RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13391/palestinians-hamas-fatah-difference

It is supposedly fine for Mahmoud Abbas and his officials to condemn Hamas on a daily basis. It is supposedly not fine, however, for the US administration to condemn Hamas for its terrorist attacks against Israel.

“The proposed [unseen] US resolution is harmful to the Palestinians’ right of resistance.” — Emad Omar, Palestinian political analyst.

This is obviously a short-lived honeymoon that will end the day after the UN General Assembly vote on the anti-Hamas resolution. The morning after the vote, Abbas will wake up to the realization that Hamas was a strange bedfellow indeed.

Has Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas changed his position toward his rivals in Hamas? This is the question that some Palestinians have been asking in the wake of Abbas’s opposition to a US-sponsored draft resolution that asks the United Nations General Assembly to condemn Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets at Israel and instigating violence.

Abbas’s hatred of Hamas is far from secret. For years – and until today – Abbas has used every available platform to launch scathing attacks on Hamas.

He accused Hamas of foiling Arab efforts to end the dispute with his ruling Fatah faction.

He accused Hamas of masterminding a series of explosions targeting the homes of some of his senior Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip.

He accused Hamas of staging a coup in 2007 against his Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip and seeking to establish a separate Palestinian there.

He accused Hamas of standing behind the botched assassination attempt on his prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, in the Gaza Strip earlier this year. He even made a metaphoric remark that, “shoes will be pouring on the heads of Hamas leaders.”

In his last speech at the UN General Assembly, Abbas repeated his charges against Hamas and threatened to impose new punitive measures against the Gaza Strip unless Hamas allows his government to assume full control over the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

https://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2018/12/from-river-to-sea-guide-to-perplexed.html
So we’re all talking about the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — which, after Temple Professor Marc Lamont Hill said it at a UN conference, reportedly caused his termination from CNN.

I don’t want to talk about Hill directly though. Quickly: He should face absolutely zero professional consequences at Temple — that’s a straightforward academic freedom issue. There is no academic freedom analogue to a sinecure at CNN, but I probably wouldn’t have fired him either — then again, I have a pretty high bar for firing people in cases like these. Certainly, the network that employs Rick Santorum doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on in this respect.

What I do want to do is give some context — hopefully helpful — to the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” I do not wish to directly challenge anyone’s substantive political commitments on the score. Much the opposite: my assumption is that there are a great many people for whom the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” sounds wholly innocuous if not laudatory — who doesn’t want freedom for all people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea? — and are a bit baffled that such a statement could trigger such an intense backlash.

In particular, my target audience is someone I imagine thinking along roughly the following lines:

They support freedom for all people who happen to reside between the Jordan and Mediterranean;
They read “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as a pithy way of expressing the above commitment;
They’ve noted, with some confusion, that many Jews seemed to react extremely poorly to the use of this phrase; and
They assume that there’s at least a decent chance that the reason for this negative reaction is not that the Jews in question are opposed to all or some people between the Jordan and the Mediterranean being free, and accordingly wonder what the actual reason is.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-UNs-delusion-573363

Former US ambassador to the United Nations and staunch Israel defender Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

For decades, the UN has repeatedly shown that it thinks it can set its own facts about Israel, history be damned.Moynihan is known for, among other things, giving a speech against the UN’s 1975 decision that “Zionism is racism,” a distortion that he called an “infamous act” by which “the abomination of antisemitism has been given the appearance of international sanction.”

On Friday, 43 years later, UN member countries authorized six anti-Israel resolutions in the General Assembly, including writing the Jewish people out of Jerusalem’s history, showing all these years later that the institution has not changed.

A resolution approved by 148 countries, and opposed by 11 that are committed to the historic truth, denied Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. That and another, which was approved 156-8, spoke of al-Haram al-Sharif without mentioning that Jews and Christians call it the Temple Mount and that it is Judaism’s holiest site.

After the UN declared Zionism to be racism, Moynihan said in his speech: “As it is a lie which the United Nations has now declared to be a truth, the actual truth must be restated.”

The same applies to Friday’s decisions.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Boost for prostate treatment. I reported previously (Feb 2012) on Israel’s Medi-Tate and its non-invasive treatment for benign prostate enlargement. Now Japan’s Olympus Corporation has invested $20 million in Medi-Tate and will market Medi-Tate’s iTind implant in several countries.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3749102,00.html

Israeli innovation saves lives. Hospitals all over the world use Israeli medical technology. But Israeli Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next big item. This article highlights Israel’s MedAware (preventing prescription errors), MobiGuide’s Patient Guidance system, Zebra Medical, and AI systems at Israeli hospitals Sheba and Sourasky.
https://www.jpost.com/In-Jerusalem/Artificial-intelligence-shall-come-forth-from-Zion-572610

Toolbox for chemists. Researchers at Israel’s Technion have developed a “toolbox” technique to give organic chemists a cheap and quick method to design complex molecules and make safe medicines. They place smaller molecules in a ring, make them rigid, use a catalyst to break their bonds and re-assemble them like toy bricks.
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/technion-scientists-develop-new-way-to-study-complex-molecules/

Recognition for pain monitor. I reported previously (Feb 2017) that the PMD200 pain measurement device from Israel’s Medasense had received European CE Approval. Now, the international Society of Critical Care Medicine has included the innovative technology in its Intensive Care Unit Clinical Practice Guidelines.
https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-pain-assessment-tool-cited-in-new-icu-guidelines/

Treatment to combat mustard gas. The US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) has invested $43 million in Israel’s MediWound to develop its NexoBrid product for the treatment of mustard gas injuries. In 2015 BARDA invested $112 million to help MediWound develop NexoBrid for burns.
http://nocamels.com/2018/10/biomedical-firm-mediwound-mustard-gas/

Guidance system for visually-impaired goes global. I reported previously (Sep 2017) on Israel’s RightHear and its app that enables the visually impaired to navigate shopping malls, hospitals, universities etc. RightHear has since been installed in Israeli supermarket chain Shufersal, launched in the US and is heading for the UK.
https://m.thegrocer.co.uk/571341.article?mobilesite=enabled (TY Hazel)

Bio-ethics conference. We’ve just returned from Jerusalem. The hotel where we stayed was also hosting the UNESCO 13th World Conference on Bioethics, Medical Ethics and Health Law and many of the international delegates were pleased to hear about VeryGoodNewsIsrael.
https://ethics-2018.isas.co.il/ https://ethics-2018.isas.co.il/hotels/

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israel-u-s-jews-and-the-left-right-rift/

In an op-ed this week on the rift between American Jews and Israel, Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev compares the “troubled marriage” to a romantic union gone sour. He does this through metaphor—a literary device that he clearly prides himself on employing to provide a snide description of the touted “match made in Jewish heaven” that is now, in his view, completely “on the rocks.”

“For many years it seemed like a love story from a fairy tale,” Shalev writes, apologizing in good liberal fashion for his use of “gender assignments” to the protagonists. “He [Israel] was brave, brash and handsome, like Paul Newman. She was rich and smart, a Jewish American princess, and what she lacked in beauty she made up for in unbridled worship for the very ground he marched on. It took them awhile to warm to each other—they kept at arm’s length for their first 19 years—but after June 1967 [the Six-Day War] they fell into each other’s arms like long lost lovers.”

The “world’s foremost power couple,” according to Shalev, proceeded to engage in a kind of mutual opportunism, with Israel serving as American Jewry’s arm candy in exchange for the coveted advantage of “cruising on the fast lane to unparalleled power, money and influence” in Washington.

This metaphorical “dynamic duo” lived in harmony for several years, until the husband’s “attractive self-confidence morphed into obnoxious arrogance.” Sadly, writes Shalev, “70 years of overall success went to his head.” As a result, “He turned holier than thou, rebuffed reproof, wallowed in victimhood, labeled his critics anti-Semites and was mortified when [his wife], of all people, seemed to echo some of their sentiments. He wanted her to remain dutifully compliant, to do exactly as she’s told and to keep the checks coming, as always.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272063/airbnbs-corporate-act-anti-semitism-ari-lieberman

Airbnb’s November 19th decision to delist some 200 accounts of Jewish citizens who reside in the districts of Judea & Samaria, alternatively known as the West Bank, will have little economic impact on those account holders. Most of their business is generated by other advertising and hosting platforms so nothing will change. The tourists will still come. Moreover, Airbnb specifically excluded rentals from East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights from its delisting efforts. Nevertheless, despite its miniscule economic impact, it is crucial that supporters of Israel and opponents of antisemitism muster all efforts to reverse Airbnb’s illogical and discriminatory policy. This includes legal action, petitions, political and economic pressures.

The decision to ban West Bank accounts of Jewish residents exclusively is discriminatory on two levels. First, despite numerous conflict zones throughout the world – Tibet, Kashmir, Crimea, Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus, Falkland Islands, Nagorno-Karabakh, to name just a few – Airbnb decided to focus its efforts on Judea and Samaria. Second, Airbnb distinguishes between Jewish and Arab homes within Judea and Samaria. Thus an Arab resident of Jericho can freely rent his apartment, while his Jewish neighbor who resides in the community of Mitzpeh Jericho, cannot.

Judging from its disparate treatment of Israel, it is patently clear that Airbnb’s decision was motivated by pressure from nefarious anti-Israel elements. The United Nations Human Rights Council, a body hosted by the world’s worst purveyors of Antisemitism and human rights violations, placed Airbnb on its black list of companies doing business in Judea and Samaria. Human Rights Watch and other anti-Israel non-governmental organizations also chimed it. As a result, Airbnb chose the morally reprehensible path and succumbed. It is time for Airbnb to recognize that its deleterious action comes with adverse legal and economic consequences.

Within days of Airbnb’s action, a class action lawsuit was filed in Israel seeking an unspecified sum on behalf of those aggrieved by the company’s delisting campaign. A newly enacted Israeli law empowers courts to award compensation to plaintiffs who can prove that they were denied goods or services on the basis of their domicile.