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May 2016

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ISRAEL’S PROWESS IN MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY AND DEVICES : BRIAN GORMLEY

By on May 24th, 2016

“Israel is known for its medical-device prowess, producing companies such as OrbiMed-backed Given Imaging Ltd., which went public in 2001 and merged with Covidien Ltd. in 2014. With support from the Israeli government, Israel’s biotechnology market is also expanding, said Erez Chimovits, a senior managing director at OrbiMed.”
OrbiMed Closes Second Israel Venture Fund at $307M

OrbiMed Advisors, which sold Israeli holding cCAM Biotherapeutics to Merck & Co. last year, has raised $307 million for its second Israel-focused health-care fund.

New York-based OrbiMed invests in a series of funds with a goal of providing various types of capital to companies globally. Its funds include a global venture fund, which closed at $975 million last year, and vehicles devoted to Asia, Israel, and royalty and credit opportunities. OrbiMed held a final closing on its $222 million first Israel fund in 2012.

The firm set out last year to raise a similar amount for OrbiMed Israel Partners II LP, according to Managing Director Anat Naschitz. Strong interest in the fund from unidentified health-care companies, family offices and other investors led the firm to take more.

A bigger fund helps OrbiMed carry portfolio companies further and improves its ability to participate in large financings of later-stage companies, according to Ms. Naschitz. The firm expects to back about 20 companies from this fund, making early- to later-stage investments in drug, diagnostic, medical-device and digital-health businesses. Holdings in the new fund include LogicBio Therapeutics Inc., a gene-therapy company.

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Netanyahu Against the Generals A case pits Israel’s faith in democracy against the views of its military brass. Bret Stephens

By on May 24th, 2016

In 2012 a former New York Times reporter named Patrick Tyler published an invidious book called “Fortress Israel,” the point of which was that the Jewish state is a modern-day Sparta whose “sabra military elite” is addicted to war.

“Six decades after its founding,” Mr. Tyler wrote, Israel “remains in thrall to an original martial impulse, the depth of which has given rise to succeeding generations of leaders who are stunted in their capacity to wield or sustain diplomacy as a rival to military strategy.” Worse, these leaders do this “reflexively and instinctively, in order to perpetuate a system of governance where national policy is dominated by the military.”

Israel’s reflexive militarists are at it again, though probably not as Mr. Tyler imagined. Last week, Moshe Ya’alon, a former army chief of staff and a member of the ruling Likud party, resigned as defense minister following ructions regarding the appropriate role of the military in political life. In his place, the prime minister intends to appoint Avigdor Lieberman, a right-wing political brawler whose military career never went higher than corporal rank.

The spat between the prime minister and Mr. Ya’alon began in late March, after an Israeli soldier named Elor Azariah shot and killed a Palestinian man who was lying wounded and motionless on the ground after trying to stab another soldier. Sgt. Azariah is now standing trial for manslaughter and faces up to 20 years in prison. Video of the killing suggests the wounded Palestinian was no threat to the soldiers when the sergeant put a bullet in his head.

The killing has been emphatically—and rightly—condemned by Israel’s military brass. But Israelis also have little sympathy for Palestinians trying to stick knives into their sons and daughters, and Messrs. Netanyahu and Lieberman have offered expressions of support for Sgt. Azariah and his family, to the applause of the Israeli right and the infuriation of senior generals. As often as not in Israel, military leaders and security officials are to the left of the public and their civilian leadership.

If that were the end of the story, you might have a morality tale about Mr. Netanyahu’s political instincts. Or you might have a story about the high ethical standards to which Israel holds itself. What you don’t have is anything resembling a mindlessly belligerent “sabra military elite” that wants to kill helpless (though not innocent) Palestinians to protect its own.

But that isn’t the end of the story. At a ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this month, Yair Golan, Israel’s deputy chief of staff, compared trends in Israeli society to Germany in the 1930s. When Mr. Netanyahu rebuked him—correctly—for defaming Israel and cheapening the memory of the Holocaust, Mr. Ya’alon leapt to the general’s defense and told officers that they should feel free to speak their minds in public. Hence his ouster. CONTINUE AT SITE

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America’s Vietnam Pivot Uneasy about Beijing, Hanoi is eager for more democratic allies.

By on May 24th, 2016

Barack Obama announced the lifting of the U.S. arms embargo on Vietnam on his visit to Hanoi on Monday, marking an important milestone in America’s rapprochement with its old adversary and its broader pivot to Asia. The decision also sends an unmistakable signal to Beijing’s leaders that their efforts to bully its neighbors have backfired.

Hanoi has reason to be deeply uneasy about Chinese intentions. Beijing has reclaimed land on disputed rocks in the South China Sea and created military bases that threaten its neighbors’ claims. In 2014 it placed a deep-sea oil exploration rig within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone, leading to a maritime standoff between the two navies.

Vietnam’s top leader, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, visited the White House in July and called the U.S. a force for regional stability. His concerns over militarization of the South China Sea and freedom of navigation refute Beijing’s claims that the U.S. is stirring trouble in the region.

Vietnam’s military, while dwarfed by China’s, is still the most formidable in Southeast Asia. It garrisons 23 of the shoals in the disputed Spratly Islands, as compared to China’s seven, and can offer the U.S. and its allies access to the deep-water naval base at Cam Ranh Bay. But first both sides have to prove that this relationship will be stable and lasting.

Washington has already allowed the sale of arms related to maritime security, including six Defiant 75 fast-response boats for Vietnam’s coast guard. But Hanoi wants to reduce its reliance on Russia for advanced weaponry and forge closer military ties with the U.S. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Sex, Bill Clinton and Trump In the 1990s, Bill Clinton taught us that only bluenoses worry about a pol’s treatment of women.By William McGurn

By on May 24th, 2016

Those of a certain age will recall the 1990s, the good old days when James Carville warned America that only “an abusive, privacy-invading, sex-obsessed” hypocrite could even think a president’s personal behavior toward women had anything to say about his fitness for public office.

Today it seems like ancient history, now that Donald Trump’s treatment of women has become a political issue. True enough, there was a day when Americans would have blanched at the thought of a candidate bragging about his adultery or using a presidential debate to boast about his genitalia. But in the 1990s we learned that only bluenoses care about these things.

We had it from no less than the Big Dawg himself. On Aug. 17, 1998, just hours after a grand jury session in which he’d tussled with prosecutors asking about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, he delivered a defiant, nationally televised address admitting his earlier denials had been misleading. Still, he insisted, whatever he had done with that young intern was between him and his family.

“It’s nobody’s business but ours,” he said. “Even presidents have private lives. It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life.”

Even perjury didn’t matter in this case, because, as New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler put it, it was “perjury regarding sex.” All that mattered was that Mr. Clinton was good at his day job.

The American people seemed to agree, with a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll on the eve of the House vote to impeach showing only a third of the public in support.

Here’s the kicker: Donald Trump was on the Bill Clinton side of the argument.

For Mr. Trump, this was all much ado about Monica. Mr. Clinton’s mistake, he said, was that he’d lied about the sex instead of sticking with the argument it was irrelevant. In a September 1998 New York Times forum that ran under the headline “Can Clinton Find the Road Back?” Mr. Trump gave this advice:

“Accept complete responsibility for personal failures, be lucky enough to have enemies with their own shortcomings, and hold steadfast to your political agenda. After the initial shock is past, the American people are less interested in sexual transgressions than they are in public achievements.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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The NYTimes Platform for Anti-Netanyahu Opponents : Yisrael Medad

By on May 24th, 2016

Ronen Bergman of Yedioth Ahronot, not a paper favorably disposed to Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, was provided a platform of op-ed space to comment on recent political and military developments in Israel. In his May 21 piece, entitled “Israel’s Army Goes to War with Its Politicians”, a theme most Americans would presume to be a non-democratic step, Bergman justifies the situation by painting Netanyahu and friends as basically the facsists in the matter.

I am not going to fisk the entire article and for most of you who read my blogs, you can easily figure out most of it yourselves. Let me zero in on one example.

Here’s what Bergman wrote:

IN most countries, the political class supervises the defense establishment and restrains its leaders from violating human rights or pursuing dangerous, aggressive policies. In Israel, the opposite is happening. Here, politicians blatantly trample the state’s values and laws and seek belligerent solutions, while the chiefs of the Israel Defense Forces and the heads of the intelligence agencies try to calm and restrain them.

None of this happened.

In fact, the opposite. It was the army brass, headed by the Minister of Defense, who were trampling values and laws and stirring up passions.

Minister Ya’alon and Commander in Chief Gadi Eizenkot illegally prejudged any in-house military investigation and trial in their public declarations. Deputy IDF Commander Yair Golan factually erred in the content of his speech and blatantly lied when he explained he didn’t say what he most certainly did say.

I am not even going to point out that, for the most part, Ya’alon has not been that successful in protecting Israel’s security – and I do not receive Netanyahu of his shared responsibility for this. But the subject is does the IDF have to interfere in the running of the civilian affairs of the country.

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Madeleine Albright as Commencement Speaker: Not at All Bright : Julia Gorin

By on May 24th, 2016

Dear Editor:

It seems everyone has missed the actual problem with Madeleine Albright as commencement speaker, including Meghan Daum (“Scripps College’s baffling crusade for simple thinking,” May 12), and Rosanna Xia (“War criminal or role model?” May 9). While both articles shrugged at Albright’s record, and student objections took on standard PC tones, the reason Albright is no role model goes even deeper down the rabbit hold than war criminality.

Let’s recall that, more than anyone else, Albright pushed for a universal military attack against Yugoslavia, such that it was dubbed “Maddie’s War” (remember her in full combat regalia on the cover of TIME). But it’s the spoils of war that make Albright particularly contemptible. Few know that her firm, Albright Capital Management, had aggressively bid for — and was shortlisted to win — privatization of Kosovo’s state telecom company (which wouldn’t be up for grabs without her war to wrest Kosovo from Serbia in the first place). It was only eventually, after being advised how icky it looked, that she bowed out of this grubby profiteering.

Three months earlier, there was a bizarre and telling incident in the Czech Republic. In late October 2012, Albright was signing books at a Prague bookstore when she was confronted by some Czech anti-war activists holding photos of the devastation she visited upon Yugoslavian civilians and their infrastructure — targets unprecedented in the history of traditional warfare. “Get out!” she screamed repeatedly, and followed up with, “Disgusting Serbs.” The video is still available on YouTube.

Is it proper statecraft, when taking one’s country to war in an outside ethno-territorial conflict, for a high official to harbor hatred and perhaps even a vendetta against one of the sides?

Indeed, Albright’s having achieved being the first female secretary of State is regarded as a virtue in and of itself. Rarely is it considered that this ‘accomplishment’ — facilitated by a nod from Hillary to husband Bill — could be an eternal disgrace to womankind. Hillary voters, take note.

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VA Secretary Compares Veterans’ Waits for Care to Ride Waits at Disney (!!!???) by Morgan Chalfant

By on May 23rd, 2016

The top official at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs indicated that the agency should not use the time that veterans wait for medical care as a metric of success because Disney does not measure wait times for theme park rides.

The Washington Examiner first reported that VA Secretary Robert McDonald made the comments during a breakfast meeting with journalists on Monday, more than two years after the agency faced national scrutiny when staffers were found concealing veterans’ wait times using secret lists.VA Secretary Likens Veterans’ Waits to Ride Waits at Disney

“When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or what’s important? What’s important is, what’s your satisfaction with the experience?” McDonald said during the Christian Science Monitor event on Monday. “And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure.”

McDonald was tapped by President Obama to lead the agency after Eric Shinseki resigned from his post as VA secretary following the wait list scandal in 2014. Dozens of veterans are believed to have died waiting for care at the Phoenix VA hospital system, from where the secret wait lists first emerged.VA Secretary Likens Veterans’ Waits to Ride Waits at Disney

Wait times at the VA have endured renewed scrutiny after reports have shown persisting problems at agency hospitals despite efforts to improve veterans’ care. A Government Accountability Office report released last month found that the VA lacks sufficient oversight to ensure that veterans receive timely care.

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Iran Threatens to Destroy Israel in ‘Less Than Eight Minutes’ Supreme leader tells U.S. to stop crying over missile tests By: Adam Kredo

By on May 23rd, 2016

A top Iranian commander has claimed that the Islamic Republic had the ability to destroy Israel “in less than eight minutes,” according to comments offered on the same day that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared that Iran would continue to build its ballistic missile arsenal in defiance of U.S. demands.

“If the Supreme Leader’s orders [are] to be executed, with the abilities and the equipment at our disposal, we will raze the Zionist regime in less than eight minutes,” Ahmad Karimpour, a senior adviser to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp’s al-Quds Force, was quoted as stating, according to regional reports.

The threat comes as Khamenei declared in a speech Monday that U.S. “cries” over Iran’s ballistic missile program will not alter the regime’s behavior.

“They [the U.S.] have engaged in a lot of hue and cry over Iran’s missile capabilities, but they should know that this ballyhoo does not have any influence and they cannot do a damn thing,” Khamenei was quoted as saying during a speech Monday in Tehran, according to Iran’s state-controlled media.

“Jihad still exists,” Khamenei added “Great Jihad means not abiding by the enemy whom we are fighting; not abiding by enemy in economy, politics, culture and art is the great Jihad.”

The Supreme Leader said the United States is the source of all hostility in the region.

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“TROUBLE IN THE TRIBE” BY DOV WAXMAN- A REVIEW BY DAVID ISAAC

By on May 23rd, 2016

Dov Waxman, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, says he has written Trouble in the Tribe to investigate the “internecine battle” waged over Israel in the American Jewish community. What emerges instead is an apologia for radical anti-Israel Jewish organizations and a distorted image of organized American Jewry as intolerant, elitist, and intent on silencing those who dare criticize Israel.

The author’s failure to level with the reader is clear by the second chapter. It’s here that Waxman introduces us to his first example of how a dissenting group was “denounced” and “shunned” by organized American Jewry. That group was Breira, an organization established in 1973 following the Yom Kippur War. Breira means “alternative” in Hebrew, and the alternative it offered was a PLO-run state in the West Bank and Gaza. In Waxman’s telling, the group came from “the heart of the Jewish community” but was smeared by right-wing organizations after it came to light that two of Breira’s members had met with Palestinians with close ties to the PLO (in Israel meeting with the PLO was then illegal).

The trouble with Waxman’s narrative is that neither Breira’s position nor its members’ PLO meet-and-greet was the issue. What did Breira in was not dissent, but flying under a false flag. What was exposed, through a monograph put out by Americans for a Safe Israel—Waxman incorrectly names it American Friends for a Safe Israel—was who was in Breira’s leadership. The group’s first two paid staff members came from CONAME, as did 19 other members of Breira, many of whom held positions on its executive and advisory committees. CONAME originated as a front group for the Socialist Workers Party, and was described by Time as one of the Arab or pro-Arab organizations working in the United States. The group specialized in bringing anti-Israel speakers like Israel Shahak (who called the whole idea of a Jewish state “unjust and absurd”) to American campuses. During the 1973 war, it had joined with Arab and pro-Arab organizations in sending telegrams to Congress urging “no arms to Israel.” When this was exposed, the group claimed lamely that its name had been used without its consent.

Breira had roped in a number of high-profile Jews who took at face value Breira’s claim to be pro-Israel. When they realized they had been duped, some—including Harvard sociology professor Nathan Glazer, scholar of Judaism Jacob Neusner, and Rabbi Robert Gordis, editor of Judaism—jumped ship. Internal dissent doomed the organization. None of this you would learn from Waxman.

The groups that followed Breira fared better, Waxman says, undercutting his own argument that such groups are ostracized. He mentions the New Jewish Agenda (like Breira, long deceased) and the New Israel Fund, which Waxman describes as a “human rights organization.” He mentions in passing that it funds Adalah, but doesn’t say what Adalah is—an Arab-run legal center that rejects the legitimacy of the Jewish state. In other words, the New Israel Fund is pulling a Breira: It pays lip service to Zionism, saying it wants Jews to achieve “self-determination in their homeland,” but it supports groups that do not. Which is not Zionism. It is talking out of both sides of your mouth.

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Political malaise and false escape fantasies by Ruthie Blum

By on May 23rd, 2016

If I had a shekel for every threat I’ve heard from disgruntled citizens to “leave the country” if a certain politician rises to power or a particular policy is implemented, I’d be rich.

Having just returned from a trip to the United States, where Trump-o-mania has some people in a frenzy over the possibility that the real estate mogul might win the presidential election in November, I thought I could escape some of this type of hysteria by returning home to Israel, where such hyperbole is so commonplace that it is barely noticeable.

But there is no rest for the weary, as I would discover on the day of my flight to Tel Aviv, when the announcement was made that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had entered into a coalition deal with former foreign minister and nemesis, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman.

That this deal entailed the replacement of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon was of no source of concern to me. Though Ya’alon has an illustrious history and a reputation for being both a serious military man and levelheaded think-tank member, I gave up on him when he started preaching morality to Israeli society. At a time when both radical Islamists and Western professors, as well as huge swaths of the British Labour Party, are waging a frontal assault on the Jewish state, accusing it of atrocities it does not commit, the last thing Israel needs is a cabinet member adding fuel to the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic fire.

I therefore say goodbye to Ya’alon without a heavy heart. Though Lieberman leaves much to be desired, at least he believes in meting out the death penalty to terrorists. Nor is he even as “right-wing” as his detractors claim. Like the positions of Trump, Lieberman’s are often indistinguishable from those of his left-wing counterparts. It’s the “take no prisoners” rhetoric and associations with dubious characters that make both men controversial.

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