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Kites fly high over Gaza as children at UN summer camp soar to new world record
from UN News Centre
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35473&Cr=&Cr1=
29 July 2010 –More than 6,200 children attending a summer camp in the Gaza Strip run by the United Nations agency assisting Palestinian refugees have broken their own world record for the number of kites flown at the same time.
The feat comes exactly one week after more than 7,200 children bounced basketballs simultaneously for five minutes, doubling a 2007 record set in the United States.
“We still have to await final confirmation from the Guinness Book of World Records, but according to our figures the kids have done it. What an amazing achievement – two world records in a week,” said John Ging, Director of Operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Both record-breaking events were part of the Summer Games programme organized by UNRWA in nearly 150 locations across Gaza over a period of six weeks, beginning on 12 June. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East, News Articles, Recent Posts on July 29, 2010 - י"ח אב תש"ע at 4:41 pm
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Playing politics: summer camp for Gaza’s children
UN vies with Islamic Jihad and Hamas to keep hundreds of thousands entertained in summer
By Harriet Sherwood, Guardian UK, July 29, 2010
Palestinian girls at an UN Relief and Works Agency day camp on the beach in Gaza City. Boys have more options and many attend summer camps run by militant groups. Photograph: Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP The boys sitting in the shade of an awning erected on a
Gaza beach are only half listening to the man addressing them through a megaphone.
After all, school’s out for the summer and there is football to be played and the sea to be swum in. Some of the 100 or so boys whisper among themselves, others are busy burying their own or a friend’s legs in the hot sand.
But when the man asks, “What is our slogan?” they snap to attention, responding in unison: “Resistance!”
This is summer in Gaza, Islamic Jihad-style. These boys are among 10,000 or so children that the militant organisation estimates attends its 50 camps. Hamas, the Islamic party which runs Gaza, claims another 100,000 children are attending 500 camps it organises; both are dwarfed by the 250,000 taking part in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s Summer Games across the Gaza Strip. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on July 29, 2010 - י"ח אב תש"ע at 10:10 am
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For embarrassing memory lapses blame your neurons
Reprinted from Sify News, July 29, 2010
A specific part of our brain processes information about human and animal faces and is responsible for how we recognize them and interpret facial expressions. Now, Israeli researchers are exploring what makes this highly specialized area of the brain unique.
In her “Face Lab” at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Galit Yovel of TAU’s Department of Psychology is trying to understand the mechanisms at work in the face area of the brain called the “fusiform gyrus” of the brain. She is combining cognitive psychology with techniques like brain imaging and electrophysiology to study how the brain processes information about faces. Her most recent research on the brain’s face-processing mechanisms appears in the Journal of Neuroscience and Human Brain Mapping.
The study of face recognition does more than provide an explanation for embarrassing memory lapses. For instance, it may help business executives better match names with faces, and more important can lead to better facial recognition software to identify terrorists or criminals. Similar to faces, bodies are also processed by distinct brain areas. How we perceive faces is not totally intuitive, she says, and therefore raises the question of how this information is combined in our brain to understand how separate face and body areas generate a whole body-image impression. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Mental Health, Middle East, Science on July 29, 2010 - י"ח אב תש"ע at 10:02 am
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The Flotilla Farce
Whether they are from Turkey, Ireland or Cyprus, those that participate reek of hypocrisy.
A couple of years ago, a Palestinian refugee camp was encircled and laid siege to by an army of tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers. Attacks initiated by Palestinian militants triggered an overwhelming response from the army that took the life of almost 500 people, including many civilians. International organizations struggled to send aid to the refugee camps, where the inhabitants were left without basic amenities like electricity and running water. During the conflict, six U.N. personnel were killed when their car was bombed.
Government ministers and spokesmen tried to explain to the international community that the Palestinian militants were backed by Syria and global jihadist elements. Al Qaeda condemned the government and the army, declaring that the attack was part of a “crusade” against their Palestinian brothers.
AFP/Getty ImagesA Palestinian refugee collects metal and plastic objects at a garbage dump in the Palestinian refugee camp of Beddawi near Tripoli.
While most will assume that the events described above took place in the West Bank or Gaza, they actually took place in Lebanon in the summer of 2007, when Palestinian terrorists attacked the Lebanese Army, which struck back with deadly force. The scene of most of the fighting was the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in Northern Lebanon, which was home to the Islamist Fatah al-Islam, a group that has links with al Qaeda.
At the time, there was little international outcry. No world leader decried the “prison camps” in Lebanon. No demonstrations took place around the world; no U.N. investigation panels were created and little media attention was attracted. In fact, the plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon garners very little attention internationally. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 29, 2010 - י"ח אב תש"ע at 8:50 am
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Antisemitism and Introspection
by Prof. Robert S. Wistrich, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
This year, Tisha B’Av (the annual Jewish fast day commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem) once again reminded us of the dangers of “gratuitous hatred” without rhyme or reason for one’s fellow Jews; the kind of hatred for its own sake, which seems more recently to have become part of our everyday Israeli reality. Divisions between Ultra-Orthodox and Secular Jews or the bitter antagonism towards the settlers in the West Bank are of course not new, but they have lost nothing of their malevolent edge. No less distressing are the actions of those Israeli lecturers who defend the international anti-Israel boycott in the name of academic freedom and the much larger numbers of those who denounce any criticism or sanctions against these boycotters as “McCarthyism”.
Such harsh polemics are happening at a time of unprecedented hatred towards Israel as a nation within the international community. The hysteria surrounding the Gaza flotilla brought this trend to new heights of hypocrisy. It reflects the ongoing campaign of branding Israel as the “Jew” of nations – libeling it as a racist, bloodthirsty, pariah-state. At the same time, American Jewish support for Israel’s policies, especially among liberals, has also been increasingly eroded. This has potentially dangerous consequences for our relations with the Diaspora, already tense over the issue of non-Orthodox conversions.True, the majority of Americans still show remarkable empathy with Israel’s dilemmas and President Obama has more recently chosen to adopt a somewhat friendlier tone to Israel’s prime minister. Many European leaders, while less supportive than the United States, are by no means blind to Israel’s security needs, to the Iranian threat or to the disastrous implications of Hamas’s violent rule in Gaza. Nevertheless, the international weakening of Israel’s legitimacy as a state remains deeply troubling. It has been accompanied by an unprecedented explosion of global anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism during the past few years. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Judaism, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 28, 2010 - י"ז אב תש"ע at 9:43 am
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Sniffing Device Helps Disabled People Move, Write
Technology Helps Severely Disabled People Use Their Noses to Drive Electric Wheelchairs, Write Text Messages
July 26, 2010 — Israeli scientists have developed a device that allows severely disabled people to sniff to precisely control objects such as wheelchairs and personal digital assistants, a new study says.
The nasal-mask device works so well that disabled people who can’t move at all can learn to write text messages and drive electric wheelchairs by sniffing, researchers report in the July issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Noam Sobel, PhD, of the department of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and colleagues set out to find a way to allow people with disabilities ranging from quadriplegia to “locked-in syndrome” to learn how to control devices with their noses just as they would using a joystick or computer mouse.
The Weizmann Institute has filed for a patent on sniff-controlled technology, which the researchers report as a possible conflict of interest.
The researchers built a “sniff controller” that measures changes in nasal pressure, which occur when the soft palate (the soft area at the back of the roof of the mouth) is repositioned. The device was tested on healthy and disabled people. The researchers report that sniffing can be done with precision, and that it requires precise movements of the soft palate, which receives signals from cranial nerves that often are not affected by paralytic injury and other disorders. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Recent Posts, Science and Technology, Special Education on July 27, 2010 - ט"ז אב תש"ע at 9:17 pm
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The Real Road to Jewish Unity
Av 16, 5770, July 27, 2010
by Rabbi Avi Shafran, Am Echad Resources
The proposed Israeli conversion-reform legislation known as the Rotem Bill – now on hold for several months – became a sort of Rorschach test for many Jews’ fears.
The bill was introduced by Yisrael Beiteinu, a nationalistic and not infrequently anti-religious political party representing a largely secular immigrant constituency. The legislation’s essential aim is to ease the conversion process for non-Jewish Israelis – like thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union – allowing them greater choice of religious courts than they currently have.
To advance the bill, Yisrael Beiteinu garnered the support of Israel’s hareidi, or so-called “Ultra-Orthodox,” parties. What allowed the religious parties to back the conversion reforms was the bill’s formalization of part of the decades-old religious status quo, placing conversion in Israel under the auspices of the country’s official Chief Rabbinate. That, the religious parties reasoned, would ensure that the bill’s reforms would not result in a conversion free-for-all.
When the bill passed its first procedural hurdle, a hue and cry rose up from Reform and Conservative leaders in America, who contended that it could potentially lead to a change in the definition of “Jewish” regarding qualification for automatic citizenship under the Law of Return. (Currently, any convert to any Jewish religious movement is registered as Jewish for civil purposes.) The bill’s sponsors vehemently deny that any such change could be effected by the legislation. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, Recent Posts on July 27, 2010 - ט"ז אב תש"ע at 9:37 am
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The Palestinian Right to Israel
by Dr. Alex Grobman / Reviewed by: INN Staff
Systematically and methodically exposes the myths and lies about the Arab right to the land of Israel.
The Palestinian Right to Israelby Dr. Alex Grobman
- Publisher: Balfour Press
- Pages: 328
- Format: Hardcover
- Price: $19.99
- Available At: Balfour Store
[Note: Readers who purchase through www.balfourstore.com will get a discount and an extra 10% discount on the price of the book, so it will cost $16. Please use the following password:INN2010 when purchasing]
The Arab/Israeli conflict is among the most intractable disputes in the world today. In this meticulously researched and well-written work, Dr. Alex Grobman, a renowned historian trained at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, systematically and methodically exposes the myths and lies about the Arab right to the land of Israel.
Grobman traces the historical, religious and spiritual connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel after the end of Jewish sovereignty in 70 CE; dispels the Arab claim that Palestine is a “twice promised land,” because the British pledged it to both the Arabs and the Jews; examines the Arab reaction to the Balfour Declaration and Jewish immigration to Palestine that established a precedent for dealing with Arabs that continues to this day; and examines Arab activities during WWII to thwart an Allied victory.
Grobman shows that the Arabs have never accepted the right of Jews to re-establish their sovereignty in the land of Israel, and how they continually try to refute the Jewish connection to Israel, especially the city of Jerusalem: by destroying Temple Mount artifacts to eliminate any evidence of a Jewish past, by accusing Israeli archeologists of manipulating authentic archeological evidence to justify the Jewish people’s right to Israel and by charging that the Jews are not a people at all, and are consequently not entitled to a country of their own. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Islam, Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, News Articles, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 25, 2010 - י"ד אב תש"ע at 8:10 am
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My cousin, the ambassador to the UN
By STEVE LINDE, Jerusalem Post, July 25, 2010
Could Meron Reuben be the new Abba Eban?
Imagine naming a gifted diplomat from the professional ranks of the Foreign Ministry rather than the usual political appointee, someone who happens to be an excellent native English speaker, as ambassador to the United Nations? What an incredible idea! Not since Abba Eban has anyone dared to do something so logical. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it primarily English they speak at the UN?
Eban was Israel’s first and probably most eloquent ambassador to the world body. At the age of 34, he was appointed permanent representative when the fledgling Jewish state was admitted to the four-year-old United Nations in 1949. At the UN, who could forget his brilliant speeches rebuffing the Arab states’ rejection of Israel’s existence? “Whether they want peace or war,” he famously declared, “they can have it only with the State of Israel.”
When Eban died in 2002 at the age of 87, then foreign minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: “With his prodigious intellect and renowned eloquence, Abba Eban was not only one of Israel’s finest diplomats, but also was one of the great diplomats of his era. He was a powerful advocate for the Jewish state and for the rights of the Jewish people. Eban set the standard for defending Israel in the courts of world opinion.
“During many difficult periods, his voice was a stirring reminder of the justice of the Zionist cause and Israel’s eternal hope to live in peace with its neighbors. Through years of dedicated service, he laid the foundations for Israel’s foreign service and proved that even though we are a small nation, our moral voice can be heard loud and clear across the world.”
Over the years, I interviewed Eban several times for Israel Radio’s English News, and on every occasion was impressed anew by his uncanny ability to convince his interlocutors through his beautifully expressed arguments. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 25, 2010 - י"ד אב תש"ע at 7:43 am
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Hong Kong? Singapore? Don’t hold your breath
Gazans still awaiting world’s promises.
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH, Jerusalem Post, July 23, 2010
Five years after Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians living there are still waiting for the housing projects and factories the international community promised them.
The areas where most of the settlements once stood have yet to be transformed into apartments and working places for thousands of unemployed Palestinians who used to work in the Jewish communities.
Promises that the Gaza Strip would be turned into the Middle East’s Hong Kong or Singapore sound today like a joke to many Palestinians.
These promises were made on the eve of the disengagement by many governments and leaders all around the world, including Israel.
It’s hard today to find one Palestinian who would point to anything positive that has come out of the pullout. In fact, Palestinians across the political spectrum agree that the situation inside the Gaza Strip is not much better than it was before the disengagement.
The Palestinian Authority continues to argue that the unilateral disengagement was one of the reasons why Hamas is in power today. Not that the PA didn’t want Israel to leave the Gaza Strip. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 23, 2010 - י"ב אב תש"ע at 6:09 pm
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