Innovation Africa

With no energy resources, Africa has major problems in the food chain, education of children and healthcare.

Innovation Africa has helped over 100 villages to date to overcome these problems using Israeli technology.

Muslims of the IDF Celebrate Ramadan

Muslim IDF soldiers stand guard even during the long hours of the Ramadan fasts, after which the army helps them celebrate their holy month.

Muslims worldwide fast each day of the holy month of Ramadan, from dawn till sunset.

The Muslim calendar, like the Jewish one, is lunar, but it does not share the Jewish calendar’s leap years, which keep the Jewish months in the same seasons from year to year. Ramadan, therefore, falls in different seasons and this year it came out in June, making for particularly long fast days.

Nonetheless, Muslim soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces stand guard during the long hours of the fasts, as do their Jewish comrades on Jewish fast days, such as Yom Kippur.

See what awaits the IDF Muslim warriors at the end of each fast day.

Cochlear implants allow Palestinian children to hear again

Meet Mohammed, a young Palestinian boy, who is able to hear for the first time thanks to sophisticated technology and the work of the dedicated team of physicians at the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem.

Mohammed is just one of many Palestinian children from the West Bank and Gaza who have overcome deafness after undergoing cochlear implant surgery at this Israeli hospital. 

A History of the Palestinian People

From Ancient Times to the Modern Era

(I couldn't resist this notice as it doesn't fit with my normal postings BUT it must be read to the VERY end!)

 

Assaf A. Voll has written one of the most comprehensive books on the history of the Palestinian People, and it is now available on Amazon in English for only $8.88.

From the description on the Amazon page:

This book is the fruit of many years of research, during which thousands of sources have been meticulously reviewed in libraries and archives worldwide. It is no doubt the most comprehensive and extensive review of some 3,000 years of Palestinian history, with emphasis on the Palestinian people’s unique contribution to the world and to humanity.

The author, Assaf Voll was born and raised in Nir Etzion, on the Carmel Mountains, and currently resides in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is a publicist, editor and creative specialist. He holds an M.A. in Jewish studies from Haifa University and taught there as an adjunct lecturer.

Without a doubt the book is incredibly unique in its historical accuracy of 3000 years of Palestinian history and their unique contribution to humanity. For such a long book, with so many pages, it’s actually quite an easy read. Even with all the comprehensive Palestinian history covered in the book, my favorite part was still the dedication,

“Just remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it – George Costanza.”

If you don’t mind reading online, you can also download a PDF version of the book for free.

Did I mention that every page of the book is blank?

Israel’s first ultra-Orthodox female pilot flies Netanyahu to Greece

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was flown by an ultra-Orthodox female pilot on Wednesday to Thessaloniki, Greece for a trilateral summit with Greek and Cypriot leaders.

It was the first time an ultra-Orthodox female co-piloted a trip for an Israeli prime minister, and the moment, while undoubtedly meaningful for the pilot, who referred to flying as her “life’s dream,” was also an inspirational one for Netanyahu.

“She is the first, but not the last,” Netanyahu said before departing.

After successfully acquiring a pilot’s license, she attempted to enter 

EL AL’s pilot course, but lacked the necessary flight hours. She acquired additional flight hours in the United States until, in 2015, she was notified of her acceptance to the EL AL pilot course in October that year.

Her course completion was delayed due to maternity leave.

Stop Child Abuse by UNWRA

Palestinian refugee children, under the auspices of UNRWA, are educated for war against Israel. 

Palestinian Donates Recovery Room to Haifa Hospital

Tens of thousands of shekels donated to Rambam Hospital by Palestinian to improve treatment of childhood cancers and Israeli-Palestinian medical cooperation after he himself underwent treatment there; 'When I arrived at Rambam, I saw a medical team caring for patients, but I also saw the suffering of the sick children,' says donor.

Ilana Messika/TPS|Published:  11.06.17

A Palestinian man donated tens of thousands of shekels to the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa to improve treatment of childhood cancers and Israeli-Palestinian medical cooperation after he himself underwent cancer treatment at the Israeli hospital.

After being diagnosed with cancer, a senior Palestinian official was directed to Rambam for further medical examinations and treatment. While hospitalized in the Joseph Fishman Oncology Center, he met with several families of patients from the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, and showed a particular interest in the needs of hospitalized children, both Israeli and foreign. 

Photo: Rambam Hospital Spokesperson's Unit

“When I arrived at Rambam (Hospital), I saw a medical team caring for patients, but I also saw the suffering of the sick children,” recalled M. in a statement (Rambam Medical Center spokespeople said they were not at liberty to reveal the man’s identity). “Palestinian, Israeli, Syrian and children from other countries receive treatment in the hospital for a variety of serious illnesses and need all the help they can get. I decided to contribute as much as I could, both a humanitarian act and a symbol of solidarity.”

After completing treatment, M. underwrote the establishment of a children’s recovery room in the Institute of Radiology, inside the oncology center. The room provides a relaxing and supportive environment for children before and after chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments, among others.

The oncology center opened its doors in June 2016, but due to lack of funding, patients still receive radiation therapy in a different building. This accessibly problem requires patients walking outside to get to the current location of Rambam’s radiation therapy equipment when moving them hinders their recovery.

Rambam estimates, that approximately 1,200 Palestinian children and adults from the Palestinian Authority and Gaza visit the hospital every year for cancer treatment.

“Israeli and Palestinian both societies suffer from the damage of violence and I am striving towards a situation where we can all contribute to peace and health,” continues M. “One where we can take care of children, save lives, share knowledge and train Palestinian doctors at Rambam Hospital.”

M. added his goal is to improve the state of health systems and treatment capacities within the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, and encourage more Palestinians to contribute to health promotion between the two peoples.

“Medicine is a bridge between people and I hope that owing to this donation and those which will come after, we will all live a better tomorrow,” M. concluded.

Unhappy Anniversary

There has been much written lately about the anniversary of the 6 day war in 19676 and the reunification of Jerusalem, However one anniversary at this time does not evoke happy memories, This week is the 10th anniversary of the bloody Hamas coup that enabled the creation of an Islamist, terrorist quasi- state on Israel’s southern border.

The editorial below describes the callousness of HAMAS in ignoring the residents of Gaza and creating catastrophic conditions for day to day living,

Gaza Marks Unhappy Anniversary - 10 Years Under Hamas Rule

JPOST EDITORIAL  JUNE 11, 2017

http://www.jpost.com/opinion/unhappy-anniversary-496453

Now that the Six Day War jubilee commemorations are over, it is time to mark another event that is integrally linked to that historic victory’s aftermath.

This week is the 10th anniversary of the bloody Hamas coup that enabled the creation of an Islamist, terrorist quasi- state on Israel’s southern border. It is an anniversary that few Gazans can celebrate.

On June 10, 2007, fighting between Hamas and Fatah began. Within days, Fatah had lost control of the Strip and Ismail Haniyeh became the effective leader of a new terrorist state in the Middle East.

Since those five days of Palestinian civil war resulted in the separation of the Fatah-ruled Palestinian Authority in the West Bank from the Hamas regime of Gaza, Hamas has forced its people to suffer several destructive wars with Israel. It continues to prepare for another conflict in the deluded hope of vanquishing the IDF.

It had alternatives. When Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 it left behind millions of dollars’ worth of hothouses that could have been used to grow produce. Instead they were used to grow rockets and roadside bombs and to hide entrances to cross-border attack tunnels into Israel.

Due to this continued focus on terrorism, Hamas has succeeded in achieving the highest unemployment rate in the world for a population that has electricity for only a few hours a day and lacks a regular supply of drinking water.

Hamas has used its 10-year rule to turn Gaza into the very prison camp its supporters accuse Israel of running.

Instead of using the foreign aid funds that support its rule to build homes to replace those destroyed in the 2014 war it provoked with Israel, the terrorist leadership diverts essential construction materials to rebuilding its network of attack tunnels for another pointless round, in an apparent attempt to divert public attention from its abuse of power.

Hamas is essentially holding its own people hostage, preventing an improvement of their lives by deciding to dedicate its resources and attention to destroying the Jewish state instead of to the prosperity of its people.

Israel, for its part, has warned the UN that Gaza is on the brink of either a water or an electricity crisis – or both.

The Independent newspaper reported recently that Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the IDF coordinator of government activities in the Palestinian territories, sent letters to the UN’s envoy for the Middle East peace process and others urging action to prevent the situation for civilians from deteriorating further. It was the second warning he issued in six months.

“Instead of worrying about the welfare of residents, Hamas is harming them and making it difficult for the international organization that worked hard to supply drinking water,” he wrote.

“Hamas must immediately provide needed electricity to operate the desalination plant for the good of residents, but instead the terrorist organization has chosen to send electricity to its terror tunnels and the homes of its leaders.”

Nevertheless, Israel continues to transfer hundreds of truckloads of supplies into Gaza daily even though it shouldn’t have to. Gaza shares a border with Egypt which should take responsibility for the Palestinians. The problem is that Cairo doesn’t want that headache.

An important indication that Hamas maintains its commitment to its declared goal of destroying Israel was the recent appointment of hard-core terrorist Yahya Sinwar as the Hamas warlord. A veteran of more than 20 years in Israeli prisons, Sinwar is a harsh enforcer of loyalty within the group and an unstinting enemy of Israel.

A decade after seizing Gaza, Hamas is a complete failure on all accounts. It doesn’t provide for its people and it doesn’t succeed in its sworn mission to destroy Israel.

Israel should not expect a change anytime soon. While it recently issued a revised policy document, it did not amend its charter: Hamas remains committed to Israel’s destruction.

What should change is the Arab world’s attitude toward Gaza. For the last 10 years, Arab states have stayed away from Gaza due to its volatility and an understanding that there is no good outcome there on the horizon.

Nevertheless, if they really care for the Palestinians and genuinely want to see a peace deal with Israel, they can start by working on changing Gaza. It’s been 10 years. We hope it’s not too late.

UNHRC declares Israel No. 1 Human Rights Violator

Visiting Israel this week, Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the UN,  stated “President Trump and I think that you (Netanyahu) have changed the discourse in the UN, have drawn new standards, and everybody's taking them up, and that's great. I think it makes a world of difference, both for Israel and the US. Again, I felt that the UN would collapse, you know, that whole scaffolding of lies would just collapse. I think you've put in that simple word, truth."

 Anne Bayefsky of the Truro Institute writes:-

https://tinyurl.com/y6uze46h 

According to the U.N.'s top human rights body, Israel is the worst human rights violator in the world today.

President Trump’s administration is currently a member of this reprehensible body. The Bush administration refused to join the Council when it was created in 2006.  

On March 31, 2009, President Obama – fully aware of its entrenched anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias – made jumping on board one of his very first foreign policy moves. Moreover, in an unscrupulous attempt to control his successor, the former President obtained yet another three-year term for the United States on the Council that began on January 1, 2017.

If President Trump were to choose a swift departure from the Council as one of his very first foreign policy moves, it would demonstrate a principled reset of American values and priorities on the world stage. March 31, 2017, the anniversary of Obama’s decision, would be an auspicious date to make that point.

The reasons for leaving are many. Here are a few:

The Council plays a leading role in the demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state by the United Nations.

In its history, the Council has condemned Israel more often than any other of the 192 UN states. Comparative totals after this session’s pogrom tell the story:  Israel – 78 resolutions and decisions, Syria – 29, North Korea – 9, and Iran – 6.  As for Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, there’s nothing at all.

Think of it this way:  500,000 dead in Syria, forced starvation and mass torture in North Korea, systematic and lethal oppression in Iran, gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia, and an elementary lack of basic freedoms affecting over a billion in Russia and China.

But at the U.N. Human Rights Council, little democratic Israel is the problem.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley rightly objected to a recent UN report charging Israel with “apartheid.” But the malicious slur of “apartheid Israel” is a staple of the Council’s fixed agenda, which dedicates time for hate-speech and incitement at every session, and transmits it around the world via a U.N. webcast. Contrary to rule of law 101, the Council has an investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a license only to report on Israel.

 The “Human Rights” Council is now the principal U.N. engine of “BDS” – the campaign to boycott, divest and sanction Israel.  Economic strangulation is Plan B for Israel’s enemies, war and terrorism having so far failed to rid the world of a Jewish state.  The Council has sponsored the creation of a blacklist of companies around the world ‘directly or indirectly’ doing business with Israeli settlements – in effect, Israel period.

Make no mistake: there is no middle ground. Staying on the Council means American taxpayers will pay for the production of a blacklist of American companies doing business with Israel. The State Department representative told the Council Friday that it will not provide information for the blacklist. But, of course, the U.N. will simply get what it wants from the Palestinian entourage.

As Freedom House attests, less than half the members of the General Assembly are fully free democracies. The majority aren't going to create a club they can’t join.

It is understandable why Council members like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Cuba and China want to masquerade as human rights authorities. But why would the United States want to legitimize this charade by standing beside them?

Sure, we voted against – and we lost. In fact, of the 15 resolutions this session adopted  by vote, the United States lost 12 of them.  Setting ourselves up for target practice is not a foreign policy in which Americans can take pride. 

Mr. President, the UN “Human Rights” Council, is not your place.

What Do Gazan Residents Really Think?

What do the residents of Gaza say when they are out of the reach of HAMAS - read below.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/hamas-gaza-israel-civil-war/ 

If you ask Palestinians in either Gaza or the West Bank who’s responsible for their suffering, most would probably say Israel. But what would they say if they were safely overseas and no longer needed to fear their own governments? That’s not a question reporters, diplomats, or nongovernmental organizations usually bother asking. We now have an answer to it, at least with regard to Palestinians who fled Gaza. They left not because of anything Israel did, but because of persecution by Gaza’s Hamas-run government

Their testimony was brought by Haaretz reporter Zvi Bar’el, who went to Greece in search of Syrian refugees but accidentally stumbled instead on Palestinians from Gaza–thousands of them, by their own count. One Gazan refugee estimated there were about 6,000 Palestinians from Gaza in Athens alone. The Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights says the real figure is probably higher.

And that’s just those who have been able to leave. Many would like to but are stuck in Gaza because the border crossing to Egypt is open only a few days per month. Even when it’s open, only a few hundred people per day can leave. Osama, one of the Palestinians Bar’el interviewed, said that when he left Gaza (via a cross-border smuggling tunnel) over 25,000 people were on the waiting list to leave via the official border crossing.

And why have so many Gazans fled or tried to flee? The Palestinians Bar’el met had a uniform answer: Hamas. Not a single one of them even mentioned Israel in their responses.

“There’s a Palestinian doctor here who came with his wife and three children,” Osama told Bar’el. “Imagine, a doctor, a respectable person with a profession, has to flee Gaza only because he was suspected of disloyalty to Hamas.”

Ayman, who has been listening to the conversation in silence, joins in. “I’m a cartoonist, an artist, and I’ve had exhibitions in Gaza. Hamas didn’t like my cartoons and they forbade me to draw, and they also arrested me. After I spent time in a Hamas prison I decided to escape,” he says.

“They tied my hands and feet, they beat me, and after I was injured from the blows they transferred me to a hospital where I was for more than a month. In the meantime they also arrested my brother to get information out of him about me.”

There are numerous UN agencies ostensibly devoted exclusively to helping the Palestinians, while human rights groups allocate disproportionate attention to this issue. In both cases, their only real interest in Palestinian suffering is finding some way to blame Israel for it. They couldn’t care less about protecting Palestinians from the abuses of their own government. That’s why they keep issuing reports accusing Israel of being the “key cause” of Palestinian suffering, as one UN agency put it this week, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Yet their blatant bias often obscures a larger problem that affects even well-meaning journalists, NGOs, diplomats and almost everyone else involved in telling the world about what’s happening in the West Bank and Gaza–a failure to understand the way fear affects what people say in nondemocratic societies. For Palestinians, blaming anyone other than Israel for their problems risks serious repercussions from either their own governments or vigilante groups affiliated with both governments. And that’s true not just in Hamas-run Gaza, as people like Ayman and Naji discovered to their sorrow, but also in the Fatah-run West Bank, where journalists, businessmen, and Palestinian security officers have all suffered arrest and financial sanctions for daring to criticize the Palestinian Authority or its president, Mahmoud Abbas. Blaming Israel is always the safest solution, even in cases where it’s patently untrue.

Responsible journalists, NGOs, and diplomats would take this fear factor into account and try to dig a little deeper to try to get at the truth. They would also recognize that the very fact that Israel is the one party no Palestinian fears to criticize is in itself a potent refutation of Palestinian claims that Israel is an oppressive regime. People who truly live under an oppressive regime are generally afraid to go on record criticizing it.

Instead, these opinion shapers take everything they hear from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza at face value and parrot it uncritically. That does nothing to better the Palestinians’ lot, but a great deal to bolster the Palestinians’ own repressive governments by absolving them of all scrutiny and pressure to reform.

The testimony of these Gazan refugees in Greece provides a rare opportunity to hear what Palestinians say when they’re out of reach of their own repressive governments and can speak freely. It thereby offers a glimpse at the true source of much Palestinian suffering – and a rebuke to all the journalists, diplomats, and NGOs who have collaborated with both Palestinian governments to hide this truth from the world.

Economic Peace

This message speaks for itself

Palestinians: Israel's Goodwill Gestures Send Wrong Messages

by Bassam Tawil June 2, 2017

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10464/israel-goodwill-gestures

The West suffers under a major misconception concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that "goodwill gestures" and territorial concessions on the part of Israel boost the prospects of peace in the Middle East. The facts, however, suggest that precisely the opposite is true.

Last week, Israel's Channel 10 television station reported that the U.S. administration was pushing Israel to transfer parts of Area C -- areas under full Israeli security and civilian control in the West Bank -- to the control of Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA). According to the report, the U.S. believes that the transfer of the territory to the PA would be a "goodwill step" towards the Palestinians, paving the way for the revival of the stalled peace process with Israel.

This assumption, of course, has already proven wrong. The experiences of the past few decades have shown clearly that Israeli concessions have always sent the wrong message to the Palestinians.

• Here is what is being said on the Palestinian street: Today Israel runs away from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip; tomorrow Israel will run away from Ashkelon, then from Tel Aviv and from there to the sea, and we have achieved our goal of destroying Israel. Therefore, we need to continue attacking Israel.

• As with the Gaza Strip, the withdrawal from Lebanon taught the Palestinians that terrorism could drive Israelis out of their country.

• Never have the Palestinians given Israel credit for its goodwill steps. On the contrary, they scoff at these moves and describe them as "cosmetic changes". The Palestinian line is that Israel's steps are "insufficient" and "unhelpful." Its concessions are regarded as gestures of a terrified people and as the rightful reward for terrorism. Far from satiating the appetite of the terrorists, such steps prompt them to step up their attacks against Israelis.