RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13812/palestinians-israel-elections

Instead of marching Palestinians towards democracy, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have chosen the model of totalitarianism as a way of governing their people. The pro-Abbas demonstrations organized by Fatah in the West Bank are reminiscent of dictatorships in the Arab world that send their loyalists to the streets to voice support for the ruler. The Hamas-sponsored anti-Abbas demonstrations in the Gaza Strip will not solve any of the crises facing the Palestinians there. These protests are Hamas’s way of distracting attention from its failure to improve the living conditions of the people living under its repressive regime.

The only way for the Palestinians to move forward is by protesting against their failed leaders in the PA and Hamas. Many Palestinians, however, are afraid to speak out against their rulers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Why would any Palestinian speak out against Abbas when the PA arrests and harasses those who even dare to post critical remarks on Facebook? Why would any Palestinian in the Gaza Strip criticize Hamas when he or she knows that this would endanger their lives?

On April 9, Israelis will again celebrate democracy by voting in a free and democratic election. The Palestinians, meanwhile, will mark another year of dictatorship and failed leadership, and will continue to dream about heading to any ballot box at all.

Israelis are scheduled to head to the ballot boxes on April 9 to vote for a new parliament (Knesset). This will be the fifth general election in Israel since 2006.

The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, on the other hand, have, since 2006, failed to hold a single election for their parliament, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/281282/what-bibis-indictment-means

Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s announcement to the media, 40 days before general elections, that he intends to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of bribery and breach of trust in three different cases was political drama of the highest order. There’s no gainsaying the importance to Israel’s politics and the election. But more importantly, Mandelblit’s announcement heralds a crisis for Israel’s democracy and the public image of its legal system.

Mandelblit’s announcement inserts law enforcement officials into the political arena in an unprecedented way, and on a very shaky legal foundation. If the legal theories that the attorney general is introducing against Netanyahu become general law, a considerable part of the democratic life of Israel will have to pass through police interrogation rooms. If they remain restricted to Netanyahu, the partisanship will permanently damage public trust in the Israeli legal system.

To be sure, Mandelblit’s announcement is only an interim step in the legal drama. Any actual indictment will have to wait for hearings in the attorney general’s office in which Netanyahu’s lawyers will be afforded the opportunity to attempt to dissuade Mandelblit from his chosen course. The hearings will take place after the election, and only in a year or so will Mandelblit be in a position to request that the Knesset lift Netanyahu’s immunity or formally file an indictment. And the political fallout will not end with the opinion polls now being conducted. It is likely that Mandelblit’s announcement will influence not only the number of votes received by the parties on April 9, but the coalition negotiations to follow.

Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced on Thursday that he will file charges in all three criminal investigations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The decision was expected throughout the day, and tension was high in political circles ahead of the long-awaited announcement.The charges came despite a last-minute Likud effort to convince Israel’s High Court of Justice on Thursday to stop the attorney general from making the announcement, arguing that it would cause “unprecedented interference” in the political system.

However, High Court justice Noam Sohlberg rejected the petition.Netanyahu faces charges in Cases 1000, 2000 and 4000.In Case 4000, (aka the Bezeq-Walla! Affair) Mandelblit charged Netanyahu with bribery. In Case 1000, (the Illegal Gifts Affair) Mandelblit brought lesser charges of fraud and breach of trust. In Case 2000, (the Yediot Ahronot-Israel Hayom Affair) Mandelblit will charge with breach of trust only.Case 4000Case 4000 is reportedly the strongest case against Netanyahu in the opinion of the State Attorney’s Office. In that case, Netanyahu is accused of driving through a merger for businessman Shaul Elovitch in return for favorable coverage on website Walla!Netanyahu maintains that the merger involving Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecommunications firm and Yes, a satellite TV provider, both owned by Elovitch, was carried out by the book.

Netanyahu also argues that coverage at Walla! was not positive toward him, undermining the case.

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/ilhan-omar-poster-child-for-the-red-green-axis/

Stop ignoring this virulently anti-Semitic, anti-American coalition of subversives. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), along with her comrades Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), has gotten a lot of press since winning a seat in Congress. Despite her non-apology for bigoted, anti-Semitic statements she made earlier this month, Omar remains a virulent anti-Semite. But it is much worse than that: In addition to likely criminality, her extreme Left positions and connections to terrorists make her a security risk.

Some have demanded she be removed from the House Foreign Relations Committee, a position awarded to her by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But she has no business in Congress at all, and should at the very least be investigated for numerous crimes committed over a period of years.

Omar’s position on Israel is long-established and well-known. She supports the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and is overtly anti-Zionist. The 2012 tweet below — which she only deleted in the past few days — reiterates the incessant Arab narrative that casts Israel as an invader and abuser of Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/431613-netanyahu-ignores-global-opinion-at-israels-peril

Few things are more infuriating than to hear Western leaders lecture Israel about how it should behave – whether the issue is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or other matters – while they say little if anything about far more serious matters of regional stability or human rights around the world.After all, it’s Israel – and no other nation – that sustains the rocket fire that the terrorists of Hamas direct from Gaza, and it’s Israel that suffers the consequences of anti-Jewish incitement by the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority from the West Bank. No Western leader should tell Israel how best to protect its people.

Having said that, rising anti-Semitism that’s often cloaked in the politer guise of anti-Zionism is a global fact of life, and so is growing hostility to Israel among leftist political parties across the West. Thus, the Jewish state, which seeks U.S. and other Western support when it’s under attack at the United Nations or elsewhere, should be at least somewhat sensitive to the global ramifications of its actions.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/false-hopes-unwarranted-hysteria/

The glee with which the “anybody but Bibi” camp responded to the national and international outcry of the prime minister’s nod towards the Otzma Yehudit Party was uncontainable. Then the news turned towards peace …When U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser, Jared Kushner, told Sky News Arabia on Monday that Washington’s yet-to-be-revealed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan includes a “redrawing of boundaries and resolving final-status issues,” right-wing campaign rhetoric went up a notch.

For days, those to the left of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been happily slamming the merger he helped broker between the Jewish Home and National Union parties, together with Otzma Yehudit, an offshoot of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane’s outlawed Kach Party. The glee with which the “anybody but Bibi” camp responded to the national and international outcry was uncontainable. Finally, here was a move—made to ensure that the votes for right-wing parties at risk of not passing the electoral threshold are not lost—that would be the nail in Netanyahu’s political coffin. The feeling was that if the prime minister’s legal troubles didn’t topple him, the wrath of American Jewry might just do the trick.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13796/palestinians-zionist-entity

Hamas and Islamic Jihad should be given credit for their clarity and honesty regarding their ambitions. The two groups are clearly saying that their ultimate goal is to see Israel removed from the region and replaced with an Islamic state. As far as they are concerned, the conflict with Israel is not about a settlement, a checkpoint or even Jerusalem. Instead, it is about the presence of Jews in what they regard as their own state and homeland.

What will happen the day after a Palestinian state is established? The answer, according to Hamas and Islamic Jihad (and other Palestinians) is that they will use it to continue the “armed struggle” until the liberation of the supposedly occupied cities of Tel Aviv, Nazareth, Tiberias, Haifa and Ashdod. Under these current circumstances, a Palestinian state will pose an immediate existential danger to Israel.

The Islamic Jihad threat to turn Israeli cities into “hell” by firing missiles at them needs to be taken seriously by those who are working on the upcoming US peace plan. Any land that is given to Abbas and his Palestinian Authority in the West Bank will be used in the future by Hamas and Islamic Jihad as a base for launching rockets and missiles at Israeli cities. Then, the terror groups will not need accurate, long-range rockets to achieve their plan to destroy Israel’s population centers: they will be sitting right across the street from them.

A Palestinian terror group says that its engineers have developed “accurate and destructive” missiles that can reach the “occupied” cities of Tel Aviv, Netanya and Jerusalem. Abu Hamza, spokesman for the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Iranian-funded Islamic Jihad organization in the Gaza Strip, threatened that his group’s “rocket unit” would turn Israeli cities into “hell.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/trumps_war_against_unrwa_will_benefit_the_palestinian_refugees_.html

In August 2017, President Trump declared war on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) by rejecting its estimate of over 5 million Palestinian refugees, suggesting that the number was more like 500,000. In effect he was saying that a new definition should be operative. If he were to exclude descendants, there would be fewer than 20,000 people still living who fled in 1948The State Department followed this attack up by announcing that the US would make no further contribution to UNRWA.

The intent wasn’t to save money or shift the financial burden to others, but rather was to begin the process of doing away with UNRWA itself because it served to perpetuate the refugee problem and the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors, rather than to solve it. And President Trump, and his envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, wanted to solve it.Not only that, but UNRWA has been known to assist Hamas in its wars with Israel, and it uses Palestinian Authority textbooks that incite hatred of Jews and promote a non-existing right of return.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Pluristem’s cells prevented amputation. A patient, with Buerger’s disease was at pre-amputation stage due to non-healing foot ulcers. Regulatory approval was given for compassionate treatment using Pluristem’s PLX-PAD cells. A year after treatment, the wound is fully closed, and the patient has resumed normal activities.
http://www.pluristem.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Pluristem_Buergers_final_isa.pdf

Slowing the progression of chronic kidney disease. I reported briefly previously (9th Dec) that Israel’s KidneyCure was developing cell therapy for treating chronic kidney disease (CKD). Here are some more details of this innovative technology that turns damaged cells into healthy cells. https://www.kidneycure.com/
https://www.israel21c.org/delaying-dialysis-for-patients-with-chronic-kidney-disease/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-kidney-cells-startup-gets-backing-from-billionaire-kahns-venture-arm/

Laser treatment of vascular disease. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (see here) on Israel’s Eximo and its lasers for treating peripheral artery disease (PAD). The Center for Cardiovascular Excellence in Orlando, Florida is the first to use Eximo’s B-Laser Atherectomy System commercially to successfully treat a patient.
https://www.vasculardiseasemanagement.com/content/eximo-medical-ltd-announces-first-commercial-case-its-b-lasertm-atherectomy-system-us-and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6eMGlGknxU

Israelis to get better scan diagnoses. Tel Aviv’s Ichilov (Sourasky) Hospital and Israel’s largest health companies Clalit and Maccabi will use the algorithms of Israel’s Zebra Medical Vision to analyze scanned images from X-rays, CT scans and MRIs.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3756385,00.html

Safer epidurals in China. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (Aug 2013) on Israel’s Omeq Medical and its smart sensor-based epidural injection system. Omeq has partnered with Shanghai-based Pharos Medical, which will establish a production line and commercialize Omeq’s system in China.
https://www.trendlines.com/omeq-medical-raises-3-million-and-signs-commercialization-agreement/

Your personal antibiotic cocktail. (TY Israel21c) Researchers from Israel’s Technion Institute have devised a system for measuring the effectiveness of a combination of antibiotics in fighting infection.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2019/01/integrated-attack/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-018-0252-1

Jefferson-Israel Center. Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University has partnered with the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) to form the Jefferson-Israel Center. The US university will provide a $1 million fund for Israeli companies to advance healthcare technology solutions. They can also access Jefferson’s medical facilities.
https://www.jpost.com/Jpost-Tech/Business-and-Innovation/Jefferson-Innovation-Authority-offer-1m-to-healthcare-innovators-580758

Monitoring newborns in Kenya. The Save the Children Fund (like Oxfam and UNICEF) is no friend to Israel. However, it didn’t stop the NGO from buying monitoring systems from Israel’s EarlySense to continuously track key vital signs of newborns in hospitals in Nairobi, Kenya. Another BDS fail.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3755791,00.html
https://www.israel21c.org/save-the-children-tests-israeli-lifesaving-tech-in-africa/

Microsoft’s Israeli virtual healthcare system. Microsoft’s Israeli R&D team, supported by several US medical partners, have launched the Microsoft Healthcare Bot. This innovative AI-powered virtual health assistant service aims to empower healthcare organizations to build and deploy virtual health assistants.
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-developers-behind-Microsofts-AI-powered-healthcare-bot-580249
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3756073,00.html

Eliminating transmission of genetic diseases. The Pre-Implantation Genetic Unit of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center uses the latest technology to ensure IVF patients have healthy babies. All procedures are in accordance with Jewish law and religious authorities are consulted when necessary.
https://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Advanced-procedures-bring-hope-to-couples-with-genetic-diseases-579959