RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/when-all-of-the-evidence-is-collected-tog

I have just published a forensic 200-page report on Amnesty international, the world’s largest humanitarian NGO.

The overarching conclusion is that Amnesty International has an institutional hostility towards Israel that borders on obsession, with the NGO visibly attacking Israel more frequently and with far more energy, than it does any other nation.

When all of the evidence presented is collected together, it is as if Amnesty has declared war on Israel.

The research was some of the most detailed I have carried out and it was commissioned by Jewish Human Rights Watch. I followed over 50 Amnesty social media accounts and monitored the output of over 40 staff and volunteers who work or have worked for the NGO.

I poured through 100,000s of social media posts. The process took several months and involved rigorous checks to try to identify what Amnesty were doing and how much of their time was spent focusing on Israel.

I was shocked by the findings. I knew when I started that accusations of bias against Amnesty were not new.

NGO Monitor, an Israel-based NGO that analyses anti-Israel bias has frequently been critical of Amnesty. Even having read their detailed analysis, I was still unprepared for what I found.

The report provides examples from the absurd to the foul. One Amnesty human rights researcher publicly asked non-Jewish citizens of Israel not to vote in an election. How cruel a twist is this, in a world where voting rights are so frequently denied.

An Amnesty media manager for the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region was found advising Palestinian terror groups like Hamas not to publicly identify their martyrs if they were lost in an action, but rather to have the west believe the fallen were innocent civilians.

An Amnesty consultant tweeted an image of two Islamic Jihad terrorists, with a love heart — and she wrote the word ‘heroes’ above the images. In the same week she tweeted that others in Gaza should be careful about what they say publicly — so as not to harm ‘the resistance’.

http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

Congratulations Israel on unparalleled and outsize contributions to the health, welfare, longevity and quality of life of billions of people in the globe! And thanks to my friend Michael Ordman who brings us these news clips almost every week of the year. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Breakthrough in the fight to cure Lupus. Researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University and the US NIH have identified a trigger for the autoimmune disease Lupus. They have also developed what the media is calling a “miracle” molecule, that blocks the trigger in Lupus and other diseases, e.g. Alzheimer’s and IBD.

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Ben-Gurion-University-develops-miracle-molecule-for-fighting-Lupus-612163  https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/Fight-lupus.aspx

Reversing the aging of the brain. Researchers from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University and the University of California have discovered that a small molecule called IPW is able to heal a damaged Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). It can also alleviate the inflammation that leads to Alzheimer’s and other age-related diseases.

https://www.jns.org/new-drug-diagnostic-techniques-slow-and-even-reverse-cognitive-decline-from-aging/

https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/11/521/eaaw8283

Stopping cancer in its tracks. Israel’s Metabomed is developing treatments using small molecules that target and inhibit metabolic enzymes vital for cancer cells’ survival.  It currently has four pipeline programs. Metabomed has just raised a further $12.5 million of funds to help it prepare for clinical trials.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3776158,00.html

https://www.metabomed.com/our-pipeline/

Developing AI for spinal surgery. Israeli intelligent scan analysis startup Zebra Medical (see here) is partnering with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary DePuy Synthes to jointly develop artificial intelligence technologies for spine and other orthopedic surgeries.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3776155,00.html

Israel’s first live multi-organ donor. Rabbi Elad Gadot recently donated one of his kidneys to a total stranger for whom he was a rare match. Years ago, Rabbi Gadot donated a liver lobe to his son Eliyahu (now in the IDF) who needed a liver transplant.  Coincidentally, the kidney recipient’s name was also Eliyahu.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/israels-first-multi-organ-donor-is-a-rabbi-father-of-11-and-idf-veteran/

Prescription checking software can save the US a fortune. As reported previously (see here), Israel’s MedAware prevents prescription errors and saves lives.  Now a 5-year Harvard study shows it would have cut $800 million a year from US Health costs. 70% of the errors detected would not have been found otherwise.

https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Harvard-Israels-MedAware-can-save-US-health-system-800m-a-year-611478

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15334/palestinians-corruption-opinion-polls

The Palestinian Authority leadership was far from pleased about AMAN’s exposure of the Palestinians public’s discontent with corruption.

Palestinian leaders fear that reports about corruption could contribute to a drying up of international funding of the PA. If donor countries got whiff of the fact that their taxpayers’ money is being squandered and stolen by senior PA officials, the cash cow might just kick over the PA bucket.

The statement by Transparency International is a clear indication of the campaign of threats and intimidation its representatives have been facing since the release of the corruption survey. The statement implies that AMAN was forced to withdraw its public opinion poll after its staff received threats from the PA leadership.

Mahmoud Abbas also apparently wants to make sure that donor countries continue to channel funds to his government without noticing that a majority of Palestinians are complaining about corruption.

Palestinian Authority leaders are upset: a survey published on December 11 by Transparency International, a global organization that “gives voice to the victims and witnesses of corruption,” found that corruption is increasing in the PA and in five Arab countries.

Transparency International said that its survey, called “Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) – Middle East and North Africa,” revealed that “almost two-thirds of all people (65%) in six countries surveyed think that corruption is getting worse in their country, and that their governments are not doing enough to end corruption.”

The GCB report, one of the largest, most detailed surveys of citizens’ views on corruption and experiences of bribery, incorporates the views of more than 6,600 citizens from Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan and Tunisia, according to Transparency International.

“For the first time, the GCB also measures the prevalence of wasta, or the use of personal connections, to access public services, in three countries: Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine,” it said in a statement. “Despite the relatively low bribery rates in countries like Jordan and Palestine, citizens often resort to wasta in order to get public services they need.”

https://www.investigativeproject.org/8228/israeli-intelligence-continues-to-help-thwart

Denmark’s security authorities foiled several jihadist terrorist attacksearlier this month after arresting 20 suspects in raids throughout the country. That same week, two brothers were sentenced to long prison terms in Australia after planning to down a commercial airplane on behalf of the Islamic State group in 2017. These developments point to a rising trend in thwarted jihadist terror plots.
But the two cases also share another commonality: Israel’s intelligence services reportedly played an integral role in stifling the mass-casualty plots. Denmark and Australia join a long list of countries that relied on Israeli intelligence to prevent serious violence around the world.
According to Israel’s Channel 12 news, information from Israel’s Mossad foreign intelligence service helped Danish authorities prevent attacks shortly before they were to be executed. Prosecutors allege that two of the suspects tried to purchase guns and ammunition “to be used in connection with one or several terror attacks in Denmark or abroad.” The Copenhagen City Court also ordered two other suspects remain imprisoned for allegedly attempting to build several explosive devices.
The relative threat posed by various terrorist actors can be skewed if analysts only look at realized attacks. Europol reports consistently show that European separatists conduct more attacks than jihadists on the continent. But these assessments misrepresent the fact that the jihadist threat is transnational, not inherently localized like separatist movements, and are more likely to generate more fatalities.