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August 2019

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Tlaib and Omar Weren’t Banned for Disagreeing with Israel Their jihad advocacy is far worse than that. Robert Spencer

By on August 19th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274656/tlaib-and-omar-werent-banned-disagreeing-israel-robert-spencer

It is unlikely to come as a surprise to anyone except the most blinkered Leftist ideologue that Ilhan Omar’s response to being banned from entering Israel, along with her fellow antisemitic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, was outstandingly disingenuous. But she knows, when she retails her outrageous falsehoods, that the establishment media will never call her on them or reveal the true depths of her alliance with jihadis and agitation against Israel.

“The irony of the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East making such a decision,” said Omar, “is that it is both an insult to democratic values and a chilling response to a visit by government officials from an allied nation.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to restore some realism and honesty to the discussion, saying: “As a free and vibrant democracy,” he said, “Israel is open to critics and criticism, with one exception: Israeli law prohibits the entry into Israel of those who call for, and work to impose, boycotts on Israel, as do other democracies that prevent the entry of people believed to be damaging to the country.”

There’s the rub. Omar and Tlaib are not just Congresswomen with opinions that are critical of Israel. They are not just spokesmen; they are activists. They are active apologists for the jihad terror networks Hamas and Hizballah. The Washington Examiner reported in May that “Rep. Ilhan Omar appeared to take the side of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Sunday night after terrorists fired hundreds of rockets at civilian targets in Israel this weekend.” Omar tweeted: “How many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends? The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable. Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace.” About Hamas’ genocidal incitement and celebration of the murders of Israeli civilians she was silent. Nor has she ever uttered a murmur of protest against the fact that Hamas is dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel, which, if it ever happened, would result in the deaths of millions of Israelis.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Release the prison surveillance footage By Bobby Harr

By on August 19th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/release_the_prison_surveillance_footage.html

I never thought I’d see the day we all unanimously demand further answers about a dead pedophile. But nobody is buying the conventional explanation for Jeffrey Epstein’s death New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.

Nearly all irregularities in the case have one thing in common, and that is their reliance on another human’s word. We’re getting all of our information by taking the word of the guards, warden, the medical examiner, the prison nurse, and so on.

All of these irregularities require a human to provide us the information we seek — all but one.

The cameras.

If the sleeping guards, falsified documents and abrupt removal from suicide watch weren’t enough, the “malfunctioning camera” in Epstein’s cell during his death sealed the deal. Cameras tell the story without humans. Cameras don’t lie.

It’s a strong likelihood that we will never see what happened on the inside of that jail cell, but it doesn’t end there. Every correctional institution in the country surveils virtually every inch of the place 24/7, especially maximum security facilities like Rikers.

Even if we must accept the “dog ate my homework” excuse for Epstein’s cell footage, we can still likely connect several dots if given access to other surveillance footage from the prison.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

DAVID ISAAC ON OMAR AND TLAIB

By on August 19th, 2019

https://freebeacon.com/

Dems and Jewish Groups pick wrong side on Omar-Tlaib

Should the Netanyahu government have barred “Squad” members and BDS advocates Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering the country? Chattering classes in both countries quickly took sides. Surprising is how quickly major American Jewish organizations—those one would most expect to defend Israel—jumped to condemn its decision, arguing that it should have rolled out the red carpet for the two congresswomen. While their argument is that keeping the women out harms the Jewish State, it is their position that damages Israel and strengthens its enemies.

“A good-faith visit to Israel is the best way to be exposed to its democracy, complexities, and range of views. And so while we absolutely disagree with the pro-BDS positions of Reps. @IlhanMN & @RashidaTlaib, keeping them out is counterproductive,” tweeted ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt on Thursday, echoing a nearly identical tweet sent out less than half an hour earlier by AIPAC, which declared “every member of Congress should be able to visit and experience our democratic ally Israel firsthand.”

The problem is that Omar and Tlaib weren’t visiting Israel. They were visiting a fictitious country called “Palestine,” which Arabs hope will replace Israel. Their itinerary, titled “U.S. Congressional Delegation to Palestine,” was loaded with meet-and-greets with Palestinian Authority officials. The only Israel representative was the group B’Tselem—a radical organization that last made headlines condemning Israel at the U.N. Security Council. Israel’s ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer described the itinerary as a “BDS circus.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump Isn’t the One Dividing Us by Race He hardly mentions it, while his adversaries are obsessed with ‘whiteness’ and ‘white privilege.’ By Heather Mac Donald

By on August 19th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-isnt-the-one-dividing-us-by-race-11566158729

Long before the El Paso massacre, President Trump’s political opponents accused him of sowing “division” with his “racist language.” Mr. Trump “exploits race,” “uses race for his gain,” is engaged in a “racially divisive reprise” of his 2016 campaign, stokes “racial resentments,” and puts “race at the fore,” the New York Times has reported over the past several months.

Yet Mr. Trump rarely uses racial categories in his speech or his tweets. It is the media and Democratic leaders who routinely characterize individuals and groups by race and issue race-based denunciations of large parts of the American polity.

Some examples: “As race dominates the political conversation, 10 white Democratic candidates will take the stage” (the Washington Post); Mr. Trump’s rally audiences are “overwhelmingly white” (multiple sources); your son’s “whiteness is what protects him from not [sic] being shot” by the police ( Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand ); white candidates need to be conscious of “white privilege” (South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg ); “white supremacy manifests itself” in the criminal-justice, immigration and health-care systems ( Sen. Cory Booker ); “ Michael Brown was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri” ( Sen. Elizabeth Warren ); whiteness is “the very core” of Mr. Trump’s power, whereas his “predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness” (Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic).

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

America’s Other ‘Special Relationship’ Remains Worth Preserving By Kevin D. Williamson

By on August 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/america-israel-special-relationship-worth-preserving/

There is no convincing argument that the destabilized Israel sought by the Ilhan Omars and Rashida Tlaibs of the world would serve U.S. interests.

Clifford May tells this story about George Schultz sending off newly confirmed ambassadors as secretary of state: “He would show them a very large globe. And he would spin the globe, and he would say, ‘Show me your country.’ And with great pride, they’d point out Brunei or Equatorial Guinea or some place in Latin America. And he would invariably shake his head and say, ‘No, that’s not your country. Your country is the United States of America. You should never, ever forget that.’”

“America First!” is the slogan of the day, and not only on the right, though populist Democrats generally prefer a slightly different rhetorical formulation. (Barack Obama called for “nation-building here at home” and complained about “free riders” abroad, and even tried to rehabilitate Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism.” To-MAY-to, to-MAH-to.) One might be forgiven for wondering how seriously people take that slogan: Democrats do not act as though, e.g., our immigration policies should be shaped according to the interests of the American people; Republicans’ “America First!” proclamations often end up meaning “Boeing First!” or “Nucor First!” But we all, it is supposed, know which one is our country.

Of course, Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) doesn’t believe that. She has argued in the past that American Jews suffer from divided loyalties vis-à-vis Israel, an ancient anti-Semitic libel that should be obvious enough to Representative Omar, who no doubt is aware that certain knuckle-dragging elements in our national life believe roughly the same thing about Muslims, that they can never really be good citizens and good Muslims both.

Israel is the other special relationship. The original “special relationship,” the one we have with the United Kingdom, has received some attention from President Donald Trump and his administration, partly because Trump believes he sees his watery reflection in the Brexit movement, which is at least a little bit true. (Who, then, is the Nigel Farage of U.S. politics? Steve King, maybe?) But Israel is much more on the political map.

Why?

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

New goal for New York Times: ‘Reframe’ American history, and target Trump, too by Byron York

By on August 18th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/new-goal-for-new-york-times-reframe-american-history-and-target-trump-too

Perhaps when you think of the founding of the United States, you think of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers. Now, the New York Times wants to “reframe” your understanding of the nation’s founding.

In the Times’ view (which it hopes to make the view of millions of Americans), the country was actually founded in 1619, when the first Africans were brought to North America, to Virginia, to be sold as slaves.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of that event, and the Times has created something called the 1619 Project. This is what the paper hopes the project will accomplish: “It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

Another, more concise statement from the Times: “The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history.”

The basic thrust of the 1619 Project is that everything in American history is explained by slavery and race. The message is woven throughout the first publication of the project, an entire edition of the Times magazine. It begins with an overview of race in America — “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.” — written by Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, who on Twitter uses the identity Ida Bae Wells, from the crusading late 19th-early 20th century African American journalist Ida B. Wells.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Roger Kimball: Trump and Tone

By on August 18th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/17/trump-and-tone/

True, the president does not speak or act like other statesmen. But whatever the man has said, he has acted with much greater forcefulness and clarity of purpose than his recent predecessors—with some commendable results.

One of the great difficulties in perfecting technologies like radar and sonar revolves around the problem of distinguishing accurately between noise and the real McCoy. Is that an enemy bomber or missile out there, or is it just a flock of birds?

Donald Trump presents his opponents, and even some of his friends, with a similar problem.  He speaks differently from most other statesmen on the world stage.  He is not beholden to many of the principles of diplomacy (what some cynics like me might be tempted to describe as “nostrums”) that inform the usual script of diplomatic relations. What part of his behavior is noise? What part is the vital signal?

Trump was elected primarily because of what he said about three things: immigration, trade, and international relations. He wanted to check the flow of illegal immigration, revise America’s trade deals with other nations (and with itself by addressing a misguided regulatory environment), and work to make sure that America’s interventions in foreign climes were in the service of its national interest while also assuring that America’s military was as strong and prepared as it could be.

Trump’s “Principled Realism” Revisited

Stepping back, I’d say that Trump’s successes on all three fronts have been mixed, whereby “mixed” I do not mean “poor.” I mean that he has his share—quite a large share, in fact—of successes and some frustrations. But all three issues—like most big things in life—represent on-going processes that are seldom solved all at once and, even then, do not stay solved for long. They require constant attention and flexibility, what Trump himself referred to in one of his greatest speeches as “principled realism.”

It must be difficult to be a paid-up member of the anti-Trump fraternity. Just a few years ago, there were thousands of females skirling about how crude Donald Trump is while parading around the Washington Mall in pink pussy hats. Dark rumors of “collusion” with the Russians to steal the election were gaining traction and crashed on to shore in the shape of Robert S. Mueller III, G-Man extraordinaire, the straightest of straight arrows, who assembled his posse of Hillary-supporting anti-Trump lawyers to perform the world’s greatest legal excavation and bring down the Bad Orange Man. Alas, it turned out that Mueller was really just Andrew Weismann’s Howdy Doody.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on August 18th, 2019

http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/2019/08/israels-good-news-newsletter-to-18th.html

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

A nano-vaccine for melanoma. Scientists at Tel Aviv University have developed a novel nano-vaccine for melanoma (skin cancer) that has proved effective in laboratory tests. Tiny particles made of bio-degradable polymer were packed with two “safe” cancer-expressed peptides for the body to develop immunity against.

http://nocamels.com/2019/08/israeli-scientists-nano-vaccine-treatment-melanoma/ 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/nano-vaccine-against-melanoma-developed-by-tel-aviv-university-researchers/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-019-0512-0

New test for Alzheimer’s. The SRY subsidiary of Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center has developed Vizamyl, a radioactive agent that can diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. Used in a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan, it estimates amyloid neuritic plaque density in the brain – the main indication of Alzheimer’s.

https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/New-non-invasive-brain-test-could-help-prevent-stymie-Alzheimers-597620

Good results for anti-radiation vaccine. I reported previously (see here) on the PLX-R18 stem cell treatment for radiation sickness from Israel’s Pluristem. Animal trials by the US Department of Defense demonstrated that PLX-R18, administered before and after radiation exposure increased survival rates by 46-70%.

https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Pluristem-gets-positive-results-from-radiation-treatment-trials-597271

US approval for antibacterial dental fillings. I reported previously (Aug 2018) about Israel’s Nobio and its nano-polymer that causes bacteria to die immediately on contact. Nobio has just received FDA approval to market its antibacterial material for dental fillings.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/startup-nobio-gets-fda-nod-for-antibacterial-dental-fillings/

Agreement for psoriasis treatment. I reported previously (see here) on the small molecule treatments from Israel’s Can-Fite for psoriasis, liver and inflammatory diseases, and cancer. Can-Fite AND South Korea-based Kyongbo have just signed a distribution agreement for Can-Fite’s psoriasis treatment Piclidenoson (CF101).

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3767633,00.html

Innovation hub for hi-tech medicine. Israel’s Innovation Authority and the National Digital Israel Initiative are setting up an innovation hub dedicated to computational biology, digital health, pharmaceuticals, and artificial intelligence. They are asking for bids worth up to NIS 32 million to build the hub.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3767709,00.html

Ultrasound skin therapy. Israeli startup SofWave Medical is developing non-invasive ultrasound technology for skin tightening. It targets specific layers of skin to reduce wrinkles and has received CE (European) approval. SofWave has just raised $8.4 million of funding.  https://alon-medtech.com/portfolio/

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sofwave-medical-closes-8-4m-financing-round-announces-appointment-of-louis-scafuri-to-ceo-position-300896907.html

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3767858,00.html

Facial recognition of genetic diseases. Israeli-founded FDNA has developed artificial intelligence to detect physiological patterns (phenotypes) that reveal disease-causing genetic variations. With one of the fastest growing and most comprehensive genomic databases, FDNA is changing the game for precision medicine. https://www.fdna.com/

First response training for medics in Chile. (TY Hazel) Israel’s emergency service Magen David Adom is helping to train municipal security personnel as first responders to medical emergencies in the Chilean capital Santiago. It is in preparation for Chile hosting two major international conferences at the end of the year.

https://www.israel21c.org/israels-mda-helps-build-first-responder-system-in-chile/

Israeli-Druze officer saves Jordanian boy. (TY Hazel) Kalai Housam Tarif, an Israeli Prison Officer of the Druze community, donated half of his liver to an unrelated eight-year-old boy from Jordan. Surgeons at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petach Tikvah transplanted around half of Tarif’s liver to save the boy.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-prison-officer-donates-liver-lobe-to-jordanian-boy/

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Extinction of Christians in the Middle East by Giulio Meotti

By on August 18th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14691/extinction-christians-middle-east

“I don’t believe in these two words [human rights], there are no human rights. But in Western countries, there are animal rights. In Australia they take care of frogs…. Look upon us as frogs, we’ll accept that — just protect us so we can stay in our land.” — Metropolitan Nicodemus, the Syriac Orthodox archbishop of Mosul, National Catholic Register.

“Those people are the same ones who came here many years ago. And we accepted them. We are the original people in this land. We accepted them, we opened the doors for them, and they push us to be minorities in our land, then refugees in our land. And this will be with you if you don’t wake up.” — Metropolitan Nicodemus.

“Threats to pandas cause more emotion” than threats to the extinction of the Christians in the Middle East. — Amin Maalouf, French-Lebanese author, Le Temps.

Convert, pay or die. Five years ago, that was the “choice” the Islamic State (ISIS) gave to Christians in Mosul, then Iraq’s third-largest city: either embrace Islam, submit to a religious tax or face the sword. ISIS then marked Christian houses with the Arabic letter ن (N), the first letter of the Arabic word “Nasrani” (“Nazarene,” or “Christian”) . Christians could often take no more than the clothes on their back and flee a city that had been home to Christians for 1,700 years.

Two years ago, ISIS was defeated in Mosul and its Caliphate crushed. The extremists, however, had succeeded in “cleansing” the Christians. Before the rise of ISIS, there were more than 15,000 Christians there. In July 2019, the Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, disclosed that only about 40 Christians have come back. Not long ago, Mosul had “Christmas celebrations without Christians”.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

WHO PERFORMED EPSTEIN’S AUTOPSY?

By on August 18th, 2019

The autopsy neither confirms nor rules out foul play. Dr. Barbara Sampson is a highly regarded and reputable medical examiner….rsk

THE FACTS: Epstein’s lawyers asked Baden, a well-known pathologist, to attend the autopsy. He did not perform it. Reports circulated Thursday on Facebook and Twitter suggesting that Baden was chosen to do the autopsy as part of a cover-up to protect important people who have been tied to Epstein, among them President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton.

New York City Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson performed the autopsy Sunday on Epstein, who died Saturday from an apparent suicide, the AP reported. Epstein was found early Saturday in a Manhattan jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Sampson said it is routine for private pathologists to observe an autopsy.

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