Likely GOP presidential candidate off to Israel for ‘educational trip’
(JTA) — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely candidate for the GOP nomination for president, said he plans to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel for what is being billed as an “educational trip.”
Walker left late Saturday night from Greenville, South Carolina, where he had participated in the South Carolina Freedom Summit.
On his five-day trip, Walker also is scheduled to meet with members of the Knesset and Israeli military leaders, as well as the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, according to The New York Times.
The governor’s tour of Jerusalem will include visits to the Western Wall, the Via Dolorosa and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, where he will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony, according to the Times. He also is scheduled to tour the site of the future Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.
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From PressTV
Israeli settlers assault Palestinian woman, her kids in al-Khalil
A group of Zionist settlers have physically assaulted a Palestinian woman and her young children in the Old City of al-Khalil (Hebron) in southern West Bank.
The assault occurred on Saturday when the illegal settlers waged an attack on Palestinian homes in the Old City’s Tel Rumeida neighborhood, Ma’an news agency reported citing an al-Khalil-based rights organization called Human Rights Defenders.
The report further quoted the group’s spokesman, Badee Dweik as saying that the Palestinian woman, Mirvat Abu Tuama, was walking home with her children Hazim, 10, Rahaf, 8, Lujayn, 5, and Liyan, 4, when a group of Israeli settlers chased and assaulted them.
According to Dweik, the attacking settlers also attacked the home of Yasser Abu Markhiyya in Tel Rumeida by hurling stones at it.
This is while another group of settlers attacked a Palestinian female teenager Madlin Abu Shamsiyya while she tried to film them as they were attacking the home of another area resident, Itidal Qiwar.
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From The Independent
Sperm created in lab in world first, French company claims
From The Times of Israel
Santorum to Obama: ‘Iran, enemy. Israel, securing the realmfriend’
Former Pennsylvania senator hints he’s close to announcing whether he’ll again run for president
May 9, 2015, 7:59 pm
Rick Santorum hinted Saturday in South Carolina that he is close to announcing whether he will again run for president, telling a gathering of conservative activists he’s driven by what he called President Barack Obama’s failures on national security.
“Russia, China and yes, radical Islam, is threatening our country,” the former Pennsylvania senator said. “Heck, I would just be happy if our president would be able to tell the difference between our friends and enemies.
“Let me give our president a primer: Iran, enemy. Israel, friend.”
Santorum said he had the experience to articulate a “vision of keeping America strong.”
He told the crowd: “I’ve been clear about the threat of radical Islam. This isn’t a war on terror. It’s a war on radical Islam.”
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From The Times of Israel
Geller: No regrets about Muhammad cartoon contest
After Texas shooting, ex-media exec says next time she speaks up ‘in defense of freedom’ she’ll wear a bulletproof vest
May 8, 2015, 6:34 pm
NEW YORK (AP) — Does Pamela Geller regret organizing the Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest that ended in gunfire? No, she says confidently.
In fact, she says, she probably saved lives by hosting the event and plans to have more just like it, with one difference: Next time, she’ll be wearing a bulletproof vest.
“I will continue to speak in defense of freedom until the day I die,” Geller said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press, as a grim-looking personal security guard hovered nearby. “It’s just that simple. It’s not even a choice. It’s a calling.”
Geller has always hired armed security personnel to protect the scores of events she has spearheaded across the nation in recent years to decry Islamic extremism. But furor over Sunday’s shooting in Garland, Texas, has led to a specific threat against Geller, posted on a website related to the Islamic State group, and the New York Police Department is taking it seriously. Now she doesn’t travel anywhere without protection.
Geller said she believes she saved lives by hosting the contest because the two Muslim gunmen shot to death by police would have picked another soft target and killed innocent civilians.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
2 Spanish-language networks: Israeli aid to Nepal was cover for baby trafficking
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — Israel used its humanitarian aid mission to Nepal as a cover for trafficking 25 Nepalese babies, two Spanish-language networks reported.
Iranian HispanTV and Venezuela’s Telesur networks broadcast the reports. Telesur is the national public television channel in Venezuela, which is rebroadcast throughout Latin America on other public television networks.
HispanTV broadcast the original report, which quotes an unnamed NGO as stating that “Israel uses humanitarian help as a cover for trafficking of 25 babies in Nepal.” Telesur picked up the report last week.
The report stated, correctly, that of the 25 babies that were taken to Israel, “15 of them were born through Tammuz, an Israeli surrogacycompany which provides services to Israeli couples unable to bear children, particularly homosexual couples.” The other babies also reportedly were born to surrogate mothers for Israeli parents.
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From Russia Today
Porn and video game addicts risk ‘masculinity crisis,’ says Stanford professor
Published time: May 10, 2015 15:43
Men who play video games “in excess” and watch online porn are facing what has been called a masculinity crisis, according to a leading US psychologist.
For those who think online video games and porn are passive online activities that have no real consequences in the real world, take heed.
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo interviewed 20,000 young people in the United States, 75 percent of them male, and found that excessive, solitary playing of video games and watching porn is seriously damaging the social development of young men.
READ MORE: Think more sex makes you happier? Think again, say researchers
“Our focus is on young men who play video games to excess, and do it in social isolation – they are alone in their room,” Zimbardo, who just released a book on the subject, entitled “Man (Dis)Connected,” told the BBC in an interview.
“Now, with freely available pornography – which is unique in history – they are combining playing video games, and as a break, watching on average, two hours of pornography a week.”
Zimbardo says “excessive” use of video games and pornography is not necessarily a matter of specific time, but rather the psychological change in mindset that such isolated activities produce, where the individual begins to feel he’d rather be doing that particular activity than anything else.
Phillip Zimbardo, 82, is a psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is perhaps best known for his 1971 experiment in which students were asked to play the roles of ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ in a mock prison. Intended to continue for two weeks, the experiment was aborted in less than a week as the initially normal ‘guards’ eventually became sadistic and the ‘prisoners’ became submissive and depressed. Zimbardo has also written introductory psychology books, textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including The Lucifer Effect and the The Time Cure. Zimbardo is the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project.
From The Times of Israel
Senior Hezbollah commander said killed in Syria
Rebels claim to have slain Marwan Mughniyeh in the Qalamoun region, where regime troops have been making gains
May 10, 2015, 6:24 am
Marwan Mughniyeh, a senior commander in Hezbollah whose cousin Imad Mughniyeh was allegedly assassinated by Israel, was killed in fierce battles in Syria on Friday, Syrian opposition sources said.
Mughniyeh was killed in a battle with rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, in the Qalamoun region, northeast of Damascus, the sources said.
He was reported to have been the commander of special operations for the Lebanese Shiite militia, which has been fighting alongside regime forces in the Syrian civil war.
Hezbollah announced Saturday on its Al-Manar television channel that, together with regime forces, it had taken the Al-Nusra Front’s largest base in the region, at Sahlet al-Maaysra.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah threatened to expel the insurgents from the area. Since then, the group has taken several positions with regime air support, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian military sources.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Sara Netanyahu rips media, accuses her accuser in ex-caretaker’s lawsuit
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the media and made new accusations against a former employee who is suing the Netanyahus.
Sara Netanyahu testified Sunday in Jerusalem Labor Court in a suit by Meni Naftali, who served for nearly two years as the caretaker for the official Prime Minister’s Residence.
In the suit, which is seeking 1 million shekels, more than $250,000, in damages from the Netanyahus and the state, Naftali claimed that he was abused during his service to the Netanyahus, including being insulted and humiliated.
On the stand, Sara Netanyahu criticized the media, saying that “for more than a year, my blood has been spilled publicly by Meni Naftali, with the media’s encouragement.” In the new accusation, she said that Naftali hit the friends of her younger son, Avner, when they came to visit.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Ethiopian-Israelis call for police officer who beat soldier to go on trial
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Ethiopian-Israeli activists called for a police officer caught on camera beating an Ethiopian-Israeli soldier to be put on trial.
At a news conference Sunday in Tel Aviv, the activists also demanded that charges be dropped against protesters arrested in the city last week during a demonstration spurred by the attack that turned violent, The Jerusalem Post reported. They also called for improved conditions for Ethiopian-Israelis in the areas of education, housing and welfare.
“Decision-makers abandoned Ethiopian-Israelis as though they were foreign implants and and not a basic part of the foundation of Israeli society,” activist Inbar Bugale said. “They have ignored the difficult reality that there is an entire young generation that feels it is not part of the Israeli society.”
Also Sunday, the Jewish Agency for Israel said it would immigrants’ eligibility to reside in its absorption centers from two years to three. Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Executive of The Jewish Agency, said the decision would be implemented immediately and that the Jewish Agency would assume the costs of the third year — the Israeli government funds the first two.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Natalie Portman to star as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in new movie
(JTA) — Natalie Portman will star as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a new film.
“On the Basis of Sex” will follow Ginsburg’s obstacles-filled career on the road to becoming the second female justice and the first Jewish female justice on the high court, Deadline Hollywood reported. President Bill Clinton appointed Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1993.
The producers are hoping to start filming by the end of the year.
Portman, who is Jewish and a native of Israel, is making her directorial debut with “A Tale Of Love And Darkness,” which premieres next week at Cannes. The film is based on the memoir by Israeli author Amos Oz and is largely in Hebrew.
From The Times of Israel
Syrian troops battle to free trapped forces near Idlib
Assad regime attempts rescue of 250 fighters and their families in northwestern hospital seized by rebels 2 weeks ago
May 9, 2015, 11:12 pm
Syrian government forces advanced Saturday towards the rebel-held town of Jisr al-Shughur, where around 250 regime force members and their families are trapped in a hospital building, a monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government troops were now within two kilometers (just over a mile) of where the group has been trapped since rebels seized Jisr al-Shughur in northwestern Idlib province two weeks ago.
“Regime forces and allied fighters are now two kilometers from the hospital and desperately want to save the 250 people besieged inside,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.
He said there was fierce fighting between rebels and army backed by air strikes as they sought to approach the hospital on Jisr al-Shughur’s southeastern outskirts.
Regime forces inside the hospital have been battling rebels to keep them from entering the building.
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