RUTHFULLY YOURS

Opposing a peace initiative because you do not like its content is one thing. Opposing a peace initiative designed to improve the lives of your people is another thing entirely.

Palestinian leaders do not care about their own people, so why should they care about peace with Jews?

They will never accept another plan, even if it comes from Prophet Muhammad.

It is easy to see why Palestinians would be opposed to the US administration’s upcoming plan for peace in the Middle East. The Palestinians do not like what they are hearing about the plan, which has not yet been made public.

Opposing a peace initiative because you do not like its content is one thing. Opposing a peace initiative designed to improve the lives of your people is another thing entirely. The latter defies logic and reveals the disappointing aspects of human nature.

Palestinian hatred of the US administration and President Donald Trump is so intense that the Palestinians are prepared to prolong the misery of their people.

Palestinian leaders care nothing for their people’s ongoing suffering. Give those leaders jobs, money and power, and their people be damned.

Once again, the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have fallen victim to their leaders’ greed, carelessness and idiocy.

Last week, we witnessed another example of how Palestinian leaders are prepared to fight for their own interests, at the expense of their people, all in order to remain in power and keep the funds flowing to their secret (and sometimes public) bank accounts.

US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, announced that the White House would soon host a meeting of “key countries and stakeholders to find real solutions to the problems has caused” in the Gaza Strip.

1. https://youtu.be/A8E77TrxWDA – VIDEO – Mordechai Kedar – Only weak sue for peace

2. http://mordechaikedar.com/a-taste-of-my-debate-on-al-jazeera-about-jerusalem/ – Dr. Mordechai Kedar interview on al Jazeera

The House of Windsor, with Prince William’s projected summer arrival, will make its first official visit to Israel since David Ben-Gurion proclaimed independence on May 14, 1948, a nice birthday present for my own arrival on Planet Earth on May 8th and, coincidentally, also the birthday of the American President who would fight his own State Department in recognizing the resurrected Jewish nation.

In good times and in bad, pre-and post-statehood Israel has been tied to Great Britain.

From the days of 19th and early 20th century British Christian Zionists culminating in Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour’s 1917 Declaration; to the separation of almost 80% of the original land envisioned by Balfour in the post-World War I 1920 Mandate of Palestine (all the land east of the Jordan River) in 1922, engineered by Colonial Secretary Churchill as a gift to Arab nationalism for Hashemite support for London’s war effort; to Lt. General Sir John Bagot Glubb’s British-led Transjordanian Arab Legion’s attack on a reborn Israel in 1948; to London’s White Papers limiting entrance of Jews fleeing for their lives from Nazi gas chambers; etc. and so forth, the Jews’ and the Brits’ histories have been closely intertwined.

Add to this the irony that right now, today, as London joins most others in the United Nations assailing Israel for refusing to return to its pre-’67 war existence as a 1949 armistice line-created, 9-15 mile wide sardine can of a state, it was Great Britain’s own Lord Caradon, the chief architect of the final draft of carefully-worded UNSC Resolution 242 after the ’67 fighting, who saw to it that Israel would not have to return to the status quo ante and withdraw to the ’49 lines. As corroborated by 242’s other architects, like Professor Eugene Rostow, Israel was to get real, more defensible, secure, and (wishful thinking) recognized borders instead.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Brain bleed detection gets Europe approval. Israel’s Zebra Medical Vision has received EU regulatory approval (i.e. the CE mark) for its new algorithm capable of detecting Intracranial hemorrhages (brain bleeds) from uploaded CT or MRI Scans. http://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3733482,00.html

Glucose analyzer gets Europe approval. I reported previously (twice) about Israel’s DreaMed Diabetes monitors for analyzing the data from Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs). DreaMed has just received the CE mark from the European Union for its Advisor Pro product.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-smart-software-harnesses-flood-of-data-to-manage-diabetes-care/
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_eMkeq0lrFc?rel=0

Excellent results for new prostate cancer test. (TY Hazel) I reported previously (July 2016) that Israel’s Micromedic Technologies had good results in an 18-patient trial of its CellDetect prostate cancer diagnosis solution. Latest tests on 59 samples were 80% successful – far exceeding the 25% for existing PSI tests.
https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-breakthrough-in-noninvasive-prostate-cancer-test/

Lifestyle controls your microbiome. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have found from a study of over 1,000 Israelis that there is no genetic link to the good bacteria in your gut (microbiome). A person’s health (cholesterol, weight, blood glucose levels etc.) however, can be controlled by maintaining a healthy stomach.
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/genetics-or-lifestyle-what-it-shapes-our-microbiome

A diagnostic kit on a USB drive. The tech-transfer company of Ben-Gurion University, plus Israeli-founded, Singapore-based Biosensorix, are developing $5 disease diagnosis kits that connect to a smartphone via its USB port. Instead of sending samples for lab tests, medical staff can get immediate blood test results and decide on a course of action. https://www.israel21c.org/new-usb-like-diagnostic-kits-provide-faster-results/

Using AI to analyze biopsies. Israeli startup Nucleai is developing computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to help overworked pathologists process and analyze biopsies for cancer quicker and more accurately. Nucleai founders have years of experience of computer vision gained during their IDF service.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startup-aims-at-disease-diagnosis-helping-pathologists-process-biopsies/

UK-Israel fund to research aging process. The UK has launched a new £5m fund to promote scientific collaboration and research between Israel and the UK into the aging process. The Britain Israel Research and Academic Exchange (BIRAX) Aging fund will also promote research that into aging-related diseases.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-sets-up-5m-fund-for-collaboration-with-israel-on-aging-process/

$20 million donation for nuclear medicine center. Russian Jewish billionaire Roman Abramovich has donated $20 million to Israel’s Sheba Medical Center to build a new medical center for nuclear medicine and research. Its cyclotron particle accelerator will use radioactive ion beams to pinpoint and kill cancer cells.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/chessed-and-tzedaka/billionaire-donates-20m-to-israels-sheba-hospital-for-nuclear-medicine-research-center/2018/03/03/

The Arab exodus from Israel in 1948 was the direct result of a genocidal war declared against the newly established Jewish state by all of its Arab neighbors, including the Arabs of Israel… approximately 700,000 local Arabs were displaced.

Approximately the same number of Jews were displaced from their Arab homelands during this period. Nearly all of them could trace their heritage back thousands of years, well before the Muslims and Arabs became the dominant population. …The most significant difference is between how Israel dealt with the Jews who were displaced and how the Arab and Muslim word dealt with the Palestinians who had been displaced by a war they started. Israel integrated its brothers and sisters from the Arab and Muslim world. The Arab world put its Palestinian brothers and sisters in refugee camps, treating them as political pawns — and festering sores —in its persistent war against the Jewish state.

The time has come – indeed it is long overdue – for the world to stop treating these Palestinians as refugees. That status ended decades ago. The Jews who came to Israel from Morocco many years ago are no longer refugees. Neither are the relatives of the Palestinians who have lived outside of Israel for nearly three quarters of a century.

A visit to Morocco shows that the claim of Palestinians to a “right of return” has little historic, moral or legal basis.

Jews lived in Morocco for centuries before Islam came to Casablanca, Fez and Marrakesh. The Jews, along with the Berbers, were the backbone of the economy and culture. Now their historic presence can be seen primarily in the hundreds of Jewish cemeteries and abandoned synagogues that are omnipresent in cities and towns throughout the Maghreb.

I visited Maimonides’s home, now a restaurant. The great Jewish philosopher and medical doctor taught at a university in Fez. Other Jewish intellectuals helped shape the culture of North Africa, from Morocco to Algeria to Tunisia to Egypt. In these countries, Jews were always a minority but their presence was felt in every area of life.

The Juniper Cobra 18 exercise, held since 2001, practices the rapid deployment of American air-defense units and equipment to Israel from Europe in the event of armed conflict.
The Israeli and U.S. militaries are in the midst of a large-scale missile-defense exercise, designed to simulate responses to a Middle East war on multiple fronts.

The scenario at the heart of the planned, biannual drill involves the Israeli home front coming under heavy enemy fire from several directions simultaneously.

The Juniper Cobra 18 exercise, held since 2001, practices the rapid deployment of American air-defense units and equipment to Israel from Europe in the event of armed conflict, in addition to the integration of U.S. capabilities into Israel’s air-defense layers.

“If conditions arise, and we are requested by the government of Israel, through our government, we will deploy,” said Lt.-Gen. Richard M. Clark, commander of the United States 3rd Air Force. Clark, who is based at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, added: “Once we get word, we can get here in days. I could be on the ground in one day. The fighting forces can be here within 72 hours.”

Brig.-Gen. Zvika Haimovich, who heads the Israeli Air Defense Command of the Israel Defense Forces, said it was the largest U.S.–IDF exercise to date, adding that it is expected to play out in the course of more than four weeks.

Some 2,500 American personnel are taking part in the endeavor. Most were mobilized to Israel, while some stayed in Europe and the United States. Around 2,000 IDF personnel are taking part as well.

The United States European Command, based in Germany, sent a number of American air-defense systems to Israel.

To the Washington, DC policy community, and to Jewish organizations across America, Uri Lubrani had become a familiar face.

The first time I met him in Washington was in November 1994, when he came to openly challenge the Clinton administration over what he saw as an appeasement policy toward the Iranian regime.

His words at the time ought to resonate in the ears of policy-makers and corporate lobbyists seeking to do business in Iran today.

As I wrote in Countdown to Crisis, the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran:

“Let me make it absolutely clear,” Lubrani said. “The Iranis have no doubt in their mind that when some of the largest U.S. companies seek a working or trading relationship with Iran, even if this is done indirectly, it cannot be done without the knowledge and explicit approval and authorization by the highest quarters in Washington. This is so because it would be unthinkable to an Irani mind, which has no understanding of the inner workings of a democracy, that such activities are at all possible without being sanctioned from above.”

At the time, the company seeking to do business in Iran was oil giant Conoco. Today, of course, it is Boeing.

On Monday, with Lubrani’s peaceful death at the age of 91, Israel lost a warrior, and a giant.

Since its 1948-49 War of Independence, the Jewish State has faced clear and present lethal challenges, adversities, assaults and threats, handling them as opportunities in disguise. This state of mind has catapulted Israel to unprecedented heights, commercially and militarily – a uniquely productive partner of the United States.

The scarcity of natural resources and the nature of the Middle East – a prototype of conflict-ridden, violent, intolerant, merciless, unpredictable, shifty and tenuous environment – have shaped Israel’s do-or-die state of mind, producing game-changing innovations in the areas of health, medicine, agriculture, irrigation, science, communications, space, homeland and national security.

In Thou Shalt Innovate (How Israeli ingenuity repairs the world), Avi Jorisch – a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council – documents the worldwide positive impact of Israel’s groundbreaking and cutting-edge hightech innovations upon critical challenges facing mankind.

Jorisch highlights the cardinal Jewish tenet of repairing – not controlling – the world (Tikkun Olam in Hebrew). This has generated a tailwind to Israel’s systematic sharing of its research and development with the world at-large, feeding reality-based optimism and upgrading the standard-of-living in the USA, India, Russia, China, Canada, Europe, Australia, Latin America, Asia and Africa. For example, since 2013 Israel has treated more than 2,500 Syrians seeking medical care, in addition to the dispatching of aid delegations to Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, etc.

The Palestinians appear to be the only ones in the Arab world who are coming out on a daily basis against a plan no one has seen.

This Arab apathy towards the Palestinians is the result of a long-standing belief in the Arab world that the Palestinians are an ungrateful people who do not hesitate to bite the hand that feeds them.

When Trump finally does announce his Middle East peace plan, the Palestinians will discover that they are alone in threatening to thwart it.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has been working hard to persuade the Arab countries to support its position in the standoff with the US administration.

The PA leadership in Ramallah fears that without the backing of the Arab countries, the US administration will “impose” President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” — the yet-to-be-announced plan for peace in the Middle East.

The Arab countries, however, appear to be preoccupied with other matters. For now, the Palestinians are getting much lip service from their Arab brothers, including promises to put pressure on the Trump administration possibly to “modify” its plan to make it less “harmful” to Palestinian demands and aspirations.

What is actually happening is that the PA leadership is terrified that many of the Arab countries will support the Trump plan, thus abandoning their Palestinian brothers and leaving them exposed to international pressure to accept the “deal of the century.” This fear does not seem to be unjustified.