RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://bit.ly/2TbG6lY

1. Israel’s most successful ever government bonds issue totaled 2.5BN Euros: 1.25BN 10-year bond and 1.25BN 30-year bond. The European demand was six times the amount of the bond issued (15BN Euros!) in spite of the low interest rate – 1.5% for the 10-year bond and 2.5% for the 30-year bond – reflecting confidence in Israel’s economy, Israel’s responsible management of its economy and Israel’s solid bond-repayment track record. Some 300 investors from Britain, Germany, France and other European countries – including European Central Banks, pension fund and insurance companies – participated in the bond issue. At the same time, Saudi Arabia had to increase its interest rate to 3%, in order to raise 3BN Euros (Globes Business Daily, January 10, 2019).

2. Israel surged to 5th place in the latest Bloomberg Innovation Index, 2019, trailing South Korea, Germany, Finland and Switzerland, ahead of Singapore, Sweden, USA, Japan, France, etc. Israel was 10th in the 2018 Index. In 2019, Israel is the only country ahead of South Korea in the category of research & development expenditure as a percentage of GDP (4.3%). Israel’s major surge is in the area of patent activity – from 19thspot in 2018 to the 4th spot in 2019. The Bloomberg Innovation Index ranks the globe’s 60 most innovative countries according to the following criteria: GDP, productivity, patent activity, concentration of researchers, postgraduate PhD students engaged in research & development per 1-million people and concentration of high-tech companies (Globes, January 22).

3. The largest ever Japanese delegation of 200 senior executives of 100 leading Japanese corporations, including Mitsubishi and Toshiba, along with Japan’s Minister of Economic Affairs, visited Israel, exploring ways and means to expand bilateral trade and investment. In 2018, Israel’s export to Japan grew 42% to $1.16BN, mostly medical, optical and metal equipment and products. Since 2014, Japanese companies have made over 200 venture capital investments in Israel’s high tech sector. However, Japan – the world’s 3rd largest economy – accounted for only 2% of foreign investment in Israel during the past five years. In addition to commercial high tech, Japan is increasingly interested in cooperation and acquisitions in the areas of defense and homeland security. Israel’s innovation track record has enticed dozens of Japanese companies to explore the potential of research, development and production cooperation with compatible Israeli companies. Japan’s and Israel’s Economic Ministers signed an agreement, enhancing digital health cooperation, teaming substantial Japanese corporations and ground-breaking Israeli startups. Another agreement highlights the matching of Israeli innovations (e.g., artificial intelligence, cyber technologies) and Japanese manufacturers, targeting the Japanese market. A leading Israeli venture capital fund, Vertex, has benefitted from hundreds of millions of dollars, invested by 31 Japanese investors, including financial institutions and major corporations (Globes, January 17).

https://worldisraelnews.com/exposed-arabs-silently-taking-over-land-in-gush-etzion/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notification&utm_campaign=PushCrew_notification_1548352996&pushcrew_powered=1

Israeli NGO and politicians campaign to fight Palestinian landgrabs in areas where Israel is in full control.

By Aryeh Savir,TPS

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has recently increased its efforts to take control of a strategic area in the Nahal Heletz area between Jerusalem and Gush Etzion.

Regavim, a research-based legal advocacy NGO which says it is dedicated to ensuring accountable use of Israel’s national land, published on Wednesday a report which exposes the PA’s construction work at Nahal Heletz, near Har Gilo on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

A large number of heavy tractors have been turning the landscape of the riverbed into a wide and flat expanse, and ancient agricultural huts have been renovated and transformed into residential buildings for Arabs.

These lands are survey lands which are not privately owned and therefore can be declared state lands.

Yishai Hemo, the Regavim director in Judea and Samaria, argues that the engineering work and high cost involved in the effort prove that this is not a private initiative.

https://worldisraelnews.com/israel-ranked-in-top-5-on-bloomberg-innovation-index/

Israel has been catapulted to fifth place in the Bloomberg innovation index for 2019, climbing from 10th place last year and jumping ahead of the U.S., which has been ranked eighth, actually rising three spots.

Also behind Israel are Singapore in sixth place and Japan in the ninth position.

The annual index is being published for the seventh time. It analyzes dozens of criteria using seven metrics, including research and development (R&D) spending, manufacturing capability, and concentration of high-tech public companies. The ranking comes as global leaders are gathering at this week’s annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Better patent registration is credited as a major reason for the Israeli improvement.

Bloomberg placed South Korea in first place on the index for the sixth time due to new investments in key technologies and a regulatory plan for encouraging startups. Germany advanced into second place due to investment in production and research by many of its industrial giants, such as Volkswagen, Daimler, and Bosch, in addition to education improvements, bringing Europe’s largest economy to near-parity with the top-ranking country.

https://worldisraelnews.com/pulling-out-of-judea-and-samaria-could-pose-existential-threat-to-israel

Research counters common view in the defense establishment supporting separating Israelis and Palestinians.

Even as anticipation grows of a U.S. plan for the Israelis and Palestinians formulated by the Trump administration, a new survey is raising alarm bells that an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria could pose an existential threat to the State of Israel.

The research was conducted by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen on behalf of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Hacohen served in the IDF for 42 years, commanding troops in battle on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts.

He is perhaps best known, however, for commanding the army’s 2005 Gaza withdrawal and overseeing the forced removal of the some 8,000 Israelis living in the Strip.

His current research accentuates the change in the military theater over the years from conventional battlefields to confrontations involving civilian populations.

In the research, Hacohen lays out possible scenarios which he says could materialize if Israel were to withdraw from Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria. ‘A’ is exclusively administered by Palestinian Authority control and ‘B’ is under joint Palestinian-Israel control under the terms of the Oslo Accords signed in the 1990’s, though Israel bears ultimate security responsibility.

There is also an Area C, which is under full Israeli control.

http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/01/23/syrian-envoy-to-un-in-veiled-threat-we-will-attack-ben-gurion-airport/

If U.N. Security Council doesn’t adopt measures to stop Israel, “Syria would practice its legitimate right of self-defense and respond to the Israeli aggression on Damascus International Airport in the same way on Tel Aviv airport,” Bashar Jaafari warns.

Syria’s Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari warned Tuesday that his country would attack Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv if the world body fails to stop Israeli strikes on his country, including on the international airport in Damascus.

Speaking before the U.N. Security Council after a series of IAF airstrikes on Sunday and Monday, Jaafari said Israel was only able to act freely in Syria because it had the backing of the United States, the United Kingdom and France in the Security Council.

If the Security Council didn’t adopt measures stop Israel, “Syria would practice its legitimate right of self-defense and respond to the Israeli aggression on Damascus International Airport in the same way on Tel Aviv airport,” Jaafari was quoted as saying by Syrian state media Sana.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Cleaning out the brain. Israel’s Microbot (see here) demonstrated a prototype of its self-cleaning shunt (SCS) at the International Society for Hydrocephalus and Cerebrospinal Fluid Disorders (ISHCFD) meeting in Italy. The SCS prevents obstruction in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) catheters of hydrocephalus patients.
https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/01/17/1701297/0/en/Microbot-Medical-Showcases-a-Working-Prototype-of-its-Self-Cleaning-Shunt.html

White blood cells can “feel” when things are not right. Scientists at Ben Gurion University have discovered that the immune system’s Lymphocytes (white blood cells) physically “grab” sick cells in the body. They then excrete a toxic chemical to kill the damaged cells, which include viruses and tumors.
http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/white_cells.aspxhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.201805954

Prescription charges fall. (TY Janglo) Israel’s Health Ministry has reduced the prices of prescription treatments with controlled patents by an average of 6.9%. The discount is due to a change in the pricing model to reduce costs plus favorable exchange rates. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/256967

Medical tourism. Around 30,000 foreign patients travel to Israel each year, eagerly seeking Israel’s top class, innovative medical treatments. This has major benefits for Israel’s economy, medical R&D and international esteem. The government has also stepped in to ensure that it does not delay treatments for Israeli citizens.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-has-israels-medical-industry-been-faring/

Lung cancer test for China. I’ve reported several times (see here) on Israeli life sciences company BioView and its innovative cancer detection technology. BioView has just signed an agreement with Shenzhen China’s Livzon to distribute BioView’s imaging systems in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3753638,00.html

Gluten-free food in Tel Aviv. Here is a helpful guide to being gluten-free in Tel Aviv perfect for any person with celiac disease or following a gluten-free diet.
https://www.touristisrael.com/gluten-free-in-tel-aviv/25100/

Drama at Tel Aviv railway station. One of the new defibrillators delivered to all Israeli railway stations has just saved the life of a woman who suffered a heart attack. Station staff at Tel Aviv Hashalom successfully jumpstarted the woman’s heart, after passengers, including a doctor and a paramedic, had administered CPR.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/257720

Medical staff dance to cheer up patients. Jewish and Arab doctors and nurses at Ziv Hospital in Northern Israel are a further example of co-existence as they dance together to cheer up patients in the dialysis ward.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/only-in-israel-jewish-and-arab-hospital-staff-dance-together/

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13572/palestinians-anti-semitic-stereotyping-of-jews

Abbas and the Palestinian leadership are clearly trying to drag Israel into a religious conflict with all Muslims, not only Palestinians. The Temple Mount has become their favorite platform for disseminating blood libels….

If anyone is defiling the sanctity of the holy site, it is Abbas and his representatives in the West Bank.

Were Israel to stop a Palestinian from entering a holy site because of his clothing, the foreign reporters based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv would have rushed to the scene to interview the man and tell the world that Israel is violating freedom of worship. This is yet another example of how the media gives the Palestinians a pass and allows them to continue their vicious incitement against Israel.

Palestinians are continuing to use the Temple Mount, in Arabic known as the Haram al-Sharif, in Jerusalem, as a platform for incitement against Israel in general and Jews in particular.

This incitement, which began after Jewish tourists were permitted to resume their visits to the holy site in 2014, has since taken various forms. The Jewish visits to the holy site had been suspended for several years during the Second Intifada uprising, which erupted in September 2000.

Since 2014, the Palestinian Authority leadership, including President Mahmoud Abbas, have been waging an unprecedented wave of incitement against Israel and Jews to protest visits to the Temple Mount.

In 2015, Abbas announced that the Palestinians “won’t allow Jews with their filthy feet to defile our Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

https://www.jns.org/opinion/netanyahus-welcome-ambiguity-breach/

In a virtually unprecedented move, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged on Sunday that the Israel Defense Forces has been “working with impressive success to block Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria.”

Breaking with Israel’s policy of operational “ambiguity,” Netanyahu not only stated generally that the Israeli military has struck Iranian and Hezbollah targets “hundreds of times” in recent years, but went into uncharacteristic detail about the latest strike. “Just in the last 36 hours, the air force attacked Iranian warehouses with Iranian weapons at the international airport in Damascus,” he said. “The accumulation of recent attacks proves that we are determined more than ever to take action against Iran in Syria, just as we promised.”

Netanyahu made these statements at his weekly cabinet meeting, exactly one week after U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton came to Jerusalem to reassure him that Washington would be “very supportive” of continued Israeli military action in Syria.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s so-called “breach” of ambiguity reportedly caused a stir among unnamed members of Israel’s defense establishment, who were horrified that the prime minister of all people would reveal such sensitive information to the enemy. You know, as though the world previously assumed that the attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah bases and weapons convoys had been carried out by, say, Norwegian forces.