RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to a November 12, 2020 OpEd by Nabil Amr, a confidant of Mahmoud Abbas, published by the leading Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat : “Ballots with Biden’s name would have filled the boxes if placed in Ramallah…. [The Palestinian Authority] bets are that Biden’s victory [will] resume ties with the US Administration, pumping money into the Palestinian Authority’s virtually empty coffers, reopening the PLO’s Washington Office and the US Consulate in Jerusalem, tasked with dealing with Palestinian affairs…. The new Administration will also go back to talking about the two-state solution and repudiate unilateral actions like annexation…. Trump’s Administration took a totally different path….”

However, the “Palestine Firsters” among the future policy makers in Washington, DC, are infatuated with the Palestinian cause, assuming that the Palestinian issue is central to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the overall Arab agenda.  They have ignored the fact that Arabs viewed Palestinians as the role model for intra-Arab terrorism, subversion and ingratitude, a low level (and negative) priority on their agenda.

The “Palestine Firsters” should study the two hour October 5, 2020 TV interview by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a senior member of the Saudi royal family and a former head of the Saudi intelligence services and national security council:

“It is not surprising to see how quick are Palestinian leaders [criticizing the Israel-UAE peace accord] to use terms like ‘treason,’ betrayal’ and ‘backstabbing.’  These are their ways in dealing with each other…. They always bet on the losing side.  In the 1930s, [the top Palestinian leader] Amin al-Husseini was betting on the Nazis in Germany…. [Following WW2, the Palestinians embraced the USSR]…. [In 1970], Arafat’s headquarters were in Jordan, and he decided that it was time to liberate not Palestine, but Jordan [through a bloody civil war]…. They had only been in Lebanon a few years when they began to behave as they did in Jordan, and Lebanon became the new target.  It led to a [1975-1982] civil war…. No one can forget the image of Arafat as he visited Saddam Hussein in 1990, after the occupation of Kuwait [which was the most generous Arab host of the Palestinians]…. We saw Arafat in Baghdad, embracing Saddam, and laughing and joking with him…. We saw [Palestinian] youth in Nablus dancing joyfully in celebration of [Saddam’s] missile attack on Riyadh, holding pictures of Saddam…. We are at a stage in which rather than…serve the Palestinian cause, we have to pay attention to our national security and interests…. We are surrounded by a stormy sea [Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and Turkey’s Erdogan]…. We do not allow [Palestinian] liars and those who are disloyal to impose their tradition on us…. The Palestinian leaders have come to regard Tehran and Ankara higher than they regard Riyadh, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, Oman and Egypt….”

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

HIGHLIGHTS

  A new Israeli endoscopy device takes better biopsies for diagnosing cancer.

Saudi Arabia diverted an Israeli plane to fly near Mecca, to avoid a storm.

An Israeli’s learning difficulties led him to develop an educational app.

Israelis helped build Apple’s new microprocessor.

Latest figures show Israel is the highest spender on R&D as a proportion of GDP.
Israeli hi-tech is the subject of the new TrueFuture TV series.

An on-line Israeli course on Islam has hundreds of students across the Muslim world.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Inflammatory eye diseases. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Tarsius (see here) reported positive results in a study of its TRS01 treatment of Active Anterior Non-Infectious Uveitis – an inflammatory eye disease. It shows promise for saving the eyesight of patients with uveitic glaucoma, which has no current approved treatment.

https://tarsiuspharma.com/2020/10/08/october-5-2020/

Better biopsies. Israel’s Limaca Medical has developed a precision instrument which improves endoscopic ultrasound-guided biopsies. The needle pinpoints the exact location of a patient’s tumor, to extract good quality biopsies for genetic profiling analysis. The device is currently aimed at pancreatic cancer patients.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3870950,00.html  https://www.limaca-medical.com/

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

Rehabilitate during the pandemic. Israel’s WizeCare (reported here previously) has become popular as a physical therapy tool during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some 23,000 patients in Israel and the United States have used WizeCare’s product in their recovery. It improves adherence to treatment regimes by around 80%.

https://www.israel21c.org/how-a-serious-car-accident-led-to-a-home-rehab-platform/

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

Preventing suicide. Researchers at Israel’s Technion Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed an innovative technology for early detection of suicidal tendencies based on automatic text analysis of social network content. They check for negative words and other factors. Newsletter readers should be safe!

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/11/11/israeli-scientists-developed-ai-technology-to-detect-early-suicidal-tendencies/

European grant for mental health startup. Israel’s Taliaz (reported here previously) has just received a $2.7 million grant from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. It will help Taliaz expand its clinical research using its PREDICTIX products to help psychiatrists treat and manage patient depression in EU countries.

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/11/13/israeli-mental-health-startup-taliaz-awarded-3-million-eu-horizon-2020-grant/  https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3870692,00.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n4ab9UCK60

Center of Excellence for cardiology. Newsweek magazine has placed Sheba Medical Center’s Department of Cardiology prestigiously in the top 50 heart centers in the world for 2020-2021. As reported here, Newsweek previously listed Israel’s Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer as the world’s ninth-best hospital.

https://www.shebaonline.org/sheba-is-proud-to-be-chosen-as-a-center-of-excellence-in-cardiology/

https://www.shebaonline.org/

Toddler from Gaza is NGO’s 5,555th heart patient. Israeli charity Save A Child’s Heart has just performed its 5,555th life-saving heart operation. The patient was Mahmad – a two-year-old Palestinian Arab boy from Gaza. SACH doctors gave him his first life-saving heart surgery when he was just 5 months old.

https://saveachildsheart.org/news/save-a-childs-heart-conducts-its-5-555-lifesaving-procedure-on-a-2-year-old-palestinian-boy-from-gaza

New grandfather delivers 3 babies. Daniel, a United Hatzalah volunteer EMT, was happy when his daughter called to say she had given birth to a boy. On his way to visit his new grandson, he had to divert to help deliver a baby girl. After seeing his grandson, he then got further calls and brought another two babies into the world.

https://israelrescue.org/blog/the-third-time-is-charming-pair-of-emts-respond-to-three-births-in-the-span-of-6-hours/

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/palestinians-living-in-jordan-deserve-to-be-jordanian-

Arabs who consider themselves to be Palestinians deserve a state; they have one – it’s called Jordan. Terrorist organizations, such as the PLO, Hamas, PLFP, Islamic Jihad and others, do not deserve support, or a state.

A “two-state solution,” therefore, based on a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) run by terrorist organizations dedicated to Israel’s destruction is not a solution. That only prevents peace and freedom for Palestinians.

The alternative requires a new way of thinking, one that is focused on people, not politics. Supporting the establishment of a state must be based on humanitarian principles that will allow Palestinians to exercise real self-determination that does not depend on what terrorist leaders determine.

This was the fundamental mistake of the Oslo Accords and the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which ignored the Palestinians and focused on a political solution that empowered terrorist regimes. It failed and will continue to fail because it did not offer freedom for Palestinians, but condemned them to live under terrorist dictatorships.

Most Palestinians are not terrorists and don’t support terrorism. They want to live normal, productive lives. They want to protect their children, not encourage them to become killers and suicide bombers. They want to teach them values, to improve themselves, their families and their communities, not to become self-destructive and destructive to others.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-zionist-left-and-the-plo-flag-a-troubling-episode/

Objecting to the reproduction of a hate map should not be a partisan issue. Palestinian Arab violence has never distinguished between left-wing and right-wing Jews.

Flags mean something. Countries, states and even terrorist organizations design their flags to make a statement about their history, values or aspirations.

America’s stars and stripes symbolize the original 13 colonies and 50 states of the union. Canada’s maple leaf alludes to its natural resources.

On the other end of the moral spectrum, the Nazis adopted the swastika because they believed it was connected to “Aryan” history. Hezbollah’s flag features the slogan “Party of Allah” and an assault rifle. The PLO and its governing arm, the Palestinian Authority, have used a number of emblems over the years. One features a map of all of Israel—not just the disputed territories, but all of Israel—across which are the words, “Palestine from the river to the sea,” in Arabic.

A maple leaf may not convey a particularly powerful message. But a map asserting that all of Israel is really “Palestine” and needs to be conquered sends a very powerful message to the Palestinian Arab public. When the ruling P.A. regime displays such a map, it is telling Palestinian Arabs what their goal should be.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-policy-divide-between-netanyahu-and-biden-opinion-648947

Let’s get the question of whether US President Donald Trump just lost the election to Joe Biden out of the way. Regardless of one’s view of the ballot count, it’s safe to call the Democratic contender “president-elect” until proven otherwise.

In the meantime, since he and his running mate, Kamala Harris, could very well be instated on January 20, it is important to prepare for the seismic shift that is inevitable in such an event. Though the earthquake will be felt most directly by Americans, its aftershocks will reverberate around the globe, particularly in Israel.

The Jewish state is by no means the only country with a serious stake in the makeup of the next administration in Washington. But for the past four years, the government in Jerusalem has enjoyed unprecedented and unequivocal support from the White House and – even more astonishingly – from the State Department.

It’s been like a luxurious soak in a warm bath following an arduous trek in the snow. As a result, most Israelis have been witnessing what they fear is a return to the frosty old days when former president Barack Obama was in office.

Only those who view Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as joint forces of evil are rejoicing at such a prospect. The rest of Israeli the public is not looking forward to the scenario and are hoping, along with Trump supporters across the ocean, that recounts and lawsuits will reverse Biden’s fortune and keep the incumbent in place.

https://www.jns.org/arabs-states-draw-closer-to-israel-to-counter-non-arab-powers-t

The decision by three Arab states to make peace with Israel can be credited both to efforts by the Trump administration and the recognition by these Sunni states that their security would improve against the ongoing threats they face from Turkey and Iran.

Iran and its proxies interfere with Arab states while promoting their Shi’ite revolutionary ideology; likewise, Turkey pushes its Sunni revolutionary ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the region.

Turkey and Iran look to overthrow the Sunni Arab states that do not align with them, such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. The normalization deals between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan have greatly upset Turkey and Iran, which ideologically view Israel as the enemy.

“Iran is a tactical enemy for the Gulf states because the regime is controlled by Shi’ite fanatics who want to destroy the Sunni regimes in the Gulf,” Harold Rhode, a longtime former adviser on Islamic affairs in the U.S. Defense Department of Defense who was in Iran during the early months of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, told JNS.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israels-president-shouldnt-obfuscate-the-particularity-of-anti-semitism/

Shame on Reuven Rivlin for marking the anniversary of Kristallnacht by taking a general stand against all forms of hatred.

To mark the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin hosted a global memorial, livestreamed from his official residence in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Ahead of the event, he got together with two of his counterparts, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, and created a video in honor of the momentous occasion, which he posted on social media and promoted through his press people.

It is both curious and disconcerting that Rivlin should consider the content of the short clip worthy of highlighting. If anything, he should be ashamed of himself for taking part in a production aimed at erasing the particularity of Jew-hatred.

“Eighty-two years since Kristallnacht, and the dark shadows of the past have not disappeared from our streets,” Rivlin, Steinmeier and Van der Bellen state in the clip.

So far so good.

What follows, however, is appalling, given the occasion in question: the marking of the “Night of Broken Glass”—the Nazi pogrom against Germany’s Jews on Nov. 9-10, 1938—aptly named after the smashing of the windows of synagogues, storefronts and other Jewish establishments.

“We will stand against hatred. We will stand against racism, against anti-Semitism. We will stand together in Vienna, in Jerusalem, in Berlin,” they say, each reciting a snippet of text. “Never again means never again. Let there be light.”