Cabinet minister highlights Israel’s pioneering space efforts
(JNS.org) Drawing on Israeli technological and scientific prowess, Israel’s top science minister highlighted Israel’s ambitious space efforts including a project by an Israeli company to be the third country to land on the moon, the Jerusalem Post reported.
At a cabinet meeting on Nov. 11, Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz briefed ministers on Israel’s latest space efforts. Hershkowitz highlighted how Israel is among the top five global leaders in developing satellite research systems.
“Israel is among the most successful in growth of sales for the space industry, improvement and broadening of space knowledge and infrastructure, and strengthening the link between its space research and society in general,” Hershkowitz said.
According to Hershkowitz, Israel has launched 13 satellites that have collectively accumulated 66 orbiting years and achieved 100 percent orbit mission successes
Hershkowitz also described how Israel has several partnerships with other nations in these areas, including satellites that focus on agricultural and environmental monitoring as well as pinpointing areas for rescuers in remote areas or disaster zones. Israel is also partnering with NASA in an interplanetary satellite mission.
In addition to Israel’s satellite projects, Hershkowitz also promoted the SPACEIL program, an initiative by an Israeli non-profit company to win Google’s $20 million Lunar X Prize by successfully landing a robot on the surface of the moon and sending images back by the end of 2015.
Israel is scheduled to host the 2015 International Astronautic Conference in Jerusalem.
*
The Forward chronicles top Jewish Americans of 2012
(JNS.org) Who are the faces of Jewish America today? The Jewish Daily Forward has published its annual list of the top 50 influential Jewish Americans with some new faces, polarizing figures and traditional Jewish mainstays, spanning the wide array of Jewish impact on American today.
New to the “Forward 50” this year are video profiles of each of the Top Five—Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, Olympian Aly Raisman, composer Philip Glass, do-it-all HBO TV star Lena Dunham and Agudath Israel of America Executive Vice President Rabbi David Zweibel.
The Forward also attempted to take a new angle on the American-Jewish community today. Aside from highlighting the traditional halls of Jewish impact such as in Hollywood or politics, the newspaper also looked to new sources of influence and vision within the community.
From “a charismatic rabbi in Los Angeles, a creative Hillel director in Philadelphia, a passionate educator in Detroit, an innovative foundation leader in Baltimore and a mother in New York who galvanized a cybercommunity by sharing the story of her dying daughter,” the Forward website described.
But the Forward also took the time to honor some of Jewish-American stalwarts like Barbra Streisand. Also included are popular celebrity personalities like Jon Stewart and the controversial political writer Peter Beinart. The emerging impact of the Orthodox community was featured with Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who delivered the invocation at the Republican National Convention.
The Forward noted that it was proud to have increased the number of girls and women in its list this year.
*
As Gaza rocket fire escalates, Israel ready to ‘intensify’ response
(JNS.org) Southern Israel has been paralyzed as Gaza terrorists escalated rocket fire since Saturday, leading to new concerns that Israel may be forced to enter Gaza to end the threat.
A dozen rockets were fired at Israel’s southern towns on Monday morning as violence entered its third day in one of the most intense barrages launched from the Gaza Strip in months, Israel Hayon reported. The rocket firing tapered off toward early afternoon as reports of an Egyptian-mediated cease-fire started taking effect.
The Israeli military says more than 110 rockets have landed in Israel since Saturday. A Grad rocket scored a direct hit in the yard of a Netivot home on Monday morning. There were no injuries from the rocket but some 20 people were treated for shock. Only half of the southern town’s schoolchildren attended school as one rocket fell near a school earlier. A resident of the home that was hit told Army Radio that it “was a miracle” that nobody was killed.
Residents ran for cover all day as rockets hit Netivot, Sderot and other communities near the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces did not retaliate immediately on Monday morning, but overnight Sunday the Israel Air Force struck three static targets in the Gaza Strip, including a weapons factory. The Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted two rockets over Ashkelon on Monday morning.
By Sunday, Israel’s response of six airstrikes killed six Gazans and wounded more than 40. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that Israel will not tolerate the latest escalation and hinted at a stronger Israeli response.
“The world must understand that Israel will not sit idly in the face of attempts to attack us,” said Netanyahu. “We are prepared to intensify the response.”
Defense Minister Ehud Barak went beyond Netanyahu’s statement, suggesting that Israel may have to invade Gaza again.
“If we have to re-renter Gaza to strike at Hamas we will not hesitate to do so,” Barak said.
The latest escalation marks a dangerous turn of events. While Israel ultimately holds Hamas responsible for all rocket fire from Gaza, the terrorist group has largely refrained from taking part in the activity until this weekend. Instead, Hamas has focused on consolidating power in Gaza. But Hamas has been under pressure from smaller extremist groups—some affiliated with al-Qaeda—in Gaza, to maintain armed resistance against Israel.
Famed Jewish author Philip Roth calls it quits after 20 novel
(JNS.org) Prolific Jewish-American author Philip Roth, 79, has decided to retire after a career that lasted more than 50 years, his publisher Houghton Mifflin confirmed Nov. 9.
“I have dedicated my life to the novel: I studied, I taught, I wrote and I read. With the exclusion of almost everything else. Enough is enough! I no longer feel this fanaticism to write that I have experienced in my life,” Roth said in a recent interview with a French publication called Les Inrocks, according to an English translation of the interview posted by Salon last week.
Houghton Mifflin reached out to Roth when the French interview was published. “He said [news of his retirement] was true,” said Lori Glazer, vice president and executive director of publicity at Houghton Mifflin.
Roth has won a number of prestigious writing awards. He gained fame with his 1959 book Goodbye, Columbus and later, in 1969, with Portnoy’s Complaint, in which he gained international fame for his psychoanalytical monologue of “a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor.” He later won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 novel American Pastoral. His final book is the short story Nemesis, published in 2010.
*
Palestinians working in U.S., South America build luxury homes in West Bank
(JNS.org) Thousands of Palestinians working in the U.S. and South America have been building luxury homes in the West Bank, Agence France Press (AFP) reported.
Rafae Hamida, president of a charity in the West Bank village of Mazraa al-Sharqiya, told the French news agency that just 5,000 of the village’s 12,000 “residents” actually live there. Two-thirds of them, Hamida said, live in the U.S., Peru and Brazil and are using the village’s land to build dream houses.
“And every one of them wants to build a house that’s better than the next,” Hamida said.
The homes “far exceed the regular size of Palestinian houses” and feature facades “covered with stone and adorned with huge pillars,” according to AFP.
*
Israeli app helps U.S. government, drivers deal with hurricane-induced gas shortage
(JNS.org) The U.S. government recruited the assistance of the Israeli-developed navigation app Waze, which incorporates a social networking element, to deal with gasoline shortages on the East Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Using data posted by Waze users on the conditions of various gas stations, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been able to better determine where gas trucks should be sent, the technology news website GigaOM reported.
Waze was contacted by the government Nov. 9 and promptly launched a system allowing users to leave chat messages regarding the availability of gas and lines at the stations, the app’s vice president of platforms and partnerships Di-Ann Eisnor said. Waze’s navigational maps have featured pins to indicate gas stations that remain open.
*
Palestinians move ahead with unilateral bid for UN status upgrade
(JNS.org) The Palestinian Authority’s representative to the United Nations over the weekend submitted to all 193 member states a first draft of the PA’s unilateral bid to upgrade its status from “observer” to “non-member observer state.”
The U.S. and Israel have opposed upgrading the Palestinians’ status at the UN. PA President Mahmoud Abbas spoke at a press conference in Ramallah on Sunday, saying that he will move forward with the bid despite pressure to abandon it.
“Some powers are trying to tell us that the two-state solution doesn’t come from the U.N. but through negotiations … Negotians are crucial. But to get U.N. recognition is also key,” Abbas said, according to Israel Hayom.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman met in Vienna with a group of Israeli ambassadors posted to European capitals to discuss the Palestinian UN bid Nov. 9. The purpose of the meeting was to hear the position of the countries where each ambassador serves regarding the Palestinian bid and to offer ways to prevent support for the PA move.
*
Gross’s wife, more than 500 rabbis continue push for his release
(JNS.org) Judy Gross, wife of jailed Jewish-American contractor Alan Gross, said Sunday at a rally across from a Cuban Symphony Orchestra performance in West Palm Beach, Fla., that “the fastest way to open relations between the United States and Cuba and to promote important people-to-people exchanges is to free my husband.”
The 63-year-old Gross—a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor imprisoned in Cuba since December 2009 for trying to bring that country’s Jewish community Internet access—has a tumor in his right shoulder that may be cancerous and “has not been adequately evaluated to modern medical standards” by Cuban doctors, according to a report by Dr. Alan A. Cohen.
A group of 518 rabbis from 36 U.S. states and 12 countries sent a letter to Cuban President Raúl Castro advocating for the prisoner’s freedom on the basis of his those health issues, Gross’s legal team said in a press release.
“Under these circumstances, we would urge your government to release Mr. Gross on humanitarian grounds,” the letter stated. “Alternatively, if despite his and his family’s suffering over the past three years in prison you remain determined to detain him, we would urge you to allow a doctor of his choosing to evaluate and treat him for whatever medical conditions that he may have.”
*
Leader of European Jewish Congress reelected
(JNS.org) The European Jewish Congress reelected Dr. Moshe Kantor for a new four-year term as its president on Nov. 7. Kantor, 59, received 73 percent of the votes over his challenger, Richard Prasquier, the president of the French Jewish community umbrella organization, Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF). The European Jewish Congress manages all the elected official leaders of the Jewish communities in more than 40 European countries.
“I am extremely proud of what we have achieved over the last few years. The voice of European Jewry is clearly visible in a united Europe, whose political weight is felt throughout the world,” Kantor said after the vote, according to Haaretz. “We cannot rest on our laurels, there are many challenges for the Jewish communities of Europe to face in the coming years. Anti-Semitism is growing from both extremes, our traditions are under assault and Israel is constantly under threat of delegitimization.”
*
IDF to fight zombie invasion in Hollywood’s ‘World War Z’
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) In 2013, Brad Pitt will star in the Hollywood action flick titled “World War Z,” a movie based on the New York Times best-selling book of the same name by author Matt Brooks (son of Mel Brooks) about a zombie pandemic threatening to wipe out the human race. In the movie, the U.S., along with almost every other country, is unprepared for the attack.
Which country does take the zombie threat seriously? According to the plot, as the infection spreads, Israel is the only country to take the proper measures, initiating a nationwide quarantine and closing its borders to everyone except uninfected Jews and Palestinians seeking a safe haven from abroad. Needless to say, the Israeli government’s decision in the film to include saving Palestinians nearly leads to a civil war. In the official trailer, available here actors playing Israeli soldiers can be seen shooting hoards of deadly zombies invading the Holy Land.
Israeli actors Noa Bodner (Israel Defense Forces soldier), Gil Cohen-Alloro (IDF general) and Daniella Kertesz (IDF officer) have roles in the film, slated for release in the U.S. next June. As for countries like Pakistan and Iran, according to the plot they destroy each other in a nuclear war after the Iranian government attempts to stem the flow of Pakistani refugees. In this YouTube clip Brad Pitt can be seen on set meeting and mingling with IDF soldiers in the alleyways of Jerusalem. In actuality, the soldiers are actors and the set is located not in Jerusalem, but Malta.
*
Massive Gaza tunnel blast wounds IDF soldier
(JNS.org) An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier was wounded when a large tunnel packed by Hamas with explosives blew up at the Israel-Gaza border Nov. 8, the Associated Press reported.
IDF Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich said the tunnel, one of the largest Israel has seen in years, most likely represented a platform to either kill or kidnap Israeli soldiers. Soldiers were uncovering the shaft when Palestinians blew it up, according to CBN News. In 2006, Hamas had used such a tunnel to attack an IDF outpost, kill two soldiers, and kidnap the now-freed Gilad Shalit
“We definitely view it as a very severe event” Leibovich said. “The amount of explosives was very big. A kidnapping attempt is a possibility. Killing soldiers is a possibility.”
Hamas claimed responsibility for the new attack on its website, describing the explosion as being caused by a roadside bomb. The blast also launched an Israeli military vehicle about 65 feet away.
*
Preceding provided by JNS.org