Israel and the world mourn “founding father” Shimon Peres - VIEWPOINT ISRAEL

Israel and the world mourn “founding father” Shimon Peres

SEPTEMBER 29, 2016  Viewpoint Israel

The state of Israel, as well as dignitaries, and Jewish groups around the world, are mourning the death of former Israeli President Shimon Peres, who passed away on Tuesday, two weeks after suffering a massive stroke. He was 93 years old.

The government convened a special mourning session at 10 a.m. Wednesday, which began with a moment of silence in Peres’ honor.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu eulogized Peres: “I join the Israeli public, the Jewish people, and many worldwide, bowing my head in memory of the nation’s beloved, Shimon Peres. “Shimon dedicated his life to our people’s independence. As a visionary, he looked to the future. As a defense official, he worked to bolster Israel in many ways, some of which remain covert to this day. As a man of peace, he worked to his last days to promote peace with our neighbors, to forge a better future for our children.”

President Reuven Rivlin also eulogized his predecessor, saying, “Peres never stopped creating and dreaming, always in the service of the State of Israel and its people. There is not a chapter in the history of the State of Israel which Shimon did not write or play a part.

Peres’ funeral will take place on Friday. He will lie in state at the Knesset Plaza on Thursday, to allow the public to bid farewell to Israel’s most veteran statesman.

Dozens of world leaders are expected to attend the state service, which will be held at the Great Leaders of the Nation’s plot on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

Originally posted at JNS.org. PHOTO: World Economic Forum via Wikimedia Commons

California Passes Anti-BDS Law! - VIEWPOINT ISRAEL

California Passes Anti-BDS Law!

ON AUGUST 26, 2016  

VIEWPOINT ISRAEL

The Israeli American Council marked a significant achievement when the California legislator passed a bill barring all state bodies, including universities, from maintaining ties with organizations that support anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions activities, Israel Hayom learned Thursday.

The bill prohibits state bodies from investing in companies “engaging in actions that are politically motivated and are intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or otherwise limit commercial relations with the State of Israel, or companies based in the State of Israel or in territories controlled by the State of Israel.”

The bill was the result of considerable lobbying efforts by the IAC, which seeks to counteract the BDS movement on legal, technological and public diplomacy levels.

Likewise, on Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed a bill banning the state’s pension fund from investing in companies that boycott Israel.

“This bill sends a significant message: The hatred the BDS movement seeks to spread will have no room in California,” Shawn Evenhaim, of the IAC-affiliated Israel American Coalition for Action, told Israel Hayom Thursday.

“This bill is important because it makes it clear that [California] taxpayers don’t have to fund boycott activities. … We’re proud of the fact we were able to spur the Israeli-American community to push for this bill, as it will now, and in the future, protect California’s diverse population from discrimination.”

Originally posted at Jewish News Service. Photo credit: Credit: Abraham Joseph Pal.

Why Palestinians Prefer Working for Israelis - VIEWPOINT ISRAEL

Why Palestinians Prefer Working for Israelis

ON AUGUST 11, 2016  VIEWPOINT ISRAEL

If Israeli Jews are such blood-thirsty haters of all things Arab, then why do Palestinian Arabs prefer working for them?

Palestinian Authority TV acknowledged as much in recent broadcasts of the program Workers’ Affairs, which were translated by Palestinian Media Watch.

A number of Palestinian laborers were interviewed, and openly stated that both pay and work conditions for Arabs are far better with Israeli employers than with fellow Palestinians.

“The lack of monitoring of [Palestinian] owners of companies and factories and their exploitation of workers is what has forced people to Israel, to work and build in Israel,” said Qassem Abu Hadwan, a laborer from Hebron. “Workers have to go to Israel, because no one [in the PA]gives them what they deserve for their work.”

Indeed, figures released by the Palestinian Authority’s Central Bureau of Statistics revealed that “the average [daily]wage for employees in the West Bank was 94.1 shekels, and 61.9 shekels in the Gaza Strip, while the average for employees in Israel and the settlements was 198.9 shekels.”

Israeli-Arab Attorney Khaled Dukhi of Worker’s Hotline explained that the situation is even worse for female Palestinian workers, who have to pay exorbitant fees to “middlemen.”

“In practice, he [the Palestinian employer] takes 50%, 60%, and even 70% of her salary. The middleman steals two thirds of her salary,” noted Dukhi.

There are currently some 120,000 Palestinian Arabs working legally in Israel and the Jewish settlements, with thousands more seeking work permits or making their way across the Green Line illegally.

It is difficult to imagine how an independent Palestinian state would survive economically when so little of its labor force wants to work there.

Originally posted at Israel Today Magazine.

Israel Has Not Been Stopped Or Slowed by BDS Efforts - VIEWPOINT ISRAEL

Israel Has Not Been Stopped Or Slowed by BDS Efforts

ON JULY 5, 2016NEWS, NEWS

Foreign capital flow to Israeli assets hit a record high of $285.12 billion last year, nearly triple of what this figure was in 2005, Bloomberg News reported last week. And while the Israeli economy has been slowing as of late, it is still performing better than that of the United States and other Western nations. Israeli companies, especially high-tech startups, have also become very attractive targets for foreign investors.

The Bloomberg report is consistent with an analysis written for The Wall Street Journal two years ago by David Rosenberg, economic editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz.

The true story is that after nearly 10 years of campaigning, the global BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement has not had the slightest economic impact. Its victories have consisted of coaxing a handful of pop stars and academics to cancel appearances in Israel, and winning empty, sanctimonious declarations of support from the likes of student governments, cooperative grocery stories and leftish church groups.

Far from being isolated, Israel’s exports are reaching record highs and it attracts billions of dollars in foreign investment.

In the weeks that Israel was supposedly under a boycott siege, Japan’s Rakuten agreed to buy the start-up Viber for $900 million and Ireland’s Covidien sealed a deal to buy Given Imaging for $860 million. China’s Bright Food was in talks to buy control of Israel’s biggest food maker Tnuva, and IBM, Lockheed-Martin and ERM all announced plans to open research and development centers in Israel. The Jewish state became the first non-European member of the nuclear research consortium CERN and was admitted as an observer to the Pacific Alliance, a free-trade bloc of five Latin American countries.

A group of multinational firms including Ford, IBM, GE, Tyco, GM, Singtel, PayPal, Yahoo, ProSieben, and Kimberly-Clark came to Tel Aviv at the end of 2015 to find suitable startups to invest in. That year, Israeli startups netted nearly $5 billion in Venture Capital-backed exit deals, a ten-year record.

The BDS campaign attempts to delegitimize and isolate Israel in an effort to advance Palestinian interests, and many of its leaders have publicly affirmed that they seek Israel’s destruction. BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti, an opponent of the two-state solution, said in 2014 that Palestinians have a right to “resistance by any means, including armed resistance,” while leading activist As’ad Abu Khalil acknowledged in 2012 that “the real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel.”

Originally posted by Brian Schrauger at Israel Today Magazine.