RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the past 2,000 years there have been numerous descriptions of Jesus of Nazareth, but the image of an Arab Jesus – “the first Palestinian fedayin who carried his sword” – as depicted by Yasir Arafat at a sideshow of the United Nations in 1983 was probably the most grotesque. Present at his first press conference at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on September 2, 1983, I heard the words from the UN simultaneous English interpretation of his spoken Arabic:

“We were under Roman imperialism. We sent a Palestinian fisherman, called St. Peter, to Rome. He not only occupied Rome, but also won the hearts of the people. We know how to resist imperialism and occupation. Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian fedayin who carried his sword along the path on which the Palestinians today carry their Cross.”1

There was a full house, but no one expressed either shock or disbelief, nor was there any later protestation from representatives of the Holy See or the World Council of Churches, even after my letter quoting his words was published in three Swiss newspapers.2 Yet few could ignore the historic fact that it was in 135 – 100 years after the death of Jesus – that the Roman Emperor Hadrian re-conquered Judea, changing its official name from Judea to Palestina. ( “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod…” Matthew 2:1)

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/omar_suleiman_jesus_was_a_palestinian.html

What do a Minnesota congresswoman, a Dallas imam, and the New York Times all have in common? In the past week all three have promoted the meme that Jesus was a Palestinian.On April 19, an op-ed in the New York Times stated that “Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was most likely a Palestinian man with dark skin.” On April 20 Congresswoman Ilhan Omar retweeted Dallas imam Omar Suleiman’s argument that Jesus was “Palestinian,” not Jewish.Such claims are part of a narrative that more and more seems to be insinuating itself into American political discourse. This narrative tends to paint both Jews and whites as inhuman oppressors and non-whites and Palestinians as their innocent victims.

https://bit.ly/2L296wX

1. 368 multinational corporations (mostly from the USA) operate in Israel – mainly research & development centers – leveraging Israel’s brain power. Most of the multinationals initialed operations with the acquisition of Israeli startups. 105 employ more than 100 persons each. 128 are in the area of information technology and enterprise software; 64 – telecommunications; 48 – life sciences; 42 – Internet; 38 – semiconductors, etc.

Intel has the largest presence – 12,800 employees in four research & development centers (Haifa, Jerusalem, Petah Tikvah and Yakum) and two manufacturing facilities (Jerusalem and Kiryat Gat, which is one of Intel’s most advanced facilities in the world), exporting $3.6BN annually. Intel’s 7th and 8th generation Intel-Core processors were developed mainly in Israel. Intel Capital’s investment portfolio includes 28 Israeli startups in the areas of cybersecurity, Internet, enterprise software, cloud computing, autonomous vehicles and 5G (the next phase in global telecommunications). In 2018, Intel Capital invested $120MN in 14 Israeli startups, out of a total of $400MN invested in 95 startups globally.
Additional multinational corporations operating in Israel: Microsoft, IBM, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Marvell, Apple, AT&T, Facebook, Google, Cisco, 3M, AOL, Yahoo, E-bay, Amazon, Pfizer, Oracle, Sony, SanDisk, Philips, Siemens, Deutsche Telecom, Alibaba, Huawei, etc.

2. A record of 211 overseas venture capital funds (mostly USA) operate in Israel – up from 149 in 2013 – primarily investing in software startups (source: Israel VC Research Center).

U.S. regulators have approved the first generic nasal spray version of Narcan, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses. The Food and Drug Administration gave the green light Friday for naloxone spray from Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals.

“In the wake of the opioid crisis, a number of efforts are underway to make this emergency overdose reversal treatment more readily available and more accessible. In addition to this approval of the first generic naloxone nasal spray, moving forward we will prioritize our review of generic drug applications for naloxone,” Douglas Throckmorton, M.D., deputy center director for regulatory programs in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.

Naloxone has been sold as a nasal spray in the U.S. since 2016 under the brand name Narcan. Pharmacists can dispense it without a prescription. It is also sold as a generic or brand-name drug in automatic injectors, prefilled syringes and vials.

A pack of two Narcan nasal sprays cost about $130 to $150 without insurance. Teva didn’t immediately provide the product’s price or when it will be available.

More than 47,600 Americans died of opioid overdoses in 2017, a toll that has been rising for two decades.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/measles-was-eradicated-now-its-back-thanks-to-anti-vaxxers/

More than 110,000 cases of the measles have been reported worldwide since the beginning of the year. Countries once free of the measles are now in danger of reverting to the days before such a blessing existed.

Israel’s national carrier, El Al, has set up a special inoculation station at Ben-Gurion Airport to vaccinate its employees against the measles. So far, some 250 ground and flight crews have been vaccinated, with likely more to come.

The makeshift clinic was created after the Israeli Health Ministry ordered all local airlines to inoculate their staff and called on the Israeli public to get fully vaccinated before taking any trips out of the country.

The directive came after a 43-year-old El Al flight attendant contracted the measles during a flight that set out from John F. Kennedy Airport on March 26 and landed in Tel Aviv the following day. Although the woman was otherwise healthy and had been vaccinated as a child, she nevertheless caught the contagious disease, as she had received only one shot of the vaccine, rather than the recommended two doses these days. After being rushed to the hospital upon landing in Israel, she fell into a coma, and is thought to have suffered brain damage.The same fate befell a 10-year-old boy on a flight to Israel.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/04/israel-emerges

In recent years a historic reversal of support and hostility for Jews and the State of Israel has occurred, in which most of the political Right, and especially what might be termed the ethno-nationalist Right throughout the world, are now strong supporters of the Jewish state, while the political Left is increasingly and centrally hostile to it. While much has been written on left-wing anti-Semitism, little has been said about the growing and quite extraordinary links by the political Right with Israel.

To show the magnitude of the change, one ought first to set out the nature of European anti-Semitism as it existed between about 1870 and 1945, especially the doctrines held by the Nazis, and then contrast these attitudes with right-wing leaders today. Anti-Semitism as it existed in Europe (and elsewhere) before 1945 had a number of points as its main planks. First, the Jews were not simply a religious denomination but a “race”, or ethno-nationality group. According to Hitler in Mein Kampf, “the Jews’ entire existence is built on one single great lie, namely that here one had to deal with a religious brotherhood, while in fact, one had to deal with a race”. Second, and following from this, Jews were not and could not be a genuine component of the countries in which they lived, but were a separate entity which, however long they dwelled there, retained an independent existence. As Hitler expressed this in Mein Kampf:

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-A-Passover-tribute-to-President-Trump-587312

Some of the cynics among us, tend to throw in a few digs at the dinner table about how we wouldn’t need so much saving at the last minute if divine intervention had kept us from needing it.

According to an old joke that never wears out its welcome, the theme of all Jewish holidays is: “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.”

On Passover, this humorous description is fine-tuned to include a quip about how the Israelites have been freed from Egyptian bondage only to become enslaved in the kitchen, after spending weeks obsessively scrubbing the house to rid it of any vestige of a breadcrumb or other leavened item.

Comedy aside, it is completely understandable for Jews to feel war-weary, particularly as a people who prefers the pen to the sword. But, being as stupid as we are smart, our response to this form of malaise is to turn our pens on one another and fear the world’s wrath whenever forced to use our swords. No wonder God gets so exasperated.

Luckily, such frustration has not been exhibited by the administration in Washington. Indeed, since assuming office in January 2017 – after being rejected and ridiculed by a majority of Jewish voters – US President Donald Trump proceeded to implement one stunningly pro-Israel policy after another.