RUTHFULLY YOURS

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

This issue is packed full of life-saving examples. They include successful coronavirus treatments, UV sterilizing, and vaccine boosters; new treatments for bladder cancer, Parkinson’s, heart arrhythmia, back pain, damaged cartilage, stroke, allergies and more. There are also heart-warming stories from two Israeli life-saving organizations. Those citizens with disabilities and special needs can expect new opportunities for a better life and Israeli firefighters are helping save Greek citizens from deadly fires. New Israeli water innovations plus agricultural projects and startups are saving millions from drought and starvation. Finally, new international agreements will save many more lives in the future. Michael Ordman

Fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah, Israel’s contributions truly set a light unto the nations.

“And unto your light, nations shall walk, and kings unto the brightness of your rising” Isaiah 60:3. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Hospital kills Covid with UV light. Tel Aviv’s Sourasky (Ichilov) is the first hospital to use ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect medical spaces. The J. Protect system, from Israel’s Juganu (see here) uses UV-A in occupied rooms and UV-C when the room is empty. Bacteria, fungi and viruses (e.g., Covid-19) are killed in one hour.
https://worldisraelnews.com/israeli-hospital-first-ever-to-use-light-to-disinfect-spaces/
 
Covid treatment trial extended. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Health Ministry has approved a Phase 2 trial of Covid-19 treatment MesenCure (see here previously) from Israel’s Bonus BioGroup. The treatment helped 15 out of 17 severe Covid cases, to be released from hospital just one day after receiving their final dose.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israel-to-expand-use-of-covid-drug-that-gets-88-percent-of-patients-out-of-hospital-676397
 
Pfizer booster vaccine works. (TY Hazel) Researchers at Israel’s Beilinson Medical Center have found that twice as many organ transplant recipients developed antibodies after their 3rd anti-covid jab compared to their 2nd dose. There were also good results in the over-60s, of which over 750,000 have had their 3rd vaccination.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/3rd-covid-shot-highly-potent-in-israels-immunocompromised-early-study-shows/
 
Freezing bladder cancer. In a global first, doctors at Israel’s Rambam Medical Center in Haifa performed cryotherapy to treat superficial bladder cancer in a 60-year-old patient. The technology was developed by Israel’s Vessi Medical (see here previously). Bladder cancer is the most common cancer in men over 50.
https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/cryotheraphy_breakthrough.aspx  https://www.vessimed.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00cr009GQ2g
 
Defibrillator on a string. Israel’s Newpace has developed. the Implantable Subcutaneous String-cardio Defibrillator (ISSD) – a low-invasive heart rhythm defibrillator that is implanted under the skin and is recharged and monitored wirelessly using Bluetooth. Newpace is now to use the battery system from Israel’s Powermat.
https://powermat.com/news/press-releases/newpace-selects-wireless-power-market-leader-powermat-technologies-to-develop-advanced-wireless-charging-technology-for-innovative-life-saving-devices/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1BNfklrA8s  https://www.newpacemedical.com/products
 
European approval for spinal fusion system. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s ZygoFix (see here previously) has obtained the European CE mark for its minimally invasive screwless zLOCK Spinal Fusion system for the treatment of chronic back pain. The system has been in clinical use for over three years in Hungary and Israel.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zygofix-receives-ce-clearance-for-its-zlock-spinal-fusion-system-301320845.html
 
Successful trials for knee cartilage replacement. Israel’s CartiHeal (see here previously) has just announced successful results in the two-year trial of its Agili-C implant for 251 patients with damaged knee cartilage. Over 77% of patients said their condition had improved, compared to 33% of those who had conventional treatment.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-cartheal-succeeds-in-clinical-trial-for-cartilage-treatment-1001380565
 
Israel’s medical robotic revolution. Join Technion UK’s webinar on 24th Aug at 2pm UK time. Professor Alon Wolf, Head of Robotics and Vice President of Israel’s Technion Institute, will talk about his work. His startup Medrobotics is now transforming his search & rescue robotic snake into an anatomical surgery tool.
https://technionuk.org/event/the-medical-robotics-revolution/
https://technionuk.org/video/snake-robots-technion-biorobotics-biomechanics-lab-alon-wolf/
 
Hi-tech stroke rehab. Ben Gurion University has established a new rehabilitation lab for stroke victims. It is based at ADI ALEH Negev Nahalat Eran Rehabilitation Village in southern Israel (see here previously). Patients spend 3 – 5 hours per day with cutting-edge equipment that utilizes the brain’s plasticity to repair itself.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/bgus-negev-lab-is-bringing-stroke-rehab-into-the-future-675273
 
Preventing allergies in babies. Israel’s MyOR uses AI models and predictive data from studies worldwide to forecast which newborns are at risk of developing food allergies and atopic dermatitis (eczema). This, plus a sophisticated skin test, gives pediatricians a tool to guide parents on how to prevent allergies.
https://www.israel21c.org/this-startup-aims-to-predict-and-prevent-allergies-in-babies/  
https://www.myorcare.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktJt2jT7E7A  (Bamba story at 8:15 mins)
 
Diagnosing cancer in Midwest USA. Alverno Laboratories, one of the largest integrated laboratory networks in the United States, is to deploy the Galen AI platform from Israel’s Ibex Medical Analytics (see here previously) to help pathologists provide accurate cancer diagnosis for patients.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3914741,00.html
 
Treating symptoms of Parkinson’s. Former Member of Knesset Michael (Miki) Eitan (aged 77) was once completely debilitated by Parkinson’s disease. In Feb 2021, he underwent Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) at Hadassah Ein Kerem in Jerusalem. Now, although the disease continues, most of his symptoms have gone.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/28-year-ex-likud-mk-staves-off-parkinsons-with-rare-brain-treatment/
 
Ethiopian’s 20-year heart guarantee. Israel’s Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) recently flew 33-year-old basketball coach Luleseged Kassa from Ethiopia to Israel, so that surgeons at could fix a faulty heart valve. The valve was one of two that SACH surgeons replaced (again for free) when Luleseged was just 13 years old.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/addis-ababa-man-battling-heart-defect-gets-second-free-treatment-in-israel/
 
The downs and ups of an EMT. Baruch, a United Hatzalah paramedic, lost vital minutes when the daughter of a heart attack victim gave the wrong address. He finally arrived to take over CPR from the patient’s exhausted wife and save her husband’s life. And a busy previous day meant that his medical kit was fully replenished.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/311474

https://dianebederman.com/bds-and-israel/

BDS, Boycott, Divest and Sanction of Israel is a policy shared by millions upon millions if not billions of people. BDS is meant to destroy Israel, the Jewish homeland for more than 3000 years. Why? Because these people are Jew haters. Hitler tried to kill  us. He managed to murder a third of the Jewish individuals; 6 million. BDS wants to destroy Israel itself. I mean, what else does “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” mean?

BDS accuses Israel of being an apartheid state – like South Africa.

From the BDS horse’s mouth:

The BDS movement was launched by 170 Palestinian unions, refugee networks, women’s organizations, professional associations, popular resistance committees and other Palestinian civil society bodies. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the Palestinian BDS call urges nonviolent pressure on Israel until it complies with international law.

So what is Apartheid? It is an Afrikaans word meaning ‘separation’ and was the name given to the system of racial segregation and subjugation of the African and other non-white population of South Africa by white settlers from 1948 to 1994.

According to BDS, there are many similarities between apartheid in South Africa and modern day Israeli apartheid. South African apartheid was characterised by settler (white) colonialism and the forced displacement of the indigenous population (black), the division of the colonized into different groups with different rights, severe restrictions on movement and violent suppression of resistance. These, say BDS, are all key characteristics of Israel’s modern day regime over the Palestinian people.

Really? It’s not the Palestinian Authority? But I digress.

Hmmm. Muslims are in the Israeli government and Arab Israelis serve on the Supreme Court. Awad Suleiman  is the first Druze colonel to take command of Air Maintenance Unit 22.Col. Talk about diversity inclusion and equity – here it is.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced that he had emerged from a productive meeting with CIA director William Burns.

“We discussed the strengthening of intelligence and security cooperation between Israel and the United States, the situation in the Middle East, the emphasis on Iran and the possibilities for expanding and deepening regional cooperation. We will continue to cooperate with our closest friend,” Bennett wrote, signing off with an icon of an American flag next to an Israeli one.

Obligatory positive pronouncements aside, Bennett would do well to view Burns’s trip this week to Israel and the Palestinian Authority with wariness.

“The visit shows that the Biden administration is serious about restoring Washington’s relations with the Palestinians and strengthening the Palestinian leadership under President Mahmoud Abbas,” a PA official told The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh on Tuesday.
Noting the CIA chief’s scheduled rendezvous with Abbas and PA General Intelligence Service head Majed Faraj, the official pointed to the PA’s “sharp financial crisis” that requires “urgent [US] aid,” without which “Hamas will come to power in the West Bank.”

If Israel had a shekel for every time the PA whined to the West about its victimhood, the Jewish state’s coffers would be overflowing. In case the most recent example of this incredible chutzpah has escaped attention, a review of the events leading up to Operation Guardian of the Walls is in order.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/arab-israelis-tech-startups-ramadan-satellite-impact-raam-abbas-orit-farkash-hacohen-blue-and-white-11628710898?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

A small satellite called Ramadan will soon be launched to track the moon and detect the beginning of the lunar month that determines the start of many holidays. It’s an initiative of a landmark Israeli government plan to promote technology and science within Arab Israeli society.

The new Israeli government, in which I serve as minister for innovation, science and technology, is a government of firsts. It is the first time an Arab Israeli party is part of the ruling coalition. I worked with my colleague Mansour Abbas of the Ra’am party and the Ministry for Social Equality on developing a plan for government investment in technology and research and development.

My vision is to use Israeli technology—the bedrock of our economy—to help people on the periphery of society.

Aptly dubbed Impact, the $100 million, five-year plan, aims to bridge a gap in tech jobs. Israel’s Arab community makes up around 20% of the country’s population but accounts for only about 2% of tech workers. The Jewish ultra-Orthodox demographic, with more than 12% of Israel’s population of 9.3 million, makes up only 3% of tech workers.

The plan aims to help the Arab community develop skills to work in science and technology. It will include educational programs, vocational training, and technology incubators for entrepreneurs and startups. We plan to establish technology and science centers for Arabs, an incubator hub with seed funding for promising minority entrepreneurs, and two new research-and-development centers, one of them for the Bedouin community.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/itamar-marcus-video-world-palestinian-child-frontpagemagcom/

This video is brought to you by a Freedom Center-Glazov Gang collaboration on a new exclusive webinar series, Teach-Ins for the Twenty-First Century. Join us as some of the leading thinkers and pundits on the scene today discuss key issues related to the coronavirus pandemic and its ongoing implications, confronting the Left, the jihad terror threat, and much, much more. And make sure to ask your own questions of our experts.

This new webinar features Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch. One of the foremost authorities on Palestinian policy and ideology, Marcus has been instrumental in exposing the PA duplicity, hate and terror promotion. He has presented PMW’s findings to members of government and parliaments of over 30 countries, leading to a major drop in foreign funding to the PA, with 4 countries cutting off all funding. His book Deception, co-authored with Nan Jacques Zilberdik, was acclaimed by the founder of Human Rights Watch, Robert Bernstein, as “one of the most important books you handle in your lives.” He was recognized as being among the world’s “top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life or the State of Israel,” by The Algemeiner newspaper.

Itamar discusses The World of the Palestinian Child, revealing how many Palestinian terrorists in recent years are teenagers including some as young as 13-year-old. He explores how the PA successfully indoctrinates even young children to see Israelis/Jews as a powerful and dangerous force in the world — turning even good people and children into terror supporters.

Don’t miss it!

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com  

On the evening of September 6th, 2021, the holiday Rosh-Ha-Shana celebrates 5782 years of Jewish life. I hope that included in the rituals of observance and sermons will be an accounting of Israel’s outsize contributions to every aspect of human endeavor throughout the globe. Millenia, centuries, and decades are daunting, but Michael Ordman’s weekly newsletters gives us updates on medical, scientific, technologic, and social institutions that dazzle and evoke admiration in lieu of libel and bias. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Successful Covid-19 treatment trial. A successful Israeli trial of Covid-19 treatment EXO-CD24 (see here previously) has now been reinforced by a trial on 88 patients in Greece. 90% of the moderate and serious patients (aged up to 85) were released within five days of treatment. None required to be put on ventilators.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/88-patients-0-intubated-israeli-precision-covid-drug-wrapping-up-early-trial/
 
Second most coronavirus innovations. (TY Hazel) The 2021 report by research center StartupBlink cited Israel as the source of 38 of some 1,300 pandemic-related innovations, ranking it world number 2 after the USA. The report praised Israel’s many innovations relative to its small size and also its vaccination program.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israel-ranks-second-in-world-in-coronavirus-innovation-study-675728
 
Breakthrough in detecting metastatic breast cancer. Researchers from four Israeli medical institutes have identified early signs in the body that indicate breast cancer is about to spread to other organs. The discovery could save millions of lives. They also discovered that the protein MYC speeds the growth of cancerous cells.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/breakthrough-in-the-battle-against-metastatic-breast-cancer-in-tau-study-675842
 
Eat up those cancer cells. A US clinical study involving Irving Weissman of Ben Gurion University is using the antibody Magrolimab to enhance “scavenger macrophages” – cancer cell-eating white blood cells. Magrolimab blocks the CD47 molecule that cancer cells produce to signal “don’t eat me” to the macrophages.
https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/bgu_stanford.aspx
 
Understanding Alzheimer’s. (TY WIN) It is known that a build-up of Amyloid plaques in the brain is common in Alzheimer’s patients, but what do they affect? Scientists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have just found that they are a catalyst to the degradation of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and adrenaline.
https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/Amyloid-Plaques-Alzheimer.aspx
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667109321001366?via%3Dihub
 
Removable heart implant. Israel’s Append Medical is developing the Appligator – an implantable device for closing the Left Atrial Appendix (LAA) to prevent blood clot leakage and strokes in those suffering from atrial fibrillation (AF). However, unlike other implants, the device is removed after surgery, leaving just stitches.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3914175,00.html   https://www.appendmedical.com/
 
President’s booster. Honest Reporting’s Daniel Pomerantz was interviewed on Turkish TV about Israel’s coronavirus activities. He revealed that President Isaac Herzog was one of the first to receive a third (booster) vaccination against SARS-Cov-2. It was administered at Sheba hospital by Muslim Arab nurse Lina Ahmad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y1ZFi16DAs  
 
Heart monitoring smartwatch ready to launch. Israel’s CardiacSense (see here previously) is about to ship its first heart-monitoring smartwatches around the world. This article gives the history and technical details of the low-cost product that can save many lives, at a fraction of the cost of hospital sensors and implants.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3913705,00.html
 
US approves 3D medical holographs. Israel-based RealView Imaging (see here previously) has received FDA clearance for its HOLOSCOPE-i holographic system. The system creates spatially accurate, 3D interactive medical holograms, based on data received from standard CT scans and 3D ultrasound systems.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3914003,00.html  
 
Ribbons of Hope. The Israel Cancer Research Fund is holding a virtual gala on 10th Aug to raise funds to help the most promising Israeli scientists advance ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer. ICRF has already provided more than 2,500 grants that have been responsible for major cancer research breakthroughs.
https://www.icrfonline.org/
 
His father’s son.  Having watched his father save many lives as a volunteer EMT for Israel’s United Hatzalah, 16-year-old Shaked decided to learn how to administer CPR himself. So, when bystanders didn’t know what to do when a woman collapsed in Afula, Shaked stepped right up and saved her life.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/311232
 

https://worldisraelnews.com/israel-beats-russia-wins-gold-in-gymnastics-angry-russians-accuse-judges-of-bias/?utm_source=

Linoy Ashram becomes first Israeli woman to take Olympic gold as Russians accuse judges of bias.

Her blue ribbon soared halfway to the rafters, and Israel’s Linoy Ashram spun and swirled and caught it, winning gold in a performance that ended Russia’s decades-long dominance in rhythmic gymnastics.

But Russian sports officials accused the judges of bias and said they would lodge a complaint.

Ashram, 22, became the first Israeli woman to ever win an Olympic gold medal, edging out a pair of Russian identical twin sisters who were the favorites heading into Tokyo.

Dina Averina, 22, placed second and her sister, Arina, fell to fourth place. Alina Harnasko of Belarus won the bronze medal.

“This is history. I’m proud of represent Israel here, on the biggest stage in the world,” Ashram said after her victory. “It’s like a dream, I think it’s like I’m not here.”

Ashram, 22, has served as an Israeli military secretary since 2017, and she works there every day when she’s not performing. Israeli women are required to perform at least two years of military service, and she said it is important to her to give time and energy to her country.

In her final performance in the four-round competition, she danced to a techno remix of the Jewish celebratory folk song “Hava Nagila” as the crowd clapped along. Ashram, wearing a blue and white feathered bird leotard in the colors of the Israeli flag, missed a catch, and spectators gasped.

Dina Averina, who was set to perform just after Ashram, saw her mistake and was hopeful it was a chance for her to take the gold medal back to Russia.