RUTHFULLY YOURS

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Huge boost for stroke diagnosis system. (TY Hazel) I reported previously (July 3) on Israel’s MedyMatch Artificial Intelligence platform for diagnosing strokes from CT-scans. MedyMatch has just signed separate 5-year agreements to integrate the groundbreaking technology with IBM and Samsung equipment.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/samsung-to-integrate-israeli-tech-to-spot-strokes/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-medymatch-inks-deal-with-ibm-watson-health/

Early diagnosis of Autism can save lives. (TY Jacques) Dr Hanna Alonim founded Israeli non-profit Mifne Center – the world’s first organization to diagnose and treat toddlers on the autism spectrum, and use a family therapy approach to treatment. Alonim’s ESPASI Screening Scale is used in Israel, the USA and across Europe.
http://israelbetweenthelines.com/2017/02/02/early-diagnosis-of-autism-has-88-chance-of-saving-lives
https://www.youtube.com/embed/dO6m_o-fasE?rel=0

Releasing Glaucoma treatment automatically. I reported previously (Mar 5) about Israel’s Eximore which is developing a tiny device that is implanted into the tear duct to treat eye diseases such as Glaucoma, without the patient’s knowledge. Eximore’s Chairperson, Dr Daphne Haim-Langford went on ILTV to explain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgRUQ6Tpau4
https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-israeli-company-develops-system-to-replace-daily-eye-drops/

Manage your diabetes efficiently. Israel’s GlucoMe has developed a “Digital Diabetes Clinic” that monitors diabetics and recommends treatment programs. The platform uses a smart glucose monitor, an insulin pen monitor, a mobile app and a cloud-based management system. It has completed trials and is Europe approved.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startup-uses-big-data-minimal-hardware-to-treat-diabetes/
http://www.glucome.com/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/l750q5YgG2M?rel=0

The next generation in cancer diagnostics. I reported previously (July 31) on Israeli-founded Cleveland Diagnostics and its improved early prostate cancer test kit. Cleveland’s CEO Dr Arnon Chait went on ILTV to explain more and to announce the company’s new Israeli operations.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/CVe117kQaP4?rel=0

A robot to traverse the small intestine. Scientists at Ben-Gurion University are re-designing their Single Actuator Wave-like (SAW) robotic snake to carry a camera and squeeze through the human small intestine. It could extend and improve the effectiveness of colonoscopy tests.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientists-design-robot-to-squeeze-through-small-intestine/

UK lawyer has MS treatment in Jerusalem. Top UK Lawyer Mark Lewis (Director of UK Lawyers for Israel) suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, walks with a limp and cannot write with his right hand. He travels to Israel every six weeks to participate in the MS trial at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/uks-foremost-libel-lawyer-sets-his-sights-on-israels-enemies/

Bone marrow tests from Czech Republic in one day. Israel’s Ezer Mizion found a likely DNA match on their database for a bone marrow transplant patient. However, the donor was in the Czech Republic. Using their “Linked to Life” WhatsApp group, volunteers rushed the sample kit from Tel Aviv to Vienna to Prague to Brno and back again in less than 24 hours. http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/czechoslovakia-no-problem/

Emergency app can save lives on the beach. A volunteer with Israel Emergency Medical Service United Hatzalah has developed a smartphone app to quickly locate swimmers in trouble off Haifa’s beaches, and navigate paramedics to that location.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-ems-volunteers-create-lifesaving-app-for-haifa-beaches/

Paramedic’s first patient was his nephew. Ben Shetiat’s first call, after completing his 6-months Emergency Medical training course, was an infant having seizures – at Ben’s sister’s house! He arrived in two minutes. After treatment, Ben’s nephew was taken to hospital and was well enough to be discharged later that night.
https://israelrescue.org/blog/newly-trained-emt-responds-to-first-call-and-saves-his-own-nephew/

Millions, perhaps billions, of the world’s population still do not know the meaning of the towering festival of freedom and liberty known as Passover; a festival recognizing an event that has blessed the world for some 3,300 years.

The festival begins at eventide on April 10th of this year and always on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Nissan. Jews and Christians know from the Bible the story of the Exodus and of the salvation of the Jewish people from centuries of slavery under the Egyptian pharaohs: This was the creation and deliverance of an entire nation.

Such a seminal event in humanity’s history became the foundation for freedom and liberty – created many centuries before democracy was first enunciated by Greek philosophers who nevertheless lived within a polytheistic society.

Many people know in varying degrees the Passover story and the birth of the Jewish people and of their undying faith in the One and Only God; invisible and indivisible. Judaism has given the world monotheism in its purest and Editmost undiluted nature. The Unity of God is what Jews have defended against all who attempted to suggest a plurality: even to enduring martyrdom.

The long suffering Jews under Egyptian bondage were led to freedom by the Jewish prophet, Moses, who brought them to their own very special and promised Land of Israel. Moses spoke with God in Sinai and brought a wondrous divine gift to the Jewish people and through them to all humanity – the Decalogue; the Ten Commandments, and the basis of today’s laws of Western and Judeo-Christian civilization and jurisprudence. These ten brief commandments – a mere 120 Hebrew words – are written on the walls of synagogues and churches.

But, as in all Jewish practice, Moses was never deified. He was shown in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, as a man; nothing else. Indeed in order not to deify him or exalt him over others he is shown in the Holy Bible with human failings and his burial place remains unknown.

He sought the mountain top and beheld the Promised Land of Israel, yet was never to enter. In fact, in the Torah Moses is described merely as “the humblest and meekest of all human beings.” For in Judaism, only God is divine and besides Him there are none other.

Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) is the first of the Jewish holidays and festivals, coinciding with the coming of the Spring in the Jewish people’s ancestral, biblical and native land: the land given by God in an everlasting Covenant to the Jewish people; a land extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and including Gilead (the possession of the tribes of Manasseh, Gad and Reuben) east of the river, in the present day Arab state of Jordan.

The Passover festival precedes two other harvest festivals based upon the agricultural cycles of ancient and modern Israel. Next comes Shavuot, Pentecost, which records and commemorates the giving to Moses of the Ten Commandments followed by Succot, which is known as Tabernacles. Mankind was, and is, blessed through the Passover for it is a veritable gift to those who accept its divine message and perform the ritual meal, the Seder, recording the Exodus story.

But there is an evil in men’s hearts, and it is a profound evil, for those who hate and envy this Jewish gift to humanity and its message of freedom, liberty and foundational democracy. They have chosen since time immemorial to rise up to destroy all that it stands for and persecute those – the Jews – who received it from God and who have shared it with all humanity.

Let me recount what Mary Antin wrote in 1911 about the horrors inflicted upon the Jews in Russia as they celebrated the festival of liberty in the Exodus story during the festive Seder meal. Ms. Antin wrote of what routinely took place at Passover and of how Russian neighbors reminded the Jews that for them it was another Egypt:

“… in Russian cities and even more in country districts, where Jewish families lived scattered, the stupid peasants would hear lies about the Jews, fill themselves with vodka, and set out to kill their Jewish neighbors.

Daniel Polisar of Shalem College in Jerusalem shook the debate over Palestinian-Israeli relations in November 2015 with his essay, “What Do Palestinians Want?” In it, having studied 330 polls to “understand the perspective of everyday Palestinians” toward Israel, Israelis, Jews, and the utility of violence against them, he found that Palestinian attackers are “venerated” by their society—with all that that implies. https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2017/04/the-israel-palestinian-peace-process-has-been-a-massive-charade/

He’s done it again with “Do Palestinians Want a Two-State Solution?” This time, he pored over some 400 opinion polls of Palestinian views to find consistency among seemingly contradictory evidence on the topic of ways to resolve the conflict with Israel. From this confusing bulk, Polisar convincingly establishes that Palestinians collectively hold three related views of Israel: it has no historical or moral claim to exist, it is inherently rapacious and expansionist, and it is doomed to extinction. In combination, these attitudes explain and justify the widespread Palestinian demand for a state from “the river to the sea,” the grand Palestine of their maps that erases Israel.

With this analysis, Polisar has elegantly dissected the phenomenon that I call Palestinian rejectionism. That’s the policy first implemented by the monstrous mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, in 1921 and consistently followed over the next near-century. Rejectionism demands that Palestinians (and beyond them, Arabs and Muslims) repudiate every aspect of Zionism: deny Jewish ties to the land of Israel, fight Jewish ownership of that land, refuse to recognize Jewish political power, refuse to trade with Zionists, murder Zionists where possible, and ally with any foreign power, including Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, to eradicate Zionism.

The continuities are striking. All major Palestinian leaders—Amin al-Husseini, Ahmad al-Shukeiri, Yasir Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and Yahya Sinwar (the new leader of Hamas in Gaza)—have made eliminating the Zionist presence their only goal. Yes, for tactical reasons, they occasionally compromised, most notably in the Oslo Accords of 1993, but then they reversed these exceptions as soon as possible.

In other words, the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” that began in 1989 has been a massive charade. As Israelis earnestly debated making “painful concessions,” their Palestinian counterparts issued promises they had had no intention of fulfilling, something Arafathad the gall publicly to signal to his constituency even as he signed the Oslo Accords, and many times subsequently.

So longas rejectionism runs rampant, debates about one-, two-, and three-state solutions, about carving up the Temple Mount into dual sovereign areas, or about electricity grids and water supplies, are for naught. There can be no resolution so long as most Palestinians dream of obliterating the Jewish state. Indeed, this makes negotiations counterproductive. The Oslo Accords and other signed pieces of paper have made matters much worse. The farce of negotiations, therefore, needs urgently to end.

Are there any Jewish players on teams in any Moslem/Arab nation ? Sounds nice and lofty but the only team sport Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIs know is team Jihad…..rsk
Mr. Fahoum is a graduate of Columbia University’s master’s program in negotiation and conflict resolution.

Tennis changed my life. Growing up as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, I struggled with an identity crisis, feeling caught between two worlds. But when I was 8, I started playing tennis in Haifa. Eventually I became the first Arab Muslim on the Israeli junior national team, representing the country in European and world championships.

This was a personal success. More important, though, it gave me a platform for building bonds with Jewish youth. The tennis court was an island where everyone felt like they belonged. My teammates and I embraced the same identity. I built trust with my doubles partner and the people on the other side of the net, too.

Once my parents realized the sport’s potential to bring people together, they established the Coexistence Program at the Israel Tennis Center in Haifa. It introduced young Arabs and Jews to the game, while transforming on-court partnerships into off-court friendships. The program, which began in 2001 with around 10 children, now operates nationwide with hundreds of participants.

When I was growing up, Israeli high schools and colleges did not have organized sports. But Americans know well the power of sports, as I learned when I came to Quinnipiac University in Connecticut on a tennis scholarship. Even though my teammates and I came from different corners of the world, we were all Bobcats. Social psychologists have a name for this phenomenon of a shared, complex identity. They call it a “superordinate identity.”

Playing sports can help reframe a conflict. It builds the groundwork for cooperation by putting teammates in the same boat. To paraphrase the late Morton Deutsch, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, this creates a positive interdependence: If you swim, I swim, and if you sink, I sink. It galvanizes people to do what is best for the team. If another player is in a better position to score than you are, you will pass the ball.

Sports recognizes no language barriers. Drop a soccer ball into a group of kids in Israel, South Africa or Ireland, and watch what happens. There will be no need for an introduction, let alone an explanation of the rules. Instead players communicate using their bodies within an established system of rules that makes them “speak” soccer fluently. Just as sports altered my path, it has the power to change the world.

That’s why the United Nations has declared April 6 the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace. Athletics can provide entertainment and exercise, yes, but also so much more. It can be used as a tool for tackling social issues—fighting obesity, empowering women, integrating refugees or promoting peace. Sports are more than mere games. They’re essential to the healthy transformation of society.