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ISRAEL

FDA approves 1st generic nasal spray to treat opioid overdose (From Israel)

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.

How Palestinian Leaders Encourage Terrorism by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14134/palestinian-leaders-encourage-terrorism

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s remarks at the Arab League gathering in Cairo demonstrate his preference for the well-being of terrorists over the ability of hard-working employees to put bread on the table for their families. These payments to terrorists and their families lie at the heart of Palestinian incitement to terror that drives the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

If anyone is collectively punishing the Palestinians, it is Abbas himself. He is depriving tens of thousands of families of full salaries, thus preventing them from purchasing food for their children or paying various fees, including rent and university tuition. A Palestinian civil service employee who sends his son to university does not get a full salary. A Palestinian whose son sets out to murder a Jew is entitled to a full salary and earns more respect from Palestinian leaders.

What message is Abbas sending to his people? That those who wish to eat had better turn to terror. The families of the public employees who are now unable to pay their grocery bill and rent are now looking at the families of the terrorists with envy. They must be saying to themselves: “We are suckers because we didn’t send our children to stab a Jew!” This is the education that the Palestinians leaders have been providing since 1965.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas recently reaffirmed his longstanding commitment to pay families of Palestinians who were imprisoned for or killed during terrorist attacks against Israelis. “We have been paying the families of the prisoners and martyrs since 1965,” Abbas told Arab League Foreign Ministers during an emergency meeting in Cairo on April 21.

Abbas’s insistence on paying millions of dollars to families of Palestinians who murder or attempt to murder Jews, has cost the Palestinians a heavy price. In the past two months, Abbas’s government has been unable to pay full salaries to its 200,000 employees. The reason? Israel has begun deducting, from the tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, the same amount the PA government pays each month to the families of the prisoners and “martyrs.”

The European Union: Nurturing Instability and Terrorism in the Middle East by Naomi Linder Kahn

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14011/european-union-palestinians-instability

The apparent objective of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is to annex these areas and bring them under PA control as part of its larger plan for the unilateral creation of a Palestinian state. This plan was publicized in 2009, in an official PA document written by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad; since its publication, it has been carried out virtually unhindered, with the help of massive European funding in violation of the Oslo Accords, and in violation of international law. Additionally, this type of activity is more easily presented to international media outlets and foreign benefactors as “humanitarian aid.”

The key actor in these land-grab projects is the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC). UAWC maintains close organizational and operational ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terror organization that has carried out many deadly attacks against Israel’s citizens – including numerous suicide bombings in the 2000s. UAWC is funded, for the most part, by European governments and humanitarian aid organizations, and by the European Union.

In recent years, and in particular since 2013, the Palestinians have intensified agricultural activity as a means of quickly and efficiently seizing large swaths of land under the guise of humanitarian aid for farmers. This activity is illegal and violates the international treaties to which the PA is a signatory. But this has not troubled foreign governments and organizations, including the European Union, who continue to bankroll this illegal activity – while at the same time vocally criticizing the State of Israel.

Under the guise of “agricultural assistance,” the Palestinian Authority is taking over Area C (the area placed under full Israeli jurisdiction in the Oslo Accords, pending a full peace agreement which would establish sovereignty over the area for one side or the other), with the help of massive European financial support — in violation of the law, and of international agreements signed by the EU.

Over the past decade, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has implemented a long-term program aimed at taking control of strategic locations in Area C of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. The PA’s apparent objective is to annex these areas and bring them under PA control, as part of its larger plan for the unilateral creation of a Palestinian state. This plan was publicized in 2009, in an official PA document written by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad; since its publication, it has been carried out virtually unhindered, with the help of massive European funding.

Ruthie Blum: Measles was eradicated … now it’s back, thanks to anti-vaxxers

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.

The Persecution of Palestinians No One Mentions by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14098/palestinians-persecution-saudi-arabia

In Lebanon, Palestinians have long been facing discriminatory and “Apartheid laws” that deny them basic rights, including access to dozens of skilled professions, health-care and education services. According to some reports, thousands of Palestinians have been fleeing Lebanon in recent years as a result of the dire economic conditions and government regulations that deny them basic rights.

In 2015, a Saudi court sentenced Palestinian artist and poet Ashraf Fayadh to death by beheading for “apostasy.” Later, however, the court overturned the death sentence and replaced it with an eight-year prison term and 800 lashes. The “evidence” against Fayadh was based on poems included in his book Instructions Within, as well as social media posts and conversations he had in a coffee shop in Saudi Arabia.

Palestinian leaders do not seem to care about the suffering of their people at the hands of Arabs. Yet, these same leaders are quick to condemn Israel on almost every occasion and available platform. Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are so busy fighting each other (and Israel) that they seem to have forgotten about the Palestinians in Arab countries, being killed, wounded and arrested every day.

Saudi Arabia appears to have joined the list of Arab countries that mistreat Palestinians.

In Syria, thousands of Palestinians have been wounded, murdered and arrested since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. The latest statistics show that nearly 4,000 Palestinians — 3,920 to be exact — have been killed in Syria in the past nine years, while 1,750 others are being held in various Syrian government prisons. Another 323 Palestinians have gone missing during the same period.

In Lebanon, Palestinians have long been facing discriminatory and “Apartheid laws” that deny them basic rights, including access to dozens of skilled professions, health-care and education services. According to some reports, thousands of Palestinians have been fleeing Lebanon in recent years as a result of the dire economic conditions and government regulations that deny them basic rights.

Israel Emerges as a Leader of Western Conservatism William D. Rubinstein

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:

Right from Wrong: A Passover tribute to President Trump Ruthie Blum

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.

The United Nations pauses to reflect on the miracle of Passover

New York, April 17th, 2019 – UN ambassadors and senior diplomats from around the world came together at the UN headquarters in New York for a traditional mock Passover Seder to learn and reflect on the message of the “Exodus” as Jews around the world were preparing for Passover which begins on Friday. A mock Seder is an abbreviated version of the Seder which can be celebrated ahead of Passover.
At the event, which was co-hosted by the Israeli Mission to the UN and the Forum for Cultural Diplomacy, the diplomats were reminded of how the Jewish nation was born some 3500 years ago through what may be described as one of the most dramatic and fascinating stories of national liberation of all times ─ the “Exodus out of Egypt”. Despite two thousand years of dispersion, the Jewish people reconstituted the State of Israel in 1948 and became a member of the UN already the next year, 1949.
Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon explained: “The Passover story, told and retold each year, reminds us of where we came from and how far we have come. Before, we were building pyramids in Egypt. Now, we are building rockets to send into space. Then, we were thirsty for water. Now, we are creating water out of thin air. In the past, we were slaves. Today, we are free.”
In his brief remarks ECI Founding Director Tomas Sandell quoted from the Book of Exodus which records that “there arose a new king in Egypt who did not know Joseph”. “Today there are many people around the world, especially young people, who do not know their history or that of European Jewry during the Holocaust”, he said. “As Europe faces a rise of anti-Semitism and some even fear a future “Exodus out of Europe”, we have chosen to remember, appreciate and cherish our own Josephs, the Jewish people, who have helped make our nations what they are today”, he added.

Hamas’s Honesty and the Deal of the Century by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14081/hamas-honesty-peace-deal

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s threats serve as a reminder that Hamas and other Palestinian terror group consider Israel one big settlement that needs to be annihilated. Above all, Hamas has never accepted the “two-state solution” or changed its charter, which explicitly states: “When our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, Jihad [holy war] becomes a duty binding on all Muslims…. We must spread the spirit of Jihad among the [Islamic] Umma, clash with the enemies and join the ranks of the Jihad fighters.”

Hamas cannot reach any political deal with Israel because it does not agree to Israel’s right to exist. This is the message that Sinwar and leaders of all Palestinian terror groups want the world to hear. For the terrorist leaders, the only peace they will accept is one that results in the elimination of Israel and the evacuation of all Jews from their homes.

The Hamas Charter is a straightforward, unambiguous message that says: “[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas]….There is no solution to the Palestinian problem expect by Jihad.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has undoubtedly read the Hamas charter. He knows that if he accepts any peace plan that does not include the expulsion of all Jews from their homes, he will be denounced by his rivals in Hamas as a traitor. Abbas is also aware of Hamas’s threats to shower Israel with rockets. He knows that at the same time as Hamas attacks Israel, it will seek to flatten him for “betraying” Arabs and Muslims in “allowing” Jews to continue living in “their” state. This is the Palestinian reality that the “Deal of the Century” is about to be dealt.

April 15 marked the 18th anniversary of the firing of the first Hamas rocket toward Israel. On this day, 18 years ago, Hamas’s military wing, Izaddin al-Qassam, launched its first rocket attack at Israeli population centers near their border with the Gaza Strip.On the eve of this occasion, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader of the Gaza Strip, threatened that his movement will continue to fire rockets at Israel. The rockets, he said, will be fired at Israeli “settlements” not only near the border with the Gaza Strip, but also at supposed “settlements” in the Israeli cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod and Tel Aviv.

25 Years After Oslo: The Elephant in the Room Is it possible for Muslim Palestinians to make peace with Israel? Robert L. Meyer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273479/25-years-after-oslo-elephant-room-robert-l-meyer

Author’s note: I have been a student of Islam for five+ years because I wanted to know what motivates so called “Islamist” or “Radical” Muslims against Jews, Israel and the West. I now understand. The short article below sets out the argument why “Land For Peace” is simply impossible under Islam, owing to Koran Sura 2, Verse 191 — and it is for this reason (and Western and Israeli diplomats and negotiators’ ignorance of it) that it has been, is, and will be impossible for Muslim Palestinians to make peace with Israel. This Palestinian position has been confirmed by the top Palestinian religious figures, who have corroborated that ALL of Palestine is a holy, Islamic waqf (Arabic: an inalienable religious endowment under Islamic Shariah law), and therefore it is prohibited to give up “even a millimeter” of it. The article has been vetted and approved for accuracy by a number of Islamic experts.

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It is now more than 25 years since the Oslo Accords were signed in October 1993. Yet in the many published opinion pieces and reporting on this anniversary and the failure of the parties to agree on a final two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, nowhere is found any Israeli politician or journalist who has the slightest inkling of the massive effect of Islam in influencing and motivating the Palestinian supposed peacemakers.

Islam is indeed “The Elephant in the Room.”

The Koran, chapter 2, verse 191 states: “Drive them out from where they drove you out.”

Islamic scholars universally have interpreted this verse to mean that once land becomes Islamic, by conquest or otherwise, it stays Islamic forever and that Muslims must drive out any non-Muslim government that takes power in a land once ruled under Islamic law.