Cyprus and Israel now connected in higher learning and innovation studies.

 

A sign of the developing relationship between Israel and Cyprus was the opening on February 23 2021 of the Pafos Innovation Center at the IDC Herzlia center of excellence that welcomes international students to study for degrees in a wide range of subjects that connect the world.

IDC Herzlia International University is a center where the brightest minds from Israel and abroad merge in subjects ranging from entrepreneurship and computer science to diplomacy and conflict studies to counter-terrorism and homeland security studies.

Now, with the forging of relations between Israel, Greece and Cyprus, the college launched the Pafos Innovation Institute to foster regional cooperation between the citizens of the region through higher education, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Students will be able to pursue advanced degrees and develop joint ventures to respond to global challenges facing the people of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Pafos Innovation Institute is recognized by the Council for Higher Education in Cyprus and by the European Union.

The President of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, said at the opening ceremony of the new institute;

“This forward-thinking and innovative institution is a product of the growing cooperation between Cyprus and Israel in recent years, in areas such as security and the war on terror, but also in the areas of technology and education. In order to realize the potential of the relations between our two countries, we want to see not only agreements and cooperation between governments, but also between the citizens of the countries themselves, working and creating together.”

Pafos in Cyprus has now become a twin city with Herzlia in Israel. Connected in friendship and higher learning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_PGt5Mupnk&feature=emb_title

Barry Shaw,

International Public Diplomacy Director,

Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

A Solution to the Vaccine Impasse. The Right to Choose.

 A Solution to the Vaccine Impasse. The Right to Choose.

Israel has hit a brick wall. The government has ordered seven million doses of Pfizer vaccines but

only about half the country is willing to be subjected to the needle. The country is at war with

the self-righteous vaccinated accusing the other half of endangering the health of the country.

Intolerance knows no boundaries against those who may not be anti-vaxers but either unable to

be vaccinated or question the long term risk of a not yet licensed jab.

In the maelstrom of the virus and the storm that is raging around the vaccine, I have discovered

that I am a conservative with liberal tendencies and my once fellow conservatives have become

vaccine fascists. Let me explain.

Here in Israel the government and half the people are marching to the drumbeat of Vaccine

Uber Alles. The orthodoxy demands that healthy people who do not wish to subject themselves

to the dreaded needle must be demoted to lesser citizens. Punished, shamed, put beyond the

pale, expelled from society.

It is strange indeed that we who question the inadequacies and potential dangers of an

unproven vaccine are accused by those who ignore or deny this fact are accusing the rest of us

of ignoring he science though many of us have spent more time inspecting the science than

many of our accusers.

Those who consider themselves safe post-vaccination accuse others of risking their health by

not complying to their orthodoxy. In their hysterical rage, they have displayed no tolerance to

those who choose to take alternative routes to protect their health. They have even applied

their rage and insults against those unable to be vaccinated.

The government has followed the global fascist precedent of banning conscientious and

compassion physicians from practicing their ancient Hippocratic Oath, one of the most binding

documents in history, the sacred duty of doctors to heal the sick to the best of their knowledge

and ability and to preserve the privacy of their patients.

Part of that oath demands that the doctor must keep their patients safe from harm and

injustice. This has been denied them.

To many of us, participating in an extension of Phase Three trials under the guise of an

emergency is, in fact, mass participation in an experiment of a yet unproven, unlicensed,

vaccine.

The contracted demand on my government to provide the vaccine manufacturer with medical

records of those participating in that experiment is adequate proof that the manufacturer is

uncertain of the full efficacy and safety of their product.

Only time will tell, beyond claims of immediate efficacy, how long it will be before the

vaccinated need to be re-vaccinated? A year? Six months? Ad infinitum?

But back to the physicians. Those with alternative knowledge. Those that know the science and

successfully apply their skills on us, their patients. They have been banned from using their skills.

Banned, after centuries from asserting their ancient code of honor, from healing us to the best

of their ability by the imposed fascist orders that they must hand their personal patients over to

the state. Because the state knows better how to heal us.

Those who object are silenced. Those who bravely choose to heal their patients are threatened

with expulsion from the profession they have dedicated their lives for going against the

authoritarian orthodoxy.

One brave doctor told me, “Better my patients are illegally alive than legally dead,” after losing

half his sick corona patients by following the orders of the incompetent World Health

Organization and his national public health officials. Instead, he successfully cured his patients

with a known, but banned, drug combination.

This doctor saved half of his patients by practicing his knowledge, by following the science. No

matter. He was forced to stop treating his patients under threat of being struck off. The result?

More of his patients died.

This tragedy is known in too many local clinics. Doctors who protest have been silenced. In too

many cases, those that refuse to be muzzled lost their jobs.

We are losing a healthy world, country by country, to incompetent fascist dictates of which

imposed mass vaccination is one. The right to choose has been denied us and to our caring

outpatient doctors.

Instead of allowing us to use another route to maintain our health, the fascists are threatening

to place us outside acceptable society, beyond the pale, looked on as lepers and criminals.

Is this what Israel has become? A nation divided between those who conform and those who

think differently?

Those in power need to take off their blinkers because power has blinded them, deafened them

from listening to experts who offer an additional path to health security by using the traditional

route.

It is time to release our local physicians from the bondage they have been placed.

Now that the vaccine is here, an innovative Start-Up Nation should take a global initiative and

run a national clinical trial by allowing our caring outpatient doctors and clinics to administer

safe and effective early treatment and assess if this reduces the hospitalization of corona

infected patients that is overloading on our hospital system.

There can be no further ban because we now have multiple confirmations that an early stage

drug combination has been proven to be as effective, statistically, as a vaccine in keeping us safe

from the current disease.

If this is the expected outcome, as predicted by thousands of silenced doctors and specialists, it

will offer all of us the freedom to choose which route we can take for our individual health

security and better escape the ravages of an infection that is attacking us both as human beings

and as a nation.

Barry Shaw, Senior Associate at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

Statements from several of Biden's top appointees are deeply troubling.

 
Statements from several of Biden's top appointees are deeply troubling.

They point to the intrusion of the radical left into the decision-making process of the new American government.

Take JALINA PORTER, the newly appointed State Department Spokesperson.

In a September 20, 2016 tweet she wrote, "The largest threat to US National Security are US cops. Not ISIS. Not Russian hackers. Not anyone or anything else. If y'all don't wake up and rise up to this truth, the genocide against Blacks in America will continue until we are near extinct. That's not a world I seek to live in or create for myself and those around me."

Jalina Porter was once a cheerleader. She is also a cheerleader for BLM lies.

This woman now represents America to the world.

Her crazed diatribe is based on a total of 19 unarmed black Americans out of a population of 330 million being shot by police during 2020, some while resisting arrest. During the same people more whites were shot in similar circumstances.

Porter thinks that American cops are committing a "genocide."

This top US representative thinks that American law-enforcement officers are a greater threat to US security than Iran, Iranian terrorism, or ANTIFA.

This raises a number of questions.

How is it possible that such an irrational person is fit for such a serious high position with international resonance?

How was it possible that Biden made such a poor appointment?

Or does the Biden Administration agree with the sentiments of this appointee?

Did her bosses, both President Biden and Anthony Blinken, the Secretary of State, have any say in her appointment? Do they accept the character and motivation of this person, or was her nomination forced on them by the radical wing of the party in power?

Barry Shaw,

Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

How the Biden Administration Will Impact Israel and the Middle East.

Anthony Blinken is the incoming US Secretary of State. The State Department executes American foreign policy.

Blinken was Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State.  Out of office, he founded a strategic consultancy firm called West Exec Advisors. They represented global corporations, foreign governments, gain access to the White House and top Government officials. His website boasted that “West Exec conveys our shared commitment to our country, to each other, and to our clients.”

Anthony Blinken reflects what Trump euphemistically called “the Washington Swamp.”

In office, Blinken made human rights a cornerstone in formulating foreign policy. Let’s see how that worked out;

Libya. Under Hillary Clinton and Obama and Biden in the White House, a decision was made to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power and let the Libyan people set their own destiny. This, despite the fact that Gaddafi had renounced his nuclear ambitions and was reaching out to the West.  In 2011, The United States led a NATO military attack against Libya on the pretext of “protecting civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.”

The result was a disaster. Gaddafi was deposed and killed, Libya descended into a warring hellhole of rival Islamist and nationalist groups, and Ambassador Stephens was murdered at the Benghazi US Consulate. The State Department failed to rescue the ambassador and his security team. When news of their fate was released, Blinken’s State Department employed a fake human rights story to cover up their fatal failure by blaming the assault on a bunch of protester angry at an amateur video that insulted Islam. And the person who went on TV to sell that fabrication, Susan Rice, has been rewarded with a White House appointment running domestic policy.

The “Arab Spring.” As protests spread across the Muslim world against corrupt leaders, the State Department celebrated it as a positive expression of human rights. They called it the Arab Spring. In Israel, strategic experts, who understand the undercurrents of the Muslim world, told American and European diplomats, “You’ve got your seasons wrong. This is the start of the Islamic Winter.”

As protests grew in Egypt, Blinken, then Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, and others urged Obama to get “on the right side of history” by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.  

The Muslim Brotherhood had hijacked students’ peaceful protests and violently targeted the police and government institutions that eventually toppled Mubarak’s regime. They imprisoned thousands and, in less than two years, had ruined Egypt’s economy driving millions into poverty. 

The Obama Administration and State Department failed to feel the mood of the Egyptian people. One month after Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood leader, was sworn in as Egyptian President, protesters pelted Clinton’s motorcade with tomatoes during her July 2012 visit to Cairo.

The army, under General al-Sisi, staged a popular coup. They arrested the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, restored law and order, and begin to forge a more stable Egypt.

This did not sit well with Obama who said of America’s response to Sisi’s popular victory, “We can’t be seen as aiding and abetting actions we think run contrary to our values and ideals.”

US military aid to Egypt was stopped. It led to a divide between the White House, the State Department and a Defense Department that advocated maintaining US aid to Egypt.

By 2015, General Sisi had reached out to Russia for a large military aid program to be paid by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Egypt’s allies in the region. Obama’s team wilted and renewed US military aid to Egypt. Sisi celebrated by flying the first delivery of American F-16s over Cairo. A triumphant gesture perceived in Egypt as Sisi’s victory over Obama.

Syria. By the fall of 2013, Syria had plunged into a sectarian civil war and Assad was slaughtering his people with chemical weapons.  Obama threatened Assad against using such weapons. A deal was struck to remove chemical reserves from Syria.

Blinken, as Deputy Secretary of State under John Kerry, said, “Imagine what Syria would look like without that deal. It would be awash in chemical weapons, which would fall into the hands of ISIS, Al Nusra or other groups.”

He may have been right, but that did not stop the devious Assad from inflicting a sarin attack, killing an estimated 80 civilians. Obama was tested but failed to respond. 

“We always knew we had not gotten everything,” Blinken admitted.

It took President Trump to punish Assad when he launched combined attacks in 2016 and 2017 destroying Syria’s chemical weapon facilities. Obama blinked. Trump acted.

Iran. If human rights were a cornerstone of the Obama Administration, it was sadly missing when it came to Iran. When mass protests erupted across Iran, Obama kept silent. The State Department in which Blinken served failed to stand affirmatively with the Iranian protesters. The opposition Green Movement was brutally crushed and has never been reconstituted. Instead, they bent over backward to appease the Tehran leadership with a highly criticized nuclear deal cemented by the delivery of $150 Billion that enabled the Republic Guard to brutally advance Iranian hegemony across the Middle East and down into Yemen.

This issue is the most consequential one for Israel with Iran spreading its hegemony and forward bases throughout the Middle East. In 2020 alone, Israel launched over 500 attacks against Iranian bases and weapon storage facilities in Syria.

Israel insists that the new Administration keep the chokehold on the Iranian economy but this is hardly likely after Biden selected Wendy Sherman to be his Deputy Secretary of State. She and Jake Sullivan, another Obama holdover and now Biden's National Security Advisor, were the principle architects of the disastrous 2015 nuclear deal.

There is nothing that gives us hope that Blinken will maintain Trump’s tough stance on Tehran.

Israel and the Palestinian Problem.  Donald Trump has been the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman. His achievements have been many and Trump’s Abraham Accord initiative is sufficient reason to reward him with a Nobel Peace Prize. That is a hard act to follow and it is doubtful that Blinken can help Biden achieve that status, not with Biden’s declared aim of refunding an unapologetic Palestinian Authority that continues to promote their ‘Pay to Slay” policy which rewards their killers. This despite the Taylor Force Act, named after an American stabbed to death by a rampaging Palestinian on Tel Aviv’s beachfront, a bill introduced by President Trump to disincentivize the PA from this heinous policy. 

The Democrat Manifesto also declared it would reopen the PA Washington bureau and the US consulate in Jerusalem to serve Palestinians, despite having a new Embassy there, thanks to Trump. All this with no demand for the Palestinians to desist from promoting terror and instead recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Former Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, said of Biden, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” 

By default, one can say the same about Anthony Blinken. Policy meetings took place in the White House Situation Room in which Anthony Blinken participated. The results were poor.

Blinken, as US Secretary of State, must insist that Iran removes its powerful precision missiles from Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.  A nuclear Iran poses an existential threat to the existence of Israel, but the presence of these lethal weapons pose an immediate danger to Israeli civilian centers and vital infrastructure. 

Perhaps Blinken can spend the next four years trying to convince the Palestinian leadership to change its behavior and ideology, and recognize and normalize their relationship with Israel, as moderate Arab and Muslim states have done, rather than push Israel into a corner, because peace with the Palestinians is impossible without it.

Foreign Policy for America is an influential policy advocacy group in Washington. They push their foreign policy proposals into Congress and the White House. They have some disturbing perspectives on Israel.

William Burns, Biden’s CIA pick, has a tainted history with Israel from his days working under James Baker.

Avril Haines, Biden’s National Intelligence Agency Chief, signed a public letter with others earlier in 2020 urging the Democratic Party to adopt a more pro-Palestinian language in its platform. By pro-Palestinian Haines did not clarify if the language should be that of the PLO, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad in Gaza. If she means the language of the Palestinian Authority, it is an aggressive anti-Israel language back by violence and shared by other malevolent Palestinian factions.

Equally troubling is that Jeremy Ben Ami, the founder of JStreet, a Jewish group with the overriding policy of creating a Palestinian state on unacceptable (for Israel) 1967 borders, sits on the FPA board of directors to impose his views onto Israel.  He sees Israel as the obstacle to peace, not PA rejectionism, nor Hamas denial of the right of Israel to exist.

The Foreign Policy for America section on the ‘Israel-Palestinian Conflict’ is copy-paste drawn from JStreet literature. It includes tips on how to persuade Congress to be more sympathetic to the Palestinians, and angry against the Israeli Government.

FPA published a history of the conflict. According to them it began in 1949. They conveniently forgot that Arabs have been murdering Jews since the 1920s.

The Oslo Accords was ruined, they say, “by growing settlements in the West Bank, continued Israeli military presence, and a blockage on Gaza.” No mention of decades of Palestinian terrorism, rockets and suicide attacks. Nor does it mention incessant anti-Semitic rhetoric and incitement, and a stubborn refusal to accept a Jewish presence in Judea & Samaria or in the Jewish state anywhere.

FPA avoids mention of the ultimate Palestinian ambition of a state “from the River to the Sea” as if it doesn’t exist. And their top personnel are moving into decisive positions in the Biden Administration.

Democrat anti-Israel activists have seeped into the Biden White House.

Reema Dodin has been an apologist for Palestinian suicide bombers. She is the Deputy Director of the White House Office for Legislative Affairs. She is alleged to have blamed the 9/11 attacks on US support for Israel, and she supported the anti-Israel BDS Movement.

Karen Jean-Pierre was selected to be the White House Deputy Press Secretary. She was the national spokesperson for the George Soros-sponsored anti-Israel MoveOn.org. She has accused Israel of “war crimes,” called AIPAC “severely racist” for supporting Israel against Palestinian terrorism, and praised Democrats who wimped out of attending the last AIPAC annual conference.

Jeremy Ben Ami tweeted this is “Exactly the type of leadership this country deserves.”

As their agenda unfolds, Israel must be prepared for cold winds to blow in our direction under such a Biden Administration.

Barry Shaw is the International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.  He is the author of many books including ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS & Anti-Semitism’ and 1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel.’

 

 

 

 

Putting the anti-Israel vaccine lie to rest. The facts.

Israel haters never let an opportunity go to waste to bash the Jewish State with lies and bluster. Why should they miss the chance to jab Israel with vaccine issues?

The BDS Movement media supporters were quick off the mark after it was announced that Israel was leading the world with our efficient mass vaccination program.

Instead of investigating and reporting on the reasons why we have been more efficient than other advanced nations they chose instead to put the needle into us.

The Associated Press bleated, “Palestinian left waiting as Israel is set to deploy COVID-19 vaccine.”

In Britain, The Observer sneakily complained, “Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers.”

It didn’t occur to them that “settlers” are Israeli citizens and are, therefore, entitled to the same treatment as any other citizen, and the Palestinians are not and have insisted that the Palestinian Authority is the sole authority over their health issues. Neither do they pay membership to any of Israel’s health funds that are administering vaccines to their members.

Or maybe they were aware of it but decided to headline their nasty bias anyway.

It was strange to see The Guardian, in a cheap shot against Israel, admit in a news article that read more like an opinion piece, that the Palestinian Authority hadn’t even asked for help from Israel.

As Liat Collins remarked in her Jerusalem Post column, “Demanding Israel vaccinate all Palestinians living under PA or Hamas rule makes as much sense as expecting India to mass immunize Pakistanis or the US to vaccinate Mexicans and perhaps Cubans for good measure.”

The Palestinian leadership insisted that they were to be totally independent from Israel in all matters, including health issues

They are fully sponsored by a multitude of global organizations, the United Nations, and individually by many of the world’s leading nations and charities.

They have the money and the health ministry to administer to their people. But they haven’t. The money has disappeared into other causes and pockets. That is the question that should be asked. Where did all that money disappear?

Palestinian leaders know where to go for their personal health issues. Even as they denounce Israel as a racist oppressor, and deny their people essential treatments, even for a pandemic, they rush to Israel’s hospital’s for their own problems.

Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh and his family have all been treated in Israel by Jewish and Arab doctors and nurses even as he incites his followers to destroy the Jewish State. Another was Saeb Erekat, the PA’s international propagandist of anti-Israel hate, who went into an Israeli hospital as a failed last resort.

Actually, there are Palestinians who are being vaccine by Israel. They are the Arab residents of Jerusalem who, though they do not hold Israeli citizenship, are vaccinated as paid up members of one of Israeli’s health clinics.

It is worth informing those who posit Israel as a racist apartheid state that Arab Israelis are vaccinated according to the same criteria as Jews, Christians, Druze and Aramean Israelis. In fact, the one millionth recipient was a resident of the Arab Israeli town of Umm el-Fahm, between Hadera and Afula, who happened to be a former prisoner released from jail for armed robbery and other violent offenses. This did not stop him being photographed with Israel’s Prime Minister who visited the Arab town for the occasion.

Talking about prisons, even Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including those imprisoned on terrorism charges, are being vaccinated even as they are richly rewarded by the PA for their acts of terror and murder against the Israeli taxpayers who are paying for their vaccinations.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, always active in highlighting anti-Semitism, wrote that “Anti-Semites have blamed Jews for the medieval Black Plaque to the Spanish flu during World War One.”

The vaccine lie is simply a contemporary version of past acts of poisonous Jew-hating poorly disguised as a cultural crime by Jews against others.

These straight forward facts should put to rest the recent weaponization of vaccines to stab Israel.

Barry Shaw, International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. Author of the book ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism.’

 

 

President Donald J. Trump. His record.

Donald J. Trump was the most peaceful president of recent years. America was not engaged in heavy conflict under his leadership, unlike his predecessors.

Donald J. Trump was the most innovative peace-making president.

Donald J. Trump introduced the greatest peace reform in the Middle East, including reversing the failed fifty year formula of appeasing Palestinians first as a way to bring Arab states to normalize and work with Israel.

The fact that he was not awarded the Peace Prize is a blight in the Nobel Committee, rather than a reflection on his achievements.

Donald J. Trump succeeded in putting America's adversaries, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, on the backfoot.

Donald J. Trump turned the US economy around like no other president before him.

As a businessman and experienced dealmaker he had the courage, commitment and knowledge to renegotiate bad deals, a factor unknown to unskilled politicians and strategists.

Donald J. Trump proved the efficacy for a nation to be led by a international businessman rather than a politician.

When struck by the Wuhan virus, Trump quickly closed off flights from China in an attempt to reduce the damage of an unknown disease. He was called a racist and a xenophobe by his political opponents for taking the right steps speedily.

He used his managerial skills in recruiting industry to turn their factories around to produce ventilators and protective clothing in record time and in record numbers.

Donald J. Trump initiated the greatest pharmaceutical miracle by ordering intense research into vaccines to counter the spreading infection and, under Operation Warp Speed, delivered on his promise to the American people to have a vaccine ready by the end of the year, a process that normally takes between five to seven years,

Donald J. Trump's economic successes prior to the arrival of the Chinese virus, led to the lowest unemployment rate across the board including African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and women.

Donald J. Trump introduced more reforms that improved the lives of Black Americans than the black president that preceded him.

It is little wonder that he won a greater number of votes of any President candidate, Republican or Democrat, before him.

Donald J. Trump, a billionaire, succeeded in winning over the working class and greater number of minority voters than any Republican Presidential candidate before him.

After dedicating the last four years to the American people, Donald J. Trump will be the only president in living memory to leave the White House poorer, yet America richer, than when he entered.

It is doubtful that the next administration will be able to match his exceptional record.

Barry Shaw,

Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

Israel now included in US CENTCOM Military Command.

 President Trump's final pro-Israel act before leaving office is perhaps the most critically important from a defensive security and strategic perspective.

Israel, as the United States strongest ally, is now included in CENTCOM, the US Middle East military command.

The United States is fully aware of the vital intelligence provided to the US by Israel.

Israel is providing the United States with invaluable combat data from hundreds of missions flown by Israeli pilots using American technology in battle conditions. Over 500 mission were flown in 2020. This improves the US defense industry's R&D resulting in upgrades to future US military hardware.

Israel recently supplied the US army with the successful Iron Dome missile defense system which is now being deployed to protect US servicemen, bases, supply depots, and facilities across the troubled Middle East from rocket attack.

Israel's inclusion in CENTCOM will also give the Arab states that recently made strategic peace deals with Israel a further sense of security, safety and cooperation.

Israel's inclusion will also help coordinate any future action against Iran if that regime steps further beyond acceptable lines.

It remains to be seen if the incoming Biden Administration will develop this new partnership between the Pentagon and Israel's IDF Command & Control Center, or if they will put a spoke in the wheel with a change of Middle East policy.

Barry Shaw,

Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

https://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/centcom-mission-expands-to-include-israel-1.658602