RUTHFULLY YOURS

The United States opened an embassy to Jerusalem today at the order of President Trump, who finally fulfilled a promise former presidents made for decades.

“We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem,” Trump said. “Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise they failed to deliver. Today I am delivering.”

President Bill Clinton said in 1992 that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, despite the U.S. embassy being in Tel Aviv. “Jerusalem is still the capital of Israel and must remain an undivided city accessible to all,” he said.

George W. Bush promised 18 years ago, “As soon as I take office I will begin the process of moving the U.S. ambassador to the city Israel has chosen as its capital.”

“I continue to say that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel, and I have said that before, and I will say it again,” President Barack Obama said at an AIPAC conference. “And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

The protests aren’t spontaneous and they aren’t’ peaceful.

hey, of course, didn’t begin today. This New York Times article from a couple of weeks ago is a pretty good guide to what we’ve seen.

The protests aren’t spontaneous:

For weeks, Palestinians protesting along the fence between Gaza and Israel have conjured up the idea of swarming across the barrier, a mass of tens of thousands of people too numerous for Israeli soldiers to arrest or even to shoot.

They aren’t peaceful:

Hamas has called the protests peaceful, despite the Molotov cocktails thrown at Israeli soldiers and firebombs attached to kites that are routinely sailed over the fence, setting fires to Israeli farmland. Israel, defending its use of deadly force, has described the protests as riots that could turn into an invasion at any time.

Israeli communities are close to the border, and Israeli forces can’t just allow them to be stormed by armed rioters:

For the first time in five weeks of protests, some reached the second barrier — a sensor-laden fence that marks the edge of Israeli territory — and tried to climb it or pull it down. A few hundred yards beyond it lies the Israeli farming community of Nahal Oz.

JERUSALEM—The U.S. cemented its ties to Israel by opening a new embassy in Jerusalem, as clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israel’s military left dozens dead and added to the Trump administration’s challenges in the Middle East.

The ceremony, held in a large tent beside the new embassy site, was attended by top Israeli and U.S. officials. “This is a great day for Israel, it’s a great day for America,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told the attendees. “I also believe it’s a great day for peace.”

Some 50 miles away, Israeli military used warplanes to hit targets belonging to Gaza rulers Hamas and fired live ammunition, tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinian protesters as many of them attempted to breach the fence dividing the Gaza Strip with Israel.
Deadly Move
As the U.S. opened its new embassy in Jerusalem Monday, about 50 miles away more than 50 Palestinian protesters were killed in clashes with the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip.

Protesters used explosive devices, firebombs and flaming kites, according to the Israeli military. Numerous shots were fired, and Gazans burned tires and threw Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers.

Gaza officials said 52 protesters were killed—among them a 12- and a 14-year-old—and more than 2,400 were injured. That marked the largest single-day death toll since the Israeli army fought a conflict with Hamas in 2014.

The unrest followed months of tension over President Donald Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, where it has resided since soon after Israel’s 1948 founding. It coincided with a host of anniversaries that Hamas has used to rally support for its cause. The U.S. Embassy opening in Jerusalem—in a city that Palestinians also claim for a future capital—offered a focal point for their anger.

An Israeli military spokesman said Monday that the demonstrations by 40,000 Gazans were larger and more violent than those of the past month and a half of protests on the strip.

In the runup to the U.S. Embassy opening, Hamas has helped organize weekly protests and threatened to break through the fence dividing the strip with Israel. Fearing a mass infiltration of Israeli territory, Israel has responded with live fire, killing about 100 people since March 30. CONTINUE AT SITE

“In a long overdue move, we have moved our embassy to Jerusalem. Every nation should have the right to choose its capital,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “I sponsored legislation to do this two decades ago, and I applaud President Trump for doing it.”

What he didn’t say is that while Mr. Schumer talked up his legislation at fund-raising time, he muted his support during the Obama years. The embassy would never have moved without Mr. Trump’s willingness to defy political convention.

The embassy transfer is also a symbolic reaffirmation of U.S. support for Israel. Ties between the two countries frayed during President Obama’s two terms, as Mr. Obama made concluding a nuclear deal with Iran his top—really, his only—Middle East priority. One of Mr. Trump’s projects has been to restore better relations with U.S. allies, and in the Middle East that has meant Israel and the Sunni Arabs in Egypt and on the Arabian peninsula.

This is already paying dividends in confronting Iran’s attempt to build an anti-Israel front in Syria with missiles and Hezbollah militia on the northern Israeli border. Israel struck back hard last week at Iranian positions in Syria after Iran launched missiles toward the Golan Heights. The missiles were intercepted, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the provocation to do significant damage to Iranian bases.

Exactly 70 years ago – on May 14, 1948 – Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion brought together members of the Jewish People’s Council in the Tel Aviv Museum.

The Zionist movement to rebirth a Jewish state had already been at work for decades. That day Ben-Gurion stood underneath a portrait of the pioneer of that movement, Theodor Herzl, and affirmed the historic right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

“The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people.Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

Hamas’s use of actual smoke and mirrors to conceal its aggressive manoeuvring on the Gaza border is the perfect metaphor for a strategy that has no viable military purpose but seeks to deceive the international community into criminalising a democratic state defending its citizens.

The UN and EU, NGOs, government officials and media — primary targets for Hamas — have been willingly taken in. For example a Guardian headline, ‘The use of lethal force to cow nonviolent demonstrations by Palestinians’, blatantly misrepresents the violent reality that has been plain for all to see. Likewise the NGO Human Rights Watch claims that we are seeing a movement to ‘affirm Palestinians’ internationally-recognised right of return’.

In reality these demonstrations are far from peaceful and do not pursue any so-called ‘right of return’. Rather they are carefully planned and orchestrated military operations intended to break through the border of a sovereign state and commit mass murder in the communities beyond, using their own civilians as cover. The purpose: to criminalise and isolate the State of Israel.

Hamas are planning to achieve maximum violence at the Gaza border on either the 14th or 15th May, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the declaration of the State of Israel, the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem and the start of Ramadan — a perfect storm.

Since 30th March Hamas has been orchestrating large-scale violence on the border between Gaza and Israel. The major flare-ups have generally occurred on Fridays, following mosque prayers, when we have repeatedly seen concerted action involving crowds of up to 40,000 people in five separate areas along the border. Violence and aggressive actions, including specific acts of terrorism involving explosives and firearms, have also occurred at other times during this period.

The new law, known as the Palestinian Cyber Crime Law, comes in the wake of the PA and its supporters continuing falsely to accuse Israel of targeting Palestinian journalists. The PA leadership’s goal is to ensure that leaders are immune from journalistic critique.

Now journalists and Palestinian human rights organizations will not be able to say that the crackdown on public freedoms and freedom of the media is illegal.

The silence of the international community and human rights groups allows Mahmoud Abbas and his allies to get away with assaults on public freedoms and move forward towards creating a dictatorial regime for the Palestinians — one funded with American and European taxpayers’ money.

The last thing the Middle East needs is another repressive Arab regime. It is also the last thing the Palestinians want.

In a move that has angered Palestinian human rights organizations and journalists, the Palestinian Authority (PA) on April 17 approved a new law that restricts freedom of expression and the media. The move is seen by Palestinians in the context of the PA’s effort to silence its critics and suppress public freedoms. Palestinian journalists call it a declaration of war on the media.

The United States is officially opening its Israeli embassy in Jerusalem today, making May 14, 2018 an historic day for the Jewish State of Israel. Other U.S. presidents have made campaign promises to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, only to abandon their promises in deference to the foreign policy establishment and “international” opinion. In moving forward to fulfill his promise to move the embassy to Jerusalem, President Trump ignored the foreign policy establishment and “international” opinion, much as President Harry Truman did when he gave de facto recognition to the newly created State of Israel only eleven minutes after Israel’s proclamation of its independence.

President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law and key adviser Jared Kushner are representing President Trump for the opening of the new embassy. The Israelis are celebrating. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared at his weekly cabinet meeting, “President Trump promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and he did so. He promised to move the American Embassy to Israel and he is doing so. Of course we will all celebrate this day.”

President Trump’s decision, denounced not only by the Palestinians themselves, as expected, but by amoral government leaders and opinion makers all around the world, should not be so controversial. Each nation has the sovereign right to locate its own embassies wherever it chooses. The U.S. embassy will be located in West Jerusalem, not in any area claimed by the Palestinians to be part of their future “capital” in East Jerusalem. Moreover, President Trump clearly stated that U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is not intended to decide any final status issues regarding Jerusalem as a whole. Finally, the United Nations resolutions that the critics of President Trump’s decision rely upon to support their objections on “legal” grounds do little to help their case. The General Assembly has no legal authority under the UN Charter to require anything of the member states except payment of their annual budget assessments. The Security Council has huffed and puffed about so-called “illegal” Israeli settlements including in East Jerusalem and called upon member states to withdraw their embassies from Jerusalem, but did so solely in the form of completely non-binding resolutions.

On Saturday night, while yet another jihadist was terrorizing Paris, people all over Europe were tuned in to the Eurovision Song Contest, an annual display of the depressingly low level to which the quality of popular music has descended. First broadcast in 1956, Eurovision gave the world such songs as ABBA’s “Waterloo” (which won in 1974) and – um – did I mention “Waterloo”?

Seriously, the music wasn’t always so bad. During its early years, the competition was something of a cultural smorgåsbord, with songs sung in native languages and in accordance with national musical traditions. If you’re old enough, you’ll probably remember the Eurovision entries “Volare” and “Al Di La” and “L’amour est bleu.” There were nice ballads and cute novelty numbers.

Over time, however, more and more of the songs were all but interchangeable U.S.- and UK-influenced pop and dance tunes, increasingly sung in English. Among the memorable titles: “Boom Bang-a-Bang” and “Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley.” By degrees, songwriting gave way to spectacle. The whole thing had started off as a competition among composers and lyrics, but now the singer was the star. In the first few decades, at least one person onstage needed to be playing a musical instrument; nowadays, believe it or not, that’s totally prohibited. Any number of back-up dancers, acrobats, lighting effects, explosive devices, etc., etc., are permitted, but the singer or singers are required to sing to a pre-recorded track, just like at a karaoke bar.

After the Iron Curtain fell, Eastern European countries not only joined NATO and EU – they were swallowed up into the madness of Eurovision. For several years, many of their entries were even worse than the crap from Western Europe – illuminating the sober fact that Communism had produced even more appalling notions of popular music than capitalism had. One measure of the gradual adaptation of Eastern Europe to Western culture has been that the entries from countries like Moldova and Estonia are now, by and large, indistinguishable from the entries from France and Sweden.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Eliminating major side-effects. A breakthrough by Israeli scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Weizmann Institute can reduce side-effects in chemicals. Treatments (e.g. thalidomide) contain both right and left-sided molecules. One type causes the side-effect and magnets can remove the “bad” sided molecules.
https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/thuo-dac051018.php https://vimeo.com/257954972
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jz300793y

99% success for freezing tumors. I’ve been reporting on Israeli-based IceCure for some time (see here). It has just reported results of clinical trials showing 99% effectiveness in eliminating cancerous breast tumors through freezing with liquid nitrogen without surgery. Of the 146 trial patients, the cancer re-occurred in only one.
https://www.globes.co.il/en/article-icecure-jumps-on-positive-breast-cancer-treatment-data-1001234568

European patent for bio-turmeric extract. Israel’s Arjuna has produced BCM-95 – an All-in-One formulation of natural curcumin & ar-turmerone, the most potent component of turmeric with its highest level of oral bioavailability. BCM-95 has just received a European patent to accompany its patents in the US and globally.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arjuna-naturals-bcm-95-curcumin-granted-new-patent-300644354.html http://www.arjunanatural.com/bcm95.html
https://www.youtube.com/embed/NdBatH3y27U?rel=0

Transforming sinus diagnosis and treatment. Israel’s 3NT Medical is developing and trialing its Sinusway platform of specialty single-use endoscopes and therapeutic devices for advancing care of ear, nose and throat (ENT) disorders. 3NT has just raised funds to complete development and commence marketing Sinusway.
https://www.3ntmedical.com/ https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03390257
https://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-ent-endoscopy-co-3nt-medical-raises-15m-1001235075

Using gut bacteria to fight disease. I reported previously (May 2017) on one Israeli biotech using the human microbiome (stomach bacteria) to fight cancer, IBD, acne etc. Now Israel’s Evogene’s new Biomica subsidiary is also developing microbiome therapies, for antibiotic resistant bacteria, immuno-oncology and GI disorders.
http://www.evogene.com/press_release/biomica-evogenes-newly-established-subsidiary-announces-therapeutic-areas-focus/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/xR_-RMe18Zs?rel=0

Eye surgeon sees no boundaries. Dr David Hartstein made Aliya from the USA in 2009. Since 2014 he has been performing eye operations on patients from Ethiopia, Gaza and the Palestinian Authority. He also visits Ethiopia where he treats up to 500 patients each visit – mostly Falash Mura Ethiopians seeking to make Aliya.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/245462

On-line spectacle prescription. I reported previously (Feb 2016) on one Israeli smartphone app to check your glasses prescription. Now here’s another – Tel Aviv based GlassesUSA checks the prescription of your existing spectacles. It allows you to scan simple prescriptions and lenses using an iPhone.
https://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-app-gives-eyeglasses-prescription-1001234738