RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

War has been around as long as has man. President Obama said as much in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2009: “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man.” Efforts to outlaw war, or even to impose rules as to its conduct, have failed. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, an effort to outlaw war, signed on August 27, 1928 did not prevent Japan (a signatory) from invading Manchuria three years later. Nor did it stop Germany (also a signatory) from invading Poland eleven years later. The best means to prevent war is to prepare for it. When I was at the University of New Hampshire, I often drove past Pease Airforce Base with its seemingly oxymoronic, but in fact accurate, sign, “Peace is Our Profession.” The projection of strength is necessary to curtail war. Unfortunately, that air base, and the entire Strategic Air Command was “disestablished” in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The conduct of modern war is supposed to follow rules of international humanitarian law established under the Geneva Convention of 1949, as they pertain to non-combatants, the wounded and treatment of prisoners of war. But such good intentions are never followed, as we have seen throughout all subsequent wars, and as Senator John McCain, along with thousands of other servicemen, learned during their years as prisoners of war in North Vietnam. As Carl von Clausewitz noted in On War, “The object of fighting is the destruction or defeat of the enemy.” The Swedish war historian Peter Englund, in his new book November 1942, wrote of a British tail gunner flying over Germany: “The aircrews are not guided by moralistic motives or complex explanations; they are given orders to carry out their missions…”

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are not asking for a two-state solution. Their call for Palestine to be free “from the river to the sea,” is a call to eradicate Israel. When terrorists hide among civilians it is they who are causing civilian deaths. “Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary,” wrote Edmund Burke, in Reflections on the Revolutions in France, but “just” is in the eyes of the beholder. “Unjust war is to be abhorred,” spoke President Theodore Roosevelt at the University of Berlin on May 12, 1910 (only four years before Europe embarked on a four-year war of devastation), “but,” he added, “woe to the nation that does not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it.” And woe to the state of Israel now if they do not confront and destroy Hamas.

 “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”  General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891).

The tragedy of friendly fire killing three Israeli hostages haunts us today. It will be investigated thoroughly by the IDF. This particular event reminds us that Israel has a citizen army -everyone serves-and alas, some are less experienced than others in the fight for survival against genocidal enemies.

But, as Michael Ordman reminds us, Israel has another nonmilitary army of researchers, doctors, technical experts, and civil servants who work around the clock to bring succor and a better and peaceful life to billions of citizens on every continent. rsk

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR

From war to the Olympics. Israel’s Sports Association for the Disabled and Israel’s Paralympic Committee have launched a voluntary initiative for IDF personnel who have lost limbs. Rehabilitation and recovery include personal trainers, coaches, physiotherapists, and sports psychologists. More than 20 have already joined.

https://www.israel21c.org/paralympians-to-help-war-wounded-heal-trauma/ 

When father meets son. Rambam hospital’s Dr. Arik Schechter has been serving in the IDF reserves deep inside Gaza since the outbreak of the Swords of Iron War. With three sons and a son-in-law also serving, perhaps it should not have been such a surprise when he was reunited with one of his sons in the fighting.

https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/father-son-meet-in-gaza.aspx

When Dad meets wife & new son. I admit that I shed a few tears when I read this story and then saw the video on Instagram.   https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/dad_arrives-for-birth_despite_war.aspx

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cz0NpHksLYG/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

What motivates us. Research led by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has discovered that the impulse for motivation is generated by the balance in the striatum area of the brain of simultaneous wavelike patterns of two neurochemicals – dopamine and acetylcholine. The team used advanced genetic tools and imaging.

https://en.huji.ac.il/news/wave-theory-neurochemical-balance-brain

Impact of early life trauma and possible treatment. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have also been studying the brain. In lab tests they found that trauma in early life caused problems in adults that showed up on brain scans. But a short treatment of diazepam soon after trauma erased those signs on adult brain scans.

https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/traces-trauma-young-brain-%E2%80%93-and-how-erase-them

Bring back the light. On Chanukah, Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund (SICF) launched its campaign, “Bring Back the Light.” for children scarred by terror.  SICF uses individual and group therapies, both traditional and alternative, administered by a team of skilled social workers, psychologists, and specialty therapists.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/miracle-of-healing-shiloh-israel-childrens-funds-bring-back-the-light-initiative/

Empathic robot companion in NY State. (TY OurCrowd) A few weeks ago (see here previously) the ElliQ empathic robot from Israel’s Intuitive Robotics was being offered free to seniors in two areas in South Florida.  It is now being offered to seniors in New York State. The pilot shows a 95% reduction in loneliness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZBKjK9WXE8  https://elliq.com/pages/free 

https://abc7ny.com/seniors-ai-robot-companionship/14154002/

https://aging.ny.gov/news/nysofas-rollout-ai-companion-robot-elliq-shows-95-reduction-loneliness

Simultaneous simulations. Israel’s QuantHealth (see here previously) has upgraded its platform for simulating clinical trials. Its new product, called Katina, simultaneously simulates hundreds of thousands of combinations of each element in a clinical trial to maximize the probability of success when real human trials begin.

https://nocamels.com/2023/12/new-ai-platform-simulates-thousands-of-clinical-trials-at-once/

Best Buy remote monitoring. Israel’s BioBeat (see here previously) is integrating its wearable devices for remote patient monitoring into the Current Health home care platform offered by Best Buy Health in the US.  The devices monitor 13 parameters, e.g., blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, pulse rate and respiratory rate.

https://nocamels.com/category/news-briefs/#post-125875  

https://www.currenthealth.com/remote-patient-monitoring/

When dormant bacteria revive. Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have discovered how bacteria spores retain vital genetic information during dormancy and activate when revived. The RNA polymerase, inside the spores, initiates copying processes. The knowledge could help research into controlling pathogens.

https://www.afhu.org/2023/12/01/hebrew-university-researchers-discover-mechanism-for-dormant-bacteria-spores-to-retain-genetic-memory/

Herbal diabetic remedy and more. Israel’s Curalife manufactures Curalin – a herbal supplement formulated to treat diabetes but with anecdotal indications for stress reduction, improved metabolism and even insomnia. It contains nine herbs based on Ayurvedic medicine – an ancient Indian practice.

https://www.israel21c.org/ayurvedic-herbal-supplement-targets-diabetes/   https://global.curalife.com/

US approval for glaucoma laser device. Israel’s Belkin Vision (previously Belkin Laser – see here) has received US FDA clearance for the use of its automatic and noninvasive glaucoma laser surgery device. The Eagle is the first and only contactless laser surgery for glaucoma patients.

https://nocamels.com/category/news-briefs/#post-125889

AI sensor to monitor kidney function. Israel’s FIZE Medical has developed a new AI device that measures production of urine by the kidneys via a patient catheter. It identifies problems with kidneys, heart, medication, etc. Fize has FDA approval and has completed a pilot at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. 

https://nocamels.com/2023/12/ai-sensor-monitors-kidney-function-one-drop-at-a-time/  https://fizemedical.com/

How does your dog smell?  Israel’s Tech4animals lab (see here previously) has developed an algorithm that detects the canine breathing condition known as Brachycephalic Obstructive Airway Syndrome (BOAS). It is common in dogs such as boxers, pugs and French bulldogs that have been bred with short snouts.

https://nocamels.com/2023/12/ai-doggie-doctor-diagnoses-breathing-problems-pugs-boxers/

ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL

Occupational therapist, soldier, and bone-marrow donor. Lee, an occupational therapist at Israel’s Rambam Health Care Campus has been serving as a casualty officer since she was called up for reserves at the beginning of the war. She volunteered as a bone-marrow donor and was a lifesaving match for a woman in need.

https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/three-in-one.aspx

She just can’t stop. I was surprised to see this on the BBC. Praise for a woman (Yael Noy) whose heads the organization “Road to Recovery” group of Israeli volunteers. Despite Oct 7, Yael drives sick Palestinian Arabs – mostly children – from security checkpoints in Judea and Samaria to hospital appointments in Israel.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-67592468 

1000+ volunteering TAU students. Some 6,000 Tel Aviv University students are serving in the IDF reserves. At least 1000 more are volunteering to help patients at hospitals; make food for serving soldiers, harvest fields and transport people to the Gaza border; help run factories at evacuated kibbutzim, and more.

https://english.tau.ac.il/news/volunteering_initiatives  https://english.tau.ac.il/news/Helping_Israeli_farmers

Lost and asleep. (TY Hazel) In the middle of fighting a war, IDF reservists discovered a 4-year-old Gazan girl who had got lost, stumbled barefoot into an IDF camp, and fallen asleep. They cleaned her up, bandaged her injured feet and then arranged an ambulance to take her to the safe civilian area of Southern Gaza.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/watch-reservists-help-lost-gazan-child-who-fell-asleep-in-idf-encampment/

Rescuing abandoned pets from Gaza. Many of the IDF’s heroic efforts go unnoticed, such as the rescue of abandoned animals from Gaza. They include cats, dogs, parrots, owls, and even a neglected, malnourished lion from the Gaza Zoo. Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority is working with the IDF to bring the lion to safely.

https://worldisraelnews.com/idf-rescues-abandoned-pets-exotic-birds-and-even-a-lion-from-gaza/

Rescuing unsold food. Israeli food rescue startup SpareEat (see here previously) shut down when Covid-19 regulations prevented people from collecting food in person. It has now re-launched and is even more popular than the first time around. Israelis collect “surprise” bags of highly discounted excess food from businesses.

https://nocamels.com/2023/12/spareeat-app-unsold-food-rescue/

US National Academy of Inventors “fellow”.  Prof. Shulamit Levenberg of Israel’s Technion Institute (see here previously) has been chosen to be a fellow of the prestigious American National Academy of Inventors. She is a founder of Aleph Farms (see here), NurExone (spinal cord regeneration) and Nanosynex (see here).

https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-777863

https://nurexone.com/professor-shulamit-levenberg/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP-CRXROorw

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-persistent-two-state-delusion?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The simmering tensions between Israel and the Biden administration over the plan for post-war Gaza have now come to the boil.

The US is doubling down on its insistence that Gaza must be run by a revamped Palestinian Authority. The Americans are still obsessed with a “two-state solution” to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

This week, US President Joe Biden told a White House Chanukah reception that there had to be a Palestinian state in the future and that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needed to make an effort to strengthen, change and “move” the PA.

Netanyahu riposted that Israel would permit neither Hamas nor the PA to rule Gaza. Israel, he said, would not repeat the “mistake of Oslo,” a reference to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organisation under which control of Gaza and parts of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria were handed over to the newly-created PA.

The previous day, Netanyahu had caused outrage by stating that the Oslo Accords caused as many deaths as the October 7 Hamas massacre, “though over a longer period”.

His enemies immediately claimed that the comparison was invidious, that he was seeking to shrug off any blame for Israel’s vulnerability to the Hamas pogrom and that he was already campaigning to win the general election that many assume will follow the war.

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2023/12/14/heres-the-real-reason-why-so-many-american-university-students-hate-israel-n4924761

It’s simple, really. Why do so many college and university students hate Israel? Because they know nothing about it, and have bought into the propaganda they’ve been fed.

In the midst of the recent and nationwide demonstrators featuring students (and many others) denouncing Israel for its alleged crimes, Algemeiner reported that “students who care strongly about the ‘Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories’ do not have knowledge of basic facts surrounding the subject, and do not share similar concerns about other geopolitical conflicts.” 

This wholly unstartling bit of information was gleaned from a survey of 230 undergraduates at University of California, Berkeley. Ron Hassner, who has the unenviable position of being Berkeley’s Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies, conducted the survey, which began by presenting students with 18 issues and asking them to rate how interested they were in them.

These issues, according to Hassner, included “US-Iran relations, the civil war in Yemen, drone warfare, etc., on a five point scale, ranging from ‘I’m not that interested’ (1 point out of 5) to ‘I care deeply’ (5 points out of 5).” The survey went on from there to ask the respondents a “series of open-ended questions ‘on history, geography, and current affairs.’”F

Forty-three percent of the students were most interested in Israel’s alleged “control of Palestinian territories,” while expressing much less interest in “other Middle East occupations, such as the Kurdish struggle for independence, the occupation of Western Sahara, or the occupation of Northern Cyprus.”

That’s understandable. These indoctrinated bots aren’t inundated daily with self-righteous leftist rubbish about the massive, outrageous, world-historical injustice of the occupation of Western Sahara or Northern Cyprus. In all likelihood, they haven’t even heard of either one.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-israel-palestinian-authority-hamas-benjamin-netanyahu-4628ede4?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden made headlines by declaring on Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has to change.” As is typical with the President, his subsequent remarks were hard to follow, but many heard them as a call for a new Israeli government coalition willing to jump-start a two-state solution.

It isn’t Mr. Biden’s place to pick Israel’s leaders. Instead, he could try listening to Israelis about the risks of empowering a Palestinian Authority (PA) that has refused to condemn the Hamas massacre. Or he could listen to Palestinians, 72% of whom believe Hamas was right to launch its Oct. 7 attack, according to a new poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. That figure rises to 82% among West Bank Palestinians, who are ruled by the PA, not Hamas.

Mohammad Shtayyeh, the prime minister of the PA, said Sunday that “Hamas is an integral part of the Palestinian mosaic.” The problem is that this is true. That’s why no one in his right mind in Israel thinks of creating a Palestinian state today. Hamas doesn’t want a two-state solution; it wants the final solution.

Israelis are focused on defeating Hamas, a goal the U.S. shares. Mr. Biden was right to say Tuesday that “nobody on God’s green Earth can justify what Hamas did. They’re a brutal, ugly, inhumane people, and they have to be eliminated.” He was also right to stand up for Israel at the United Nations, where the international herd demands a cease-fire.

Israel fights on because it has no other choice if it wants to survive as a state. But many nations see these U.N. votes as consequence-free gestures for peace or solidarity. That a cease-fire now would mean a Hamas victory and the death of Israeli deterrence, bringing on the next massacre and the next war, doesn’t concern them.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/israels-invisible-victims?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The sickening reaction of so much of the western public to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza doesn’t just reveal a frightening degree of bigotry, double standards and moral bankruptcy.  It doesn’t just involve a staggering absence of knowledge about the Middle East, the history of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland and the fact that the forces Israel is fighting are also waging a war against the west itself.  It also displays a brutalised callousness based on profound ignorance of Israeli society.

The hostility towards Israel’s military action is based on understandable revulsion at the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza whose homes have been flattened by the Israel Defence Forces. Through relentless, disproportionate and often deeply distorted media coverage, this has eclipsed the brief window of sympathy that opened towards Israeli suffering from the depraved Hamas atrocities of October 7 in which more than 1200 Israeli women, men, children and infants were slaughtered, raped, tortured, decapitated and burned alive by Palestinian Arabs.

In the war that has followed to destroy Hamas, Israel has been portrayed as attacker rather than victim. In fact, the toll of Israel’s victims is steadily mounting. Yet to the west, these victims are invisible.

At time of writing, 433 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7, with 104 IDF soldiers killed during ground combat in Gaza so far.

This toll is not just a tragedy for the families of the fallen. Every one of these losses is also experienced as a knife to Israel’s heart. For these young men and women are felt to be the sons and daughters of all of us here in Israel. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/oct-7-attack-made-israel-stronger-hamas-palestinians-jewish-state-herzl-4b628804?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Tel Aviv

The Jewish state, and the Zionist movement that sustains it, is emerging from this crisis stronger than before. That’s my conclusion after a week in Israel, traveling to the combat zones in the north and south, touring the Gaza-area kibbutzim that were occupied by Hamas, and meeting with Israelis ranging from senior government officials to survivors of the Oct. 7 attacks struggling to put their lives back together. Israel is more united, its citizens are more determined to fight for their state, and Jews around the world have renewed their commitment to the Zionist cause.

I spoke to Israelis across the political spectrum. From leaders of the pre-Oct. 7 protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to senior officials in the war cabinet, I heard only commitment to supporting the government through the war. Politics isn’t dead in Israel. Protests demanding Mr. Netanyahu’s resignation have resumed, and profound disagreements bubble below the surface. But none of this affects the country’s determination to prosecute the war. Israelis from all political camps are determined to put national security first when the war ends.

Israeli military experts, including critics of the government, think the war is going reasonably well. Casualties are significant, and there is hard slogging ahead, but Israel is on course to inflict defeat on the deranged and misguided Hamas movement. It also is headed toward deeper integration into the Middle East. Arab leaders, who are moving the Arab and Islamic worlds into a brighter future than the fanatics can imagine, appreciate as never before the value of a strong Israel to their own security and prosperity.

Much can still go awry. Iran and its proxies have a vote in what happens next. America’s Middle East policy remains muddled, and the global struggle of revisionist powers against the American-led world system can intersect explosively with Middle East politics. But for now, Israel has rallied from the shock of Oct. 7 and is on track to re-establish deterrence.