05-16 TBC NewsWatch | thebereancall.org

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TBC NewsWatch

UN: Israel Top Women’s Rights Violators

UnitedWithIsrael.org, 4/1/16, “UN Names Democratic Israel as Top Violator of Human Rights for Women [Excerpts]: The UN Human Rights Council (CSW) concluded its month-long session in Geneva by condemning Israel five times more than any other of the 192 UN member states.

“At New York’s UN headquarters, 8,100 NGO representatives gathered from all corners of the globe, in addition to government delegates, and watched the weight of the entire world of women’s rights descend on only one country,” Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, wrote in a recent Fox News column.

“On the ground, Palestinian women are murdered and subjugated for the sake of male honor, Saudi women can’t drive, Iranian women are stoned to death for so-called ‘adultery,’ Egyptian women have their genitals mutilated and Sudanese women give birth in prison with their legs shackled for being Christian,” Bayefsky noted. “Isn’t it about time that people stopped calling the UN a harmless international salon or a bad joke?”

The CSW event took place during the same week that Islamic State terrorists struck Brussels in simultaneous suicide bombings that claimed 34 innocent lives and wounded scores of others was striking. “Petrified or already vanquished, no European state voted against this onslaught of UN resolutions against Israel,” Bayefsky wrote.

“Here we are just 70 years after World War II and Europeans believe that they can license this vitriol against the Jewish state – the only democracy on the front lines of an Islamist war against human decency – and the consequences can be contained to the Jews,” Bayefsky declared.

(http://goo.gl/UgcdGn)

Secret Notes in 500-year-old Bible

Discovery.com, 3/18/16, “Secret Notes Hidden in 500-Year-Old Bible” [Excerpts]: A historian in the U.K. has discovered secret notes hidden in the text of England’s first printed Bible.

Recent analysis of the Latin Bible, which was published in 1535 by Henry VIII’s printer, has revealed fascinating English annotations made during the 16th-century Reformation. The Reformation was a period of immense upheaval in England, which saw the Church of England break away from the authority of the Catholic Church in Rome.

The historian brought in Graham Davis, a specialist in 3D x-ray imaging at the university’s School of Dentistry. The experts took two images in long exposure. For one image, a light sheet slid beneath the pages was turned on; for another, it was tuned off. The first image revealed all the annotations, scrambled with the printed text, while the second picture showed only the printed text. Davis wrote a piece of software to “subtract” the second image from the first, revealing a clear picture of the annotations, which are written in English.

Poleg said that the annotations support the idea that the Reformation was a gradual process. “Until recently, it was widely assumed that the Reformation caused a complete break, a Rubicon moment when people stopped being Catholics and accepted Protestantism, rejected saints, and replaced Latin with English,” he explained. “This Bible is a unique witness to a time when the conservative Latin and the reformist English were used together, showing that the Reformation was a slow, complex, and gradual process.”

(http://goo.gl/BSGaJZ)

Abortions Due to Disabilities, Sex, Race Banned

Breitbart.com, 3/25/16, “Indiana Gov. Pence Signs Bill Banning Abortions Due to Disabilities, Sex, Race” [Excerpts]: Gov. Mike Pence (R-IN) signed a bill into law that prohibits abortions because the unborn baby has been diagnosed with a disability such as Down syndrome, or is of a sex or race that is undesirable.

In addition, the measure requires that aborted or miscarried babies be interred or cremated, an issue that challenges the practice of abortion clinics contracting with waste management companies that ultimately burn aborted babies with bio-hazard medical waste.

House Enrolled Act 1337 makes Indiana only the second state to ban abortions because of a diagnosis of a disability. North Dakota also passed a law prohibiting abortions for genetic abnormalities in 2013.

(http://goo.gl/kpN2Pe)