RUTHFULLY YOURS

ps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21012/biden-harris-palestinian-policy

On a number of occasions over the past few months, US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has declared her support for the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. Last month, Harris said: “We must have a two-state solution where we can rebuild Gaza where the Palestinians have security, self-determination and the dignity they so rightly deserve.”

Harris’s repeated talk about the need to establish a Palestinian state in the aftermath of the October 7 atrocities against Israelis is the best gift the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group could have wished for.

Harris seems to ignore that a majority of Palestinians continue to support Hamas and the October 7 atrocities…. Two-thirds of the Palestinians [in a poll conducted by Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in June] said that the October 7 massacres were “correct.”

What is most disturbing about Harris’s advocacy for the establishment of an Iranian-controlled Palestinian state is that it is seen by many Palestinians as a reward for the October 7 atrocities…. So, when Harris talks about the need to establish a Palestinian state, she is sending a message to Hamas and other Palestinians that terrorism against Israel pays….

If Harris really cared about the Palestinians, she should be calling on Hamas to surrender; and calling on the Palestinian Authority (PA) stop glorifying terrorists and paying their families monthly salaries, dismantle all terror groups operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, stop poisoning the hearts and minds of their people, and recognize Israel’s right to exist. Unfortunately, she has done none of the above.

Moreover, the assumption that the PA can be “revitalized” and play a role in a post-war Gaza shows that Harris and the Biden administration are unfortunately clueless…. The poll also found that if presidential elections were held today, Hamas arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar would receive 41% of the votes, while Abbas would get only 13%. A majority of 84% of the Palestinians want Abbas to resign.

Abbas is also well aware that the talk about “revitalizing” the corrupt PA is nothing but a farce. The PA was established more than 30 years ago and its leaders, first Yasser Arafat and now Abbas, have never shown any serious intention to combat rampant corruption, anarchy and lawlessness in areas under their control.

Abbas and the Egyptians appear to have renewed their talks with Hamas because they sense that the Biden-Harris administration is not interested in ending the terror group’s rule over the Gaza Strip.

If Biden and Harris really wanted to see Hamas removed from power and the Israeli hostages released, all they need to do, is issue an ultimatum to the ruler of Qatar, who funds and hosts the terror group’s leadership, that the US will withdraw its air base from the Gulf state and impose sanctions on the emirate if the issue is not resolved immediately.

If the Biden-Harris administration really wanted to get rid of Hamas, they would be calling out Abbas and the Egyptians for negotiating with a terror group about ways of incorporating it in a new administration in the Gaza Strip.

Talk about creating a Palestinian state emboldens terrorists everywhere and assures the world that the US is on their side.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21017/middle-east-total-victory

Such were the mutilations that not a single corpse of a girl or a woman was in a state fit to be shown to her family before burial.

[W]ithin days of the atrocities, the global moral compass had swung 180 degrees. Starting significantly in London, and long before the IDF had marshalled itself to go into Gaza, street protests in Western cities and reporters in mainstream media were portraying Hamas as the victims and Israel as the violent aggressor…. This accusation has been the biggest lie of the past year.

If one is among the modern cult “perfecti”…. one’s inherent virtue confers special privileges and exemptions which are not available to less-perfect people. By definition, one can do no wrong. Any respect for the integrity of history is lost. As in the former Soviet Union, but no longer a joke: the future is certain, only the past is ever-changing…. and the mandatory projection of modern values onto the past is popular among the self-righteous.

[I]n Israel’s war of self-defence… tactical operations show that minimisation of loss of life of everyone except the terrorist enemies has been a prime concern…. To a degree that is unmatched, the IDF routinely warns civilians to leave targeted zones before attacks.

Iran’s proxy groups hide their attack tunnels, command posts and weapons caches in Gaza and Lebanon under residential buildings, schools, hospitals and mosques, in an express flouting of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war…. The tunnel complexes which, in the instance of Gaza, exceed the length of the London Underground, were not built for the protection of civilians in time of conflict, but only for the protection of Hamas terrorists, as Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, readily admits…. Not by choice, these are the circumstances under which the IDF has been forced to fight.

It is all the more so because since October 7, 2023 the IDF’s actions on the ground in Gaza, on the West Bank and in Lebanon show the best record of any modern armed forces in discriminate targeting, even in combat with terrorists who deliberately use civilians as human shields…. On the basis of such data, former British Army Infantry Commander Colonel Richard Kemp, CBE, has called the IDF “The World’s Most Moral Army.”

When one’s enemy has no war aim other than genocide, and has said so consistently for 90 years, there is most likely zero probability of a diplomatic route to peace. After six refusals of land offered for peace since 1922, there is now no prospect of any diplomacy this side of Israel’s total victory, and the terrorists’ total defeat. “Mugged by reality” is now… the realisation that, whatever else people may think about him, Netanyahu is the indispensable war leader for present times. The historian Andrew Roberts has called him “The Churchill of the Middle East.”

By and large the Western administrative class — whose worldview is framed by the assumption that with enough meetings in convivial places (“diplomacy”) deals can be reached that split differences — still does not rise to a sufficient level of geopolitical and comparative historical appreciation. This weak intellectual grasp only contributes significantly to the risk of a third world war.

The need for a strategy of total victory needs to be underscored. For decades, Iran and its proxies have been trying, as Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it, to “wipe Israel off the map.” Israel’s enemies are still trying. Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad warned a year ago that Hamas would repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel was annihilated.

With the high probability that if Iran were to be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, it would use them on Israel, the avoidance of World War III now depends upon Israel eliminating that threat. Once again, President Joe Biden must not be obeyed. Products of the Western mind-set, as mentioned, it was the disastrous naivety of President Barack Obama and Biden in seeking to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear programme (the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) — and illegitimately, with no mandate, to boot — that allowed Iran’s regime to play the US for fools and in so doing to acquire vital foreign currency inflow – and time — that enabled the Iranian theocracy to resume and hasten its road to nuclear weapons.

“Iran is reeling… insecure and unsure how deeply its own intelligence has been penetrated. Failing to take full advantage of this opportunity to neutralize the threat is irresponsible.” — Jared Kushner, advisor and son-in-law of President Donald J. Trump, X, September 29, 2024.

The threat is not just to the Jews but to the world order and the West…. Israel rightly feels unleashed. This tiny nation has both moral mandate and customary international legal right (which long predates the experiment of UN-drafted papers) to be so. Like Ukraine’s, Israel’s victory matters to the entire free world.

The world currently divides unequally into those who understand this and the majority who do not, or who may just not want to admit it.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/14/is-the-death-cult-of-hamas-on-its-last-legs-lets-hope-so/

Many grim things are happening in northern Gaza right now, as Israel puts the screws on Hamas. But there’s one thing in particular that leapt out at me from this bloody showdown between the Israel Defence Forces and the army of anti-Semites that started this infernal war with its pogrom of a year ago. It’s a thing that isn’t being widely reported. A fact you will need to dig deep to find. You certainly won’t spy any mention of it in the toilet of Israelophobia known as social media. It’s this: the IDF is pleading with Palestinian civilians to leave northern Gaza, while Hamas is instructing them to stay.

Even the BBC – so hostile to Israel that it refuses to refer to its fascistic persecutors as ‘terrorists’ – felt compelled to chronicle this most telling of stories from the benighted north of Gaza. In a typically breathless piece alleging that Israel is pursuing the military strategy of ‘surrender or starve’, the Beeb reports that where the IDF has warned Gazans that it will be ‘operating with great force’ in the north, and thus they should ‘evacuate immediately’, Hamas has told them to stay. In fact, Hamas has warned the 400,000 souls still left in the north to not even think about moving. It has used falsehoods and fear to cajole women and children into staying put, telling them the south is ‘just as dangerous’ (not true) and that if they leave ‘they will not be allowed back’ (bastards).

Reuters has likewise clocked these disturbing accounts from the ground. ‘The Israeli military [is] calling on Palestinians to evacuate south’, it reports, while Hamas is ‘telling them not to leave because it [is] too risky’. The IDF has gone to great lengths to convince civilians to flee, posting messages online in Arabic clearly stipulating that even ‘shelters’ in certain parts of the north would shortly become ‘dangerous combat zone[s]’. It has distributed maps with a ‘large yellow arrow’ showing civilians where to go. Hamas, meanwhile, has all but forbidden an exodus. There are even reports that it is using physical force to make people stay. One Gazan has claimed that their Islamist rulers are ‘beating them with sticks’ if they try to access the IDF’s mapped-out ‘humanitarian corridor’.

How do we make sense of this? According to the intellectuals and activists of the Western world, Israel is a demented genocidal state, hell-bent on slaughtering Palestinians and especially keen on killing children (blood libel, much?). Hamas, meanwhile, is a ‘resistance’ movement, if an iffy one, whose strikes against Israel are an understandable stab at protecting Gazans from the violent bloodlust of psycho Zionists. And yet here we have the ‘genocidaires’ pleading with Gazans to move out of harm’s way, and ‘the resistance’ ordering them to stay in it. Providing civilians with maps to safety? Israel is surely the most rubbish genocidal entity in history.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Here are a few highlights from Israel brought to us from Michael Ordman. Neither war, nor pandemic stops Israel in research and development of science, medicine, defense, and environmental technology in agriculture and water preservation that benefits the world. And, best of all, a people determined to survive, with a citizen army of patriots and heroes, fill cafes, restaurants, theaters and concerts in spite of daily warning sirens. rsk

While fighting Hamas, the IDF rescued a Yazidi girl from slavery in Gaza.

Israelis can diagnose Alzheimer’s 20 years in advance of the first symptoms.
Israel spends more on education per capita than almost every other nation.

An Israeli laser beam can knock hostile drones out of the sky.

One day soon, Israeli technology will be inside every car.

An Israeli 17-year-old girl is Europe’s Youth chess champion.

A Torah scroll memorializing Oct 7 victims was dedicated at the Western Wall.

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
IDF rescues enslaved Yazidi girl from Gaza. (TY UWI) Fawzia Amin Sido, a Yazidi girl abducted by ISIS in Iraq at age 11 and later sold to a Gazan and held captive by Hamas, has been freed by Israeli forces. And after a complex, months-long operation involving the US and others, she was reunited with her family in Iraq.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-rescues-yazidi-woman-from-gaza-after-kidnapping-by-isis-at-age-11/
 
Mia leaves hospital. (TY WIN) Former hostage Mia (Maya) Regev was discharged from hospital after a long rehabilitation process following her release from Gaza in November. Hamas terrorists shot her at the Nova festival. A “doctor” in Gaza reattached her foot sideways, and Israeli surgeons had to operate to correct it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/former-hostage-mia-regev-released-from-hospital-after-months-of-rehabilitation/   https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/society/artc-former-hostage-mia-regev-released-from-hospital-after-long-recovery 
 
Oct 7 survivor’s heroism in Jaffa. Lev Kreitman, who survived the Oct 7 Nova Music Festival massacre, eliminated one of the terrorists responsible for the deadly attack at the Jaffa light rail station. Having served five months in Gaza, he had successfully applied for a pistol, with which he saved many innocent lives.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/nova-survivor-who-eliminated-terrorists-in-jaffa-rail-attack-thanked-by-people-he-saved/
 
We can fly. More than a dozen patients from the Kaylie Rehabilitation Medical Center at ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran took to the southern Israel skies with pilots from the partner organization “Ananim: Flights for the Community”. It gave a moment of joy, respite, and motivation to continue their complex battle with disability.
https://www.jns.org/wire/war-wounded-soldiers-and-civilians-touch-the-southern-israel-skies/
 
Wedding on the front lines. Victoria and Asher were all set to marry in a beautiful ceremony, but then Asher was called up. Rather than postpone the celebration, Asher’s friends from the Carmeli (Golani) Brigade, along with a rabbi, took it upon themselves to create a memorable wedding on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-idf-soldiers-wedding-goes-forward-on-the-front-lines/
 
IDF’s “autistic” unit is winning the war. IDF’s Unit 9900 employs Israelis whose neurodivergence makes them particularly talented in monitoring and analyzing satellite images. They are playing a key role in dismantling Hezbollah’s leadership. These “gifted” soldiers greatly help protect Israel’s population.
https://www.nysun.com/article/how-israels-unit-for-soldiers-with-autism-helped-the-idf-demolish-hezbollahs-leadership  (register for two free articles)
 
Rebuilding the Gaza envelope. Israeli NGO Kolot has launched the “Restart” program, a transformative initiative dedicated to revitalizing communities in Israel’s Gaza envelope region. Initiatives include business development, educational outreach, tourism, welfare, community building and the arts.
https://www.jns.org/wire/kolot-launches-restart-program-to-rebuild-gaza-envelope/
 
Back to school. (TY Yanky) Kibbutz Be’eri’s children may be displaced, but that didn’t prevent them starting the new school year with Be’eri’s flag ceremony held since 1952. Flag standards were rescued from a wrecked storeroom. Volunteers, including a Bedouin woman, cleaned and repaired the flags for the children to parade.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/flag-rescue-project-lets-evacuated-kibbutz-beeri-open-school-year-in-customary-style/
 
Thank you to our UK friends. Great to see and share the support for Israel from friends in the UK. Here is a video of supporters from Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, who conduct a weekly vigil to publicize the plight of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. In this video they unfurled a giant yellow ribbon as a symbol of hope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X8USIUdMjo
 
Some of the many global vigils to mark the anniversary of Oct 7.
https://marchoflife.org/thousands-of-people-in-more-than-130-cities-commemorate-october-7/
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-823442 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f26a388bIqI  (UK)
https://unitedwithisrael.org/families-honor-lost-loved-ones-at-nova-massacre-site-on-oct-7-anniversary/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80iVsWF2xUQ  (Eylon Levy, Citizen Spokesman’s Office)
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Markers for early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. A team of researchers led by Hebrew University has mapped millions of brain cells in 437 patients, discovering molecular markers that indicate future onset of Alzheimer’s disease some 20 years in advance of symptoms. The discovery will help development of early treatments.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-game-changer-israeli-researchers-find-alzheimers-markers-20-years-before-onset/  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07871-6
 
No more missed diagnoses. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Professor Miri Sklair-Levy and Dr. Debbie Anaby, from Israel’s Sheba Medical Center explain how AI tools are revolutionizing the fight against breast cancer and early diagnosis. The digital revolution is no longer a futuristic dream – it is happening now.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/bjuatjgyyg
 
Beyond the Blood Brain Barrier. Charles River Laboratories International has partnered with Israel’s Insightec (see here previously) to develop brain disease remedies. Insightec’s novel low-frequency ultrasound platform non-invasively disrupts the blood brain barrier, enabling drugs to be delivered to targeted brain areas.
https://www.ourcrowd.com/startup-news/charles-river-and-insightec-announce-strategic-collaboration-to-advance-therapeutic-development-utilizing-focused-ultrasound-in-neuroscience
 
Seeing deep inside the body.  Researchers at Israel’s Technion Institute have devised a radical new way to obtain clear direct images of cells deep inside the body using non-invasive wavefront shaping. They obtained images of neurons (nerve cells) using the fluorescent protein EGFP and correction software to remove “noise”.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2024/08/an-in-depth-view/ 
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49697-w
 
Closed eye imaging. (TY WIN) Researchers from Tel Aviv University can monitor changes in pupil size and gaze direction behind closed eyes using touchless infrared imaging. It can help track the depth of sedation, and recognize pain or responsiveness in unconscious patients that may occur after trauma and in intensive care,
https://english.tau.ac.il/research/see-through-closed-eyes
https://www.aftau.org/news_item/closed-eye-imaging-can-track-pain-in-unresponsive-patients/
 
DNA sequencing in Romania. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s Sequentify (see here previously) has partnered with Romanian distributor Dexter bring Sequentify’s InfiniSeq™ library preparation solutions to Romania. InfiniSeq reduces time from DNA extraction to sequencing to 3.5 hours to enable fast diagnosis of genetic diseases.
https://www.ourcrowd.com/startup-news/sequentify-and-dexter-collaborate-to-introduce-genomic-sequencing-solutions-to-the-romanian-market
 
Automatic medical coding. Medical coding is at the heart of the American medical record system. It usually requires a trained coder to analyze and convert patient records into US-recognized codes. Israel’s Nym Health does this automatically, saving time and costs, while improving accuracy, and achieving compliance.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/bk36lbtrc  https://vimeo.com/779623519  https://nym.health/
https://www.coursera.org/articles/medical-coder
 
London’s first MedEx. 100 doctors attended London’s first MedEx event to support UK medical professionals considering or intending to make Aliyah. They met representatives of the Health Ministry, hospitals, and the Health Management Organizations, to discuss licensing requirements, employment options and benefits.
https://www.jns.org/wire/doctors-attend-inaugural-london-medex-to-strengthen-israels-healthcare-system/

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21011/resistance-or-terror-the-importance-of-dosage

However, it is hard to see how the October 7 attack could be categorized as an act of resistance by freedom-fighters… For Hamas, October 7 was a war of choice, not a war of necessity, and its goal wasn’t just to terrorize a real or imaginary foe but to murder as many non-combatants as possible.

Terror is used to persuade or force an adversary into doing something you want or stop doing something you don’t want and sadly, in many instances it works. However, if an act of terror transcends certain boundaries, it could produce the opposite of what the terrorist hoped for. In other words, it is all a matter of dosage.

Without the “Al-Aqsa Storm” raid, no Israeli prime minister, let alone Benjamin Netanyahu, who happened to have hit the nadir of unpopularity, would have dared to launch a total war aimed at flushing Hamas out of Gaza and Hezbollah out of Lebanon.

Sinwar isn’t the first victim of unintended consequences and won’t be the last either.

In hindsight, it seems that the late leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, understood the importance of dosage in terror and/or resistance.

This is why initially, to the surprise of some, Nasrallah refused to enter the danse-macabre opened by Sinwar.

We may never know what persuaded or forced Nasrallah to abandon his usual caution and join an adventure beyond his control. My guess is that he didn’t jump, but was pushed. Your guess as to who pushed him.

These days, my two favorite bookshops in Paris and London are devoting a full shelf to books on or inspired by Hamas’s “Al-Aqsa Storm” October 7 invasion of Israel.

Some of these books offer various accounts of what happened on that day and could be classed as extended reportages of the kind news magazines offered in the good old days of print journalism. The most interesting of these, Trey Yingst’s Black Saturday, which broadens its scope to offer a portrayal of the subsequent war in Gaza. Because the author is a television reporter, his fast-paced reportage often resembles a newsreel. That, however, does not prevent him from offering often deep insights into the mind-sets of the two adversaries.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21008/betraying-the-free-world

The only country in the Middle East consistently pressured to make concessions “to avoid escalation” was the victim of October 7, Israel.

The rapacity of Iran’s regime, which apparently feels free to launch attacks on U.S. troops at will — especially after enjoying massive amounts of US generosity — is breathtaking.

The Biden-Harris administration also infused the regime with “closer to $60 billion” — which most likely funded its militias; its terrorist proxy organizations, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis; its expansionist agenda as far away as Venezuela, and its oppressive domestic policies, to which, for decade, the U.S. has turned a blind eye. When widespread protests take place in Iran, citizens bravely rise up against the regime, only to be brutally crushed — without so much as a glance from the U.S.

Iran, taking its cue from the Biden-Harris administration’s road-siding of Israel, proceeded, not surprisingly, to escalate its campaign against it. If there are no serious consequences, why stop?

Israel now finds itself fighting for its survival on multiple fronts. Thanks to the seeming lack of support from the Biden administration, Israel alone must fend off Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the UN, much of Europe, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, professionally whipped-up Western university campuses and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The dangerous reality that unfolds when a once-reliable ally is abandoned, is that enemies can become increasingly aggressive so long as no one stops them.

The message being sent is that allies will be left to fend for themselves, and enemies of freedom and democracy can go ahead and demolish them with impunity.

The Free World, once a beacon of security, is left vulnerable, isolated and under siege.

An ally, a true friend, is someone upon whom you can depend in times of crisis, especially when under attack. Throughout history, alliances have been formed on the basis of mutual support and protection. Yet, one could strongly argue that no administration in the history of the United States has left its allies in such a vulnerable position as the Biden-Harris administration.

Iran, no longer content to merely act through its proxies, has taken direct and aggressive action against America’s long-term ally, Israel, by attacking not only Israel but, through its proxies and militias, U.S. troops in the region more than 160 times just since October 2023 — whenever it deems fit. Iran-backed Hamas terrorists murdered 43 Americans in their October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/08/israel-at-war-democracy-in-action/

How does Israel do it? When the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) assassinated the head terrorist of Hezbollah two weeks ago, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the world that ‘We are winning’. And he was right.

A year after the darkness of 7 October, the message from Israel is: let there be light! The IDF has crushed Hamas in Gaza, delivered hammer blows to Hezbollah in Lebanon and shaken the terrorists’ sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to its tyrannical roots.

So how has Israel – a small state of fewer than 10million people, surrounded, as Daniel Ben-Ami analysed on spiked, by genocidal Islamist enemies and isolated on the international stage as never before – had such military success?

No doubt superior military technology, both imported and homemade, has played its part, alongside the sort of intelligence and chutzpah required to blow up personal pagers in terrorists’ pockets.

The most important factor, however, is surely the active commitment of a large part of the Israeli population to the war effort. It is a people’s war, supported by millions who identify with and have a stake in the Jewish State, and view its existential struggle against the Islamists as a fight for their own heritage and future.

Anybody who supports democracy and freedom should be unequivocally on Israel’s side. As the sole democracy in the Middle East, and the sworn enemy of Islamist terrorists, Israel is on the frontline of the global struggle between civilisation and barbarism.

Even more than that, Israel is an example to us all of what can be achieved if you fight for what you believe in and take the people with you. The support of the Israeli demos – the people – means that Israel is not only fighting for democracy. Its war effort is real democracy in action.

This idea might come as a surprise to those who get their news about the Middle East solely from the mainstream media. The only Israelis who ever appear on the TV news here, in between the constant coverage of suffering Palestinians, are those protesting against the Israeli government and demanding an end to the war.