles that should be guiding academics that so many of us find the motivation to keep resisting it, even when it seems hopeless. Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights was obstructed and failed to pass in his first campaign, but who is to say that it will never pass? Perhaps the Lindsay Shepherd affair and the Brett Weinstein affair were tipping points in the eyes of the silent majority, who are disgusted at the excesses of the progressive movement and who have finally understood that the issue – whether it is framed as racism, sexism or classism – is never the issue; the issue is always the Marxist revolution.

We won’t know if we have reached that tipping point until we try again. The Left in the University is a perfect companion volume to the events of today, and moreover an inspiration to taking up anew the battle to entrench an Academic Bill of Rights for students in law.

By: Barbara Kay

Barbara Kay is a columnist for the Canadian newspaper National Post and a member of the Board of Governors of the conservative student newspaper, princearthurherald.com.

 

7 Israeli Singers to Watch in 2018

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Nathan Goshen performing at Hangar 11 in Tel Aviv, December 2017. Photo via Facebook

Nathan Goshen, Yonina, JonZ, Noga Erez, Itamar Haluts, DORJ and Gili Yalo aren’t household names yet but they’re fast gaining fans across the world

Quite a few Israeli singers have fans across the globe and perform in North America, Europe and Asia. But for every success story like Idan Raichel, David Broza, Ester Rada or Noa, there are dozens of other talented vocalists working hard to get recognition abroad by getting their material on social media and adding English songs to their repertoire.

Here are seven solo and duet artists to keep your eye (and ear) on in 2018. Are there others whose music you want to share? Let us know about them in the comments section below.

  1. Nathan Goshen

Six years after releasing his successful self-titled debut album, which contained numerous top singles in Israel, Nathan Goshen enjoys a growing fan base worldwide for his electronic-tinged pop.

His first English-language song, “Thinking About It (Let It Go),” amassed a huge following including a remix by Dutch artist KVR that has clocked more than 102 million plays and led to Goshen being picked up by Scandinavian imprint disco:wax.

His new offering on the label, “Home,” is accompanied by short documentaries depicting people for whom the word “home” has a hard-hitting meaning.

As well as starring on “The X Factor” in Ukraine as a guest mentor/judge assistant, Goshen was named Man of the Year and Singer of the Year by Israel’s Galgalatz Radio and has been tapped by filmmaker Avi Nesher for his first movie role.

  1. Yonina
Yonina duo Yoni and Nina Tokayer. Photo by Kfir Ziv

Yonina – a duo of Yoni and Nina Tokayer (often appearing in videos with their baby, Ashira) gained surprising popularity after posting weekly homemade music videos on which they sweetly harmonize and accompany themselves on a variety of instruments.

“To our growing astonishment, our videos began receiving a huge amount of exposure, the record being our most popular ‘One Day’ video with over 40 million views from all over the world,” they report.

Pretty soon, Yonina branched out from doing covers to writing and recording their own compositions in Hebrew and English. Their debut album, supported by a crowdfunding campaign, is titled “Emet Pshuta (Simple Truth).” A second album is in the works.

Over the past year they began performing live in Israel and other countries, including sold-out concerts in New York and New Jersey. Yonina performed in Switzerland in December and has a gig in Florida this March. Then it’s on to the US West Coast and Vienna next summer.

  1. JonZ
JonZ, a duo of Yoav Or and Jenia Vasilenko. Photo: courtesy

Pronounced “Jonesy,” JonZ consists of Jenia Vasilenko and Yoav Or. They started writing melodic music together in an isolated house above the Carmel Mountains. Following their first EP live recording, a debut album recorded in Tel Aviv is scheduled to be released in March 2018.

JonZ has played festivals in Israel and Europe (including Colours of Ostrava, Rosa Laub, InDnegev, Haifa 100 Live, Yearot Menashe and Songbird Festival in Davos), toured the south of France last winter and most recently performed in Germany, Czech Republic and Switzerland. The couple debuted the first single from their forthcoming album at Cuckoo’s Nest in Jaffa.

  1. Noga Erez

Last November, Apple Music chose “Dance While You Shoot,” the first single by Israeli singer-songwriter Noga Erez, as the anthem for an advertisement featuring album covers of such stars as Eminem and Dr. Dre.

Trained at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Erez became interested in music software and has won a place on the global electronic dance music scene.

Members of the US-based electronic pop band Son Lux heard a cover Erez made of their track “Weapons,” and invited her to open for them at Tel Aviv’s Barby Club in February 2014. Since then she’s headlined her own show at the Barby.

The 28-year-old Erez partners with producer Ori Rousso to create beat-driven songs – all in English — whose lyrics touch on controversial political and social issues.

During 2016, Erez performed at the Rio Olympics with the official Israeli music showcase and signed a record deal with Berlin-based City Slang. Erez has been touring Europe and releasing additional titles from her “Off the Radar” CD.

  1. Itamar Haluts
Itamar Haluts in concert. Photo by Gaya Saadon

Guitarist-singer-songwriter Itamar Haluts, 26, last year released his first album in English, “Alexandra Clyde,” featuring hard-driving rock ’n’ roll songs written during a one-year post-army sojourn in New Zealand, during which he supported himself by picking apples.

Haluts played most of the instruments and recorded the tunes in his father’s Rosh Ha’ayin studio. He also did all the mixing and over-recording, mastered the album online in conjunction with Abbey Road Studio, has made two music videos from the album so far, and is touring Israel with his four-man band. Among the venues they’ve played are the Ye’arot Menashe, Tel Aviv Blues and Jacob’s Ladder festivals.

“I’m working on a new project right now,” he tells ISRAEL21c.

  1. DORJ

Clash Magazine recently described the music of DORJ as “sultry, emotional, trip-hop inspired neo-soul.” Highsnobiety included him in an October 2017 edition of “10 Under the Radar Artists to Discover This Week.”

DORJ already has a sizeable following in Berlin, where he has performed live, and played to a sold-out house in Poland. He appeared on the Swiss and German summer festival circuit and has gotten airplay on BBC Radio 1. His latest cut, “Shadow,” was co-written and produced by London’s Subculture Sounds and was released via the London imprint Twisted Hearts.

Currently, DORJ is working on a live show and an album with electronic hip-hop artist Melodiesinfonie, whom he met in Switzerland.

  1. Gili Yalo

Combining his Ethiopian roots with soul, funk, psychedelic and jazz elements, Gili Yalo released his self-titled debut album in November 2017 on the Dead Sea Recordings label and has been touring around Europe based on the disk’s success.

Backed by a band of five musicians, Yalo sings in English and Amharic, the Ethiopian language that best expresses his personal story of making the perilous journey to Israel from his native land when he was a child.

By: Abigail Klein Leichman
(Israel 21c)

Holocaust Photo Exhibit to Be Displayed at Bronx Synagogue

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The experiences of Jewish youngsters trapped in a ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland will be vividly evoked in “Through the Eyes of Youth: Life and Death in the Będzin Ghetto,” a traveling photographic exhibit that will be on display at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale – The Bayit, 3700 Henry Hudson Parkway East, from Sunday, January 21 through Friday, January 26.

Photos bring horrors, joys of Polish Ghetto to Hebrew Institute of Riverdale

The experiences of Jewish youngsters trapped in a ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland will be vividly evoked in “Through the Eyes of Youth: Life and Death in the Będzin Ghetto,” a traveling photographic exhibit that will be on display at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale – The Bayit, 3700 Henry Hudson Parkway East, from Sunday, January 21 through Friday, January 26.

The exhibit will kick off with a panel discussion on January 21, with Holocaust Survivors Sam Bradin, Gela Majerczyk Buchbinder, Josef Guttman and Dasha Werdyger Rittenberg, from the neighboring towns of Będzin and Dąbrowa Gornicza; Moderated by Jeffrey Cymbler, Founder of the Będzin-Sosnowiec-Zawiercie Area Research Group, and Będzin Town Leader for Jewish Records Poland, Inc.

Dr. Björn Krondofer, a professor of religion and director of the Martin-Springer Institute, which seeks to apply the lessons of the Holocaust to the crises of today, will speak at the opening.

“Today, we often encounter survivors as people who could be our grandparents but most of them were teenagers when they experienced the Holocaust,” Dr. Krondorfer said. “In this exhibit, we focus on the struggle of young people; we hope that our audiences, especially students, can more easily identify with them.”

The exhibit shares the struggles of the youth in Będzin, a small town in southern Poland, who grew up amid tragedy while still trying to find small joys in life. It follows seven young people from prewar life to the harsh conditions of German occupation and finally deportation to Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp in Europe. The exhibit ends with their lives after the Holocaust in America and other places. Most did not survive the war.

During the opening event monitors will play testimonials from Będzin Survivors: Joe Guttman, Dasha Rittenberg, Ben Fainer and Sam Bradin; and trailers to the BBC documentary Rutka Laskier: The Lost Diary of the Holocaust, and By A Thread: A Daughter’s Search for her Mother’s Hidden Holocaust Past; Sam Pivnik’s A Visit to Poland and the movie Cardinal Lustiger: Jewish Archbishop of France.

Inspirations, Cantor David Props sings Memories of Home : Holocaust Museum of Houston’s Tribute to the Survivors will be featured at the exhibit opening and the award winning documentary: Diamonds in the Snow, directed by Będzin Survivor Mira Reym Binford will be aired.

The program is sponsored by The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale; The Doris-Martin Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University; The Holocaust, Genocide Interfaith Education Center of Manhattan College; Healthy Communities; The Rutka’s Notebook Holocaust Education Continuity Project, and members of the Riverdale and Zaglebie (Zaglembie), Poland communities.

For more information, or to schedule a visit by schools or senior centers, contact: Rick Feldman at [email protected]/ 646 431 7734. Light refreshments will be served at the opening. Suggested donation $10. Save time and pre-register online @ www.thebayit.org/bedzin

Edited by: JV Staff

 

 

 

Howard Stern Blasts Lorde for Canceling Israel Show

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Popular radio shock-jock Howard Stern took a shot at New Zealand pop star Lorde this week, after she canceled an upcoming show in Israel amid pressure by supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS).

Popular shock-jock suggests New Zealand pop star is anti-Semitic after she cancels Tel Aviv concert

Popular radio shock-jock Howard Stern took a shot at New Zealand pop star Lorde this week, after she canceled an upcoming show in Israel amid pressure by supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS).

Stern, an ardent supporter of Israel and constant critic of musicians who refuse to take the stage there, blasted Lorde on his Sirius XM radio show, saying the singer likely has a problem with Jewish people.

“She has no problem with Russia. The only place in the world where she can’t play is Israel. So what do you think’s going on? What’s the one thing about Israel that’s different than all other places. There’s Jews there … I hope Lorde has a good time in Russia,” he said, as quoted by The Washington Free Beacon.

“Anti-Semitism is on the rise. I’m so [expletive] sick of it,” Stern said, adding about Lorde, “One hit song this girls’ living off of.”

News of the cancellation of Lorde’s June concert in Tel Aviv came days after pro-Palestinian Arab fans in her native New Zealand criticized her. Israeli concert organizers announced the cancellation and said ticket sales would be refunded.

Lorde later justified her decision, claiming it was the right one and adding, “I pride myself on being an informed young citizen, and I had done a lot of reading and sought a lot of opinions before deciding to book a show in Tel Aviv, but I’m not too proud to admit I didn’t make the right call on this one. Tel Aviv, it’s been a dream of mine to visit this beautiful part of the world for many years, and I’m truly sorry to reverse my commitment to come play for you. I hope one day we can all dance.”

In the past, Stern also has blasted former Pink Floyd frontman and notorious anti-Israel activist Roger Waters for his vocal criticism of Israel and effort to get various artists to cancel concerts there.

Waters, who regularly pressures artists not to perform in Israel, last week was one of 100 artists who signed an open letter in support of Lorde.

The letter of support by the group of artists was a response to New York City based Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who published a full page advertisement in the Washington Post in which he called Lorde a Jew-hating “bigot” and a hypocrite on human rights issues.

Published two weeks ago, Rabbi Boteach’s ad said “While Lorde claims to be concerned with human rights, she hypocritically chose to proceed with her two concerts in Putin’s Russia, despite his support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s genocidal regime.”

“Let’s boycott the boycotters and tell Lorde and her fellow bigots that Jew-hatred has no place in the twenty-first century.”

The ad also states that “21 is young to become a bigot.”

Rabbi Boteach had raised money for the ad on a GoFundMe page.

By: Ben Ariel
(INN)

 

Authorities Allow Terrorist to Radicalize Others in NYC Prison

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Ahmad Khan Rahimi was in MCC awaiting sentencing in January after he was convicted of setting off two improvised explosive devices in 2016, one in New York and one in New Jersey. A third device set by Rahimi failed to detonate. The bomb that exploded in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York City injured more than a dozen people. Luckily, no one was killed.
New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. That saying may best describe the Federal Bureau of Prisons administrators who operate the New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). How foolish were they? Well, they gave the inmates there the blueprints to make a bomb. And if that wasn’t stupid enough, they also gave them radical Islamic literature by noted terrorists Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki. These were no ordinary inmates who had all this material while in custody. One was an ISIS sympathizer, one was an al-Shabaab member, and another was convicted of attacking U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan.

How did this fiasco occur you ask, as if this storyline couldn’t get any worse? The materials were distributed by convicted terrorist Ahmad Khan Rahimi, better known as the Chelsea Bomber. Rahimi was in MCC awaiting sentencing in January after he was convicted of setting off two improvised explosive devices in 2016, one in New York and one in New Jersey. A third device set by Rahimi failed to detonate. The bomb that exploded in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York City injured more than a dozen people. Luckily, no one was killed.

This egregious breach in prison security protocol was outlined last week in a letter from Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim, Southern District of New York, to U.S. District Judge Richard Berman. Among the security breaches Kim informed the court of was that Rahimi was “attempting to radicalize fellow inmates.” Investigators found the radical literature on Rahimi’s electronic devices. He received copies back during the discovery process.

It is no surprise to learn that terrorists radicalize other inmates.

Numerous reports during the last decade identified cases of people radicalized in prison both in the United States and abroad. Several government reports have also identified specific factors that contribute to radicalization in prison. Among them were convicted terrorists who have gained notoriety by their crimes and exerted influence on other inmates. Another factor in the radicalization process was inmate access to extremist literature by radical Islamists. Several years ago, the Investigative Project on Terrorism discovered that tapes of Anwar al-Awlaki’s sermons were available in the Bureau of Prisons’ inmate library. In 2011, I testified before the House Committee for Homeland Security on the subject of Islamic radicalization in the U.S. prison system. I told the committee then that I would not be surprised if a copy of al Qaida’s Inspire magazine was found in prison. Several copies of Inspire were among the jihadist literature found in the Metropolitan Correctional Center inmates’ cells, Kim’s letter said.

So what caused this breakdown in security procedures now?

It’s not like MCC has never had to deal with incarcerated terrorists before. Over the last 25 years it has held numerous high profile terrorists within its cavernous walls in lower Manhattan, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.

Nor is it the first time terrorists have been able to obtain contraband items there. In November 2000, al-Qaida members Mamdouh Salim and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed were held in MCC for the bombing of the United States embassy in Tanzania. They attempted to escape by stabbing prison guard Louis Pepe with a sharpened comb they had hidden in their cell in order to gain possession of the officer’s cell block keys and escape. In the ensuing struggle, Pepe was stabbed in the eye and suffered a traumatic career ending disability.

Prisons are dangerous places and the people who work in them realize the risks every time they go to work. Housing terrorists in the same prisons as ordinary criminals exponentially increases the security threat both outside the prison and within. Authorities shouldn’t heighten the risk by becoming lax in security measures. Consistent vigilance is a prerequisite to operating a secure prison.

Someone in MCC should have reviewed the material prior to giving it to inmate Rahimi. Yes, inmates are allowed access to legal papers. But those papers containing material that would jeopardize the security of the facility (bomb making instructions) they are held in a secure location outside the general population.

Defendants in child pornography cases cannot bring such images into their cells.

In terrorism prosecutions like Rahimi’s, a failure to examine his belongings allowed him to distribute the material to the other inmates in the jail mosque during Jummah services. Where was the Muslim chaplain while this was happening, or the security personnel assigned to cover the services? Bringing a Quran into the prison mosque is acceptable. Bringing a copy of Inspire magazine or writings by Anwar al-Alwlaki is not.

Someone has to be held accountable. If not, the likelihood of being fooled again just went up.

By: Patrick Dunleavy
(Investigative Project on Terrorism)

IPT Senior Fellow Patrick Dunleavy is the former Deputy Inspector General for New York State Department of Corrections and author of “The Fertile Soil of Jihad.” He currently teaches a class on terrorism for the United States Military Special Operations School.

 

Iran’s Attempts to Set Up a Terrorist Base in Judea & Samaria is Now Exposed

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In recent days, the Iranian Republican Guards Corps (IRGC)'s elite overseas unit called the Quds Force released a propaganda video showing Gazan children "thanking" Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani for his support.

Israeli security forces have uncovered a significant Iranian attempt to infiltrate the West Bank and use it as a base for launching terrorist attacks and hostile intelligence gathering operations against Israel.

The radical Shi’ite axis, led by Iran, has long held the ambition of flooding the West Bank with weapons, terrorist cells, and espionage agents, turning it into an active Iranian terror base.

In recent years, most of those efforts have seen Hizballah, Iran’s chief proxy in the region, attempt to create a footprint in the West Bank. Israel has foiled multiple Hizballah attempts to set up terrorist cells among Palestinians, and recruit them for bombings, shootings, and espionage. In one high profile case last year, Shin Bet found that Hizballah’s Unit 133, responsible for foreign operations, was operating a social media recruitment program in the West Bank and Israel in hopes of setting up terrorist cells for suicide bombings and gun attacks.

Yet the latest plot to be broken up by Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency shows direct involvement of Iranian intelligence agents in orchestrating a Palestinian terrorist cell in Hebron.

Until now, most of the known Iranian attempts to promote Palestinian terrorism played out in the Gaza Strip, Reuven Erlich, director of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

In recent days, the Iranian Republican Guards Corps (IRGC)’s elite overseas unit called the Quds Force released a propaganda videoshowing Gazan children “thanking” Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani for his support.

“Until today, the connection to Iran was mostly seen in the Gaza Strip, through Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Hamas,” Erlich said.

Under Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, relations between the PA, which governs most Palestinians in the West Bank, and Iran, soured, Erlich said. Things were different under Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat. Iran “enjoyed a romance with the PA” during Arafat’s time, Erlich said, recalling Iranian weapons smuggling efforts, including the Karine A weapons ship that was packed with arms destined for the PA in 2002 when it was intercepted by Israel.

Today, however, the PA sees Iranian and Hizballah activities in the West Bank as a “direct threat,” Erlich said. Israel’s “abilities to take care of this threat” prevent Iran and its proxies from realizing their vision of building a network of terrorist outposts in the West Bank.

“The Iranians find it much easier and simpler to get to Gaza, though they also have problems reaching it, with Egypt in the rear,” Erlich said. Despite the Egyptian obstacle, Erlich warned, there has been a “flood of declarations” by Iran, Hizballah, and Palestinian terrorist factions in Gaza indicating a new level of cooperation among them.

Iran has, over the past months, transferred $100 million to Hamas and PIJ, due to the fact that they “share the same vision about the State of Israel,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said in a recent speech.

From Iran to South Africa to Hebron

The Shin Bet announced last week that it had uncovered and foiled a West Bank terrorist infrastructure “that was run by an Iranian intelligence operative living in South Africa.”

“The principal operative that was arrested is Mahmoud Makharmeh, 29, a computer engineering student, who resides in Hebron. He was recruited for Iranian intelligence activity by a relative of his, Bakhar Makharmeh, who is from Hebron, but who has been living in South Africa in recent years,” the Shin Bet stated.

“Iranian intelligence has been using South Africa as a significant center for locating, recruiting and activating agents against Israel in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank],” it added.

Acting on behalf of the Iranian intelligence agents, Bakhar Makharmeh tried to recruit operatives in the West Bank and in Israel for espionage and terrorist missions, according to the investigation.

Bakhar took advantage of a 2015 visit by his relative, Mahmoud, to South Africa, and succeeded in recruiting him, the Shin Bet said. Mahmoud then had several meetings with Iranian agents, “several of whom came from Tehran especially to meet him.”

Following his arrest, the IDF’s Judea and Samaria Military Court charged Mahmoud Makharmeh with several severe security crimes. The charge sheet alleges that he worked to recruit suicide bombers and a shooting terrorist cell. It also details his involvement in a training course for the use of explosives and other weapons, and the opening of a computer store in Hebron which was supposed to double as an Iranian intelligence gathering post.

Mahmoud Makharmeh allegedly recruited an Israeli Arab man to take photographs in Israel. He also sent Israeli SIM cards and cash to the Iranians – items that were apparently necessary for the next stage of Iran’s operations.

The Israeli charge sheet details how Mahmoud Makharmeh recruited two Palestinians in Hebron, both aged 22, who agreed to join the Iranian-run terrorist cell.

“Mahmoud received $8,000 from the Iranians to operate the cell,” the Shin Bet said.

The Iranians instructed him to also recruit residents of Israel, including journalists, because they have access to official sites.

The two Palestinians recruited by Makharmeh were charged with conspiring to join an illegal organization.

The investigation “underscores Iran’s involvement in sponsoring terrorism against Israel, and exposes Iran’s efforts in various countries in order to promote hostile activity against Israel,” the Shin Bet said.

Commenting on the investigation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “This is not the first time. They are trying various methods, and in various fields, to attack the State of Israel. I am pleased that the ISA [Shin Bet] and our security services have succeeded in foiling it. I would like to bring it to your attention that Iran is using terrorism against the State of Israel not only with the assistance of terrorist movements such as Hamas, Hizballah and Islamic Jihad but is also attempting to organize terrorist actions inside the State of Israel and against the citizens of Israel.”

By: Yaakov Lappin
(Investigative Project on Terrorism)

Yaakov Lappin is a military and strategic affairs correspondent. He also conducts research and analysis for defense think tanks, and is the Israel correspondent for IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly. His book, The Virtual Caliphate, explores the online jihadist presence.

 

Smartphones and Kids: Harmful Effects and What to Do About It

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Recent research on the impact of smartphones on children and how we can realistically protect them

Another part of our brains, the prefrontal cortex, is necessary for interpreting emotions and for focusing on tasks, and is also harmed by smartphone use. This part of our brains doesn’t fully develop until people’s mid-20s, and excessive smartphone use can get in the way of that. “

On January 6, two of Apple’s biggest investors published an open letter calling on Apple and other high tech firms to do much more to protect the health of their youngest users. Citing studies showing that smartphones can have grave impacts on kids’ physical and mental well-being, the investors – California State Teachers’ Retirement System and JANA Partners LLC – have opened a major debate, asking tech companies to develop more controls on their products for their youngest users.

What is so bad about kids and smartphones? With more researchers look into the impact of smartphones and other technology on children, here are some recent results, as well as suggestions for what we can do when it comes to protecting kids from smartphone abuse.

 

Stunting Babies’ Brain Development

Consider Shabbat as an antidote to too much smartphone use. For 25 hours each week we’re completely phone free. The results are amazing: a whole day without distractions, when we’re able to focus on each other and ourselves. While it can seem daunting to go a whole 25 hours without a smartphone, doing so is a welcome weekly respite from the tyranny of technology for us all.

The harm that smartphones and other screens do to kids is particularly acute in babies whose brains are still developing. Psychologists call the first three years of a child’s life “the critical period” in brain development because the way that brains grow during these years becomes the permanent base upon which all future learning relies. Receiving information and cues from the real world around them helps babies form neural pathways that make their brains strong and healthy. Stimuli from screens, including tablets and smartphones, get in the way of brains’ normal development, overwhelming their still-developing minds with stimuli.

The damage from too much screen time can be permanent. “The ability to focus, to concentrate, to lend attention, to sense other people’s attitudes and communicate with them, to build a large vocabulary – all those abilities are harmed,” warns Dr. Aric Sigman, an associate fellow the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Society of Medicine.

The ability to interact with other people, to empathize and read people’s feelings all have their foundations in babyhood. Spending time interacting with screens instead of human beings can permanently alter our children’s brain structures, making tasks like forming friendships and understanding the world around them much harder.

 

Harming Teens’ Brain

Indeed, heavy smartphone use is associated with higher rates of stress and depression in kids. One study conducted by the Center on Media and Child Health at the University of Alberta found that over the past three to five years, as smartphone use has skyrocketed, 90% of teachers report that the number of students with emotional challenges is increased; 86% of teachers report that the number of students with social challenges has gone up as well.

While older kids don’t experience the same sort of intense brain development as babies, kids’ and adolescents’ brains continue to develop and can be harmed by too much smartphone use.

The problem is that teenagers’ brains are very adaptable. The experience of using a smartphone, switching rapidly between many activities such as texting and using social media, is associated with lower levels of brain matter in teens’ anterior cingulate cortex, the region in our brains that is responsible for emotional processing and decision-making. Less brain matter in this area is associated with higher rates of depression and addiction.

Another part of our brains, the prefrontal cortex, is necessary for interpreting emotions and for focusing on tasks, and is also harmed by smartphone use. This part of our brains doesn’t fully develop until people’s mid-20s, and excessive smartphone use can get in the way of that. “During our teenage years,” explains Paul Atchley, a psychology professor at the University of Kansas, ”it’s important to train that prefrontal cortex not to be easily distracted. What we’re seeing in our work is that young people are constantly distracted, and also less sensitive to the emotions of others.”

 

Harder to Make Friends:

Given the changes smartphones make to developing brain’s ability to empathize with others, it’s no surprise that smartphone use is associated with difficulty in making friends.

For many teens, smartphones can become a crutch in difficult social situations. “When you’re with people you don’t know well or there’s nothing to talk about, phones are out more because it’s awkward,” one Connecticut high school senior explained to researchers.

Yet this “new normal” where smartphones are such a part of social interaction is dangerous, warns Brian Primack, Director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health at the University of Pittsburgh. “There’s strong research linking isolation to depression, and time spent socializing with improved mood and well-being,” Dr. Primack explains. “If smartphones are getting between an adolescent and her ability to engage in and enjoy face-to-face interaction – and some studies suggest that’s happening – that’s a big deal.”

 

Smartphones and Depression in Kid

Indeed, heavy smartphone use is associated with higher rates of stress and depression in kids. One study conducted by the Center on Media and Child Health at the University of Alberta found that over the past three to five years, as smartphone use has skyrocketed, 90% of teachers report that the number of students with emotional challenges is increased; 86% of teachers report that the number of students with social challenges has gone up as well.

Many teachers blame smartphone use for these jumps. Kids used to go outside during lunch break and engage in physical activity and socialization. “Today, many of them sit all lunch hour and play on their personal devices,” one junior high teacher said.

Between 2010 and 2016, the number of adolescents who experienced major depression grew by 60%, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. Suicides have also increased significantly among kids ages 10 to 19 during that time. “These increases are huge – possibly unprecedented,” explains Prof. Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. She has found that since 2010, teens who spend more time using smartphones and other technology are more likely to report having mental health problems than teens who spend less time with their devices.

Prof. Twenge surveyed over half a million adolescents across the United States; her findings paint a troubling portrait of a generation both addicted to and harmed by smartphone use. Kids who spend three hours a day or more on smartphones or other devices are over a third more likely to suffer at least one suicide-related symptom such as feeling hopeless or thinking about suicide than kids who limit their smartphone and other device use to two hours a day or less. Among kids who used devices for five or more hours each day, nearly half reported experiencing at least one suicide related outcome.

Even moderate smartphone and other high tech use can harm our kids’ mental health, Prof. Twenge has found. Kids who use social media every day are 13% more likely to have high levels of depressive symptoms than those who don’t. In her research, teens who ditched their smartphones some of the time and who spent the most time interacting face to face seemed to be the healthiest emotionally.

 

Breaking the Smartphone Addiction

Despite the drawbacks of excessive smartphone use, limiting tech time can be difficult. In fact, many psychologists now view smartphone use as an addiction.

This is partly due to the nature of teenagers’ developing brains. The anterior cingulate cortex, mentioned above in its connection to helping teens develop the characteristic of human empathy, is also a factor in decision-making and addiction. “We know for a fact teens have very underdeveloped impulse control and empathy and judgment compared to adults,” explains Dr. Frances Jensen, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of The Teenage Brain. As kids brains continue to develop, adolescents and teens are more prone to addiction.

Researchers have also found that the speedy interactions teens enjoy on their smartphones floods their brains with neurochemicals like dopamine, which induces a feeling of euphoria. It also can contribute to addiction, as kids learn to rely on the gratification they feel when they use their phones. Once an addiction develops, teens (and others) can experience feelings of anger, depression, fatigue and distraction when they’re not using their phones.

One rehab center near Seattle now offers therapy for smartphone and technology addiction, and has treated children as young as 13. Hilarie Cash, the Center’s founder, has explained that smartphones and other mobile devices can be so stimulating and all-consuming that they “override all those natural instincts that children actually have for movement and exploration and social interaction.”

 

Strategies for Change

Limiting smartphone and other tech use isn’t easy. In fact, in one recent study, teenagers were given a choice: would they rather break a bone in their bodies, or break their phones? It might not come as a surprise to teens and their parents that fully 46% of teenagers said they’d prefer to break a bone than their smartphone.

Yet change is possible. Here are three suggestions for starting to change: both for teens and their families.

  1. Set aside a time every day to go phone free. That’s the advice of New York University Professor Adam Alter who wrote “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.” When the thought of giving up a phone seems too scary, try limiting phone use to certain hours each day: Prof. Alter recommends blocking out a time, such as 5-8pm each day, to go phone-free. This proposition might seem less daunting than a wider phone moratorium.
  2. Lead by example. It’s hard to tell your kids to limit their smartphone use if you are glued to your devices. Try setting aside time for the entire family come together, phone-free. That’s the advice of child psychologist Yalda Uhls: specify a set amount of time for your family to interact with no devices in sight. This can help foster the face-to-face interaction and emotional empathy that is lacking from smartphone-based communication.
  3. Consider Shabbat as an antidote to too much smartphone use. In my own family, we also struggle with too much technology time. Shabbat is the one day a week when we don’t have to worry about smartphones and other devices. For 25 hours each week we’re completely phone free. The results are amazing: a whole day without distractions, when we’re able to focus on each other and ourselves. While it can seem daunting to go a whole 25 hours without a smartphone, doing so is a welcome weekly respite from the tyranny of technology for us all.

By: Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
(Aish.com)

 

Gal Gadot Sparks Controversy; Wears Dress by Lebanese Designer

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Days after Gal Gadot wore a dress by Lebanese designer Elie Saab at the National Board of Review Awards Gala in New York, controversy over her choice seems not to die down.
Elie Saab’s Instagram followers attacked the designer for posting a picture of the Israeli actress wearing his dress. In the post, Saab bragged about the Israeli star’s choice of clothes and called her “flawless”. But shortly afterwards, he was forced to remove the post after Lebanese Instagram users called him a “traitor”.

Days after Gal Gadot wore a dress by Lebanese designer Elie Saab at the National Board of Review Awards Gala in New York, controversy over her choice seems not to die down.

In yet another chapter of the Israeli actress’ tormented relationship with the Lebanese public, Elie Saab’s Instagram followers attacked the designer for posting a picture of the Israeli actress wearing his dress.

In the post, Saab bragged about the Israeli star’s choice of clothes and called her “flawless”. But shortly afterwards, he was forced to remove the post after Lebanese Instagram users called him a “traitor”.

Gal Gadot had already sparked debate in Lebanon when her movie “Wonder Woman” was distributed last year. Hours before the first screenings in Beirut the movie was censored by the Interior Ministry, following a campaign against what was called “an Israeli soldier’s film”.

Gal Gadot had already sparked debate in Lebanon when her movie “Wonder Woman” was distributed last year. Hours before the first screenings in Beirut the movie was censored by the Interior Ministry, following a campaign against what was called “an Israeli soldier’s film”.

Three years before, during the Israeli Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, Gal Gadot had posted a picture of her and her daughter praying for the Israeli youth involved in the offensive. Like most Israelis, the actress had served in the army, specializing in combat training.

“I am sending my love and prayers to my fellow Israeli citizens,” she wrote. “Especially to all the boys and girls who are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts conducted by Hamas, who are hiding like cowards behind women and children…We shall overcome!!! Shabbat Shalom! #weareright #freegazafromhamas #stopterror #coexistance #loveidf”

“I love and respect Elie Saab, but is he really pleased when an Israeli actress wears his dress?” tweeted Lebanese journalist Heba Bitar (pictured above). “I don’t have a problem with her wearing @ElieSaabWorld but I do have a problem with posting her picture from Elie Saab’s account and bragging about an ex-Israeli soldier wearing his dress!” tweeted one critic. “Don’t ruin one the few things that make us proud Lebanese people!”

The Israeli star has not publically addressed the Lebanese boycott of her movie since it hit screens. Surprisingly, a sequel she also starred in, Justice League, was cleared for screening in the country.

According to a report on Ynet News, this was not the first time Gadot has faced backlash from Americans of Arab descent, not merely for being an Israeli but also for having served in the IDF.

“I love and respect Elie Saab, but is he really pleased when an Israeli actress wears his dress?” tweeted Lebanese journalist Heba Bitar.

“I don’t have a problem with her wearing @ElieSaabWorld but I do have a problem with posting her picture from Elie Saab’s account and bragging about an ex-Israeli soldier wearing his dress!” tweeted one critic. “Don’t ruin one the few things that make us proud Lebanese people!”

Israel and Lebanon are officially at war with each other, even though the last open confrontation between the Israeli Defense Forces and the arch-enemy militia Hezbollah happened in summer 2006. Since 2011, with the beginning of the civil war in Syria, Lebanon’s Shiia militia Hezbollah has been involved in operations to support President Bashar Assad against rebel forces in Syria.

Edited by: JV Staff
(i24 News & Ynet)

 

Michael Douglas Denies Charges of Sexual Misconduct in Hollywood Reporter Story

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Michael Douglas, the Oscar winning actor and producer, and famed son of Kirk Douglas, announced before it became common knowledge, that pending allegations that he masturbated in front on an aspiring actress and then had her blackballed from Hollywood, were false.

Michael Douglas, the Oscar winning actor and producer, and famed son of Kirk Douglas, announced before it became common knowledge, that pending allegations that he masturbated in front on an aspiring actress and then had her blackballed from Hollywood, were false.

Douglas, who received his Bachelor Degree in Drama at the University of California and won a series of Emmy nominations for his role in the ABC drama the Streets of San Francisco, has had an incredible career in film which began when he produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest starring Jack Nicholson. Douglas has starred in numerous films in both serious and comical nature with the height of his acting career taking place during the 1980s in such films as Romancing the Stone (1984) and Wall Street (1988).

Douglas related to Deadline Hollywood that he had been informed that the Hollywood Reporter was set to publish as story detailing supposed misdeeds that had taken place during the heyday of his acting career during the 1980s. The unidentified woman had worked for the actor’s production company in New York City, the Douglas related.

The allegations come at a time during of increased sensitivity in both the dramatic arts, the political world and in the news business around sexual harassment claims by high powered players such as Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and other prominent figures.

Douglas and his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones both support the #MeToo movement which centers around women who have been sexually assaulted. At the recent Golden Globes awards, actresses wore black in solidarity with those who had fallen prey to sexual misconduct by people like Weinstein and even well-respected actors like Dustin Hoffman, et. al.

“I don’t know where to begin,” the 73-year-old actor said in disbelief. “This is a complete lie, fabrication, not truth to it whatsoever,” Douglas told Deadline.

“I felf the need to get ahead of this,” Douglas related, as it “pertains to me but I’m also getting a sense of how it reflects in our culture, and what is going on today.”

While Douglas admitted that he often used profanities during his professional relationships, he had never directed any foul language in her presence adding that the woman worked in development and because “we didn’t have a good development record . . . I just moved on. I never blackballed her.”

Zeta-Jones defended her husband saying the they were “seeing changes that have taken many years t even be talked about. Jones and Douglas have been married for 17 years and their son, back in 2014, had his Bar Mitzvah in Israel.

By: Andrew Schiff

 

Jewish Woman in UK Gets Special Note from Prince Harry & Meghan Markle

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Meghan Markle, 36, and Prince Harry, 33, are to marry May 18th at Windsor Castle in what is to be a televised occasion

The upcoming royal wedding of the world’s most eligible bachelor, Prince Harry, and American actress Meghan Markle has the world royally exited. The couple has received well wishes from exited royal watchers as well as other celebrities and heads of state from around the world–but not everyone receives a personalized note in response, except of course, for Edna Levi, who lives just outside Leeds, England and is a members of the Leeds Jewish community.

The British born Levi, who is in her eighties, sent a congratulatory note expressing her “Mazel Tov” to the newly engaged couple, wanting to feel part of the excitement regarding the royal and highly publicized nuptials. What Ms. Levi did not expect when she checked her mail one day was a letter delivered straight from Buckingham Palace. Surely thousands of well wishers had sent similar notes to the couple, and yet Harry and Megan responded personally to the woman’s letter, leaving her both shocked and elated.

Ms. Levi’s note in part read:

“I’m British born but a member of the Jewish faith and we say Mazel Tov on a happy occasion. This is why I am saying it to you and wishing you well and good health.”

The prince and his American fiancée were so touched by the note they wrote back how “thoughtful” and “greatly appreciated” Ms. Levi’s words were.

“I’ve never written to the royal family before but I like Prince Harry because of the way he looks after charities, he’s a nice, normal young man,” said Ms. Levi, who was beyond shocked that she received such a heartfelt and personal reply.

Markle, 36, and Prince Harry, 33, are to marry May 18th at Windsor Castle in what is to be a televised occasion. The couple had received so much publicity during their courtship that Kensington Palace issued a letter warning the press to leave Ms. Meghan alone and also called out certain publications for their stories on the couple featuring sexist and racial undertones. Ms. Markle, who left her TV show Suits prior to the engagement, was previously married to Trevor Engelson, a Jewish film producer.

By Julie L. Sagoskin

 

Emanuel Rund; The Initiator of the Int’l Holocaust Remembrance Day

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Emanuel Rund tells of his life in New York and Hollywood and his successful start in to the film business. "Suddenly, I wanted to know where I came from," he said. In 1984, he traveled with his mother to her hometown of Aurich in East Friesland. There he learned the story of his relatives who were murdered by the Nazis; such as his grandparents Joseph and Ida Wolffs

“I wanted a day of remembrance for all the victims of National Socialism together” – An Interview with Emanuel Rund

A scene from Emanuel Rund’s film, “All Jews Out!”

Emanuel Rund, successful documentary filmmaker and producer, grew up as the son of German Jews in Israel. When he moved to Germany after completion of training, he noticed that there was in this country no remembrance for the victims of National Socialism–and grabbed the process of memory reprocessing in Germany under the arms. Johanna Strunge has spoken to us by Rund.

If Emanuel Rund talks about his idea for a German Day of Remembrance for Victims of National Socialism, he begins with his life in America. Around grows up as the son of German Jews in Israel. For his training as a documentary filmmaker, he goes to the USA. He tells of his life in New York and Hollywood and its successful start into the film business. “Suddenly, I wanted to know where I came from.” In 1984, he travels with his mother in her hometown Aurich in East Friesland. There he learns the story of his murdered by the Nazis relatives–such as his grandparents Joseph and Ida Wolffs.

About the history of his family, he opens up gradually about the history of National Socialism. “It surprised me very much that there is no remembrance for the Holocaust in Germany,” says Rund. He knows the Yom HaShoah, the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was introduced in 1951.

Rund remains in Germany and his life builds up over the eighties here. He is rabbi and cantor of some communities and on the board of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. He is in contact with important people from politics, the church and education. These contacts he uses to express his desire for a Remembrance Day: “I have asked hundreds of these people, if they cannot help to establish a memorial in Germany.”

A new impetus given its commitment to the memorial but only by Karin: 1994 goes Rund with a group of young people to Israel. He films them as they meet survivors, talk with volunteers of the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace and Yom HaShoah commemoration participate in Israeli at Yad Vashem. “Then,” he says, ” one of the young Germans, Karin, said in the camera that she was ashamed that there was no memorial day in Germany.” He uses the opportunity, as he calls it, ” to be naughty.”

He goes back to Germany to talk to the people; among other things, he will meet with the President of the Bundestag Prof. Dr. Rita Süssmuth. Again and again he asks the people the question: “Can you do something for the young people in your country who are ashamed that there is no memorial in their country?” In 1995, he engaged in almost around the clock so.

“And then I got in early January 1996, the response from Berlin, the German President Roman Herzog have now taken over this project,” says Round, “and that he will proclaim a day of remembrance for Germany 27 January.” He laughs and cries, ” Hallelujah! ”

On 3rd of January 1996, President Roman Herzog declared the January 27th, a day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism. The date commemorates 27 January 1945, when the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. It is envisaged that day express all of whom the Nazis systematically persecuted. “That was for me from the beginning of special concern,” says Rund. “I wanted to put together a day of remembrance for the Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, political and clergy resistance and all the other victims of persecution.”

President Roman Herzog and Rund are of the opinion that in fact, the commemoration of the Holocaust is of great importance for the young generation. “My goal is always the education of the younger generation and the motivation for a better future,” said Rund. Therefore all witnesses were interviewed by young people in his second German film “All Jews Out!”. He also raves about imaginative school projects in the framework of the German Remembrance Day.

Nevertheless Rund also exerts considerable criticism: “January 27, when you go to the Marienplatz in Munich or at Alexanderplatz in Berlin, you do not notice that it is a memorial day! In Israel that is quite different. There, we all know from Memorial Day and it would take place in the morning. Around 10:00 o’clock am, a two-minute siren is sounded. “In every city and even on the highway everything stops, people go out and then stand for two minutes in silence.” Rund says that this would also be a good addition to the German Day of Remembrance for Victims of National Socialism. But he doesn’t want to set it now: “I now have so many other projects. Especially I am busy for example in the process of digitizing my huge private archive so it is available to the public.

He laughs and says: “I grabbed the Memorial Day project under my arms and now I’m looking for people who grab me by the arms… ”

Whoever wants to know more about Emanuel Rund can visit his blog at http://emanuelrund.wordpress.com.

The interview was conducted by Johanna Strunge, 2009/10 ASF volunteer.

As Emanuel Rund came in 1985 to shoot his first film in Germany, one of many issues he had to “settle” with the Germans was to initiate a memorial day for the Holocaust and for all other victims of the Nazis. He did it in the early 1990’s, raising the issue with many people he met. The last phase of the campaign was in May 1994 after filming young Germans on the Jewish Memorial Day to the Holocaust, Yom-Hashoah in Yad Vashem. He campaigned for one and a half years; spoke with over 200 politicians, civil activists, teachers and the clergy.

Then on January 3rd 1996 the German President Roman Herzog chose the 27th of January as a Memorial Day. Later it was adopted by the European Union, followed by the UN as The International Remembrance Day for the whole world.

Edited by: JV Staff

 

 

Autistic IDF Recruits Beckon Age of Inclusive Vision in the Military

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Roim Rachok cadets receive guidance from their commanding officer
A Roim Rachok cadet scans aerial photographs for suspicious activity

For decades, service in the Israel Defense Forces has been an important rite of passage for Israeli youth and a launch pad for social and professional success. But until recently, young adults on the Autism spectrum were unable to take advantage of this crucial and transformative experience. That is, until a forward-thinking program righted this shortsighted mistake in a way that benefits the entire Jewish State.

Known as “Roim Rachok” (literally “looking beyond the horizon”), the innovative program allows young adults with “high functioning” Autism, those who have above-average intelligence but struggle with social interaction and communication, to join the IDF as volunteer soldiers. Using their unique abilities of spatial intelligence and visual perception, these young cadets make valuable contributions to Israel’s most sensitive security operations.

Thanks to Roim Rachok, Pvt. E, a young man on the spectrum who never thought he would be able to join the army now serves in a sensitive intelligence unit. Though he struggled with certain social situations and was often easily distracted, the skills he gained from the program allowed him to secure a position working in software quality assurance, accomplishing what he and his family previously deemed impossible.

The brainchild of Tamir Pardo, the former head of the Mossad, and his retired colleagues, Tal Vardi and Leora Sali, Roim Rachok empowers young men and women on the Autism spectrum, teaching them basic life skills and preparing them for Israel’s job market through extensive training and invaluable security experience.

“I knew this program had potential because it taps into their strengths, specifically intense focus for extensive periods of time and strong visual capabilities,” says Sali, who understands this from her own experience as the mother of a son on the Autism spectrum. “I first became involved in this out of personal motivation, but I have moved on to a broader goal – to do something that has an impact on others.”

In order to ensure the greatest impact, Roim Rachok enlisted the help of the organization Beyond the Horizon and Ono Academic College the fastest growing institute of higher education in Israel and a model of inclusive undergraduate and graduate programming, to train both the recruits and the IDF commanders, most of whom have little experience interacting with individuals on the spectrum. Ono Academic College provides Roim Rachok with access to a full faculty of health professionals, including occupational and speech therapists which also enables the students to work with Roim Rachok for their practical experience.

During the first three months of the program, the pre-army training takes place at Ono Academic College, where a team of military specialists and health professionals, including speech, occupational and emotional therapists and psychotherapists, teach the recruits how to communicate with their commanders, make presentations in public, write a polite email, and travel using public transportation. Throughout the course, the curriculum focuses equally on technical and socio-emotional training, preparing recruits to work with others in a professional setting. The training continues for three more months at an army base in an effort to ease the recruits into their news surroundings.

Once the training is complete, the newly-minted soldiers are accompanied by an occupational therapist and a psychotherapist, who provide guidance to the cadets on the spectrum and their commanders and colleagues.

“Commanders have told me that working with Autistic soldiers has made them better commanders and better human beings,” says Sali. “They say they are better able to accept others, with their strengths and weaknesses, and develop more patience and sensitivity, which affects their relationships with all soldiers, not just the ones on the spectrum.”

Back in 2013, the program’s first group was trained to scan aerial photographs for suspicious activity, a role that requires great concentration. The recruits’ success in this area led to the growth of the program, which now prepares the teens to work in software quality assurance, information sorting, electro-optics and various tasks for the air force and intelligence.

Once they reach 21, individuals on the spectrum are usually burdened with the challenge of fending for themselves following the cessation of state-funded programs and assistance. Roim Rachok provides its graduates with a soft landing that includes a network of friends, a toolbox of life skills, a greater sense of belonging in mainstream Israeli society, and a professional future.

“A number of companies have expressed interest in hiring our graduates. And for the first time, they are able to decide what they do and how they do it,” says Sali. “There is a ripple effect, and this program touches more than just the recruits – it impacts their extended families and their entire neighborhoods. It’s a change in Israeli society, and we’re part of that.”

By: Ayala Young

 

 

ABCs of Tu B’Shvat

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On Tu B’Shvat, it is also customary to eat a "new fruit" – a seasonal fruit that you have not yet tasted this season

The “new year for trees” has a special set of meaningful customs.

Tu B’Shvat appears in the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 2a) as one of the four “new years” in the Jewish calendar:

“Beit Hillel says that the ‘new year for the trees’ is the 15th of Shevat – Tu B’Shvat.”

The custom on Tu B’Shvat is to eat fruits from the seven species for which the Land of Israel is praised: “…a land of wheat, barley, [grape] vines, fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and [date] honey” (Deut. 8:8).

Kabbalistic tradition even includes a mystical Tu B’Shvat “seder” service (conceptually similar to the Passover seder), where the inner dimensions of fruits are expounded, along with blessings, songs and deep discussion. The 16th century kabbalist Arizal taught that eating 10 specific fruits and drinking four cups of wine in a specific order can bring one closer to spiritual perfection.

Some Jews preserve their etrog from Sukkot and eat it on Tu B’Shvat. This is also considered a propitious day to pray for a beautiful etrog on the following Sukkot.

In contemporary Israel, Tu B’Shvat is a sort of Jewish Arbor Day – a day of environmental awareness where trees are planted in celebration.

 

Agricultural Laws in Israel

Tu B’Shvat has great significance in the agricultural laws that are relevant in the Land of Israel.

As “new year for the trees,” Tu B’Shvat is the cut-off date in the Hebrew calendar for calculating the age of a fruit-bearing tree.

Each tree is considered to have its “birthday” on Tu B’Shvat. This means if you planted a tree a few weeks before Tu B’Shvat, it begins its second year on Tu B’Shvat; whereas a tree planted after that time does not reach its second year until the following Tu B’Shvat.

Think of Tu B’Shvat as the fiscal year for agriculture.

The practical relevance of this is that during a tree’s first three years, its fruits are forbidden under the biblical injunction against eating Orlah (Leviticus 19:23).

Furthermore, Tu B’Shvat is the new year for determining the tithes: In years 1, 2, 4 and 5 of the 7-year Shmita cycle, 10 percent of produce grown in Israel is Maaser Sheni, which must be redeemed with a coin. In years 3 and 6 of the cycle, that 10 percent is Maaser Ani.

When partaking of fruits grown in Israel, they must be properly tithed. Otherwise, the fruits are not “kosher.”

 

Blessings on Fruit

The proper blessing before eating any fruit is:

“Baruch Atah Adod-nai Elohai-nu Melech HaOlam boray pri ha-aitz.”

“Blessed are you God, King of the Universe, Who creates the fruit of the tree.”

[A few fruits, such as pineapple, have a different blessing – the last word is changed to “ha-adama.”]

On Tu B’Shvat, it is also customary to eat a “new fruit” – a seasonal fruit that you have not yet tasted this season.

When eating two foods with the same bracha, e.g. a date and an apple that both require Ha’aitz, one bracha covers both foods.

If you plan to eat more than one kind of fruit, the principle is: Say a blessing (bracha) over the more important of the two foods. The Code of Jewish Law (OC 211) outlines a specific order in which to say the bracha over (and consequently which food to eat first).

A key factor in determining “importance” is the special “Seven Species.” Therefore when faced with two foods of the same bracha – e.g. dates and apples – you would say Ha’aitz on the dates (one of the seven species).

[The special status of the Seven Species applies even to non-Israeli produce. Although, with all things being equal, produce grown in Israel has bracha-preference over produce from the Diaspora.]

Furthermore, this verse teaches the order of importance within the seven species themselves. The rule is that a fruit or grain that is mentioned closer to the word “land” (which appears twice in the verse) is considered of higher importance. Within the seven species, the order of importance is:

wheat / barley / olives / dates / grapes / figs / pomegranates

To memorize this list, one rabbi suggests the following ditty, whose first letters correspond to the first letter of the seven species, in order: We Believe One Day God Forgives Penitents.

By: Rabbi Shraga Simmons
(Aish.com)

For more details on the laws of brachos, see: