RUTHFULLY YOURS

For the past two decades, the anti-Israel rhetoric of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership has radicalized many Palestinians, to a point where they are no longer willing to accept any form of compromise or peace with Israel.

By accusing the Trump administration of hostility to the Palestinians, the Palestinian leadership has delegitimized the US to a degree where many Palestinians now feel that Americans are legitimate targets for violence and terror attacks.

How, exactly, do these condemnations conform with Abbas’s other claims that he seeks to resume peace talks with Israel? The mask on Abbas’s face has fallen once again. That mask has, in fact, been falling for many years. Perhaps one day the world will even see that.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas continues to say one thing to his people, and an entirely different thing to the international community.

To Arab audiences, Abbas describes Israel and the US administration as not far short of Satan incarnate.

When the PA president sends a message to the international community, however, he shows a different face.

Ever since US President Donald Trump’s December announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Abbas and his top aides in Ramallah have been consistently signaling to the Palestinians that the peace process with Israel is “over.”

The Palestinians have also been assured by Abbas that Israel and the US will pay dearly for the recognition.

Israel’s unique contribution to US’ national security and US defense industries was reaffirmed on February 10, 2018, by Israel’s effective military operation against Syrian-based Iranian-Syrian surface-to-air missile batteries, early-warning radar stations, a launching-base of unmanned aerial vehicles and a command-control bunker.

While Israel lost one F-16 combat plane, its air force demonstrated exceptional capabilities in the areas of intelligence, electronic warfare – especially radar jamming – firepower capabilities, precision, maneuverability, penetration of missile batteries, early-identification and destruction of advanced unmanned aerial vehicles and their mobile controller, etc.
Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF) are analyzing the lessons of this recent operation, most of which will be shared, promptly, with the US – the manufacturer and provider of most of the systems operated by the IDF – as has been the case with a multitude of Israel’s military operations and wars. For example, much of the battle-tactics formulation in the US Army Headquarters in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas has been based on the Israeli battlefield experience.

The February 10, 2018 Israeli Air Force operation against Syrian-Iranian military targets has reinforced the legacy of the late Senator Daniel Inouye, who was the Chairman of the full Appropriations Committee and its Defense Subcommittee. Senator Inouye considered Israel a moral ally of the US, as well as the most effective battle-tested laboratory of the US military and defense industries – a primary outpost, in a critical region, sparing the US billions of dollars, which would be required to deploy additional US military forces to the area.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES OCTOBER 19,2000 http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/nyregion/columbia-debates-a-professor-s-gesture.html

When Edward W. Said, a celebrated literary scholar, Columbia University professor and outspoken Palestinian advocate, hurled a rock toward an Israeli guardhouse from the Lebanese border in July, a photographer caught the action. The photo, which captured Mr. Said with his arm reached far behind him, ready to throw, appeared in newspapers and magazines in the Middle East and the United States.

When challenged later, Mr. Said, who had been on a trip with his family at the time, dismissed the action as trivial, ”a symbolic gesture of joy” that Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon had ended. But others saw it as scandalous and called on Columbia to reprimand Mr. Said, or at least repudiate his behavior.

For two months, Columbia gave no reply. But yesterday, in response to a request from student government leaders of Columbia College, Columbia broke its silence.

Its answer: Mr. Said’s behavior is protected under the principles of academic freedom.

”To my knowledge, the stone was directed at no one; no law was broken; no indictment was made; no criminal or civil action has been taken against Professor Said,” Jonathan R. Cole, the provost and dean of faculties, wrote in an open letter to Columbia’s student government and the student newspaper, The Columbia Daily Spectator.

A Palestinian diplomat, speaking to Canadian college students visiting the United Nations headquarters in New York, said that Palestinians are proud of their history of throwing stones at Israeli forces.

Further, they will continue teaching their children to do just that:

Israeli news outlet Ynet obtained the recording of Abdallah Abushawesh, a member of the Palestinian delegation to the UN, making the comments to international relations students from McGill University. Abushawesh serves as a senior adviser to the UN’s Development Group, Ynet reports.

“We are very clever and very expert at throwing the stones. We are very proud to do that. We will not stop to learn our kids (to do that),” Abushawesh says in broken English amid students’ snickers.

Abushawesh added that Palestinians who are caught throwing stones “go to the jail.”

He continued: “We are very proud that we are stone throwers. I’m one of them. Now I became a little bit older, but I stay resistant in the name of my kids.”

According to Ynet, the diplomat also boasted about his own stone-throwing exploits during the first intifada.

“I was in high school. I never missed an opportunity to throw stones. This is our life. We develop our resistance every day. We’re proud of it,” he said.

Abushawesh would no doubt be a strong contender for the media’s diplomatic gold medal, but Kim Jong Un’s sister already won that earlier this week.

Israeli innovation is behind almost half of the healthcare revenues of the 350-year-old German pharmaceutical and chemicals firm Merck, Kai Beckmann, CEO of Performance Materials at the firm, said in an interview on Tuesday.

“Roughly almost half of (our) healthcare revenue is based on innovation stemming from Israel,” Beckmann said. “This tells us a lot of the story of how important” Israel is to Merck.

The Rebif drug marketed by Merck to help decrease the frequency of relapse symptoms of multiple sclerosis had sales of some 1.7 billion euros in 2016, while the Erbitux drug for patients with cancer of the head and neck, also based on Israeli technology, had global sales of around €1 billion, he said.

Merck’s range of products includes biopharmaceutical therapies for cancer and MS, and liquid crystals for smartphones and LCD televisions. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed corporate group, which was established in 1668.

Beckmann spoke with The Times of Israel as the German giant, which employs 52,000 employees globally and had total sales of €15 billion in 2016, inaugurated on Tuesday a new technology innovation laboratory at its subsidiary, Qlight Nanotech in Jerusalem, which it bought in mid-2015 to boost its expertise in liquid crystal display materials and OLED materials.

Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Pope Francis in Rome this past week. The topic of the meeting wasn’t the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, nor Erdogan’s human rights abuses in Turkey. It was Erdogan’s and the Vatican’s shared objection to the United State moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

It is hard to see how Pope Francis and Erdogan have any standing in the matter. Israel is a sovereign nation; it gets to choose its capital like every other country. And what foreign entity gets to say where the U.S. embassy should be? This is especially aggravating given the fact that having the American embassy in Jerusalem is U.S. law according to the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995.

Why is the embassy not already in Jerusalem in line with a 20-year-old law? It’s because the law states the embassy move can be put off for six months at a time as long as the president “determines and reports to congress in advance that such suspension is necessary to protect the national security of the United States.”

This loophole allowed Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama to circumvent the move for twenty years, even though both presidents Bush and Clinton campaigned for it. Donald Trump, on the other hand, made relocating our embassy to Israel’s capital a campaign issue, and he’s acting on it.

It is hard to imagine how moving the American embassy could be a genuine threat to U.S. national security. The inaction was another shameful bow to Arab anti-Jewish sentiments and a slight to Israel’s sovereignty.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Printing prosthetic arms for amputees. Israel’s Stratasys is teaming up with multinational 3D software company Dassault Systèmes and robotics innovator Easton LaChappelle to provide amputees with affordable, custom-made, battery-powered prosthetic limbs, created using 3D scanners for printing anywhere in the world.
http://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3731258,00.html

British girl’s leg is saved. I reported previously (7th Jan) that the only chance Kyra Warrell, of Brighton, UK had of saving her leg from amputation, was for surgery at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center by visiting US (Israeli-born) surgeon Dr Dror Paley. Many Israelis helped Kyra’s family and the operation was a success.
https://www.jta.org/2018/02/06/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/british-girl-6-undergoes-special-surgery-in-israel-to-keep-her-leg/amp

Israel marks World Cancer Day. This video of five major Israeli cancer detection and treatments was released to mark World Cancer Day on 4th Feb. They are Velcade for multiple myeloma; IceCure; RAD51 gene research; bone marrow transplants for leukemia; and Doxil’s delivery direct to the tumor.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/R7FgJHMDc3w?rel=0

On the trail of the malaria virus. I reported previously (Mar 2015) that Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists made progress countering the way the malaria virus hides its genes from the immune system. Now Weizmann Institute scientists have disabled the gene that fools the immune system into attacking decoy cells.
http://nocamels.com/2018/01/israeli-scientists-breakthrough-malaria/

NHS target for Israeli digital health tech startups. British Jewish philanthropist David Dangoor is launching the UK Israel Dangoor Health Initiative. This new accelerator/hub will match a pipeline of Israeli digital-health startups with Britain’s NHS. http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/philanthropist-david-dangoor-well-pipe-israeli-health-tech-directly-into-the-nhs/

Doctors remove battery from infant’s stomach. 10-month-old Ram Jannam from the Druze/Arab town of Maghar, broke his toy telephone and swallowed the battery. Doctors at Israel’s Padeh-Poriya Medical Center in Tiberias, extracted the battery endoscopically under anesthesia. Ram is now back home and doing well.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/israeli-doctors-remove-battery-from-10-months-old-babys-stomach/2018/02/06/

Israeli innovations saving lives. Nice short video featuring some of the many Israeli life-saving and life-enhancing medical innovations. https://www.youtube.com/embed/7wMHmKHDiJI?rel=0

Nikki Haley has received great and deserved praise for defying UN standards to defend Israel. Well done indeed!

The United Nations conceived with such hope, has lost its way to bias, ignorance and endless attacks on Israel. The irony here is that the finest speeches delivered there have been by Israel’s defenders.

In 1949, Abba Eban urged the United Nations, still housed in Lake Success, to accept Israel’s membership. His speech lasted more than two hours. He chided the U.N. for holding up Israel’s application with the lame excuse that the “refugee and resettlement” issue had to be investigated. He noted many nations which expelled and dislocated hundreds of thousands were swiftly accepted. He scolded Jerusalem’s Arab authorities for flouting the UN’s resolution declaring Jerusalem an “international city” with access to people of all faiths. He described the desecration of shrines, churches and synagogues. And he addressed the problem of refugees with data and possibilities for resettlement in other Arab nations.

Abba Eban succeeded: United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273 was adopted on May 11, 1949 admitting the State of Israel to membership in the United Nations. It was passed following the approval of UN Security Council Resolution 69 on March 4.

Abba Eban served as Israel’s representative to the U.N. from 1948 until 1959 and as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States. He became Israel’s most effective speaker in the Diaspora. With a courtly manner and perfect diction, rarely checking notes, he defended his nation with zeal and rhetorical genius. The response of the Arab states was laughable. As soon as Eban stood, the Arab representatives walked out.

When he returned to Israel in 1959 he joined the Labor party. In June 1967 Eban, then Foreign Minister, returned to the United Nations to address the Security Council following the Six Day War.

Here are excerpts from his magnificent speech which should be read in full by anyone who falsely uses the word “occupation.”