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ISRAEL

Only Two Democrat Senators Will Publicly Oppose The Anti-Israel BDS Movement On Monday and Tuesday, we offered every Democrat senator an opportunity to clarify his or her position on boycott, divestment, sanctions policies. Only two offices responded. Melissa Langsam Braunstein By Melissa Langsam Braunstein

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/10/two-democrat-senators-will-publicly-oppose-anti-israel-bds-movement/

Sen. Marco Rubio threw a rock at a political hornet’s nest on Monday when he tweeted, “The shutdown is not the reason Senate Democrats don’t want to move to Middle East Security Bill. A huge argument broke out at Senate Dem meeting last week over BDS. A significant # of Senate Democrats now support #BDS & Dem leaders want to avoid a floor vote that reveals that.”

Twitter erupted — as it is wont to do — with users arguing whether this reflected insider knowledge or was a convenient lie. Personally, I’m inclined to believe there’s something to what Rubio wrote. Anyone who’s followed American foreign policy in recent years knows that the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement is an explosive and barely contained hot-button issue for Democrats.

Consider that one year ago, Pew Research polled Americans’ attitudes toward Israel and the Palestinians. They reported that “the partisan divide in Middle East sympathies, for Israel or the Palestinians, is now wider than at any point since 1978. Currently, 79% of Republicans say they sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, compared with just 27% of Democrats.”

Drilling down, Pew quantified the change within the Democratic Party’s progressive wing that’s been apparent to Middle East watchers for some time: “The share of liberal Democrats who sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians has declined from 33% to 19% since 2016. Currently, nearly twice as many liberal Democrats say they sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel (35% vs. 19%).”

Lest these numbers be dismissed as theoretical concerns, Midwestern voters just elected the nation’s first two pro-BDS members of Congress. Of course, neither Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan nor Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota were particularly forthright about their views during election season. It wasn’t until after winning her Democratic primary that Tlaib “explicitly endors[ed] a one-state solution and oppos[ed] aid [to Israel], a change celebrated by far-left Palestinian activists, who sharply criticized her for seeking out and receiving the J Street endorsement.” Omar didn’t publicly acknowledge that she supported BDS until after November’s election.

Former Israeli Minister Admits to Spying for Iran Gonen Segev served in cabinet in the mid-1990s; Israel accused him of being an active agent for Iran Dov Lieber

https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-israeli-minister-admits-spying-for-iran-11547049367?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=contextual&cx_artPos=2#cxrecs_s

TEL AVIV—A former Israeli minister pleaded guilty to spying for the country’s bitter enemy Iran and faces an 11-year prison sentence, in a case that has gripped the public as Israel tries to thwart Tehran’s attempts to entrench on its border.

Gonen Segev, a former energy and infrastructure minister, admitted to espionage and passing sensitive information to Iran, Israel’s Ministry of Justice said Wednesday. A plea deal was reached after a monthslong closed-door trial and Mr. Segev’s sentencing has been set for Feb. 11.

In May, Israeli authorities arrested Mr. Segev—who served in Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor-led government during the mid-1990s—and accused him of being an active agent for Iranian intelligence.

Israeli said Mr. Segev made contact with the Iranians through their embassy in Nigeria in 2012, and since then twice visited Iran. He was arrested after he attempted to enter Equatorial Guinea and was transferred to the Israeli police at their request.

Secretary Pompeo, welcome to the real Middle East! Amb.(Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/2VAbA6W

Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, is well aware that the Department of State’s conventional wisdom on the Middle East has clashed frequently with its arch adversary: Middle East reality.

For example, in defiance of conventional wisdom, Secretary of State Pompeo is in the Middle East at a time when Israel’s security and commercial ties with pro-US Arab countries have expanded unprecedentedly, irrespective of the Palestinian issue.

Moreover, Secretary Pompeo is visiting Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar while more-than-ever prominent individuals and delegations from pro-US Arab countries visit Israel, advancing mutually-beneficial goals in the areas of counter-terrorism, military, agriculture, irrigation, medicine, health, commerce and industry, independent of the Palestinian issue.

Secretary of State Pompeo aims to bolster confidence in the US’ posture of deterrence by Arab regimes, which feel the machetes of Iran’s Shiite Ayatollahs and Sunni terrorism (the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS/ISIL and Al Qaeda) at their throats, regardless of the Palestinian issue.

Furthermore, Secretary Pompeo, the former CIA Director, is meeting Arab leaders, who are intensely traumatized by the volcanic, lethal Arab Tsunami (defined as “Arab Spring” by conventional wisdom), which erupted in 2010 and is still highly tempestuous, unrelated to the Palestinian issue.

How Palestinian Schoolbooks Indoctrinate Students Against Israel Peace with the Jews is not an option. David Bedein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272465/how-palestinian-schoolbooks-indoctrinate-students-david-bedein

The think tank that I run, the Center for Near East Policy Research, has completed a four-year research activity in which all 364 schoolbooks for grades 1-12 that were published by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the years 2013-2018 were examined. The chief researcher whom we hired to examine the texts used by the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools was Dr. Arnon Groiss, a scholar of Middle Eastern studies. The goal of this research project was to check the Palestinian attitude toward the Israeli-Jewish “other” and to the possibility of solving the war with the “other” in a peaceful manner, in the spirit of the peace agreements known as “the Oslo Accords” that were signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel in 1993-1995. The project yielded three studies which demonstrate that Palestinian students are learning that a peaceful resolution of the war with Israel is not an option. Instead, the theme that runs through the PA curriculum is that “Palestine” must be liberated from “Zionist occupation” by way of an armed struggle titled “Revolution [Thawrah],” which involves terrorist actions styled as “self-sacrificing operations [‘amaliyyat Fidaiyyah].”

You can see this in the context in a PA schoolbook reference in one of the books to the “1972 Munich operation” in which 11 members of the Israeli team at the Olympic Games were massacred (History Studies, Grade 11). Those who carry out such actions are called “self-sacrificing ones [Fidais]” and those among the liberation struggle are called on to liberate the Muslim holy place of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and removing it from the Jews’ sway.

Palestinian pupils are taught that “struggle for liberation” is not limited to the areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but rather the whole country from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, as Zionist occupation is said to have started in 1948 in what is termed “the Catastrophe [Nakbah]”, and not in 1967. Israel’s pre-1967 territory is termed “the Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1948” (Management and Economics, Grade 11). Pre-1967 Israel is never presented as a legitimate sovereign state nor does it appear on the map where it is replaced in its entirety by “Palestine.”

15-year-old girl stabbed in Jerusalem attack

https://worldisraelnews.com/15-year-old-girl-stabbed-in-jerusalem-attack/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notification&utm_campaign=PushCrew_notification_1547013665&pushcrew_powered=1

A teenage girl was stabbed and wounded in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood in Jerusalem on Wednesday morning.

The victim, 15, was was stabbed several times including in her neck. She was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem and is reportedly in light-to-moderate condition.

The teenager said she was standing at a bus stop when an Arab man attacked her. She told the security forces who arrived at the scene that she did not know her attacker.

Security forces launched a manhunt for the assailant.

The Armon Hanatziv neighborhood is situated adjacent to Arab neighborhoods and has been the site of several terror attacks, some of them deadly.

Most recently, a knife-wielding terrorist scaled the fence at a police station in the neighborhood and attacked four officers. He was shot and killed.

Two years ago on this day (Dec. 9), an Arab terrorist rammed his truck into soldiers waiting at a bus stop in Armon Hanatziv, killing four and wounding 13.

One of the most deadly attacks in the area took place in October 2016 when two Arab terrorists boarded a bus and shot and stabbed passengers, murdering Alon Govberg, Haim Haviv and Richard Lakin, the latter of whom was also an American citizen.

Another 17 Israelis were wounded in that attack.

The Gamble of Israel’s ‘New Right’ BY: David Isaac

https://freebeacon.com/blog/the-gamble-of-israels-new-right/

“Boom!” read the headline of a supplement in Israeli weekly Makor Rishon, after two leading politicians, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, announced on December 29 that they were jumping ship from the Jewish Home Party to create the New Right Party. The question Israeli pundits are trying to answer now is whether that boom—or “blast” as most of the press characterizes it—is an explosion or an implosion. Will it strengthen the national camp or will it bring it to its knees?

The ruling Likud Party wasted little time in slamming the New Right as a threat to the entire right. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “It will break the right into slivers of slivers. Parties won’t make it past the electoral threshold.” Netanyahu referred to the 3.25 percent of the vote a party must win in order to enter the Knesset. Passing that threshold gives a party four seats. Failing to pass means the loss of all the votes that had gone to that party.

Netanyahu counts on those slivers to build his government. In Israel’s parliamentary system, a government must have a majority of at least 61 votes in the 120-seat Knesset. How does Likud fare in the polls? Much better than the others, but still with only 30 seats.

Netanyahu has repeatedly raised the specter of 1992, when a plethora of right-wing parties caused two of them to fail to make it into the Knesset, wasting their votes. The result was a Labor government led by Yitzhak Rabin, which brought about the Oslo Accords, long viewed as a disaster by the right. (It’s a view now held by most of Israel’s electorate, judging from the fact that no party outside of the extreme Meretz wants to be identified with it.)

Likud fears are more than mere scare-mongering. Polls place two to three right-wing parties perilously close to the abyss, and some analysts estimate that even the loss of one right-wing party is enough to hand the reins of government to a center-left coalition.

Chaim of Arabia: The First Arab-Zionist Alliance Rick Richman

https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/4992/chaim-of-arabia-the-first-arab-zionis

On January 3, 1919, a few weeks after World War I ended, the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann met with Emir Faisal, the commander-in-chief of the Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire, at a London hotel. Faisal’s father, King Hussein of Hedjaz, ruled the two holiest sites of Islam—Mecca and Medina—and the family traced its lineage to the prophet Muhammad. Faisal was accompanied to the meeting by his adviser, friend, and translator, T. E. Lawrence, who had helped him lead the Arab Revolt.

At the meeting, Weizmann and Faisal signed an agreement, brokered over the preceding month by Lawrence, exchanging Arab acceptance of the Balfour Declaration for Zionist support of an Arab state in the rest of the Ottoman lands. In February, they traveled to the Paris Peace Conference, where the victorious Allies would remap Europe and the Middle East, and made complementary presentations about the future of the region.

In the famous 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence would be played by Peter O’Toole, and Faisal by Alec Guinness. Weizmann was not portrayed at all, but perhaps he should have been. His arduous wartime trip, in June 1918, from Palestine to Faisal’s remote desert military camp—a five-day journey by train, boat, car, camel, and foot—led to their January agreement.

The Balfour Declaration, issued on November 2, 1917, had pledged support for a Jewish national home in Palestine, in part to generate support in America and Russia for Britain’s war effort. The British believed that both countries had influential Jewish populations and that the declaration would help keep Russia and America in the war against Germany and the Ottoman Turks. It was also, however, part of a broader British war strategy—one designed to bring the Jewish, Arab, and Armenian national movements into an informal alliance to defeat the Ottoman Empire.

The Palestinians’ Uncivil War by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13502/palestinians-hamas-fatah-conflict

The biggest losers from this internal bloodletting are the Palestinians living under these leaders in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The dispute between Hamas and Fatah is not over who will bring democracy and a better economy to the Palestinians. They are not fighting over who will improve the living conditions of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by building new schools and hospitals. They are not fighting over who will introduce major reforms to the Palestinian government and end financial and administrative corruption. They are not fighting over the need for freedom of expression and a free media.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Hamas leaders correctly argue, is not a rightful or legitimate president. If Abbas were to sign a deal with Israel, people could come along later and say that he lacked the legal authority to do so; they would be right.

In order for any peace process to move forward, the Palestinians first need to stop attacking each other. Then, they need to come up with new leaders who actually give a damn about their people.

The Palestinians’ major ruling groups, Fatah and Hamas, are now saying they are done with each other: that the divorce is final.

Recent days and weeks have witnessed the two groups maligning each other beyond anything previously seen. Fatah and Hamas have reached a new level of mutual loathing. At times, it even seems as if Fatah and Hamas hate each other more than they hate Israel.

Many in the West say they would like to see Israel and the Palestinians return to the negotiating table. They want Israelis and Palestinians to resume the so-called peace process. They are hoping that Israel and the Palestinians will manage to reach a historic agreement that would end the Israeli-Arab conflict and bring real peace to the Middle East.

The region, however, does not need a “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians. It needs one of a different type. The “peace process” that the Middle East is crying out for is one between Palestinians and Palestinians, one that would end their bloody, internecine war.

DR. REUVEN BERKO: THEIR WILDEST FANTASIES

http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/in-their-wildest-fantasies/

“The Palestinians are selling a combination of illusions, historical fiction and Israel hatred. Among Arab states, there are those who are now waking up from the brainwashing they’ve endured. It is only here in Israel that we continue to cooperate with the fraudulent ploy.”

The High Court of Justice is set to deliberate in the coming days whether the nation-state law should be changed so that “the right of return” will serve as a counterweight to the Law of Return, thereby allowing the Palestinians to drown Israel in hordes of “refugees” with knowledge of murder and rape that will “return” from the killing fields in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq to realize a peaceful state from the river to the sea. Funnily enough, that river of which they speak is located right here in Israel. While Arab countries maintain a partnership of interests with us against Iran and abandon the Palestinians’ illusions of a “return and a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem,” the Palestinians can take comfort in the Israel hatred popular in those countries of peace, where they stomp on our flag and defiantly oppose their dictatorial governments.

In the meantime, the Palestinians continue to engage in a collective battle against Israel’s survival. In the racist trial of Issam Akel, sentenced to life in prison and heavy labor, the Palestinians declared it forbidden to sell land to Jews.

This is absurd. All the man did was sell the land back to its legal owners. These are properties the Muslims conquered from the Byzantines in 638 C.E. and which were returned to their Jewish owners in 1967. But from the Islamists’ point of view, the rights of the owners of these forcibly conquered lands have expired. Now the Palestinian raiders pretend to be the landowners in our country.

Did the descendants of the Arab feudalists from Lebanon, who sold lands to Jews in the 19tth century, also put their parents on trial?

GOOD NEWS FROM ABSOLUTELY AMAZING ISRAEL: FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

New ways to fight viruses & cancer. Parallel international research involving Haifa and Bar Ilan University scientists have discovered the key role of enzyme ADAR1 in the immune system and how it can become a new pathway for eradicating viruses and cancers.
https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-research-breaks-through-in-battle-against-viruses/
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2006577
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/on-campus/bar-ilan-harvard-researchers-show-new-mechanism-to-activate-immune-system-against-cancer/2019/01/03/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0768-9

Cause of heart failure in pregnancy. Israeli researchers at Tel Aviv University and Sheba Medical Center have found the cause of PPCM (Peripartum cardiomyopathy) heart failure before and after giving birth. They discovered a functional defect in the heart cells that should lead to early diagnoses, prevention and treatments.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/on-campus/israeli-scientists-identify-possible-cause-of-heart-failure-in-pregnancy/2019/01/02/

No more pain. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s ZygoFix has conducted the first human trial of its innovative zLOCK spinal facet joint fixation system. One day after the minimally invasive procedure, the 67-year-old woman’s back and leg pain went from level 9 to level 1 and after six months it was zero.
https://spinalnewsinternational.com/first-in-human-zlock/ https://www.zygofix.com/

Post-mastectomy surgical dressings. (TY Atid-EDI) Every year over 13 million mastectomies, lumpectomies, reconstruction and aesthetic breast operations are performed. Israel’s Ezbra is the first patented disposable dressing tailor-made for such operations. Comfortable, absorbent, time-saving and protective against infections.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ezbra-breast-dressing-makes-us-debut-at-premier-aesthetic-surgery-conference-300757919.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erv8r2C0rkg https://ezbra.net/

Saving lives in Massachusetts. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (see here)on Israel’s Clew Medical and its AI system to warn of deteriorating ICU patients. Clew is now partnered with UMass Memorial Medical Center in Massachusetts, using its advanced analytics engine to enhance UMass’ patient care.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clew-collaborates-with-umass-memorial-medical-center-to-bring-predictive-analytics-to-tele-icus-300757529.html

Hadassah accelerates with IBM. (TY Atid-EDI) Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center and IBM Israel have established a special accelerator for startups to develop advanced technological solutions and services in digital medicine. They will have access to IBM and hospital resources and staff.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-hadassah-ibm-set-up-digital-health-accelerator-1001262831

World’s leading DBS company. I reported previously (see here) on Israel’s (Arab-owned) Alpha Omega and its Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) device for treating disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Alpha Omega has 100% market share in Israel and is active in the US, Europe and now (thanks to a $7 million investment) China.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-medical-device-co-alpha-omega-in-chinese-jv-1001264279

Gut reaction in treating IBD. (TY Calcalistech) I reported previously (see here)on BiomX. The Israeli biotech has now partnered with Janssen – the therapy R&D arm of Johnson & Johnson. BiomX’s XMarker microbiome-based platform will be used to classify responders to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) therapies.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-microbiome-co-biomx-teams-with-jj-1001264660
http://www.biomx.com/

Why is LDL cholesterol bad? Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have identified that the problem with LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol is when excess LDL is deposited on blood vessel walls. It oxidizes into a toxic substance that triggers immune cells to form crystals, leading to inflammation and arterial disease.
https://www.israel21c.org/how-does-a-helpful-substance-like-cholesterol-turn-deadly/