RUTHFULLY YOURS

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1.       Israel had barely begun to up the ante in fighting Hizballah before the world powers began making proclamations about it.

President Biden and President Macron said jointly: ““It is time for a settlement on the Israel–Lebanon border that ensures safety and security to enable civilians to return to their homes. The exchange of fire since October 7th, and in particular over the past two weeks, threatens a much broader conflict, and harm to civilians.”

A convocation of the European Union, the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates called for a three-week ceasefire to “provide space for diplomacy” and said the current “intolerable” situation “presents an unacceptable risk of broader regional escalation.”

Here in Israel, we couldn’t help noticing that almost a year of daily Hizballah missile, rocket, drone, and mortar fire into Israel, predominantly at civilian targets, did not count as an “escalation,” was not “intolerable” or “unacceptable,” and did not “threaten a broader conflict.” At no time, of course, did President Biden or any other Western leader demand Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to

tell Hizballah to stop the bombardment. It could have gone on for another ten years; it was not, after all, an escalation, since only Israel is capable of escalating.  

2.       Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Mitch McConell have sent a letter to President Biden that “strongly condemn[s] your administration’s continued delay in providing critical military equipment and weapons to our ally Israel in the midst of an existential war.” The letter says the US is denying Israel MK-84 bombs, which Israel needs “to hit Hamas’s deeply buried tunnels and other military infrastructure in Gaza,” while “Hezbollah also has significant military infrastructure that Israel must destroy”; Apache attack helicopters, which “Israel requested . . . last December, recognizing the increased need given the war in Gaza,” a need that “has only increased with Hezbollah’s escalation in the north”; and Caterpillar D9 tractors, which the administration is “holding up” even though Israel uses these “to clear improvised explosive devices (IEDs)” and “to save the lives of scores of Israel Defense force (IDF) soldiers and civilians.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20968/war-against-hezbollah

On October 8, 2023, the very day after Hamas attacked, Hezbollah opened a “second front” against Israel to help Hezbollah’s brothers in Hamas.

On September 19, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah promised that his organization’s terrorist attacks on Israel would continue until the war in Gaza ended. Hezbollah, he said, will continue supporting the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip “no matter what the consequences are, what the sacrifices are, what scenarios will unfold.” Nasrallah further threatened that Israelis who have evacuated from their homes will not be allowed to return, implying that Hezbollah might be planning to invade and occupy Israel’s north.

The war in the Gaza Strip could end tomorrow if Hamas would lay down its weapons and release the 101 Israelis hostages it is still holding, only about half of whom are thought to be alive. Hamas, nonetheless, seems to have chosen to fight to the last Palestinian. Hamas evidently does not care if thousands of Palestinians are killed in the war. Its main objective is to hold onto power.

How would the US respond if a terrorist organization in Mexico began launching hundreds of missiles and drones into American cities?… How would France respond if its cities came under attack from terrorists based in neighboring countries… Would the French call for negotiations with the terrorists, or would they practice their right to self-defense?

Hezbollah has decided to destroy Lebanon and sacrifice a large number of Lebanese civilians to keep Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip. It has left Israel with no choice but to wage a counterterrorism offensive to defend its own citizens. After Hamas brought a nakba (catastrophe) to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah is bringing the Lebanese people another.

Some in the international media are misrepresenting the recent round of fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist organization, Hezbollah, as a war between Israel and Lebanon. This, however, is not a war between Israel and the Lebanese people. Rather, it is a war between Israel and a heavily armed terrorist group that has created a state within a state in Lebanon and is acting on orders from the mullahs in Tehran to advance their goal of destroying the “Zionist entity.” This war was initiated 11 months ago by Hezbollah in support of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, another Iran-backed proxy based in the Gaza Strip.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/24/the-wests-reckless-dishonesty-over-lebanon/

If a keffiyeh-adorned posh kid on a leafy campus were to hold forth on the Israel-Lebanon clash without once saying the word ‘Hezbollah’, none of us would be surprised. To the West’s à la mode loathers of Israel, the Jewish State is responsible for every ill in the Middle East, and its foes are always blameless. But for a world leader to do it, to pontificate on this bloody battle without mentioning the ruthless terror outfit whose rocket fire started it, is unforgivable.

Step forward President Emmanuel Macron. On Friday, in the aftermath of Israel’s pagers attack on Hezbollah militants and the firing of missiles by both sides, he said France stands with Lebanon and feels ‘grief for all civilian victims of [the] attacks’. He said he’d spoken to the key parties to the war, ‘from Israel to Iran’, and told them to de-escalate. There was one party he neglected to mention, however. Which is odd given it’s the party that started the war by raining rockets on Israel from 8 October 2023 onwards – in solidarity with the racist pogromists of Hamas – and in the process drove 60,000 Jews from their homes, destroyed land and massacred children. As the Times of Israel put it: he ‘made no explicit mention of Hezbollah’.

As oversights go, it’s a shocker. It’s like gabbing about the West’s intervention in Raqqa without saying ‘ISIS’ or lamenting 9/11 but forgetting to mention a certain Islamist death cult. Is it any wonder that in a reportedly tense phone call between Macron and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, the latter said ‘instead of putting pressure on Israel, it’s time for France to increase pressure on Hezbollah’? Or at least to mention Hezbollah. That would be a start: saying out loud the name of the Iranian proxies who’ve been battering the Jewish State with missiles for a year in a show of support for the worst act of violence against Jews since the Holocaust.

Macron’s post-pagers commentary may have been bizarre but it wasn’t surprising. In handwringing over a war without referring to the war’s instigators, without namechecking that self-styled ‘Army of God’ whose destruction of Israeli homes and murder of Druze children gave rise to this latest round of hostilities, he was doing what many in the West have done. Namely, ripped this battle from its historical and moral context. Depicted it as an act of unilateral Israeli evil. Worse, absolved Hezbollah, implicitly, of responsibility for this horror show by either playing down its role or outright redacting its name from their pompous virtue-signalling.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/09/israels-righteous-war-on-hezbollah/

The Jewish state is under no obligation to tolerate the intolerable.

Israel is supposed to tolerate the intolerable.

A terror group has launched thousands of missiles into the Jewish state over the last year — catalyzed by a hideous pogrom against Israel carried out by another terror group — and we are told that it is Israel, finally hitting back in earnest, that is dangerously escalating the situation.

Since the Hamas atrocities on October 7, Lebanon-based Hezbollah has fired roughly 8,000 rockets at Israel. These indiscriminate attacks have forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee the north of the country. In July, a missile killed twelve children and teenagers who were playing soccer in the Golan Heights, a random massacre with no military purpose whatsoever.

Israel retaliated for the horror in the Golan Heights but has generally absorbed Hezbollah’s attacks, since it’s been focused on the war against Hamas to its south while the Biden administration has been working to stay its hand in the north.

The theme, as ever, is that the Jewish state is expected to accept as background noise unprovoked attacks on its sovereign territory that no other state would ever abide.

What other country is asked to bear the rocketing of its civilian population as the price for faux regional comity?

Israel won’t abide by these rules, and nor should it. It began turning up the heat against Hezbollah with its Mission Impossible–worthy attacks on Hezbollah operatives via their pagers and other electronic devices.

The pager attack was an experiment in whether Israel could carry out perhaps the most carefully calibrated counterterrorist operation in the modern age and still get accused of committing war crimes. Sure enough, AOC and others have condemned the Jewish state.

Israel hits terrorist targets from the air — and it’s accused of war crimes.

Israel goes in on the ground — and it’s accused of war crimes.

Israel does neither, opting instead to target terrorists by using their own devices against them — and it’s accused of war crimes.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/jet-blue-effaces-israel-from-its-in-flight-maps/

The airline Jet Blue has recently changed its in-flight maps. Now on its screens appears a map wherein the word “Israel” has been completely overlaid, in text of a much larger size, with the words “Palestinian Territory.” No explanation for the change has been given by Jet Blue. More on this disturbing toponymic effacement can be found here: “JetBlue Airways changes Israel’s borders and name to ‘Palestinian Territories,’” Jerusalem Post, September 4, 2024:

American airline JetBlue Airways has updated their in-flight map to show the words “Palestinian Territories” in significantly larger text than the word “Israel,” to the point where it is overlaid on the entire state of Israel, N12 reported Tuesday evening.

Hodaya Knafo, an Israeli woman studying in the United States, told N12 that she was on a domestic flight from Miami to San Diego when she tried to show another passenger where Israel was located on her seat’s personal screen. “The label was prominently displayed in a way that didn’t seem innocent,” she said, and additionally, the borders were incorrect.”

According to the map, Israel’s northern border does not include the Golan Heights….

Someone at Jet Blue decided to remove from its screen map of Israel the Golan Heights, which was annexed by the Jewish state in 1981. This was not an accident, but a clear political statement: the Golan annexation is illegitimate, and we refuse to show it as part of Israel.

Wanting to show a seatmate just how small her country was, Ms. Knafo was shocked to see it even smaller than she knew it to be, stripped of the Golan Heights. And what’s more, the overlaid large-text “Palestinian Territories” made it almost impossible to make out the small-text toponym “Israel.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/panetta-accuses-israel-of-carrying-out-a-form-of-terrorism-with-beeper-operation/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

Leon Panetta, one of the 51 former national security officials most connected to the Obama-Biden administration, who sullied his reputation by falsely claiming in a partisan pre-election open letter that the Hunter Biden laptop reporting bore the hallmarks of a Russian influence operation, has joined his co-author, John Brennan, in condemning Israel’s “Grim Beeper” operation.

As I detailed on Saturday, Brennan, who eventually succeeded Panetta as Obama’s CIA director, told NBC News last week that Israel’s infiltration of the communications of Hezbollah — which began bombing Israel in conjunction with Hamas’s October 7 atrocities — was an unacceptable form of warfare.

Panetta, who also served as Obama’s defense secretary, has one-upped Brennan, accusing Israel of executing “a form of terrorism.”

To reiterate what I contended in the column, it is difficult to quantify how idiotic such allegations are. Israel’s attack was narrowly targeted, discriminate, and proportional. To state the obvious, its targets were the operatives of a terrorist organization, which (a) has murdered hundreds of Americans and (b) has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization under federal law for 30 years.

Israel’s explosions were ingeniously designed to harm only the terrorist operatives to whom the terrorist organization distributed pagers in order to facilitate the planning of terrorist operations. Yet, according to Panetta’s meandering in a CBS interview on Sunday, this could amount to “a form of terrorism” because it is the exploitation of common communications devices: “The ability to place an explosive in technology that is very prevalent these days, and turn it into a war of terror” — indeed, “the battlefield of the future.”

Where to begin?

https://www.jns.org/guterres-stands-by-unga-resolution-calling-for-jews-to-be-removed-from-old-city-of-jerusalem/?

A spokesman for the secretary-general told JNS that António Guterres “has called for an end to the occupation, and he has called for the end of settlements.”

Prior to the U.N. General Assembly’s vote on Wednesday calling for Jerusalem’s Old City, Judea and Samaria to be free of Jews, António Guterres, the global body’s secretary-general, told reporters that he would back implementation of the resolution should it pass.

The Palestinian-drafted resolution, which passed by a 124-14 margin with 43 abstentions, is meant to give force to the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in July, when the U.N. high court in The Hague declared Israeli presence to be illegal in any area over the 1949 armistice line.

JNS asked Guterres’s spokesman Stéphane Dujarric during a press briefing on Thursday whether the secretary-general now backs the resolution, calling for the Old City in Jerusalem to be Judenrein, which he said he would report.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20964/zion-a-place-worth-defending

In essence, Zionism is simply an attempt to re-establish their ancestral home, their place of refuge and sanctuary in an alien world which largely despises them. Zion (now Israel), is a place they can gather to practise their faith without persecution. The six ancient cities of refuge were located only within the Land of Israel, just as, in a microscopic sense, the family is a city of refuge.

The world desperately needs Jewish values and wisdom — those detailed in the holy scriptures. Jewish wisdom was among the first, after the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1,755 BCE), to present the world with social justice — not only in the Ten Commandments — but also in how we treat our fellow creatures:

“But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do” (Deuteronomy 5:14);

“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk” (Deuteronomy 14:21);

“If you come across a bird’s nest beside the road, either in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother with the young” (Deuteronomy 22:6);

“You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns” (Deuteronomy 24:14);

“You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets – for he is poor and counts on it” (Deuteronomy 24:15);

“You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour” (Leviticus 19:15);

“You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child” (Exodus 22:22).

Jews have historically defended liberty against tyranny and moral confusion…

The true calling of the Jews, with “the world’s most moral army,” as the IDF is referred to by military expert Col. Richard Kemp, as they now wage a war that was forced on them, is to bring eternal values such as those above, found in the Torah, to the world at large. The Jews remain, after all, a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” They are entitled to their land, a place historically theirs — Zion, Israel, their ancestral home. This land was promised to the Jewish nation forever. It is a place worth defending.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Israel, a nation of about 9,400,000 people gets more news coverage than Brazil with a population of 211,140,729 people. Unfortunately, most of it is biased and low information, particularly during a war occasioned by barbaric enemies. As Michael Ordman details in weekly postings, what the biased media ignores is the outsize and remarkable contributions Israel makes in science, medicine, technology, agriculture and water recycling and preservation, to name a handful, to the entire world. Read it all. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
On a mission. Technion alumna Maya Shnur is a business manager at Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. “When the sirens start and I take my little boy down into the bomb shelter, I say ‘thank you Rafael for saving our lives.’” Maya contributes to Israel’s security and raises the profile of women in the workplace.
https://technionuk.org/news-post/on-a-mission-a-woman-who-protects-her-country-her-family-her-home/  
 
Cowboys don’t run away. (TY Israel21c) There are some 50 cattle ranches in Israel’s Golan Heights, under fire from Hezbollah rockets and drones. One, Merom Golan, has around 1,500 head of cattle. Shay Zerbib owns another ranch; he says, “Someone has to take care of the animals; they need to get fed no matter what,”
https://www.israel21c.org/cowboys-herding-cattle-under-hezbollah-rocket-fire/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-sazvRNUGM
 
Doctors answer the call. (TY Yanky) Since Oct 7, some 400 doctors and 30 health professionals from the US and other countries have arrived in Israel to assist in treating the large number of injured or to fill in for Israeli medical staff who are called to military duty.  Read about five of them here.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/foreign-doctors-answer-the-call-to-help-in-israels-hospitals-and-rehab-centers/
 
Christian support for the South. (TY Yanky) The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem visited the south and asked Rafi Babian, security chief of the Sadot Regional Council, what he needed. “Paramedic kits for all 16 communities under my watch, please,” he replied. The life-saving kits have now been delivered.
https://www.icej.org/blog/icej-donates-paramedic-kits-to-sadot-negev-region/
 
Montana retreat helps heal IDF vets. (TY Yanky) Healing in Nature (HIN) runs weeklong retreats on an isolated Montana ranch for IDF combat vets traumatized by their Gaza experience. Tel Aviv University psychiatrist Dr Roi Sar-el, uses biofeedback to track soldiers’ vital signs before, during and after the ranch trip.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/weeklong-retreat-in-montana-ranch-aims-to-heal-idf-vets-from-war-traumas/
https://www.hin-group.org/
 
Underwater protection. The IDF Navy’s Underwater Missions Unit (Yaltam), protects Israel’s maritime borders, performs complex rescue operations, and neutralizes underwater threats. Since Oct 7, its missions included neutralizing and removing vehicles, devices, and weaponry from attempted sea infiltrations.
https://www.jns.org/deep-dive-into-israels-elite-underwater-unit/
 
How female soldiers saved lives on Oct 7. We read about how female IDF intelligence soldiers were ignored when they warned of Hamas Oct 7 invasion preparations. This video tells of an all-female unit that helped defend beleaguered Israeli communities on that fateful day.
https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-female-soldiers-play-crucial-role-in-hamas-conflict/
 
IDF father and daughter reunite in Gaza. Another emotional family reunion on the battlefield.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-father-and-daughter-reunite-on-gaza-battlefield/
 
Rebuilding the South & North. A historic agreement between the two largest Zionist organizations KKL-JNF and Jewish National Fund-USA has established a joint venture for reconstruction and renewal in Israel’s southern and northern regions. Each organization will contribute $25 million for each rebuilding project.
https://www.jns.org/wire/keren-kayemeth-leisrael-jewish-national-fund-and-jewish-national-fund-usa-lead-rebuilding-efforts-in-israel/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Can we talk? Researchers at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center have created LIV – a new generative AI-based platform offering personalized patient interactions and effective diagnostics to people with PTSD, depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. It reduces bottlenecks from an acute shortage of mental health experts.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/edglfl4h6
https://sheba-global.com/transforming-mental-health-care-with-ai-liv-the-next-step-in-psychiatric-innovation/
 
Pain relief is also anti-inflammatory. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s PainReform (see here previously) has developed new improved anti-inflammatory properties for its PRF-110 pain relief treatment. These have then been successfully tested in a Phase 3 multi-site US trial of 443 patients undergoing bunionectomy surgery.
https://painreform.com/releases/painreform-announces-positive-safety-profile-for-prf-110-in-phase-3-bunionectomy-study/  https://painreform.com/releases/painreform-announces-development-and-successful-manufacturing-of-new-formulations-providing-anti-inflammatory-and-extended-analgesic-effects/
 
Hope for hypothyroidism sufferers. Israeli researchers have discovered that a common pollutant (perchlorate salts – found in pesticides and automobiles) interferes with the proper functioning of the thyroid gland, leading to hypothyroidism. They built a detection device that uses a receptor molecule to alert to pollutant’s presence.
https://ats.org/ats-news/new-sensor-detects-chemicals-that-impair-thyroid-gland/
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-sensor-chemicals-impair-thyroid-gland.html
https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/chem.202302968
 
Positive thoughts can heal the heart.  At least it can in heart-diseased mice.  Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute induced positive emotion and motivation, resulting in an immune response that helped heal cardiac scarring, increased blood vessel formation, and improved cardiac performance. So pass on my positive news!
https://technionuk.org/news-post/can-good-thoughts-heal-the-heart/
 
Predicting and preventing brain diseases. Researchers at Israel’s Technion Institute have developed a model to predict problems involving proteins that can lead to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other brain diseases. This model could serve as a basis for designing new proteins that can treat these diseases.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2024/08/new-hope-for-alzheimers-and-parkinsons-patients/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46881-w
 
Shape-shifting pill gets US approval. Israel’s Epitomee (see here previously) has received US-FDA  marketing approval for its pill that expands in the stomach, making it feel full and discourage overeating.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/qmnwnpw1b
 
Life-saving deliveries. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Magen David Adom is training some 1,000 Wolt delivery drivers in CPR, treating injuries, how to stop bleeding, etc., and giving them life-saving first aid tools. Wolt drivers often encounter emergencies all over Israel, in which first aid training could be vital.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-820579
 
Even smarter. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Sheba Medical Center was ranked 10th in Newsweek’s latest list of the world’s smartest hospitals, having risen from 13th (see here previously). Sheba’s standout categories were Robotics and Telemedicine.
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/health-and-medicine/sheba-medical-center-ranked-10th-smartest-hospital-worldwide/2024/09/18/  https://www.newsweek.com/rankings/worlds-best-smart-hospitals-2025