RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/israels-annexation-plan-jordan-valley-joseph-puder/

The new Israeli government is considering extending Israeli law and sovereignty to the Jordan Valley, which is within area C of the Oslo Accords. The Accords, which gave Israel both military and administrative control in the area, also contains a large bloc of Jewish-Israeli communities. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on a short visit to Israel (April 22, 2020) told reporters: “As for annexation of the (Jordan Valley) West Bank, the Israelis will ultimately make those decisions.” He added, “That’s an Israeli decision. We will work closely with them to share with them our views in a private setting.”

Reacting to Israeli intentions, a senior official at the European Union (EU) has warned that Individual member-states within the EU are already looking to apply sanction against Israel should Israel annex the Jordan Valley. The EU requires full consensus among its 27 members in adopting foreign policy measures. Austria and Hungary have blocked a call by Luxembourg and Ireland to consider an Israel annexation of the Jordan Valley a ‘violation of international law’ as defined by the United Nations (UN). The anti-Israel bloc at the EU believes that Israel’s intended action is comparable to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. But, while Crimea was part of the sovereign nation state of Ukraine, Palestine is not a recognized state by the UN. Still, there might be bilateral sanctions imposed by anti-Israel states within the EU such as Ireland, Luxembourg, and Sweden. 

While the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas understands that there is no comparison between Russia’s action in 2014 in annexing Crimea, and Israel’s intended annexation of the Jordan Valley Jewish settlements, he nevertheless agrees that it will be a violation of international law. 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/right-from-wrong-why-we-want-netanyahus-trial-televised-629523

For some reason, the Jerusalem District Court – where the arraignment took place and the rest of the trial will be held – nixed the idea to televise it.
With few exceptions, the Israeli press is none too fond of Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu. The feeling, as a result, is mutual, with very good reason.

Acting as judge, jury and executioner, the country’s media outlets have not even tried to conceal their long-standing desire to see his dust. Imagine their delight, then, when the judicial system provided them with the perfect cover for their unbridled lack of neutrality and blatant partisanship.

Not that readers or viewers really believe that journalists are unbiased. More to the point, most people these days – including publishers, editors and reporters – seem have a hard time telling the difference between news, analysis and opinion.

Nor would this be the least bit of a problem if each outlet acknowledged its slant. There is no shame in having and promoting a worldview, after all. No, the disgrace lies in the pretense. And left-wing reporters are full of it, so to speak, which is why Netanyahu is a perfect target for them.

It is not his party, voters or even the entire Right – they claim – that is at the root of their open aggression, but rather the man himself. Indeed, they tell themselves and everybody else, the very fact that he is under indictment on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust makes him fair game.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16065/palestinians-home-demolitions

While international human rights groups and the European Union have also been condemning Israel, they are ignoring home demolitions carried out by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

In February, Hamas notified 50 families… that their homes would be destroyed on the pretext that they were built without a license. The families were instructed to evacuate their homes within two weeks…. Last year, Hamas demolished another house in Khan Yunis belonging to Bassam Duhan, also on the pretext that it was built without a license. Duhan, a father of eight, set up a tent in front of the demolished house. He complained that relatives of senior Hamas officials had also built homes in the same area, but no one destroyed their homes.

Last year, a youth group in the Gaza Strip called on the Arab League and other Arab and Islamic parties to launch an investigation into Hamas’s crimes against Palestinians. Needless to say, the group has never received a reply from the Arab League or any other organization in the Arab and Islamic countries. The appeal came after Hamas militiamen used excessive force to prevent Palestinians from protesting economic hardship and Hamas corruption.

In the absence of an international response, Hamas continues to demolish homes in the Gaza Strip — and other crimes against its own people — with impunity, leaving hundreds of families without shelter.

Hamas, the Iranian-backed terrorist movement controlling the Gaza Strip, is often one of the first Palestinian groups to condemn Israel for demolishing homes of terrorists or Palestinian-owned houses built illegally in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

While international human rights groups and the European Union have also been condemning Israel, they are ignoring home demolitions carried out by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

In the past 10 years, Hamas has demolished not only houses, but also a mosque — a move that has received almost no attention from the international media and human rights organizations or the EU.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/demonstrating-against-the-forces-of-condescension/

Protestations to the contrary, the chattering classes in the press, academia and the courts have been on an endless campaign to delegitimize the right.

(May 26, 2020 / JNS) Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Jerusalem District Court on Sunday afternoon to express their support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his arraignment. It was the first hearing of a trial that his champions had hoped would never materialize, and that his enemies had spent the past four years pressing for and salivating over.

The latter also turned out at the courthouse, mainly to gloat. But a greater number preferred to hold their anti-Netanyahu festival—replete with champagne and blessings of l’chaim—in front of his official residence on Balfour Street, a mere mile-and-a-half away.

Finally, after four years of investigations into the activities of their nemesis, they were getting their wish: that the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, whom they’ve been unable to beat at the ballot box, will end his career in disgrace, if not in jail.

But their schadenfreude may be short-lived—whatever fate befalls Netanyahu at the hands of the panel of three judges, hand-picked for the purpose of kicking him when he’s up.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/jordanian-king-abdullahs-empty-threats-caroline-glick/

Should Jordan’s King Abdullah have veto power over Israel’s plan to apply its sovereign laws to its cities, towns and villages in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley, in accordance with the Trump peace plan? Just recently, senior leaders of Israel’s Blue and White Party began making noises to that effect.

In an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel last week, King Abdullah threatened, “If Israel really annexes the West Bank in July, it would lead to a massive conflict with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.”

Subsequent news updates reported that “senior officials” from Blue and White were working to condition Israel’s implementation of the sovereignty plan on securing prior approval from Jordan.

During the ceremony at the Foreign Ministry marking the arrival of incoming Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, Ashkenazi said that Israel will implement the Trump peace plan “in dialogue with our neighbors, [and while] preserving of the peace treaties and the State of Israel’s strategic interests.”

Taken together with these news updates, Ashkenazi’s remarks raised the prospect that he and his partner, Defense Minister and vice prime minister Benny Gantz see Abdullah’s threat as a justification for abandoning their support for the sovereignty plan. It bears recalling that during the negotiations leading up to the formation of the unity government between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud and Gantz and Blue and White, Netanyahu made Blue and White’s support for the sovereignty plan his only substantive condition for signing the deal.

Abdullah, of course, will never approve the sovereignty plan, so giving him a veto means shelving the plan. This raises the question of whether there is any reason to give the head of the Hashemite clan that sort of power. Can he cause Israel harm so grave that it should abandon the sovereignty plan to appease him?

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/prime-minister-netanyahu-in-the-dock/91145/

What a spectacle is underway in Israel, where Prime Minister Netanyahu is being prosecuted by his own government for bribery and other crimes that he was formally alleged to have committed before he was re-elected to a third term. It’s a lesson in constitutional conundrums from a country that doesn’t have a constitution — and not just because Mr. Netanyahu has entered the dock with all saddlebags flapping in the breeze.

“Netanyahu’s Defense Strategy Is to Undermine His Accuser, the State of Israel,” is the way the poser was put in Israel’s leading liberal daily, Haaretz, as the trial was getting underway. A country doesn’t have to have a constitution, it seems, for its headline writers to comprehend the implicit constitutional contradiction. Here in America, we’ve been marking the point as a special counsel pursued, in President Trump, his own boss.

In America, of course, there are ways around this problem. One would have been for President Trump to fire the prosecutor for trying to prosecute him in a way the President didn’t like. Mr. Trump was more forbearing, and merely unleashed tornados of tweets against Robert Mueller, until the prosecutor cleared him of collusion with the Russians. Another method for dealing with the predicament is impeachment. It, too, cleared Mr. Trump.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15970/palestinian-jihad-virus

While doctors, nurses and many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are complaining about a shortage of medical supplies, the Palestinian armed groups, including PIJ and Hamas, do not appear to be facing the same problem.

The masked men [in the video] are not covering their faces or wearing gloves because they are worried about the virus. Instead, they are wearing gloves and using hand sanitizers as they prepare to descend into a tunnel built to enable Palestinians to infiltrate from the Gaza Strip into Israel [to kill or kidnap Israelis]. Once they are inside the tunnel, the militiamen are seen carrying out construction and drilling work.

Since 2014, Hamas has invested about $120 million per year in the terror tunnels. Quality concrete goes into the construction of these tunnels, instead of residential buildings. In addition, electricity is redirected to build and light up the tunnels 24 hours a day, while hospitals and the homes of civilians suffer constant power outages. According to various estimates, a terror tunnel can cost anywhere from three to 10 million dollars, depending on its length and depth.

Palestinians, particularly those living in the Gaza Strip, do not speak out against the two organizations: they are afraid for their lives.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip need jobs and proper healthcare more than rockets and tunnels. The leaders of Iran, Hamas and PIJ, nonetheless, are determined to pursue their goal of eliminating Israel. The biggest losers are the two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the Iranian people, whose money and resources are being wasted on Palestinian terror groups and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia.

The Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the second largest group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas, is using latex gloves and hand sanitizers to prepare terrorist attacks against Israel, not to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Good progress of Pluristem trial. Seven of the eight critically ill coronavirus patients on ventilators, treated with PLX stem cells from Israel’s Pluristem, survived after 28 days.  Only one of those still needed mechanical ventilation – the other five having been discharged from hospital. 10 further patients have now begun treatment.

https://www.pluristem.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/PSTI-28-day-follow-up-FOR-RELEASE.pdf

US Covid-19 vaccine progress. (TY David F) The Israeli Chief Medical Officer of US biotech Moderna reported that company’s mRNA-1273 Covid-19 vaccine successfully produced antibodies on 8 patients. Dr. Tal Zaks received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Ben Gurion University, joining Moderna in 2015.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/modernas-israeli-top-medical-officer-weve-shown-today-that-our-vaccine-works/   https://www.linkedin.com/in/talzaks/

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/18/health/coronavirus-vaccine-moderna-early-results/index.html

US patent filed for 8 antibodies. The Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) in Ness Ziona has just completed the patent application process for eight new coronavirus antibodies (reported here previously).

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/iibr-files-for-patents-for-8-coronavirus-antibodies-628134

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/280294

Teva donates medicines for US Covid-19 study. Israel’s Teva is donating the medicines for a US study into the effectiveness of a potential combination coronavirus treatment. The study will evaluate whether combining the antibiotic azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine can prevent hospitalization and mortality from COVID-19.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/05/15/israeli-pharma-giant-teva-donates-medicines-for-new-nih-coronavirus-treatment-study/

Bone-grafting cells may treat coronavirus symptoms. While developing its unique treatment for growing human bone grafts, Israel’s Bonus BioGroup (see previously) discovered MesenCure – a new pneumonia treatment that could help coronavirus patients. A study on animals was successful; human trials are planned.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-bone-grafting-company-makes-breakthrough-in-treatment-for-coronavirus/

TAU to search for a Covid-19 vaccine. (TY Hazel) Tel Aviv University (TAU) researchers have partnered with Swiss biotech Neovii to find a vaccine against Covid-19. TAU will use their 2015 patented research into the MERS virus to accelerate their work on Covid-19.  https://www.jpost.com/health-science/after-years-studying-coronaviruses-israeli-team-ready-to-develop-vaccine-627882

US approval for vertebrae image analysis. Israel’s Zebra Medical has just received its fifth FDA approval (previous ones reported here) – this time for its Vertebral Compression Fractures (VCF) image analysis product. Zebra’s latest AI solution automatically identifies likely compression fractures from scans.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/zebra-medical-vision-secures-5th-135200965.html

Results of 10-year Israeli-led gastro study. Dr. Ami Sperber, professor emeritus of Ben-Gurion University, initiated a 10-year epidemiology study of 73,000 patients in 33 countries. It found that over 40% of the world’s population have Disorders of Gut-Brain Interactions (DGBI). The data is vital to gastrointestinal knowledge.

https://theromefoundation.org/research-institute-rome-foundation/rome-foundation-global-epidemiology-study/

https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(20)30487-X/fulltext

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/05/22/israel-celebrates-jerusalem-day-marking-53-years-since-reunification-of-capital/

The Israeli armed forces liberated Jerusalem after Jordanian rule trashed ancient cemeteries, defiled shrines, and forbid Christian access to holy churches and shrines. And it too another 53 year for an American President named Donald Trump to fulfill a promise and move the American Embassy to Israel’s eternal capital….and the locus of Jewish prayer and hopes for centuries…rsk

Israel celebrated Jerusalem Day on Friday, marking the 53rd anniversary (according to the Hebrew calendar) of the liberation of its capital city during the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry tweeted, “All it takes is a glimpse to fall in love with this breathtaking city. Happy #JerusalemDay from the eternal capital of the Jewish people.”

The Israel Defense Forces — whose troops freed the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the Old City, from Jordanian control — tweeted, “On this day in the Hebrew calendar, we celebrate the liberation of Jerusalem. The Old City — lost to the Jewish people for 2,000 years — was finally back in our hands.”

“Today, we celebrate the triumph of those IDF heroes & reaffirm our commitment to securing Jerusalem forevermore,” it added.

Israel Defense Forces

✔ @IDF

On this day in the Hebrew calendar, we celebrate the liberation of Jerusalem. The Old City—lost to the Jewish people for 2,000 years—was finally back in our hands.

Today, we celebrate the triumph of those IDF heroes & reaffirm our commitment to securing Jerusalem forevermore.