RUTHFULLY YOURS

Ayman Qawasmeh and Issa Amro would have been better off being arrested by Israeli authorities. Had that happened, their stories would have made it to the pages of major Western newspapers. CNN or NBC might have dedicated an entire program to their ordeal. Without a way for the Western media outlets to implicate Israel, however, their tale remains buried — along with their freedom.

The group also points out that it has documented some 472 cases of deaths consequent to torture in Syrian detention centers and prisons over the past few years.

Would anyone like to know about the true apartheid laws applied to Palestinians in different Arab countries? The information is readily available: all that needs to happen is for the Western media and the rest of the international community to reconsider their obsession with Israel and to start paying attention to the real Palestinian victims — those living in the Arab countries.

More than 1,600 Palestinians have gone missing in Syria, and hundreds have been killed, since the beginning of the civil war there. This is not the type of news that makes it to mainstream media in the West, however.

To catch the eyes of the international community and media, Palestinians need to live in the West Bank, Gaza Strip or Jerusalem. These are the lucky Palestinians whose stories (and plights) are regularly covered by the international media. Why? Mostly because these are the Palestinians whose stories are often linked, directly and indirectly, to Israel.

It is no secret that Western journalists and mainstream media outlets have developed an obsession with Israel. Everything that Israel does (or does not do) receives widespread coverage, especially if there is a way to blame Israel for inflicting suffering on the Palestinians.

When Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas imposed punitive measures against the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, denying them medicine, electricity and salaries, somehow the mainstream media finds a way to implicate Israel.

Abbas’s ongoing crackdown on the Palestinian media, including the arrest of journalists and Facebook users, is also apparently not newsworthy, in the view of the Western media. Who cares if Abbas blocks 30 news websites because of their criticism of his policies and actions? Who cares if Abbas just this week ordered the arrest of journalist Ayman Qawasmeh, the director of a private radio station in Hebron?

Qawasmeh was arrested shortly after he criticized Abbas and called on him and his prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, to resign. Western journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dismiss these stories only, it seems, because they lack an anti-Israel angle.

As if the arrest of Qawasmeh were not enough, Abbas’s security forces later arrested Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist from Hebron, for speaking out against the arrest of the journalist. Amro was taken into custody after he published a Facebook post criticizing the Palestinian Authority security forces for arresting the journalist and stifling freedom of expression.

Qawasmeh and Amro would have been better off being arrested by Israeli authorities. Had that happened, their stories would have made it to the pages of major Western newspapers. CNN or NBC might have dedicated an entire program to their ordeal. Without a way for the Western media outlets to implicate Israel, however, their tale remains buried — along with their freedom.

The tragic tale of Palestinians in Syria exposes the double standard of the international media and community when it comes to covering the Middle East: when Israel is not involved, journalists are not involved.

What happens to Palestinians in Arab countries seems to be rather ho-hum to most of the world. So what if thousands of Palestinians have gone missing or have been killed? If an Arab state is involved, the media stays away.

Advocating the need for food banks throughout the world, Moon believes that this is the key element in reducing the number of hungry and malnourished people.

“The good news is that if you look at the world population who lives with chronic hunger [people who don’t consume enough calories in their daily diets], that has dramatically decreased over the past 20 years. There are still about 800 million people in the world who go to bed hungry,” Lisa Moon told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview on Monday, adding that they mainly reside in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

For the past 18 months, Moon has been president and CEO of the Global Food-Banking Network (GFN), an international nonprofit organization working in 32 countries, dedicated to alleviating world hunger by creating, supporting and strengthening food banks around the world that currently serve 57 million people annually.

On her first trip to Israel, Moon is primarily visiting the Leket Israel facilities outside of Ra’anana, meeting with the staff and observing practices that Leket is using in Israel that can be applied throughout the world to combat hunger.

Leket, Israel’s national food bank, has “rescued” some 15,000 tons of produce for the needy which mainly comes from farms throughout Israel.

“So far, the biggest takeaway for me is that Leket’s approach is really unique, because they focus on fresh fruits and vegetables and working with local producers and focusing on nutrition with the people they are serving and people in food banks all over the world,” Moon said.

Moon, an expert on global international policy and food waste, who has been involved with GFN since 2015, explained the shift in world hunger from chronic hunger to “hidden hunger.”

“When people who may have enough to eat on a fairly regular basis but may have to miss meals, and they also don’t have access to nutritious foods, and, regrettably, about one in four people globally has micronutrient deficiencies and is subject to ‘hidden hunger’ – that’s really the hunger that food banks are working to address,” she said.

Moon noted that we are living in a time when there is enough food for everyone, yet the statistics show that one in nine people in the world go to bed hungry.

“It doesn’t matter how much food we produce; if we don’t have a way to distribute it to the people who are in need, we are still going to have a hunger issue,” she said. “So it’s an honor for me to work with food banks, because they really work with distribution.”

Advocating the need for food banks throughout the world, Moon believes that this is the key element in reducing the number of hungry and malnourished people.

“Right now, hunger is not about food production,” she said, “because, right now, we produce enough food for everyone to have enough. It’s a distribution challenge and a logistics problem. And so what is so challenging about that is that a third of all the food that is produced goes to waste.”

Explaining the need to provide impoverished communities with food banks, Moon said the challenge facing these organizations is getting this food directly to those in need efficiently and, of course, cheaply.

“And so we need a mechanism to take that surplus food which is edible,” she said. “We need a way to capture that surplus food and redistribute it to those who can’t access this at the store – maybe the price is too high, maybe they’re too sick. That’s really the role of food banks. And that’s why GFN is so passionate about promoting this model to communities around the world.”

Moon credits Leket Israel for its “unique method of collecting fresh, rescued food from the top of the food chain at the level of agricultural production.”

Hoping to apply Leket’s model on a global level, Moon said: “We must focus on scaling food rescue around the world in order to meet growing demands and enter emerging markets.”

1. According to the June 15, 2017 Wall Street Journal, six Israeli startups (three in the cybersecurity sector) are among the top 25 tech companies, which may be the global leaders of tomorrow.

2. According to Forbes Magazine, Israel has become a cybersecurity powerhouse, creating more than 300 cybersecurity startups, exporting in 2016 $6.5BN in cybersecurity products, convincing more than 30 multinationals to establish local research & development centers in Israel and attracting foreign investors. According to Forbes, there are six reasons leading to Israel’s prominence in the world of cybersecurity: the close government-military-business-academia interaction; government support of early-stage cybersecurity startups; Israel’s military as a startup incubator and accelerator, combining research and operation; investing in human capital (e.g., cybersecurity is an elective high school matriculation exam, and operating six university cybersecurity research centers); Israel’s overall inter-disciplined and diverse human factor enhanced through military service and interaction with global giants; Israel’s constant need to defy security and commercial odds.

3. Enhancing the mutually-beneficial, two-way-street US-Israel cooperation, a cybersecurity bilateral working group was established by the Trump Administration, aimed at combatting cyber offensives. Tom Bossert, White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, stated: “Israel’s agility in developing solutions will innovate cyber defenses that the US can test in Israel and bring back to America….”

4. During the first half of 2017 – in addition to Intel’s March 2017 acquisition of Israel’s Mobileye for $15.3BN – Israeli hightech companies were acquired by foreign companies for a total sum of $1.8BN. For example, Symantec, the Mountain View, CA software security and storage systems giant, acquired Israel’s FireGlass and Skycare (cybersecurity) for $250MN each (Globes, July 13, 2017).

5. During the second quarter of 2017, $1.3BN were invested in Israeli startups, mostly by foreign investors, second highest quarter in the last five years, compared to $1.1BN in the first quarter, as well as the fourth quarter of 2016, and $1.7BN in the second quarter of 2016. For instance, the Japanese giant SoftBank invested $100MN in Israel’s cybersecurity, Cybereason, and Johnson & Johnson led a $12MN round by Israel’s medical/nutritional tech, Day Two. Israel’s venture capital fund, Qumra, raised $115MN for its second fund, mostly from US and European Family Offices (Globes, July 20).

6. Intel is bolstering its operations in Israel – over and beyond its 10,000 employees, four R&D centers, two manufacturing plants and $4BN annual exports out of Israel – leveraging Israel’s cybersecurity added-value. Intel has recently expanded its Israel Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, partnering with Illusive Networks, a cybersecurity startup, and Israel’s Team8, a cybersecurity powerhouse, which has developed close contacts with Microsoft, Cisco, Qualcomm, ATT&T, Nokia, Mitsui and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, aiming to develop cutting edge cybersecurity technologies.

7. India-Israel trade balance surged from $200MN in 1992 to over $4BN in 2016.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Patient receives new implant to treat diastolic heart failure. A 72-year-old Canadian at Israel’s Rambam Medical Center is the first congestive heart failure patient to receive a new CoRolla implant from Israeli biotech CorAssist. The device was implanted by catheter and the patient has improved sufficiently to be discharged.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Israeli-doctors-are-first-to-implant-device-for-congestive-heart-failure-503648 https://www.youtube.com/embed/Iy0iL1cKG2s?rel=0

Rabies treatment approved. Israeli biotech Kamada has received FDA approval for its anti-rabies vaccination in the US. US company Kedrion will be responsible for distributing the new product. Kamada is already marketing the anti-rabies vaccine in various countries.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-kamada-receives-fda-approval-for-rabies-treatment-1001202763

Seeing the signs of Alzheimer’s. I reported recently (30th July) about the research at Sheba Medical Center into the link between Alzheimer’s disease and loss of retina function. Israel’s RetiSpec is already working towards building an ocular scanner for the spectral signature of neuropathological changes due to the disease.
https://www.israel21c.org/look-into-my-eyes-do-you-see-early-signs-of-alzheimers/ http://retispec.com/

Curing glaucoma in the blink of an eye. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Belkin Laser has developed an innovative laser ray system that can treat glaucoma in just one second every year, instead of daily eye drops. There is no need for direct contact of the equipment with the eye. Belkin recently raised $5 million of funding.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-glaucoma-treatment-co-belkin-laser-raises-5m-1001191036
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5HkXjWPSpxU?rel=0 http://www.belkin-laser.com/

An app to guide the visually impaired. Israel’s RightHear is an iPhone app that enables the visually impaired to find their way through shopping malls, hospitals, universities – any of the 200 locations (mostly in Israel) where Apple iBeacon transmitters have been installed. It’s also integrated with taxi apps Gett, Uber and Lyft.
https://www.israel21c.org/app-orients-visually-impaired-in-malls-schools-hospitals/

The elderly can benefit from baby movements. Researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University have found that older adults use the same exploration-exploitation mechanism that babies use to successfully grasp objects. And as with babies, making “mistakes” helps improve future task performance.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/older-adults-could-use-babies-strategy-to-grasp-objects-israeli-study/

Gaza man cured of Tree-man virus. Doctors at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center cured Mohammed Taluli from Gaza of a rare genetic disorder. Epidermodysplasia verruciformis (tree-man disease) is contagious and cancerous. It causes scaly lesions on the feet and hands that resemble tree bark. (See the astonishing photo.)
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/jerusalem/jerusalem-doctors-treat-rare-treeman-virus/2017/08/29/

Returning the smiles to African children’s faces. Israeli surgeons Omri Emodi and Zach Sharony from Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center have been in Ghana correcting facial deformities (e.g. cleft lips and palates) in local children. The mission was managed by US organization Operation Smile.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-doctors-return-smile-to-african-childrens-faces/
https://www.rambam.org.il/EnglishSite/AboutRambam/Publications/NewsandEvents/Pages/Rambam-Doctors-Perform-Pediatric-Surgery-Marathon-in-Ghana.aspx

After treatment, PA official donates recovery room. A senior Palestinian Arab official has donated tens of thousands of shekels to Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center after he himself underwent cancer treatment at the Israeli hospital. The money will fund a room for children, pre-and-post chemo and radiotherapy treatment.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Palestinian-official-gives-back-to-Israeli-hospital-that-treated-him-496545 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4974484,00.html

While the world is focused on the horrendous terrorist attacks carried out by the Islamic State group and on the international campaign being waged against the organization in Iraq and Syria, the IDF is maintaining two intensive sectors opposite the group, in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.

The majority of operations in both sectors is clandestine and is held as part of the IDF’s doctrine of the “campaign between the wars,” a title that encompasses a host of covert and low-intensity military and intelligence efforts to prevent enemy states and terrorist organizations from becoming stronger and thwart their offensive activity. Arab media reports about drone strikes in Sinai or the elimination of terrorist operatives on the Golan Heights usually receive only a casual mention, if that, in the Israeli and international media. The reason for that is simple: Barring a terrorist attack, there’s only minor media interest.

Keeping things on the down low involves intensive operational and intelligence activity seeking to ensure that Israel does not find itself in Islamic State’s crosshairs. The reason that the IDF has, until now, preferred to spare the public the details of its operations in these two sectors is two-pronged: the natural clandestine nature of things and the desire to keep a low profile vis-a-vis ISIS.

While the balance of power in the two sectors is clear to all, Israel has no interest in seeing ISIS operatives in Sinai or the Golan Heights train their sights on its territory. The fact that Wilayat Sinai‎, Islamic State’s proxy in the south, and the Khalid ibn al-Walid Army, an ISIS-affiliate group based in the Syrian Golan Heights, are engaged in internal wars rather than fighting us, is very convenient for Israel.

This week, the IDF gave Israel Hayom an exclusive glimpse into the intensive, nightly counterterrorism operation against ISIS on the northern border, which aims to foil threats and ensure that the civil war raging in Syria and the parallel battles taking place in Sinai do not spill over into Israel.

No-man’s-land no more

The security fence in the southern part of the Golan Heights does not overlap with the border. For operational and topographical reasons, the IDF chose to place it in dominant areas across the ridgeline rather than adhering to the border itself. As a result, small “no-man’s-land” enclaves were formed between the border and the security fence. These enclaves — stretching up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) deep in some areas and merely dozens of meters in others — are separated from Israel by the security fence, but nothing separates them from enemy territory.

In the summer of 2006, Hezbollah used one of those enclaves, which the IDF refrains from operating in so not to risk breaching Lebanese territory, to abduct IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, triggering the Second Lebanon War. As part of the war’s lessons, the IDF decided to no longer leave the enclaves be, and then-GOC Northern Command Gadi Eizenkot ordered intensive activity in all of them, up to the very last inch.

The rationale was political — preserving Israel’s sovereignty over the entire territory; operational — removing the threat; and also psychological — shifting the balance of power back in the IDF’s favor by again positioning it as the party taking operational initiative.

The Palestinian population is not some hapless victim of the terror groups, but the very crucible from which they emerged

Congress is finally considering legislation to stop the Palestinian Authority from incentivizing violence…This has to stop, and the Taylor Force Act…attempts to do that. As it currently stands, the act would cut U.S. foreign assistance to the West Bank and Gaza in its entirety if the “payments for acts of terrorism against United States and Israeli citizens …do not stop…. There should definitely be no ‘pay to slay’, but…[b]eing smart counts for more than being right. And the smart approach is one that also recognizes that innocent Palestinians…should not be forced to pay for the mistakes of a government they cannot control. – David Makovsky et al“The Smart Way to End ‘Pay to Slay’”, Foreign Policy, August 2, 2017.

Lesley Stahl, on CBS’s 60 Minutes on the effects of US led sanctions against Iraq (May 12, 1996): We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Madelaine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations , subsequently President Clinton’s Secretary of State: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.

Recently, three members of the well-known think-tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, posted an article on the new legislative initiative, named the Taylor Force Act after the West Point graduate and veteran, who was killed in a terrorist attack in Israel last year.

Appropriate and imperative

The proposed bill, which was recently passed in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support, is designed to stop American financial aid to the Palestinian Authority [PA] until it ceases its generous payments to individuals who commit acts of terrorism and to the families of deceased terrorists.

Perversely, under the prevailing conditions, the more gruesome the act of terror and the longer the sentence imposed on the perpetrator, the greater the remuneration!

Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal points out, under existing circumstances, “U.S. aid becomes a transfer payment for terrorists”.

This is clearly an unconscionable situation and hence legislation to contend with it, and correct it, was not only appropriate, but imperative.

The need for a punitive response to the egregious “pay for slay” custom of the PA was conceded by the previously mentioned Washington Institute article, entitled “The Smart Way to End ‘Pay to Slay’”.

Penned by David Makovsky, distinguished fellow and director of the project on the Middle East Peace Process, veteran diplomat Dennis Ross, distinguished fellow and counsellor on the U.S.-Israel Strategic Relationship, and Lia Weiner, a research assistant, it clearly proclaims “There should definitely be no ‘pay to slay’… This has to stop.”

“…the ‘mistakes’ of a government they cannot control”.

However, it cautions against an across-the-board cessation of US funds to the PA, calling for a more nuanced (read “watered-down”) application of the punitive cuts:“Threats of sweeping cuts to Palestinian aid may hurt the cause more than they help.”They warn that “To entirely defund U.S. aid to the West Bank and Gaza is…to halt economic and social progress there”, proposing instead an approach that “recognizes that innocent Palestinians…should not be forced to pay for the mistakes of a government they cannot control”.

But making the innocent members of the population pay for the nefarious deeds of governments they “cannot control” has been the hall mark of American policy across the globe for years—even when those governments have been far more tyrannical than the PA.

‘Precision-guided missile factories” are being built in Lebanon and Syria, and unless the UN stops them, Israel will.

That, more or less, was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s message to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Jerusalem on Monday.

The new UN chief vowed to “do everything in my capacity to make sure that the [UN Interim Force in Lebanon] fully meets its mandate.” UNIFIL, established after Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah in south Lebanon, was charged with disarming Hezbollah. It didn’t.

The UN Security Council is set to renew UNIFIL’s mandate Wednesday. It automatically does so each year, even as Hezbollah, no longer a ragtag organization, now commands a formidable Lebanese-based army that dominates vast swaths in Syria, with tentacles in Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere. All while UN forces look on.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah has amassed over 100,000 missiles and other arms, hidden in plain view at private homes, or under schools and infirmaries, ready to hit neighboring Israel. And as Bibi noted Monday, new factories in Lebanon and Syria would allow Hezbollah to manufacture missiles there, rather than risk losing them en route from Hezbollah’s patron, Iran.

“This is something Israel cannot accept. This is something the UN should not accept,” the prime minister told Guterres.

Well, when Israeli leaders say they won’t “accept” something, they usually mean it — the country sets red lines and enforces them. But the UN? Could it actually help prevent a looming war? Not with its current blasé attitude.

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley wants change. On Friday, she told reporters that UNIFIL commander Maj. Gen. Michael Beary of Ireland is the “only person in south Lebanon who is blind” to Hezbollah’s arming. In an unprecedented personal rebuke, Haley added, “That’s an embarrassing lack of understanding on what’s going on around him.”

Haley said she wouldn’t accept an automatic renewal of the force’s mandate, demanding “more robust” action on Hezbollah’s arms.

Is that realistic?