RUTHFULLY YOURS

What could be more positive than pictures of three young women hostages returned to a mother’s embrace? Even those of us opposed and enraged at the disproportionate terms of the cease fire are happy to see them home.

Home, is Israel, often and gratuitously accused of “disproportionate” responses to evil. What is truly disproportionate, is Israel’s dazzling contributions to humanity and all its beneficent endeavors. To his enormous credit, Michael details this in his weekly newsletters.  rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
150 lone soldiers join the IDF. Over 150 young immigrants from the US, Canada, UK, and other countries are currently arriving in Israel as part of the Garin Tzabar Scouts program. After four months in an absorption program they will enlist in the IDF. Garin Tzabar has supported 7,000+ lone soldiers during its 33 years.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-836917
 
US students cheer up wives of reservists. The NGO Israel Resilience together with the OU-JLIC (Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus) has given US students volunteering in Israel the task of giving support to the wives of IDF reservists. They visit, hand them gift cards, and offer them thanks.
https://www.jns.org/us-students-launch-initiative-to-support-wives-of-idf-reservists/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hNL_dBC3us
 
Better than before. On Oct 7 2023, homes, fields and vehicles at Kibbutz Nirim were destroyed by Hamas terrorists and their supporters. Almost immediately afterwards, rebuilding and renovating began. Kibbutniks and external contractors are busy making Nirim bigger and better, safer and stronger than ever before,
https://www.jns.org/bigger-and-better-than-ever-rebuilding-nirim-after-oct-7/
 
Rehabilitating tourism in the North. The Jewish Agency for Israel is establishing a fund to rehabilitate the tourism industry in the north of Israel. Businesses impacted by the war – mainly those in tourism – can receive a low cost loan up to NIS 650,000. Since Oct 7 2023, the Agency has lent NIS 350 million to 8,000+ businesses.
https://www.jns.org/wire/the-jewish-agency-signs-agreement-to-rehabilitate-the-north-of-israel/
 
Northern hospitals come up for air. (TY Yanky) Several hospitals across northern Israel have spent 14 months in fortified underground bunker-like facilities. Now, since the ceasefire, they are leaving the crowded and dark conditions and returning to normal. Staff and patients are delighted to be breathing fresh air again.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/northern-hospitals-move-out-of-underground-bunkers-after-months-of-war/
 
Student of courage. On Oct 7 2023, Coral Hamo Goren – a Ph.D. student at Israel’s Technion, mother of three, and operations officer in the IDF was called to manage a command center near the Gaza border. When she can, she commutes between Gaza and Haifa, submits papers, attends courses, and keeps up with research.
https://ats.org/our-impact/on-the-front-lines-of-war-and-academia/
 
Voices of Iron. (TY UWI) 50 pro-Israel public diplomacy professionals, activists and social-media influencers were presented with the inaugural “Voices of Iron” award in a ceremony held at the Knesset auditorium. They were honored for their “Iron Dome” advocacy “blowing lies out of the sky” during the Swords of Iron war.
https://www.jns.org/voices-of-iron-award-honors-online-israel-advocacy-warriors/
 
Huge post-Oct 7 giving boom. (TY Yanky) Overseas charities bring hope to Israel’s frontline communities. The Diaspora Ministry estimates over $1.4 billion in foreign donations since Oct 7 2023. This article focuses on the Jewish Agency, KKL-JNF, Keren Hayesod, UJIA, Jewish Federations of North America, and the Joint.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/huge-post-october-7-giving-boom-from-overseas-brings-hope-to-battered-frontlines/
 
Yeshiva hosts injured soldiers. Yeshivat Hakotel hosted injured IDF soldiers, members of the Lifros Knaf nonprofit, who came to Jerusalem as part of a rehabilitation trip. They were welcomed by the students and heads and, during Shabbat, they were given a guided tour of Jerusalem’s Old City and the Jewish Quarter.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/402198  https://www.lifroskanaf.co.il/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Immunotherapy can slow aging process. Israel Prize winner, Weizmann Institute’s Prof. Michal Schwartz and her research team are working on a groundbreaking treatment to boost immune cells relevant to the brain, cure brain diseases, and slow the aging process. Schwartz founded Israel’s ImmunoBrain (see here previously).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientist-in-peer-reviewed-study-immunotherapy-treatment-could-slow-aging-process/    https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(24)00882-1
 
Huge rise in organ donations. Israel’s National Transplant Center has reported that a record number of heart transplants (36) were performed in Israel in 2024. There was also a 6% rise in the number of kidney transplants to 469, including 313 from living donors. Also see article about those who have donated a kidney to a stranger.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/402203
https://www.israel21c.org/why-danny-newman-gave-his-kidney-to-a-stranger/
 
Scientists identify a new blood group. (TY Yanky) In 1972, doctors discovered a woman missing a surface molecule found on all other known red bloods. 50 years later, Israeli and UK researchers have finally identified it as a new blood group, “AnWj-negative”. It will help provide better care for these patients.
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-identify-new-blood-group-after-50-year-mystery
https://ashpublications.org/blood/article-abstract/144/26/2735/517404/Deletions-in-the-MAL-gene-result-in-loss-of-Mal
 
Understanding chronic pain. (TY ATS) Researchers from Israel’s Technion were part of a team that has discovered why only some whiplash injury patients, suffer from chronic pain. It is related to their brain’s memory communication system, plus if they had high anxiety after the injury – literally “painful memories”.
https://technologytangle.com/new-study-identifies-brain-activity-predicting-chronic-pain-after-whiplash-injuries/    https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-024-00329-8
 
Treating cardio-metabolic diseases. Bar-Ilan University’s Dr Sivan Spitzer and EU colleagues won a €22 million EU-IHI grant for CAREPATH – a 5-year project to use cutting-edge tools to ensure diabetic, obese, and heart patients take their medication. It involves international researchers, plus companies led by Novo Nordisk.
https://www.biu.ac.il/en/article/582866
 
OncoHost wins BIG. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s OncoHost (see here previously) has won a 2025 BIG Innovation Awards for Healthcare. BIG (Business Intelligence Group) CEO Russ Fordyce said,  “We’re thrilled to spotlight OncoHost as a shining example of innovation making a profound impact globally.”
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oncohost-wins-2025-big-innovation-award-for-healthcare-302351878.html

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21322/hamas-deal-power

The ceasefire-hostage deal does not require Hamas to disarm or cede control over the Gaza Strip…. The terrorist group seems to be convinced that the deal will enable it to keep control of the Gaza Strip and prepare for more massacres of Jews.

Shortly after the ceasefire-hostage deal was announced on January 15, Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya made it clear that his group intends to pursue its Jihad against Israel.

The new US administration, to avoid more violence and bloodshed, must insist that Hamas be removed from power.

This can only be accomplished by applying pressure and sanctions on Hamas’s Qatari and Iranian sponsors.

Those who think that the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas will abandon its Jihad (holy war) to murder more Jews and destroy Israel in the aftermath of the recent ceasefire-hostage agreement are mistaken.

Although the agreement may put an end to the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, it does not, in any way, reflect a shift in the radical and dangerous ideology of the Islamist group, as outlined in its 1988 Covenant. The document quotes Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood organization (of which Hamas is an offshoot), as saying: “Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam abolishes it, as it abolished what went before.”

melaniephillips@substack.com

To all those in the west who have perpetrated the lie of Israeli genocide in Gaza for the past 15 months: look at the pictures of the mob surrounding the three Israel women hostages who were freed today, and see thousands of Gazans who are well-fed, well-groomed and well-dressed.

What do you have to say now about the murderous libel you have perpetrated against the Israeli victims of these people, the lie that the Israelis were deliberately starving them, that they were the victims of Israeli-induced famine, that the Jews were behaving like Nazis? Do you have a scintilla of shame or regret about what you have done in spreading this foul incitement? Do you even understand what you saw today? Or are you too busy cheering on instead the pictures of those “pro-Palestinian” hate-marchers in London yesterday, dozens of whom were arrested by the police because they were absolutely determined to harass and terrorise British Jews at their synagogue Sabbath services nearby?

Look at that horrifying footage of those Gaza mobs, those enormous potential lynch mobs jeering and threatening the three Israeli women as they were handed over to the Red Cross — the same mobs who abused the live hostages and desecrated the bodies of the murdered ones when they were all dragged into Gaza after the October 7 massacre; look at that footage and then tell us all again that the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza are innocent civilians and victims of the Israelis.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/there-is-a-frightening-defect-in-the-israel-hamas-deal-the-terrorists-live-to-fight-on/ar-AA1xpuZa?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=3ff8207ea26c41a4edbb93a2a0de580d&ei=102 On October 7 2023, Hamas murdered more than 1,200 people in Israel and abducted 251. The deal which begins its enactment tomorrow, provides for the release, in phases, of the estimated 94 hostages still held by Hamas, of whom, the Israeli government calculates, 34 are dead. In return, Israel will let hundreds of Palestinian […]

https://nypost.com/2025/01/16/opinion/douglas-murray-it-is-time-to-eliminate-hamas-and-bring-our-hostages-back-home/

“Bring them home” has been the slogan of the hostage families in Israel since October 7, 2023.  

But when Hamas murdered 1,200 people, including 46 Americans, and when it took 254 people hostage, including 12 Americans, there should have been a different slogan: “Give them back. Now.”

Since that day, so many opportunities have been missed. 

On October 8, Joe Biden could have called up the governments in Qatar, Iran and other rogue states and told them to get their friends in Hamas to hand over the hostages now. 

Or else.

With the leverage the US has in the Middle East, a hardball approach against the Qataris, Iranians and Turks could have solved this mess 15 months ago.

Instead it has taken the pressure of the incoming Trump administration to get a deal agreed to.

It is still a bittersweet moment.

On the one hand, everyone except Hamas and its goons in the West must feel their hearts lift at the idea of the remaining hostages being released. 

These are men, women and babies who did nothing wrong but have spent 15 months in the hell of Hamas captivity. 

On the other hand, the deal includes the release of Palestinian prisoners, including murderers.

In the first round of releases, nine ill and wounded hostages will be exchanged for 110 Palestinian prisoners who are serving life sentences. 

Just think about that. 

An Israeli baby could be released in exchange for a dozen grown murderers. 

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/16/is-this-peace-or-appeasement/

Here’s a pretty good rule for international affairs: if a deal pleases neo-fascists, it’s probably a bad deal. If an agreement gets an army of anti-Semites dancing in the streets, it’s likely a poor agreement. That was my first thought upon seeing the Jew-killers of Hamas emerge from their tunnels in Gaza last night to celebrate the ceasefire deal struck with Israel: if they like it, then those of us who side with civilisation over the regressive tyranny of such merciless Islamists probably will not.

Of course there’s a thinness to Hamas’s bravado. Its crowing disguises the profound losses it has suffered in this war it started with its pogrom of 7 October 2023. Thousands of its militants are dead. Its leaders are too. Its allies in Hezbollah have been pummelled into insignificance. All Hamas has to show for its fascistic onslaught against the Jewish nation a year-and-a-half ago is the depletion of its racist army and the ruination of vast swathes of Gaza.

And yet its instinct to laud the deal is not wholly wrong. For it does seem to benefit Israel’s foes more than Israel. The Associated Press has seen a draft. It will be enacted in three phases. In the first phase, which will last for 42 days, hostilities will cease and Hamas will release just 33 of the 94 hostages it still holds. In return, Israel will set free around a thousand Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of terrorists. As AP says, Israel is required to release ‘30 Palestinian prisoners for each civilian hostage and 50 for each female soldier’. Anyone who thinks it is a fair deal to swap 30 detainees, many of whom will be terrorists, for one child stolen from his home almost 470 days ago is in urgent need of a moral compass.

Israel will also commit to removing its troops from ‘populated areas’ and staying on the ‘edges of the Gaza Strip’. It is in those populated areas, of course, that Hamas militants are gathered. The overnight withdrawal of the opposing army will benefit them enormously. In Phase 2, which will also last 42 days, Hamas will release the remaining hostages in return for a ‘yet to be negotiated number of Palestinian prisoners’ and the IDF will initiate a ‘full withdrawal’ from Gaza. In Phase 3, the final act of the deal will take place: the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages will be returned to their grieving families.

We have to be honest: for those of us who support the Jewish nation against the medieval militants that wish to destroy it, this is a bad deal. It is hard to see it as anything other than a boon for Hamas and a blow to Israel. Over the next month, Israel will secure the return of 33 hostages, but Hamas will secure immeasurably more from the deal. Alongside the release of dangerous prisoners, Hamas will watch the IDF withdraw from Gaza’s fighting zones. It will win the breathing space to regroup, rearm and refortify after 15 months of war. Is this peace or appeasement?

Of course, we should not belittle the joy of the Israeli families who will finally have their loved ones returned. Or the sweet relief Gazans will enjoy once the hostilities that Hamas ignited are brought to a halt. These are good, human developments. Yet it is undeniable that the war aim of eliminating Hamas, a noble goal, has not only been temporarily halted but reversed. It seems that Israel must, after all, suffer a genocidal terror army on its doorstep. Can you think of any other nation that would be told to leave be a neighbouring army of racists that slaughtered its civilians and longs to slaughter more?

For a sense of how risky this deal is, consider that in 2011 Israel likewise agreed to the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in return for one IDF soldier abducted by Hamas. And among the released was Yahya Sinwar. He went on to become leader of Hamas in Gaza and a chief architect of the butchery of 7 October. Who is Israel releasing this time? What might they go on to do? The moral dilemma faced by the Jewish nation is almost unimaginable. Should it secure the return of its citizens even if that means releasing men who will plot the future slaughter of its citizens? That the Jewish State, alone among the nations, must make such a tragic calculation is nothing to celebrate.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21320/hamas-deal-crime

The decision by the Israeli government to make significant concessions to the Hamas kidnappers should never be called a “deal.” It was an extortion…. The kidnapping was a crime. And the extortionate demand was an additional crime.

When a terrorist group “negotiates” with a democracy, it always has the upper hand. The terrorists are not constrained by morality, law or truth. They can murder at will, rape at will, torture at will and threaten to do worse. The democracy, on the other hand, must comply with the rules of law and must listen to the pleas of the hostage families.

Especially complicit, with blood on their hands, are supporters of Hamas on university campuses who chant for intifada and revolution. Also complicit are international organizations, such as the International Criminal Court, that treat Israel and Hamas as equals.

[L]et us put the blame for ALL the deaths in Gaza where it belongs: on Hamas and the useful idiots and useless bigots who support murderous terrorists.

The decision by the Israeli government to make significant concessions to the Hamas kidnappers should never be called a “deal.” It was an extortion. Would you call it a deal if somebody kidnapped your child and you “agreed” to pay ransom to get her back? Of course not. The kidnapping was a crime. And the extortionate demand was an additional crime.

So the proper description of what occurred is that Israel, pressured by the United States, capitulated to the unlawful and extortionate demands of Hamas as the only way of saving the lives of kidnapped babies, mothers and other innocent, mostly civilian, hostages.

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/the-deal-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=

The emerging ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is a perplexing document, because the strongest argument in its favor is that the agreement will earn Israel President-elect Trump’s gratitude. Since the value of that goodwill is by definition unknowable, the deal should be judged on its own terms.

Here’s what to expect, barring last-minute changes, and what it means for the future of the conflict.

The ceasefire would begin with Hamas releasing three Israeli hostages (likely to be American citizens) and Israel beginning to remove its troops from populated areas of Gaza. A week later, Hamas is expected to release four more hostages—at which point Israel will begin allowing Gazans to return to north of the Strip. According to the BBC, cars, animal carts and trucks would pass through an Egyptian-Qatari-operated scanner, while the people would go on foot.

The rest of the first phase would see, over the course of about a month, Hamas release another 25 or 26 hostages, most of whom are believed to be alive. Israel would continue facilitating the return of Gazans to the north of the strip while redeploying its troops out of Gaza—save for a half-mile buffer zone on its eastern and northern borders and in the Philadelphi Corridor in the south. Israel would also release about 1,000 Palestinian security inmates in Israeli jails. Of those, nearly 200 are in prison for murder or serving long-term sentences for violence. These would be sent to live outside of the Palestinian territories.

Israel and Hamas are supposed to negotiate the second phase of the deal as they implement the first phase. In the second phase, Hamas would release the remaining hostages in return for another to-be-determined number of Palestinian inmates in Israeli jails. Israel would withdraw from the rest of Gaza. A third phase would see Israel trade the bodies of deceased Hamas fighters in return for the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages.

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=

In the war ignited by the October 7 massacre, Israel set two goals that were incompatible: retrieving all the hostages and destroying Hamas. I’ve only recently, with the help of a couple of analysts who have pointed this out, come to grasp the incompatibility. I was among those who kept believing Israel could achieve both those goals in tandem with each other.

In the 15+ months of this war so far (it’s still being waged as, at the time of writing, I hear explosions from Gaza 25 miles away), Israel has managed to militarily rescue seven hostages. An eighth was found by troops after his captors had abandoned him.

All of the seven who were military rescued were being held in apartments. Reportedly, after the rescue of four hostages from two apartments in June, all the hostages still being held in apartments were moved to tunnels. There, all of them are closely guarded by terrorists, possibly suicide terrorists. These captors can hear Israeli troops approaching and, if they do, will kill the hostages (and possibly themselves as well). That was what happened to the six Israeli hostages murdered in a tunnel in August.

Some say that, instead of prodding Israel into the current hostage deal at this stage, President Trump should have waited a few more days to take office and then have supported Israel in “starving out” Hamas. But “starving out” Hamas would mean the hostages—already on near-starvation diets and in very weakened condition—would get “starved out” too, and would be in further acute danger from a desperate and vindictive Hamas.

In other words, for those who want to see the hostages freed, something like the current deal is the only option.