RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/marc-lamont-hills-atrocious-libels-against-israel/

Marc Lamont Hill has a long history of posing as an expert on the Middle East with the sole aim of excoriating Israel. In 2019 article in the Jerusalem Post, Seth J. Frantzman observes:

Hill’s latest excoriation of Israel, posted to his 90,000 followers [on Facebook], followed Mazzig’s [Hen Mazzig, an Israeli writer, and Mizrahi] argument that Israel is not a country of “privileged and powerful white Europeans.” Mazzig sought to emphasize the role of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli history and condemned the tendency of critics to define Israelis as Ashkenazi Jews alone. Hill responded that Mazzig ignores “the racial and political project that transformed Palestinian Jews (who lived peacefully with other Palestinians) into the 20th century identity category of ‘Mizrahi’ as a means of detaching them from Palestinian identity.”

Hill is claiming that the category of “Mizrahi Jews” — “Oriental Jews,” that is, “Jews of Middle Eastern ancestry” — was made up by Ashkenazi Jews to “detach” them from their “Palestinian identity.” In fact, Mizrahi Jews have their own history, never considered themselves as “Palestinians,” and did not “live peacefully” with Arabs, but only as dhimmis, subject to a host of social, economic, and political disabilities, including, most importantly, the duty to pay the jizyah, a capitation tax that allowed them to continue to worship as Jews free from Muslim attack. Frantzman also states:

Mazzig posted a screenshot of another exchange with Hill in which Hill wrote that “I literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living.”

What “living” is that? He doesn’t teach about Yemeni and Moroccan Jews; he hasn’t written a word about them. So why does Marc Lamont Hill claim that he “literally” studies them “for a living”? I thought he studied race, racism, anti-racism, and of course hip-hop lit, for his living. Has he quietly changed the subject of his study? Can we be expecting a paper soon on “Yemeni and Moroccan Jews” by “one of the leading intellectual voices in the country”?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20006/palestinians-steal-water

“Yesterday there was an enforcement activity in the Idna area near Hebron during which four illegal water wells were sealed. The water wells, which were drilled in violation of the interim agreement [with the Palestinians], damage the natural water reserves and pose a pollution threat to the aquifer [the source of water supplied to both Palestinian and Jewish communities]. The enforcement action was carried out in accordance with the jurisdiction authority and established protocols.” — Israeli authorities, July 27, 2023.

“Additionally, there were approximately 2,500 instances during those years in which Israeli authorities disconnected illegal connections to existing water infrastructure.” — NGO Monitor, October 2021.

The “illegal connections” included wells and pipes in the West Bank to illegally divert the water elsewhere, thereby stealing water that Israel had intended for both Israelis and Palestinians.

In 2018, the Israel Water Authority identified 77 Palestinian illegal well-diggings in the West Bank. During the same year, Israeli authorities arrested 25 Palestinians on suspicion of stealing water and disconnected 1,457 illegal connections to water mains. Some Palestinians also reportedly drilled holes in water mains to divert water.

“Without this activity [by the Israeli authorities], the water supply would have been significantly disrupted,” the Israeli Water Authoroity said. The following year, Israeli authorities discovered another 58 illegal water wells and confiscated ten well- drilling machines.

The Palestinians’ actions are in violation of the “Water Agreement” that is part of the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (“Oslo II”) of September 18, 1995 (Annex 3, Appendix 1, Article 40), which stipulates the manner in which the parties must act in the field of water in the West Bank. This is an international agreement that was not only signed by Israel and the Palestinians, but also witnessed by the US, Russia, the European Union, Norway, Jordan and Egypt. According to the Oslo II accord: “Each side shall take all necessary measures to prevent any harm, pollution, or deterioration of water quality of the water resources.”

[T]he Israelis and Palestinians agreed in 1995 to establish a Joint Water Committee to deal with all water and sewage issues, including protection of water resources. The Palestinian Authority, however, decided to boycott the committee after the start of the Second Intifada in September 2000.

According to a 2017 report from Israel’s State Comptroller, the Palestinian Authority prevented the committee from convening for seven years. The report noted that the reason for the Palestinian boycott was to hinder the development of water infrastructure for Israeli communities in the West Bank. Instead, the Palestinian boycott severely hindered the development of water infrastructure for the Palestinians and created a massive blockage of projects, including several waste-treatment facilities.

While Israel has fulfilled its obligations according to the “Water Agreement,” the Palestinians have continuously breached the accord. Israel made available approximately 70 million cubic meters (MCM) a year of water to the Palestinians in the West Bank before they boycotted the Joint Water Committee, even though the agreement allocates a much smaller quantity of only 23.6 MCM/year for the West Bank.

The Palestinians have also failed to treat their sewage, which flows freely into streams flowing through the West Bank and Israel, thereby contaminating both the environment and the Mountain Aquifer for everyone.

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

The shocking scenes in Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur not only destroyed the principal claim of Israel’s nine months-old protest movement against the government. They also illuminated a fundamental and disturbing fault-line in the wider Jewish world and the west.

Those who came to pray together in Tel Aviv’s public spaces on the holiest day of the year were shouted at, abused, reduced to tears and forced to disband their prayer services.

This repellent spectacle, on Yom Kippur of all days, was redolent of the forcible attempts to suppress Jewish prayer that have characterised Jew-hatred throughout the ages. Yet sickeningly, the perpetrators were themselves Jews spitting baseless hatred against other Jews.

The immediate cause was that the worshippers had erected a mechitzah, or divider, between men and women. Tel Aviv’s Mayor Ron Huldai had made a ruling forbidding segregated prayers in the city’s public spaces, a ruling that was upheld by the Supreme Court.

The objectors said the Rosh Yehudi movement, which tries to spread Orthodox Judaism in Tel Aviv, deliberately provoked disorder by disobeying Huldai’s ruling.

However, as everyone could see, the mob wasn’t only targeting Rosh Yehudi but also ordinary, religiously observant people who came to pray in those open spaces.

During the Covid emergency, segregated public prayers were regularly held in Tel Aviv and provoked no problem. The flashpoint occurred this week because, for the past nine months, secular people have whipped up hysterical loathing of the haredim and religious-nationalist Jews, whom they accuse of plotting to destroy Israeli democracy and human rights through the government’s judicial reforms.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20001/palestinian-concessions-peace

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was quoted on September 15 as saying that “normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel….needs to involve a two-state solution.” Most Palestinians, however, take quite a different view of the matter.

[A] public opinion poll revealed that a majority of the Palestinians are opposed to a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel and the so-called two-state solution. The two-state Saudi solution envisages the establishment of an Iran-backed Arab terror state next to Israel. Israel already has such a terror state next to its border: the Gaza Strip, ruled since 2007 by Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

On August 25, the American media outlet Axios reported that Blinken told Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer that the Israeli government is “misreading the situation” if it thinks it will not have to make any concessions to the Palestinians as part of any Saudi deal.

If anyone is misreading the situation, however, it is Blinken, who thinks that Israeli concessions would convince the Palestinians to accept a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. As the results of the PCPSR poll showed, the Palestinian public is not impressed with the proposed concessions.

If the Palestinian Authority is currently unable to prevent terror groups from attacking Israelis, it is truly delusional to think that it would be more diligent in protecting any new areas it received from Israel. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is hardly likely to send his security officers to arrest or kill the terrorists in the cities of Jenin and Nablus. He knows that if he does, his people will condemn him as a “traitor” and “collaborator” with Israel, and quickly dispatch him to “drink tea up there” with the assassinated former President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat who was murdered for brokering Israel’s 1979 peace deal with Egypt. Moreover, Abbas will not go against the terrorists as long as they do not physically go against him.

Most of all, the idea of transferring more land to the Palestinians is terrible because sends a message to the Palestinian Authority that, after it failed to combat terrorism in land under its control, it will be rewarded with even more land.

As the poll illustrates, support for anti-Israel terrorism among the Palestinians has risen from 53% (three months ago) to 58% today. That is why it is unrealistic to expect the Palestinian Authority to take any measures to disarm the terror groups in the West Bank. Unlike Blinken, Palestinian leaders are aware of the massive support for terrorism among their people. Unlike Blinken, Palestinian leaders also know that without Israel’s presence in the West Bank, Iran and its terror proxies would have taken complete control of the area a long time ago and ousted Abbas just as they did from the Gaza Strip in 2007

The Palestinian Authority, through its “Pay-for-Slay” policy, does indeed proudly reward terrorists who murder or injure Jews. In just one year, “Ramallah paid out around NIS 600 million ($187 million) in salaries for Palestinians imprisoned, jailed, or killed by Israel in 2020, according to a senior Palestine Liberation Organization official.”

So, while Blinken is talking about the need to involve the “two-state solution” in a Saudi-Israeli deal, 67% of the Palestinians oppose it.

On this coming Sunday at sundown until Monday at sundown, Jewish people observe Yom Kippur, arguably the holiest of holidays. It is a day of reflection on one’s character, responsibilities, and behavior, and regret and contrition for slights and offense one may have caused during the past year. We end the prayers with “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for a Good Year.”

And a good year and longer and better life is what Israel’s researchers work for around the clock and every single day, to benefit billions of citizens on every continent. Michael Ordman details these astonishing contributions. May he and good people of every faith be inscribed and prosper from the fruits of Israel’s Labor. “G’mar chatima tova” rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Better together. Researchers at Israel’s Technion have developed an AI system that identified 77 approved cancer nano-therapies that can chemically self-assemble in nearly 2,000 combinations to be far more effective, with less side-effects. They proved their system, combining bortezomib-cabozantinib to treat head/neck cancer.
https://nocamels.com/2023/09/new-ai-tool-combines-cancer-drugs-to-optimize-treatment/
https://www.israel21c.org/ai-matchmaker-heralds-new-era-in-nano-cancer-treatment/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168365923004236?dgcid=author
 
Woman saved from deadly skin-peeling disease. A woman with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS) was saved by doctors at Soroka-University Medical Center in Beersheba. The genetic disease progresses into toxic epidermal necrolysis – a life threatening condition causing 30% of the skin to peel off.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-756591
 
Positive results in bladder cancer trial. Israel’s UroGen Pharma (see here previously) has published positive results from two clinical trials of bladder cancer treatment UGN-102. The therapy can benefit some 80,000 patients. Trial success (65%) was similar to patients who had surgery but with a 55% less re-occurrence rate.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-urogen-to-raise-120m-after-positive-bladder-cancer-trial-results-1001453726
 
Nasal spray combats allergic reactions. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Nasus Pharma (see here previously) has reported positive results from its latest clinical study of its FMXIN002 intranasal Epinephrine powder spray device. It provides a safe and effective rescue for the emergency treatment of life-threatening allergic reactions.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasus-pharma-announces-publication-of-its-positive-clinical-results-with-fmxin002-intranasal-powder-epinephrine-spray-in-the-journal-of-allergy-and-clinical-immunology-in-practice-301895372.html   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37394178/
 
MS treatment commercialized. GranaGard Nano Omega 5, made by Israel’s Granalix Biotechnologies, is now available in Israel and online. The nano-engineered high antioxidant supplement from pomegranate oil (see previously) improves cognitive function in Multiple Sclerosis patients and will be tested on dementia patients.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/nano-engineered-pomegranate-oil-holds-hope-for-brain-disease-study-shows/
https://il.granalix.com/en/  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211034821003709
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8ef3JpVl90
 
EU funds trial for preemie insulin. Israel’s Elgan Pharma (see here previously) has been awarded a 2.36 million euros grant by the European Innovation Council. It will support a Phase III study of its ELGN-GL oral insulin-based formulation that helps the development of a preemie’s gastrointestinal (GI) system.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-company-nears-final-hurdle-to-okay-insulin-based-preemie-therapy/
 
US approval for cancer treatment software. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Techsomed (see here previously) has received US FDA approval for its Ablation Treatment Planning and Confirmation Software. VisAble.IO helps guide surgeons using ablation therapy (extreme heat or cold) to destroy tumors.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/techsomed-announces-fda-clearance-for-ablation-treatment-planning-and-confirmation-software-301917800.html
 
US approval for precision endoscope.  Israel’s Limaca Medical (see here previously) has received US FDA approval for its Precision GI™ Endoscopic Ultrasound (EUS) Biopsy Device. The device automatically obtains biopsies, for diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and other cancers, quicker and safer than current products.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/limaca-medical-receives-fda-510k-clearance-for-its-breakthrough-precision-gi-endoscopic-biopsy-device-301923165.html
 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-oslo-accords-began-israels-folly-with-the-palestinians-plo-conflict-peace-terrorist-36661be1?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Barbara W. Tuchman opens her iconic 1984 book, “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam,” with Rehoboam, who caused the Kingdom of Israel to splinter into Judah and Israel. If Tuchman were writing today, she might have ended it with another wretched chapter from the history of Israel—the great folly of Oslo.

Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to its own interests, whose adverse effects are apparent in real time, with the availability of feasible alternatives. The perpetrators are a group, not a single ruler, whose leadership spans longer than a generation. Israel’s implementation of the Oslo Accords, which were signed 30 years ago this month, meets all her criteria.

The folly of Oslo lies not in the creation of Palestinian autonomy (or as Yitzhak Rabin repeatedly called it, “less than a state”), which was part of the peace agreement Menachem Begin forged between Israel and Egypt. This idea was popular in Israel. But the decision to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization, a bloodthirsty terror organization devoted to the destruction of Israel, was an act of sheer folly. Viable alternatives existed, first and foremost local leaders in the Arab cities in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

In the days between the 1991 Gulf War and Oslo, PLO leader Yasser Arafat was a regional outcast because of his support for Saddam Hussein against the American-led Arab coalition. His prestige and the PLO’s suffered greatly. Yet Israel allowed Arafat to become a global player and even furnished him with weapons.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19976/palestinians-fleeing-gaza

These Palestinians are running away because they can no longer tolerate life under the Islamist movement of Hamas. They are not fleeing because of Israel.

“I know I’m risking my life, but I want to leave, dead or alive. At least I will find a dignified life abroad. People want to leave because of the oppression and injustice we see here [in the Gaza Strip].” — Sfouk AlSheik, twitter.com, September 10, 2023.

Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been controlled by the Iran-backed Hamas terror group, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood organization. Instead of working to improve the living conditions of the two million Palestinians living under its rule, Hamas has since invested millions of dollars in manufacturing weapons and building tunnels from which to attack Israel. Hamas had an opportunity to turn the Gaza Strip into the “Singapore of the Middle East,” but its desire to destroy Israel has brought only war and death to the Palestinians. To achieve its goal of murdering Jews and eliminating Israel, Hamas appears ready to sacrifice endless numbers of Palestinians.

Hamas evidently does not care if hundreds of Palestinians are killed and injured in wars instigated by its rocket attacks against Israel. Hamas does not even hesitate to use Palestinians as human shields during its wars with Israel. Members of the terror group have endangered the lives of thousands of their own innocent civilians by firing rockets from residential areas close to schools and hospitals.

“Despite their exposure to the risks of drowning, loss, and death, Palestinians fleeing the Gaza Strip see that Turkey and Europe are their hope and future.” — Mahmoud al-Raqab, Palestinian political analyst, knooznet.com, September 10, 2023.

Needless to say, Abbas, in his speech, completely ignored the plight of the young Palestinians fleeing the Gaza Strip. For Abbas, promoting hate against Israel and Jews is more important than addressing the economic and humanitarian crisis he helped create, through his sanctions in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas leaders, for their part, continue to pretend that in the Gaza Strip everything is fine. They are also continuing to incite Palestinians to carry out terror attacks against Israel. Notably, the Hamas leaders are making these statements from their five-star hotels and villas in Qatar and Lebanon.

The international community, meanwhile, continues to ignore the wretched conditions of the Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, choosing instead to lay all the blame on Israel.

As Palestinian leaders continue to suppress the people of the Gaza Strip, Israel has increased the number of work permits for Gazans. In July, at least 67,769 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were allowed to cross the Israeli-controlled Erez border crossing — up to 90% of them for jobs that pay well in Israel. Six per cent of the exits were for patients needing medical treatment in Israel or the West Bank.

It seems that Israel is doing more to help the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip than the Palestinian Authority, Hamas or any Arab country. However, because this news does not fit the anti-Israel agenda of many newspapers and foreign journalists, it is highly unlikely to make it into the mainstream media in the West.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/biden-back-doors-israel

Rescinding Trump’s Recognition of Sovereignty over the Golan
In a move from the Obama playbook, the U.S. is advancing a stealth agenda in the Middle East at the expense of its allies.

Sometimes, U.S. foreign policy is what you see on the news. Increasingly, however, changes in policy are hidden from view because they are unpalatable to many Americans. The growing divide between the policies that America claims to be pursuing and the policies that it’s implementing on the ground poses a growing threat to America’s global standing, as well as to its democracy, which is supposed to exert oversight of foreign policy through Congress. In order to maintain key alliances, allies must believe that American commitments will endure regardless of changes in administration. In order for American commitments to be worth the paper they are written on, allies must believe that America has their backs.

Nowhere is the split between formal U.S. policy and the stealth agendas being implemented by U.S. policymakers more glaring and toxic than in the Middle East. This is true because the core of U.S. Middle East policy is the de facto alliance with Iran promoted by the Obama administration and enshrined in the JCPOA. Obama’s revisionist approach to Iran has in essence left the U.S. with two Mideast policies—one enshrined in our alliances and understandings with historic U.S. allies, and the other centered on dumping our commitments to our allies in order to appease Iran. Only one of these is truly U.S. regional policy, of course—the policy that seeks to establish Iran as the center of a new Middle East. As a result, American commitments now serve to gaslight our allies into going along by encouraging them to imagine that, sooner or later, things will go back to normal.

The focus of the split in U.S. policy and of gaslighting our allies is the Lebanese pseudo state run by Hezbollah, the terror army controlled by Iran. By dealing with “Lebanon,” the U.S. can help forward the objectives of its Iranian partner without ever dealing directly with Iran—and thereby can continue gaslighting its allies to the extent that they would prefer to believe that the U.S. is still their partner.

The latest act in the Biden administration’s Middle Eastern Kabuki theater is the use of Lebanon to rescind America’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. No formal announcement of this major policy shift was made, of course. Instead, it was buried in the fine print of the U.N. Security Council’s reauthorization of UNIFIL, the force that ostensibly secures Lebanon’s border with Israel. In a reprise of Barack Obama’s passage of Security Council Resolution 2334 in the final days of his second term, Team Obama-Biden on Aug. 31 again used the route of the Security Council to abandon a formal American commitment and implement a new policy with extreme repercussions for Israel’s security.