RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/08/unrwas-jihad-against-israel-part-three

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has turned “their plight into a political tool” for Israel’s destruction, Center for Near East Policy Research (CNEPR) Director David Bedein noted in 2014. His book, Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict—UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, is essential for understanding UNRWA’s cruel exploitation of humanitarianism in order to wage war on Israel.

As previously discussed, over five million Palestinian “refugee” descendants of Arabs who lost their homes in what became Israel during its 1948-1949 War of Independence are the wards of UNRWA. This outsized agency uniquely exists outside of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which cares for all other refugees worldwide. UNRWA has also uniquely emphasized a “right of return” to modern Israel as a permanent solution for Palestinian “refugees.”

They “are the only ones in the world who have sustained their status as refugees across four generations; and their misery has been utilized as a weapon against Israel,” Bedein wrote. Any “right of return” influx would demographically inundate Israel. Thus, “Israel understands that ‘return’ is a code word for destruction, something the Jewish state will never permit,” he added.

Indeed, Bedein quoted Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Muhammad Saleh Ed-Din to this effect. He wrote in 1949 that “in demanding the restoration of the refugees to Palestine, the Arabs intend that they shall return as the masters of the homeland” and “annihilate the state of Israel.” As Bedein reviewed, the

‘Right of Return’ issue was often mentioned in Arab forums within the wider context of the discussion of Israel’s liquidation. In Israeli eyes, therefore, the continued persistence on the ‘Right of Return’ by any Arab party betrays that party’s desire to wipe Israel off the map.

“Tragically, UNRWA emphasis on ‘right of return’ provides Palestinians with a rationale for their war against Israel,” Bedein observed, and correspondingly UNRWA “camps, quite simply, function in a pro-terrorist environment.” “Terrorist activity in the UNRWA refugee camps has been extensively documented” by monitors such as the Israeli Shin Bet intelligence service, he wrote. Shin Bet has “documented how UNRWA schools are used for storing ammunition, as well as for hiding suspected terrorists,” while UNRWA vehicles and ambulances also transport terrorists and ammunition.

During your first official visit to Washington, DC, you’ll have to choose between two options:

*Blurring your deeply-rooted, assertive Israeli positions on the future of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), which would be welcome by the Biden Administration, yielding to short-term political convenience and popularity inside the beltway;

or

*Tenaciously advocating your deeply-rooted, principle-driven positions, which would underscore a profound disagreement with the Biden Administration and the “elite” US media, while granting you and Israel long-term strategic respect, as demonstrated by some of your predecessors.

For example, the late Prime Minister Shamir honed the second option, bluntly introduced his assertive Israeli positions on Judea and Samaria, rebuffed heavy US pressure – including a mudslinging campaign by President Bush and Secretary of State Baker – suffered a popularity setback, but produced unprecedented expansion of US-Israel strategic cooperation. When it comes to facing the intensified threats of rogue regimes and Islamic terrorism, the US prefers principle-driven, reliable, patriotic, pressure-defying partners, irrespective of disagreements on the Palestinian issue.

Assuming that you shall not budge on the historical and national security centrality of Judea and Samaria, it behooves you to highlight the following matters during your meetings with President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, National Security Advisor Sullivan, Secretary of Defense Austin and Congressional leaders (especially the members of the Appropriations Committees):

1. The 1,400-year-old track record of the stormy, unpredictable, violent and anti-“infidel” Middle East, which has yet to experience intra-Arab peaceful-coexistence, along with the 100-year-old Palestinian track record (including the systematic collaboration with anti-US entities, hate-education and anti-Arab and anti-Jewish terrorism) demonstrates that the proposed Palestinian state would be a Mini-Afghanistan or a Mega-Gaza on the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria.

It would dominate 80% of Israel’s population and infrastructures in the 9-15-mile sliver between Judea and Samaria and the Mediterranean, which is shorter than the distance between RFK Stadium and the Kennedy Center.

Thus, a Palestinian state would pose a clear and present existential threat to Israel; and therefore, Israel’s control of the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria is a prerequisite for its survival.

https://www.meforum.org/62587/mandelbaum-bidens-middle-east-policy-challenges

Michael Mandelbaum, professor emeritus of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and author of The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth, spoke to a July 26 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about the Biden administration’s foreign policy challenges, specifically regarding the Middle East.

According to Mandelbaum, the Biden administration is handicapped by the fact that its foreign policy team is dominated by Obama administration personnel who formulated their worldviews during the “post-Cold War” era in which the U.S. “faced no serious threats.” We now live in what Mandelbaum calls the “post-post-Cold War world,” in which the U.S. faces three “major challengers”: China, Russia, and Iran. The Biden administration “has no experience dealing with what is the central issue in foreign policy when there are challengers, namely whether, when, and how to use and threaten force.”

Biden is being “dragged pretty far … to the left of where good American foreign policy should be.”

The administration is also handicapped by the fact that the Democratic Party has “moved sharply to the left.” As a result, the Biden administration is being “dragged pretty far … to the left of where the country is, and I would say to the left of where good American foreign policy should be,” said Mandelbaum. Although “every administration has to navigate when it comes to foreign policy between politics and policy, that task seems to me to be perhaps unusually complicated and difficult for this administration.”

While Mandelbaum observed that the Biden administration has “adapted to the new circumstances” with respect to China and Russia, at least rhetorically, “the necessary, or at least desirable, adjustments are not in evidence … [regarding] four relevant issues in American policy toward the Middle East, namely Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran.” He discussed each of these in turn.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/bennett-cant-have-it-both-ways-with-biden/

(August 24, 2021 / JNS) It’s hard to figure out what Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett meant when he told his Cabinet on Sunday that in his upcoming visit to the White House, he intends to present U.S. President Joe Biden with an “orderly plan that we have formulated in the past two months to curb the Iranians, both in the nuclear sphere and vis-à-vis regional aggression.”

After all, Israel has been leading the battle against the regime in Tehran for decades, ever since it was taken over by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. This fight hasn’t been merely rhetorical, though former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu devoted much of his career articulating, verbally and in print, the dangers that a nuclear Iran would pose to the Middle East and the rest of the world.

He understood, as Bennett surely does, that since the Jewish state is a key target of the mullahs’ genocidal aims against the “infidels,” Israel has had no choice but to try to persuade other countries to wake up to the threat—or go it alone.

Some American administrations have recognized this more than others; the same applies to different constellations of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

It hasn’t been a question of accepting Israel’s warnings about Iran. Rather, it’s been an issue of how best to keep the Islamic Republic’s race for the A-bomb in check.

Left-wing politicians and pundits from both the “Great Satan” (America) and the “Small Satan” (Israel), tend to believe that the only way to do this is through a deal. Those on the right think that negotiating with a state sponsor of global terrorism is as pointless as doing so with its proxies, which happily dispatch “martyrs” to undertake the up-close-and-personal dirty work. You know, the kind that enables them to watch the blood and gore that they extract from their victims.

When Biden’s immediate predecessor and former boss, President Barack Obama, entered the picture, Israel was in trouble. Fans of the “hope and change” candidate on either side of the ocean would come very quickly to attribute the soured relations between Washington and Jerusalem to Netanyahu.

They were wrong to do so.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/08/unrwas-jihad-against-israel-part-two

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East or “UNRWA was nurtured from its beginnings to avoid any permanent solution to the plight of the refugees” from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. So documented Center for Near East Policy Research (CNEPR) Director David Bedein in his previously discussed insightful 2014 book Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict—UNRWA Policies Reconsidered.

As Bedein explained, UNRWA has caused the 1948 “Arab refugee crisis to persist longer than any other refugee situation in the world.” This longevity results from UNRWA’s definition of Palestinian refugees as including not just those who lost their homes in what became Israel in 1948-1949 but also their multigenerational descendants. Simultaneously, UNRWA has insisted that this community may only end its refugee status through a “right of return” to what is now modern Israel.

Contrary to UNRWA, Bedein observed, the “1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees makes no mention of descendants.” This convention also “exempts from refugee status a person who ‘has acquired a new nationality,’” he added. While such acquisition of new citizenship usually ends refugee status, UNRWA’s refugee “definition makes no mention of newly acquired nationality.

Meanwhile a Palestinian right of return “has no legal precedence in history and, indeed, has not been applied in other cases of wartime refugees throughout the twentieth century, which witnessed a record number of such refugees,” Bedein noted. Proponents of this claimed right often wrongly invoke the December 11, 1948, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. Yet at this time, UN officials “were concerned that an international guarantee of the ‘right of return’ for refugees could be applied by the millions of Germans” who lost their homes in Eastern Europe following World War II.

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

Another week and Michael Ordman brings us another dazzling compendium of Israel’s achievements, contributions, and social programs which give the lie to the unrelenting turpitude of anti-Israel groupies. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Coronavirus booster progress. Some 1.2 million Israelis have now had a third coronavirus vaccination and wider rollout is imminent. Maccabi Healthcare Services reported 37 (all non-serious) infections in Israelis over 60 who have been triple-vaccinated, compared to 1,064 (many serious) for those who have had only two doses.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/08/18/israeli-hmo-initial-results-show-covid-19-booster-shot-86-effective/

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/312034

Covid treatment is too cheap? Professor Eli Schwartz of Israel’s Sheba Medical Center was unable to publish the results of his successful double-blind trial of ivermectin on 89 coronavirus patients. Interesting reading.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-scientist-says-covid-19-could-be-treated-for-under-1day-675612

Trial approved for Alzheimer’s treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s SciSparc to commence a Phase 2a clinical trial of its SCI-110 (formerly THX-110) treatment for patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and agitation. The study will be conducted at the Israeli Medical Center for Alzheimer’s.

https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/scisparc-to-commence-phase-iia-clinical-trial-of-sci-110-for-the-treatment-of-alzheimers-disease-and-agitation-301326828.html

New therapies for mental illness. Israel’s Nextage Therapeutics is developing technology to deliver to the brain tiny quantities of controversial chemicals, to treat depression and other neurological disorders.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-team-aims-to-treat-neurological-disorders-with-psychedelics-676923

How the brain maps 3D space. Scientists from Israel’s Weizmann Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have unveiled how 3-dimensional space is represented in the brain’s “GPS” system. They mapped out how “grid cells” work in bats and the findings have turned the previous theory “on its head”.

https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/when-brain%E2%80%99s-gps-goes-grid

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03783-x

First 3D printed active tumor. After Researchers at Tel Aviv University have printed an entire active and viable glioblastoma (brain cancer) tumor using a 3D printer. It includes simulated brain tissue and blood vessel-like tubes through which blood cells can flow and treatments can be (and have been) tested.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israel-prints-worlds-first-3d-living-malignant-brain-tumor-677079

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUjuFyLF5nM

Rejuvenating the immune system. (TY UWI) The reason the elderly are vulnerable to Covid, is their immune systems fail to recognize a new virus. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute, Sourasky (“Ichilov) and Rambam hospitals have demonstrated that removing most of the memory B lymphocytes rejuvenates these immune cells.

https://www.israel21c.org/study-reveals-why-elderly-at-more-risk-from-covid-19/

https://doi.org/10.1182/blood.2021012428

Take your blood pressure with your smartphone. Israel’s Binah.ai (see here previously) is in the final stage of validating its iPhone blood pressure functionality at Israel’s Sheba medical center. The technology records video at up to 120 frames per second, to analyze skin color changes for monitoring vital signs.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startup-lets-users-check-vital-signs-by-looking-at-their-smartphones/

Google health subsidiary sets up Israeli R&D center. Verily Life Sciences, an independent subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, is establishing a Research and Development center in Israel.  The company focuses on digital health, applying AI to medical problems. In Israel it will target colorectal (colon) cancer.

https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-googles-verily-life-sciences-to-set-up-israel-rd-center-1001380819

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-google-project-in-israel-aims-to-use-ai-to-help-detect-colon-cancer/

Online support. Israel’s Circles has developed a platform designed to help users overcome life’s challenges. It matches groups of 6-8 people who are facing similar difficulties such as divorce, grief, or medical diagnoses, and connects them together for one-hour video meetings. People don’t have to face their struggles alone.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3915387,00.html

ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL

ww.jihadwatch.org/2021/08/unrwas-jihad-against-israel-part-one

Congressional Republicans have recently introduced legislation to reenact President Donald Trump’s cutoff of American aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Closing UNRWA and ending a decades-long, multigenerational “refugee” status for over five million Arabs is long overdue, as documented in the 2014 book Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict—UNRWA Policies Reconsidered.

The book’s author, David Bedein, director of the Center for Near East Policy Research in Jerusalem, provided a detailed, damning indictment of UNRWA. Founded in the wake of Israel’s 1948-1949 War of Independence, UNRWA had the mission of providing for Arabs who lost their homes in the territory that became Israel. Various estimates of their number ran between 540,000 and 750,000.

“When UNRWA launched its operations on May 1, 1950, it was thought that, since the refugee situation would soon be resolved, UNRWA would have a limited life span,” Bedein wrote. Yet ever since UNRWA’s mandate has been “renewed every three years by the UN General Assembly.” As a later article will analyze in detail, the key to UNRWA’s longevity lies in UNRWA’s refusal to apply ordinary resettlement processes to these refugees and their multiplying “refugee” descendants. Rather, UNRWA insists that they “return” to modern Israel.

UNRWA is anomalous in other ways, for it demonstrates an inordinate global attention to Palestinian refugees. As Bedein wrote, “UNRWA remains the only UN organization dedicated to handling exactly one ethnic group of refugees.” Thus, UNRWA “stands in sharp contrast to” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who “works on behalf of all refugees in the world.”

 For more than 20 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, anti-Zionism was a regional phenomenon—a clash between Arab and Jewish national movements in the Middle East. In the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe the Soviets exploited antisemitism for political purposes, but it was rarely part of international debate until after the Six-Day War in 1967. By the end of the 1960s, and since 1975, anti-Zionism became international in scope. It first appeared in the universities in the West where the New Left, in cooperation with the Arab student associations, attacked Israeli policy. [1]

 When the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 on November 10, 1975 and declared “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” it significantly expanded anti-Zionism into the sphere international non-governmental organizations and therefore into the Third World countries. This was done by an alliance of the Arabs and the Soviet Union. They endowed anti-Zionism with legitimacy and official recognition. [2]  

 After the First World War, the Arabs expected Greater Syria—which included Palestine and Lebanon—to become a vast united and sovereign Arab empire. Instead the French and the British divided the area into what the Arabs considered “irrationally carved out” entities that became the present-day states of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Trans-Jordan (later Jordan), Iraq and Israel. They were outraged that a “non-Arab embryo state in Palestine” had been inserted into an area where they would never be accepted. They claimed that this shattered their dreams of unification and impeded their search for a common identity.  [3]  

 The Fight for “Dignity and Independence”

The fight against a Jewish homeland became an integral part of their struggle “for dignity and independence.” Israel’s existence, they claimed, “implied that not only a part of the Arab patrimony, but also parts of Islam had been stolen. For a Moslem there was no greater shame than for that to happen.” The only way to eliminate this deeply felt affront—this “symbol of everything that had dominated them in the past”—was to rid the area of “imperialist domination.” [4]  

Zionists were the official enemy of the Arab national movement, but Arab governments have long been accused of using the Arab Israeli confrontation to divert attention from their own critical domestic social and economic problems. When confronted, they respond that if this were not a real concern, it would not resonate so strongly among the Arab masses. [5]

The late Bernard Lewis, the dean of Middle Eastern scholars, said Arab preoccupation with Israel is the licensed grievance. In countries where people are becoming increasingly angry and frustrated at all the difficulties under which they live—the poverty, unemployment, oppression—having a grievance which they can express freely is an enormous psychological advantage.” [6]

https://unitedwithisrael.org/in-medical-first-israeli-doctors-freeze-out-cancerous-bladder-tumors/?utm_source=newsletters_

Doctors at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital are hopeful the procedure will eventually become an outpatient treatment.

Doctors at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital removed cancer tumors from the bladders of four patients by freezing them out rather than by cutting. The procedure has never been tried before and offers tremendous potential to reduce bleeding, infection, pain and other risks.

All the patients were discharged without side effects and will be monitored over several weeks.

“Normally, the tumors are frozen by injecting the freezing agent using needles, but this can’t happen with bladder cancer,” said aide Dr. Isaac Hoffman, who operated with his colleague Prof. Gilad Amiel.

Instead, an Israeli medical company, Vessi Medical, based near Nahariya, developed a process to spray a freezing agent on the cancerous cells. Ice forms around and within the cancerous cells without damaging the bladder muscles.

The bladder is unlike other organs, explained Eyal Kochavi, CEO of Vessi Medical. “It’s mostly muscle and very flexible. It has the ability to change its volume in a way that we don’t pay attention to. So, for example, we don’t feel any urge to urinate until it fills to almost half a liter.”

Said Hoffman, “Here we are actually spraying liquid Co2 instead of cutting out the tumor, a process that causes scarring of healthy tissue…

“We are very happy that we succeeded in freezing the tumor, after which the cancerous cells die off without them needing us to cut them out.”

Hoffman added that the procedure could eventually be administered as an outpatient treatment. “The aim is to release the patient from the hospital on the same day as the procedure.”

Bladder cancer affects around two million people globally. According to the Mayo Clinic, risk factors for bladder cancer include family history, a personal history of chronic bladder irritation or infection, age, smoking and exposure to certain chemicals used to manufacture dyes, rubber, paint and other textiles.