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Adam Abrams

Vice President Mike Pence is using his trip to the Middle East this week as an opportuni-ty to tout the Trump administration’s recent policy changes on Jerusalem.
Prof. Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of the NGO Monitor watchdog group, told JNS that the government’s move signals that Israel “won’t turn a blind eye to those who work to delegitimize it, but the downside is that it also serves to raise the profiles of these groups.”
At the start of 2018, a purportedly emboldened Israeli right initiated political measures that seemingly enhance Israel’s sovereignty in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. While the mainstream press, led by The New York Times, branded the moves as “annexation” and “apartheid,” legal expert Avi Bell told JNS that the Israeli initiatives are almost entirely symbolic and have “no meaningful legal consequences.”
Although experts believe it is too soon to tell how the renewed anti-regime protests in Iran will affect Israel, Meir Litvak, director of the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that if the demonstrations continue to grow, Iran might be forced to divert attention and resources from fighting the Jewish state to domestic affairs.
Last week’s inauguration of the Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT)—the first Israeli university campus in China—represents a fusion of the Jewish state’s innovation with the Asian giant’s abundant resources and comes amid developing ties between the two nations.
As digital currencies like bitcoin make historic gains and as the “start-up nation” of Israel emerges as a key player in the blockchain field, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become one of the first world leaders to weigh in on the cryptocurrency phenomenon, placing the country at the center of the global financial technology revolution.