Israel is only Mideast state safe for Christians, envoy to U.S. says

In Wall Street Journal op-ed, Michael Oren compares what he calls the current repression of Christians in the Muslim world to the expulsion of Jews from Arab states.

 

Israel is the only country in the Middle East that is safe for Christians, Israel’s ambassador to the United States Michael Oren wrote in an op-ed column for the Wall Street Journal on Friday, comparing what he said was the suppression of Christian communities in Arab states to the twentieth-century expulsion of Jews from these nations.

Ambassador Michael Oren

Ambassador Michael Oren - Photo by: Natasha Mozgovaya

In his article, Oren cited the continuing violence against Egypt’s Coptic Christians, the burning of Iraqi churches, a Saudi ban on Christian worship and the desecration of the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank as instances indicating a threat to Christianity in the Muslim world, adding that conversion “to Christianity is a capital offense in Iran, where last month Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani was sentenced to death.” Continue Reading »

PA to Israel: Release Prisoners, Then We’ll Talk Peace

Fatah yet again demands that Israel release terrorists as a condition for peace negotiations

The leadership of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement is once again demanding that Israel release terrorist prisoners as a condition for peace talks, it was reported on Thursday.

Abbas opens up Doha conference - Photo by Reuters

According to the report on Kol Yisrael radio, among the prisoners the Fatah is demanding to be released is Ahmed Saadat, who heads the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and who planned the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001.

Saadat was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years in prison for heading the PFLP. Continue Reading »

Israeli women join ‘Slutwalk’ protest movement

Movement started in Canada in response to policeman’s comment that to avoid being attacked women shouldn’t dress like sluts.

Slutwalk Toronto

Slutwalk in Toronto - Photo By REUTERS/Mark Blinch

 

Less than a year after a group of Canadian women held the Slutwalk protest in response to a policeman’s comment that if women want to avoid being attacked they should not dress like sluts, Israel is poised to follow suit with its first Mitzad Sharmuta (Slutwalk) next week.

“The problem here is that rape is often seen as being the fault of the woman and during court cases or investigations there is always reference to how many partners she might have had in the past or how she was dressed, but that is just not relevant,” Ya’ara Liebermann-Callif, one of the women involved in organizing next Friday’s Slutwalk in Tel Aviv, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview Thursday.

Continue Reading »

Israeli expert forced to cancel lecture in Jordan

Hundreds of enraged Jordanian students protest Israeli expert’s participation in conference, succeed in canceling his lecture

 

Cold peace: Hundreds of Jordanian students rallied outside Amman’s University of Jordan on Thursday in protest of a scheduled lecture by an Israeli expert at a mental health conference.

Protest in Jordan university

Protest in Jordan university

The protesters demanded that Dr. Gideon Anholt’s lecture be canceled and called on authorities to expel the Israeli ambassador from Jordan and cancel the 1994 peace treaty.

A university official met with the protesters and promised to cancel the Ben-Gurion University lecturer’s appearance so as not to disrupt the conference. Protesters bragged they succeeded in cancelling “the Zionist’s lecture” on Facebook. Continue Reading »

UN women’s rights panel due to culminate annual session by condemning Israel

Israel’s envoy to UN Prosor bemoans Commission on the Status of Women ‘obsessive’ preoccupation with Palestinian issue, while ignoring women being ‘butchered, tortured, raped’ in Syria.

The United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), scheduled to wrap up its annual session on Friday, is expected to pass a resolution condemning Israel’s part in the degrading of living conditions for Palestinian women, while failing to mention the mistreatment of women in the ongoing crisis in Syria.

Friday’s session will include such professional resolution as concerning “woman and natural disasters,” “women hostages,” women and girls and AIDS,” and “mortality among women.

Continue Reading »

UNESCO Condemns Syria But Won’t Kick it Out

UNESCO condemns Syria for its brutal crackdown on protesters but stops short of dismissing it from its human rights committee.

UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency, condemned Syria on Thursday for its brutal crackdown on opposition protesters but stopped short of dismissing it from its human rights committee.

Fox News reported that the commission of the executive board of UNESCO voted 35-8 Thursday for the watered-down resolution.

Damaged houses in Baba Amr, Homs

Damaged houses in Baba Amr, Homs Handout photo / Reuters

The resolution, the report noted, urged Syrian authorities to end human rights violations, protect the population, restore freedom of expression and respect heritage.

But it did not heed U.S. Continue Reading »

PA: Register Church of Nativity under ‘Palestine’

Palestinians to ask UN World Heritage Committee to register Bethlehem church as Palestinian heritage site.

For the first time in their history on Thursday, Palestinians have the right to act as a state before the World Heritage Committee and ask the UN body to register Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity under the name of Palestine.

Church of the Nativity

The Palestinian Authority has an inventory list of 20 historical, religious, cultural and natural sites over the pre-1967 line that it wants the UN to register.

These range from the old town of Nablus to Qumran where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. No sites in Jerusalem are on the PA’s list at present.
Continue Reading »

The Rachel Corrie myth

Op-ed: Killed ‘peace activist’ one of the most powerful tools in anti-Israel propaganda campaign

March 16 is the anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death. She is the American college student killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza while attempting to block a house demolition. Israeli authorities claim that the driver was unable to see Corrie, given the restricted vision from his perch, and that she acted recklessly by inserting herself into the path of the bulldozer. But as always happens in the Middle East, lies trumped truth.

The Corrie myth has been one of the most powerful tools in the anti-Israel propaganda campaign. Continue Reading »

First Druze kibbutz members say they’re ‘enveloped with love’

Haza and Nibal Tafesh, originally from a Galilee village, get warm welcome on southern kibbutz.

 

A couple originally from a Galilee village made history last week by becoming the first Druze accepted as members of a kibbutz.

The couple, Haza and Nibal Tafesh, have been living on Kibbutz Elifaz in the southern Arava region since 2007, after starting out in the Druze village of Beit Jann. Last week the kibbutz voted by a large majority to accept the couple as full members.

Tafesh says he and his wife fell in love with Kibbutz Elifaz on their first day there. “We were captivated by the place and we integrated very well.

Continue Reading »

Senior Hamas Leader Undecided on Attacking Israel Over Iran

Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar sends different signals when asked whether Hamas will attack Israel if it attacks Iran.

 

A senior leader in the Hamas terrorist organization sent two different signals on Wednesday, when he was asked whether the group would attack Israel if it launches a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

First, Mahmoud al-Zahar denied the group would get involved and told the BBC, “We are not part of any political axis. If Israel attacks us we will respond. If they don’t, we will not get involved in any other regional conflict.”

Mahmoud al-Zahar

Mahmoud al-Zahar - Photo by Reuters

He also questioned Hamas’ ability to offer support to Iran from Gaza, if it wanted to. Continue Reading »

Israel’s 18-year-old high-tech whiz kid

 

He’s only 18, but Ben Lang is already a serial entrepreneur. Now he’s co-founded Innovation Israel — a community for startups, entrepreneurs and investors.

 Ben Lang

“Right now I want to learn from really smart people,” says Ben Lang.

 

Ben Lang gets a kick out of sharing the story of how he received a cease-and-desist order from the New York Times for making a website called freenewyorktimes.com, which explained how to get around the venerable newspaper’s impending pay wall.

“They shut down my server for a week, and I couldn’t even login to take down the website,” he recalls. “If they would have asked nicely I would have stopped.”

Continue Reading »

Report: Iran Tried to Clean-Up Traces of Nuclear Tests

Diplomats say satellite images from show trucks and earth-moving vehicles at the Parchin military site.

Satellite images of an Iranian military facility appear to show trucks and earth-moving vehicles at the site, indicating an attempted cleanup of radioactive traces possibly left by tests of a nuclear-weapon trigger, diplomats told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The diplomats who spoke to the news agency are all nuclear experts accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano - Photo by Reuters

Two of the diplomats told AP the crews at the Parchin military site may be trying to erase evidence of tests of a small experimental neutron device used to set off a nuclear explosion. Continue Reading »

California wine country to benefit from Haifa study

Water-monitoring system developed by IBM’s Israeli labs allows close observation of pressure valves, reduces leakage.

 

  Water conservation tools developed in Haifa research labs will soon be arriving at Northern California’s wine country, in order to reduce water loss for the more than 600,000 people who live in the Valley of the Moon Water District.
  Building upon a cooperation agreement signed in June 2010 between IBM and the Sonoma County Water Agency, the technological giant has installed analytic devices and sensors that reduce water loss by making pressure adjustments based on usage, weather and environmental conditions, the company announced on Wednesday morning.
Continue Reading »

What the IDF’s Iran wish list would look like

If the IDF were to present the Pentagon with a wish list to ensure a military attack against Iran’s nuclear program succeeds, this is what it might ask for

 

New smart bombs with extended ranges and greater penetration as well as landing rights on aircraft carriers are just some of the requests that would appear on an Israeli military wish list, if one was presented to the Obama administration as a way to ensure that Israel succeeds in a potential attack against Iran.

While US President Barack Obama voiced clear opposition earlier this week to such a strike, Israel has been noncommittal.

Continue Reading »

Peres launches official Facebook page

Social network CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosts president during visit to Silicon Valley; helps him launch personal page

WASHINGTON – President Shimon Peres visited social network giant Facebook’s headquarters Tuesday in what he described as an effort to use social networking to mend divides governments have been unable to bridge.

Peres met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who helped him launch the 88-year-old leader’s personal page aimed at creating a dialogue with young Arabs who live in countries that do not have diplomatic ties with Israel.

Click to see President Shimon Peres – Be My Friend For Peace (Noy Alooshe Remix Video)

“The President will call on them to talk with him, to ask questions and to offer ideas to advance peace between peoples, not just between governments,” Peres’ staff said in a statement. Continue Reading »