Odds & Ends

The opinions expressed on this webpage represent those of the individual authors and, unless clearly labeled as such, do not represent the opinions or policies of TBS. Can the Israeli baseball team win an Olympic medal? Can a baseball team made up mostly of professional, college and semiretired Americans bond as a lineup to win an Olympic medal? We’re about to find out. By ELLI WOHLGELERNTER  - JANUARY 10, 2020   Baseball catcher Ryan Lavarnway remembers being in his hotel room in Seoul, South Korea, getting his body worked on by Yoni Rosenblatt, the strength and conditioning coach for Team Israel.   It was the eve of the opening game of the 2017 World Baseball Classic, the quadrennial competition known as the sport’s “World Cup.” The international baseball community was shocked when Israel qualified: no one saw it coming, and no one gave the team a chance to win a…

The opinions expressed on this webpage represent those of the individual authors and, unless clearly labeled as such, do not represent the opinions or policies of TBS. The stolen missile boats Israel used in the Yom Kippur War Half a century has passed since Israel defied a French embargo and stole its own boats from Cherbourg harbor on Christmas Eve, titillating the world media. By ABRAHAM RABINOVICH  - DECEMBER 21, 2019 THE DESTROYER ‘Eilat,’ first victim of the naval missile age.(photo credit: GPO)   Fifty years ago this Christmas Eve, five small naval vessels slipped out of Cherbourg Harbor after midnight into the teeth of a force-nine gale. Ordered by Israel from a local shipyard, the “patrol boats” had been embargoed by France for political reasons. The Israelis were now running off with them.   The vessels would be refueled at sea by Israeli merchant ships moving into position along…

The opinions expressed on this webpage represent those of the individual authors and, unless clearly labeled as such, do not represent the opinions or policies of TBS. Today's selection -- from My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem.The first Women's Conference was held in 1977 in Houston, Texas. But before the main event, 56 mini conferences took place across the United States:  "The 1977 Na­tional Women's Conference in Houston ... may take the prize as the most important event nobody knows about. ...  "It all began in 1972, when the United Nations declared that 1975 would be International Women's Year -- right up there with the Year of the Child or the Year of the Family Farm. In 1974, President Gerald Ford appointed a thirty-nine-member delegation to repre­sent U.S. women, and named a man from the State Department to head it. "But the one who took on this task of finding out what issues and hopes really did represent the female…

The opinions expressed on this webpage represent those of the individual authors and, unless clearly labeled as such, do not represent the opinions or policies of TBS. In April 2006, The Second Annual United Nations Documentary Film Festival honored The Making of a Martyr with the Audience Choice Award for Best Film. Brooke Goldstein and Alistair Leyland were on-site to accept their first award for this film. On March 24th, 2004, 15-year-old Hussam Abdu was apprehended at an Israeli border checkpoint with live explosives strapped around his waist. Instead of detonating the bomb, out of fear of death and love for his family, Hussam voluntarily surrendered and is now serving time in an Israeli prison for attempted murder. Since the start of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000, an alarming number of suicide bombers have been children aged 18 and under. To explore this troubling phenomenon, filmmakers Brooke Goldstein and Alistair…

The opinions expressed on this webpage represent those of the individual authors and, unless clearly labeled as such, do not represent the opinions or policies of TBS. Brooke Goldstein describes the way her film “The Making of a Martyr” documents how Palestinians abuse their children; and discusses why she created The Lawfare Project to fight antisemitism in courts of law around the world. With Mark S. Golub. Click the triangle on the picture to view and listen. {source}    <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/tPnctqJmN_o" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>   {/source}

The opinions expressed on this webpage represent those of the individual authors and, unless clearly labeled as such, do not represent the opinions or policies of TBS. Ancestry.com digitizes millions of Holocaust records, free to public The project contains approximately 1.2 million digitized images, which are searchable by entering a person's basic demographic information. By SONIA EPSTEIN - August 4, 2019       PEOPLE VISIT the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in May. . (photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN / REUTERS)   A digital, searchable archive of Holocaust records is now available to users around the world via the website Ancestry.com. Ancestry, the consumer genetics and genealogy giant, partnered with the Germany-based Arolsen Archives to produce the online database, called the Holocaust Remembrance Collection. The archives, previously known as the International Tracing Service (ITS), holds more than 30 million documents on Nazi persecution, containing…

The opinions expressed on this webpage represent those of the individual authors and, unless clearly labeled as such, do not represent the opinions or policies of TBS. The little known fascination Newton had with the Jewish Temple A brilliant scientist as well as a prophet of doom counting down to the End of Days. A gifted physicist and a messianic mystic. Isaac Newton was a man of many contradictions. By SHARON COHEN / NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL - July 21, 2019     Physicist Isaac Newton. (photo credit: SHARON COHEN / NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL)   Physicist Isaac Newton did not pull any punches when it came to his criticism of the church, which was perhaps not surprising considering he was one of the most famous scientists to have walked the earth. What many are unaware of, is that Newton devoted much of his time to the study of ancient…

The opinions expressed on this webpage represent those of the individual authors and, unless clearly labeled as such, do not represent the opinions or policies of TBS. Short on burial space, Jerusalem prepares to open underground necropolis Without the tunnel project, Jerusalem is “doomed” to become a graveyard. By SAM SOKOL/JTA - October 25, 2019     Har Menuchot tunnels. (photo credit: KEHILLAT YERUSHALAYIM BURIAL SOCIETY)   Carved into the rock on the side of a mountain directly under the Har HaMenuchot cemetery here lies the entrance to Jerusalem’s newest necropolis, a city of the dead that its designers hope will relieve a shortage of burial space in the capital.A local engineering firm and Jerusalem’s largest burial society have devised a plan to radically change how Jerusalemites dispose of their dead by building a modern system of burial caves, a throwback to a practice discontinued some two millennia ago.  …

Middle Israel: What are the Kurds doing wrong? Faced with their most recent abandonment, Kurdish nationalists must first ask themselves why they are repeatedly betrayed, and then draw several lessons from Zionist history. By Amotz Asa-El - October 17, 2019         KURDISH PROTESTERS carry flags and a banner with a portrait of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan during a demonstration against Turkey’s military action in northeastern Syria in Zurich, Switzerland, this week. (photo credit: REUTERS/ARND WIEGMANN)   ‘Let every nation know,” vowed John Kennedy in his inaugural address, “that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”Donald Trump’s amendment of this brave statement – “every nation except the Kurds” – is obviously a disgrace, but lamenting his betrayal can be no substitute for the introspection in…

 The opinions expressed on this webpage represent those of the individual authors and, unless clearly labeled as such, do not represent the opinions or policies of TBS.   When Shoah witnesses are gone... Survivors of the Shoah – the Holocaust – are fading rapidly, and very few of those in their 80s or 90s have any clear recollection of what happened to them. By Greer Fay Cashman August 29, 2019 14:42     Sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, whose parents were murdered in the Holocaust, with Bella Bryks-Klein at the Tel Aviv Cinémathèque. (photo credit: YOSSI SHARON)   September 1 marks the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. Survivors of the Shoah – the Holocaust – are fading rapidly, and very few of those in their 80s or 90s have any clear recollection of what happened to them.   What they know is essentially what was told to…