Israel Debates Role of Women In Israeli Society As Prof Channa Maayan Cannot Accept Prize

/

If you think it’s only in Saudi Arabia where men and women can’t mix, you’re wrong. Many Israelis also seek to segregate women from men in an Israel that increasingly turns against secularism and women’s rights.

The New York Times writes in Israelis Facing a Seismic Rift Over Role of Women that professor Channa Maayan confronted the reality of a new Israel when she was recently awarded a prize for her book on hereditary diseases common to Jews.

Respecting the fact that the crowd would be mixed from ultra-orthodox to secular Jews, Channa Maayan wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt. But it was not enough. No one was prepared for the next event — not even us reading this article.

Simply stated, Channa Maayan was not allowed to accept her own prize for scholarship, because in Israel — a country that receives how much foreign aid from America? — she was no longer permitted on stage. Maayan was instructed to have a male colleague accept her prize.

At a time when there is no progress on the Palestinian dispute, Israelis are turning inward and discovering that an issue they had neglected — the place of the ultra-Orthodox Jews — has erupted into a crisis.

And it is centered on women.

Astounding Assault on Privacy Rights by News Corporation

/

Former PM Gordon Brown will shortly announce that he, too, was hacked by Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, with the scandal now broadening to include the Times of London and the Sun. 

A “blagger” working for the Sunday Times posed as Brown six times to gain information from his bank account; also, his lawyers were tricked by a Sunday Times employee into handing over personal legal information. The Sun also obtained records from Brown’s son’s medical file. The Guardian says “the sheer scale of the data assault on Brown is unusual, with evidence of attempts to obtain his legal, financial, tax, medical and police records as well as to listen to his voicemail.”

Read More

Shakira's Barefoot Foundation Commits $400,000 to School in Haiti

/

GivingTracker| Shakira is one of our muses here at Anne of Carversville, a quintessential Smart Sensuality woman: smart, sexy and with heart. A constant activist for the poor and underprivileged, Shakira walks her talk in word and deed.

Shakira was in Haiti on Thursday, celebrating the upcoming renovation of a historic Catholic girls school, severely damaged in the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake. Shakira always gets down with the people. In Haiti, with her song ‘Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) setting the mood, Shakira grooved with students from Port-au-Prince’s Elie Dubois high school.

‘I’m convinced that the key to a dignified future for Haiti is through education,’ said Shakira.

Shakira’s Barefoot Foundation donated an amazing $400,000, matched by the Inter-American Development Bank, to restore the high school. Reconstruction of the nine-classroom, 250-student school will hopefully begin in two months and will take about 14 months to complete.

It is expensive to reconstruct the school because everything must be imported, said project manager Eric Cesal of Architecture for Humanity. As a special gesture, students — many of them still living in tents more than a year after their own earthquake — folded paper cranes in support of students in earthquake and tsunami-ravaged Sendai, Japan.

Read More