RUTHFULLY YOURS

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A report on Israel’s ynet (Hebrew)—drawing on a report in Asharq al-Awsat, an Arabic newspaper published in London—cites Hamas members both inside and outside Gaza who say the organization’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, is updated all the time on the ongoing Gaza war.

“[Sinwar’s] ability to stay hidden, alongside Israel’s inability to reach him, does not mean he lacks communication with [other Hamas leaders]”—including those outside of Gaza, primarily in Qatar.

Sinwar “remains updated especially on the negotiations [for a hostage deal], and looks into every initiative, ponders it, and gives his judgment.” 

The Hamas members further told the paper that only “a very small circle knows [Sinwar’s] location. No more than two or three people who provide for his needs and handle his communication with other [Hamas] leaders.”

Is it true, as widely speculated, that Sinwar has surrounded himself with Israeli hostages to keep himself safe? Is Israel’s failure to reach him due to concerns about those hostages, or to the fact that the Israeli (and American? British?) intelligence agencies have lost sight of his whereabouts?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20738/hamas-crimes-western-media

The Palestinian Authority and other Arab governments have been reminded in recent days of the reasons why entering the Gaza Strip after the war would be risky, if not impossible…

According to reports from the Gaza Strip, Hamas has murdered a number of Palestinians who it believed had indicated willingness to be part of a new government that would replace the terrorist group after the war.

Hamas, apparently, does not want food or medication to reach the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, particularly not via Israeli border crossings. This situation is most likely caused by Hamas’s desire to prolong and aggravate the suffering of the Palestinians and create a “famine” so it can place the blame on Israel.

“Why is the media ignoring what is going on in central and southern Gaza? Hamas is assassinating Gazans, particularly tribe leaders, in order to deter anyone other than Hamas from delivering humanitarian relief and participating in Gaza.” — Hamza Howidy, Palestinian social media influencer from the Gaza Strip, x.com, June 26, 2024.

Until the international community – and particularly the Biden administration – fully support Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas, unfortunately there can be no real discussion of “the day after” in the Gaza Strip.

Israel… will not be the only party to benefit from Hamas’s demise. A large number of Arabs and Muslims who oppose Hamas and other Iran-backed Islamist groups will also benefit, even though it is “politically incorrect” and immensely dangerous to say so.

In reality, those advocating for a “ceasefire” are asking for Hamas to be allowed to continue ruling the Gaza Strip, rearming, and gearing up to attack Israel — in their words, “again and again.”

A ceasefire will only ignite an immediate increase in terrorist attacks against Israel. Worse, Islamists worldwide will be incentivized to launch attacks not only against Israel but also against Europe. Islamists have already attacked US troops in the Middle East more than 150 times in the region since Oct 7.

By exposing the crimes of Hamas against its own people and raising awareness of these threats — instead of helping the terrorists cover them up — the international media can actually help to protect their own countries against steadily increasing terrorism. At the moment, terrorists over the world can only see their efforts as victorious, glorified and rewarded.

https://www.jns.org/has-israels-security-apparatus-learned-nothing-from-oct-7/

If Mohammed Abu Salmiya hadn’t filmed a couple of hate-filled videos upon his triumphant return to Gaza on Monday morning, the Shifa Hospital director’s release from Israeli incarceration would have remained under the radar.

But Abu Salmiya, one of some 50 Palestinian detainees let out of the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel and whisked back to the terrorist enclave from whence they came, was proud to highlight his ordeal.

t’s lucky he did. Otherwise, the fact that he’s now back in the business of using his illustrious license and position to store weapons and abuse hostages would have escaped notice—not only of the Israeli public, but of the very government that’s supposed to have learned a lesson or two on and since Oct. 7.

In his clips, Abu Salmiya failed to mention his own key role in Hamas’s atrocities, which involved aiding and abetting the perpetrators of the massacre and mass abductions. This isn’t mere speculation; all evidence of Shifa operations is fully documented, with footage, photos and Israel Security Agency Interrogations galore.

Naturally, this didn’t stop the Shifa chief, who was arrested in November, from accusing the “enemy” of criminal behavior toward the “hundreds of doctors, nurses and medical technicians” in Israeli prisons. Nor did it prevent him from encouraging the “resistance” to fight to free all Palestinian terrorists—or from having the nerve to call on human-rights organizations to visit them and see the “tragic” conditions under which they’re being held.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/r-i-p-to-a-fateful-metaphor-for-bidens-incompetence/

As Joe Biden’s campaign collapses, so, too, does the misguided Gaza pier.

As Joe Biden’s campaign collapses with all the force of a Red Giant star, there may not be much of a market out there for imploding-campaign metaphors. But for those of you whose demand for analogies along those lines is nigh insatiable, here’s hoping you didn’t miss the final days of the president’s ill-conceived Gaza pier.

Last Friday, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh revealed that Biden’s brainchild — a temporary dock extending from the Gaza coast into the Mediterranean, from which humanitarian assistance could be dispersed to local Palestinians — was defunct. “As we always said with the pier, it is meant to be temporary,” she said. “When the commander decides that it’s the right time to re-install that pier, we’ll keep you updated on that.”

Singh added that the pier was never going to be a “long-term solution or solve for land routes,” which is “the most effective way” into the Strip. But that was the point of the pier as a political argument. It was designed to embarrass the Israelis for failing to distribute humanitarian aid (716,000 tons and counting) to the Strip to the administration’s satisfaction. The Israelis did not publicly object to the slight, in part because it would further imperil Jerusalem’s relationship with the Biden White House and because it would make little sense to object to the administration’s offer to relieve the humanitarian burdens on the IDF. But the lack of a defined and achievable mission ensured that the pier would have to remain in operation indefinitely — at least, until the close of combat operations in the Strip.

The Biden White House surely didn’t intend for the pier to remain in service forever, but nor could they have possibly set out to engineer an embarrassment for themselves.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

If you want to be depressed by stories about violence, tragedies, and lies about Israel, there are many websites you can link to and email groups you can join.  But if you want the truth about the positive achievements of the only Jewish State, then Read It Here! Michael Ordman

Could not say it better! rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
Israel’s largest flag. (TY Yanky) 50 meters above Moshav Netiv HaAsara flies is probably the biggest flag in Israel at 17 meters wide and 12 meters tall. It is visible from Gaza, as a symbol of defiance to the Hamas terrorists who tried to overrun the Moshav on Oct 7.  https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/hyuhfkwl0
 
CAM-supported volunteers honored.  Members of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) received Presidential Volunteer Medals in Jerusalem for helping those impacted by Oct 7. They included Yahaloma Zechut (Ofakim Resilience Center), Racheli Tadesa Malkai (Ethiopians), and Wahid Alhuzeil (Bedouins).
https://www.jns.org/herzog-honors-cam-supported-volunteers-for-post-oct-7-response/
 
Volunteers learn resilience. Some 100 US college students just completed the Jewish National Fund-USA’s “Alternative Break” week, supporting families in southern Israel impacted by the Oct 7 attacks. They repaired houses, worked on farms, and made food packages for IDF soldiers and admired the spirit of all the Israelis.
https://www.jns.org/wire/college-students-volunteer-in-israel-on-alternative-break/
 
Cooking for soldiers. (TY Yanky) Yehudit and a group of volunteers make Shabbat food for IDF soldiers. An online order mix-up resulted in a donation to pay for the food. She blogged the story and got more donations. Soldiers love it when she brings the food to the bases. They are hungry for home cooking.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-jewish-mothers-way-to-the-soldiers-stomachs/
 
How does a comedian deal with Oct 7? (TY UWI) Israeli standup comedian Modi was flying to Paris on Oct 7 to perform to European audiences. In this interview on Israeli Internet TV channel I24 he relates how Jewish humor can give respite in times of crisis.  (see also Seinfeld below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5wMmT0yygo
 
IDF rescue tortured Gazan donkey. The IDF found a donkey in Gaza that had been tortured and tied up and released it. Earlier in the war, the IDF rescued dogs, cats and exotic birds (see here previously). They even took care of a neglected lion from a Gazan Zoo.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-idf-rescues-tortured-tied-up-donkey/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Taking research to heart. As cells age, they stop dividing. Our immune system removes them, but they build up as we age. Scientists say that all these “senescence cells” must be removed to prevent aging, but scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have discovered that those formed after heart injury are needed, to protect the heart.
https://www.israel21c.org/cellular-aging-mechanism-may-actually-heal-hearts/  
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-024-00493-1
 
Candida gets the blue-light treatment. Israel’s Zero Candida has developed a device to treat candidiasis – an infection that affects hundreds of millions of women per year worldwide. It uses high-energy blue light to destroy the fungus quickly and without side effects. The device has been patented in South Africa!
https://nocamels.com/2024/06/israeli-femtech-startup-patents-candida-treatment-in-south-africa/
https://zero-candida.com/
 
Cancer immunotherapy clinical trials. Israel’s Biond Biologics (see here previously) has begun multi-center trials of BND-35. It is already trialing BND-22. Both are immunotherapy treatments for solid tumors.
 https://nocamels.com/2024/06/novel-cancer-immunotherapy-drug-given-to-first-patient-in-trial/
https://www.biondbio.com/clinical-trials/
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06274437?term=BND-35&rank=1
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04717375?term=BND-22&rank=1
 
Shining light on pancreatic cancer. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to illuminate previously undetectable pancreatic tumors. They injected deuterium-enriched glucose into the bloodstream. The tumors eat the glucose and excrete lactate that MRIs can reveal.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/392102
 
Med-tech and fast response saves mother’s life. After giving birth to her second child in Israel, Nofer’s vital signs plummeted. Her midwife alerted emergency teams who found multiple blood clots and a heart defect. A cardiologist then used advanced ultrasound technology and minimally invasive surgery to save Nofer’s life.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-midwifes-quick-thinking-saves-mothers-life/
 
The youngest doctor? Doron (31) was only 25 years-old when he received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Technion in 2018. Today he is a fourth-year Technion medical student and intends to combine his expertise in mathematics with medicine to help people with mental illness. As a child, Doron “operated” on his toy animals.
https://ats.org/our-impact/doron-elad-the-young-technion-scholar-on-a-mission-for-answers/
 
Kidney exchanges save lives. (TY Nevet) Israeli Ronit and a kidney transplant recipient in Czechia (Czech Republic) underwent a kidney exchange thanks to Israel’s National Transplant Center. Ronit’s friend Yair donated his kidney to the Czech recipient, whose wife donated her kidney to Ronit. https://www.jpost.com/international/article-804396
https://www.gov.il/en/departments/units/transplant_center/govil-landing-page

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/

This may come as some surprise, but only three per cent of the residents of Rafah, in Gaza, were poorly fed in May, according to the United Nations. In Khan Yunis and the central town of Deir al Balah, that figure stood at six per cent. The biggest challenges were faced by those who had failed to evacuate from the north at the start of the campaign. There, 13 per cent were found to be hungry. The overwhelming majority of Gazans had “acceptable” quantities of food.

Now consider the situation before Hamas brought catastrophe to Gaza. Despite billions of dollars of aid money pouring into the Strip, 14 per cent of the population faced hunger in 2022, according to a contemporaneous study by the World Food Programme. So it appears that provisions are better now than they were when Hamas was in charge.

Not that you’d know it from the reporting. In its analysis, the UN grudgingly concluded that it was “unable to endorse” the classification made by the likes of the head of the World Food Programme, who had claimed that Gaza had entered a “full-blown famine”. Was there an apology? Nope. The new line, spun by the UN and amplified by the BBC and fellow travellers, was that Gazans faced “catastrophic levels” of hunger.

Without wishing to minimise the deprivations of war, here was an object lesson in propaganda in the age of mass media. 

Step eagerly forward the Guardian, which on Tuesday published an article headlined “The starvation of Gaza is a perverse repudiation of Judaism’s values”. The author, John Oakes, is a radical American intellectual, whose authority appears to rest on his book about the history of fasting. Whether he knows anything about the conflict or Judaism, or has ever met anybody from Gaza, is unclear. According to his website, his second book will be about the nature of intelligence.

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Daniel Hagari, spokesperson of the Israel Defense Forces, recently created a flap when he said that “Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party. It’s rooted in the hearts of the people—whoever thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.”

Hagari added that Hamas would remain in control in Gaza unless Israel “develops something else to replace it.” 

The statement was widely cast as an admission that Israel was not really winning, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office to reply that the Israeli security cabinet “has defined as one of the war goals the destruction of Hamas’s military and governance capabilities…. The Israel Defense Forces is of course committed to this.”

It was a sensible rejoinder, implying that Israel did not actually aspire to vaporize Hamas from the face of the earth, but to break it as an effective military and political force.

Indeed, Nazi Germany was defeated, but almost 80 years since the war ended Nazism certainly still exists as an idea, as do a plethora of neo-Nazi organizations. ISIS was militarily devastated in Iraq and Syria, but still exists not only as an idea but as a terror group that in 2024 has inflicted mass-casualty attacks in Russia and elsewhere. Both entities were defeated but not annihilated.

https://www.jns.org/west-wing-worry-about-bibis-upcoming-speech/

An article published in Politico on Saturday claims that the administration in Washington is worried about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address next month to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

The reason for the anxiety—say the outlet’s White House bureau chief, Jonathan Lemire, and national-security reporter Alexander Ward, citing “senior officials” whom they “granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal deliberations”—is that “no one knows what he is going to say.”

According to the authors and their nameless contacts, the White House fears that Bibi might take the opportunity of the podium on Capitol Hill to (gasp!) criticize President Joe Biden for not sufficiently supporting Israel’s war effort.

Terrifying indeed.

That ship sailed, of course, as the piece makes sure to stress by referring to Netanyahu’s by-now infamous video urging Biden not to uphold arms shipments—you know, the ammo needed for an Israel Defense Forces victory over Hamas. Naturally, no mention of the Israeli premier’s invoking Winston Churchill’s 1941 request of Franklin Roosevelt to give Britain the tools to “finish the job” against Nazi Germany.

Calling the clip “unhelpful,” the op-ed disguised as a news story quotes one of the unspecified inner-circle denizens as saying that Bibi could make things “far worse up there in front of Congress.”

The clarification for those curious about what this actually means is void of information, but rife with partisan speculation.

“Frictions have deepened between Biden and Netanyahu since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, with Biden aides increasingly believing that the Israeli leader is prolonging the conflict to stay in power,” it asserts. “And that he would prefer Donald Trump return to the White House.”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/23/hamas-is-the-enemy-of-the-palestinian-people/

On 7 October last year, Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. Despite this demonstration of anti-Semitic barbarism, many Western anti-Israel activists continue to see Hamas as some sort of ‘resistance’ movement, fighting for Palestinian nationhood.

This view couldn’t be more wrong. As Italian journalist Paola Caridi shows in her largely sympathetic account of the group, Hamas: From Resistance to Government (originally published in 2009 but updated last year), Hamas is not and never has been a national-independence movement. It is above all an intransigent, religious movement set on the destruction of Israel.

The exhaustion of Palestinian nationalism

To get to grips with the nature and development of Hamas, it’s important to understand the broader historical background. The central problem here for Palestinians and Israelis is that their national aspirations are irreconcilable.

Israel was founded in 1948, after Jewish people revolted against Palestine’s British rulers. (With a mandate from the League of Nations, the British took over from the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled Palestine for over four centuries, at the end of the First World War.) During the 1920s and especially the 1930s, Palestine’s indigenous Jewish population was supplemented by refugees from Eastern Europe and later Nazi Germany. This growing and increasingly restive populace rebelled against British occupation, just as neighbouring Iraqis did in the 1920s and 1940s, and Egyptians did in the late 1910s and early 1920s. In doing so, these rebellions laid claim to new nations, which claimed descent from ancient civilisations.

Many Arabs, caught in the crossfire of the often violent Jewish struggle for an Israeli state in the late 1940s, fled to the neighbouring territories of the Egyptian-governed Gaza Strip and the Jordanian West Bank. In 1967, Israel defeated the Arab coalition of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Six-Day War. Through this war, Israel conquered the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, complete with their Arab populations. These became the ‘occupied territories’.

As the Six-Day War demonstrated, the Arab world refused to accept Israel’s existence. Arab nations took Israel as an affront to their own independence. Yasser Arafat, born to Palestinian parents in Cairo in 1929, co-founded the paramilitary organisation, Fatah, in the late 1950s. Its object was to fight for a Palestinian state. In 1967, Fatah joined and became the dominant faction in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which was then a national-independence movement. Arafat became PLO leader in 1969.

Israel’s leaders always understood that the national aspirations of Palestinians were irreconcilable with the existence of Israel. Hence, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir insisted in a 1976 New York Times op-ed that there were no ‘Palestinians’, only Arabs, living in Egypt, Jordan and Israel itself.