Israeli-made ‘TaxiBot’ airplane tow vehicle makes debut in Germany
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) An Israeli-made robotic airplane tow vehicle made its debut at Frankfurt Airport on Thursday in a ceremony attended by journalists from around the world.
Israel Aerospace Industries’ (IAI) “TaxiBot” was designed to ferry the most commonly used passenger airplane, the Boeing 737, from its terminal to the runway. The TaxiBot was first tested on a commercial Lufthansa flight, and later, after a thorough and prolonged review, was approved by Israeli and European aviation authorities. During Thursday’s ceremony, a memorandum of understanding was signing between IAI and Lufthansa to develop a larger TaxiBot model to support larger aircraft such as the Boeing 747 and Airbus A380.
The TaxiBot is an upgrade over the traditional airplane towing vehicle, known as a pushback truck. The pushback truck pulls an airplane away from a terminal to a safe distance, so that the pilots can use the airplane’s thrusters to maneuver the plane without fear of jet exhaust damaging the terminal or spreading debris. But the drive from the terminal to the runaway burns a lot of fuel. The TaxiBot, alternatively, Taxibot allows the pilot to drive the plane from the cockpit via remote control and take it from the terminal to the runway, without having to use the plane’s engine. This reduces air pollution and fuel consumption.
“We have started an eco-friendly revolution in the commercial aviation industry,” said IAI Corporate Vice President Shuki Eldar.
Iran has direct military presence on Israel’s borders, report says
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Iran has a direct military presence along Israel’s northern border, according to a new report by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
The authors, whose report is founded on research of Arab and Iranian media, write that in recent years, “Iran has based its deployment in Syria on the establishment of a new Hezbollah Syria organization along the lines of Hezbollah Lebanon, as well as on the direct presence of Iranian forces in Syria, particularly on the Golan Heights.”
According to the report, Iran’s deployment in Syria “reveals a trend of Iranian activity in the region that is direct, not only by proxy as it has been to date.” Iranian command posts in the Golan Heights oversee “130,000 trained Iranian Basij fighters waiting to enter Syria,” which is evident from comments by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) senior official Hossein Hamedani last May that were removed immediately after publication in Iran.
Senior Iranian officials have boasted in recent months that direct Iranian deployment in the Golan Heights creates a unified battle front against Israel spanning from Rosh Hanikra along the Mediterranean coast to Quneitra in the Golan. For example, former IRGC commander Yahya Rahim Safavi said last year, “Our strategic depth reaches to the Mediterranean, and above Israel’s head.”
Malaysian Christians upset over government’s ban on pilgrimages to Israel
(JNS.org) Malaysian Christian leaders are calling on their government to lift a recent ban on pilgrimages to Israel.
“Travel groups have been calling on the authorities to lift the suspension as many are being denied a pilgrimage. It is hoped that the PM (Prime Minister Najib Razak) will act on this matter as soon as possible,” said Hermen Shastri, the general-secretary of the Council of Churches in Malaysia, Malaysia Insider reported.
The Malaysian government recently banned all travel to Israel over security concerns arising from last summer’s Gaza conflict and the threat posed by the Islamic State terror group, according to government officials.
“We are concerned about all threats to security there,” Malaysian Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said.
“We decided to freeze travel to Israel and Jerusalem for the sake of the safety of Malaysians who want to go there. This is because of the war and the unpredictable situation there that could jeopardize the safety of travelers,” he added.
Malaysia is a Muslim-majority nation, with Christians comprising roughly 9 percent of the population. While Malaysia has long banned travel to Israel, the government had previously permitted Christians to make pilgrimages to the Jewish state on the condition that they applied for a permit.
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Israel divestment resolution overturned at UC Davis
(JNS.org) An Israel divestment resolution passed at University of California, Davis (UC Davis) last month was overturned Thursday by a student court on the grounds that the measure was not sufficiently related to student welfare.
The Court of Associated Students, in a 5-0 vote with one abstention, found the passage of the divestment resolution by school’s student senate to be in violation of the UC Davis student government constitution. According to the student court, the resolution was “primarily a political document” that “did not deal with student welfare to the extent that allowed the ASUCD (Associated Students of the University of California, Davis) Senate jurisdiction to pass.”
The student senate is “free to pass resolutions concerning ‘divestment’ as long as the “focus and primary purpose is with the student welfare and not a political one,” the court added.
“Great job to UC Davis students for seeing the light—that BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) is a narrow-minded agenda to target only the Jewish state,” the California-headquartered Israel education group StandWithUs said on Facebook.
Following the passage of the Israel divestment resolution at UC Davis last month, two large swastikas were found spray-painted on the fraternity house of the school’s Alpha Epsilon Pi chapter.
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DC rabbi accused of voyeurism pleads guilty
(JNS.org) Barry Freundel, a prominent Washington, DC-based rabbi who was accused of videotaping women during their preparations for mikvah (ritual bath) immersion, has pleaded guilty to the voyeurism charges brought against him.
At a hearing in the District of Columbia Superior Court, Freundel pleaded guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism, the Washington Post reported.
Freundel was arrested last October on charges that he secretly videotaped six nude women at the mikvah located on the premises of DC’s Kesher Israel Congregation. But at a meeting last week at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, prosecutors said that as many as 150 women were allegedly videotaped by Freundel.
Prosecutors have alleged that Freundel hid a camera in a clock radio in an area where women undress for the mikvah. The rabbi’s sentencing hearing is set for May 15.
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‘Forward’ editor win journalism prize for editorial on conversion to Judaism
(JNS.org) Jane Eisner, editor-in-chief of The Forward, was announced as the winner of an annual award named after a distinguished Jewish journalist for her editorial on the difficulties facing prospective converts to Judaism.
“Why is it so Hard to Convert to Judaism?”—published by The Forward last June—earned Eisner the 2015 David Twersky Journalism Award, which comes with a medal and a $1,000 prize.
Eisner wrote in the editorial that those “who care about sustaining the future of the modern Jewish family” need to “radically rethink conversion.”
“Instead of playing hard-to-get, or acting as if Jews are part of a club with admission standards higher than Harvard Law School, we need to open our arms, drop our reluctance, lower the barriers and not just welcome converts to join our synagogues,” she wrote. “We need to encourage people to become Jews, in their way, in their time—especially when marriage and child rearing are involved.”
David Twersky’s daughter Anna said, “I can’t speak for my dad, but he believed in the facts, and he believed in the debate, because that meant people were discussing the issues. After I read [Eisner’s] article, my first reaction was to make my roommate read it so that we could talk about it.”
The award, in its fourth year, was established to recognize the work of journalists at the New Jersey Jewish News (NJJN) and The Forward, the newspapers where David Twersky (who died in 2010) worked for a combined two decades. Twersky’s time at The Forward “was a scoop-filled period when he established the newspaper as a serious voice for the Jewish community in Washington,” and at NJJN he “transformed a community paper into a strong, state-wide publication through a series of mergers with neighboring Jewish community newspapers,” according to a press release.
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Sen. Chuck Schumer: European leaders should ‘go to extra lengths’ to protect Jews
(JNS.org) In the wake of recent attacks on Jewish sites in Denmark and France, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday urged European leaders “to go to extra lengths” to protect their countries’ Jewish communities.
“European leaders should tell those who would try to perpetrate anti-Semitic acts that they will be fully prosecuted,” Schumer said in a statement. “The bottom line is that, like all ethnic groups and religious minorities, Jewish people, no matter where they call home, should not have to live in fear.”
Last Sunday, 22-year-old Omar El-Hussein—a terrorist of Palestinian origin—fatally shot 37-year-old Jewish volunteer security guard Dan Uzan outside of a synagogue in Copenhagen. In January, an Islamist terrorist attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris killed four Jewish shoppers. More recently in France, hundreds of gravestones were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union, near the German border.
“There is an evil stew right now in Europe,” Schumer said Thursday. “It is a combination of Islamic fundamentalist, the far Left, and the far Right—and they are not just being anti-Israel, they are being outright anti-Semitic. Just as racism has been the poison of America for centuries, anti-Semitism has been, just as strongly and just as equally, the poison of Europe for a millennium. For centuries, Jewish people have been perniciously targeted because of their faith, and in recent years it seems that this primitive, hateful feeling towards Jews has tragically regenerated and grown.”
European governments, said Schumer, “must do more to protect their fellow Jewish citizens, while also providing leadership to call out, confront and beat back a rising current of anti-Semitism.”
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Swedish radio station asks if Jews are ‘responsible’ for anti-Semitism
(JNS.org) The Swedish radio station Sveriges Radio (SR) is receiving heavy criticism after one of its journalists asked Israeli Ambassador to Sweden Isaac Bachman on air if “Jews themselves [are] responsible for the progression of anti-Semitism?”
In response, Bachman said he “purely and simply” rejects that question, and that it should never have been asked.
When pressed by the reporter to elaborate, Bachman said, “I am not angry at you personally. I am used to these questions. The question of how a woman is responsible for being raped is absolutely irrelevant. There is no provocation made by Jews other than their very existence. For as long as the Jews have existed—perhaps because of their success—that may have created feelings against them, but they have done nothing that justifies such treatment.”
Hanif Bali, chairman of the Swedish-Israeli Friendship Association in Sweden’s parliament, later responded on social media to the interview, stating that the radio station’s question was “disgusting and insane.”
“The claim that Jews bear responsibility for anti-Semitism is one of the most ancient expressions of anti-Semitism,” he said.
In response to criticism of the segment, the station later removed the question from the recording of the interview in its archive, and issued an apology.
“We would like to fully apologize for this question,” the radio station said in a statement. “It was wrong to place guilt on individuals and on a vilified group. The Jewish community suffered a criminal act of terror, and it has all of our sympathy.”
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Facebook to offer Israelis ‘I voted’ button
(JNS.org) On Wednesday, Facebook announced plans to offer Israeli users the option to share that they have voted in the upcoming Knesset elections on March 17, mirroring the feature offered to American voters during the 2012 presidential election.
According to Facebook, Israelis will be able to press an “I voted” button that will appear at the top of their news feed. This will make their voting status visible to their Facebook friends. Users will also be able to receive information about their polling station from Israel’s Central Election Committee via the social network.
“Facebook connects people with the things that are important to them, and election periods are rich with significant conversation moments and civilian debates. The voter-participation rate is an important matter worldwide, and in Israel, we hope that the ‘I’m Voting’ button will make it easier for voters to share the fact that they are participating in the elections, and will serve as a reminder to others to go out and vote,” said Elizabeth Linder, Facebook’s Politics & Government Specialist for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, reported Yedioth Ahronoth.
The “I voted” button was also offered to Indian voters during last year’s election of current Prime Minister Narendra Modi. More than 4 million Indian voters used the feature during the election period, Facebook said.
Meanwhile, Facebook on Tuesday removed the page of the Hamas terrorist group’s news agency, Shehab, in response to a complaint by Israeli students participating in a program fighting anti-Semitism. Facebook removed the page, which had 2.7 million likes, because it contained graphic violence, violating the social network’s terms of use.
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Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman.