RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to the OECD definition of the “poverty line,” you can make everyone fabulously rich while keeping them all as poor as before. But you can eliminate poverty by reducing them all to starvation levels.

Assume that large differences between OECD countries in alleged “child poverty” may, nevertheless, have some significance. The consequence of this assumption, however, is that Israel is doing better than numerous other OECD countries when the uniquely high fertility rate in Israel is taken into account.

It was a real achievement to raise the employment rate of single mothers from 66% to 81%. To insist that nothing has changed because the same proportion of such families remains below the so-called poverty line is both wrongheaded and could discourage attempts to improve the situation further.

It is sometimes thought to be paradoxical that Israel features so highly in the “World Happiness Reports” – at 11th place out of 157 countries in the latest report. There is no paradox if such factors as joy over having children and pride at being in work outweigh artificially defined poverty.

Israel joined the “Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development” (OECD) on September 7, 2010. Since then, Israel has featured in the OECD’s annual reports. Every year we are told that “Israel’s poverty rates are highest among OECD nations,” as again in 2016. Especially bewailed are figures about “the proportion of children living in families below the poverty line.”

There are, of course, poor families in Israel. Any social worker dealing with families can name some. The question is whether the OECD reports provide information that can serve to deal with such poverty as exists. The answer is negative because OECD “poverty lines” are falsely construed as measures of poverty. They define, instead, something quite distinct from poverty: income disparity.

This absurd discrepancy is revealed in a little Wikipedia article on “Measuring Poverty,” where we are told:

“The main poverty line used in the OECD and the European Union is a relative poverty measure based on ‘economic distance,’ a level of income usually set at 60% of the median household income.”

To be exact, the OECD sets the level at 50%. In one place, its website states:

“The poverty rate is the ratio of the number of people (in a given age group) whose income falls below the poverty line; taken as half the median household income of the total population.”

The so-called “Two-State Solution” has been touted for years as the only way to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But time has shown it’s just a land-grab by Israel’s enemies.

The so-called “Two-State Solution” has been touted for many years by Israel’s enemies as the only way to achieve peace. The fundamentals of this “solution” consist of the creation of two new countries. One would comprise the “West Bank,” historically known as Judea and Samaria, and be populated and governed solely by Arabs. As in other Arab countries, Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims would be unwelcome.

The other “country” would comprise the area now known as Israel, but would be open to the return of millions of Arabs as citizens. These “returnees” would include all Arabs who could show any relation to those living in the ill-defined region known as “Palestine” prior to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

This, in effect, would mean Israel would have to open its borders to all Arabs in the Levant. The idea of a Jewish homeland would disappear. A nation populated and governed by Arabs would take its place.

The nation of Israel came into existence after a protracted 30-year struggle, beginning with Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration, guaranteeing a Jewish homeland within its protectorate. It culminated with a decisive vote in the United Nations in 1947, the same year Pakistan was created as a home for Indian Muslims (the size of the new Jewish State decreased over the intervening years to about 20 percent of that originally proposed in 1918.)

In the 70 years following that vote, Israel has been subjected to three major conflicts, all instigated by its Arab neighbors. The first, the War of Independence, began right after its birth on May 15, 1948 with a coordinated attack by forces from Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt. Few people at that time gave the tiny Jewish nation any chance for survival. Yet thanks to financial and military aid, but not troops, from the United States, it did survive and prosper, miraculously turning a patch of desert with virtually no natural resources into a thriving, productive democracy, home not only to Jews but to Arabs and Christians as well.

The second major conflict was the so-called “Six-Day War,” brought on by troops from Egypt and Syria massed on Israel’s border in early June, 1967. Thanks to a brilliant preemptive strike, Israel was able to survive. Further, because of Jordan’s poorly thought-out attack on West Jerusalem, attempting to wrest control of the Jewish sector, Israel was able to gain control over the whole city and its environs. It also captured the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria, giving it some measure of protection from future attacks.

The notion that the Israeli pilot is the only one who has any responsibility for the child’s death is simply false. A lot of bad choices were made — by Palestinians — prior to the death of the young child and Atef Abu Saif knows it; he just can’t — or will not — address these choices, at least not in this text.

The reality that Saif will not confront in his book [The Drone Eats With Me] is that Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, bears a huge measure of responsibility for the suffering he documents. Hamas has repeatedly started wars that it cannot win against a country that cannot afford to lose.

During these conflicts, it has launched rockets from schoolyards and has used hospitals as command centers for its leaders, putting civilians on both sides of the conflict at risk. When children are killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza, Hamas puts their bodies on display to demonize Israel, and writers such as Saif assist in this tactic.

During the war in 2008–2009, Hamas… used cement and other building materials allowed into the Gaza Strip—ostensibly for the benefit of Palestinian civilians—in order to construct tunnels that could penetrate Israel and serve as a means to kidnap Israeli soldiers and civilians.

During its 2012 fight with Israel, Hamas leaders declared that killing Jews is a religious obligation. Hamas promotes a genocidal organization that seeks Israel’s destruction and yet Saif does not speak a word about this lethal ideology or actions before or during the 2014 war.

Honesty requires that the deaths of these Palestinian children serve to drive — not obstruct — the conversation toward Palestinian abilities and responsibility.

On and on he goes in an emotionally powerful but intellectually dishonest lament. Saif simply cannot come to grips with the responsibility Palestinian leaders have for the suffering in the areas they govern.

This is exactly what Saif’s condescending patrons and boosters in the West are looking for — narratives that allow them to embrace and broadcast baseless hatred for the Jewish state in the name of human rights.

Westerners who feast on this narrative do not help the Palestinians, but hurt them, by responding to the misdeeds of Palestinian elites with condescending pats on the head instead of the rebukes they warrant.

After returning from an awful weekend trip with a Christian youth group, I told my mother I wanted to stop going to church in the next town over and worship where we lived. “Nobody likes me over there,” I said. Her response was direct and brutal: “Maybe they are not the problem. Maybe it is you.”

It was a shock. Mothers are not supposed to talk that way to their 11-year-old sons (so I thought). In the years since, I have tried, with varying degrees of success, when in a difficult position, to look at the role I played in creating the circumstances I find myself in.

The Oslo Accords, the Wye Agreement, the Roadmap, ad nauseam, have all attempted to separate much, if not all, of the eternal possession of the Jewish people from their God given homeland? This decades long political foolishness has continued in order to appease a succession of occupants of the White House whose policies have, alas, too often become a clear and present danger to the very existence of Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

The reluctance by many Israeli leaders to resist various U.S. administrations or offend various presidents has inexorably led to Jewish rights not asserted vigorously enough. It has thus allowed the erosion of those very millennial and inalienable entitlements of the Jewish people to their ancestral heartland – primarily the narrow strip of land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.

History has proven that it was a near fatal mistake to embrace the pernicious, self-defeating and idiotic policies known as “land for peace” in which Israel gave away its historic land but never received peace.

That other evil seed, also spawned from the Oslo Peace Accords, namely what is called the “Two-State-Solution,” would, if enacted with the duplicitous and terrorist PLO, be as diabolical and deadly a euphemism for the Jewish state as was Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution” for Europe’s Jews.

Instead, there should have always been watertight demands made upon the so-called Palestinian Authority, which now occupies large swathes of Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank).

This was left undone and now the PLO and the so-called Palestinian Authority spew anti-Jewish propaganda in schools and through its regime controlled media, poisoning the minds of yet another generation of Arabs. At the same time its terrorist entities, Fatah and Hamas, unleash relentless and barbaric violence resulting in thousands of Israeli civilian deaths.

Demands should also have been made upon the artificial entity known as the Kingdom of Jordan for the return of biblical Gilead – the ancestral homeland of the Jewish tribes of Gad and Manasseh, east of the River Jordan.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government and previous governments stretching back to that of Yitzhak Rabin, all betrayed Jewish patrimony in the Land of Israel. They did not effectively reject the Arab and pro-Arab lie that Israel “occupies” Arab territory – specifically territory occupied by a fraudulent Arab people who have come to call themselves Palestinians.

Judea and Samaria have still not been annexed yet they are the very warp and woof, the heartland and very fabric and fiber of Jewish history during and after Biblical times.

I was looking back at what Professor Talia Einhorn of the University of Ariel wrote in 2003 about Judea, Samaria and Gaza, or as it is known by its Hebrew acronym, Yesha: meaning Yehuda, Shomron and Azza.

She was commenting on the ‘slip of the tongue” by then Prime Minister Sharon who used the word “occupation” in reference to Israel’s presence in Yesha. In 2003, Yesha still included Gaza.

This is generally a fair appraisal of the debate, but the majpr premise here is wrong. Israelis in the West Bank do not “occupy” another people’s land. The West Bank is a parcel of land included in the fraction of Palestine deeded to the Jews after Jordan was severed. rsk
Some want to annex the West Bank, others to separate from the Palestinians—and all view Jerusalem as anything but a settlement.

A billboard near the highway entering Jerusalem proclaims in Hebrew: “The Time for Sovereignty Has Come.” It is part of a new campaign for the formal incorporation into Israel of Ma’ale Adumim, one of the largest settlements in the West Bank and barely a 10-minute drive east of Israel’s capital. The campaign’s sponsors, backed by several ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s coalition, see annexing Ma’ale Adumim as the first step to annexing the entire West Bank and preventing the creation of a Palestinian state.

Israelis have been arguing about settlements ever since the Six Day War of June 1967, when the Israeli army captured the West Bank—the biblical regions of Judea and Samaria—and small groups of Israelis began establishing enclaves there. Annexation, long the goal of the settlement movement, has always been more aspiration than possibility, thwarted by opposition within Israel and from the international community.

But with the rise of Donald Trump, settlement leaders have sensed an opening. Mr. Trump’s nominee as U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is a longtime pro-settlement activist. And in a marked break with American policy, the Trump administration refused to condemn Israel’s announcement that it intends to build some 5,000 housing units in settlements, the largest expansion project in recent years.
A Palestinian laborer works at a construction site in the Jewish West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, near Jerusalem, Sept. 16, 2014. Photo: Dan Balilty/Associated Press

The collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the chaos of the Arab world in recent years have reinforced the settlers’ sense of opportunity. So too has the imminent approach of a date fraught with symbolic significance: the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War. According to Jewish tradition, 50 years—a jubilee—is the time for a reset. For those who believe that Israel needs to overcome its hesitancy and claim its rightful borders, it is a moment of high expectation.

Unlike critics abroad, including the U.N. Security Council, who denounce settlements as illegal under international law, mainstream Israeli discourse takes for granted the legitimacy of Israel’s claims to the West Bank—lands where the Jewish people find their deepest historical roots, won in a war of self-defense against the Arab world’s attempt to destroy the Jewish state. The debate, instead, is over the wisdom of implementing these claims to the “territories” (the more politically neutral term preferred by many in Israel).

Permanently absorbing the West Bank would mean adding more than two million Palestinians to Israel’s population, forcing it to choose eventually between the two essential elements of its national identity as both a Jewish state and a democracy.

That is precisely the point of another new campaign, from the opposite side of the political spectrum, urging withdrawal from the territories. “We’re Not Annexing—We’re Separating,” reads one billboard near the highway in Tel Aviv. A second billboard warns of what will happen if Israel doesn’t separate from the Palestinians: “The One-State Solution. Palestine.”

That warning reveals a profound shift in Israeli discourse. The mainstream Israeli left no longer promises “land for peace” but instead offers a more modest formula: withdrawal as the best way to ensure that Israel remains both Jewish and democratic. This shift recognizes that, after years of terrorism and Palestinian rejection of past Israeli peace offers (the last offer was in 2008), the Israeli public has become deeply skeptical of Palestinian intentions.

Polls consistently show that a majority of Israelis support a two-state solution, while doubting the possibility of peace. According to an October 2016 poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute’s Peace Index, nearly 65% of Israelis backed peace talks—but only 26% thought they would succeed.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

US approves two Teva asthma treatments. The US FDA has approved two treatments developed by Israel’s Teva, for adolescents and adults with asthma. They are AirDuo RespiClick (fluticasone propionate and salmeterol inhalation powder) and ArmonAir RespiClick (fluticasone propionate inhalation powder).
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-fda-approves-two-teva-asthma-treatments-1001174386

Combatting fatty liver disease. (TY Atid-EDI) In advance of Phase 2 trials, preclinical data showed the potential efficacy of Namodenoson (CF102) from Israel’s Can-Fite (see Jan 2012). It inhibited the growth and proliferation of liver fibrosis cells, supporting its potential ability to combat non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
http://ir.canfite.com/press-releases/detail/776/new-preclinical-data-show-can-fites-namodenoson-cf102-inhibits-liver-fibrosis—-supports-potential-efficacy-in-treatment-of-nash

Europe approves focused ultrasound treatment for prostate cancer. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (several times) on the focused ultrasound treatment from Israel’s Insightec to cure shaking and remove uterine fibroids. Now Insightec has been given the CE mark to use focused ultrasound to treat prostate cancer.
http://www.insightec.com/news-events/press-releases/2016/insightec-receives-ce-mark-for-the-exablate-prostate-for-treating-locally-confined-prostate-cancer

Patching up the brain after surgery. Israeli biotech Nurami Medical is developing the ArtiFascia, a biodegradable nanofiber patch that protects brain tissue and spinal cord damaged during neurosurgery. Nurami, founded by Jewish and Arab graduates, has just secured NIS 2.5 million ($650,000) of funds.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-biotechnology-startup-nurami-medical-raises-nis-2-5m/

Diagnosing sleep apnea by smartphone. Ben-Gurion University researchers have developed a system to assess obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) severity by analyzing the patient’s speech using his or her smartphone. It also records and evaluates overnight breathing sounds and has been tested successfully on 350 subjects.
https://aabgu.org/smartphone-diagnoses-sleep-apnea/

A shining example. Former Lieutenant Colonel Yossie Cohen made many life and death decisions in the IDF. But he never thought that filling in a form at the Ezer Mizion Bone Marrow Registration Station was one of them. Ten years later he received a phone call. He donated some cells and gave another man the gift of life.
http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/a-shining-example/

Universal flu vaccine – latest news. Knowing many sufferers of the current flu bout, it is timely to report positive preliminary results in the Phase 2b trials of the Universal Flu vaccine from Israel’s BiondVax. And thanks to a $2.8 million investment (see Jan 15), BiondVax is to “proceed confidently into Phase 3 as planned.”
http://www.biondvax.com/2016/11/biondvax-phase-2b-trial-preliminary-safety-results-the-universal-flu-vaccine-candidate-is-safe-and-well-tolerated/