Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas  advisor on high-tech affairs strongly criticized a planned meeting between Palestinian Authority and Israel high-tech companies, calling such meetings “unacceptable” because they give the world the wrong impression.

The adviser, Sabri Saydam, told the Bethlehem-based Ma’an  news agency that Palestinian Authority companies should reconsider their participation and “give priority to Palestinian interests.”

He added that the companies should not act  independently of the PA union of high-tech firms.

What could be wrong about Israeli and PA high-tech companies talking to each other, especially since officials from 11 high-tech companies, including Microsoft and Cisco, are to attend?

For starters, the forum is being organized by the Peres Center for Peace. That already puts a Zionist stamp on the meeting.

The forum is entitled ”Business without Barriers,” but without barriers, the Palestinian Authority cannot claim it is an Israeli scheme for  Apartheid.

One of Saydam’s problems is that, according to Ma’an, “there were still few details about the event.”

Perhaps it is a Zionist plot to snare Microsoft and Cisco into declaring that Israeli high-tech companies have a Jewish identity, and that might cause the international community to think that Israel is a Jewish state.

Even worse, the meeting is scheduled for Tel Aviv. The Palestinian Authority undoubtedly would want it to take place in some PA high-tech city, if any exist.

And what would the international community think if it saw that Palestinian Authority Arabs and Israeli Jews can sit down for direct talks on high-tech without pre-published “details of the event?”

One might reach the conclusion, horror of horrors, that Abbas could sit down with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu without knowing ahead of time ”details of the event.” But that might lead to negotiations, in the true sense of the term.

And that would spell the end of Abbas’ “peace process” strategy of “I take, you give.”

Now that Microsoft and Cisco understand what Abbas means by “direct talks,” maybe they can explain the term to John Kerry.

Cancer sufferers and survivors are at increased risk of major obstetric complications, according to new research by Israeli researchers to be presented next week at the Annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

It is well known that cancer treatments decrease fertility, but very little has been known until now concerning pregnancy outcomes in cancer sufferers and survivors. Tel Aviv’s Sheba Medica Center researchers Drs. Richard Lawrence and Nir Pillar interrogated a large database of U.S. inpatient statistics and identified 15,191 births in which the mother was a cancer sufferer or survivor. Compared with other women, these births were at very high risk for a range of complications ranging from blood clots and premature labor to maternal and fetal death.

“Parenting has been defined as one of life’s greatest fulfillments, and parenthood is a major concern among cancer survivors”, explained Dr. Lawrence, the abstract’s senior author. “Increasingly we are seeking to understand and improve the life-experience of cancer survivors, once cancer treatment is behind them… Our recommendation is that these pregnancies should be considered ‘high-risk’, and very closely monitored.

Meet Jay Shultz, president of the Am Yisrael Foundation and head of seven non-profit organizations serving the international community in Tel Aviv. What opportunities does Tel Aviv offer to immigrants from English-speaking countries and others planning to settle in Israel? Tune into the second part of this week’s Goldstein on Gelt podcast to find out!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Israel’s Waze user-run navigation service easily beat out Google’s app Tuesday night when the Israel Electric Corp. closed down the high-speed Ayalon Highway that runs through Tel Aviv.

Drivers using the Google app, which uses Android devices that broadcast information of traffic, found themselves being directed to the Ayalon even though it was closed, the Globes business website reported.

On the other hand, Waze, which operates on drivers’ reports, directed motorists to alternate routes.

The website noted that Waze learned its lesson from a disastrous mix-up four months when its system directed drivers to the Ayalon, which had been closed due to flooding. Waze later made it possible for drivers to report blocked roads, which saved the day on Tuesday.

Israeli intelligence and security officers again have foiled an imminent plot against soldiers and civilians, this time by a Hamas cell in the Ramallah area that worked with partners in terror from Hamas.

The problem is who knows how many more terrorist cells have stayed under Israel’s radar? The IDF reported that last month there were hundreds of rock-throwing and firebombing attacks by Palestinian Authority Arabs who have not yet graduated to the stage of guns and knives.

One “graduate” stabbed to death a Jew from Samaria last on the, and the terrorist’s father said the 24-year-old murdered carried out “the duty of all Palestinians who suffer from the aggression of the army and the settlers,” stated al-Zaghal’s father, Ali al-Zaghal.

One day after the stabbing death of Eviatar Borovzky, father of five. The Fatah party, headed by IDF PA Chairman Mahmoud Abba, posted on its Facebook page praise for the terrorist.

The Hamas cell in the Ramallah area that was arrested by the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and the IDF is one of many that exist with the encouragement of Abbas’s party.

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and the IDF arrested the cell month earlier this year. The   arrests were announced in March, but details of the plots were not released until Wednesday, when indictments were filed.

The ringleader is a layer from a Ramallah village and who was identified as 26-year-old Ahmed Fahida, who worked with a Hamas terrorist from Gaza, named Ahmed Uda. Fahida’s mission to kidnap a soldier and use him for negotiations with Israel before killing him,

Fahida and another unnamed terrorist also were ready to collect weapons and build rockets and escalate the war against Israelis in Judea and Samaria and in urban centers.

Even a primitive Kassam rocket launched from Samaria could inflict huge damage and loss of life with a strike in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or the Ben Gurion Airport. It also would cause political and diplomatic earthquake in Jerusalem and Washington.

Despite the success in stopping most major terrorist attacks, so far, the IDF has been at a loss to protect Israeli motorists on the roads.

A total of 615 rock-throwing attacks were reported in March. That is a rate of 20 a day and does not include dozens or hundreds of others that are not reported.

In addition, at least 72 firebombs were hurled at soldiers and civilians last month.

In the last week of April alone, 119 rock-throwing attacks and 18 firebomb attack were recorded.

Stars from the hit American TV shows “Scandal” and “Once Upon a Time” visited the Western Wall Friday night during and found themselves immediately recognized by religious Jewish prayer-goers.

”People approached us at the Western Wall, saying they watch our shows,” said Katie Lowes, who stars in the new American political thriller television series “Scandal,” created by Grey’s Anatomy’s Shonda Rhimes.

”It has been an amazing experience, visiting across Israel. But the visit to the Western Wall and the Shabbat dinner that followed, was truly a highlight,” she added. ”It was beautiful to hear the people singing and praying and to be part of a Shabbat dinner with a family in Jerusalem.”

The Hollywood celebrities spent a week touring Israel in a trip which was led by America’s Voices in Israel (AVI) director Irwin Katsof and sponsored by El Al Israel Airlines and the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The group spent time in the Golan Heights, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Masada, Dead Sea and Jerusalem from April 29-May 5.

It took five days, but United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon finally said he “rejects” United Nations Human Rights Council official Richard Falk’s comments that cited “the American global domination project: and US-Israeli relations as provocations for the bombings.

Falk, a Jewish American who has long history of accusing Israel of “war crimes” and “apartheid, wrote as “long as Tel Aviv has the compliant ear of the American political establishment, those who wish for peace and justice in the world should not rest easy.”

Israeli officials as well as the UN Watch organization protested his remarks, but Ban’s spokesman simply stated that Falk “speaks independently” and does not necessarily represent the United Nations.

Further condemnations of Falk appeared in the media, including The Wall Street Journal, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations tweeted, “Someone who spews such vitriol has no place at the UN.”

Ban‘s spokesman finally announced five days Falk’s article, “The Secretary-General rejects Mr. Falk’s comments [which] undermine the credibility and the work of the United Nations.”

Police have arrested an African immigrant who charged at Knesset Member Elazar Stern in Tel Aviv Sunday night, hit him, knocked his kippa off his head and then stepped on the kippa several times.

MK Stern is a product of a national religious yeshiva, former head of the IDF Manpower Department and now presents Tzipi Livni’s “HaTnua” party in the Knesset.

The unidentified immigrant, who was shirtless at the time despite unseasonably cool weather, waved a cross he was wearing and shouted at Stern. The MK ignored him, apparently angering the immigrant even more.

MK Stern was visiting the neighborhood along with other MKs who had been invited by a local committee to see the problem first-hand.

The low-income area of southern Tel Aviv has attracted thousands of illegal immigrants, causing fear among long-time residents who have been victims of rape and murder and daily theft.