Zionists in Berkeley? You bet!

If 2011 goes down in history as the year we "punched back", then 2012 is well on its way to becoming the year we took a pro-active stand. No longer content to merely respond to hate and delegitimation , the local community is leading the way with positive programming, show-casing our pride in our ancient homeland.

The Berkeley conference "Israel through the High tech Lens conference" was met with 2 very bored protesters while hundreds gathered to learn about the "Start up nation", and to take home lessons regarding Israel's culture of innovation.



This unabashed pride in Israel is being seen all over Berkeley, from the streets to the synagogues. Check out the latest offering from Berkeley Hadassah




And, in a gesture than cant help but rub salt into the wounds of the BDS'ers, check out the raffle prizes!


And, in the category of "How's that Boycott coming, btw?" , a quick glance at the local Costco shows the answer is "epic fail"

(Why, yes! That's Israeli cheese!Thank you for asking.)

Even the local Safeway is stocked with israeli goods


Shows that in the belly of the beast, progressive liberal Berkeley, merchants ignore BDS in favor of good old supply and demand.

From Hussein Ibish: "The bottom line is this: if you can't get divestment through UC Berkeley, you're done." Lets take it a step further. If the Zionists in Berkeley of all places are unified and are fighting back, BDS is going down for the final time.

Presenting Israel through the High Tech lens

From Hussein Ibish : “The bottom line is this: if you can’t get divestment through UC Berkeley, you’re done.”

Oh, Yes.

Presenting Israel through the High tech Lens- an International Conference to be held at UC Berkeley Feb 1 and 2, 2012

The two-day interdisciplinary conference will bring together business leaders, scholars and policy makers from Israel and from the US to discuss business, legal, economic and social aspects of the Israeli High-Tech world.

The conference will have over 35 speakers and 10 diverse sessions addressing a range of topics including: models of tech-sector investment, green-tech trends, legal challenges to US-Israel business collaboration, global corporations' involvement in Israel, labor-market diversity, cross-border collaboration in the Middle East, and high-tech entrepreneurship.

The Conference will Focus on Two Key Themes

• Challenges and Opportunities of Local and Global Dynamics in the Israeli Technology Sector.
• Past Experiences, Present Trends and Future Directions - lessons from the past and challenges
for the Israeli technology world in the 21-century.

Speakers include

Kheir Abdel Razek. She's has been serving as Deputy CEO at "Kav Mashve" since April 2011. Kav Mashve ("the Equator") is an Israeli non-profit organization dedicated to promoting equal employment opportunities for Arab university graduates in the Israeli labor market. As Deputy CEO, Kheir is responsible for the organization's strategic marketing activities and cooperation with the business private sector.

Dr. Gilad Almogy brings more than a decade of experience leading global technology organizations. Mr. Almogy is the inventor of over 30 registered US patents and holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology and a BSc in Physics and Mathematics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.

Isaac Applbaum is a Founding General Partner of Opus Capital, an early stage venture capital fund. Previously, Isaac was a Partner and Managing Director for Israel at Lightspeed Venture Partners an early stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California.

Ambassador Ram (Ret) Aviram is an expert in the sphere of cross boundary water interactions. His experience is based on 25 years of multilateral and bilateral diplomacy, while serving in high ranking positions at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs including Chief of Staff of H.E. Shimon Peres, Ambassador to Greece and long term service periods in Europe and Asia

And many many others

Keynote speakers will include:

Dan Senor, co-author, Start-up Nation
David (Dadi) Perlmutter, Executive Vice President, Intel Corporation

Sound interesting? I thought so, too. You can register here.