Opinions of a Wandering Waif

The same bacteria that make your sweaty socks smell are responsible for some 1.7 million hospital-associated infections in the US alone. An Israeli antibacterial fabric may offer a solution.

JERUSALEM (Aug. 31) — A Palestinian gunman opened fire on an Israeli vehicle traveling in the West Bank on Tuesday, killing four passengers, authorities said, in a deadly attack that cast a long shadow over Mideast peace talks set to start this week.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But in the past, militant groups have staged attacks in an effort to sabotage peace efforts.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the gunman opened fire at a vehicle traveling near Hebron - a volatile city that has been a flash point of violence in the past. Some 500 ultranationalist Jewish settlers live in heavily fortified enclaves in the city amid more than 100,000 Palestinians.

Israel’s national rescue service said the victims included two men and two women. It gave no further details.

The attack occurred as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was en route to Washington for a White House summit launching peace talks on Wednesday.

Netanyahu, leader of a hard-line coalition of religious and nationalist parties, has said that protecting Israel’s security interests will be his top priority as he negotiates with the Palestinians.

Before leaving for Washington, Netanyahu told his Likud Party that he would seek “real arrangements on the ground” that ensure the security of Israelis.

“True peace is not a short break between wars, it’s not a short break between terror attacks. True peace is something that persists dozens of years, that stands well for generations,” he said.

President Barack Obama hopes to forge a peace agreement within one year.

[…]

Emphasis mine. ~ waif

newsfromjerusalem:

Why does the Daily Telegraph choose to reuse an image from the 2009 Gaza conflict to inaccurately portray the present day?

Photo bias is one of the most insidious forms of anti-Israel media bias and HonestReporting has addressed a number of recent examples, including AFP/Getty and Reuters wire services. Sometimes, however, the newspapers themselves are responsible for misusing imagery.

Via LGF:

Iran has been making a lot of noise about sending a flotilla of “humanitarian aid” to Gaza, but today the news is that they’ve canceled their plan.

And after blustering for weeks about destroying the Israelis if they tried to stop the flotilla, Iran’s reason for canceling is: they’re afraid of “Israeli threats.”

One of the organizers of an Iranian aid flotilla that was to said to Gaza in efforts to break Israel’s naval blockade on the territory, announced Thursday that the event has been cancelled due to “Israeli threats.”

Army Radio reported that a separate Iranian ship, carrying 60 Iranian activists, was being prepared to sail to Gaza via the Caspian Sea. This after the Lebanese media reported several days ago that Egypt has denied Israel’s request to prevent Iranian ships from passing through the Suez Canal toward Egypt.

Meanwhile Thursday, the U.S. State Department issued a statement calling the aid flotillas to Gaza irresponsible.

“Mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian assistance to Gaza by member states and groups that want to do so,” the U.S. State Department said regarding Lebanese plans to ship aid to Gaza. “Direct delivery by sea is neither appropriate nor responsible, and certainly not effective, under the circumstances.”

Emphasis mine. ~ waif

Even as Israel shows signs of loosening its blockade of Gaze, large majorities in the House and Senate have signed off on letters supporting the blockade and defending Israel’s enforcement of it against a Turkish vessel.

Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, along with 83 other senators, have signed the Senate version of the letter, which is backed by AIPAC; 298 members of the House have signed on.

Says the letter:

We fully support Israel’s right to self-defense. In response to thousands of rocket attacks on Israel from Hamas terrorists in Gaza, Israel took steps to prevent items which could be used to support these attacks from reaching Gaza. Israel’s naval blockade, which is legal under international law, allows Israel to keep dangerous goods from entering Gaza by sea. The intent of the measures is to protect Israel, while allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Late last month when Israel learned that groups operating in Turkey wanted to challenge its blockade of Gaza, Israel made every effort to ensure that all humanitarian aid reached Gaza without needlessly precipitating a confrontation. Israeli forces were able to safely divert five of the six ships challenging the blockade. However, video footage shows that the Israeli commandos who arrived on the sixth ship, which was owned by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (the IHH), were brutally attacked with iron rods, knives, and broken glass. They were forced to respond to that attack and we regret the loss of life that resulted.

(via @AIPAC)

The following article by the former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznarwas published in the British newspaper ‘The Times’ on 17 June 2010:

Sixty-two years after its creation, Israel is still fighting for its very survival. Punished with missiles raining from north and south, threatened with destruction by an Iran aiming to acquire nuclear weapons and pressed upon by friend and foe, Israel, it seems, is never to have a moment’s peace.

For years, the focus of Western attention has understandably been on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. But if Israel is in danger today and the whole region is slipping towards a worryingly problematic future, it is not due to the lack of understanding between the parties on how to solve this conflict. The parameters of any prospective peace agreement are clear, however difficult it may seem for the two sides to make the final push for a settlement.

The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfilment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large.

The core of the problem lies in the ambiguous and often erroneous manner in which too many Western countries are now reacting to this situation. It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Middle East. Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.

Israel is our first line of defence in a turbulent region that is constantly at risk of descending into chaos; a region vital to our energy security owing to our overdependence on Middle Eastern oil; a region that forms the front line in the fight against extremism. If Israel goes down, we all go down. To defend Israel’s right to exist in peace, within secure borders, requires a degree of moral and strategic clarity that too often seems to have disappeared in Europe. The United States shows worrying signs of heading in the same direction.

The West is going through a period of confusion over the shape of the world’s future. To a great extent, this confusion is caused by a kind of masochistic self-doubt over our own identity; by the rule of political correctness; by a multiculturalism that forces us to our knees before others; and by a secularism which, irony of ironies, blinds us even when we are confronted by jihadis promoting the most fanatical incarnation of their faith. To abandon Israel to its fate, at this moment of all moments, would merely serve to illustrate how far we have sunk and how inexorable our decline now appears.

…

International agreements require Egypt to keep the Suez open even for warships, but the armada, led by the USS Truman with 5,000 sailors and marines, was the largest in years. Egypt closed the canal to fishing and other boats as the armada moved through the strategic passageway that connects the Red and Mediterranean Seas.

Despite Egypt’s reported refusal to block the canal to Iranian boats, the clearance for the American-Israeli fleet may be a warning to Iran it may face military opposition if the Iranian Red Crescent ship continues on course to Gaza.

The warships may exercise the right to inspect the Iranian boat for the illegal transport or weapons. Newsweek reported that Egyptian authorities could stop the ship for weeks, using technicalities such as requiring that any official documents be translated from Farsi into Arabic.  

The magazine’s website also reported that the Iranian navy is the weakest part of its armed forces. Tehran has already backed down from announced intentions to escort the Iranian ships with “volunteer marines” from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

The Iranian news site Hamsayeh.net reported, “The move might be in connection to U.S. self-inflicted embargo against Iran aimed at inspecting Iran bound ships for suspected goods related to the country’s nuclear program.”

…

(Via)

Hezbollah is determined and so is Hamas. Hezbollah’s newest strategy seems to be to use the women in its military to attempt to break Israel’s blockade, and perhaps as a means to make Israel appear paranoid. The mainstream media who are actually taking the time to talk about Lebanon’s flotilla aren’t mentioning that it has about 70 women and no men on board, which is likely an attempt on Hezbollah’s part to make the flotilla appear legitimate in its “peace” efforts. 

The mainstream also isn’t reporting is that Hezbollah has no problem with using women to further its agenda to destroy Israel. In fact, Hezbollah’s military women are not defenseless damsels. They are trained military warriors. A www.aljazeera.net article from April goes into quite a bit of detail about the type of training these women get. They are taught how to use weapons like an AK-47 and a Kalashnikov long before they are teenagers. The article stated that some are taught to fight on the frontlines, and that “These women proved determined and were often resourceful in the weapons they used.” The video below details some of their stories.

Meanwhile, a www.israelnationalnews.com article on Sunday reported that American warships and at least one Israel warship were given permission by the Egyptian government to pass through the Suez Canal after the Egyptian government refused to respond to an Israeli request to prevent an Iranian flotilla from using the same canal. The article goes on to state that Egypt then, “closed the canal to fishing and other boats as the (American – Israeli armada) moved through the strategic passageway that connects the Red and Mediterranean Seas.”

According to a www.israeltoday.co.il/ article on Sunday, Yasser Kashlak, who is of Palestinian descent, is responsible for financing the flotilla from Lebanon. He was quoted as saying, “Don’t let the moderate Arab leaders delude you. (You) cannot make peace with us.” The article goes on to state that he has referred to Jews as “Europe’s refuse,” and that he ignores the fact that a Jewish presence has been “in the region for at least 3,000 years,” and that their presence “has been documented by successive ancient empires from the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Persians to the Greeks and, most thoroughly, by the Romans.” One specific book where that information can be easily found is in the Bible.

[…]

Emphasis mine. ~ waif

(Via)

Researchers in Jerusalem have just announced they’ve developed super simple, sustainable, organic electric batteries which are powered by treated potatoes. Their findings have just been published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, and detail uses of the batteries in the developing world where infrastructure is lacking. The apparently highly efficient battery is made from zinc and copper electrodes and a potato slice which has been boiled. The act of boiling the potato increased the electric power around 10 fold in comparison to an untreated potato, giving it power for days, and sometimes weeks depending on the conditions. The potato batteries are also, of course, way cheaper than regular commercial cells. The technology has officially been made available free of charge to the developing world. We knew there was a reason we loved potatoes so much. The full press release is below.

Press release:

JERUSALEM—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Yissum Research Development Company Ltd., the technology transfer arm of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, introduces solid organic electric battery based upon treated potatoes. This simple, sustainable, robust device can potentially provide an immediate inexpensive solution to electricity needs in parts of the world lacking electrical infrastructure. The findings were published in the June issue of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy and are featured in this week’s Research Highlights section of Nature.

“The ability to provide electrical power with such simple and natural means could benefit millions of people in the developing word, literally bringing light and telecommunication to their life in areas currently lacking electrical infrastructure.”

Researchers at the Hebrew University discovered that the enhanced salt bridge capability of treated potato tubers can generate electricity through means readily available in the developing world. This cheap, easy to use green power source could substantially improve the quality of life of 1.6 billion people, comprising 32% of the developing non-OECD populations, currently lacking access to electrical infrastructure. Such a source can provide important needs, such as lighting, telecommunication, and information transfer.

“The ability to construct efficient vegetative batteries supplies us with a novel way of exploiting bio-energy sources, which are currently primarily used as fuel,” said Yaacov Michlin, CEO of Yissum. “The ability to provide electrical power with such simple and natural means could benefit millions of people in the developing word, literally bringing light and telecommunication to their life in areas currently lacking electrical infrastructure.”

Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch from the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment and the research student Alex Golberg from the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hebrew University, jointly with Prof. Boris Rubinsky at the University of California at Berkeley, study the electrolytic process in living matter for use in various applications, including the generation of electric energy for self-powered implanted medical electronic devices. In their research, they discovered a new way to construct an efficient battery using zinc and copper electrodes and a slice of your everyday potato. The scientists discovered that the simple action of boiling the potato prior to use in electrolysis, increases electric power up to 10 fold over the untreated potato and enables the battery to work for days and even weeks. The scientific basis of the finding is related to the reduction in the internal salt bridge resistance of the potato battery, which is exactly how engineers are trying to optimize the performance of conventional batteries. The ability to produce and utilize low power electricity was demonstrated by LEDs powered by treated potato batteries.

[…]

(via LGF)

kohenari:

Just in case anyone wondered about the prospects for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas or a possible way forward for the peace process that could involve Hamas, consider this:

Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar told the East Jerusalem newspaper al-Quds that rocket attacks against Israel should be coming from the West Bank, not just the Gaza Strip.

Zahar criticized the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority for fighting the “resistance,” saying that it was not Hamas that took over Gaza, but in fact President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement that had seized the power in the West Bank, aided by the Israeli “occupation.”

And, for all of the proponents of a democratic Palestinian state out there:

He added that Hamas policy will not change no matter how long the blockade of Gaza continues, and whether or not Hamas will win the next elections in the West Bank.

First-rate.

Full articles here and here.