Trump administration has been preparing for a withdrawal from world heritage body for months, which Israeli PM praises as ‘brave and moral decision’

The United States has formally notified the UN’s world heritage body Unesco that it is withdrawing its membership of the organisation citing “continuing anti-Israel bias”.

The announcement by the Trump administration was followed a few hours later by news that Israel was also planning to quit the financially struggling cultural and educational agency.

In a statement Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, welcomed the US move saying: “This is a brave and moral decision, because Unesco has become a theatre of absurd. Instead of preserving history, it distorts it.”

The body is best known for its world heritage listings of outstanding cultural and natural sites but has often drawn the ire of Israel and the Trump administration for a series of decisions, including the listing of Hebron, a city in the southern part of the occupied Palestinian territories, as a Palestinian world heritage site.

Unesco’s director general, Irina Bokova, expressed her “profound regret” over the US decision. “This is not just about World Heritage,” she said, describing the withdrawal as “a loss to both the organisation and the US”.

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When I was in the fourth grade, my class went on a field trip to Zichron Ya’akov, to visit the home of a woman named Sarah Aaronsohn. She, we were told, was a great Jewish heroine, although the particulars were left deliberately vague. She was some sort of spy, our teacher told us cryptically, and she died for our country.

That she did, exactly one hundred years ago this week. But her bravery remains singular, and her story, sadly, too rarely told: Aaronsohn was a committed feminist, a proud Zionist, and a witness to genocide who refused to remain silent in the face of atrocity.

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has sent letters to 150 global and Israeli firms warning they will be added to a UN blacklist if they do not cease doing business in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Haaretz newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed Israeli and Western officials.

The UN Human Rights Council voted in 2016 to compile the list, prompting an outcry in Israel, which claims that the Council is stacked against the Jewish state. The High Commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has said he intends to publish the list by the end of the year.

An anonymous Israeli official told Haaretz that the letter warns firms that if they continue to do business in Jewish settlements, they will find themselves on a blacklist of companies that are in violation of “internal law and UN decisions.”

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Innovation Minister Paul Goldsmith confirmed NZ officials were in talks with Israel about an agreement “facilitating research and development cooperation” between the two countries.”

The New Zealand and Israeli governments may sign an innovation agreement that would see technology firms from both countries fast-tracked to receive funding from their respective government grants agencies.

Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) international relationships manager Simon Rae confirmed a deal was moving closer.

He said the agreement would encourage companies and universities from both countries to share research, information and possibly join ventures that both governments would help pay for.

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Michael Rosbash of Brandeis University, whose parents fled Nazi Germany and the son of a cantor, was one of three American scientists to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

The prize awarded to Rosbash, 74, and the others announced Monday was for their discoveries about molecular mechanisms controlling the body’s daily rhythm. Jeffrey Hall of the University of Maine and Michael Young of Rockefeller University in New York joined Rosbash in receiving the prize.

They used fruit flies to isolate a gene that controls the rhythm of a living organism’s daily life. The biological inner clocks regulate functions such as sleep, behavior, hormone levels and body temperature.

Rosbash, 74, came to Brandeis in 1974 and is the Peter Gruber Endowed Chair in Neuroscience and professor of biology at the Jewish-founded nonsectarian school.

“This morning’s unexpected announcement certainly affected my circadian rhythms,” Rosbach said in a statement from Brandeis. “I am thrilled to join Jeffrey and Michael in this recognition. I am grateful to my colleagues at Brandeis and to the unusual environment here that allows researchers to explore without boundaries while also engaging students in the process of discovery. This is a very special — perhaps unique — university,”

His parents were immigrants who fled Germany in 1938. His father was a cantor at Temple Ohabei Shalom, a Reform synagogue in Brookline, Massachusetts, not far from the Brandeis campus.

Rosbash and Hall started at Brandeis together in 1974; Hall is a professor emeritus there.

Source:  Jewish Week

GENEVA, Sept. 25, 2017 – A Hamas member turned humanitarian addressed the U.N. human rights council today and called the Palestinian Authority the “greatest enemy of the Palestinian people.”“If Israel did not exist, you would have no one to blame; take responsibility for the outcome of your own actions,” said Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father was a founding member of Hamas.

Read more: Palestinian exposes lies at UN – Israel Institute of NZ

If you give a “menu” to a bee, it will instinctively choose dishes that provide the right balance of nutrients: sugary nectar plus pollen full of protein, fatty acids and micronutrients.

That’s one of the findings of groundbreaking experiments performed at Israel’s Benjamin Triwaks Bee Research Center at Hebrew University’s Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot.

The center also has discovered that, like humans, bees consuming an unhealthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids develop cognitive deficiencies.

They cannot simply choose pollen from flowers high in omega-3 because increasing urbanization has decimated many kinds of wildflowers. The resulting nutritional imbalance is a major reason why honeybees, responsible for the pollination of more than 90 commercial food crops across the world, are dying at an alarming rate.

Read more:  Unique Israeli research reveals why honeybees are dying | ISRAEL21c