Now the larger news outlets have had time to think about this and get the opinion of greater legal minds than this humble blogger.

And the answer seems to be, it is a victory, but only if you didn’t know anything about international law and the specifics of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions.

Well I’d say that’s just about everyone on earth and doubly so for everyone who is deluded by BDS campaign lies!

As Alan Baker is quoted in the Times of Israel:

“I don’t know if you can call it a big victory or a small victory or a victory at all: it’s just confirmation of what Israel has been saying all the time, that there’s nothing inherently illegal about the fact that it’s administering the territory,” Baker told The Times of Israel. “This in itself is something that goes against a lot of the statements coming out of the Palestinians, who say that the occupation itself is an illegal occupation.”

A former Israeli ambassador to Canada, Baker is the co-author of the controversial Levy report, which asserts that the settlements are legal under international law and that Israel’s actions in the West Bank should thus not be considered an occupation.

“Why should I be surprised?” he asked, referring to the Versailles ruling. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else from a French court or any other court.”

As we’ve seen in the long running back and forth of the Karsenty trial concerning the Pallywood fraud around Mohammad Al Durah, justice in France can’t be assumed completely free of political bias.

So I’ll stand by my original pronouncement for now: whatever the technical details it is very helpful when a French court of good standing says, effectively, carry on everything is legal. We’re talking about the court of public opinion here, not just the hallowed halls of international legal conferences.

Companies can continue to build useful infrastructure for Jews and Arabs and the task of making Jerusalem a better city for everyone can continue. And the PA are caught in a barefaced lie so large they ran with it and embellished it all the way to a defeat at the hands of a French court!

And this is France remember, nobody is routinely saying some mythical “Jewish/ Zionist Lobby” in France is running the show (as they seem to be saying of the USA in Finland right now).

As to one point mentioned in the Times of Israel: the ruling says nothing much on the legality of settlements in the territory liberated from illegal Jordanian occupation. That is correct: so many of the so called settlers were just returning to areas they’d been thrown out of when Jordan invaded as Yisrael Medad says in a comment on the Times piece:

As regards Jewish communities, the whole point left-wingers and Arabs ignore, from a legal perspective, is that historically “settlements” already existed before 1967, well, prior to 1948, at which time it was the Arabs who commited crimes of ethnic cleansing and expelling Jews from Gaza, Shchem(Nablus), Jenin, Hebron, Gush Etzion, Neveh Yaakov, Bet HaAravah, Atarot and Jerusalem’s Old City and environs like Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood. Jews have not been “transferred in”; they were expelled and are returning to their former resisdential locations as part of the indigenous Jewish population over the past centuries.

So there. And for another opinion here is Eliyahu m’Tsiyon of Emet m’Tsiyon:

The author of the article, Raphael Ahren, fails to bring out that the Levy Report which Alan Baker was coauthor of states that Judea and Samaria are not occupied.

Frances Raday misses that point too and then speaks foolishly about the length of time of time of an occupation rendering it “illegal.” Actually, if it weren’t Israel involved, your “int’l legal experts” would  argue that the length of time that Israel has held Judea-Samaria dissolve the “occupation.”

That is, that the longer time passes, the less the area can be called occupied. Ahren is also rather thick on Geneva IV:49. As an article or report, Ahren’s work is poor, leaving out significant facts as well as the actual positions of those whom he interviewed.

And if you’re in the mood for 45 mins of legal explanation, here are a few truths about the legalities of Israel and the liberated territories that many could do with listening to and internalising.

SodaStream — the Israel-based industry leader, which began sales in the United States in 2009 — reported that annual sales worldwide rose to $436.3 million in 2012, from $289 million in 2011. According to Yonah Lloyd, president of SodaStream International, the company sold about 3.5 million machines last year. Because of its nimble approach to manufacturing, SodaStream landed on Fast Company magazine’s “World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies” list for 2013, alongside Apple and Google. (The company has also attracted unwanted attention, including a boycott, because some of its plants are in the West Bank.)

Tell me again, what does BDS achieve?

I am a Zionist

I am a Zionist. I grew up a Zionist and I think its safe to assume that I will die a Zionist – hopefully later rather than sooner. Zionism means different things to different people, For me, Zionism meant I felt that not only was it a good idea to have a Jewish homeland, but that I should really put my money where my mouth is and actually live in it. And thats what I’ve done for the last 21 years. I made Aliyah, I served my 1 year in the IDF and then I went to work. For years I worked for a string of Israeli startups selling high-tech products across multiple continents.

Well this week is the official Buy Israel Week and was brought to my attention by the good folks at Dan Hotels who are one of the key sponsors.

So whatever you’re looking for, make a BDS Jew Hater mad with anger and buy something Israel or come visit and show your support.

After all his crocodile apologies, it’s clear the guy now hates us Jews even more. He’s trying to find some way to express his anger, frustration and, yes, antisemitic Jew hatred and he’s fallen back on the safe favourite of BDS. You know what we think about BDS here at Israellycool. Until they start BDS’ing real abusers of human rights or at least paying some attention to them, their targeting of Israel alone renders their entire moral fabric as suspect.

So - question is - how do we seriously raise issue of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel? Are these words acceptable to all?

— David Ward (@DavidWardMP) February 6, 2013

So – question is – how do we seriously raise issue of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel? Are these words acceptable to all?

Turns out that when I clear my history and search on google.co.uk only the second of the first six results relates to our Jew hating, anti-Israel friends. That’s nice.

bds – Google Search on google.co.uk

So BDS is not a particularly highly regarded term even in the UK, one of the hotbeds of this particular strain of modern Jew hatred.

Carlsbad power station site in the San Diego area

Israelis to design San Diego-area desalination plant

IDE Americas Inc., a subsidiary of Israel’s IDE Technologies Ltd, to design project – the largest of its kind in western hemisphere

The Israeli desalination giant that is already responsible for the brunt of Israel’s salty-to-fresh water transformation is now taking on San Diego, in the biggest desalination project to hit the western hemisphere.

IDE Americas Inc., a subsidiary of Israel’s IDE Technologies Ltd, will be designing a 204,412-cubic-meter seawater desalination plant for the San Diego region, the company announced on Sunday. The $922 million plan, called Carlsbad Desalination Project, is being administered by Poseidon Resources (Channelside) LP, a subsidiary of Poseidon Water LLC, and will be carried out in partnership with the San Diego County Water Authority.

Kiewit Shea Desalination, a joint venture between subsidiaries of companies Kiewit Corp. and J.F. Shea Construction Inc., will be providing the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the facility as well as the 10-mile (16- km.) pipeline required to deliver the treated water per day produced there, according to Poseidon Resources. Meanwhile, IDE Americas Inc. will design the processing plant, and will also be responsible for operation and maintenance (O&M) of the plant under a 30- year contract.

For the design contract, IDE will be receiving $150m., while the O&M agreement will bring the company $500m. Construction of the plant will begin this year and is slated to begin bringing high-quality drinking water to the San Diego area by 2016, a statement from IDE Technologies said. The hope is that the new desalination plant will help San Diego County Water Authority alleviate its water shortage and achieve its goal of supplying 7 percent of the region’s water through desalination by 2020 – “creating a new map of the American water market,” the statement added.

“The Carlsbad Desalination Project is a significant milestone for us, California and the US at large, as we believe it will set the stage for the future of desalination in America,” said Avshalom Felber, CEO of IDE Technologies Ltd. “For decades, we’ve successfully completed similar projects in countries all over the world, and we’re excited to be a part of what will be the largest desalination plant in the US.”

Israel saving the planet, one drop at a time.

h/t: San Francisco Voice for Israel

Depeche Mode announce 2013 Stadium Tour

Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher will play 34 must-see shows in 25 European countries to an audience of more than 1.5 million fans, before taking the tour to North America. The tour kicks off with an open-air stadium show in Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park on Tuesday May 7th.

Oh yeah, they also started their previous one in Israel as well.

The BDS’ers can enjoy the silence of DM not giving a f**k about them.

The Palestinian West Bank government on Sunday said it was ending restrictions limiting the number of traders who can import Israeli goods into the territory, in a bid to reduce spiralling prices.

“The system of exclusive agencies and exclusive distributors for goods and products manufactured in Israel or foreign goods imported through an Israeli agent is cancelled,” economy minister Jawad Naji told a news conference.

“We will allow all interested traders to buy directly from the Israeli market without an intermediary, in compliance with the laws and mechanisms of the Palestinian Authority,” he said in Ramallah.

I’ve taken the liberty to translate the following article featured in “Calcalist”:

Samsung Ramat Gan:

Most smartphones equipment manufacturers in the world, and most tablet makers, are using developments of Samsung’s R & D center in Israel, according to Amit Baruch, director of Samsung’s Israeli Center in the heart of Ramat Gan, who is particularly proud of the contribution of the R & D center to the South Korean camera. “The new Galaxy 3 device’s rear camera and image processing technology are ours, and we will be partners for the development of future generations of the Galaxy.”

The Center, which wasn’t anxious to be exposed to this day, preferring to operate under the radar of the media’s coverage, is exposed now on the occasion of the arrival of the President of Samsung Semiconductor, Dr. Nam Sung (Steven) Woo, to appear before the plenum and high-tech conference next week in Haifa and Jerusalem. Additionally, he will visit the center of R & D and meet with the development teams and start-ups in Israel.

“We have tremendous respect in South Korea. We are the only development center of the company abroad,” says Baruch. The development center is functioning as an active partner in developing all of the company’s mobile phones and generates Samsung global revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

“We have created hundreds of millions of units that were integrated into phones, laptops, digital cameras and tablets of the leading companies in the world,” said Baruch, “It is not trivial for Samsung to let us only develop solutions, but the entire Galaxy’s camera. We are increasing the revenues of Samsung”.

Baruch also reveals that Samsung-Israel are partners for the future development of a camera based on Android operating system. He did not call a spade a spade, but the item is probably the Galaxy S Camera, and is expected have a thickness of about 2 cm, and is designed as a Galaxy device but with an enhanced lens.

Unlike Samsung employees worldwide, who went into gloom after the company lost a case against Apple and was fined 1 billions dollars, the employees of the development center in Israel probably share only successes. “Even though the general atmosphere in the organisation was bitter, we did not feel it here,” says Baruch.

80 patents in the last three years

The development center of the South Korean giant in Israel was established in 2007, after buying the Israeli TransChip, Inc. company for $50 million, which specialized in manufacturing mobile phone cameras. “Our center has grown from 50 employees at its beginning to 200 employees today. 40 out of the 50 employees at TransChip are still working in the company. I believe the phenomenon is very rare  in our field, but the numbers are not what matters to us but mainly the technological capabilities we offer here,” says Baruch. “We are not looking to recruit workers in order to increase the center, but rather as needed and by projects. I believe that in 2013 we will recruit a few dozen more.”

Samsung is currently the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world, and the Galaxy S 3 has become the best selling cell phone of its kind in the last quarter of the year, and in the United States is even topped the iPhone. But Samsung-Israel also has an important role in many other manufacturers. Baruch does not specify the manufacturers names, but according to estimates, include LG, HTC and others that combine the Israeli technology.

So far, Samsung has been idle investments in Israeli companies. Can we expect a change in the trend?

“I believe that by the end of 2013, we will be active on all levels of business process management. Eighteen months ago we started our BPM activities aimed at creating cooperation at three levels: academia, start – up companies and investment in firms.” To focus on this field, the company appointed Ruth Adar as VP business process management. “The mandate that we received from Samsung in the coming year is not to improve current technologies, but to invest in breakthrough technologies,” says Baruch.

Do you seek academic cooperation similar to what Intel is doing, like setting up a research center?

“We are looking for partnerships with the academia. I believe that every company needs to connect to the academia in the way that suits them. We prefer to research technologies through direct access to professors, because of the size of our center.”

What do you develop in Israel?

“In Israel, we work in three key areas. First, the development of cameras for mobile devices, laptop computers and vehicles, which is not a very developed field. Second, is image processors that integrate in tablets and advanced mobile phone. The last field in which we operate is to take the Samsung’s integrated circuits and make them into 4GL Application generators. I can compare it to the revolution the MMX processor Intel developed in Israel made. Using our capabilities it is possible to develop computerised vision systems. In the future, a camera with our systems can look at the picture and really understand its content and not just picture it.

A completely different field are patents. During the last three years while working here, we filed about 80 patents in our fields. “

The rest of the article talks about the LG technological center in Herzliya that employs 10 people who search for Israeli companies and technologies for implementation in LG product through licencing agreements.

So remember, next time you see a BDSer using his Galaxy S3 camera, smile to him and say: “Thank you for supporting Israel!”

Smile!