Breaking news: New rule change regarding quarantine for those under and over 60 and EVIDENCE: Radical Leftists Paying Palestinians to Destroy Jewish Property in Judea By Sheri Oz and What is the world's largest uninhabited island? and what are some differences between the Arctic and the Antarctic and 20 years before the Holocaust, pogroms killed 100,000 Jews – then were forgotten
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
In Policy Shift, Vaxxed Israelis Only Need Home Test to Avoid Quarantine
The new policy is meant to relieve the pressure on COVID testing facilities, relying more on home antigen swab tests to clear vaccinated Israelis who aren't in a high-risk group from quarantining
Israel's Health Ministry announced changes in its coronavirus testing policy on Wednesday, in light of the continued surge in COVID infections and the consequent demand for testing.
Speaking at a press conference, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz announced that beginning on Friday, vaccinated, healthy Israelis under the age of 60 who have come into contact with coronavirus carriers can now take a rapid home test to be exempt from isolation, thereby avoiding long lines at testing sites and unnecessary quarantine. He also urged the entire public to get vaccinated.
According to the new guidelines, the ministry will reserve PCR tests for people aged 60 and older, as well as for high risk groups. These groups won't be determined solely by age and vaccination status, sources in the health system said, but will likely include people with conditions such as diabetes, obesity and pulmonary disease. Young unvaccinated Israelis will have to take supervised antigen test.Read more
Horowitz added that the new home testing policy "is part of our coronavirus routine, which will allow us to keep our economy open.
"We are adjusting to the new situation. The omicron wave is different, and is obligating us to change our perception. The guiding principle here is protecting high-risk groups," Horowitz said.
This shift in policy comes to relieve the pressure on testing facilities, relying more on home antigen swab tests to clear vaccinated people who aren't in a high-risk group from quarantining. Health care providers and other testing facilities have made it clear to ministry officials that the current policy is unsustainable given the amount of people who need tests.
But even under the new policy, the system may well have trouble meeting the demand for tests, given that the number of new cases is expected to jump to around 30,000 a day by early next week.
Also on Wednesday, Israel broke a new record for COVID cases, recording its highest-ever number of diagnoses since the pandemic began as the omicron variant continues to spread.
The Health Ministry reported 11,978 new cases, with 6.65 percent of COVID tests coming back positive.
The rapid surge in the number of cases is also putting pressure on Israel's health maintenance organizations, which administer vaccinations, conduct PCR tests and treat outpatients with COVID-19. Their physicians are also responsible for prescribing a new coronavirus drug, Plaxovid, to people deemed at high risk of serious illness.
"We're currently stretching our capabilities to the limit," said Dr. Doron Netzer, who heads Clalit Health Service's community medical services. "We know the peak is still ahead of us, but based on what we do know, this wave is expected to be large but brief."
The rapid rise in the number of COVID-19 cases and the government's decision to approve a fourth dose of the vaccine for high-risk groups – a second booster shot – is also spurring more Israelis to get vaccinated, Netzer said. On Tuesday, 50,000 people got the shot; for half of them, this was their fourth dose.
EVIDENCE: Radical Leftists Pay Palestinians to Destroy Jewish Property in Judea By Sheri Oz
Photo Credit: screenshot
Palestinian-destroys-olive-trees.
In an exclusive interview with United with Israel, a Palestinian Arab who was vandalizing state land in the Judea and Samaria region admitted that he was being paid for harassing Jewish communities.
Last week, a video was released showing Arabs angrily pulling up young olive trees next to the Jewish community of Avigayil in Judea.
It was unique as it was one of the few instances of Palestinian Arab harassment against Jews that was caught on film.
The video shows what Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria have been trying to tell the rest of the country regarding daily occurrences as Palestinian Arabs engage in efforts to exert their dominion over Area C, the region assigned to Israeli control in the Oslo Accords, – with the help of radical left-wing organizations.
Much more familiar than this video are those clips claiming to show settler violence against Arabs in Judea and Samaria.
Such videos have featured in the mainstream news and social media for a long time and have been gathering increasing steam over the past few months.
It is only recently that an increasing number of articles have been published pointing out that a double standard exists whereby "'routine' terror attacks, including murder by Palestinian Arabs against Jews, are downplayed or treated as justified.
This is, perhaps, because little documentation has reached the public regarding the daily harassment of settlers by Arabs.
A common trick played by the Arabs is to attack or relentlessly badger Jews and then film them in the instances when they fight back, ignoring the times they do not.
Tuesday was not an instance when Jews provided photogenic propaganda for the Arabs. Quite the contrary, in fact. Three Arabs were caught on film pulling up olive tree saplings that had been planted by the community of Avigayil. But this short film clip does not tell the whole story.
Just as media consumers should insist that articles documenting Jewish attacks on Arabs put the entire incident in context, telling the story from beginning to end, we should expect no less when it is an Arab attack on Jews.
With the entire story told, readers can assess for themselves what truly happened and not simply accept the spin provided by the particular outlet uploading the so-called evidence of violence.
United with Israel (UWI) spoke with Yehuda Bazak, a resident of Avigayil, who witnessed the entire incident that was recorded on video last Tuesday.
UWI: Please tell us how you came to witness the events last Tuesday.
Bazak: That morning my wife went off to work and I stayed at home with our baby. I went out with him for a walk because he was fussy. Then I saw in the distance that something was happening.
I go out for walks often, just to experience the desert, to hike. I feel safe going for walks in the hills surrounding Avigayil. My wife and I go for walks with the kids. It is perfectly safe. Avigayil does not have a border fence around it.
I don't go to places where I know there may be danger. About a three-to-four-kilometer circumference around Avigayil is safe for walking. I go into valleys, wander around. Many people do this. So I walked.
What I saw was someone tilling the land. The Arabs know that it is [Israeli] state land. There is no doubt about that.
UWI: Do you know the man who was working the land?
Bazak: Yes, it was Mohammad Hamamdi.
UWI: You mean the Hamamdi from el-Mufaqara who has been featured on anti-Israeli propaganda social media sites over the past few months? There was a huge demonstration after the violence there on Simchat Torah and a big show was made of bringing water to his family. Is that the one?
Bazak: Yes.
UWI: OK. You saw Hamamdi tilling on state land. What happened next?
Bazak: I walked towards him. The Civil Administration inspector had already arrived. The inspector told Hamamdi to leave and he refused, continuing to cultivate the soil. The inspector told him he would take his tractor. When they threatened to take his tractor, Hamamdi said that he would come the next day with a mule and continue to work the land.
Hamamdi kept the argument going, taking his time in order to give his friends a chance to arrive. Within moments we saw fancy jeeps coming up from the desert; a few Europeans came right away, two Israeli Jewish leftists who live in the nearby town of a-Tawani and are present at every incident. [NOTE: UWI has seen videotapes documenting this.]
There were about seven soldiers and a number of police. As the shouting was going on, some Arabs who don't live here came and moved higher up the hill to where our olive trees were. The whole incident involved a lot of shouting and the uprooting of the trees. There was no physical violence at all.
Finally, Hamamdi and his friends left. So far, they have not been back to work the soil in that particular spot.
UWI: Is there anything unique about this incident?
Bazak: Not really. This kind of thing happens all the time. They cultivate a piece of state land when nobody is watching. If undisturbed, they continue. They erect new buildings. If one happens to be taken down, they put it up again. They will come and throw out an old sofa one day, a few dirty old rugs another day, then gradually build a hut, put up a fence, dig a well, and claim another piece of state land.
So, what do I do as a private citizen when all around things are closing in on us? Every day they are building, one building after another. It is faith that keeps me going. I ask myself what I can do that is not against the law?
UWI: What can you do?
Bazak: In Avigayil, we respect private land. We do not build on private land. There was even the question whether our playground was set up on private land, so we moved it to land we knew was not owned by any individual.
On state land, people cannot build or cultivate land wherever they want. You have to get permits to do that. Even shepherds, Jewish and Arab, have leases of specific plots of land where they can let their animals graze.
We are making an attempt to protect the land around us amid the chaos. With that in mind, we try to do things that are not extreme. We come with maps; the maps are not secret. We do things in an attempt to protect state land. If the Arabs try to cultivate state land, we will come and take videos and photos.
The Arabs do not accept the concept of state land. From their perspective, everything is theirs. I feel like we are the sheep and the Arabs are the wolves, preying on every piece of land that there is here.
We planted olive trees on state land next to Avigayil as part of our goal of protecting the land. I see around us that the Arabs have been putting up new structures day after day, and the state does nothing about it. On the other hand, we know that the land where we planted trees is state land, and planting trees does not turn the land into OUR land. It remains state land. If we plant here, then it keeps the Arabs from coming and cultivating the land or building on it.
UWI: What are your relations like with the Arabs of el-Mufaqara?
Bazak: Relations with the Arabs are dynamic and change all the time. The general atmosphere changed dramatically following the violent Simchat Torah incident. But even now, some of the friendships among some Jews in Avigayil and Arabs in el-Mufaqara remain strong.
In fact, when the inspector said he would take the tractor away and store it in a Jewish settlement, Hamamdi asked that it be taken to Avigayil, saying that in Avigayil the people are good.
UWI: What can you tell us about Mohammad Hamamdi?
Bazak: I talk with Hamamdi a lot. He likes to talk. I can talk with him for hours.
He told me that he is a politician. He leads the incitement. I don't know if it started with him or if they found him. An Arab laborer who was working in Avigayil told me that most of the Arabs living in the Avigayil region also have homes in the town of Yatta and they get money for living here. In fact, I have a tape of Hamamdi saying that he is there because he gets money for being there.
Video Player00:0000:10
In the video, we can hear Hamamdi say: "Don't worry, someone pays me for this." Bazak says he knows that his leftist friends pay for this. And Hamamdi repeats that he is getting paid. Hamamdi agrees. Then Bazak repeats what was said: "Here we have it. Hamamdi clearly says that there is someone who is paying for this."
UWI: What is it like for you living here?
Bazak: I am happy here. Personally, I do not get involved in politics and I have no social media. I live a private life and a life of faith.
Avigayil is still not officially recognized, but the state was involved in the establishment of our community because it is interested in preventing the takeover of land by the Arabs. The story is complicated, however, when we get the message continually that the government does not care about us, allowing the Arabs to do what they would never let the Jews do.
The army does not seem to act from a sense that this is our land, and we need to protect it. When there is an incident, they come to quiet things down again.
We try to operate delicately, obeying the law and, most of all, living the faith that this is where we are supposed to be.
Welcome to Devon Island, the largest island on Earth with a permanent population of 0.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Source: Wikipedia; Devon Island.
Located in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, North of Baffin Island, Devon Island (also known in the Inuktitut language as Tallurutit) is a tundral desert island with absolutely no long-term residents.
It has a land area of 55,247 km^2 (21,331 sq mi), and is comparable in size to Croatia. It is also the sixth-largest island in Canada, and the 27th-largest island in the world.
And again, not a single person currently calls Devon Island home.
And for good reason: Honestly… There is not much to see there.
For the most part, Devon is just a barren, icy and rocky island with little of interest to most visitors.
Its only major landmarks are the Devon Ice Cap, its highest point, the Haughton impact crater, created by a 2 km-wide meteorite impact over 39 million years ago, and the Truelove Lowlands (pictured below), which has a favorable microclimate to support most of the island's vegetation and animal life.
The only fauna of note are a small population of muskox, and a variety of migratory birds and other small Arctic mammals like foxes and rabbits, and these are almost entirely concentrated along the coasts and the Truelove Lowlands.
Not even the hardy polar bear is seen on Devon Island.
Now, notice how I didn't say the island was "completely uninhabited", as there is a temporary population on the island that fluctuates over the course of the year.
This is because of two research stations located on the island.
Firstly, the Devon Island Research Station, established in 1960, is a scientific research facility specializing in biological and meteorological research, and is maintained year-round by the Arctic Institute of North America, with facilities for up to 20 researchers.
And secondly, because of the islands' barren, slightly hilly terrain and arctic desert climate, Devon Island has been compared to the landscape of the planet Mars. As such, considered an ideal location to test technologies to be used in the eventual human settlement and colonization of Mars.
This has led to the establishment of a simulated Mars habitat, the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS), on the island, which is staffed on a semi-regular basis for short-term research assignments.
However, with the exception of this small, temporary population of human scientists, Devon Island is considered to be the world's largest "permanently uninhabited" island.
20 years before the Holocaust, pogroms killed 100,000 Jews – then were forgotten
'In the Midst of Civilized Europe' by Jeffrey Veidlinger revisits the brutal violence in 1918-1921 that portended a genocide of Europe's Jews, and was soon overshadowed by it
British Jews marching in protest of the 1918-1921 pogroms. (Courtesy of Jeffrey Veidlinger)
In the early 1920s, thousands of Jewish child refugees flooded into Moscow from Ukraine, fleeing a terrifying series of pogroms. Legendary Jewish artist Marc Chagall remembered giving art lessons to some of the refugees at a Jewish orphanage outside the Soviet capital. He recalled the horrifying atrocities they spoke about — their parents murdered, their sisters raped and slain, and the children themselves chased out in the cold, threadbare and starving.
Unlike the Holocaust, this earlier wave of antisemitic violence has largely been forgotten by history. Yet at the time, it was front-page news. From 1918 to 1921, more than 1,100 pogroms killed over 100,000 Jews in an area that is part of present-day Ukraine. Such large-scale violence led to fears that six million Jewish lives across Europe were at risk from antisemitic hate. Those who made such dire predictions included writer Anatole France; less than 20 years later, these fears were realized.
"I think right now they're not very well-known at all, mostly because they've been so surpassed by the Holocaust," Veidlinger told The Times of Israel in a phone interview. "In the interwar period, they were very well-known. In some ways, it seems like it was all anybody was writing about then."
Rooted in a previous linguistic research project with elderly Yiddish-speaking Jews in Ukraine who told Veidlinger about surviving the pogroms, the book takes readers back to this disturbing moment in history during the Russian Civil War.
"It's terrifying and horrifying," Veidlinger said. "It takes a toll on you to write [down] that testimony. I'm sure it takes a toll on the reader… It was difficult for me to hear, and probably difficult for them to tell."
The title phrase comes from France's fears for the future of European Jewry. The French poet and journalist noted that some of the pogroms occurred at the same time as the peace talks at Versailles tasked with ending World War I. One was perhaps the largest single mass murder of Jews in modern history up to that point — the pogrom of Proskuriv on February 14, 1919, with 911 listed deaths, which Veidlinger estimates is one-third of the actual total.
"I think it was almost genocidal," Veidlinger said of the Proskuriv pogrom. "It shows how the violence escalated during the very short period of time between November 1918 to February 1919."
The Arctic is a frozen ocean surrounded by landmasses, while the Antarctic is a frozen landmass surrounded by ocean.
The North Pole is typically warmer than the South Pole, with temperatures around -40°C during winter in the North while temperatures reach around -60°C in the South during winter on average.
Main reason as to why the Antarctic is colder is that it's a landmass of pure ice while the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land, while the waters of the Arctic are certainly incredibly cold, it's still warmer than the ice which warms up the air a bit, but the ice sheet of Antarctica is thousands of meters thick and has a high altitude, hence why its colder.
Another difference between the two is it's life forms, the Arctic contains polar bears, walruses, reindeers, snowy owls, foxes, etc, while the Antarctic contains penguins, leopard seals, petrels, etc.
Both are though, wonderful and fascinating places.
