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ISRAEL

The Long Road to Israel’s Very Good Month The Jewish state has become too valuable to the Arab world to be treated as a pariah. Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-long-road-to-israels-very-good-month-11600124843?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=9

Not since May 1948, when both the U.S. and the Soviet Union recognized the state of Israel in the critical weeks of its war for independence, has Israel had a diplomatic month like this. On Aug. 13, the United Arab Emirates and Israel signed an agreement to normalize relations, with the formal ceremony to be held Tuesday in Washington with President Trump. On Sept. 11, Bahrain followed suit. The Palestinian Authority, holding the rotating chair of the Arab League, introduced a resolution condemning the U.A.E. move at a Zoom session of Arab foreign ministers, but in a shocking departure from past practice, the motion failed to pass. On Sept. 13 another Arab nation, Oman, issued a statement of support for Bahrain’s decision to normalize relations.

Meanwhile, defying pressure from the European Union and in exchange for Israeli recognition of Kosovo’s independence, Kosovo became the first Muslim-majority country in the world to agree to place an embassy in Jerusalem in another Trump-brokered deal. (The status of a similar pledge from Serbia isn’t clear.)

With Saudi Arabia allowing flights from Israel to the U.A.E. to pass over its territory and Morocco reported to be close to allowing direct flights to the Jewish state, something of a tipping point seems to have been reached in the Middle East. Resentment of Zionism and sympathy for the Palestinians will no longer be allowed to interfere with what embattled Arab rulers see as a vital relationship.

These changes are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Arab opposition to Israel’s existence has never been as unanimous or implacable as casual observers sometimes assume. Geopolitically, conservative Arab states have long understood that their interests and Israel’s are connected.

A Pilotless Pilot Program By Seth J. Frantzman

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/a-pilotless-pilot-program/

Israel–U.S. drone cooperation could revolutionize what soldiers carry into battle.

The U.S. and Israel reached a new milestone in defense cooperation this month as Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced that an Israeli start-up named Xtend would be part of a pilot program with the U.S. Department of Defense to use its Skylord drones. The program will initially include several dozen of the small drone systems, which are designed for air defense against drone or other threats.

If this all sounds a bit futuristic and confusing, using drones to confront other drones, it is because the current threats that we face from drones and other types of enemy innovations are increasing daily. Xtend’s innovation is in using augmented reality, basically wearable goggles like the ones hi-tech gamers use, to guide the drones to find and destroy threats. Imagine soldiers guarding the perimeter of a base and being alerted to a terrorist drone threat, like the kind ISIS used in the battle for Mosul. Now, instead of taking cover or plinking away with rifles at a hard-to-hit small drone, the soldier can put on virtual-reality glasses and guide their own drone in for the kill.

The Combating Terrorist Technical Support Office at the Department of Defense is supporting this project. It is part of a much wider ecosystem of defense and research-and-development cooperation between Israel and the U.S. For instance, the military is evaluating Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, which can be used against rockets and other threats. Americans have been killed this year in Iraq by pro-Iranian groups firing rockets at bases where soldiers are housed. An Iron Dome–style system could help protect them. Similarly, American tanks use the Trophy defense system developed by Israel. The technology goes both ways: Israel is among the most active users of the American-made F-35.

Questions for American Jewish leaders about the Israel-UAE deal Democracy demands US Jewish groups ask members what they think before taking drastic new positions, like UAE peace trumps sovereignty.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/287256

Whenever there is a major diplomatic development involving Israel, news reporters call the presidents of various American Jewish organizations for their comments. Naturally they are tempted to immediately respond. But the statements some Jewish officials issued in response to the Israel-United Arab Emirates deal remind us that caution is often the more prudent course.

Of course, leaders of Jewish organizations have a practical need for the public’s attention. Getting quoted in a newspaper is critical to fundraising. It demonstrates to potential donors that their particular organization is significant and valuable. It’s the donations that keep our many Jewish and Zionist organizations alive. That’s what pays for the salaries and the per diems and more.

Still, although Jewish leaders may have their reasons for rushing, to give statements and issue press releases, it’s fair to ask whether it is appropriate for a leader of a American Jewish organization to take a public stance on a major controversial issue without consulting the members of that group. Especially when it involves taking a stance that differs significantly from the traditional positions taken by that organization.

Consider the decision to suspend declaring sovereignty over any part of Judea-Samaria, in exchange for diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates.

This question might not apply to the various left-of-center American Jewish organizations. They have always been strongly opposed to Israeli sovereignty in the territories, so the leaders of their groups are on safe ground with their constituents on that issue. It’s hard to imagine any members of J Street or Peace Now opposing the statements which their leaders made in support of the Israel-UAE agreement. The very essence of the agreement is the fulfillment of the classic slogan that Peace Now dreamt up in the 1970s, “Peace is better than an undivided Land of Israel.”

Israel & The Middle East: The Difference A President Makes (American, that is)… by Gerald A. Honigman

Fast forwarding from the days that Presidents Truman had to fight his own Arabist, Big Oil-connected State Department over the very rebirth of Israel in ’48; when Secretary of State Dulles and Eisenhower threatened to cut off all private as well as official aid to Israel over its response to incessant terror and blockade in the Sinai Campaign in ’56; the officially neutral stance of President Johnson in the brief “Six Day War” in ’67; positive response from Nixon but horrendous reviews for his machiavellian SoS, Kissinger, in the Yom Kippur War of ’73; etc….there were reports that emerged, despite “the filter,” that the ground-breaking flight of President Sadat of Egypt directly to Israel in 1977 and historic peace treaty which followed in ’79 actually took place as much as despite Jimmy Carter than because of him… https://ekurd.net/jews-should-not-henry-2019-07-14

Carter wanted such things as bringing Russia in on the deal, shoving a Palestinian State upon a super vulnerable 9-15 mile wide Israel, and so forth. The Sunday School teacher– who, among other things, still likes to preach about G_d-killing, money-loving Jews, and so forth, and writes about “Apartheid Israel”–changed his mind only when he saw in ’77 that Egypt and Israel were about to leave him behind in history…

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/meir-soloveichik/jimmy-carter-sunday-school-years/

And then there was William Jefferson Clinton…the president who had a murderous Arafat to his White House repeatedly, and who pressured Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000 to forsake the promise of meaningful territorial compromise via the final draft of UNSC Resolution 242 in the wake of the 1967 War that Israel would never have to return to the suicidal ’49 Auschwitz/Armistice lines of 1949–which made Israel, for almost two decades, a mere sardine can ghetto of a State where most of its population and infrastructure where located. George W. Bush would comment that Texas had driveways larger than that.

During the era of Clinton’s so-called “Oslo Peace,” the more Israel gave in territory, the more it profusely bled via predictable increased blown buses, restaurants, and other acts of Arab “peace making”–courtesy of the American State Department and its Hebrew arm-twisting boss in the White House. First Lady Hillary gave Arafat’s wife a big hug right after the latter gave a speech accusing Israel of poisoning Arab children.

Only Arafat’s refusal to accept almost all of the disputed territories (i.e., forget about Israel getting 242’s more defensible, secure, and real borders)–along with a 33 billion dollar virtual slush fund, half of Jerusalem, and more–were these terms not shoved up or down some Israeli orifice. Yasir’s Swiss bank accounts were/are legendary. His latter day Arafatians-in-suits, led by Fatah and the PLO/PA’s Mahmoud Abbas, learned this lesson well: It literally pays nicely to be designated a “moderate.”

While Israel thankfully was saved from Slick Willy’s dangerous machinations via the Arabs themselves, the “Progressive” Ehud Barak’s caving became the starting point for later American “peace making”–notably that of Barak Hussein Obama.

The very first person Obama called on the international arena after winning the presidency was Mahmoud Abbas. This would prove to be a harbinger of what his eight years in office would bring to an Israel seeking some degree of a viable existence.

Earlier, he had a long history in Chicago attending one of the worst antisemitic pastors’ in America church for decades–Reverend Jeremiah Wright, bosom buddies of the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farakhan, who himself later proclaimed Obama to be “the messiah.” Guess why? https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9494

To be fair, however, after all, there were no other churches in Chicago that Obama could have frequented…Right?

Obama hounded any Israeli leader who expected UNSC Res. 242’s call for a meaningful compromise in the disputed territories as if he/she was Public Enemy # 1. And he hated/hates Benjamin Netanyahu in particular for this—what the “Settlement Issue” is mostly all about.

Earlier, President Trump’s opponent in 2020, Senator Joseph Biden, pounded the table to try to intimidate the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin over the same issue

https://ekurd.net/biden-jihadi-cheer-leaders-2019-03-06; and John Kerry warned that Israel needed to be saved from itself because of this as well. Both were later peas in the Obama pod and served as major attack dogs https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21625

While still a senator, Obama began stating that Israel would be crazy–exact words–to not accept the “Saudi Peace Plan.” He would repeat this when in the White House as well. Among other things, that beloved Obama plan demanded Israel withdraw to its ’49 Auschwitz/armistice lines (not official borders) existence which made it 9-15 miles wide at its waist, and expected it to allow itself to be inundated by real or fudged jihadi-raised Arab refugees. Recall more Jews fled Arab/Muslim lands than vice-versa over a war Arabs started in 1948 over Israel’s rebirth on less than one half of one percent of the region.

How dare those Jew–at least some–not be thankful for such a “deal” !

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Radiation to reduce Covid-19 inflammation. (TY Hazel) Doctors at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center are to test the use of low-dosage radiation on 30 severe Covid-19 patients. It is expected to reduce the inflammatory cells that invade the lungs of coronavirus patients and prevent them from oxygenating the blood.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/reviving-old-therapy-israeli-doctors-unleash-lung-radiation-against-covid-19/

More success for Covid-19 antibody treatment. 11 of the 12 trial patients treated with the IgG Covid-19 treatment from Israel’s Kamada (reported here previously) have now recovered and been discharged from hospital. https://nocamels.com/2020/09/early-trial-results-kamada-covid-19-antibodies/

A national lab to study viruses. The Israeli government is to set up a new national laboratory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for the study of viruses. It will help Israel counter pathogens after the Covid-19 pandemic. It will have special air conditioning, advanced testing tools and high-level protective gear.    

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3848670,00.html

Sheba’s “Gulf” initiative. (TY UWI) Sheba Medical Center has launched its “Gulf” initiative with the first agreement between an Israeli hospital and an organization in the United Arab Emirates. Sheba will work with UAE’s APEX National Investment on key medical challenges from COVID-19 to the future of hospital care.

https://nocamels.com/2020/09/uae-apex-sheba-healthcare-innovation/

On stream. More details about the development of StreamO2 – the low-cost breathing machine for Covid-19 patients built by Israeli fizzy-drinks maker SodaStream (reported here previously). StreamO2 was the idea of Hadassah ICU doctor Akiva Nachshon, and recently tested successfully at Hadassah Ein Kerem in Jerusalem.

https://www.israel21c.org/whats-the-worlds-favorite-fizzy-drinks-maker-doing-fighting-covid/

Antibody for Alzheimer’s. (TY Yehoshua) Israel’s ImmunoBrain Checkpoint aims to begin trials of its IBC-Ab002 treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. The antibody, developed by its Chief Scientist EMET Prize-winning Weizmann Institute Professor Michal Schwartz, boosts the immune system to induce brain repair processes.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-revolutionary-alzheimers-treatment-to-launch-phase-1-trial-641848  https://www.ibcheckpoint.com/

Cornea and Glaucoma treatment news. The synthetic cornea from Israel’s CorNeat is beginning human trials, as reported here in July. This has become vital due to shortage of human corneas during Covid-19. CorNeat will soon begin trials of its EverPatch for Glaucoma surgery and is developing the eShunt to reduce eye pressure.

https://nocamels.com/2020/09/medtech-corneat-patented-implants-blind-diseases/

Detecting prostate cancer in Puerto Rico. (TY Hazel) The CorePlus pathology lab in Carolina Puerto Rico is the first in the Americas to detect prostate cancer using the AI-based software from Israel’s Ibex Medical Analytics (reported here previously). The system is already in use in the UK and in France.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/puerto-rico-lab-to-use-israeli-ai-based-tech-to-help-diagnose-prostate-cancer/

https://ibex-ai.com/press/first-u-s-lab-implements-ai-based-solution-for-cancer-detection-in-pathology/

A painless bandage. Israel’s Inteligels has developed a wound covering that can be removed without pain. It is made from a special smart transparent polymer that can be triggered to liquify and does not need to be pulled off. It is based on the work of Daniel Cohn, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/08/31/israeli-startup-inteligels-has-made-a-new-painless-bandage/

https://www.geektime.com/inteligels-israel-startup/  http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/casali/cohn.htm

Doctor, heal thyself (with Israel’s help). Durban pediatrician Dr Thesi Reddy (non-Jewish) was diagnosed with a brain tumor earlier this year and was given nine months to live. South African Friends of Sheba Medical Center got him to Israel, where Sheba surgeons used advanced techniques to remove the entire tumor. Amazing.

https://www.sajr.co.za/news-and-articles/2020/09/10/durban-paediatrician-saved-by-israeli-medical-team

What Bahrain’s deal with Israel really means Trump is bringing major changes to the Middle East Charles Lipson

https://spectator.us/bahrain-israel-peace-deal-trump-middle-east-iran/

On September 15, representatives from the oil-rich Kingdom of Bahrain will meet Israeli leaders at the White House to sign a historic peace deal. It will normalize relations between the Muslim state and the Jewish one, not long after the United Arab Emirates concluded a similar pact. Expect more such ‘normalization deals’. They supplement other White House initiatives, such as the deal it brokered between Serbia and Kosovo, which includes both countries establishing closer relations with Israel.

The deals are significant for several reasons. First, they represent a common regional front against the Iranian threat, which has been developing beneath the surface for some time. Their public expression sends a stronger signal to Iran and opens the door to greater cooperation between Arab states and Israel, the region’s most developed economy and the leader in advanced military technology.

These deals also signal that Arab-Muslim regimes are less concerned with domestic, Islamist opposition to their outreach to Israel. Equally important, they show that the Palestinian Authority no longer holds a veto over fellow Muslims’ relations with Israel. We saw another sign of Palestinian weakness last week when the Arab League refused to condemn the UAE for its accord with Israel.

What changed to prompt these deals? The answer is not a greater threat from Iran. The danger from the mullahs is no higher now than it was in 2005, 2010, or 2015. Iran’s Sunni neighbors and Israel have all been threatened by Tehran’s expansionism, aggressive religious ideology, and support for terrorist movements for years. Yet, until recently, Israel was the only country seeking normalization with its Arab neighbors. What finally convinced the Arab states to come to the table was actually a shift in US policy.

The ‘Merchants of the Palestinian Issue’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16486/merchants-palestinian-issue

Many Gulf citizens described the Palestinian leaders as “merchants of the Palestinian issue” and accused them of financial corruption and embezzlement of public funds.

“The enemy of the Palestinian cause is not Israel, but the [Palestinian] comrades, the disgraceful merchants of Palestine, who don’t want the Palestinian issue to be resolved. Before you [Palestinian leaders] criticize others, you need to take a look at yourselves and your miserable situation and the condition of your people, whom you have destroyed.” — Shuja Al-Hothli, Saudi journalist and author, Twitter, September 7, 2020.

Palestinian leaders have accumulated huge personal fortunes, possibly in part thanks to donations from Western taxpayers and their unenquiring governments.

Some Gulf Arabs interpreted Hamed’s remarks as incitement to carry out terrorist attacks against the Gulf states. “The funny thing is that Mueen Hamed called for armed actions against the Gulf, not Israel.” — Saudi social media user who calls himself inthe_shade911, Twitter, September 6, 2020.

By alienating the Gulf Arabs, the Palestinian leaders are further ravaging their own people, especially those who live and work in these countries. Abbas has already wrecked the Palestinians’ relations with Israel and the US. By offending the Gulf states and depicting their residents as backward illiterates, Abbas and the leaders of the Palestinian factions are convincing yet more Arabs to stay as far away from Palestinians as they can.

Palestinian leaders are continuing to show contempt for other Arabs, including those who for many years provided them with financial and political aid. Some Palestinian leaders are even indirectly inciting their people to carry out terrorist attacks against Gulf countries that engage in normalization with Israel.

On September 3, during a videoconference meeting of leaders of several Palestinian factions, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas poured scorn on the Arabs of the Gulf states by hinting that they are illiterate and uneducated. “There are 13 million Palestinians, and they are all educated,” Abbas said in a speech he delivered from his office in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians. “We don’t have illiteracy like others.”

Mueen Hamed, a representative of As-Sa’iqa, a pro-Syria Palestinian Ba’athist group, is one of several faction leaders who spoke at the conference from Beirut. Hamed, too, mocked the Gulf Arabs.

Referring to the recent normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, he said:

“We blame the United Arab Emirates and the [Arab] countries that support it. As our comrades said, the Palestinian people were responsible for the advancement of all the Gulf states from 1948 and until today. Everyone acknowledges that the Palestinian worker is the most active in the Gulf. [The Palestinians] taught them how to read and write and lead.”

Hamed pointed out that there are 400,000 Palestinians in the UAE “who are capable of changing the society of the Emiratis.”

“Why shouldn’t these Palestinians play a role? Why shouldn’t the Palestinian factions be in contact with all these Palestinians so they could play an active role in preventing any country from following suit with the United Arab Emirates? The situation is dangerous.”

Palestinian claim examined Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3bLqm3k

Are Palestinians the descendants of the original inhabitants (Canaanites) of the Land of Israel, as claimed by the Palestinian Authority, or are they descendants of recent waves of immigration?

Systematic Arab migration within the Middle East

Arab migration within the Middle East – including to/from the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean – has been an intrinsic feature of the region for millennia.
Illinois University Economics Prof. Fred Gottheil wrote (The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931): “According to the International Labor Organization, Middle East migrant workers – moving within and beyond the Middle East – make up approximately 9% of the world’s total.”

According to the Geneva-based Global Commission on International Migration, “The world’s highest share of migrant population is to be found in the Middle East.”
The scope of Egyptian emigration is highlighted by the Washington, DC-based Migration Policy Institute: “More than 6 million Egyptian emigrants lived in the Middle East North Africa region as of 2016, primarily in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.”

This busy traffic of Arab migrants was, also, prevalent during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, when Arab/Muslim emigrants – many of them from Egypt – pursued a better standard of living in various parts of the globe, including Ottoman and British-ruled Palestine.

When will the Palestinian man wake up?! By Hani Al-Dahiri

https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/597569/Opinion/Voices/When-will-the-Palestinian-man-wake-up!

It is regrettable to see the plight of Palestinian brothers whose politicians have traded their cause for more than 60 years. These politicians saw to that the issue remained alive and did not reach any settlement. They sabotaged negotiations and rejected all peace initiatives, whether those presented by the Israeli side or those by other international parties.

The Palestinian politicians did this at the expense of their cause and their people so as to gain from the situation, which has remained as is till date. The intransigent attitude that they pursued for decades was the only guarantee for their survival with donations pouring in and aid funds boosting their treasuries and accounts in the European banks from all sides, especially from the countries of the Arab and Islamic worlds.

Today, things have changed, and the peoples who used to sympathize with the Palestinian cause are fully aware of this game by people with vested interests. The Palestinian issue means the death of the issue in the minds of millions of people, because it is the inevitable result of six decades of lying, trickery and collection of money in the name of a crisis whose owners do not want it to be resolved.

A few days ago, the courageous Emirati step to normalize relations with Israel came and that delivered an explicit message to the Palestinian political leaders: “The time has come to confront between yourselves and those who are deceived by you… the time for playing and jumping the ropes as well as trafficking with the concerns of the Palestinian people is over.”

As for serving the interest of the Arab people in Gaza and the West Bank, it requires the intervention of rational Arabs to negotiate with the Israeli side and work to establish comprehensive peace in the region away from gangs who eye only political gain.

Ruthie Blum Viral apathy in Israel

https://www.jns.org/opinion/viral-apathy-in-israel/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a joint press conference on Monday evening with Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein and National Coronavirus Project coordinator Ronni Gamzu.

The purpose of the event, after which only Netanyahu responded to reporters’ questions, was pretty clear: to display a unified front in what has begun to seem like a circus of contradictory COVID-19 rules and a losing battle against the spread of the virus.

The discrepancy between the Jewish state’s stellar record during the first wave and its current failing grade—listed earlier this week by John Hopkins University as having the world’s highest rate of new infections per day per million people—is only part of the reason that Netanyahu, Gantz, Edelstein and Gamzu each took to the podium to make a statement.

The greater impetus was the recent confusion surrounding the government’s latest conflicting announcements on how it intends to tackle the worrisome infection rates and rising death toll. On Thursday, the coronavirus cabinet decided to impose a general seven-day lockdown on some 30 of the country’s “red” towns and cities—those with the highest morbidity rates—in accordance with Gamzu’s color-coding “traffic light” model, which was to go into effect on Sunday.

The cabinet determined that the week-long lockdown on the yet-to-be-finalized areas would be extended if necessary. By Sunday night, however, two things happened.

The first was that the number of “red” cities was increased to 40. The second was that the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties, realizing that their population was going to be hard-hit by the lockdown, railed against Netanyahu.