RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/opinion/defeating-the-danger-from-without/

 It is sound practice to examine one’s own behavior before casting aspersions on that of others. But self-reflection in the Jewish context is all too often an exercise in directing accountability inward, rather than where it belongs: squarely on the shoulders of the people of Israel’s external enemies.

European Jews learned the hard way that their very existence—and the blood in their veins—was sufficient cause for all of them, from the visibly Orthodox to the utterly assimilated, to be systematically tortured and slaughtered. Tragically, it’s a lesson that American members of the tribe are now being forced to internalize and in which their counterparts in Paris, London and elsewhere on the Continent are being given a refresher course.

Anti-Semitism of the above type is foreign to native Israelis, especially the younger generation, despite contending daily with foes out to kill them for being Jews. In fact, even many Israelis whose families have been ripped apart by terrorist missiles, fire bombs, guns and machetes don’t recount having experienced anti-Semitism. Instead, they view themselves as victims of Arab/Palestinian terrorism; as though it were a separate phenomenon.

A minority of Israelis, some of whom have high positions in the government and an even higher number of whom hold seats in the Knesset, still cling to the notion that the cause of the hatred and ensuing violence is political. This bloc thus believes that the solution lies in diplomacy—Israeli territorial and other concessions whose ultimate goal is the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Since all such efforts on Israel’s part have belied this idea, the weary majority has come to realize that the hostility is deep-seated, religious, ideological and not going anywhere in the near future. The divide between the two perspectives is not new in Jewish history or the annals of the Jewish state.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

Israelis were really flying with innovations and humanitarian activities this past week.  A Ukrainian girl was flown to Israel for heart surgery; blue-sky thinking unlocked more secrets of how the brain works; and Israeli scientists revealed the details of many of the medical experiments performed by Israel’s Eytan Stibbe during his 15 days in space. The first Israeli Druze pilot is now commander of IAF Southern Command Fire Center; over 100 Israeli Arabs flew to visit Auschwitz for Yom ha ‘Shoah, and Israel soared to the top of the list of the World’s most live kidney donors. New Israeli renewable energy innovations will help keep our skies blue and warn of solar storms. Israeli judokas have sent their international opponents flying and Aliyah numbers are sky high!  Michael Ordman

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Field hospital treated 6,000. Israel’s Kochav Meir (Shining Star) field hospital in Ukraine has closed after six weeks, having treated 6,000 patients. The hospital was originally planned to operate for one month. The initial 100 staff (80 doctors & nurses) were then replaced by new staff from Israel’s Sheba Medical Center.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-shuts-ukraine-field-hospital-after-6-weeks-medical-team-returns-home/
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/326670
 
Life-saving heart treatment for Ukrainian girl. Israeli NGO Save A Child’s Heart brought 5-year-old Karina from Ukraine to Israel for surgery to fix her atrial septal (hole in the heart) defect. Following the catheterization operation, Karina is expected to enjoy a normal life.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/5-year-old-ukrainian-girl-receives-lifesaving-treatment-in-israel/
 
Gene in “junk” DNA protects against ALS. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have found a gene in the non-coding (“junk”) part of the genome that reduces five-fold the risk of developing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The gene IL18RAP can contain mutations that reduce inflammation in the brain.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/mutations-in-noncoding-dna-protect-the-brain-from-als/  
https://www.timesofisrael.com/identifying-als-preventing-mutation-israeli-researchers-hope-for-path-to-treatment/
 
Breakthrough brain research. Israeli scientists have published a peer-reviewed paper that identifies the dendrites in the brain’s neurons as the learning center of the brain, rather than currently regarded synapses. It could help develop new types of treatments for degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/bold-new-israeli-brain-theory-touted-as-breakthrough-for-medicine-computing/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10466-8
 
Phase 3 trial of oral insulin begins. Israel’s Oramed (see here previously) has completed enrollment of patients for the Phase 3 trial of its oral insulin for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Topline results of the trial are expected early 2023.  https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oramed-completes-patient-enrollment-in-pivotal-phase-3-oral-insulin-study-ora-d-013-1-301538222.html
 
The world’s most protected blood bank. (TY Sharon) After 4 years’ construction, Magen David Adom has opened its new $135 million Marcus National Blood Services Center (see here previously). The underground facility doubles current capacity and is shielded from terrorism, rocket attacks, earthquakes, and cyber-attack.
https://baltimorejewishlife.com/news/news-detail.php?SECTION_ID=37&ARTICLE_ID=154008
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-opens-worlds-most-protected-blood-bank-rocket-proof-and-underground/
 
Israeli space medical experiments. Enlightening article about some of the ground-breaking medical experiments performed by Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe aboard the International Space Station. It features the miniaturized, remotely controlled lab on a chip developed by Israel’s SpacePharma (see here previously).
https://www.jpost.com/science/article-705829
 
Hear this. (TY JNS) Plastic surgeons at Israel’s Galilee Medical Center attached a 3D-printed prosthetic ear to a six-year-old boy, born with microtia, to correct his birth defect. Although the ear will never be functional, the landmark operation will reduce pain, prevent future complications and is socially, aesthetically important.
https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-surgeons-print-an-ear-to-correct-boys-deformity/
 
A happy return. When United Hatzalah paramedic Leah helped deliver a baby girl in Jerusalem, she remembered the address. Three years previously it had taken 40 minutes of CPR and several shocks from a defibrillator, to restore the pulse of the baby’s father after he had suffered cardiac arrest.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/326507
 
 
ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL
 
Teddy bear treatment. Bar-Ilan University’s Azrieli Faculty of Medicine complex in Safed was transformed into a Teddy Bear Hospital when some 500 children brought their teddy bears and dolls in for “treatment”. The annual event included ER, surgery, pharmacy, cardiology, ENT, MDA, Israeli police, the IDF and more.  
https://www.jns.org/bar-ilan-university-medicine-complex-in-tzfat-transforms-into-teddy-bear-hospital/
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/326851
 
Joint feast to mark end of Passover and Ramadan. More than 300 Jews and Arabs in Beersheba celebrated at a joint Iftar and Mimouna feast to mark the end of the daily Ramadan fast and the traditional Moroccan Jewish celebration at the conclusion of Passover. It was organized by Beersheba’s Hagar Association.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-arab-feast-marks-coinciding-of-passover-and-ramadan/
 
Over 100 Israeli Arabs visit Auschwitz. 103 Arab-Israeli teenagers from across the country marched alongside Holocaust survivors and their progeny in the March of the Living. Before leaving Israel, they visited Yad Vashem and the Ghetto-fighters Museum, prior to flying to Poland and touring the Auschwitz site.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-705316
 
Druze commander of Israel’s Fire Control Center. Lt.-Col. A., the first Druze to complete the Israel Air Force flight school, now serves as commander of Israel’s Southern Command’s Fire Center. Ironically, his grandfather served in the Syrian Arab Army forces that invaded Israel in 1948, before switching sides.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-705814
 
The world’s top healing spot. (TY UWI) International travel magazine Travel + Leisure’s put the Dead Sea top of its 2022 list of 10 recommended global healing destinations. Benefits include as a remedy for asthma, arthritis, and osteoporosis; its mud alleviates psoriasis, and the UV-filtered sun as a safe source of vitamin D.
https://www.israel21c.org/travel-leisure-names-dead-sea-1-healing-spot-for-2022/
 
The world’s most live kidney donors. (TY Stuart Palmer) Israel is the country with the most living kidney donors worldwide per capita, according to a recent World Health Organization report of 2020 data. Israeli non-profit Matnat Chaim (see here) facilitated the donation of 1,170 kidneys – two thirds of all Israeli donations.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-694257
http://www.transplant-observatory.org/2020-international-activities-report/ (see yellow bar on page 13)
 
 

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/article-705999

Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel Independence Day, is always marked by a mixture of joy and reflection. This year is no different, though a touch of malaise is putting a damper on the former, while taking the latter in the wrong direction.

Among the minority currently in power are members of the Left, who have always held Israel accountable for the plight of Palestinian Authority denizens and for international condemnation. This group still blames the entire Right for the 1995 murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Neither nationwide horror surrounding that unprecedented event, nor the fact that assassin Yigal Amir has been sitting in prison since then, has made a dent in the Left’s view that anti-Rabin incitement from the opposition — led at the time, as today, by Benjamin Netanyahu — was directly responsible.

That Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s family recently received threatening letters with live bullets in them has brought the old accusations to the fore, providing the “anybody but Bibi” crowd with proverbial ammunition.

The above camp’s go-to position whenever Arab terrorism spikes, as it is currently doing, is the one that was voiced ad nauseam by gung-ho supporters of the disastrous Oslo Accords: that we cannot allow the “enemies of peace” to win.

This bloc, which now has important ministerial portfolios, contains politicians who call for Israeli “soul-searching” at every opportunity, including during Holocaust Remembrance Day and Yom Hazikaron, our Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. Their message is that if Israel isn’t careful, it will become like Nazi Germany.

http://The Palestinian State Bill: Palestinians Ask That More Arab Repression Not Be Allowed by Khaled Abu Toameh

According to the new bill, foreign journalists who do not endorse the Palestinian narrative or who do not “respect the Palestinian identity and history” may soon be banned from operating in PA-controlled areas.

The same restriction applies to Palestinian media organizations and journalists seeking permits to operate in these territories.

The PA leadership apparently fears that stories about corruption, anti-Israel incitement and terrorism will prompt Western donors to halt their funding to the Palestinians.

Unlike other Arab regimes, however, the PA is almost entirely dependent on foreign aid from the US, the European Union and other international donors, who do not seem the least bit bothered by the Palestinian leadership’s measures to curb freedom of expression and deprive its people of an independent media.

In response, several Palestinian human rights and media organizations, including the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, expressed deep concern and disapproval of the PA leadership’s intention to hijack the media.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate also warned that the draft bill, if approved, would have a negative impact on the international community’s support for the Palestinians and undermine Palestinians’ “dream of a modern Palestinian state that respects basic rights and freedoms.”

Sadly, the Palestinians harbor no hope that their current leaders will work towards establishing a state where public freedoms and human rights are valued and respected.

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip are corrupt dictatorships that care only about their own interests.

What remains difficult for Palestinians to understand is the continuing silence of the international community and foreign media towards the human rights violations and restrictions on the institutions of democracy and freedom of speech perpetrated by the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

While the US administration and many countries seem enthusiastic about the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Palestinians themselves are worried that such a state would end up like most of the corrupt and authoritarian regimes in the Arab world.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/abbas-threatens-cut-ties-israel-no-one-cares-hugh-fitzgerald/

Is it every year, or every other year, that President-For-Life of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas threatens to end all ties to Israel? Sometimes he says he’s done it, but nothing actually changes. Sometimes he says he’s going to do it, and then doesn’t. Sometimes he says he’s waiting for a meeting of the PA leadership to discuss it, then cancels the meeting. A report on the latest farcical threat by the angry rais in Ramallah is here: “Bennett: UN must stop serving terrorists’ agenda,” by Lahav Harkov and Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post, April 22, 2022:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has again threatened to halt security coordination and suspend Palestinian recognition of Israel.

The latest threat was made during a meeting in Ramallah on Thursday night with US administration envoys Yael Lempert, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs….

Abbas usually makes this threat to cut ties with Israel when he feels the hot breath down his back of Hamas and other even more violent rivals; it’s a way of re-establishing his anti-Israel bonafides with the doubting thomases: he’s assuring them that he still knows how to be tough on Israel, and don’t anyone forget it.

Earlier this week, Abbas abruptly called off an emergency meeting of the Palestinian leadership that was scheduled to take place in Ramallah on Sunday night to discuss the implementation of a resolution by the Palestinian Central Council (PCC) to terminate all agreements with Israel, including the security coordination and Palestinian recognition of Israel.…

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18481/israel-needs-a-statesman

The years before 2021 had brought relative calm and improvements. The United States had cut much of its funding for the Palestinian Authority, which had been used for terrorism. As a result, terrorism had substantially decreased. When the US pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and drastically sanctioned Iran, the mullahs and their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had less money to finance and arm Hamas. ISIS was crushed. A rapprochement began between Israel and the Arab world and led to the Abraham Accords, signed between the United States, Israel, and five Muslim countries – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Kosovo and Sudan. For the first time in decades in the Middle East, “peace, security and prosperity” held sway.

The election of US President Joe Biden, however, quickly revealed that better lives for people in the region, including the Palestinians, were about to end. The Biden administration immediately returned to the policies of the Obama years. It restored the funding that Palestinian leaders use for terrorism, without first stipulating that the terrorism had to stop. The Biden administration resumed nuclear negotiations with Iran — through an intermediary from, of all places Russia. (Iran did not allow the US officials in the room.) The US government itself had named Iran “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism;” now the Biden administration was again enabling the ruling mullahs — who call for “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” — soon to have an unlimited number of nuclear weapons, the intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver them, and billions of dollars for terrorism and resuming their efforts to take over the oil-rich Middle East. Meanwhile, America’s interlocutor, Russia, has been working with Iran on how it can evade US sanctions for invading Ukraine so that both countries may further enrich themselves by Iran selling Russia’s oil.

When “settlement expansion” is made to sound as grave a transgression as murder, terrorism will resume.

Since June 2021, for the first time in 12 years, Israel seems to have a weak prime minister, Naftali Bennett. He has evidently promised to work in “quiet coordination” with the Biden administration and never criticizes the administration’s anti-Israel policies.

The leaders of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas see that an anti-Israel administration is in place in Washington and draw their own conclusions.

Sunni Arab leaders are currently “trying to decide whether to grovel to Iran, or stand with Israel… Israel has but one option – to become the strong tribe of the Middle East”. — Caroline Glick, Israel Hayom, March 25, 2022.

Israel needs its strong tribe status. Israel needs a statesman. Now.

Beersheba, Israel. March 22. Mohammed Abu al-Kiyan rams his car into a rabbi riding a bicycle, killing him, then drives to a gas station and stabs a woman to death there, and then drives to a shopping mall and stabs two more people to death. After fleeing the mall, he crashed his car into another vehicle and was finally shot and killed by armed civilians as he charged at one of them with a knife

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/hallelujah_un_official_tells_the_truth_about_palestinian_violence.html

God bless Tor Wennesland!

This Norwegian UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process told the truth.

This is a rare quality among UN officials when it comes to getting to the heart of why there is no progress to peace with the Palestinians: they always point the finger of blame at Israel, and never at the perpetrators of hate and violence.

Mr. Wennesland is a brave exception.

His report  identified what really happened on the Temple Mount during Ramadan and Passover and pointed to the real perpetrators.

“On 15 April, during the early morning hours, a large number of Palestinians gathered at the Al Aqsa compound. Some Palestinians threw stones, fireworks, and other heavy objects toward Israeli Security Forces. (snip)

Several dozen Palestinians entered a mosque in the compound, with some continuing to throw stones and fireworks toward Israeli security forces.”

Following a standoff with those inside, Israeli police entered the mosque and arrested those barricaded inside, but not without a fight.

“During the clashes,” he reported, “some damage was caused to the structure of the mosque.”

He went on to report that Israeli forces only entered the Al Aqsa Mosque after the rioting Palestinians had barricaded themselves inside.

And Tor Wennesland actually praised the Israeli police, who were only attempting to restore law and order so that thousands of Muslims could peacefully pray atop the Temple Mount as part of their Ramadan rituals, thus confirming what every Israeli watching TV news already knew, that Israeli officials had “reiterated their commitment to upholding the status quo and ensuring that only Muslims would be allowed to pray on the holy esplanade.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/05/jordan_is_palestine.html

Yes it is.

The Arab propaganda machine, aided and abetted by the UN, EU, US and most of the global media would have you believe otherwise.

They demand that the Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria and Gaza be granted statehood on all lands not controlled by Israel when the cease fire lines were agreed upon in 1949.  This is referred to as the “Two-State Solution.” This solution is at the heart of the Arab Peace Initiative that was agreed to in 2002 at the Beirut Summit which provided:

“(a) Complete withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the 4 June 1967 line and the territories still occupied in southern Lebanon; (b) Attain a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with the UN General Assembly Resolution No 194. (c) Accept the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since 4 June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

Like most peace plans since, it was based on a deliberate misreading of 1967.UN Security Council Resolution 242.  This resolution did not require Israel to withdraw from all lands “occupied in the ’67 War and it allowed Israel to remain in possession of said lands until she had “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force”.

However, this resolution also included a preamble:  “Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security.”  

On top of this, the UN Charter provides for the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of land by war”, international law allowed for the retention of land acquired in a defensive war, which the ’67 War undoubtedly was.

But that is not the whole story…