Israel in the News May/Jun 2016
Your Tax Dollars at Work: Islam in America’s Schools
La Plata High School, a public school in Charles County, Maryland, is being sued in federal court for allegedly making students profess the Muslim statement of faith and memorize the Five Pillars of Islam, while a charter-school empire owned by a Turkish civilizational jihadist is collecting millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money.
The Thomas More Law Center has filed a lawsuit against La Plata High School on behalf of John and Melissa Wood who said their daughter was forced “to disparage her Christian faith by reciting the Shahada, and acknowledging Mohammed as her spiritual leader,” Thomas More’s President Richard Thompson said, as Todd Starnes of Fox News reported.
In an article “Lawsuit: Public school forced my child to convert to Islam,” Starnes said the suit also claims the school teaches that a Muslim’s faith is stronger than that of average Christians. “And when Mr. Wood complained – the school banned him from campus,” Starnes reported. “The Shahada,” wrote Starnes, “is the Islamic Creed, ‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.’”
Starnes said the suit alleges students spent only one day studying Christianity and two weeks studying Islam, which they were told is a religion of peace. In addition, Starnes said, “Students were also allegedly instructed that ‘the Islamic religion is a fact while Christianity and Judaism are just beliefs.’”
Meanwhile, WND.com’s Leo Hohmann has reported that Muhammad Fethullah Gülen is directing “his cult-like Islamic movement from a guarded compound in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania,” raking in “tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars every year” for his charter schools.
Hohmann called Gülen “a Turkish Islamist, writer and preacher with a secret plan for bringing Shariah law to America” and “Turkey’s most influential spiritual leader for the past 50 years.”
The schools, “which have innocent-sounding names like the Horizon Science Academies in Illinois, Harmony Schools of Excellence in Texas, Dove Science Academies in Oklahoma and Magnolia Science Academies in California—have long been the subject of investigations into alleged corruption scandals involving influence peddling and visa abuse,” Hohmann wrote.
“Most of the parents of students who attend Gülen charter schools have no idea about Gülen’s background as a Turkish Islamist and believer in civilizational jihad—which is a form of nonviolent jihad focused on infiltrating and overcoming Western nations over time through immigration and exploitation of the civil liberties available in those nations,” Hohmann reported.
Anti-Sharia activist Pamela Geller told WND.com, “It has been widely reported for years that he wants ultimately to restore the Islamic caliphate in Turkey. That alone should make his charter schools in the U.S. a subject of law enforcement scrutiny, but it largely hasn’t.”
A complete list of Gülen’s schools is available at tinyurl.com/7uxruyr. Starnes’s article is available at tinyurl.com/zhulgfx, and Hohmann’s article at tinyurl.com/jtpjtza.
Israel Makes Medical Breakthroughs
Israeli researchers have made three recent medical breakthroughs: a new treatment for leukemia, a blood test to screen and diagnose Alzheimer’s, and a new anti-radiation cell therapy.
JNS.org reported that researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center have used the research of professor Zelig Eshhar of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science to genetically modify the T-cells of 29 leukemia patients, which resulted in the remission or cure of cancer in 27 of them.
“I’m not surprised to hear about the results,” Eshhar said. “In our lab, we cured many rats and mice of cancer. I have been saying for years that we could do this in people.”
Gil Ronen of Arutz-7 reported on another new discovery concerning Alzheimer’s. Professor Illana Gozes of Tel Aviv University is leading the research on a new process of screening and diagnosing the disease. The study proposes a new biomarker—activity-dependent neuroprotective protein (ADNP)—for cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s disease. “This study,” Gozes stated, “has provided the basis to detect this biomarker in routine, non-invasive blood tests….Early intervention is invaluable to Alzheimer’s patients.”
The Jerusalem Post reported an Israeli biotech company, Pluristem Therapeutics, has developed an anti-radiation therapy that the U.S. government will likely begin stocking next year. The placenta-based cell therapy consists of injecting patients who have been exposed to lethal doses of radiation. Clinical trials have yielded a near 100 percent recovery rate for animals.
From news reports
Changes at the Wall
The Israeli cabinet has voted to allow non-Orthodox Jewish prayer in a specially designated place at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, with plans to build a new plaza where both men and women can pray together.
The decision is a “dramatic, unprecedented and critical acknowledgement” by Israel, said a statement by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).
“Though much work regarding the implementation of this decision still remains,…we are measurably closer today to the ultimate symbol of that reality—one wall for one people,” the statement said.
JNS.org
UNHRC ‘Blacklists’ Jewish State
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is calling for a database of businesses “involved in activities” in Judea and Samaria and wants to be informed of the “human rights and international law violations involved in the production of settlement goods.”
Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the UN, called the database a “blacklist” and said the UNHRC is acting “obsessively” on the issue of Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the UNHRC an “anti-Israel circus,” and said it “attacks the only democracy in the Middle East and ignores the gross violations of Iran, Syria, and North Korea.”
The measure’s passage comes in the wake of the UNHRC’s appointment of Canadian legal expert Michael Lynk, who has expressed anti-Israel views in the past, as special rapporteur on human rights issues affecting the Palestinians.
JNS.org
IDF Develops New Fog Technology
The Israel Defense Forces have developed a new system for locating and identifying terrorists in fog and haze.
Based on the drone system, it is an advanced, specified spy package, containing all of the regular equipment but including an option for seeing through fog. The specialized camera, called Savir, allows one to see and photograph people and moving objects in high resolution through fog or cloudy conditions from more than a mile away.
Arutz-7 (IsraelNationalNews.com)
Finally! Egyptian Ambassador in Israel
After more than three years with no Egyptian ambassador to Israel, Egypt’s new Ambassador Hazem Ahdy Khairat presented his credentials in Israel and said he hopes Israel and Egypt’s “constructive” relationship will bring peace to the region, according to Raphael Ahren from The Times of Israel.
Ahren said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin told reporters, “He [Khairat] told me that he is very happy and very proud to be in Israel and that he hopes that his presence here will bring about a situation in which the friendship between the Jewish people and the Arab people…will be such that we can live in peace,” the Times reported.
Boy finds ancient Canaanite figurine
A 7-year-old Israeli boy discovered a 3,400-year-old Canaanite figurine while hiking with his father and friends in the archaeological park Tel Rehov. The family reported the finding to the Israel Antiquities Authority, and a representative awarded the boy with a certificate of appreciation for good citizenship.
The ceramic statuette is of a nude woman, which was made by pressing soft clay into the mold. Amichai Mazar, professor emeritus at Hebrew University, who led a delegation of archaeological excavation representatives in the area, inspected the statuette and noted, “It is typical of the Canaanite culture of 15th to 13th centuries BC. Some researchers believe the figure represents a woman of flesh and blood, and others see it as Astarte, goddess of fertility, known from Canaanite [history] and the Bible.”
Arutz-7 (IsraelNationalNews.com)
