One would think that after several recent public relations disasters when Jewish or Jewish-connected organizations honor people who support political and economic warfare against the State of Israel, that Jewish groups would stop doing this.

But one would be wrong.

First there was Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School which presented a human rights award to one of the world’s leading defamers and delegitimizers of Israel, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

Then there was the 92nd Street Y which came very close to providing a public platform from which leading BDS advocate Roger Waters would spew his venom against Israel. Luckily for the 92nd Street Y, Waters had to change the date of the appearance, and the Y took that opportunity to slip out of the noose it had created for itself.

Then there was the incredible fiasco of the State of Israel itself inviting a long-time critic of the Jewish State, scientist Stephen Hawking, to a major scientific conference in Israel.  A little due diligence would have revealed that Hawking was already on record as embracing a hostile narrative against Israel. But no, Israel invited Hawking to give a talk at the President’s Conference.  Hawking rebuffed the Jewish State, backing out of his commitment because he wanted to support the academic boycott against Israel. And Hawking and, especially, those who make the demonization of Israel their life’s work, were thrilled to chalk up a victory in the BDS war against the Jewish State.

Now we learn that the American fundraising arm of a wonderful Israeli institution – Soroka Medical Center – is poised to honor yet another soldier in the delegitimization war against Israel.

On June 18 at the Harvard Club in New York City, the American Friends of Soroka Medical Center will hold its annual gala.  The Statesman for Health Award is being given to a man who helped the virulently anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace support the boycott of Ariel Cultural Center. Mandy Patinkin not only supported the Ariel boycott, he allowed his name to be used to recruit other celebrities to vilify the cultural center in the Jewish town of Ariel. Some statesman.

Patinkin has done more than simply sign a letter of support for artists boycotting a cultural center in Israel, he has also assisted in a fundraiser for Jewish Voice for Peace, and has long been a national board member of Americans for Peace Now.  Just last year, at a conference in Israel he talked about having had his eyes opened while on a tour of Hebron with his good friends from Breaking the Silence, an organization committed to demonizing the Israel Defense Forces as a military force of terror, bent on acquiring territory, and not a defensive, ethical military.

Patinkin, unlike some with whom he associates, is not an Israel hater.  He simply believes that Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria are the nub of the problem and if Jews would just get the heck out of the area, peace would break out.

Patinkin said he supports Israel in a variety of ways, but says the “settlements ignite the situation” between Israelis and Palestinians. For Israel to build a new theater “in an illegal settlement” was adding fuel to the fire.

It is hard to listen to Patinkin and imagine anything other than that he has a warm, loving soul and just wants everyone to get along.  But he’s a big boy now, one with an audience who listens to him.  And with that following comes a responsibility.

The same is true for the American Friends of Soroka.

It is not enough to find a sweet Jewish man with a beautiful voice, one whose star is on the ascent because of his role in a huge television series hit. If the American Friends of Soroka wanted to honor someone, it would have been nice if they found someone who loves all of Israel, someone who doesn’t encourage economic warfare against any of it.

And now Jews are left with the choice of not going to a fundraiser for a wonderful, non-political medical center in Israel, or going and watching as an American Jew who encourages the economic boycott of a Jewish town is given an award.  It’s a tough choice that Jews should not make other Jews make.

Professor Noam Chomsky of the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT was the force behind a group of 20 academics who lobbied Professor Stephen Hawking to boycott an Israeli conference where he was expected to be a keynote speaker, the Guardian reported. (See: Stephen Hawking Boycotting Company Working on his Cure and Resolved: Cambridge U ‘Misunderstood,’ Hawking Actually Hates Israel.)

Chomsky, a veteran supporter of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian causes, joined British academics from the universities of Cambridge, London, Leeds, Southampton, Warwick, Newcastle, York and the Open University to who all shared with Hawking how “surprised and deeply disappointed” they were that he had accepted the invitation to speak at next month’s presidential conference in Jerusalem, which will chaired by Shimon Peres and attended by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

On Friday the liberal academic David Newman, dean of the faculty of humanities and social sciences at Ben Gurion University in Israel, warned that the academic boycott “just destroys one of the very few spaces left where Israelis and Palestinians actually do come together.”

Incidentally, the boycott on Israeli goods hurts thousands of Palestinian farm workers, and the boycott on Israeli tourism hurts thousands of Arabs working in that industry. But they make leftist Europeans and Americans feel better, and, after all, that’s what really counts.

But Chomsky, an old-time backer of “boycott and divestment of firms that are carrying out operations in the occupied territories,” was not concerned with gray shades, and to prove just how righteous he is, he added his considerable weight to the pressure on Hawking, according to Jonathan Rosenhead, chair of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine campaign group (BRICUP).

The letter to Hawking was in the ancient spirit of “It all started after Israel retaliated. It pointed out that Israel’s “treatment of the people of Gaza amounts to ‘collective punishment,’” meaning that should an Arab terrorist shoot a rocket at your children’s kindergarten, but he does it from the midst of his housing project, you are not permitted to fire back, lest you be guilty of collective punishment.

Just lie back and enjoy it, seems to be the BRICUP general attitude.

The letter also repeated the age old lie that “the construction of Jewish settlements breaches the Geneva convention” – it doesn’t, since the GC deals with areas occupied from a sovereign owner and no power had a recognized sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, or Gaza.

Finally, the letter accused Israel of placing “multiple roadblocks, physical, financial and legal, in the way of higher education, both for its own Palestinian citizens and those under occupation.” That may be the most terrible lie of them all, since no other Arab country even comes close to the number of institutions of higher education in the territories, as well as the percentage of academics among Arab citizens of Israel.

It is stunning that while in the rest of the region half the population, namely women, can’t walk freely in public, much less attain higher education, the one country those bizarre little men and women are attacking is the Israeli democracy.

Their letter had something to say about all that positive hogwash, too: “Israel has a name for the promotion of its cultural and scientific standing: ‘Brand Israel.’ This is a deliberate policy of camouflaging its oppressive acts behind a cultured veneer.”

In other words, don’t confuse us with all those “facts” about Israeli achievements, and Arab progress within the Israeli system – we all know it’s nothing but a lie.

Many of us have experienced the dubious pleasure of arguing with these characters and their hordes of disciples. You can’t reason with them because they’re not interested in reason. They are intellectually violent leftists.

Tom Hickey, a member of the UCU’s executive committee who put forward the draft motion, told the Guardian: “It is brave of Hawking for the straightforward reason that someone who has his prominence will be targeted for vilification. If he can do that then all of us should think of doing it. This isn’t about targeting Israeli scholars but targeting the institutions.”

Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the BDS who studies philosophy at Tel Aviv University, told the Guardian that Hawking’s decision to withdraw from the conference in the country that facilitates Barghouti’s career “is one of the starkest indicators yet that the tide is changing in the western mainstream against Israel’s occupation, colonization and apartheid, and that the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement is fast reaching its South Africa moment of maturity and impact.”

Professor Stephen Hawking now supports the academic boycott of Israel, because of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the Guardian reported Wednesday, and to show it, he pulled out of the conference that will be hosted in June by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem..

Hawking, 71, “the guy who invented time,” as the Big Bang Theory character Penny calls him, is a mega-famous theoretical physicist and the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. He had initially accepted an invitation to speak at the fifth annual president’s “Facing Tomorrow” conference (possibly the last one, too, since the next president might not be up to it).

Hawking is in very poor health, according to the Guardian. He suffers from a motor neuron disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS – also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a condition that has progressed over the years. He is almost entirely paralyzed and communicates through a speech generating device.

Last week, the author of “A Brief History of Time” wrote President Peres a brief letter ignoring a good 50% of History, saying he had changed his mind and won’t appear at the much touted conference.

A statement published with Hawking’s approval by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, said the reason for the insult to Peres and to Israel is “his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there.”

The Guardian reports that in the four weeks since Hawking’s participation in the Jerusalem event was announced, the great man has been “bombarded with messages from Britain and abroad as part of an intense campaign by boycott supporters trying to persuade him to change his mind.”

It worked. Finally Hawking broke down, and told friends he decided “to follow the advice of Palestinian colleagues who unanimously agreed that he should not attend.”

Here’s the catch: almost a year ago, The Jewish Press ran a story about Israeli scientific advancements in the use of stem cells to treat a variety of serious and debilitating illnesses, resulting in the miraculous recovery of the dean of the Mir yeshiva, Rabbi Refael Shmuelevich, from ALS.

A clinical trial of ALS patients conducted by Israel’s BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics shows their therapy, NurOwn, is safe and well-tolerated by patients, and not only capable of halting the progress of the illness, but can actually reverse the course of the disease, improving the breathing, muscle strength, and speech capabilities of sufferers with nerve damage in the brain and spine.

At the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Rabbi Shmuelevitz was given just 2-4 years to live, until he succumbed to the most severe form of the neuromuscular diseases. Soon his speech became difficult to understand, and he was confined to a wheelchair.

But just one month after beginning an experimental treatment spearheaded at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, Rabbi Shmuelevitz was back on his feet, teaching again at the 7,000-student yeshiva, as he has done for the last 30 years. His recovery was not only touted as a miracle and a joy for the students of the Mir yeshiva, but is being called the first ever recovery from ALS.

The Mayo Clinic is participating in clinical trials of the BrainStorm drug.

It’s possible that next time Professor Hawking comes to Jerusalem, it would be to receive treatment rather than to rebuke the local scientific community.

Except, as a Jewish Press manager commented online: Maybe Hawking just prefers the innovations and gifts the Palestinians have brought to the world… big bangs.

Hawking has visited Israel four times, most recently, in 2006, when he said he was “looking forward to coming out to Israel and the Palestinian territories and excited about meeting both Israeli and Palestinian scientists.”

But as of now, it’s down to just Palestinian scientists.

Both of them.

Israeli Presidential Conference Chairman Israel Maimon responded to Hawking’s announcement saying that his decision was unjustifiable and wrong:

“The academic boycott against Israel is in our view outrageous and improper, certainly for someone for whom the spirit of liberty lies at the basis of his human and academic mission. Israel is a democracy in which all individuals are free to express their opinions, whatever they may be. The imposition of a boycott is incompatible with open, democratic dialogue.”

Malka Fleischer contributed to this report.

Well, time to add another genius who let us down to the list.

Perhaps the world’s best known scientist, Stephen Hawking, has pulled out of a commitment to give a lead lecture at a major international science conference which willl be held in Israel next month.  The event is also a celebration of the 90th birthday of Israel’s president, Shimon Peres.

Hawking, 71, is the world-famous author and theoretical physicist and professor of mathematics at England’s Cambridge University.  Last month Hawking accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president’s conference, “Facing Tomorrow.”

However, in a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, allegedly with Hawking’s approval,  Hawking’s change of mind was described as “his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there.”

According to the British newspaper the Guardian, last week Hawking sent a letter to Peres, informing him that he had changed his mind and would not be appearing at the conference.

Hawking has ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), and has been confined to a wheelchair for decades.

President Obama’s advance team insisted that Yityish Aynaw, the first Ethiopian Miss Israel, be included on the guest list for the official state dinner President Shimon Peres will host for the U.S. president.  At the time, they probably did not think it was necessary to do extensive background checks on the young woman.  What could be problematic about a beautiful African young woman who came to Israel as an orphan at the age of 12, and now reigns as the beauty queen of this Middle Eastern country?

But a potentially problematic YouTube video has surfaced.  Unlike a video which tanked the former Miss Delaware, forcing her to relinquish her crown, Miss Israel’s video is unlikely to harm her reputation within her domain.  The former Miss Delaware’s YouTube video confirmed rumors that she had made a pornographic movie, and it was later revealed that she was paid for her participation in that movie.

Miss Israel’s YouTube video, which is a clip of an interview aired on Israeli Ch 2 news on Wednesday, March 13, reveals something quite interesting, but utterly non-salacious.

The interviewer asks Aynaw, “What will you tell Obama when you meet him?”

She answers, “That he is a role model for me, and second, that he should free Pollard.”

Aynaw explains that she was very active while in high school – she was head of the student council – working on many different activities to help free Pollard.  She explained to the interviewer that she knows the story very well, and that if she has the opportunity, “lama lo? (why not?)”

So far there has been no response from the White House.

Jonathan Pollard has been in prison since 1987.  He was an American naval intelligence analyst in the early 1980′s when he passed certain classified information to the Israeli government. No other person who was convicted of obtaining classified information for an ally of the U.S. has served in prison as long as has Pollard, and several who were convicted of spying for enemies of the U.S. were released after serving shorter sentences.

On Wednesday, March 13, Jonathan Pollard and his wife, Esther, released a statement calling on all Israelis to show the utmost respect to President Obama during his visit to the Jewish state, according to the Jerusalem Post. This statement was made in response to a call from an Israeli politician to boycott President Obama’s speech if the president does not bring the Pollard home to Israel with him.

“Esther and Jonathan Pollard join the Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home in urging the public to refrain from any action that may impugn the honor of the State of Israel by conveying, even inadvertently, any hint of disrespect or dishonor towards our official distinguished visitor,” the Pollards said in a statement. “We call upon the Israeli public to welcome President Obama to our country and to behave at all times with all due respect and honor towards the president of the United States.”

It’s that time of the year again, when the World Bank’s latest Economic Monitoring Report is being issued, and it includes a special segment on how things are in the Palestinian Authority.

The bank’s press release says that this year’s report stresses that “while the donor community’s efforts are directed towards short-term relief for Palestinian fiscal stress, it is important to recognize that the prolonged system of closures and restrictions is causing lasting damage to the competitiveness of the Palestinian economy.”

So, there’s a narrative in place, which is: Palestinians are poor, wealthy countries are sending in the funds, but Israel is limiting movement within the Palestinian Authority so badly, what with checking if their cars are carrying weapons, bombs, or suicide bombers, and what with the security wall that physically bars terrorists from sneaking into Israel – those things are ruining the Palestinian economy.

The problem with press releases of this kind is that one occasionally gets the feeling that their authors haven’t read their own text all the way through.

For instance, take a look at the following two paragraphs:

The economy is in danger of losing its capacity to compete in the global market, according to the report. It shows that the structure of the economy has deteriorated since the late 90’s as the value-added of the tradable sectors has declined, illustrated by the productivity of the agriculture sector having roughly halved and the manufacturing sector having largely stagnated.

The share of exports in the Palestinian economy has also been in steady decline since 1994, dropping to 7 percent in 2011, one of the lowest in the world. Moreover, Palestinian exports are concentrated in low value-added goods and services, the majority of which is exported to Israel.

So, starting in 1994, Palestinian poverty has been increasing steadily, until it really started revving down, so to speak, in more recent years.

And what magical event started in 1994? You guessed, the Paris Economic Protocol happened, which followed the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, creating the Palestinian Authority and handing over the keys to the terrorist organization PLO, and its leader, the late Yassir Arafat.

Let’s consult Wikipedia for a somewhat different narrative than the one offered by the World Bank:

GDP per capita in the Palestinian territories rose by 7% per year from 1968-1980 (correlating with the “occupation”), but slowed during the 1980s. Between 1970 and 1991 life expectancy rose from 56 to 66 years, infant mortality per 1,000 fell from 95 to 42, the percentage of households with electricity rose from 30% to 85%, the percentage of households with safe water rose from 15% to 90%, the percentage of households with a refrigerator rose from 11% to 85%, and the percentage of households with a washing machine rose from 23% in 1980 to 61% in 1991.

You’re with me so far? After 19 years as a proud and free people under the loving rule of the Kingdom of Jordan, the Israeli takeover spelled a stunning prosperity for the occupation victims. But then the geniuses from Labor—Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin, and Yitzhak Rabin—liberated the suffering Palestinian by imposing a gang of ruffians on them, complete with street executions and the exacting of protection money from every businessman and every productive person. The fruits of liberty ripened fast:

Economic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza, where economic activity was governed by the Paris Economic Protocol of April 1994 between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, deteriorated in the early 1990s. Real per capita GDP for the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS) declined 36.1% between 1992 and 1996 owing to the combined effect of falling aggregate incomes and robust population growth. The downturn in economic activity was due to extensive corruption in the newly governing Palestinian Authority, and to Israeli closure policies in response to security incidents in Israel, which disrupted previously established labor and commodity market relationships.

This is years before the security wall, years before the complex system of checkposts, this is in a mere four years of Palestinian self rule.

“Continued financial support by the donor community, and increased reform efforts by the Palestinian Authority to manage the current fiscal challenges must remain a high priority,” said Mariam Sherman, World Bank Country Director for the West Bank and Gaza. “However, much bolder efforts to create the basis for a viable economy need to be made to prevent the continued deterioration that will have lasting and costly implications for economic competiveness and social cohesion.”

Not going to happen. You can’t run a competitive economy with armed thugs at the helm. For real prosperity, you must first kill all the gangsters. I say “kill” because throughout history we haven’t come up with a better, softer method of asking gangsters to leave.

Barbra Streisand will make her official performing debut in Israel at the 90th birthday celebration for President Shimon Peres at the Israeli Presidential Conference, where 4,500 people are expected to attend.

Streisand is slated to perform at the opening ceremony of the Israeli Presidential Conference on June 18.

She has traveled to Israel several times but never has sung publicly.

Streisand is being brought to Israel through the music company Live Nation, which is organizing a rare European tour.

One of the best-selling musicians of all time, Streisand has 140 million in record sales. She performed at last month’s Oscars for the first time in 26 years.

President Shimon Peres  and the Israeli lawfare group Shurat HaDin have launched two separate but simultaneous campaigns to pressure the European Union to agree Hizbullah equals terror.

President Peres is to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg next week and will urge it to place the Iranian-backed Hizbullah Shi’ite Muslim group on the list of terror organizations, as the United States has done.

A major obstacle to the classification is the failure of all 27 EU countries to agree.

“The President will tell the EU leaders that every country needs to treat Hezbollah as a terror organization,” a spokesperson to the President told the European Jewish Press (EJP).

“The President’s EU meetings “will take place in the context of the inquiry into the terror attack in Bulgaria which found that Hizbullah was responsible for the bombing and the subsequent discussions within Europe on the consequences.”

His speech to the European Parliament will be the first by an Israeli leader in the legislature’s current format, which includes 754 members from the 27 EU member states.

Shurat HaDin, known in English as the Israel Law Center, is headed by attorney Nitsana Darshn-Leitner. She has staged a quiet revolution in fighting terrorism by winning lawsuits against Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as well as banks that handle money of terrorist groups. Shurat HaDin has won  judgments running into the billions.

It also was instrumental in convincing companies they could be subject to criminal charges if they did not stop equipping Iranian oil tankers and terrorists’ Gaza-bound ships with communications equipment.

Darshn-Leitner now has written to the un to demand that it designate Hizbullah as a terrorist organization.

“In our letter to the EU officials, we accused the EU of cowardice and hiding its head in the sand in the face of overwhelming proof of the Islamic extremist groups’ long term involvement in global terrorism,” she said.

“We accused the EU of ignoring Hizbullah’s assassination of Lebanese President Rafiq Hariri, for which several of its officials were indicted by The Hague, and Hizbullah’s on-going role in perpetrating crimes against humanity in the Syrian civil war.”

Despite pressure from the United States and Israel, the EU has claimed that it will not outlaw the group until there is “tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism,” she said.

Shurat HaDin this week issued a partial list of dozens of attacks that have killed more than 400 people, not including targeted civilians in the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Bulgaria recently announced that Hizbullah was behind the July 2012 terrorist attack that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver.

Following is the partial list that is more than enough of the  “tangible evidence” the EU is looking for.

-  The 1982 and 1983 suicide bombings against the IDF headquarters building in Tyre, Lebanon, which killed 103 Israelis and 46–59 Lebanese, wounding 95 people.

-   The April 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing Lebanon, that killed 241 US marines, 58 French paratroopers and 6 civilians at the US and French barracks in Beirut.

-   The Hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985.

-   The kidnapping and murder of numerous individuals during the Lebanon Hostage Crisis from 1982 to 1992, including the kidnapping and torture-murder of CIA Beirut station Chief William Buckley.

-   The 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing in Buenos Aires, killing 29, in Argentina.

-   The 1994 AMIA bombing of a Jewish cultural centre, killing 85, in Argentina.

-   The 1996 KhobarTowers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 20.

-   The 2000 kidnapping and murder of IDF soldiers Adi Avitan, Benyamin Avraham, and Omar Sawaidwere.

-   In 2002, Singapore accused Hezbollah of recruiting Singaporeans in a failed 1990s plot to attack US and Israeli ships in the Singapore Straits.

-   The 2006 kidnapping and murder of IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, which precipitated the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War.

-   Intentionally targeting Israeli civilians and cities with rocket fire during the Second Lebanon War.

-   The January 15, 2008 bombing of a U.S. Embassy vehicle in Beirut.

-   In 2009, a Hezbollah plot in Egypt was uncovered, where Egyptian authorities arrested 49 men for planning attacks against Israeli and Egyptian targets in the Sinai Peninsula.

-   A failed 2011 bombing in Istanbul targeting the Israeli consul, which left eight dead.