Losing the battle against rising Anti-Semitism in Britain.

I recently detoured through London on my return to Israel during a firestorm of events that involved and affected British Jews.

Picking up a copy of the Jewish Chronicle, the traditional national weekly for British Jews, I was troubled to read of an inquiry that had been called by the Board of Deputies of British Jews against a delegate based on her intemperate views on Islam. It is unclear to me what Roslyn Pine said or didn’t say about Muslims and Arabs. She denies having certain Twitter and WhatsApp accounts from which her words were quoted. Pine is accused of being Islamophobic. I don’t agree with her definition of Islamophobia.  She was reported to have said, “There is no such thing as Islamophobia. Islamophobia’ is trying to shut down criticism of Islam.”  Islamophobia is a fear of Islam and on that we may have something in common. Fear of Islam can be rational. As someone deeply researched and involved in the actions and advances being made in the name of Islam I can attest that Roslyn Pine’s fears may not be irrational and blind hate. 

The undercurrent of everything that is going on around Israel is based on a religious hatred of Jews, a Judeophobia if you will, except this phobia takes the form of decades old murder, rape, robbery, and mayhem against Jews. The charge of Israel being the powerful oppressor and occupier of poor Palestinian victims, robbing them of their land, is a propaganda fig-leaf covering the truth of what is at play in the Middle East, namely that both sides of the Palestinian political divide have no intention of accepting any solution that will allow the Jewish state the right to exist as a sovereign democratic state in the region.  And where this applies to Mrs. Pine’s case is that both sides of the Palestinian divide incite violence against Israel using the most inflammatory Islamic and anti-Semitic language.

Does that make me, an Israeli Jew, Islamophobic? You bet it does! I, like millions of my fellow countrymen, live in real fear of the Islamic agenda against us. And this agenda has been exported with the migration from the Muslim countries of the Middle East into Britain.

That should concern more British Jews than Roslyn Pine. It should concern the other BoD delegates, and they should be more open in expressing their concerns, rather than, as one delegate said, brush them under the BoD carpet. As an Israeli colleague, an expert on Islam and Arabic culture and lecturer at one of Israel’s prestige universities, is keen to remind anyone with an open ear, “People do not leave the Middle East for Europe and British. They bring the Middle East with them into Europe and Britain.”  

This is not being racist or Islamophobic. This is stating facts. People come with their cultural baggage. We see British Jews bring their cultural norms and habits when they come on vacation to Netanya and Herzlia in Israel. It is equally natural that the mass of migrants from Muslim countries will bring with them their tribal, ethnic, and religious mores, and these include a long tradition of Jew hatred that preceded the establishment of the State of Israel.

 Jews were treated as inferior citizens within Muslim societies for centuries. The creation of the Jewish state was a pretext for the Muslims to perpetrate violence against them and kick them out of their countries, often accompanied by murderous pogroms, murders, rape, and robbery. Far more Jews suffered expulsion from Arab lands than did Arabs leaving Palestine under the orders of the Arab High Command, when the United Nations voted for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, the official declaration of a Jewish State, and the launch of a massive Arab assault against the nascent Jewish state. The leaders of the Arab regimes vowed to inflict a massacre on the Jews. Yet another justification for Jewish Islamophobia.

I read in my copy of the JC that the new president of the BoD, Marie van der Zyl, told invited members of the Muslim community attending a BoD-hosted Iftar dinner, that her organization would not tolerate anti-Muslim hate. Quite right, though I did not hear her say that Muslims must refrain from anti-Jewish hate, including the brand of Anti-Semitism that disguises itself as Anti-Zionism. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks recently reminded us during a visit to Israel, “Anti-Zionism is the Anti-Semitism of our time.”

The Board of Deputies has a duty to get behind this brand of Jew hatred. It is not an issue divorced from the Jews of Britain, as some representatives claim. It cannot, as it has in the past, be shrugged off by BoD delegates as an issue concerning Israel and not relevant to their obligations and responsibilities to their British Jewry constituents.

As Mrs. Van den Zyl was listening to pleasant words from Fijaz Mughal, thousands of Muslim were marching through the streets of London swearing their allegiance to Hezbollah. Regretfully, Mughal does not represent the Muslim street. That belongs to the misnamed jihadi organization, the Islamic Human Rights Commission, who were hosting the growing influential voice of Sheikh Mohammad Bahmanpour who excited the crowd by telling the Jewish State that “Your days are numbered. Either you go yourself, or we will drive you away. That’s a promise. We will wipe you off the map!”

The IHRC organized the Al Quds Day march where provocative yellow flags bearing an outstretched fist clutching an AK47 of an Islamic terrorist organization that threatens and kills Jews were flown proudly through the center of London.

The Board of Deputies were absent. They fail to publicly protest dangerous displays of Jew-hatred, just as they failed to appear with the Jewish counter demonstrators protesting another march in support of Hamas outside Downing Street just a few weeks before.

Instead, British Jews had to rally for themselves. In frustration, British Jews and sympathizers have cobbled together volunteer grassroots groups to stand up to the provocateurs. Courageous people like London lawyer, Mark Lewis, stopped the pro-Hezbollah, anti-Jewish State, march for an hour when he positioned his wheelchair ahead of the marchers in defiance. Mark, who is battling multiple sclerosis with special treatment he is receiving from the Israeli medical team at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, was forcibly removed by police officers. But he made a public statement that the BoD failed to make.

It took Mark Lewis to temporarily stop the Islamic march partly because of the ineffectiveness of the Board of Deputies, and dare I add the British Zionist Federation, in failing to persuade the authorities not to allow public displays of support for Islamic terrorist organizations. Free speech is not free speech when it is hate speech. What does it take for the BoD and the British authorities to get the message?  In France, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Jews have been attacked and killed by the freedoms granted to anti-Israel, and by default anti-Jewish, protesters and demonstrators. Most of the demonstrators are Muslim aided and abetted by the radical Left-wing agitators. Must the resultant violence and harm come to Britain before the BoD wake up?

The BoD, under the leadership of Jonathan Arkush, tried to reason with Jeremy Corbyn about the growth of Anti-Semitism within the British Labour Party. Their publicized meeting was quickly followed by two disgraceful displays of anti-BoD defiance by Jewish fringe groups. A group calling itself Jewda invited Corbyn to a faux Seder, ignoring the fact that the Labour Leader not only calls Hezbollah and Hamas his “friends,” but also that he had attended a special memorial in Tunis at the grave of a Palestinian terrorist who had murdered tens of Israeli Jews. Even worse, another Jewish group held a public Kaddish in Parliament Square in mourning for fifty plus Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists killed by Israeli forces when they tried to lead a mob of forty thousand to breach the border fence with Gaza in order to kill and capture Jews. Such is the disarray within British Jewry. The Board of Deputies recently allowed into its ranks a radical group that notoriously called our brave defenders of Israel “war criminals.”

The BoD may claim, with some justification, that it was not created to defend Israel.It was, however, established for the Jewish communities interests and concerns and when rank and file British Jews have to take to the streets for what they perceive as a threat to their safety and well-being this should drive the BoD into affirmative action. 

The threat is growing in Britain. The Community Security Trust has reported the highest number of Anti-Semitic incidents in that country. Although right-wing hooligans are also perpetrators, the vast majority of anti-Jewish threats and crimes are carried out by left-wing ideologues and from an emboldened Islamization taking place in Britain. Linking the two was the declaration that the Islamic Human Rights Commission that organizes events such as the pro-Hezbollah march, according to Corbyn, “represents all that’s best in Islam.”

Really? Try telling that to Mark Lewis, Roslyn Pine, or the hundreds of Israelis, Americans, and others who have been murdered by the terrorists that IHRC in Britain promote and support.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism,’ available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Jew hatred sneaks up on you in the most unexpected places.

It’s surprising, some would say shocking, where you find little incidents of anti-Semitism. They sort of sneak up on you in sublime places, leaving you in a quandary whether to address it or walk away from it.

This happened to me on the final sea day on the home leg of our fjord cruise aboard the Norwegian Jade heading southward to Southampton ahead of our flight back to Israel.

I went for a late self-service lunch in the Garden Café, my wife, one of our daughter’s, and me. The place was still fairly crowded at 1.15 and we joined a table occupied by a tiny disheveled elderly man. He wore a mismatched pair of trousers and jacket that had seen better days, that covered an ancient shirt from which a scrawny neck poked out of an over-sized stained collar. He must have been one of the only passengers on the ship who wore a tie at lunchtime.

He peered at us through his George Burns spectacles as he told us he was eighty-nine and travelling alone in an inside, windowless cabin.  We congratulated him on his independence and health to enjoy travel.Polite conversation. 

He had emerged from his cabin at around nine o’clock that morning and gone to the Garden Café at around nine thirty. It took him so long to eat his breakfast that the waiters had changed the menu for lunch. So he decided to stay where he was for his mid-day meal.  This was apparent by the multiple stains on the white napkin he had thrust down the collar of his old shirt. His lips were stained by something brown he had eaten, and odds bits of food were ejected from his thin lips as he told us he ate lots of porridge. My wife nodded, eyeing me, when he told us his role in life was avoiding pneumonia. “It can kill you, you know.”

After the usual pleasantries, I hazarded a guess that he came from New York. I was wrong. He surprised me by telling us he was from some place in Texas. I congratulated him on the extraordinary long distance flights he had taken on his own from Texas to London and then the road travel down to Southampton to meet the cruise ship.

Then I said we lived in Israel. He starred at me.

“Why do your neighbors hate you?”

I didn’t see that coming but, experienced in hasbara, I made some reference to being surrounded by people who want to kill us. If I didn’t see that coming I certainly didn’t expect what came next.

“All you people want is our money.”

Momentarily off-balance, I asked him what he was talking about.  He answered, “You Jews keep coming to our Congress begging for our money.”

Trying to maintain a jovial atmosphere I attempted a weak but pointed joke.

“I thought you people accuse us of controlling the banks and world global economy. Now you accuse us of begging for your money.”

The old man came back. “Yes, that’s all you want from us, Our money.”

My wife glared at me to keep quiet. That’s what Jews usually do when confronted by a Jew-hating dinner guest. But I wasn’t prepared to take it without some sort of response.  I don’t let these low level, deep-seated, anti-Semites go unanswered. You can’t win them over but the new Jew should not sneak away. It didn’t require much added provocation, but it came.

“Why are you people so stubborn?” he asked. It was more a statement than a question.

“I’ll tell you why, old man,” I ventured. “It’s because for two thousand years we had to put up with snide little Jew-haters just like you, and much, much worse. You ask why we are stubborn. It’s because we don’t take crap from people like you anymore.”

There is no way you can convert a person from a decades old antisemitism, someone in the late stages of his octogenarian period. It’s far too late in his life for that. He will go to his grave with that biased chip scarring his soul. But there is an advantage to being on the way to seventy-six and no longer duty bound to respect your elders any more, particularly those with a life-long, built-in, ignorant hatred of Jews.

I remember many such people from my days in England. People living in places who rarely met a Jew yet who still had this false negative myth of us.

This is not contemporary antisemitism. It is the same old nasty, petty, ignorant Jew hating that many of us experienced when venturing out of our comfortable communal shtetls into areas in the north of England, or somewhere in Texas. Places that were miles away from Jews, many years ago.

Apparently, it is still alive and hating in silence today. Just scratch the surface, and there it is.

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism.’ He is also the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

Saying Kaddish for Hamas.

On May 16, about 50 Jewish activists gathered in London’s Parliament Square and, in a public display of phoney grief, davened Kaddish.

This gathering was less about a genuine empathy for dead Palestinians. It was more an exhibition of Jew hatred for the Jewish state.

How do we know that? Well, these people proved they are not equal opportunity grievers. They did not gather to mourn the 1242 Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists since the year 2000. Instead, they collected together to publicly show their support for Palestinian terror. Of course, these useful idiots would protest vehemently at such a suggestion but what other conclusion can we reach when it was announced, from the Palestinian side, that at least 53 of the 58 rioters shot by IDF soldiers were, in fact, either members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

So, in mid-May, we had the spectacle of Jews meeting in the heart of British democracy to pray for the souls of those that were prevented by Jewish soldiers from slaughtering Jews.

Don’t take my word for it that this was their intention. Hamas Gaza chief, Yahiya Sinwar, incited his people by telling them, “We will tear down their borders and then tear out their hearts from their bodies.”

The grief in Parliament Square was by those who mourned the failure of Sinwar, Ismail Haniya, and others to rip out any Jewish hearts according to the Hamas vow to “fight the Jews until the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry out, ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me. Come out and kill him!’”

While these Jews gather to mourn the death of Islamic terrorists, the parents of the dead Hamas terrorists celebrate their sons’ deaths.

“My son died as a Martyr defending Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. …Allah willing, all of them will follow this path, all the youth of Palestine. Allah be praised.”

These were the words of the mother of Mohammad Tarareih who butchered 13-year-old Israeli girl, Hallel Yaffa Arieh in 2016. There are many such words of praise from parents of the Palestinian butchers of Israeli Jews. Yet no public or private Kaddish were made by these fools for the soul of Yaffa.

Yet we witnessed the sickening gimmick of young progressive (read “regressive”) Jews gathered to mourn and honor dead members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in a faux display of moral superiority based on fake human rights values. They said they were expressing “Jewish values of justice,” and about the “Jewish principles of the sanctity of life.”

What sanctimonious hogwash! What they were doing was feeling sad for Palestinian who set out to murder Jews.

As for their “morality,’ Seth Frantzman asked in his Jerusalem Post article, “had these fifty Jews ever held a Kaddish for the dead of the Rwandan genocide or the thousands of Yazidis machine-gunned to death by ISIS, or for the hundreds of Israelis killed during the Second Intifada” or since by Palestinians? Or the Jewish victims of antisemitism?  Highly unlikely.

As for these Jews who never publicly mourned for the many hundreds of Israeli Jews murdered by Palestinians, shouldn’t they be told that Kaddish is a Jewish form of mourning normally held for ones one people, and certainly not for those dedicated to slaughter Jews? If that were so, the forefathers of these Parliament Square exhibitionists would surely have been holding Kaddish for the Nazis.

Let’s be very clear about it. This grotesque exhibition was a perverted form of anti-Semitism. When one mourns for those who set out to murder Jews this is, indeed, a deep form of Jew hatred, even if it is performed by Jews.

Who said you can’t be Jewish and an anti-Semite? With our superior sense of Jewish cunning even this is something we do better than the goyim.

It is shameful that, among the fake mourners, and those who later spoke and tweeted their support for them, were members of organizations that are officially represented in the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

By their words and actions, they shame and stain British Jewry.  It is high time that such groups be outlawed rather than welcomed into the bosom of British Jewry.

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism.’

He is also the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

Want to know why Israelis have little patience for Jewish Democrats?

Want to know why Israelis have little patience for Jewish Democrats?

First, none of their leaders accepted the invitation to attend the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, Israel's capital.

Second, Bernie Sanders just agreed with Hamas that they have the right to return to Israel, which would spell the end of Israel.

Third, Dianne Feinstein endorsed the Fatah-Hamas call for a UN investigation of what happened on the Gaza border after all the delegates, except Nikki Haley and Israel had roundly condemned Israel and not Hamas.

So when Jewish Democrats wonder why Israel ignores their views on Israel or take their protests to be pro-Israel with a pinch of salt they will understand why.

These actions from their political leaders are as lame as they were when they backed the awful Obama-Kerry nuclear deal with Iran.

Or when Obama stuck the knife in Israel's back when voting against Israel.at his final session of the  UN Security Council and the Demos stayed silent.

The Demos are coming after Israel on two counts.

Our relief and massive appreciation for a president that keeps his promise and affirmatively stands with Israel is being threatened by Democrats who warn us not to get too close to Trump and stop applauding him because there could be a price to pay when they get back into power.

The other warning is that Israel had better adopt the Dems pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, identity politics, that Israel should take measures that are against our security and strategic interests because the Dems know better and if we don't toe their line we can expect to have our defense allocation radically cut.

The Democratic Party is swinging irrevocably to the radical left. The DNC is looking increasingly like the UK Corbyn Labour Party but with greater emphasis on gender and racial politics. Achievements and ability have less merit that what you are. If you are a woman and black you are a shoe in for a top spot.  I am ready to place a wager that the next Democratic nominee for president will be a black woman, and if she has been sexually harassed by a white guy that only increases her chances of making it to the White House, which will immediately have a name change because the traditional name is blatantly racist. That would be fine if it didn't mean dividing America and the world along gender and racial lines. Increasingly in America, identity politics is about image, not substance. It is the image that you have to support. If not, you are an alt-right racist.
This does not auger well for Israel because the Dem mantra is that Palestinians are black oppressed victims meaning their cause is automatically just and right, meaning Israel is perceived as white and powerful and therefore unjust and wrong. See my recent article 'South Africa. It's not all black and white.' The same applies in spades to American far left politics.

Finally, I am not prepared to be lectured to on morality by JStreet and Jewish Bernie supporters who want to teach us how to become ethical people. They are quick to lecture us with their moral superiority about our "disproportionate use of force" in "killing peaceful protesters in Gaza," but then go quiet days later when it is shown that at least fifty three were either Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorists.
They preach to us about Tikun Olam, their secular form of Judaism about repairing the world. Except, they don't repair the world. They only talk about it. It is tiny Israel that actually practices Tikun Olam on a global scale.

So what is Israel to do about the Democrat warnings and threats?
We Israel should do as we always do to those who lean on us. We tell them, "Lech likfotz li."

Loosely translated, this means "Go take a jump!"

Barry Shaw is the author of 'BDS for IDIOTS,' a seriously funny humiliation of anti-Israel BDS nonsense.

https://www.amazon.com/BDS-IDIOTS-BOYCOTT-ISRAEL-honestly/dp/152372157X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527318873&sr=8-1&keywords=bds+for+idiots

This is Israel’s insurmountable Palestinian problem.

        This is Israel's insurmountable Palestinian problem.

Thank you Czech Foreign Minister, Martin Stropnicky, for being a rare European leader with clarity of thought and the courage to state the obvious, that inciting thousands to tear down a nation's border fence in order to murder its citizens is an act of terror and that, in Gaza, it is Hamas that is guilty of international crimes, and not Israel.  

Stropnicky, in an official statement entitled "Gaza: Telling things as they really are," wrote that the concern is not only about the victims of the ongoing violence, "but also about its causes, including who initiates it. The fact is that Hamas, designated by the EU as a terrorist organization, is fully responsible for the form and objectives of the violent actions that have taken place on the border between Israel and Gaza for weeks."

The Czech minister called out Hamas for coming up with "provocative actions that no state in the world could accept."

"The persistent effort of the attackers to break the border fence and enter Israel can be considered an act of terrorism." Stropnicky also said that burning tires and setting fields on fire cannot be ignored. He also included Palestinians setting fire to the Kerem Shalom Crossing and sending minors to the fence so that Israel could be accused of killing children were also Hamas crimes.

Martin Stropnicky concluded what all this shows is that Hamas is not concerned about the people in Gaza and that its actions do nothing to contribute to a resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. 

His statement is in stark contrast to much of the European diplomatic bleating class who simply refuse to get it and prefer to dump the blame on Israel.

To support the courageous statement of the Czech Foreign Minister please watch what actually happened last week on Israel's border with Gaza. In this short video by my friend and colleague, Pierre Rehov, you will better understand what Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad is up to, and how European diplomats have rewarded Hamas with a diplomatic and publicity victory by placing the blame onto the Jewish state. 

https://vimeo.com/271215407

The political incompetence of the EU simply emboldens Hamas to continue their violence. The inevitable outcome of such fake diplomacy will be if armed and indoctrinated Gazans manage to break into Israel and begin killing Israeli civilians and drag hostages back into Gaza, for these are the orders given by Hamas to the "protesters" on Israel's border.

The harsh truth is that Hamas is on a messianic mission to destroy Israel and kill Jews. Take a look at the screenshot which is the opening caption to this report. It shows one of the "peaceful Palestinian protesters" who managed to breach the border fence and was on his way, in his words, to slaughter Jews in the name of Allah.

This is the real face of "protests" along Israel's border with Gaza. They are not spontaneous. They are not peaceful. Their relentless propaganda is that a holy war against the Jews has to be fought to liberate Palestine "from the river to the sea." 

This dangerous nonsense must be seriously challenged. This, and this alone at this time, must be the principle aim of diplomats everywhere, but particularly European diplomats and politicians because this is, and always has been, the principle obstacle to any progress in solving the insurmountable Palestinian problem.

Until that happens, we Israelis must send our sons and daughters to do whatever is necessary to protect us and defend our country against the avowed enemies across our borders.

Barry Shaw is the author of 'Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism' and '1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel.' He is also the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. 

https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Hamas-BDS-Anti-Semitism-violence/dp/1508595534/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527243093&sr=8-1&keywords=fighting+hamas%2C+bds%2C+and+antisemitism

Your future will be run by Israeli innovation.

Not a week goes by without the Israeli press headlining major investments and partnerships between global corporations and Israeli start-ups and tech companies.  This may fly under your radar but pay attention. Today’s Israeli innovation will impact how you live your life tomorrow.

The opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem hit the global headlines but the news that 270 venture capitalists visited Jerusalem didn’t make a ripple. But this event will affect the lives of many millions of people going forward. 

There are currently 470 start-ups in Israel’s capital alone, and that number is growing.

How about these headlines. 

Intel plans to build a $5 Billion production center in Israel this year. Volkswagen opened a new technological center in Tel Aviv last week. Oil giant BP invested $20 Million in Israeli firm, StoreDot, which developed a battery system that could charge an electric car in the same time it takes to fill a gas tank. This was on top of the $60 Million it received from Daimler last September. The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance agreed to invest $50 Million this year in Israeli start-ups to find technologies for tomorrow’s self-drive vehicles.

The Israeli genie (technological genius) didn’t come out of a bottle. It emerged out of the IDF special 8020 unit. This unit is charged with developing technological solutions for Israel’s multiple security threats on various fronts in real time, often during actual operations, from aerial threats from Iran and other bad actors in the north and east of the country to Hamas headaches from their underground terror tunnels to their mass incursion attempts on our southern border.  Platforms had to be designed to intercept incoming missiles. Spyware to assist Israeli intelligence agencies in observing targeted enemy personnel. Aerial and ground cameras, interconnected ipads for field officers displaying the movement of terrorists, tracking suspects and movements with drones, cybersecurity, robotics, and automated equipment. The pressurized 8020 environment induced creative thinkers to come up with solutions that were immediately battle-tested in situations as varied as violent riots to cockpit advancement to enhance the ability of Israeli top gun fighter pilots.

What was used to guide and intercept missiles, keep computer systems secure from hackers or malfunction ,is being redeployed by 8020 operatives in civilian life into the development of automated vehicles.

Investment and partnerships are pouring into Israeli auto-tech from Samsung, Ford, GM, Daimler, Continental, Kia, and many other major companies. As Ford Executive chairman, Bill Ford, Jr, told Reuters, “A lot of entrepreneurs are coming out of the IDF and they tend to be older than their traditional Silicon Valley colleagues.” 

He could have added that the Israeli entrepreneurs have the edge over their Silicon Valley rivals by being battle-tested.

Investment in Israeli auto-tech, including venture capital, acquisitions, and joint ventures, last year amounted to $3.5 Billion. This figure will be surpassed by the end of 2018.

So what are these foreign auto and computer companies looking for from Israel for their cars of the future?  Security, imaging, location finding, analytics software, vehicle computers that keep hackers out, radar, sonar, sensors, and positioning systems to keep cars on the road and stop them crashing into other vehicles and objects. Israeli cyber and fraud detection techniques came out of its counter-terrorism needs. Optical and sonar software came from Israel’s missile defense requirements.

Korea’s Samsung and Kia have built a test road at Shefaim, just north of Tel Aviv, to evaluate self-drive cars with in-built Israeli technology. The CEO of one Israeli start-ups, supported by Samsung, spent seven years in an elite technology unit of the IDF Intelligence Corps.

In 2014, Google bought the Israeli mapping company, Waze, for $1.2 Billion. Anyone who has driven can attest to the amazingly accurate innovation that Waze has brought to everyday driving pleasure. The miracle of this Israeli technology is today considered commonplace. 

Then, last year, Intel spent a whopping $15.3 Billion on Israeli autonomous vehicle technology firm Mobileye and moved all its operations in the auto-tech field to Jerusalem.

For a country not known for its automotive industry, it is miraculous that tiny Israel now has over five hundred start-ups dealing with the global automotive industry alone. 

The Chinese have been attracted to Israel, as has Porsche and Honda. “We are going to do more here,” said Honda’s Innovations chief.

The Israeli tech sector employs over 270,000 highly trained engineers and programmers. At least another 10,000 will be needed within the next few years. 

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of ‘BDS for IDIOTS,’ a seriously funny humiliation of BDS activism.

https://www.amazon.com/BDS-IDIOTS-BOYCOTT-ISRAEL-honestly/dp/152372157X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527146683&sr=8-1&keywords=bds+for+idiots

In South Africa, someone needs to get an education.

Yaakov Amidror, the former national security adviser, told an Israel Project conference that “relations with South Africa are not that important to Israel so, if they want their ambassador back, they are most welcome.”

This undiplomatic statement was made after South Africa pulled its ambassador out of Israel following the Hamas promoted violence.

Having met the ambassador, I can attest that Amidror is right. I have never met such an unpleasant and provocative ambassador as Sisa Mgombane who came to Israel with a heinous anti-Israel stance and began to off load his “Israel is a racist apartheid state’ venom on the two shocked guests I brought to him on a courtesy visit.

As we left the meeting my guests, two black South African pastors, embarrassingly apologized to me for their ambassador. They happened to view Israel completely differently.

The problem in South Africa is that the ANC has veered desperately away from the path of Nelson Mandela. Now they have the reins of power, they wield them with a radical ideology. Everything is black or white, and what they perceive as white has no legitimacy.

Currently in South Africa, Afrikaans farmers are being threatened, tortured, and brutally murdered for being white. They are either driven from their farms and out of the country, or they live in very real fear. The recent murder of an elderly white couple has triggered a furious debate about the growing crimes against white land owners. The woman was strangled with a wire cord, and the intruders slit her husband’s throat. There were six such murders within 3 days of this incident. The perpetrators of many of these brutal murders go unpunished. 

South Africa voted to seize the land of white farmers without paying them compensation. This was a step that led Zimbabwe to economic ruin under Mugabe. The ANC Government seems keen for South Africa to follow in Zimbabwe’s failed path. And they pick on Israel for their scorn. They really have strayed too far from the path of Mandela.

In 2015, Leila Khaled was invited to South Africa by BDS to help them in their fundraising efforts. When you need a Palestinian terrorist and convicted plane hijacker to raise money you know you have a troublesome organization, Yet this did not stop the ANC South African Government, that walks in lockstep with BDS, to officially welcome Khaled as a hero.

Amidror is right. There is little economic or political will in South Africa to reach out to Israel, an Israel that extended its hand to help them with their drought and lack of clean water, a hand that was rejected. An Israel that can improve their quality of life with our technology and science. Apparently, they don’t want to improve their people’s future with Israel’s help and innovation.

They won’t change until someone tells them that their simple notion that the world turns on   black is good and white is bad, and black is right and white is wrong. This sadly misplaced nonsense positions Palestinian Arabs as black and therefore right, and Israel as white and therefore always in the wrong.

South Africa used to call itself the Rainbow Nation. Not anymore. If the South African government, a government that is persecuting white farmers, want to see a Rainbow Nation north of Cape Town it has to search up the immense dark continent of Africa, across the vast north African zone of conflict and poverty, and through the Muslim Middle East until it reaches the only spot, a tiny spot, that can truly be called the Rainbow Nation. The State of Israel.

Israel has welcomed and absorbed unwanted Jews of all color and culture from the Muslim world, from Asia, South America, Russia, even black Jews from war torn Ethiopia. All are fully integrated Israeli citizens. Among Israeli citizens are Christians, Muslims, Druze, Bedouin, Bahai, Aramean, people of all color and faith. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population has grown. Israel is not an apartheid state. It is a diverse Rainbow Nation. Compare that to the Muslim states in the Middle East. Show me one without a dwindling Christianity. Show me one with a working, thriving Jewish community, if they have any Jews at all? Yet South Africa calls Israel an apartheid state!

So I totally reject the myopic prattle of BDS-supporting ANC South Africa and their nonsensical notion of Israel as an apartheid state. So while the South African government practices a reverse apartheid policy against their own minority white farmers, if the ANC really want to see where genuine apartheid is being practiced against the Palestinian Arabs they so passionate support, let them look no further than Jordan.
In Jordan, over a million Arabs, who call themselves Palestinian, still live in refugee camps after 70 years into their fifth generation, stateless, deprived of higher education and government jobs. This is real apartheid but ANC has nothing to say about that. No Jordan Apartheid Week on South African campuses. Hypocrites!

Or the biggest shock of all. Palestinians living in refugee camps under the full civil and security administration of the Palestinian Authority! BDS-loving ANC are completely silent about this apartheid abuse of Palestinians by Palestinians. Instead, they invent a non-existent apartheid screed against the Jewish state.

There is a psychological asymmetry between South Africa and Turkey. Under Erdogan’s rule, Turkey suppresses their own people, are killing the Kurds, support Hamas while condemning Israel for Hamas committed crimes, as the ANC suppresses their white farmers, support Hamas, and condemn Israel for anything and everything. This is the similarity between ANC and a Turkey guilty of the  genocide against Armenian Christians.

Black Christian ANC members are so color sensitive in persuading us that Arabs are black like them, and therefore in need of their support and protection. They offer them a special dispensation in the killing of "whites" (in our case, Israelis) in an effort to drive them off their land (in our case, the Land of Israel).  But, let them consider this.

The ANC South African government shamefully turns a blind eye to the butchery of white South African farmers at home while also turning the other blind eye to the slaughter and slavery of fellow Christian Africans at the hands of Arab Islamic terrorists, some, like Erdogan, of the Muslim Brotherhood persuasion.

In Africa, Arab Muslims today still force black African Christians into slavery as they have been doing for centuries. Yet the black South African Christian ANC ignores the plight of their fellow African Christians and compliment Arab Palestinians by falsely calling them black.  Clearly this is an uneducated nonsense used only to portray Israel as being white as they heap more false charges against the Jewish state in support of the terror tactics of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, just like Turkey.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, BDS, Leila Khaled, Fatah. This is the company that the South African government prefers to keep. 

Somebody needs to get an education. Tell the South African government it's not all black and white, as they mistakenly make it out to be.  

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism’ and ‘BDS for IDIOTS.’  He is also the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

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