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ISRAEL

Read of the day: A strong dose of reality on Israel By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/read_of_the_day_a_stron

I strongly recommend a long interview with Michael Oren, and American-born Israeli, who has served as Israel’s ambassador the United States and currently is a Member of the Knesset and Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office. He speaks very frankly on many issues, and provides perspectives that I found fascinating and useful.

I had never before seen the website (https://octavianreport.com/article/michael-oren-israel-world-power/?) that published the interview, but I am impressed with it and will be returning.

Here is a short sample of Oren’s perspectives on matters of current concern:

About five years ago, when Secretary of State Kerry was traveling back and forth between Israel and the Palestinians, he almost invariably paused before getting on a plane back to the United States to issue a not-so-veiled threat against the state of Israel. The threat was, and we understood it as a threat, that if Israel did not make concessions to the Palestinians, we would be isolated internationally. To quote the Secretary: “isolated on steroids.”

Today, you’ll find that Israel today is pointedly and emphatically less isolated than at any other time in its history. To the best of my knowledge, we’ve yet to make peace with Palestinians.

Our relationship with Latin America is at an unprecedented high. We’ve had the Prime Minister be the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit any country south of the United States of America. Now he’s visited four.

There are 51 countries in Africa, most of which cut off relations with us after the Arab boycott of the 1970’s, that have renewed relations with us. They’re standing in line to strengthen those relationships with us. Our relationships with Eastern Europe, the former Soviet bloc countries, are excellent.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
“Ghost” decoy cells kill cancer. Israel Technion Professor Marcelle Machluf has developed tumor-shrinking technology using normally “good” mesenchymal stem cells that tumors hi-jack to help them grow. Machluf’s team removed the cells’ contents and filled the membranes with chemotherapy.  They lure and destroy tumors.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/technion-professor-creates-army-of-cell-ghosts-to-battle-deadliest-cancers/
 
Colon capsule has further positive trial results. I’ve reported previously (see here) on the C-Scan colon diagnostic capsule from Israel’s Check-Cap. In its latest (post CE approval) study, C-Scan detected 76% of small (potentially cancerous) polyps as opposed to only 28% using currently approved non-invasive techniques.
http://ir.check-cap.com/2019-07-09-Check-Cap-Announces-Positive-Final-Results-from-Its-Post-CE-Approval-Study-of-the-C-Scan-R-System
 
Surgical navigator approved. (TY OurCrowd) The Israeli Ministry of Health approved marketing of the Surgical Navigation Advanced Platform (SNAP) and SuRgical Planner (SRP) systems from Israel’s Surgical Theater. The VR systems help surgeons plan and perform complex operations including brain, heart and spinal.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/surgical-theater-received-approval-market-190000527.html
https://www.surgicaltheater.net/
 
Pain relief without pills. Israel’s Solio has developed Alpha Plus – the world’s first US FDA and European CE approved radio frequency (RF) topical pain relief device. It combines bipolar RF to increase blood circulation, infrared to heat and ease pain and stiffness, and low-level laser to relieve the skin. All in a simple external unit.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-at-home-device-uses-radio-frequency-to-relieve-pain/
https://www.soliotherapy.com/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iw1qvfm8sQ
 
Anti-bacterial tooth fillings. Tel Aviv scientists have developed dental fillings made of resin-based composites enhanced by antibacterial nano-assemblies. It can hinder bacterial growth on dental restorations, the main cause of secondary tooth decay that can lead to root-canal treatment and tooth extractions.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-antibacterial-fillings-may-fight-repeated-tooth-decay/
 
Paramedics cross the seas. Israel’s Magen David Adom has inaugurated its new ‘Sea-Bulance’ service to assist people in need of critical medical treatment and rescue while at sea. It currently operates in the Sea of Galilee equipped with advanced medical tools and can carry up to six people at speeds of up to 35 knots.
http://nocamels.com/2019/07/mda-sea-ambulance-emergency-water-rescue/
 
Paramedics scale the heights. Israel’s Magen David Adom paramedics treated a Haifa crane operator who lost consciousness, 50 meters above ground. Using advanced medical equipment, they provided treatment before harnessed firefighters and security guards extracted and evacuated him to hospital in stable and good condition.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/265830
 

The Palestinian Problem Is Dying of Natural Causes David Spengler

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-palestinian-problem-is-dying-of-natural-causes/

“West Bank grows calmer as pocketbook issues take priority of protests” is the headline of a New York Times story today. It seems that the Palestinian jihadists of the old intifadas are more concerned about making a living than killing Israelis. Writes reporters Isabel Kershner:

BILIN, West Bank — On a recent weekday, Muhammad Abu Rahma returned to the place where Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers used to clash in weekly confrontations that made the West Bank village of Bilin a symbol of resistance against the Israeli occupation.

But this time, he came not to protest but to picnic with his wife and three children. He had served three terms in prison for his activities at the height of the protests. But now, at 33, he had a family and a job as a garbage collector.

“People want money to live, and permits,” he said, referring to the Israeli permits allowing laborers to work in Israel, where they can earn twice as much as they do in the Palestinian territories.

It turns out that time is on Israel’s side, as Ambassador Yoram Ettinger and other Israeli analysts have argued for years. The Arab “demographic time bomb” turned out to be a dud, as fertility rates plunge across the Muslim world, a phenomenon I discussed in my 2011 book How Civilizations Die. In a 2011 analysis for Asia Times, I counseled Israel not to attempt to make peace with a Palestinian population heavily tilted towards hot-headed youngsters, and to wait until the declining Palestinian fertility rate had raised the average age of the West Bank population. Like Northern Ireland, the militants would find themselves married with mortgages (at least those who survived). Prime Minister Netanyahu generously commented on the article when it was published.

Right From Wrong: Rage and responsibility in the nanny state By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-From-Wrong-Rage-and-responsibility-in-the-nanny-state-595399

Mass demonstrations took place across Israel on Sunday night, following the indictment of 25-year-old Carmel Mauda on 18 counts of abuse and assault of infants and toddlers in her care. Until her arrest last month, Mauda had been running the “Baby Love” preschool, a private creche she co-owned with her father near the family home in Rosh Ha’ayin.

Luckily for police, who were tipped off about Mauda’s cruelty by aides she had fired, the daycare facility was equipped with surveillance cameras, oddly installed by the perpetrator herself. The shocking footage obtained by investigators provided the kind of irrefutable evidence that made it simple for them to extract a confession from the suspect, who initially denied any wrongdoing.

When confronted with one of the videos in which she is seen angrily flinging a baby, by his outstretched arms, into a crib, Mauda said, “That day, I was in a black funk.”

When questioned about another scene, showing her tying a toddler’s hands behind his back – a regular practice that she later admitted lasted from minutes to hours – she acknowledged having been “satanic.”

UK Tory leadership front-runner Boris Johnson declares his love for the State of Israel, willingness to launch sanctions against Iran.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/uk-leadership-frontrunner-boris-johnson-im-a-passionate-zionist/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&

In a recent exclusive interview with the UK-based Jewish News, British MP Boris Johnson, a leading candidate to replace Prime Minister Theresa May, praised Israel and said he would pursue Palestinian leaders about their “pay for slay” policy.

May will be leaving her post this month.

Johnson, who was mayor of London from 2008 until 2016, described himself as a “passionate Zionist” and referred to Israel as a “great country” that “I love.”

As for the Iran’s breaching of the nuclear deal, Johnson told the Jewish News, “I think that there are enough tensions in that region without triggering a nuclear arms race, whose consequences would be very hard to foresee, and which would certainly pose very difficult choices for any Israeli government.

“I certainly think you could not fault the UK government for being tough on Iran’s sanction busting. As Prime Minister, I’d make sure we continue to do everything we can to constrain Iran’s disruptive behaviour in the region,” he said.

Concerning a Palestinian state, Johnson said that should only happen when Palestinian leaders “meaningfully recognize Israel and stop threatening to revoke recognition.”

In 2016, the British government froze $30 million earmarked for aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA.) Though the PA had claimed the money was to pay civil servants in Gaza, it was used to support terrorists in Israeli jails and their families.

Why Palestinians Do Not Trust Their Leaders by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14520/palestinians-leaders-trust

Evidently, Palestinian leaders do not grasp that the Palestinian public cares a great deal more about being treated like human beings by their own leaders than about anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric.

This incitement is Palestinian leaders’ way of distracting attention from problems at home. They want their people to be busy hating someone else – in this case Israel, the US and pro-US Arab leaders. Otherwise, these people might wake up one fine morning and demand reform, transparency and democracy from their leaders in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

If Palestinian leaders spent a fraction of the time that they waste on condemning Israel and the US, on bringing good government to their people, the Palestinians would be in a much better situation. It seems that some senior Palestinian leaders cannot go to sleep at night without having disgorged fiery statements against Israel and the US. Needless to say, this does not make for particularly constructive governance.

When fighting an unseen peace plan becomes a greater priority than bettering the lives of your people, one can only say that, with failed leaders such as these, the time has come for the Palestinian public to raise its collective voice and demand its rights from its unelected leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Until this happens, Palestinian leaders will continue to enjoy the good life on the extremely burdened backs of its people.

While Palestinian leaders continue to dedicate their time to vilifying Israel and the US administration, the Palestinian public seems to have more pressing matters on its mind. Take, for example, the debilitating and dangerous lack of public freedoms and the corruption under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian leaders, however, appear oblivious to the urgent concerns of their people. Evidently, Palestinian leaders do not grasp that the Palestinian public cares a great deal more about being treated like human beings by their own leaders than about anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric.

Thus, the gap between Palestinian leaders and their people appears to widen by the moment, and the Palestinians’ dissatisfaction with the performance of these leaders grows at a parallel pace.

The number of Palestinians who heeded the Palestinian Authority’s call to take to the streets in protest against the recent US-led “Peace to Prosperity” economic conference in Bahrain was relatively small.

Although the Palestinian leaders were hoping that tens of thousands of people would participate in the rallies against the US and Israel, it was evident that the number of participants was much lower than expected. In fact, most of the protesters in the West Bank were members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction or employees of his government.

Similarly, the number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who are heeding Hamas’s call to head to the border with Israel for the weekly protests is in steady decline. The protests, which began in March 2018, are organized by Hamas and other Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip under the title: “Great March of Return.”

The decreasing number of Palestinians who are willing to go to the border and endanger their own lives by catapulting stones, firebombs and other lethal objects at Israeli soldiers is a positive sign; it is possible that the Palestinian public in the Gaza Strip is getting fed up with Hamas’s empty arguments and rhetoric.

Two recent public opinion polls have revealed the depths of Palestinians’ mistrust for their leaders.

Associated Press Targets Jewish Americans Who Support Israel The leftist art of personal destruction. Caroline Glick

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274235/associated-press-targets-jewish-americans-who-caroline-glick

Last week, the Associated Press ran a hit job on a successful American businessman. Simon Falic and his two brothers own the Duty Free Americas chain, a private company that runs duty free stores in airports throughout the United States and Latin America.

They also happen to be Jewish. Simon Falic in particular is a powerful advocate for Jewish causes worldwide and for the State of Israel.

Through their family foundation, Simon Falic and his wife donate to dozens of organizations in Israel. The causes they support run the gamut from medical research to Jewish education. They support synagogue construction and refurbishment; archaeological excavations and preservation of archaeological sites; battered women’s shelters and day care centers; and the construction of new Jewish communities in Israel.

AP’s hit piece centers on Falic’s charitable work.

The title of the article gave the game away. It read, “U.S. duty free owners give millions to settlements.”

The obvious question is: so what? There is nothing even vaguely illegal about Falic’s charitable undertakings. And indeed, the article doesn’t accuse him of committing or facilitating any crime.

Peace Doesn’t Exist – Nor Do the Palestinians Ask these three questions if you really want peace. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274210/peace-doesnt-exist-nor-do-palestinians-daniel-greenfield

Salah Abu Miala, a Hebron businessman, traveled to Bahrain to attend the Bahrain peace conference. When he returned home, he was arrested by the Palestinian Authority.

A security official for the Islamic terror group admitted that there was no actual charge.

“It was a warning,” he said. “He must understand the implications of this sort of collaboration.”

Collaboration with the United States. The country that set up the PA and lavished billions in aid on it.

Another businessman managed to evade the crackdown on peace conference attendees.

The Palestinian Authority had not only boycotted the peace conference, but it arrested participants in the peace conference, and warned that participating in the peace conference was collaboration.

Collaboration, under Palestinian Authority law, can be punishable by death.

The message is that the Palestinian Authority really doesn’t want peace. It has sabotaged peace conferences under Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now Trump. Every approach running the same narrow gamut from pressuring Israel to bribing the Palestinian Authority has been tried. They all end the same.

Just ask Salah who was locked up for attending a peace conference.

The pattern here is so obvious that it would take a diplomat or a politician to miss it. That’s why we’ve been mired in it for so long. And the billions of dollars wasted and thousands of lives lost could have been saved if only our leaders had questioned their premises by asking three simple questions.

1. What if the Palestinians don’t want peace?

2. What if there are no Palestinians?

3. What if there’s no such thing as peace?

The three assumptions, that the Palestinians exist, that they want peace, and that enduring peace is an attainable condition in the region, are at the root of the senselessly Sisyphean peace process.

THE TRUMP EFFECT: AMB. (RET.) YORAM ETTINGER

https://bit.ly/2S1WeHb

The initial two and a half years of President Trump’s national security policy have departed sharply from those of President Obama, his predecessor at the White House.

The nature of Trump’s national security policy may be assessed through the worldview of Vice President Mike Pence and the two most crucial appointments:Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was a “Tea Party” leader in the US House of Representatives, and National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has been a consistent advocate of a bolstered US posture of deterrence – in the face of rogue regimes and organizations – by flexing political, economic and military muscle. In 1991, it was Bolton who led the successful US campaign to revoke “Zionism is Racism” from UN records. Both Pompeo and Bolton have been consistent critics of Obama’s national security policy. 

The worldview of President Obama (and his Secretary of State, John Kerry) was shaped by the following principles:

1. No US moral, political, economic exceptionalism;

2. Preference of multinational – over unilateral – initiatives;

3. Considering the UN as a key factor in shaping the global arena;

4. Viewing non-assertive Western Europe as a role model;

5. Embracing the worldview of the State Department establishment, which has been persistently divorced from Middle East complexity (e.g., the “Arab Spring” illusion);

6. Adopting negotiation, reconciliation and containment as key tactics when dealing with rogue regimes (e.g., the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement);

7. Approaching rogue Islamic entities as potential allies rather than lethal opponents and enemies (e.g., “Islam has always been a part of the American Story,” Cairo, June 4, 2009);

8.  Playing down Islamic terrorism by designating the murder of 13 Fort Hood, TX, US soldiers by radical Muslim Major Nidal Hasan, as “workplace violence” (and later on, as “combat related casualties”), prohibiting the use of the term “Islamic terrorism;”

9. Defining the Palestinian issue as the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a core cause of Middle East turbulence and a crown-jewel of Arab policy-makers;

10. Assuming that a resolution – not management – of conflicts is a realistic option in the unpredictable, violent, intolerant, volcanic Middle East, which has never experienced long-term intra-Muslim peaceful coexistence.

 

A Moral Philosopher’s Letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Leading the most beleaguered state on earth against the greatest threat to civilization. Jason Hill *****

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274217/moral-philosophers-letter-prime-minister-benjamin-jason-d-hill

Jason D. Hill is a professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. He is the author of several books, including “We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People.”

Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu,

I write to you as an admirer; as a moral philosopher, and as an immigrant to America from Jamaica where part of my ancestral bloodline can be traced to a maternal great-grandfather who was a Sephardic Jew, and whose people came to Jamaica from Jerusalem via Portugal.

Your name as you know, means, “Given by God.” And so you have been offered up to  your people in historic Supreme leadership in your unprecedented role in serving as fifth-term Prime Minister of Israel. You hail from the line of the first three great Patriarchs of Israel and, like the first, Abraham, you have been singled out by God to lead your great state and exceptional civilization. Unlike Abraham, you do not have to flee your homeland. You only have to defend it ruthlessly and intransigently and, with moral implacability, protect it by any means necessary against those who have sworn your people as their eternal enemies, and who have codified in their charters a Jihadist roadmap to the destruction of your country and your people.  Like Abraham’s people, many of God’s chosen people have yet to accommodate themselves to you and your prophetic role as an historic figure. You, the patriarch of Israel, are a mouthpiece of the dead and a living producer of victories yet to come.

Jews have had a 3,300 year presence in the land of Israel. In your heroic years ahead, and in your historic fifth term as Prime of Israel, the task of preserving that homeland lies in the unyielding grip of your hands.  As much of Europe grows more anti-Semitic with each passing year and, as that most racist of institutions, The United Nations, along with Europe seem to stamp their moral approval upon the terrorist organizations of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, you face a lonely and daunting task in decisions you will  make in the self-defense of your country. You will, undoubtedly, act unilaterally and defiantly at times, and toss international approval where it belongs: into the dustbin where stale, musky racist detritus resides, and where the moral grammar of rights are not really up for grabs—they have been allocated to your sworn enemies while your state is deemed worthy of none. Indeed, when the United Nations tries to shame your country for defending itself against war crimes committed by Hamas by declaring that you ought to share your Iron Dome defense technology with the very terror group trying to kill your citizens, then there is now lower and egregiously shameful space of moral degradation that the United Nations can occupy. Let the world remember that Hamas has repeatedly shot more than 9,000 missiles and mortar rockets into Israel from Gaza since your state withdrew military forces from there in 2005.