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You can re-write their report but their mind-set remains. (See 1 below.)
If our State Department was serious and truly objective they would support the de-funding of UNESCO.
Nikki Haley is the best thing America and Israel has going for it but words can only do so much. A schism exists between what she does and our State Department. She will eventually be gone but the State Department views will continue to dominate the halls. (See 1a below.)
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Melanie is correct but also wrong. Europe understands but they are caught in the mistaken belief their age old scape-goat is their problem. (See 2 below.)
Getting Palestinians to agree that they lost is a dead end street. Psychologically speaking losers need to think they are winners to sustain their myth. Denial is a powerful crutch. (See 2a below.)
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Kim and I are in agreement. Time for McConnell to call out the dogs to de-feather the peacocks. (See 3 below.)
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Israel and cyber-security. (See 4 below.)
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Now that Spicer is gone and Bannon has been dealt a blow because he backed Spicer perhaps Trump knows what he is doing about getting his communication train back on the tracks.
I always thought Newt should have been White House Chief of Staff but I guess he would have clashed with Trump who marches to his own drum beat when it comes to managing or mis-managing his Administration's staff.
Perhaps his new communications director will serve to rebut the mass media's vitriol so Trump will no longer have to defend himself and he can focus on executing his campaign goals.
So far Trump has allowed his quirkiness to blow apart opportunities of allowing his messages to have an extensive life.
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Dick
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1)State Dept. Blames Israel for Terrorism, Claims Palestinians Rarely Incite Attacks
Latest Trump admin report viewed as wrongly blaming Israel for attacks
BY: Adam Kredo
Washington Free BeaconThe State Department is facing harsh criticism for claiming in an official report that Israel is to blame for terrorism attacks committed by Palestinians and accusing the Jewish state of being largely responsible for an impasse in peace negotiations, according to a leading member of Congress who is calling on the State Department to correct its "inaccurate and harmful" characterization of Israel.The State Department, in its latest annual report on the global terrorism situation, blames Israeli security policies for stalling the peace process and claims that Palestinians rarely incite terror attacks.The claims are coming under fierce criticism from pro-Israel advocates and have prompted one leading member of Congress to formally call on the Trump administration to amend the report to more accurately reflect the situation.Rep. Peter Roskam (R. Ill.), co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, criticized the latest report in a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and called on the administration to immediately amend it to portray Palestinian terror attacks as a primary reason for the impasse in peace talks.The State Department's current characterization, Roskam claims, is harmful to Israel and likely to impede efforts by the Trump administration to renew peace talks."The State Department report includes multiple findings that are both inaccurate and harmful to combating Palestinian terrorism," Roskam wrote in a letter sent Thursday to the State Department, a copy of which was exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. "This report wrongly insinuates Israeli security measures on the Temple Mount and a stalled peace process as key forces behind terrorism.""Most egregiously," Roskam adds, "it portrays the PA as innocent peacemakers far removed from being the source of terrorist activity."The State Department characterizes Palestinian calls for terrorism and violence against Israel as "rare," stating: "Explicit calls for violence against Israelis, direct exhortations against Jews, and categorical denials by the [Palestinian Authority] of the possibility of peace with Israel are rare and the leadership does not generally tolerate it.""This assertion is demonstrably false," Roskam writes. "The PA does not only tolerate terrorist attacks against Israelis but it also incites, rewards, and memorializes those who carry out these horrific attacks."Regional organizations monitoring the situation routinely cite the Palestinian Authority and its senior officials as calling for violence against Israel and glorifying past terror acts.Palestinian television programs also promote violence against Israel and Jews, with some aimed at children promoting hatred of the Jewish state.The Palestinian government also uses U.S. taxpayer aid to pay salaries to one-time terrorists who are imprisoned in Israel. This issue has become a particular sticking point in peace talks with Israel, and Congress is currently considering legislation that could cut all aid to the PA until it formally ends this terror payment policy.In late 2015, during a massive wave of Palestinian terrorism, attackers carried out 181 stabbing attacks on Israelis, 159 shooting, and 60 vehicular ramming attacks, which called more than 50 Israelis and injured nearly 1,000.Roskam notes this statistic in his letter to Tillerson."I write to express my concern about numerous mischaracterizations found in the 2016 State Department Country Reports on Terrorism, which undermine the prospect for Israeli-Palestinian peace and wrongly blame Israel for Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians," Roskam writes."At the highest level, the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership directly incites, rewards, and, in some cases, carries out, terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis," the letter states. "In order to effectively combat terrorism, it is imperative that the United States accurately characterize its root cause—PA leadership."Roskam calls on the Trump administration "to modify this report to accurately characterize and hold accountable the root causes of Palestinian violence—PA leadership, and clarify the longstanding issue of Palestinian support for terrorism as the leading impediment to Israeli-Palestinian peace."One senior Congressional source tracking the situation told the Free Beacon that the State Department's findings are appalling to Israel supporters."It is unacceptable that the State Department ignores PA-backed terrorism," the source said, adding that Congress is working hard to pass legislation cutting off U.S. aid until the Palestinians cease paying terrorists."The State Department should be working to do the same," the source said. "They can begin by correctly reporting the source of Palestinian terrorism—government-led incitement and policies that rewards terrorists."A second senior congressional source intimately familiar with the situation labeled the report a farce and chided Trump's State Department for towing a line similar to the former Obama administration, which was vocal in its criticism of Israel."This report is comically farcical and detached from reality," the source said, "We expect efforts to whitewash history at Israel’s expense from the U.N., but not our own State Department.
1a) ISRAEL: UNESCO IS A FULL PARTNER IN PALESTINIAN INCITEMENT
Israel's UNESCO ambassador in Paris condemned UNESCO's actions as helping encourage Palestinian incitement.
Israel has charged that UNESCO’s actions have helped Palestinians use the Temple Mount to incite violence against Israel.
“UNESCO is a full partner to the false incitement by Palestinians and radical Islam who claim that Al-Aksa [Temple Mount mosque] is in danger,” Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO in Paris Carmel Shama HaCohen said on Thursday.
This year, both UNESCO’s Executive Board and its World Heritage Committee passed a resolution that disavowed Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, known to Muslims as Al-Haram/Al-Sharif. This followed two years of resolutions that also ignored Jewish ties to the Temple Mount - as well as the city of Jerusalem as a whole - by referring to Judaism's holiest site solely by its Muslim name.
He spoke as tensions mounted in Jerusalem’s Old City in the aftermath of last Friday’s terror attack, in which two Israeli policemen were killed by three Israeli Arabs. The assailants were shot and killed by Israeli police as they attempted to flee the site of the attack.
Israel’s decision to place metal detectors at the entrances to the site to ensure that weapons would not be brought in has sparked outrage among Muslim worshipers.
Instead of entering the Temple Mount compound, the worshipers have stood daily next to the metal detectors at the Lion’s Gate and held prayer services in protest.
Shama HaCohen said he is certain that in October, UNESCO’s Executive Board will condemn Israel for placing the metal detectors at the site. The text of that resolution will most likely state that the metal detectors harm the site’s integrity, freedom of worship, and the status quo of the area.
To help remedy the situation his office has called on UNESCO’s Director-General Irina Bokova to condemn any attempts to use the Temple Mount as a location from which to launch terror attacks.
It is important that Bokova state that incitement and terrorism are the true threats here, Shama HaCohen said. The letter his office sent stated: The Old City of Jerusalem, and its Walls, including Har-Habait (Temple Mount), is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and as the Director-General of [that] organization, I urge you to strongly condemn this deadly and shameful attack, [which] occurred within a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”
“Furthermore, I urge you to condemn the use of Har-Habait (Temple Mount), as a place for launching terror attacks against Israel , and condemn as well the violations of the holiness of this sacred place by terrorists,” the letter stated.
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2) Europe remains blind because it doesn’t want to see
By MELANIE PHILLIPS
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In recent years, French Jews have been repeatedly attacked by Muslim assailants motivated by religiously based hatred of Jews. France has persistently ignored the significance of this. In Budapest this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had an unintentionally revealing moment.
On an open microphone, he was overheard condemning as “crazy” the EU’s insistence on resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a precondition for closer trade ties. European links with Israel, he said, would determine whether the EU would “live and thrive or shrivel and disappear.”
The situation is surely even broader and starker than that. European leaders don’t realize their fate is wrapped up not only with Israel but with Judaism itself.
They don’t grasp that prejudice against the Jews is a major driver of Islamist attacks not just against Israel but also against the West. And they don’t understand how their own orthodoxies are aiding that malign process.
Last April Sarah Halimi, a 67-year-old French Jewish woman, was murdered by her 27-year-old neighbor, Malian immigrant Kobili Traore, who beat and tortured her before throwing her alive out of the third floor window of her Paris apartment. During the attack he shouted “Allahu akbar” and “you sheitan!” (devil). He had previously taunted her repeatedly with anti-Jewish remarks.
The police, who had failed to respond to the pleas by Halimi’s family to do something about Traore because they feared being accused of anti-Muslim prejudice, have refused to acknowledge this was an anti-Jewish crime.
In recent years, French Jews have been repeatedly attacked by Muslim assailants motivated by religiously based hatred of Jews. France has persistently ignored the significance of this.
When Islamists murdered French Jews in the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris in 2015, the Jewish community observed bitterly that this atrocity was only properly acknowledged because it happened two days after the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo.
What the Hyper Cacher atrocity actually showed, along with other attacks on French Jewish targets around the same time, was what Europeans have denied for so long: that Muslims kill Jews because they are Jews.
In 2003 Sébastien Selam was killed in Paris by Adel Amastaïbou who screamed: “I’ll go to heaven, I killed my Jew!” In 2014 in Lyon a man armed with a hammer and an iron stick charged at his neighbor, a woman and her child, yelling “Dirty Jew, go back to your country!” The same month a young man was beaten up in Paris by two men crying: “Dirty Jew, we don’t like Jews here, this is no Israel, this is Palestine!” In Britain, there is an ongoing furor over antisemitism in the Labour Party. This is being blamed on the party’s far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn. But anti-Jewish attitudes, expressed principally through attacks on Israel, are now the default position throughout the Left.
The usual alibi that such views are anti-Israel but not anti-Jew doesn’t wash. Although those expressing them may have no personal animosity against Jews, their Israel-bashing has precisely the same characteristics as Jew-baiting: singling out Jews or the Jewish state alone for double standards, demonization and systematic lying used against no other people.
During Netanyahu’s visit to Paris last Sunday, the French president Emmanuel Macron helpfully observed that anti-Zionism was a “new type of antisemitism.” He also issued a welcome call for “total clarity” on the Halimi murder and admitted: “We were silent because we did not want to see.”
Alas, Macron himself doesn’t want to see what needs to be seen. He has persistently failed to acknowledge the real cause of Islamist terrorism, blaming it on things like joblessness, grievances or – most fatuously – global warming.
Islamist terrorism is caused by a fanatical interpretation of Islam. Intrinsic to that is hatred and fear of the Jews deriving from Islamic sacred texts. Islamists further believe that modernity has to be stopped, the Jews are behind modernity and all other evil and so the Jews have to be eradicated.
The Islamists’ key insight is that progressive views have hollowed out Western societies, particularly in Europe, so that they no longer know what values they need to defend against the Islamic jihad.
What secularists fail to grasp is that the values they most prize, such as the power of reason or belief in human rights, were created by Judaism and expressed in the West through Christianity.
Human rights rest on the belief that all are created equal in the image of God. The power of reason rests on the revolutionary concept in the book of Genesis that there is an intelligible universe.
Secular ideologies, however, are positively anti-Judaism.
Moral relativism denies the moral codes of Mosaic law. Deep green environmentalism repudiates the belief embodied in the creation that mankind is superior to the natural world. Scientific materialism dethrones God and puts man in his place.
Judaism is an obstacle both to the unconstrained individualism of Western libertines and also to the Islamist attack on reason, equality and freedom. Small wonder Western progressives make common cause with Islamists against the Jewish people.
Macron is a universalist who doesn’t believe in defending Western national identity. Nor does he believe in France. He said last February: “French culture does not exist; there is a culture in France and it is diverse...
French art? I never met it!” Anyone who believes Macron will defend the Jewish people, the free world or France itself is in for a rude awakening. As are the rest of Europe and the West, while they continue to misjudge the central importance of Israel and the Jewish people to their battle to survive.
The writer is a columnist for The Times (UK).
On an open microphone, he was overheard condemning as “crazy” the EU’s insistence on resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a precondition for closer trade ties. European links with Israel, he said, would determine whether the EU would “live and thrive or shrivel and disappear.”
The situation is surely even broader and starker than that. European leaders don’t realize their fate is wrapped up not only with Israel but with Judaism itself.
They don’t grasp that prejudice against the Jews is a major driver of Islamist attacks not just against Israel but also against the West. And they don’t understand how their own orthodoxies are aiding that malign process.
Last April Sarah Halimi, a 67-year-old French Jewish woman, was murdered by her 27-year-old neighbor, Malian immigrant Kobili Traore, who beat and tortured her before throwing her alive out of the third floor window of her Paris apartment. During the attack he shouted “Allahu akbar” and “you sheitan!” (devil). He had previously taunted her repeatedly with anti-Jewish remarks.
The police, who had failed to respond to the pleas by Halimi’s family to do something about Traore because they feared being accused of anti-Muslim prejudice, have refused to acknowledge this was an anti-Jewish crime.
In recent years, French Jews have been repeatedly attacked by Muslim assailants motivated by religiously based hatred of Jews. France has persistently ignored the significance of this.
When Islamists murdered French Jews in the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris in 2015, the Jewish community observed bitterly that this atrocity was only properly acknowledged because it happened two days after the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo.
What the Hyper Cacher atrocity actually showed, along with other attacks on French Jewish targets around the same time, was what Europeans have denied for so long: that Muslims kill Jews because they are Jews.
In 2003 Sébastien Selam was killed in Paris by Adel Amastaïbou who screamed: “I’ll go to heaven, I killed my Jew!” In 2014 in Lyon a man armed with a hammer and an iron stick charged at his neighbor, a woman and her child, yelling “Dirty Jew, go back to your country!” The same month a young man was beaten up in Paris by two men crying: “Dirty Jew, we don’t like Jews here, this is no Israel, this is Palestine!” In Britain, there is an ongoing furor over antisemitism in the Labour Party. This is being blamed on the party’s far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn. But anti-Jewish attitudes, expressed principally through attacks on Israel, are now the default position throughout the Left.
The usual alibi that such views are anti-Israel but not anti-Jew doesn’t wash. Although those expressing them may have no personal animosity against Jews, their Israel-bashing has precisely the same characteristics as Jew-baiting: singling out Jews or the Jewish state alone for double standards, demonization and systematic lying used against no other people.
During Netanyahu’s visit to Paris last Sunday, the French president Emmanuel Macron helpfully observed that anti-Zionism was a “new type of antisemitism.” He also issued a welcome call for “total clarity” on the Halimi murder and admitted: “We were silent because we did not want to see.”
Alas, Macron himself doesn’t want to see what needs to be seen. He has persistently failed to acknowledge the real cause of Islamist terrorism, blaming it on things like joblessness, grievances or – most fatuously – global warming.
Islamist terrorism is caused by a fanatical interpretation of Islam. Intrinsic to that is hatred and fear of the Jews deriving from Islamic sacred texts. Islamists further believe that modernity has to be stopped, the Jews are behind modernity and all other evil and so the Jews have to be eradicated.
The Islamists’ key insight is that progressive views have hollowed out Western societies, particularly in Europe, so that they no longer know what values they need to defend against the Islamic jihad.
What secularists fail to grasp is that the values they most prize, such as the power of reason or belief in human rights, were created by Judaism and expressed in the West through Christianity.
Human rights rest on the belief that all are created equal in the image of God. The power of reason rests on the revolutionary concept in the book of Genesis that there is an intelligible universe.
Secular ideologies, however, are positively anti-Judaism.
Moral relativism denies the moral codes of Mosaic law. Deep green environmentalism repudiates the belief embodied in the creation that mankind is superior to the natural world. Scientific materialism dethrones God and puts man in his place.
Judaism is an obstacle both to the unconstrained individualism of Western libertines and also to the Islamist attack on reason, equality and freedom. Small wonder Western progressives make common cause with Islamists against the Jewish people.
Macron is a universalist who doesn’t believe in defending Western national identity. Nor does he believe in France. He said last February: “French culture does not exist; there is a culture in France and it is diverse...
French art? I never met it!” Anyone who believes Macron will defend the Jewish people, the free world or France itself is in for a rude awakening. As are the rest of Europe and the West, while they continue to misjudge the central importance of Israel and the Jewish people to their battle to survive.
The writer is a columnist for The Times (UK).
2a)
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Representatives of the Middle East Forum paralleled the visit of Trump's emissary to the region and they brought a proposal to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. The organization, which established the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, established another body in Israel headed by Knesset members.
Representatives of the Middle East Forum, a conservative American organization, arrived in Israel last week for a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The organization's representatives presented the prime minister with the steps they are advancing with the U.S. administration should negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians collapse. The meeting took place against the backdrop of U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, who also arrived in Israel this week as part of the efforts to renew Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The organization, headed by Daniel Pipes and Gregg Roman, last month launched the "Congressional Israel Victory Caucus" in Congress. During their visit, they launched a parallel lobby in Israel, headed by MKs Oded Forer (Yisrael Beiteinu) and Yaakov Perry (Yesh Atid).
The basis of the idea they are promoting is that the starting point for any future negotiations is recognition by the Palestinians that they have lost the struggle against Israel. "I expect the American effort to renew talks between Israel and the Palestinians will fail," Pipes said at the launch of the Israel Caucus. "Our project offers an alternative to the peace talks that have been going on for so many years and do not lead to any solution, while Israel is repeatedly required to make 'painful concessions'."
He continued; "When the Palestinians recognize that they lost their struggle against Israel, that is, when they recognize the State of Israel as the Jewish state, they will be liberated from their obsession with harming Israel and genuine peace negotiations can begin. Such a process will bring Palestinian prosperity and many other benefits."
According to sources briefed on the meeting between Netanyahu and the organization's representatives, the prime minister showed great interest in the "Israel Victory Project" idea. According to the sources, Netanyahu would not have bothered to meet with the two had he not in the first place found merit in the concepts they promoted.
Gregg Roman told Walla! that he could not share details of the conversation with Netanyahu, but he agreed to describe the main points of the ideas presented in the visit: "Palestinians behave as if they have won; the time has come for them to understand that they have lost. We need to convey this message to them," he said. "To achieve this goal requires two things: political support in Congress and elsewhere in the United States; and for the administration to accept this new policy."
Toward this end, the two MEF leaders also met with members of Congress and U.S. government officials, urging them, should negotiations fail, to promote a series of steps. These include: getting the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA to stop inciting violence; ceasing tax benefits for Palestinian companies in American-designated Qualified Industrial Zones; and promoting legislation to allow the Palestinian Authority to be sued for terrorist attacks against Americans. Roman said, "If Palestinians do not cooperate, this wide range of options can be taken gradually."
The Prime Minister's Office did not respond to Walla's inquiry about the content of the meeting.
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3) Our Self-Interested Senators
An open health-care debate finally would bring some actual accountability.
By Kimberley Strassel
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at this point has busted pretty much every move in his effort to rally 50 votes for an Obama Care replacement. He’s listened. He’s negotiated. He’s encouraged. He’s cajoled. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Months later, still lacking a majority, the time has come for the Kentucky Republican to execute the final, clarifying move. It’s time for Mr. McConnell to make this all about his self-interested members.
Up to now, this exercise has been about trying to improve health care and the federal fisc. The House bill isn’t perfect—no bill ever is—but it amounts to the biggest entitlement reform in history. It repeals crushing taxes. It dramatically cuts spending. And it begins the process of stabilizing the individual health-care market and expanding consumer freedom.
None of this is good enough for a handful of senators, so now it’s time to make this exercise all about them. Mr. McConnell should make clear that the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party stands ready to make good on its repeal-and-replace campaign promise—and that it would have done so already were it not for a cynical or egotistic few. It’s time for some very public accountability.
That rests in Mr. McConnell giving his caucus a drop-dead date to broker a compromise, after which he will proceed to bring up the House bill. And any Republican who votes against moving forward, “a motion to proceed,” will forever be known as the Republican who saved ObamaCare. The Republican who voted to throw billions more taxpayer dollars at failing entitlement programs and collapsing insurance markets. The Republican who abandoned struggling American families. The Republican who voted against a tax cut and spending reductions. The Republican who made Chuck Schumer’s year.
And that’s only a short list of the real-world accountability. That vote might also provide home-state voters a new, eye-opening means to account for the character of their senators. Few things drive conservative voters battier than phony politicians, those who say one thing and do another to avoid hard choices.
Nearly every Senate Republican is on record having voted to repeal ObamaCare—back when they knew that President Obama’s veto made the vote consequence-free. And to be crystal clear, any senator who now votes against simply proceeding to debate is doing so for just one reason: To again avoid consequences, to again avoid accountability.
Because the good senators understand just how illuminating those votes would be. Under the Senate reconciliation process, anyone can offer endless amendments—with roll-call votes.
Voters would be able to see just how gigantic a Medicaid payoff Ohio’s Rob Portman, Nevada’s Dean Heller and West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito are demanding for their support. They’d watch supposed conservatives such as Tennessee’s Bob Corker vote against pro-growth tax cuts. They’d observe Utah’s Mike Lee offer up changes to ObamaCare mandates, muster not even a dozen votes, and realize how unpopular his position is. They’d witness Kentucky’s Rand Paul vote against all reform ideas—no matter how good—because they still weren’t good enough for Rand Paul.
They’d see Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski cynically vote against the very same repeal-only amendment she supported in 2015, back when it didn’t matter. They’d see South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy cast the only two votes for a bill they’ve been pushing—and confusing everyone with—for weeks.
Mr. McConnell can meanwhile count on a great deal of help in this accountability effort. Conservative grass-roots groups have tried to play a constructive role throughout this debate, but they have had it with Senate egos. They’re mobilizing to name names. The chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ralph Reed, sent a letter to every senator on Thursday, explaining that his group would be watching the voting and documenting any “no” votes on “tens of millions of congressional scorecards and voter guides to be distributed in 117,000 churches nationwide in 2018.”
A flood of other conservative outfits—the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots—are launching websites and Twitter campaigns to highlight holdouts. Some groups are planning primary challenges against those who refuse to debate a bill. The Murkowskis of the world may be hoping nobody will remember by the time they’re up for re-election, but they shouldn’t count on that.
What the Senate leadership most needs to stress these coming days is that senators who claim they can’t “support” debating a flawed bill are snowing voters. Don’t like the bill? Get it to the floor and offer amendments. But do it in the open. Do it with some accountability.
Maybe, finally under the public glare, Republicans will get their act together.
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4 Israel – a cybersecurity powerhouse Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger
Posted By Ruth King
, “Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative”
Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #221, July 21, 2017 http://bit.ly/2vqdYQu
Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #221, July 21, 2017 http://bit.ly/2vqdYQu
- According to the June 15, 2017 Wall Street Journal, six Israeli startups (three in the cybersecurity sector) are among the top 25 tech companies, which may be the global leaders of tomorrow.
2. According to Forbes Magazine, Israel has become a cybersecurity powerhouse, creating more than 300 cybersecurity startups, exporting in 2016 $6.5BN in cybersecurity products, convincing more than 30 multinationals to establish local research & development centers in Israel and attracting foreign investors. According to Forbes, there are six reasons leading to Israel’s prominence in the world of cybersecurity: the close government-military-business-academia interaction; government support of early-stage cybersecurity startups; Israel’s military as a startup incubator and accelerator, combining research and operation; investing in human capital (e.g., cybersecurity is an elective high school matriculation exam, and operating six university cybersecurity research centers); Israel’s overall inter-disciplined and diverse human factor enhanced through military service and interaction with global giants; Israel’s constant need to defy security and commercial odds.
3. Enhancing the mutually-beneficial, two-way-street US-Israel cooperation, a cybersecurity bilateral working group was established by the Trump Administration, aimed at combatting cyber offensives. Tom Bossert, White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, stated: “Israel’s agility in developing solutions will innovate cyber defenses that the US can test in Israel and bring back to America….”
4. During the first half of 2017 – in addition to Intel’s March 2017 acquisition of Israel’s Mobileye for $15.3BN – Israeli hightech companies were acquired by foreign companies for a total sum of $1.8BN. For example, Symantec, the Mountain View, CA software security and storage systems giant, acquired Israel’s FireGlass and Skycare (cybersecurity) for $250MN each (Globes, July 13, 2017).
5. During the second quarter of 2017, $1.3BN were invested in Israeli startups, mostly by foreign investors, second highest quarter in the last five years, compared to $1.1BN in the first quarter, as well as the fourth quarter of 2016, and $1.7BN in the second quarter of 2016. For instance, the Japanese giant SoftBank invested $100MN in Israel’s cybersecurity, Cybereason, and Johnson & Johnson led a $12MN round by Israel’s medical/nutritional tech, Day Two. Israel’s venture capital fund, Qumra, raised $115MN for its second fund, mostly from US and European Family Offices (Globes, July 20).
6. Intel is bolstering its operations in Israel – over and beyond its 10,000 employees, four R&D centers, two manufacturing plants and $4BN annual exports out of Israel – leveraging Israel’s cybersecurity added-value. Intel has recently expanded its Israel Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, partnering with Illusive Networks, a cybersecurity startup, and Israel’s Team8, a cybersecurity powerhouse, which has developed close contacts with Microsoft, Cisco, Qualcomm, ATT&T, Nokia, Mitsui and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, aiming to develop cutting edge cybersecurity technologies.
7. India-Israel trade balance surged from $200MN in 1992 to over $4BN in 2016.
According to the Executive Editor of Business India (published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies), “this sliver of a country [Israel] of 8.4 million is a leading innovation hub with the highest density of startups and venture capital in the world. It has more NASDAQ-listed companies than any other country save the US and China – more than India, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong combined. The total market capitalization of these Israeli companies exceeds $85BN…. Israeli companies either pioneered or were among the first to commercialize firewalls (CheckPoint), voicemail (Comverse), USB flash drives (M-Systems), VoIP (Vocaltec) and digital printing (Indigo).
“Israeli startups have also driven innovation across all major technology sectors, as in the cases of Amdocs and Comverse in telecommunications applications, Verint and NICE in contact center applications, Mercury in information technology (IT) management, Check Point in security, DSPG in semiconductors and Mellanox in Infiniband…. Israel has proportionately more scientists and tech professionals than any other country. Almost 40% of Israeli hightech employees are engaged in R&D for [over 200] major global tech companies that have subsidiaries or research centers in Israel. These include Intel, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Facebook, Applied Materials, Apple, IBM, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Oracle and Motorola….
“Israel is a country 0.63% the size of India. Its population is 0.64% that of India and its GDP $297BN to India’s $2.25TN, but its GDP per capita is $34,000 to India’s $6,700…. With India its largest arms client, Israel netted its biggest-ever defense contract in April, 2017 when India awarded Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) contracts totaling almost $2BN [medium-range surface-to-air missiles, air and missile defense systems and a long range SAM air and missile defense systems for India’s aircraft carrier]…. India buys from Israel military hardware worth an average of over $1BN annually… Israeli technologies can be used to boost the development of India’s critical sectors, including food security, water management and efficiency, cyberspace and data protection, e-learning and innovation and digitalization…. 21 memoranda-of-understanding were recently concluded between Indian and Israeli academic institutions….”
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