Israel gives gifts for its birthday

Posted on April 26, 2012 by CNP Webmaster

Israel’s Many Gifts to the World

No country in the history of the world has ever contributed more to humankind and accomplished more for it’s own people in so brief a period of time as Israel has done

From Ron Jager, April 26, 2012

As Israel celebrates its 64th Independence Day, all of us can take a step back and view Israel from a different perspective than is usually depicted daily by the global media and internet.

Can you imagine hundreds of millions of viewers watching and acquiring a sympathetic portrayal of Israel that has nothing to do with war, terror, and the never-ending conflicts of the Middle East?

Imagine Israel being depicted as a global center of innovation, academic excellence, heading the global efforts towards renewable energy and water preservation.

Imagine learning that no country in the history of the world has ever contributed more to humankind and accomplished more for it’s own people in so brief a period of time as Israel has done.

Whether it is the fact that Israel exports more life-saving medical technology per capita than any other nation in the world or is turning the vast arid wastelands of Africa into blooming fields through the introduction of Israeli produced slow-drip irrigation technologies, there is much about which to be proud.

There is an organization that exists for this purpose alone, they call themselves; Israel Up Close (http://www.israelupclose.org) , and they are very serious about getting the good word about Israel out there.

American Jews constitute a mere 2% of the U.S. population, and are even a smaller minority in Europe. Israel Up Close does not direct its activities to Jews exclusively, but reaches out to the vast majority of people of the world, who are not Jewish.  Many of the messages and stories that are produced speak about ideas and experiences that appeal to large groups of people in the Western World, showing Israel in a whole new perspective and understanding.

Continue reading →

Posted in Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts | Comments Off

Muslim rejects lies about Israel

Posted on April 26, 2012 by CNP Webmaster

Muslim, Zionist and proud

The choice was obvious: I had to stand with Israel, with this tiny nation, free, democratic, making huge strides in medicine, research and development, yet the victim of the same lies and hatred that nearly consumed me.

Kasim Hafeez, April 25, 2012

I am a Zionist, a proud Muslim Zionist, and I love Israel, but this was not always the case. In fact, for many years I was quite the extreme opposite. I experienced the high levels of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity taking place on British university campuses, because I was the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel activist.

Growing up in the Muslim community in the UK I was exposed to materials and opinions at best condemning Israel, painting Jews as usurpers and murderers, and at worse calling for the wholesale destruction of the "Zionist Entity" and all Jews. In short, there was no accommodating a Jewish State in the Middle East.

See Also:  Hating Israel

The new anti-Semitism / Moshe Dann

Op-ed: Anti-Israel campaign identifies Jews as immoral, Jewish state as historical fraud

Full Story

To grow up around this constant barrage of hatred directed at Israel has a massive effect on an individual’s own opinions. More disturbingly, many of these people weren’t radical or extreme, but when it was about Israel the most vicious of rhetoric poured out, coupled with the casual anti-Semitism that seemed too prevalent, when the phrase "stop being a Jew" used as an insult.

My father, however, was much more brazen in his hatred, boasting of how Adolf Hitler was a hero, his only failing being that he didn’t kill enough Jews.

By the time I had reached 18 I was completely indoctrinated to the fold of radical Islamism. My hate for Israel and for the Jews was fuelled by images of death and destruction, set to the backdrop of Arabic melodies about Jihad and speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah or Osama Bin Laden.

These views were reinforced when I attended Nakba Day rallies, where speakers predicted Israel’s demise as Hezbollah flags were waved proudly in the centre of London.

The Case for Israel

Was there a case for Israel? In my mind, of course not, there was no shadow of doubt. Even the most moderate clerics I came across refused to condemn terrorism against Israel as unjustified; the Jews must obviously deserve it, I believed.

Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Islam, Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts | Comments Off

Arabs perpetuate lies and myths

Posted on April 25, 2012 by CNP Webmaster

UN Amb. Prosor Explodes ‘Myths’ of PA-Israeli ‘Struggle’

Amb. Prosor explodes myths. ‘How can Israel-PA conflict be the key to stopping Assad and Ahmadinejad? Jerusalem not Jewish?

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, Arutz Sheva, April 24, 2012

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor tore apart several myths Monday in an “Open Debate on the Situation in the Middle East” in the United Nations Security Council.

After quoting Winston Churchill’s statement, “In the time that it takes a lie to get halfway around the world, the truth is still getting its pants on,” Prosor methodically brought up and tore apart myths that he said have fertile ground in the Middle East. 

“Facts often remain buried in the sand. The myths forged in our region travel abroad – and can surprisingly find their way into these halls,” He said.

- Myth number one: “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is the central conflict in the Middle East. If you solve that conflict, you solve all the other conflicts in the region.” Prosor told the Council members. “The truth is that conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain, and many other parts of the Middle East have absolutely nothing to do with Israel.

“It is obvious that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict won’t stop the persecution of minorities across the region, end the subjugation of women, or heal the sectarian divides. Obsessing over Israel has not stopped Assad’s tanks from flattening entire communities. On the contrary, it has only distracted attention from his crimes.

“Thousands are being killed in Syria, hundreds in Yemen, dozens in Iraq — and yet, this debate again repeatedly is focusing on the legitimate actions of the government of the only democracy in the Middle East. And dedicating the majority of this debate to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, month after month after month after month, has not stopped the Iranian regime’s centrifuges from spinning. 

Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts | Comments Off

Jewish jokes will never die

Posted on April 24, 2012 by CNP Webmaster

The Ever-Dying Art Of Jewish Humor

Gary Rosenblatt

Gary Rosenblatt

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Gary Rosenblatt

Editor And Publisher, The Jewish Week 

 

OK, so there are these three guys in the hospital, and they’re very bad off, and the doctor is making the rounds. He goes over to the first patient, a Catholic, and explains that there’s nothing more he can do medically for him and asks him his last wish.

“I’d like to see a priest and make a confession,” the man says.

The doctor says fine, and moves on to the next patient, a Protestant. And when the doctor asks him his last wish, the poor guy says, “I’d like to see my family and say good-bye.”

So the doctor says OK, and comes over to the third patient, an elderly Jewish man.

“And what is your last wish?” the doctor asks.

“My last wish,” the old man whispers, “is to see another doctor.”

Funny? Well, according to some sophisticated research, the odds are you thought so — or at least there was a time when Jewish readers would have thought so. In a survey by Psychology Today, Jews among the 14,000 readers who sampled 30 jokes rated this classic joke higher than non-Jews.

But that was more than three decades ago, and it’s reasonable to wonder if things have changed. After all, the Golden Era of Jewish Comedy, marked by scores of Borscht Belt “tummlers” who went on to national fame, including Sid Caesar, Danny Kaye and Red Buttons, are gone or have faded from the scene. Who under 35 would remember Lou Goldstein, the Grossingers fixture who made “Simon Says” his own act? (“Simon says jump up…Come down.”) He died earlier this month at 90. And how could Generation Xers or Yers appreciate the nostalgic sadness over the recent fire that destroyed the former Browns Hotel, one of the last vestiges of the Catskill Resorts that spawned generations of comics?

Continue reading →

Posted in Fun Stuff, Humor, Judaism, Recent Posts | Comments Off

Jew hatred continues around the world

Posted on April 20, 2012 by CNP Webmaster

Jewish World Review April 20, 2012 / 28 Nissan, 5772

Hemorrhage of hatred

The general policy debate in the West about the nature of Middle Eastern politics is completely divorced from reality.

By Caroline B. Glick


Incidents that should make the world’s Front Pages but WON’T because of the ‘unacceptable Truths’ they would reveal

JewishWorldReview.com | Hatred of Jews is the central animating feature of the political and strategic reality of the Middle East. It is hatred of Jews that dictates the legal regimes, foreign policies, military aspirations, cultural mores, educational themes and even public health policies of our neighbors from Ramallah to Teheran.

Despite the centrality of Jew hatred in all aspects of public life in the Arab and Muslim world, our neighbors’ unrelenting and irrational abhorrence for Israel and the Jewish people remains a dirty secret that you aren’t supposed to mention in polite company. From Washington to Brussels, talk of the policy implications of Arab and Muslim Jew hatred is prohibited.

Omar Abu-Sneina, a convicted terrorist murderer is one of the thousand Palestinian terrorists that Israel released from prison in order to secure the release of Israeli hostage IDF Sgt. Gilad Schalit. Originally from Hebron, Abu-Sneina was released to Hamas-controlled Gaza. This week the IDF announced that since his release Abu-Sneina has returned to the terror business. The Israel Security Agency intercepted a memory card he sent his family in Hebron with instructions for how his fellow terrorists should go about kidnapping and holding IDF soldiers hostage. The instructions demonstrate how for Abu-Sneina, Israelis don’t even deserve to be treated like animals.

Among other things, he discussed how to hide a hostage. As he put it, "Avoid hiding [the captive soldier] in desolate places, tunnels or forests, unless the aforementioned [captive] is a corpse or a severed head. If the aforementioned is a live human, that must be visited at least once a week and provided with food and drink, it is best to hide him in a house, an agricultural farm, a workplace, etc."

Abu-Sneina’s coldblooded cruelty and rejection of the inherent value of the lives of Israelis is not simply a function of the fact that he is a terrorist. It is a reflection of the values of Palestinian society. Those values are continuously expressed and reinforced by Fatah and Hamas controlled media outlets, cultural and educational institutions and religious authorities. The ubiquitousness of Jew hatred in the daily lives of Palestinians is so overwhelming it is difficult to imagine any facet of Palestinian life that isn’t inundated by it.

Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts | Comments Off

Israel deserves to celebrate independence

Posted on April 20, 2012 by CNP Webmaster

Happy 64th Birthday, Israel!

Above all, Israel is a wondrous "adventure." I feel privileged daily to see the fulfillment of the prayers of generations longing for a return to Zion from forced exile.

David Harris  for Israeli Independence Day, 5 Iyar, 5772

Celebrated April 26, 2012

Author is Executive Director, AJC, and Senior Associate, St. Antony’s College, Oxford (2009-11)

What’s so special about a country’s 64th birthday?

Well, in the case of most nations, perhaps not all that much, unless the country happens to be Israel, which celebrates its birthday this year on April 25 and 26.

Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only U.N. member state whose right to exist is regularly challenged, whose elimination from the world map is the aim of at least one other U.N. member state, Iran, and whose population centers are deemed fair game by Hamas-controlled Gaza and Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon. Thus, Israel’s sheer act of survival from year to year is itself noteworthy.

None of the countries that are serial human-rights violators — not Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Sudan, or any of the others — gets anything near the relentless, obsessive, guilty-till-proven-innocent scrutiny that democratic Israel receives from U.N. bodies, with their built-in, anti-Israel majorities, in New York and Geneva.

No other country is the target of such non-stop, well-funded, and highly-organized campaigns to discredit, delegitimize, and demonize a sovereign state.

No other country faces such systematic attempts to launch boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions against it, not to mention flotillas and flytillas, and all the while those behind the efforts, claiming to speak for human rights, blithely ignore places like Syria, where thousands were killed in the past year alone, because they can’t claim an Israeli connection.

And no other country has its right to self-defense challenged as Israel does, even though it does no more than any other nation would do if confronted by periodic terrorist assaults and deadly missile and rocket attacks.

I have enormous admiration for Israel — for its resolve, resilience, courage, and ingenuity.

Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts | Comments Off

Israel helps the world

Posted on April 20, 2012 by CNP Webmaster

Entire World Benefits from Israeli Knowledge

Reprinted from Daily Alert, Friday, April 20, 2012

Teachers from Rural U.S. on Educational Journey to Poland and Israel – Corinne Lestch
17 teachers from schools across the U.S. are still processing an emotionally powerful trip to Poland and Israel to deepen their understanding of the Holocaust, and bring back their experiences to the classroom. "We’re using the Holocaust as a lens to teach social justice, and we wanted to concentrate on teachers who have very little access to resources or survivors," said Sondra Perl, an English professor who helped create the Holocaust Educators Network at Lehman College.
    "They’re addressing local issues in their own home states around injustice, tolerance, bullying, racism. Most of them are not Jewish." "Poland broke my heart, and Israel blew my mind," Perl recalled a teacher from Idaho saying. (New York Daily News)

Free Israeli Cataract Clinics Treat 1,000 Ethiopians – Rivka Borochov (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
    When the seven-person crew from the Israeli volunteer organization Eye from Zion arrived in a remote region in Ethiopia in February to provide free cataract surgery, they were expecting several dozen patients. 1,400 showed up.
    The organization has performed the 20-minute procedure on thousands of people in Asian and African countries.
    After an initial 170 operations in the regions of Debark and Gondar, Eye from Zion founder Nati Marcus planned to return with another team of four eye doctors, a couple of nurses and a technician over the course of the year to finish the job for those on the waiting list.
    No one at Eye from Zion receives any money for their services.

Israeli Defense Firm to Add 100 Jobs in Maryland (Baltimore Sun)
    ELTA North America, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., has opened a location in Maple Lawn in Howard County, Md., where it plans to create 100 new jobs, the state Department of Business and Economic Development said Wednesday.
    Most of ELTA’s employees are scientists, engineers, programmers and technicians who develop products for the armed services.

Woman from Cyprus Saved at Hadassah (Cyprus Mail)
    A 30-year-old pregnant woman from Cyprus was flown to the Hadassah University Medical Center where a 48-hour surgery saved her life, the Israeli hospital said on April 11.
    After her local physician was unable to locate the fetus, Hadassah’s obstetricians determined that the fetus was not in the woman’s uterus, nor in her Fallopian tube.
    Instead, they discovered the fetus under a kidney, next to a large blood vessel, only the second recorded case of such an ectopic pregnancy.

Continue reading →

Posted in Alternative Energy, Education, Health Sciences, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts, Science and Technology | Comments Off

Hamas refuses to make peace

Posted on April 20, 2012 by CNP Webmaster

Hamas Wouldn’t Honor a Treaty, Top Leader Says

Abu Marzook Says He’s Open to a New Israel Relationship

Varied: In an exclusive interview, Abu Marzook discussed his own political future, relations with Israel, the Hamas Charter and the impact of the Arab Spring on his organization.

ahmed esmaill

In an exclusive interview, Abu Marzook discussed his own political future, relations with Israel, the Hamas Charter and the impact of the Arab Spring on his organization.

By Larry Cohler-Esses

Jewish Daily Forward, Published April 19, 2012, issue of April 27, 2012.

Cairo — Any agreement reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be subject to far-reaching changes if Hamas comes to power in a democratic Palestinian state, a top Hamas leader told the Forward in an exclusive and wide-ranging interview.

Mousa Abu Marzook, considered Hamas’s second-highest-ranking official, said that his group would view an agreement between Israel and the P.A. — even one ratified by a referendum of all Palestinians — as a hudna, or cease-fire, rather than as a peace treaty. In power, he said, Hamas would feel free to shift away from those provisions of the agreement that define it as a peace treaty and move instead toward a relationship of armed truce.

“We will not recognize Israel as a state,” he said emphatically. “It will be like the relationship between Lebanon and Israel or Syria and Israel.”

The exchange was but one part of an unprecedented five-and-a-half-hour discussion conducted over two days between Abu Marzook and the Forward, the first-ever in-depth exchange between a senior Hamas leader and a Jewish publication.

Continue reading →

Posted in Islam, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts | Comments Off