RUTHFULLY YOURS

“The time has come to bring together countries to fight against the enemies of Israel…. Israel never needs to fear that they are only seven or eight million people standing against 150 million Arabs. They have 1.2 billion Indians backing them.” — Subramanian Swamy, Indian parliamentarian.

Historically, relations between India and Israel, with a few exceptions, have been warm. In January 1992, then Indian Prime Minister P. V, Narsimha Rao established full diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. Since then, economic, technological, military and diplomatic relations between New Delhi and Jerusalem have moved from strength to strength.

During the last few years Jerusalem has sold to New Delhi advanced military equipment.[1]

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit (July 4-6) to Israel was the first by a prime minister of India to the Jewish state. After the meeting between Modi and his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, India and Israel signed seven agreements in the fields of water, agriculture, and space, including a $40 million joint fund for research and development in innovation. Netanyahu and Modi also upgraded the current bilateral relationship to a “strategic partnership,” and agreed that “strong measures must be taken against terrorists, terror organisations, their networks and all those who encourage, support and finance terrorism, or provide sanctuary to terrorists and terror groups.” Netanyahu said the India-Israel relationship today could be described as “I-square T-square”—that is “Indian Talent and Israeli Technology.”

Modi held a meeting with CEOs of various companies, leading to the signing of agreements worth about $4.3 billion between the participating companies. The forum intends to take current bilateral trade of about $4-5 billion to $20 billion in five years. High-tech Israeli companies produce robotic waterless cleaners for solar panels and portable desalination units, which could help India solve its water and energy crises.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attend an Israel-India innovation exhibition, on July 6, 2017. (Image source: Kobi Gideon, Israel Government Press Office)

Indian and Israeli companies entered into agreements to bid jointly for defence contracts for the Indian military and locally build the systems under “Made in India.” India and Israel also agreed to increase their air linkages, with Air India expected to commence flights to Tel Aviv.

Both nations face several common threats, including radical Islamist terrorism. Both nations have faced major conventional wars with their neighbours and continue to experience low‐intensity conflict. And both are confronted with weapons of mass destruction in the hands of their rivals — real and potential.

Israel has been a time-tested ally of India in combating all kinds of threats to its security. New Delhi, too, must be sensitive to Jerusalem’s security. The Jewish state’s existence has been under threat from radical Islamist forces in the region. Threats by Iran, with the its growing nuclear potential, to annihilate the Jewish state cannot be overlooked.

Last month IDF Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Herzl Halevi made a stunning revelation. Hezbollah and Iran are transforming the terrorist group into a military force capable of independently producing its own precision weapons.

Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, Halevi reported, “We are seeing Hezbollah building a domestic military industry on Lebanese soil based on Iranian know-how. Hezbollah is producing weapons systems and transporting them to southern Lebanon.”

Halevi added, “Over the past year, Iran is working to establish infrastructure for the independent production of precision weapons in Lebanon and Yemen. We cannot be indifferent to this development. And we aren’t.”

Not only is Hezbollah building a missile industry. It is deploying its forces directly across the border with Israel – in material breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 from 2006, which set the terms of the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah at the end of the Second Lebanon War.

Under the terms of 1701, Hezbollah is prohibited from operating south of the Litani River. Only the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and UNIFIL – the UN’s peacekeeping force – are supposed to be deployed in southern Lebanon.

According to Halevi, operating under the cover of a phony environmental NGO called “Green Without Borders,” Hezbollah has set up observation posts manned with its fighters along the border with Israel.

In Halevi’s words, with these posts, “Hezbollah is now able to operate a stone’s throw from the border.”

In a media briefing on Sunday, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman discussed Halevi’s revelations. Liberman said that the security community “is absolutely aware [of the missile plants] and is taking the necessary action.”

“This is a significant phenomenon,” Liberman warned. “We must under no circumstances ignore it.”

Perhaps in a jab at his predecessor, Moshe Ya’alon, who years ago argued notoriously that Hezbollah’s missiles would “rust” in their storage facilities, perhaps in warning to Hezbollah, Liberman added, “The factories won’t rust and the missiles won’t rust.”

So if we aren’t indifferent to Hezbollah’s expansion of its capabilities, what are we planning to do about it?

Whatever answer the IDF decides upon, Israel is already taking diplomatic steps to prepare for the next round – whoever opens it.

Last month Israel filed a formal complaint with the UN Security Council against Hezbollah for setting up observation towers along the border and manning them with its fighters.

Not surprisingly, UNIFIL and the Security Council rejected Israel’s complaint. Ever since six UNIFIL soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb in 2007, UNIFIL has turned a blind eye to all of Hezbollah’s operations in southern Lebanon. As to the strike for which the complaint to the Security Council began setting the conditions, what purpose would it serve?

In a future war, Israel shouldn’t aspire, for instance, to destroy Hezbollah as a fighting force. The goal, in my opinion, should be to destroy or neutralize as much of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal and its missile assembly plants as possible. If possible, Israel should also seek to destroy Hezbollah’s tunnel infrastructure along its border.

The first question is whether the threat justifies action. The answer, in my opinion, is clear enough. Over the past 11 years, Hezbollah’s missile arsenal has become an unacceptable and ever-growing strategic threat to Israel. Whereas in 2006 Hezbollah’s missile arsenal numbered some 15,000 rockets, today it fields approximately 150,000.

In 2006, at the height of its missile offensive against Israel, Hezbollah lobbed some 120 missiles a day at Israeli territory. Today it can shoot some 1,000 to 1,200 missile a day at Israel.

And it isn’t only the quantity of missiles that make them an insufferable threat. It’s also their quality. Whereas in 2006 Hezbollah attacked Israel with imprecise projectiles with low payloads, today Hezbollah reportedly fields precision guided, long-range missiles like the Yakhont and Fatah-110.

The Yakhont missiles can imperil Israel’s interests in the Mediterranean, including its offshore natural gas installations. The Fatah-110s, with a range of some 300 kilometers, threaten metropolitan Tel Aviv and key military installations. Both missile types are capable of carrying payloads of hundreds of kilograms of explosives.

To be sure, in the 11 years since the Second Lebanon War Israel has also massively upgraded its military capabilities. Last week air force chief Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel said the force today can inflict a level of damage on Hezbollah in two days that it took it weeks to inflict in 2006.

The question is not whether Israel has the ability to respond to a Hezbollah assault. Given the lethality of Hezbollah’s arsenal, it would be reckless to assume that Israel can easily absorb an opening volley of missiles.

But battle losses aren’t the only consideration Israel needs to take into account. For instance, there is the US. How would the US respond to a war?

The 75,000 strong Mennonite Church-USA has joined a few other church organizations in voting to divest from companies “profiting from the occupation.” They seem rather proud of themselves for having chosen a “third way.”https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/the-mennonites-divest/

What this means in the resolution’s terms is that the Mennonites will admit complicity in anti-Semitism and also admit complicity in Israel’s activities in the West Bank. They will form committees to navel-gaze concerning the first problem and single out Israel for economic punishment to deal with the second.

What’s shocking about this resolution, which Church leaders boast is the work of two years of study, is that it treats anti-Semitism and Israel’s presence in the West Bank as equivalent crimes. The Mennonites will resolve to avoid both! Although the drafters of the resolution acknowledged that “Palestinians have turned to violence,” they have evidently done so only to “achieve security” and “seek their freedom.” In spite of the resolution’s hand-wringing concerning anti-Semitism, there is not a word about Palestinian anti-Semitism and the role it has played in frustrating peace efforts in the region.

Nor are these peace efforts the subject of any reflection in the resolution. As far as the drafters are concerned, the Israelis marched into the West Bank in 1967—who can say why?—and have doggedly continued there, even though they could easily withdraw. The resolution recognizes that Israelis “feel threatened” but not that they actually are threatened. Indeed, that Israelis feel threatened is treated as evidence that security walls and other measures Israelis have taken for their security have been useless. It is hard to believe that intelligent and well-meaning people justify serious actions on so flimsy a basis, as if the ongoing need for security suggests that one ought to lay down one’s arms. But the Mennonite Church takes no risk, so they can afford to be frivolous about serious matters.

Apart from singling out the Jewish state for singular punishment, the Mennonites are studiously neutral. Somehow in their years of study, they missed that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement endorsed in 2015 an “ongoing, youth-led Palestinian uprising” whose weapon of choice at that time was the knife. There can be no excuse for not knowing this and therefore no excuse for simply noting, concerning BDS that “there are vigorous critics of BDS who raise a range of concerns” as well as groups who “support BDS as a nonviolent alternative to violent liberation efforts.”

Of course, some of those critics point out that BDS has at best cheered on anti-Semitism. But the Mennonites, though they are in bed with BDS-supporting Jewish Voice for Peace, see no need to get to the bottom of it. Their affectation of neutrality here means that they simply don’t care about the consequences of working hand-in-glove with a movement that, while it claims to be nonviolent, iseffectively the propaganda wing of the violent “resistance.”

The Mennonites also studiously avoid taking a position on whether a majority Jewish state should exist at all. On the matter of a “two-state” or “one-state” solution—the latter of which means that Jews will be a minority everywhere in the world—that should be left up to “Israeli and Palestinian people.” Sure, the end of the Jewish state in the Middle East would leave Jews defenseless in a region teeming with anti-Semitism, but not to worry. The Mennonites have already “raised seed money and initiated plans for several conferences in the next biennium on topics including Mennonite involvement in the Holocaust and how we read scripture in light of the Holocaust.” They will make up for their blithe indifference to the fate of Jews today by conferencing, and maybe even shedding a few golden tears, about the fate of Jews last century.

The resolution has called “on Mennonites to cultivate relationships with Jewish representatives and bodies in the U.S.” I will leave it to knowers of the Torah to say whether we are required to associate with a small group of morally obtuse, self-righteous preeners. But if it were left up to me, I would tell them to go to hell.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

The protein that kills cancer cells. Professor Varda Shoshan-Barmatz of Israel’s Ben Gurion University has developed many new treatments to kill cancer cells by targeting the protein VDAC1 that controls cell death. A new Israeli biotech, Vidac, is trialing these treatments. VDA-1102 ointment for pre-skin cancer is in Phase 2.
https://aabgu.org/targeting-brain-cancer/ http://www.vidacpharma.com/pipeline-vidac-pharma

New treatment for Huntington’s disease. Israeli biotech Mitoconix Bio is developing a new treatment for Huntington’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. It works by inhibiting mitochondrial splitting. Mitochondria contribute to important brain functions, including regulation of cell growth.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startup-takes-aim-at-huntingtons-disease/
http://www.futurx.co.il/portfolio/mitoconix-bio/

Early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Suaad Abd-Elhadi has won a Kaye Innovation Award for a new tool to diagnose Parkinson’s disease. Her lipid ELISA detects the cellular secretion of the protein alpha-Synuclin, present in the pathways that Parkinson’s disease travels along.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/35134

Preventing epileptic attacks. (TY Nevet) Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Gurion University have discovered that high levels of a micro-RNA called miR-211 reduces the brain’s susceptibility to epileptic seizures. Therapeutics that increase miR-211 production can lead to new treatments for epileptics.
https://news.afhu.org/news/researchers-get-head-start-on-gene-that-protects-the-brain-from-epilepsy

Israel can wipe out Hep C. Israel’s Health Basket of treatments for Health funds includes protein and polymerase inhibitors that are effective in curing patients from Hepatitis C. The treatment costs $100,000 per patient, but that cost is reducing. Experts say that the treatment will wipe out the disease within a decade.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Oral-drugs-in-health-basket-can-wipe-out-hepatitis-C-in-a-decade-498392

The first medics course in sign language. I regularly include (see here) articles to show how important Israel regards sign language for communicating with the deaf and the hearing-impaired. Now United Hatzalah has organized Israel’s first-ever course to teach sign language skills to volunteer United Hatzalah medics.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Ashdod-hosts-nations-first-medics-course-given-in-sign-language-498346

“Respect” for MDA. The family of Sacha Baron Cohen (alias Ali G) has donated two medicycles, costing £15,000 each, to Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom. Daniella Baron Cohen dedicated them to her late husband Gerald (Sacha’s father). On the back of one of the vehicles is Ali G’s famous slogan “Respect!”.
http://mdauk.org/news/baron-cohen-dedicates-medicycles-to-mda-respect/

EMET prize for cancer research. Professor Zelig Eshhar of Israel’s Weizmann Institute and Professor Alexander Levitzki of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University shared the EMET Life Sciences award for their cancer research. Eshhar’s award was for his adaptive immunotherapy treatment; Levitski for his protein kinases inhibitors. http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Creating-a-better-generation-498393

Check you’re not dehydrated. Currently, dehydration can only be formally identified in hospital using blood tests or urinalysis. Now a non-invasive device from Israeli startup sZone can measure your hydrations levels at home or even whilst running. sZone is vital for athletes, the elderly, children, and the chronically ill.
http://trendlines.com/portfolio/szone/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/iuIU33acPfc?rel=0

Cured of tremors during Israel visit. Parkinson’s sufferer Yocheved Mintz was part of a group visit to Israel’s Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. One of Rambam’s doctors mentioned the hospital’s cutting-edge work on curing Parkinson’s patients of their tremors. Yocheved asked for the treatment, and now she is cured.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSRq63Bsc28

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman delivered a speech this week that made the ‎unbearably hot and humid weather feel like a breath of fresh air. At the annual Fourth of July ‎celebration, held Monday evening at his official residence in Herzliya, Friedman not only ‎reiterated his personal faith in Judaism and the Jewish people, but stressed America’s ‎‎”unbreakable bond” with the Jewish state.‎

The bond Friedman was referring to had become so fragile during former U.S. President Barack ‎Obama’s two terms in office that it became the punchline of a joke made in 2014 by comedian ‎Jay Leno. Obama, Leno quipped, knows just how unbreakable the U.S.-Israel bond is, “since ‎he’s been trying to break it for years.”‎

It was not only Friedman’s address that was crafted to convey the loud and clear message that ‎the new administration in Washington is going to behave differently — that it is and will continue ‎to be unequivocally and unflinchingly on Israel’s side. The fact that he was the first U.S. ‎ambassador to invite settler leaders to the event, and proudly pose for photographs with them, ‎already spoke volumes.‎

Friedman began by recounting that the first time he hosted a party in Israel was at the Western ‎Wall in Jerusalem, when he was 13. “As the son of a rabbi of modest means, I can assure you that ‎my bar mitzvah party bore absolutely no resemblance to the party that we are attending here ‎tonight,” he said. “But the spirit … is exactly the same. It is the spirit of patriotic Americans ‎committed to increasing the ties and enhancing the relationship between the United States and ‎the State of Israel. That’s what my family stood for 45 years ago, and that’s still who we are ‎today.” ‎

That right off the bat he boasted of his Jewish connection to the Western Wall in the context of ‎U.S.-Israel relations was highly significant. It signaled to those supporters of President Donald ‎Trump who became disillusioned by what appeared to be a backtracking of his vow to move the ‎U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that this is not a case of yet another administration ‎reneging on its promises in an attempt to appease the Palestinians and impose a peace deal on ‎Israel. It also indicated to Israel’s enemies that America recognizes Israeli sovereignty over its ‎capital city. ‎

Friedman went on to say, “It was just two months ago that I had the honor … to be the master of ‎ceremonies at the very first party ever hosted by the White House to commemorate Israel’s ‎Independence Day, [where] I had the privilege to proclaim, ‘yom haatzmaut sameach l’medinat ‎yisrael’ — ‘Happy Independence Day to the State of Israel.’ Today, it is my great pleasure to return ‎the favor from 6,000 miles away. And so let me proclaim, ‘yom haatzmaut sameach l’artzot ‎habrit,’ ‘Happy Independence Day to the United States.'” ‎

And then he quoted, in Hebrew, a line from Psalm 118 — “This is a day that the Lord has made; ‎let us [be glad and] rejoice in it” — to make a point about Israel’s being “the source of many of the ‎Judeo-Christian values that spawned the American enterprise.” He invoked the famous Puritan Pilgrim John Winthrop, who in 1963 “implored his followers to be faithful to the teachings of ‎the Jewish prophet, Micah, to ‘do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with thy God,'” and told ‎new immigrants to America that if they did so, they would “find that the God of Israel is among ‎us.” ‎

He said that when Winthrop “referred to New England as a ‘city upon a hill with the eyes of all ‎people upon us,” he was also referring to Jerusalem. Indeed, Friedman added, “So much of who ‎we are derives from the teachings of ancient Israel. And, perhaps for that reason, it is no surprise ‎that the United States and Israel have the most special of special relationships.”‎

Here, again, Friedman purposely spoke of Jerusalem, emphasizing that the success and mutual ‎admiration that America and the Jewish state enjoy emanate from “ancient Israel.”‎

‎”We have, of course, common enemies that unite us,” he said — as well as military, trade, culture ‎and cybersecurity cooperation. “But our collective core, what fundamentally unites us, is that we ‎are the two shining cities on a hill, drawn together by a shared history, shared values and … a ‎shared destiny of continued greatness.”‎

Last week marked one year since 13-year-old Hallel Ariel was stabbed to death by an Arab terrorist while she slept in her bedroom. Hallel’s parents, Amichai and Rina, marked the date of their daughter’s murder by ascending the Temple Mount, along with many other Jews, including two Knesset members (who accompanied the family to the Temple Mount entrance but were prohibited by the Israeli government from entering due to the Arabs considering Jewish Knesset members on the Temple Mount as incitement.)

Besides being a beautiful memorial to Hallel, the Jewish gathering on the Temple Mount was momentous for other reasons. According to The Temple Institute, an activist group for non-Muslim rights on the Temple Mount, the Israeli police, who accompanied the Ariels and posed for pictures with them, showed great respect to the Jewish group and even allowed members of the group to pray quietly, to make blessings, and to use a microphone. This was a break from the police’s modus operandi. For the past several years, such actions, including Jews moving their lips in what appeared to be prayer, have resulted in the arrest of Jews due to Arabs considering such acts provocative.

Also, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, who accompanied the group, was not only allowed to ascend the Temple Mount, but also to speak to the group. Rabbi Ariel was one of the paratroopers who liberated the Mount during the Six-Day War. On a previous visit to the Temple Mount, he was arrested and temporarily banned for allegedly bowing down and for saying a prayer and blessing out loud commemorating his fallen comrades.

While many consider it a positive advancement of inclusion that the Jews were allowed to congregate, pray, and speak blessings while on the Temple Mount, the Palestinian Authority did not. Because the Israeli police closed the Temple Mount to Muslims during the memorial for Hallel, the P.A. responded by stating that the closure was “an inhuman and immoral act … incompatible with human and moral values.” The P.A. also complained that the closure was in violation of international law. Never mind that the Temple Mount was closed to Jews for nine days recently during Ramadan and that Jews have limited access to the Temple Mount or have no access at all on a regular basis.

The P.A. implored the international community to “take immediate action and deterrent measures to stop the occupation regime and prevent them from continuing to commit further crimes against our people and to harm the holy sites of Islam and Christianity.”