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michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com

Israel’s 76th birthday is tomorrow May 13th, beginning at sundown and ending on sundown on Tuesday May 14th. 76 years of wars, terror, victim of libels, bias and outright anti-Semitism. But, Israel is also a democratic survivor and purveyor of outsize research and development of medicine and technology that enrich the life and aspirations of billions on every single continent in the world even during wartime.

To his enormous credit, Michael Ordman works prodigiously to catalog Israel’s positive contributions to the world. Happy Birthday Amazing Israel!!!!!rsk

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Remarkable Resilience. This video describes how Israel’s Ben Gurion University responded after the devastating events of Oct 7.  BGU and its students are helping the Negev recover and rebuild. From finance to students in the reserves and evacuees, to medical gear, clinics, and many vital cutting-edge innovations.
https://americansforbgu.org/video/rr4-recording/
 
Picking fruit on Gaza border farms. Before Oct 7, farms near the Gaza border supplied 70 percent of Israel’s fresh produce as well as produce for export. Lack of staff threatens closure of the farms, but volunteers from Israel and overseas has ensured their survival. Grapefruit and clementines are two of the crops being harvested.
https://www.israel21c.org/volunteering-on-israeli-farms-devastated-on-october-7/
https://www.israel21c.org/how-you-can-volunteer-in-israel-during-the-war/
 
 
ISRAEL’S  MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
US approval for retinal imaging. The US FDA has approved the fully autonomous AI from Israel’s AEYE Health (see here previously) that diagnoses referable diabetic retinopathy from retinal images obtained by a handheld camera. Portable screening addresses the leading cause of blindness in the global working population.
https://www.ourcrowd.com/startup-news/fda-clears-first-fully-autonomous-ai-for-portable-diabetic-retinopathy-screening
 
How cancer manipulates the immune system. Researchers at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University are the first to analyze biopsies to discover how cancer cells prevent being destroyed by the immune system. As each patient is different, the results will help scientists develop personalized strategies for destroying tumors.
https://www.biu.ac.il/en/article/580703   https://www.newswise.com/articles/in-a-first-researchers-generate-a-direct-measurement-of-the-interaction-between-immune-cells-and-cancer-cells-from-a-patient-s-biopsy
 
The world’s 10th best healthcare. Israel was ranked tenth in the latest edition of the CEOWORLD magazine Health Care Index. 110 countries were surveyed for infrastructure; professionals (doctors, nursing staff, and others); competencies; cost per capita; quality medicine availability, and government readiness.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/technology-science/artc-israel-ranks-10th-best-health-care-system-in-2024-review  https://ceoworld.biz/2024/04/02/countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2024/
 
Improving the use of Operating Rooms. Israel’s Opmed.ai has developed an AI optimization platform for healthcare, starting with Operating Rooms. An empty OR carries a cost of $1,000 for each unused hour. Opmed.ai is already used in the US and Israel and is working with leading Health Systems such as Mayo Clinic.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r1s5ss8mc  https://www.opmed.ai/
 
Integrated cancer research center. The Technion’s Rappaport Cancer Research Center under construction (see here previously) will house interdisciplinary researchers, computer scientists, doctors, data analysts, biotechnologists, chemical engineers, and more, working to develop treatments via discovery and education.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq_AKCixxzw   https://rticc.net.technion.ac.il/
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-782519
 
A new hospital for Beersheva. The Israeli has approved the establishment of a second hospital in the Negev city of Beersheva, The Peres Medical Center is expected to open in 2028 with 600 beds. It will reduce the strain on Beershava’s Soroka Medical Center. It will be operated by the Sheba Medical Center.
https://www.jns.org/israeli-cabinet-green-lights-new-hospital-for-beersheva/
 
A new strategy for treating multiple myeloma. Israel’s UB-Therapeutics is developing a novel therapy for the treatment of multiple myeloma. Its proteasome degradation inhibitor is a cyclic peptide that directly targets the degradation pathway of the proteasome – overcoming cancer’s resistance to existing proteasome inhibitors.
https://ats.org/our-impact/fighting-cancer-drug-resistance/  https://ngt-healthcare2.com/ub-therapeutics/   https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hyx7duwi2
 
Using plant cells to improve health. (TYAIFL) Israel’s BioHarvest Sciences (see here previously) is building an 80,000 square foot campus in Yavne, Israel to house all R&D functions and manufacturing facilities. BioHarvest uses plants to transform the medical, cosmetic, and nutrition industries.
https://bioharvest.com/bioharvest-sciences-announces-new-campus-for-botanical-synthesis-cdmo-and-expansion-of-manufacturing-capacity/
 
Combining software and medicine. Israel’s Remepy is developing tailored therapeutic software for mobile applications. It aims to unlock and trigger brain functions that modulate the immune system and enhance traditional medication. The hybrid digital and physical therapy should optimize the effectiveness of treatments.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startup-to-pioneer-hybrid-app-drug-combinations-for-tailored-treatment/
https://www.remepy.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyZ-vCIKPIQ
 
Using AI & RNA to deliver therapies. Mana.bio (see here previously) presented to the delegates of Technion UK’s tour of Israel. CEO and co-founder Yogev Debbi explained Mana’s drug delivery development, exactly 7 months after moving to its new premises on Oct 8 when 25% of their staff started IDF reserve duty.
https://technionuk.org/trip-album/#manabio0524  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBbEzqwlIGY

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/09/bidens-unforgivable-betrayal-of-israel/

Imagine if, in 2017, the world told the Kurds to hold off from attacking Raqqa. Imagine if, following their valiant liberation of 2,000 square miles of Syrian territory from the barbaric diktat of the Islamic State, the Kurdish-led forces were told to down arms. To leave Raqqa be. To leave intact the capital of the cruellest pseudo-state the modern world has known. We would have looked upon such a request as lunacy. We might even have considered it an essentially pro-ISIS position. After all, the flipside of telling the enemies of ISIS to cease fire is that ISIS would gain the breathing space to regroup, rearm and revisit its apocalyptic sadism on the people of Syria and beyond.

Well, just such an unhinged demand is being made right now, though of Israel, not the Kurds. From the White House to those whiffy tents on campus lawns, from the leader pages of the liberal press to the Israelophobic pulpits of social media, the cry goes out: don’t attack Rafah. If Israeli forces launch an invasion of that southern Gazan city, in pursuit of Hamas, it will be a bloodbath, the posing peaceniks cry. It would be ‘genocide in action’, insists former Corbynite bigwig John McDonnell. If you do it, President Biden warns Israel, we will stop providing you with certain weapons. In short: leave Rafah be. Which means leave Hamas be. Leave in peace the army of anti-Semites that butchered a thousand of your people – this, fundamentally, is the request being made of the Jewish State by the self-righteous of the Earth.

We need to talk about the cravenness, the outright iniquity, of the Western world’s lofty insistence that Israel back off from Rafah. It is presented to us as a ‘pro-peace’ position, underpinned by a pure urge to save life. But it could just as easily be seen as the antithesis of peace, as a position likely to benefit and even fortify the army of violent bigots that started this war and who seem hell-bent on continuing it. We know that huge numbers of Hamas militants have decamped to Rafah. We know they’re firing rockets from Rafah. We know some of these deadly devices have killed IDF soldiers while others have fallen on Israeli towns, with the intent of slaughtering the Jews who live there. In such circumstances, the cry ‘Hands off Rafah!’ is really a demand that Israel throw its own hands in the air and submit to the violent persecutions of its medieval foe.

https://nypost.com/2024/05/08/opinion/i-witnessed-israel-choosing-life-as-it-fights-against-a-death-cult/

Adapted from Douglas Murray‘s speech Monday as The Post columnist accepted the Manhattan Institute’s Alexander Hamilton Award.

“I want to dedicate my acceptance of this award to the people of Israel who in the face of death, choose life.”

I’ve never seen as much of the best and the worst of humankind as I have in the past six months in Israel and Gaza.

I was here in New York on the 7th of October, and on the 8th, I went down to Times Square.

And there were these men and women, waving signs, celebrating the massacre.

They were holding these signs in Times Square, “by any means necessary.”

At a time when we already knew what those means included.

I thought I had to get to Israel as soon as I could, that we were going to see a kind of Holocaust denialism in real time, and therefore I should see with my own eyes everything that had happened.

In Israel, I joined the pathologists in the morgues of Tel Aviv as they were trying to identify the dead.

An unbelievable task, which they do with extraordinary delicacy and religiosity.

I had the great opportunity to witness firsthand Israel’s response, because unlike some countries today, Israel doesn’t just sit back with equanimity when it’s attacked.

Some of the world would like it to do so.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20625/warriors-of-israel-defending-freedom

These assaults are not only aimed at Israel and its inhabitants but, ultimately, at the West.

Adversaries of the West — whether religious fundamentalists or authoritarian states such as China, Russia, and Iran and its allies — appear intent upon imposing a new totalitarian world order. To do so, they seek destruction of the two main countries standing in their way: United States of America and Israel, the global champions of democracy, freedom, Western values, and human rights.

Regrettably, with freedom often comes the need to protect it, at times by force, from those who would take it away. Sometimes, this requires measures open to criticism by those who may have a different goal….

“Therefore, having judged that to be happy means to be free, and to be free means to be brave, we do not shy away from the risks of war.” — Pericles, funeral oration, 432 BCE.

Israel… is fighting for the values of civilization opposing terrorist barbarism so that the rest of us in the West will not have to. We should be sending whatever they need to end the terrorism, not withholding precision-guided weapons — especially, as we sanctimoniously claim, if we do not want to harm civilians.

“I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.” – Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1986.

As people of peace, the warriors and all citizens of Israel long for such a time with all their hearts, but first there are battles to be won.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20624/israel-gaza-egypt-border-rafah

Hamas and Egypt were quick to issue statements denouncing the capture of the Rafah border crossing, claiming that the move would “threaten” the lives of the Palestinians and hinder the entry of humanitarian and relief aid into the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptians and Hamas have good reason to be angry with the presence of the IDF at the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing. For several years, Palestinians who wanted to exit the Gaza Strip via the terminal have alleged that they had to bribe Hamas and officials. Hamas and Egypt are now afraid of losing the Palestinian milk-cow.

“It is our right to travel without bribes and without corruption. We are living under a [Hamas] dictatorship.” Abu Amr was later arrested by Hamas security officers, who confiscated her mobile phone and ordered her to delete the Facebook post. — Noha Abu Amr, Palestinian journalist, 24.ae, January 24, 2024

[A] Palestinian man in the US [said] he paid $9,000 to get his wife and children on the list. On the day of travel, he was told his children’s names were not listed and he would have to pay an extra $3,000. He said the brokers were “trying to trade in the blood of Gazans”.

[T]he company [Hala Consulting and Tourism Services] owned by an influential Egyptian businessman and ally of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi] is estimated to have made a minimum of $118 million from desperate Palestinians trying to leave the Gaza Strip. “By the end of this year, if the April average continues, the company may earn well over half a billion dollars from the so-called VIP list of people Hala is transferring across the Gaza-Egypt border. ” — Middle East Eye, May 1, 2024.

An international charity [that does not want to be named] with extensive experience in providing emergency aid in wars…is also being forced to pay $5,000 per truck to a company linked to Egypt’s General Intelligence Service (GIS) to get aid into the Gaza Strip. — Middle East Eye, January 30, 2024.

The Palestinians actually owe Israel a huge debt of gratitude for finally driving Hamas out of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing.

Egypt and Hamas are, it seems, indifferent to the pain endured by the Palestinians they are effectively imprisoning. All that matters to them is making more money off anyone desperate to leave the Gaza Strip.

On May 6, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) captured the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, drawing condemnations from the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group and Egypt.

The IDF said it had “intelligence that terrorists were using the border crossing for terror purposes.” A day earlier, Hamas terrorists fired rockets from near the Rafah terminal toward the Kerem Shalom area (near the Israel-Gaza border), killing four Israeli soldiers and wounding several others.

In response to the Israeli military operation, Hamas and Egypt were quick to issue statements denouncing the capture of the Rafah border crossing, claiming that the move would “threaten” the lives of the Palestinians and hinder the entry of humanitarian and relief aid into the Gaza Strip.

“Egypt condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli military operations in the Palestinian city of Rafah, and the resulting Israeli control over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing,” read a statement by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/09/try-a-little-honesty-about-israel/

Scan news accounts of anti-Israel campus and street protestors. Read their demands and manifestos. Collate the confusion after October 7 from the Biden administration.

Here are ten of their most common untruths about October 7 and the war that followed.

“Progressive Hamas”: Gay and transgendered student protestors in America would be in mortal danger in Gaza under a fascistic Hamas that has banned homosexual acts and lifestyles. Anyone protesting publicly against Hamas or its allies would be arrested and severely punished.

Women are segregated in most Hamas-run educational institutions. Under the Hamas charter, women are valued mostly as child-bearers. By design, there are almost no women in high positions in business or in government under Hamas.

“Colonists and Settlers”: Students scream that Israelis are “settlers” and “colonists” and sometimes yell at Jewish students to “go back to Poland.”

But the Jewish presence in present-day Israel is deeply rooted in ancient tradition. Dating back at least three millennia, the concept of “Israel” as a distinct Jewish state, situated roughly in its current location, is ingrained in history.

By contrast, the much later Arab invasions of the Byzantine-controlled Levant and their arrival in Palestine occurred about 1800 years after the establishment of a Jewish Israel.

“Two-state Solution”: When student protestors scream “from the river to the sea,” that is not advocacy for a two-state solution. It is a call to eliminate the state of Israel—lying in between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea—and its 10 million Jewish and Arab citizens. The Hamas charter is a one-state/no-Israel agenda, which we saw attempted on October 7.

“Occupied Gaza”: Gaza was autonomous. The Israeli border is closed, but so is the Egyptian border. There have not been any Jews in Gaza for nearly two decades.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20622/palestinian-state-massacres

If the Saudis were really interested in normalizing their relations with Israel, they could have done so long ago. Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is delaying the move, in part, reportedly, out of fear of facing a backlash from his own people. He may, however, also have serious reservations that he would prefer not to talk about in public.

Like most Arabs, the Saudis could not care less about a Palestinian state and might secretly prefer not to have one at all. They are no doubt aware that the Palestinians themselves are the biggest obstacle to the establishment of a state of their own. During the past half-century, they have acted as a serial wrecking ball to every peaceful place they set foot.

The last thing most Arabs want is a Hamas-controlled Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain justifiably regard Hamas and other Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to their national security, most likely the main reason they all have refused to take in Gazan refugees.

Blinken’s claim that a Palestinian state would “isolate” Iran and its proxies is pure nonsense. The opposite is the case. Qatar, the Iranian regime and its proxies would doubtless be extremely happy if the Biden administration would allow them to establish a terrorist state on Israel’s doorstep. This state would be used by Iran and its terrorists as a launching pad for more October 7-style massacres of Israelis to further their goal of destroying first Israel, then the Arab States.

It is Israel — not Iran — that will find itself “isolated” and surrounded by Iran-backed Islamist groups….

A Middle East that includes a Palestinian state controlled by Iran and Islamist terrorists will be a less secure region, especially after Iran acquires nuclear weapons.

First, Biden, by reconfirming that terrorism “works,” would embolden all the other terrorists. Just keep on terrorizing everyone, and, when your demands are met, keep on upping and hardening them.

More significantly, by appeasing Iran, Qatar and potential voters in Michigan by creating a Palestinian State, the Biden administration will in fact be inviting Iran to initiate still more attacks – not only on Israel but also on US forces in the region….If Iran finally coerces the US to withdraw from the area, as reports indicate it might be doing, the regime will finally be able to take over its neighbors’ oil fields and holy sites without worrying about the US interfering.

Meanwhile, as the Biden administration, busy trying to win re-election in November, seems to have no idea how to end all the conflicts it ignited, directly or indirectly, in Gaza, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific. The US has been backing both sides of all of them. Iran, presumably taking advantage of these distractions, and perhaps as a consolation prize for losing Hamas -– has been moving to take over Sudan. It is a country rich in oil, gold, rare earth minerals and terrorism — and felicitously positioned to help Iran fire unlimited combat drones – the planet’s new “cheap, instant air force” — at both Israel and US forces, and enable Iran to use Sudan’s port on the Red Sea to continue obstructing maritime traffic.

After all, if terrorism “works,” why stop?

https://www.jns.org/al-jazeera-plays-the-free-speech-card/

The brouhaha surrounding the closure of Al Jazeera’s Israel operations is part of a broader disinformation campaign against the Jewish state. Even the way the move is being portrayed by the Qatari media outlet—as a violation of free speech—is a lie.

Not surprising, given that mendacity is a requirement for employees of the network. But bad journalism isn’t behind the legislation, which passed last month in a landslide Knesset vote and unanimously by the Cabinet on Sunday.

Indeed, if slanted coverage had been the impetus for the law, the government would long ago have banned Al Jazeera, as well as most other broadcasters and print publications, including the Hebrew-language ones. Contrary to negative narratives, Israel actually adheres to the tenet (coined by Voltaire biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall): “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” 

No, the bill, which allows Israel to temporarily shutter foreign broadcasters deemed to be a threat to national security during the war against Hamas in Gaza, was born and approved as an emergency measure in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre. It arose as a result of Al Jazeera’s involvement in, support for and obfuscation of the atrocities committed by Hamas on Simchat Torah—and in its abetting the terrorist organization’s falsification of ostensible Israeli crimes.