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by Dr. Alex Leventhal, Common Ground News, 27 November 2008
The intergovernmental partnership became effective on many levels, such as harmonising diagnostic and reporting methodologies; establishing common training programmes; encouraging data sharing and analysis; improving detection and control of food-borne infectious diseases and— facilitating cross-border communication between laboratory technicians and public health officials.
JERUSALEM – Against the backdrop of the Second Intifada, Search for Common Ground (SFCG) conceived a collaborative public-health effort among three neighbouring countries: the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and the State of Israel. The initial basis for the endeavour was the notion that in the Middle East, public health has tremendous potential to serve as common ground. This idea became even more compelling during those times when bilateral meetings between Palestinian and Israeli public health professionals were scarce and the involvement of Jordan was unprecedented
Late in 2002, leaders and professionals from the public health arena from both respective Ministries of Health (MoH) and academia, met. This meeting was the catalyst for a joint partnership between SFCG and the Global Health and Security Initiative (GHSI), part of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a Washington DC-based international NGO. Together, they formed the Middle East Consortium for Infectious Disease Surveillance (MECIDS) in 2003.
The pillars of MECIDS are trust, mutual respect, excellence in the field, equity among partners and low profile in public relations. Its first mission was to facilitate trans-border cooperation in response to food-borne disease outbreaks, a common public health issue in the Middle East. MECIDS selected a regional data analysis unit within the Cooperative Monitoring Center in Amman, and established a mechanism for sharing data among the national systems.
The intergovernmental partnership became effective on many levels, such as harmonising diagnostic and reporting methodologies; establishing common training programmes; encouraging data sharing and analysis; improving detection and control of food-borne infectious diseases and— facilitating cross-border communication between laboratory technicians and public health officials.
These achievements proved invaluable in supporting a platform from which to broaden surveillance of other serious emerging infections, such as the Avian Flu:
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Islam, Judaism, Middle East Report, Recent Posts, Science and Technology on November 28, 2008 - א' כסלו תשס"ט at 7:56 am
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By David Wilder, Jewish Press, November 26 2008
By A professor from Bar Ilan University, an expert on ancient affairs, investigated the value of silver of thousands of years ago. He concluded that the price of 400 silver shekels that our Patriarch Abraham paid for Ma’arat HaMachpela, the caves where the Patriarchs and Matriarchs are buried is worth, in today’s value, some $750,000. That’s just a little less than what Morris Abraham and his father Mickey paid for Beit HaShalom in Hebron.
Beit HaShalom, (the "Peace house" in English) is a huge, 40,000 square foot structure, just above the main road leading from Hebron to Kiryat Arba. When it became known that the Arab owner of the building, some five years ago, was putting it up for sale, and the Abraham family heard about it, it was a done deal.
Well, not quite. It took a few years to actually complete the transaction. Jews purchasing property from Arabs in Hebron is not an everyday occurrence, and is not easily accomplished. It is a task that requires, among other things, a tremendous amount of money, fine attorneys, much time, nerves of platinum, and most of all, a huge quantity of Divine assistance.
Thank G-d, it all came together, and about 20 months ago, having received a green light from the lawyers, residents from Hebron’s Jewish community moved in.
It wasn’t easy. From literally the moment we moved in, there was someone trying to have us removed. Some claimed that we "stole the building" from the Arab owner. Others said, "We don’t care if they bought it legally. Jews shouldn’t be in Hebron, period. Throw them out!"
However, we had a lot going for us. First of all, the building was purchased legally. At one point the community released a film of the Arab counting the cash he received. (When he later denied the sale during a police investigation, and the police showed him the video, he exclaimed, "I later cancelled the deal and gave them the money back!")
Hebron’s commanding IDF officer was ecstatic about the purchase, since the building is located at a very strategic position. It’s situated overlooking all of Kiryat Arba just across the road, and most of Hebron. And an initial police investigation of the documents was positive. The documents were authentic.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on November 27, 2008 - כ"ט חשון תשס"ט at 4:33 pm
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By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today
Published: November 26, 2008
Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Serotonin in the brain is associated with mood and cognitive functions, but 95% of the body’s supply of the molecule is produced in the gut and its function has not been understood. The compound plays a key role in regulating bone formation, opening the possibility of novel treatments for diseases such as osteoporosis.
NEW YORK, Nov. 26 — That Thanksgiving turkey may be bad for your bones.
That’s one of the implications of a study that — for the first time — links the gut to bone formation, according to Gerard Karsenty, M.D., Ph.D., of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and colleagues.
The research, conducted mainly in mice, links serotonin produced in the duodenum to the proliferation of osteoblasts, the cells that create new bone, Dr. Karsenty and colleagues reported in the Nov. 26 issue of Cell.
"This is totally new," Dr. Karsenty said. "We had no clue that the gut had control over bone, and in such a powerful manner."
The findings open up the possibility of controlling such diseases as osteoporosis either by a diet low in tryptophan — the raw material for serotonin synthesis — or by inhibiting the serotonin-osteoblast interaction with medications.
If diet turns out to be a possible approach, the turkey may have to go –it’s one of the best dietary sources of tryptophan.
Until these experiments, Dr. Karsenty said, the function of gut-associated serotonin was not known.
"The findings demonstrate without a doubt that serotonin from the gut is acting as a hormone to regulate bone mass," he said.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness on November 27, 2008 - כ"ט חשון תשס"ט at 4:04 pm
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See Also: Peace on Earth
By Janet Albrechtsen The Australian, November 26, 2008
To spend a week in Israel is to begin to understand that this country is generations away from peace with Palestinians. The people here talk about tahadiya: a period of calm. To an outsider, it is a week of alarming disquiet where each day reveals yet another culprit killing the prospect of peace. What you see and hear is disturbing enough. Even more destructive to peace is that which is hidden from you. This is how the week unfolds.
Sunday: A Qassam rocket is launched from northern Gaza into Sderot, an Israeli town within 3km of the Hamas stronghold.
Monday: Three more rockets are fired into this small town of 20,000 Israelis that has endured thousands of rocket attacks in recent years. I arrive in Sderot by helicopter just ahead of Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
I see some of the mangled Qassam rockets that have hit this town. The rockets proudly bear the brand of the terrorists who launch them, written in Hebrew so the Israelis know who is firing at them. The Israelis who later collect the rockets date each of them in white paint and pile them up at the local police station. More than a hundred rockets were launched after Israel destroyed a Hamas tunnel built to attack Israel, a tunnel like the one used in June 2006 by militants to kidnap Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from the edge of the Gaza strip. Shalit is the only Jew left in Gaza, a precious negotiating tool for Hamas. The Israeli Government has blocked access points to Gaza until the rockets stop.
Tuesday: A young Ethiopian woman, who has lost relatives to the rocket attacks from Gaza, tells me, "We don’t count the rockets anymore". Three more qassam rockets slam into the fields of the Negev desert.
Wednesday: Two Qassam rockets land south of Ashkelon, a town well beyond the Gaza border, on the coast towards Tel Aviv.
Thursday: The Palestinian Authority runs advertisements in Israeli newspapers detailing in Hebrew Fatah’s commitment to a peace plan. It is a meaningless commitment. Analysts call this a virtual negotiation. How can Israel negotiate peace with Palestinian interlocutors in Fatah, who have no control over Gaza, where more than 40 per cent of Palestinians live? If elections were held in the West Bank today, predictions are that Hamas would win there, putting an end to the co-operation that has stopped the terrorism emanating from that Palestinian enclave.
Friday: Another rocket is launched from Gaza into the industrial zone of Ashkelon.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on November 27, 2008 - כ"ט חשון תשס"ט at 12:12 pm
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The believers in Islamic mysticism embrace a personal approach to their faith and a different outlook on how to run their country’s government
By Nicholas Schmidle, Photographs by Aaron Huey
Smithsonian magazine, December 2008
See Also:Pakistanis lose faith in extremist education
In the desert swelter of southern Pakistan, the scent of rosewater mixed with a waft of hashish smoke. Drummers pounded away as celebrants swathed in red pushed a camel bedecked with garlands, tinsel and multihued scarfs through the heaving crowd. A man skirted past, grinning and dancing, his face glistening like the golden dome of a shrine nearby. "Mast Qalandar!" he cried. "The ecstasy of Qalandar!"
The camel reached a courtyard packed with hundreds of men jumping in place with their hands in the air, chanting "Qalandar!" for the saint buried inside the shrine. The men threw rose petals at a dozen women who danced in what seemed like a mosh pit near the shrine’s entrance. Enraptured, one woman placed her hands on her knees and threw her head back and forth; another bounced and jiggled as if she were astride a trotting horse. The drumming and dancing never stopped, not even for the call to prayer.
I stood at the edge of the courtyard and asked a young man named Abbas to explain this dancing, called dhamaal. Though dancing is central to the Islamic tradition known as Sufism, dhamaal is particular to some South Asian Sufis. "When a djinn infects a human body," Abbas said, referring to one of the spirits that populate Islamic belief (and known in the West as "genies"), "the only way we can get rid of it is by coming here to do dhamaal." A woman stumbled toward us with her eyes closed and passed out at our feet. Abbas didn’t seem to notice, so I pretended not to either.
"What goes through your head when you are doing dhamaal?" I asked.
"Nothing. I don’t think," he said. A few women rushed in our direction, emptied a water bottle on the semiconscious woman’s face and slapped her cheeks. She shot upright and danced back into the crowd. Abbas smiled. "During dhamaal, I just feel the blessings of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar wash over me."
Every year, a few hundred thousand Sufis converge in Seh- wan, a town in Pakistan’s southeastern Sindh province, for a three-day festival marking the death of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in 1274. Qalandar, as he is almost universally called, belonged to a cast of mystics who consolidated Islam’s hold on this region; today, Pakistan’s two most populous provinces, Sindh and Punjab, comprise a dense archipelago of shrines devoted to these men. Sufis travel from one shrine to another for festivals known as urs, an Arabic word for "marriage," symbolizing the union between Sufis and the divine.
Sufism is not a sect, like Shiism or Sunnism, but rather the mystical side of Islam—a personal, experiential approach to Allah, which contrasts with the prescriptive, doctrinal approach of fundamentalists like the Taliban. It exists throughout the Muslim world (perhaps most visibly in Turkey, where whirling dervishes represent a strain of Sufism), and its millions of followers generally embrace Islam as a religious experience, not a social or political one. Sufis represent the strongest indigenous force against Islamic fundamentalism. Yet Western countries have tended to underestimate their importance even as the West has spent, since 2001, millions of dollars on interfaith dialogues, public diplomacy campaigns and other initiatives to counter extremism. Sufis are particularly significant in Pakistan, where Taliban-inspired gangs threaten the prevailing social, political and religious order.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Islam, Middle East, Monotheistic Religions, News Articles, Recent Posts on November 25, 2008 - כ"ז חשון תשס"ט at 9:21 pm
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by Michelle Nevada, Arutz Sheva, 24 November 08
See Also: Land for Pieces
After all, if the countries of the world agree that the concept of land for peace works, then why not use it as it should be used? Why not give land back to those from whom it was taken and recognize that the Jewish people have a right to their ancestral land.
(IsraelNN.com) Since the first “land for peace” deal with Egypt in UN Resolution 242, the diplomatic goal of most peace proposals has included the concept of “land for peace.” The idea behind the concept of “land for peace” is that Israel “took” land from Egypt, which, in exchange for getting that land “back”, granted Israel peace.
Now every agreement with any Arab group has always included the idea of “land for peace.” Why? Because the Arabs know that Israel has very little land to give. So if they keep insisting that we give them a pay off of land, not only will we have destroyed any defensive position we may now hold, we will also shrink measurably. This is a very good strategy for the Arabs and a very dangerous one for us.
Nonetheless, every Israeli government, and every American and European Union official, seems determined to accept the idea that peace must be predicated upon giving up land.
I don’t think much will change with the new Obama administration. I expect that he is wedded to the idea of “land for peace” just like all of his predecessors. I know that, even before she has opened her mouth, the new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be studying up on Resolution z242, and expecting the same “miracle” between Israel and the “Palestinians.”
I even expect that, for all his promises to the contrary, and all his speechmaking, and all his made-for-TV sound bites, the potentially former-future Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will sit down with a dower face and a strong jaw on live TV and concede Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights to our enemies.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on November 25, 2008 - כ"ז חשון תשס"ט at 3:46 pm
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At a time when businessmen around the world are facing the consequences of the world financial crisis, Palestinians were guaranteeing these business people that the effects on the P.A. economy were marginal.
By Abd el Raouf Arnaout, Media Line, November 24, 2008
[Nablus, West Bank] Palestinian businessmen concluded their one-day Palestine Investment Conference "north forum" in the West Bank city of Nablus with a package of seven investment projects with a total value of $510 million.
Five of the projects were in the infrastructure sector, one in industry, and one to finance investments. All are concentrated in the northern part of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority has proved, over the course of this year, its ability to impose law and order.
The biggest project was the power plant planned for the northern parts of the West Bank with capital of $300 million shared among several investors.
Second is an iron factory in the West Bank city Jenin with capital of $100 million, of which $15 million has been allocated to begin the first phase of the galvanized iron plant.
A fund to revive the economy of the northern parts of the West Bank was launched at a cost of $50 million to be funded by the P.A., the private sector and donors.
Palestine Industrial Estates Development and Management Company (PIEDCO), a company affiliated to the Palestine Development and Investment Company (PADICO,) announced a grain silos project in Jalama, north of Jenin, at a cost of $18 million.
On the sidelines of the conference, the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) and the municipality of Nablus signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a profession industrial zone on an area of 120 dunams (30 acres) in Nablus to cost $25 million dollars in the first phase, then to be expanded to 350 dunams at a total cost of $85 million.
In addition, a solid waste treatment project in the governorate of Nablus, to cost $2.1 million, was launched.
Twelve other projects were presented in the four sessions during the conference, attended by 1,200 Palestinian and Arab businessmen, according to the organizers.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Business and Commerce, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on November 24, 2008 - כ"ו חשון תשס"ט at 11:33 am
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Editorial, THE JERUSALEM POST, Nov. 23, 2008
This clash is emblematic of a much larger struggle not just between Jews and Arabs but among Israeli Jews – and not just over Hebron, but over borders and the political and religious character of the Jewish state.
The Torah identifies the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron as the oldest piece of Jewish-owned property. There Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are buried.
In modern times, the city has been a flashpoint. In 1929, Arabs slaughtered dozens of Jewish residents, forcing the survivors to flee. In 1979, Hebron’s Jewish community was reestablished but only with the unenthusiastic acquiescence of the Israeli government.
The city is home to some of the most combative settlers in Judea and Samaria. They have been killed (think Aharon Gross and Shalhevet Pas) and they have killed (think Baruch Goldstein). They have been demonized and demonized others. They have fiercely struggled over every centimeter of their relatively small and hard to defend enclave.
Hebron’s predicament is seldom far from the headlines. Late last month, a panel of three justices headed by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch ruled that Jewish families living in a disputed building – Beit Hashalom – had to leave.
Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai says the Supreme Court’s decision will be carried out.
The settlers, who have been living in the disputed dwelling for a year and eight months, argue that the ruling does not obligate security forces to take any immediate action.
A sense of looming confrontation pervades.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on November 24, 2008 - כ"ו חשון תשס"ט at 10:21 am
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The new material is such a close match that the human body cannot tell the difference between its own and the cow protein. This means that wounds will heal better, with less inflammation.
By Karin Kloosterman, Israel 21C, November 23, 2008
Plastics, sheep gut, silk and metal wire: the materials that doctors have used to stitch wounds together on the battlefield and in the clinic have changed over time, but none of the solutions are perfect. They take time to apply, leave scars, and a body vulnerable to infection as the wound heals.
Researchers from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, have "spun" together something brand new. They’ve created a kind of fiber, which can be applied like a dressing, to help a body stitch together wounds.
Based on a protein found in cow’s blood, it can be used like a second skin to heal the type of external wounds created after a C-section, and also internally on abdominal wounds and those created during heart operations, says its inventor Prof. Eyal Zussmann, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion.
Less scarring, less infection
Using the protein, bovine serum albumin, Zussmann has created the fibers from tools in nanotechnology, through a technique called electrospinning. The material he has developed into thread form can be formed into a patch that could be used extensively in medical applications.
Zussmann’s solution is closely related to the human protein, human serum albumin, an abundant protein in the body. The new material is such a close match that the human body cannot tell the difference between its own and the cow protein, he explains. This means that wounds will heal better, with less inflammation.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Business and Commerce, Health Sciences, Middle East Report, Recent Posts, Science, Science and Technology on November 24, 2008 - כ"ו חשון תשס"ט at 7:49 am
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Editor’s Note: Although Biblical texts cannot constitute a legal basis for land ownership, the following article illustrates the strong historical, cultural, and religious connections that Jews have to Judea and Samaria. It is time that the "international community" recognizes that the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are built on liberated and reclaimed Jewish lands and not on "occupied Palestinian territory."
See Also: Visiting Bethlehem
By Rabbi Chaim Wasserman, President, Council of YI Rabbis in Israel
November 21, 2008
Most important, in these three places as well as elsewhere, the nations of the world, shamefully joined by substantial numbers of our Jewish brethren in Israel and America, believe that the Jews of Israel are criminal settlers and occupiers of these areas.
[1] From time immemorial – almost two millennia – we felt confident when we would read the well-known Midrash about our undisputed claim to at least three specific places in Eretz Yisrael.
According to the Midrash, Jews would not be accused by the nations of the world of being treacherous, illegal occupiers of these three places since the record would show that these areas were purchased by Jews, each for a good price (Bereishit Rabbah 79:7).
The earliest purchase was the one we read about in Parashat Chayei Sarah where Avraham Avinu insisted on purchasing the Cave of Machpelah from Efron, the Hittite. While initially Efron offered the piece of land gratis to Avraham, our patriach insisted on paying for it. And pay he certainly did. Four hundred shekels of silver could very well be worth in the many tens of thousands of dollars these days.
The second purchase of land in Eretz Yisrael was made by Ya’akov Avinu. We read about that in Parashat Vayishlach (33:18-20) when Yaakov returned to Eretz Canaan from Padan Aram. He acquired a plot of land from the children of Chamor, the father of Shechem, for 100 kesitah. That plot of land, in Shechem, we are also told at the end of the book of Yehoshua (24:32), was where the Jews who conquered the land of Canaan under the leadership of Yehoshua buried the bones of Yosef. In Yehoshua, the fact that Yaakov purchased that plot of land is quoted directly from the original reference in Parashat Vayishlach.
The third plot of land that was purchased outright was what we call today the Temple Mount. David ha-Melech purchased that from Aravna, the Yevusi who owned a silo on what was to be the future site of the first Bet ha-Mikdash. The cost was 600 gold shekels where each of the twelve tribes contributed 50 shekels (Divrei haYamim I, 21:22-26 as well as Shmuel II, 24:24). Here, also, when David approached the original owner, the gracious offer was made to gift the plot of land. But David, like Avraham, refused the gift and paid royally for the spot where he built an alter.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on November 21, 2008 - כ"ג חשון תשס"ט at 8:06 pm
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