RUTHFULLY YOURS

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Protein protects brain against DNA damage. (TY Eli) Scientists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have discovered that the protein SIRT6 is key to repairing DNA damage that causes neurodegenerative brain diseases. SIRT6 was almost completely absent in Alzheimer’s disease patients. http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Israeli-scientists-find-likely-cause-of-neurodegenerative-diseases-490134
http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247(17)30325-X

New understanding about Parkinson’s. Researchers from Israel’s Technion and Harvard have a new theory on how Parkinson’s disease develops. The responsible toxic protein alpha-synuclein doesn’t spread like an infection but accumulates throughout the body. It could change the way the neurological disease is treated.
https://www.israel21c.org/harvard-technion-study-suggests-new-parkinsons-theory/
http://www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/abstract/S0166-2236(16)30145-X

Removing lung tumors using AR. Israel’s Body Vision Medical has integrated CT scans with X-rays to help surgeons remove small, early-stage lung-cancer tumors. Pre-surgery 3D CT images are overlaid with 2D X-ray images during the operation to produce high-resolution Augmented Reality maps of the tumors in real-time.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-body-vision-maps-lung-cancer-1001187492
http://www.bodyvisionmedical.com/

Easier removal of colon polyps. Israel’s Tandem Technologies has developed Tandem Snare – a device for precise removal and retrieval of polyps in the colon. Tandem’s CEO Noam Hassidov described the device on ILTV. https://www.youtube.com/embed#3IRkVWCVwYA?rel=0
http://trendlines.com/portfolio/tandem-technologies/

Safe stitches. I reported previously (Jan 29) about Israel’s Gordian Surgical and its safe suturing (stitching) system to assist minimally-invasive surgery. Gordian’s Doni Mayerfield was interviewed recently on ILTV.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/bzD2DDuXGPI?rel=0

Another cure for pelvic prolapse. Israel’s Escala Medical has developed what it describes as “the only non-surgical, incision-free 20-minute solution for patients suffering pelvic prolapse.” It is targeting FDA approval by the end of 2017. (I reported on a similar solution previously.)
https://www.israel21c.org/first-ever-incision-free-fix-for-pelvic-organ-prolapse/
https://www.youtube.com/embed/r_livY0vlIQ?rel=0 http://trendlines.com/portfolio/escala-medical/

Cartilage regeneration aims for FDA approval. Israeli bone regeneration biotech CartiHeal has raised $18.3 million to fund a trial that will help it achieve US FDA approval for its cartilage regeneration technology. CartiHeal already has CE (European) marketing approval.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israel-bone-regeneration-co-cartiheal-raises-183m-1001187527

Cancer biotech launches on NASDAQ. Israel’s UroGen has three treatments for the treatment of cancers of the urinary system (bladder and kidneys). It has just raised $58.2 million on NASDAQ. UroGen’s MitoGel treatment for Upper Tract Urothelial Carcinoma has received Orphan status from the US FDA.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-urogen-pharma-raises-582m-in-nasdaq-ipo-1001187475
https://www.youtube.com/embed/6aBvLhlUxh0?rel=0

UK medical magazine publicizes Israeli achievements. Newsletter readers may remember (Oct 2014) when UK Lancet editor Professor Richard Horton visited Rambam hospital after writing an anti-Israel article. In his latest publication, Horton has made a complete turnaround, publishing 15 positive Israeli medical articles.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4959260,00.html
http://www.thelancet.com/series/health-in-israel

Israel’s first “green” hospital. (TY Eli) Jerusalem’s Herzog Medical Center, Israel’s foremost center for geriatric, respiratory, mental health and psycho-trauma treatment, is opening Israel’s first environmentally-friendly pavilion. The 270-bed 8-floor facility includes a 200-bed underground emergency hospital.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4958694,00.html

Personalized cancer treatment. Israel’s GeneSort detects specific genetic mutations linked to various types of cancer. Oncologists can then adapt treatments to the patient’s specific genetic mutations, dramatically improving outcomes. GeneSort has just been acquired by Hong Kong investment fund AID Partners for $23 million. http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-aid-partners-buys-israels-genesort-for-23m-1001187888
https://www.genesort.com/about-us

Iraqi boy gets bovine heart valve. Israeli surgeon Sagi Assa from Save A Child’s Heart worked together with his former mentor Dr Stephan Schubert from Germany to implant an artificial heart valve into 11-year-old Iraqi-Kurdish boy Marwan Ghazi Ali. The valve was made from the jugular vein of an Australian cow.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/German-and-Israeli-doctors-partner-on-Iraqi-childs-heart-surgery-490163

As part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority on May 22-23, he will meet with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem. It will be the second time this month that the two leaders will have sat down to discuss the impasse in the peace process; the first took place at the White House just over a week ago.

During their chat in Washington, Abbas fed Trump his usual lies. Among these was the claim that Palestinian children are raised to be tolerant and peace-loving. That the U.S. president did not burst out laughing at this absurdity is more a function of his being new on the job than having good manners. It is also probably due to his belief that he will be able to apply the “art of the deal” to the Israeli-Palestinian context and broker a successful agreement.

Trump will soon learn, however, that his methods will not work. Even a business deal cannot be forged when the true aim of one side is failure. Indeed, it is precisely the lack of Palestinian statehood that has been Abbas’ meal ticket internationally — and the only thing that has kept him the least bit relevant at home. Well, that and cultivating, honoring and paying the salaries of terrorists.

In fact, as Palestinian Media Watch revealed on Wednesday, while Abbas was sitting in the Oval Office, his Fatah faction was openly lauding suicide bombers and other murderers of Jews.

On its official Facebook page on May 3, Abbas’ faction Fatah sent “blessings” to 12 of the “heroic prisoners” currently staging an open-ended hunger strike in a number of Israeli prisons. According to PMW, these included Abbas Al-Sayid, mastermind of the infamous suicide bombing at a Passover Seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya, and Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences for orchestrating several deadly attacks. Incidentally, being incarcerated did not prevent Barghouti from being re-elected to the PA parliament from jail. On the contrary, it made him even more popular.

There is nothing novel about the glorification of terrorists in the PA or about the hypocrisy of killers like Barghouti. Nor is it new for an American administration to fantasize about finding the magic formula for striking peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But it is interesting that Abbas reportedly requested of Trump that the starting point of any new talks be based on the parameters of his negotiations with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. He also was said to have presented the U.S. president with maps and other documents related to Olmert’s offer, which involved a nearly complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem. It was an offer — as Abbas acknowledged for the first time in an interview with Israel’s Channel 10 in 2015 — which he then flatly refused.

During the interview, which appeared in a three-part series about the peace talks between PLO chief Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000 and those between Abbas and Olmert eight years later, Abbas made the preposterous statement that one of the reasons he rejected the deal was because he didn’t understand Olmert’s map. Apparently, he has been boning up on his cartography ahead of the next round of bad-faith negotiations that will be marked by and culminate in Palestinian violence.

In private conversations over the past week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has complained bitterly about American Jewish billionaire Ronald Lauder. According to media reports, Lauder played a key role in convincing US President Donald Trump that he can reach “the ultimate deal” with the PLO and Israel.

Netanyahu is surely right that Lauder shouldn’t be acting like he knows what’s good for Israel better than the Israeli government does. He doesn’t know better than Israel’s leaders. And no one elected him.

But Netanyahu is wrong about Lauder’s responsibility for the president’s sudden decision to start singing from Barack Obama’s hymnal on everything related to Israel and the PLO .

Lauder is far from the only member of the PLO ’s booster club.

First of all, there is the American foreign policy establishment.

After 23 years of successive administrations upholding the fantasy that all the Middle East’s problems will be resolved the minute Israel hands over Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the PLO, it’s hard to find any establishment types who aren’t completely committed to the delusion that the PLO is the answer to America’s prayers.

Then there is the Israeli establishment. To understand its power, we need to consider the status of the Taylor Force Act.

The Taylor Force Act is a popular pro-Israel bill now being deliberated in Congress. If it passes, the US will be barred from transferring funds to the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority so long as the PA pays salaries to convicted terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons and pays pensions to the families of terrorists killed while committing terrorist acts.

The bill, named for Taylor Force, a former US military officer murdered by a Palestinian terrorists in Tel Aviv in 2015, enjoys majority support in both houses. Nonetheless, it has hit an iceberg.

On Wednesday The Jerusalem Post reported that neither AIPAC nor the Israeli government support it.

AIPAC reportedly won’t lobby for the bill because it lacks support from Democratic lawmakers. This claim is ridiculous on its face.

If AIPAC can’t get Democrats to support a bill ending US funding of terrorism, then AIPAC might as well close its doors right now.

As for the government, it is far from clear how the government could be more supportive. Netanyahu has spoken publicly in favor of the bill.

So if Netanyahu supports it, which Israeli government opposes it?

There is no shortage of critics of Israel. Some are antisemites who conspire to destroy the Jewish state. Others have legitimate concerns about particular Israeli government policies. When does criticism or condemnation of Israel become antisemitic? At what point does the condemnation of Israel cross the boundary into antisemitism?

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS)

Omar Barghouti, founding member of The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) that initiated BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), and a graduate of Tel Aviv University, claims that “Israel and its lobby groups often invoke the smear of anti-Semitism, despite the unequivocal, consistent position of the movement against all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. This unfounded allegation is intended to intimidate into silence those who criticize Israel and to conflate such criticism with anti-Jewish racism.”1

After hearing Barghouthi speak at UCLA, Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, the long-time executive director of UCLA Hillel and a renowned left-wing activist, said “BDS is poison and Omar Barghouti [a co-founder of the BDS movement] is a classic anti-Semite.” He found “no articulated aspiration for peace, only a negative desire to destroy the very foundation of the State of Israel. This is just recycled Palestinian rhetoric about the pursuit of justice in the mouth of a sophisticated, smart, Israeli-educated and wily ideologue.” When he uses the term “Justice,” it is merely “a political code word for no compromise. And everyone knows that any peaceful outcome is contingent on mutual compromise.”

Seidler-Feller considered Barghouti’s denial of Jewish peoplehood particularly egregious. Usurping the right of Jews to define who they are “is an aggressive act of denying Jews the fundamental right of self-definition. It constitutes a delegitimization of my being and of my identity as a Jew.” 2

A Unique Challenge

Nathan Sharansky, once a dissident in the former Soviet Union, sees these new attacks against Israel as posing a special challenge. Traditional antisemitism threatened the Jewish people or the Jewish religion. Individual Jews were denied the right “to live as equal members in a society. The new anti-Jewishness denies the right of Jewish people to live as equal members in the family of nations…. All that has happened is that we’ve moved from discrimination against the Jews as individuals to the discrimination against the Jews as a people.” Antisemitism, directed at the Jewish state, hides behind a façade of legitimate criticism that is more difficult to expose. 3

Definition of Antisemitism

The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at Tel-Aviv University suggests several criteria to distinguish between reasonable condemnation of Israel and antisemitic assaults.

Congressional Israel Victory Caucus’ launch by Republicans reinforces support for Israel
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/27/congressional-israel-victory-caucus-launch-by-repu/
By Valerie Richardson – The Washington Times – Thursday, April 27, 2017

Republicans fortified their growing bond with Israel by launching Thursday the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, a coalition aimed at promoting widespread recognition of the Jewish state’s right to exist as a predicate to peace.

“We founded this caucus primarily on one single irrefutable principle, and that is first and foremost, Israel has a fundamental right to exist and defend herself. And that is not negotiable,” said Rep. Bill Johnson, Ohio Republican, who chairs the caucus with Rep. Ron DeSantis, Florida Republican.

No Democratic lawmaker spoke at the press conference to unveil the caucus, which comes with President Trump championing Israel after eight years of strained relations under the Obama administration.

Mr. DeSantis is the chairman of the House subcommittee on national security, which oversees U.S. embassies. He cited reports that Mr. Trump is in discussions to visit Israel on May 22, and predicted that the president at that time would announce the relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. (Palestinians have claimed Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.)

Mr. DeSantis, who toured in March possible relocation sites for the U.S. Embassy in Israel, noted that such a trip would coincide with the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem Day, which marks the reunification of the city after the Six-Day War in 1967.

“I think it will send a powerful signal not only about the U.S.-Israel relationship — that we’re back and stronger than ever — but I think that will send a signal to other countries in the rest of the world that America is back, we’re going to stand by our allies, and that we’re not going to let folks cow us into not doing the right thing,” Mr. DeSantis said.