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Ruthie Blum:The paving of a former Shin Bet chief’s path in politics Nadav Argaman’s hyped-up interview with Ilana Dayan was a let-down, other than to Netanyahu’s enemies.

Posted By on April 15th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/the-paving-of-a-former-shin-bet-chiefs-path-in-politics/

Two days before Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of drones and missiles, Channel 12’s investigative current-affairs program “Uvda” conducted an in-depth interview with former Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) director Nadav Argaman. The teasers for the broadcast, hosted by Ilana Dayan, promised bombshell revelations about the Oct. 7 massacre.
Despite the left-wing slant of the well-known TV show, viewers across the political spectrum tuned in on Thursday night to watch it. Reeling from and in the throes of Hamas’s invasion of Israel’s southern border six months ago—when its sadistic foot soldiers committed the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust—everyone in the country remains hungry for any sliver of information that might shed light on the travesty.
Capabilities that Israelis had always taken for granted were intelligence-gathering and security. The failure of both prior to and during that “Black Sabbath” shook a core communal foundation.
The question of how the government and Israel Defense Forces weren’t prepared for the mass enemy onslaught, and therefore didn’t prevent or put an immediate stop to it, still lingers, unanswered. That 133 hostages have yet to be freed by their brutal captors in Gaza makes the national need to understand what happened on Oct. 7 even more pressing.
Argaman was invited by Dayan to explain it. After all, he served for decades in the Shin Bet, which he headed for more than five years, starting in 2016. And it was Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu who appointed him to the position.
Anyone hoping to be enlightened by the hyped-up dialogue was let down, however. Other than Dayan, of course, who achieved her transparent aim of having an “expert” blame Bibi for the debacle.
It was a no-brainer that Argaman would deliver the goods. He’s been an “anybody but Bibi” activist since early 2023, when he signed a letter condemning the Netanyahu coalition’s initiative to reform Israel’s judicial system.

Yes, he was one of the hysterics claiming that such a move would constitute the death of democracy and the birth of Bibi as a full-fledged dictator. Raising the issue with Dayan, he argued, “This government is ultimately responsible for Oct. 7, because the judicial overhaul is what led to the weakening of Israel in the eyes of our enemies.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL EVEN DURING WARTIME FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on April 14th, 2024

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Israel and its allies have just defended the Jewish State from hundreds of drones and missiles launched by Iran and almost all of the projectiles were intercepted.  This newsletter was compiled before the news of that attack. Michael Ordman

Even the neutral to unfriendly reporters praised Israel’s response to modern and high tech Pharaohs.

The National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said to CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union :Israel’s response to Iran’s attack ‘was an incredible success’. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Fallen soldier saves five lives. (TY Yanky) The family of fallen IDF soldier Sivan Weil donated his organs. His heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, and pancreas saved five seriously ill patients at Israel’s Sheba, Hadassah, and Beilinson Medical Centers. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-794971  
https://www.timesofi srael.com/liveblog_entry/parents-of-soldier-killed-in-gaza-say-organs-donated/
 
Protection at sea. For the first time, Israel deployed the C-Dome naval point defense system on a recently commissioned Sa’ar 6-class corvette to intercept an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that had entered its airspace near the southern city of Eilat. Here is an article about the event and the timely implemented new system.
https://www.jns.org/in-first-israels-ship-mounted-iron-dome-downs-target-near-eilat/
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/b10lmpmga
https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-enemy-drone-shot-down-by-ship-mounted-interceptor/  (see video)
 
Rebuilding the South. Israel’s Ben Gurion University has launched “Way Forward” – a campaign to raise $1 billion for rebuilding the Negev region devastated on Oct 7. It will fund capital projects ($500 million), student aid ($250 million), and research excellence ($250 million). Philanthropists have already donated $380 million.
https://www.jns.org/ben-gurion-university-launches-1-billion-campaign-to-rebuild-south/
 
How life can change. Danielle graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Music. She started a bureaucratic job with the UK Government. Then she went to The UK Limmud Conference, and now she is executive director of Israel’s Volcani International Partnerships, repairing devastated farms in southern Israel.
https://www.israel21c.org/danielle-abraham-fixing-the-farms-that-hamas-ruined-and-fighting-global-hunger/
 
A positive BBC interview of 3 Israeli students! Has the perpetually anti-Israel BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen finally seen the light? There was little to complain about his five-minute interview of three students from Israel’s Ben Gurion University who fought against Hamas in Gaza. Apart from some unsympathetic questions.
https://americansforbgu.org/bbc-student-reservist-interview/
 
Why Israelis are happy despite the war. Historian Gil Troy wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that the essence of Israeli happiness lies not in the absence of conflict, but in the deep social cohesion, enduring family ties, and a rich tapestry of tradition and history that bind its people, especially evident after Oct 7.
https://israfan.com/2024/04/11/unity-amid-adversity-the-secret-to-israels-remarkable-happiness/
 
 
ISRAEL’S  MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
A nano-polymer to deliver chemo. Researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have developed a nanometer size polymer containing a peptide for delivering chemotherapy. In lab tests, it was over 50% successful in destroying resistant liver metastases (secondary cancer) materialized from colorectal cancer.
https://www.bgu.ac.il/en/news-and-articles/new-nanomedicine-succeeded-in-treating-metastatic-colon-cancer/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1748013224000379
 
The arms race in the gut. Ben Gurion University scientists have just published the results of their work reported here in 2019. In trying to develop a biologic remedy to reduce the methane produced by cows, they have uncovered a war in the intestines between good and bad bacteria and a probiotic toxin that tries to mediate.
https://www.jpost.com/science/article-795199   https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01521-9
 
Fast-tracking cure for hospital infections. The US FDA has granted Fast-Track Designation to the groundbreaking antimicrobial peptide OMN6 from Israel’s Omnix Medical (see here previously). OMN6 is commencing a Phase II trial in patients with two deadly hospital-acquired pneumonias – HABP and VABP.
https://omnixmedical.com/2024/02/20/omnix-medical-granted-fast-track-designation-by-u-s-fda-for-its-next-generation-anti-infective-omn6/
 
Confirming Deep TMS treats depression. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s BrainsWay’s has published another positive study of 247 depression patients receiving its Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation treatment. 60% went into remission and 80% had a positive response. The results confirmed a 2023 study of 1,350 patients.
https://www.brainsway.com/news_events/brainsway-announces-positive-results-in-late-life-depression-post-marketing-analysis/
 
Improving mental health in the Police force. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s XRHealth (see here previously) is to deploy its VR/AR solution in a specially equipped “quiet room” at every police station throughout Israel. It aims to promote mental health resilience, decrease stress, anxiety, and aggression, and improve performance.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/xrhealth-awarded-contract-israeli-police-120000609.html
 
Israelis are living longer. The number of Israelis aged 75 and over is growing by about 9,000 individuals per year. Life expectancy in Israel is 85 years for women and 82 years for men and continues to increase. Currently some 346,000 people receive elderly care benefits (e.g. home caregiver) as compared to about 180,000 in 2018.
https://www.jns.org/researchers-call-to-reform-long-term-care-as-israelis-live-longer/
 

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Israel: Standing Alone Against Multifaceted Threats, Thanks to the Biden Administration by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on April 13th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20565/israel-standing-alone

Israel is currently facing a multi-front war for its survival, with Qatar, Iran and Iran’s proxies, which are encircling Israel, leading the charge. The gravity of this aggression cannot be overstated: not just for the existence of Israel, but also for that of the US, Europe and the West.

Israel’s struggle for survival is not solely a regional conflict; it is a battle between civilization and those who think international law, human rights and the rules of war are a Western joke. Since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, its rulers have been calling for “Death to America” – now also demanded in Dearborn, Michigan.

Which side is the US on? President Joe Biden’s legacy, especially after surrendering Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021, will be “Biden, friend of the Terrorists.”

All the US would have to do to stop much of Iran’s bellicosity is take out the bases of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) inside Iran — so there is a direct cost to Iran, not just to its human shields.

Iran, on the way to having nuclear bombs, has provided support to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the Houthis, all of which have vowed to annihilate Israel. Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, boasts an arsenal of an estimated 150,000 missiles, many precision-guided, aimed at Israel’s population. Meanwhile, Hamas has demonstrated its willingness to commit a genocide, launching more than 12,000 indiscriminate rocket attacks just since October at civilian targets in Israel, a country the size of New Jersey.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has outlined his vision for Israel’s demise in his book, Palestine, a 416-page “guide to destroying Israel,” and railing against “The Great Satan,” the United States. This is not a hypothetical scenario; it is a meticulously planned campaign of annihilation.

While the Biden administration is threatening to withhold life-saving arms from Israel, the Biden administration just rewarded both of its chief attackers, Iran and Qatar.

The Biden administration just actually invited Hamas’s main funder, Qatar, to operate a planned pier in Gaza to bring in humanitarian aid. All of it will certainly end up with Hamas, not Gazan civilians — and, one can imagine what else Qatar will allow in, from heavy weapons to more terrorists.

A Hamas “victory,” incentivizing aggression, cannot be rewarded; it must be stopped.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hate ‘Zionists’? Apply for Your Grant Today!Timothy Cootes

Posted By on April 13th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/the-left/2024/04/hate-zionists-apply-for-your-grant-today/

Clementine Ford, I’m sorry to report, has found a new way of making a pest of herself. Since Hamas’ pogrom of October 7, Ford has become one of Australia’s most prolific anti-Israel activists, a project she has undertaken with all the rigour and restraint we have come to expect from the feminist termagant.

This was all on display, for example, when Ford helped dox the names and details of about 600 Jewish artists and creators, an act that led, of course, to harassment and death threats. It was also around this time that Ford herself was outed as a devoted pal of Laura Allam, the Palestinian activist currently facing charges of stomping on the head of her kidnapped victim. “I love YOU”, gushed Ford to Allam on Instagram, which, to be fair, was a rare departure in her behaviour on that social media platform. More often, Ford is shouty and deranged, fond of directing her venom at Jewish women who object to Hamas’ psychopathic campaign of rape and murder. Ford has labelled these “Zionist women”, in politer moments, as pathetic crybabies.

None of this, I’m even sorrier to report, has disqualified Clementine Ford receiving government grants. To its discredit, Screen NSW has provided her with $30,000 to co-create a TV series called Smile Bitch, which, I predict, most viewers will find unwatchable.

As usual, it gets worse. Clementine Ford isn’t some weird outlier here. A penchant for anti-Israel fanaticism, I have come to suspect, is much more likely to assist prospective applicants in their quest to be awarded with taxpayer funds. For example, Elsa Tuet-Rosenberg recently introduced herself to the Australian public as one of Ford’s fellow doxxers. As The Australian reported, Ms Tuet-Rosenberg used the incident to show off her talent for organising and delegating, as she split up her various lists of Jews into categories like ‘Artists’, ‘Sports Zios’, and the like. She then exhorted her social media followers to “let these f***ing Zionists know no f***ing peace.” This seems to be about the extent of her vocabulary, though, as she has also posed for photos where she sports both a maniacal rictus and a t-shirt with profanity-laden imprecations against Zionists and Israel.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Inevitable Result of Intersectional Gender Studies By Haley Strack

Posted By on April 13th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-inevitable-result-of-intersectional-gender-studies/

Harvard University’s gender and sexuality department will offer a wide range of classes next semester: Gender as Technology; Gender and Sexuality in Korean Pop Culture; Feminism in the Age of Empire; Gender, Race and Poverty in the United States; Decolonization; Love’s Labors Found: Uncovering Histories of Emotional Labor; and more. Decolonization is as relevant to feminist theory as the songs of BTS are to Korean gender roles in Harvard’s gender studies department. As George Leef has written, gender studies is “not really an intellectual enterprise, but ideological posturing,” one that “is not about trying to understand the world, but is all about trying to change it in certain ways.”

Gender studies professors have taken the posture of supporting Palestinians since October 7, and opposing Israel since well before October 7. A recent panel held at Rutgers University, and sponsored by its gender studies department, is a good study of how mad the departments have become and a better example of their ideological ends.

The panel, called “Palestine Is a Queer Feminist Struggle against Imperialism,” was led by Maya Mikdashi, an assistant professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, and Nadine Naber, an associate professor in the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Illinois. Mikdashi went viral for complaining that criticizing Hamas’s persecution of LGBTQ Palestinians is a “homophobic” tactic. Naber delivered a word salad against “settler-colonialism,” which is good enough to quote in full:

Any movement committed to a free Palestine must take seriously how the categorical dichotomization of gender and sexuality is made material — is corporealized through violence, punishment, murder, and disappearance, and that the gender binary is foundational to colonization. And also that the gender binary, like all borders, [is] made possible through state violence. . . .

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

The Danger of Self-Induced National-Security Crises Intensifies Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on April 13th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-danger-of-self-induced-national-security-crises-intensifies/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

Open war between Israel and Iran — as distinguished from the always thrumming war Tehran has waged through its jihadist proxies for decades — is a higher likelihood in this moment than it has ever been. Despite President Biden’s reckless distancing of the United States government from Israel — while it is at war with Hamas and Hezbollah, and while Hamas is still holding American hostages — the high alert that the Israeli armed forces are on in anticipation of an Iranian onslaught, which Western intelligence services believe could be imminent (as in: as early as today), means an increased likelihood of Iranian-backed attacks on the United States — not just in the Middle East but in our own territory.

I say “Despite” advisedly. Keeping alive his streak of being wrong on every consequential foreign-policy matter in his half-century career — with the wages of his inanities now higher than ever — President Biden has bashed our Israeli ally to appease Iran (and woo the “Death to America” precincts of Dearborn, Mich.). As ever, the result will not find Iran overlooking American support for Israel (support which is still very strong in the public and much of Congress); the result will be — it already is — to embolden Iran to attack in the conceit that the Biden administration may not be fully committed to Israel’s defense. Biden’s ongoing display of weakness can only further embolden Iran to step up attacks against us.

On that score, I observed back in January that Biden’s self-created border crisis has been overlapping with the crisis caused by his mishandling of Iran policy:

For many years, Iran has had an operational alliance with the Marxist totalitarian regime in Venezuela. This gives Iran a toehold in the West and a well-trod route to infiltrate operatives across the southern border. Biden has appeared blithely indifferent to this — which is no surprise when we remember the debacle last fall: Biden agreed to a “prisoner exchange” in connection with the $6 billion ransom that he paid Iran for the release of American hostages. Then it turned out that most of the Iranian prisoners, who had been or were being prosecuted by the Justice Department for clandestine activities on behalf of Tehran, were “U.S. persons” who got to stay in the United States rather than being returned to Iran.

Biden is facilitating illegal immigration from Venezuela (among other South and Central American countries) through a lawless visa scheme. In a post earlier today, I drew on a report by Andrew Arthur (of the Center for Immigration Studies) about the staggering number of illegal immigrants (371,000) who entered the country last month. Arthur relates that, despite the fact that Biden reserves for Venezuela a healthy share of the annual (illegal) parole grants from his CHNV program (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela), tens of thousands of additional aliens from those countries are showing up illegally every month. Last month, of 61,500 such illegal aliens, 47,000 were from Venezuela. That’s bad . . . but not as bad as the 51,833 from Venezuela in September.

The mind reels. Does any rational person think Iran is not capitalizing on this scheme?

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

Hamas Just Made a Major Announcement…And the Media Is Nowhere to be Found Matt Vespa

Posted By on April 13th, 2024

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2024/04/12/media-is-silent-as-hamas-admits-palestinian-death-toll-screw-up-n2637708

It’s wild when you think about it: news organizations were taking Hamas propaganda as if it were verified and accurate information. No one learned from the Gaza hospital fiasco, the first wall the media crashed into when they erroneously said that an Israeli airstrike hit this facility. The reality was it was the terrorists’ own rocket salvo, fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The New York Times had to print a retraction, but the damage was done. Now, Hamas has openly admitted they inflated the death toll in Gaza, and the media is AWOL (via Foundation for the Defense of Democracies): 

The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said on April 6 that it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claims to have documented. In a statistical report, the ministry notes that it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any of the following key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth, or date of death. The health ministry also released a report on April 3 that acknowledged the presence of incomplete data but did not define what it meant by “incomplete.” In that earlier report, the ministry acknowledged the incompleteness of 12,263 records. It is unclear why, after just three more days, the number fell to 11,371 — a decrease of more than 900 records. 

Prior to its admissions of incomplete data, the health ministry, asserted that the information in more than 15,000 fatality records had stemmed from “reliable media sources.” However, the ministry never identified the sources in question and Gaza has no independent media. 

[…] 

On October 16, the health ministry told global media that an Israeli airstrike was responsible for an explosion that killed 500 Palestinians at the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in northern Gaza. U.S. media quickly reported the story even though it became clear within hours there was no evidence to support claims of an airstrike or a death toll close to 500. Soon, evidence emerged showing that a rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists was nearly certain to have caused a blast in the hospital’s parking lot. An unclassified U.S. intelligence report on October 18 said the blast likely caused between 100 to 300 deaths, and it leaned towards casualty estimates at “the low end of the 100-to-300 spectrum.” 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

How Taxpayers Will Heavily Subsidize Democrat Boots on the Ground This Election By Ben Weingarten

Posted By on April 13th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/13/how-taxpayers-will-heavily-subsidize-democrat-boots-on-the-ground-this-election/

Progressives are using legal loopholes and the power of the federal government to maximize Democrat votes in the 2024 election at taxpayers’ expense, RealClearInvestigations has found.

The methods include voter registration and mobilization campaigns by ostensibly nonpartisan charities that target Democrats using demographic data as proxies, and the Biden administration’s unprecedented demand that every federal agency “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.”

A dizzying array of overwhelmingly “democracy-focused” entities with ties to the Democratic Party operating as charities and funded with hundreds of millions of dollars from major liberal “dark money” vehicles are engaged in a sprawling campaign to register the voters, deliver them the ballots, and figuratively and sometimes literally harvest the votes necessary to defeat Donald Trump.

These efforts, now buttressed by the federal government, amplify and extend what Time magazine described  as a “well-funded cabal of powerful people ranging across industries and ideologies,” who had worked behind the scenes in 2020 “to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information” to defeat Trump and other Republicans. The “shadow campaigners,” Time declared, “were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”

Heading into 2024, “there is not a ‘shadow’ campaign,” said Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. “There is an overt assault on President Trump and those who wish to vote for him occurring at every level of government and with the support of all major institutions.”

By contrast, Republican Party stalwarts lament that no comparable effort exists on their side. The GOP’s turnout and messaging efforts seek to thread a difficult needle by encouraging early and absentee voting and ballot-harvesting – pandemic-era measures that Trump and supporters blame for his 2020 electoral defeat – while the party simultaneously fights the mainly blue-state laws that made the practices possible. The party’s position is further complicated by its standard-bearer’s warnings of a rigged election bigger than in 2020, which some speculate could turn off moderate swing voters.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Denver to cut police and firefighters to pay for illegals. What could go wrong? By Monica Showalter

Posted By on April 13th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/04/denver_to_cut_police_and_firefighters_to_pay_for_illegals_what_could_go_wrong.html

Migrant-magnet Denver has announced a plan to pay for all its new arrivals — by cutting police, firefighting, sheriff, 911, transport, infrastructure and other services otherwise meant for its citizens. Their quality of life is about to go down.

According to the Daily Caller:

The Democratic-run city of Denver, Colorado, plans to defund its police department to pay for illegal immigrants.

Denver, which is commonly referred to as a “sanctuary city,” announced on Wednesday that it will spend $89.9 million on services for incoming illegal migrants, pulling some of the funding from roughly $45 million in public programs and services. Denver’s police department will be hit with an $8.4 million reduction — about 1.9% of its total operating budget, the city confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

According to Denver’s mayor, Mike Johnston, it’s about “shared sacrifice.”

Breitbart reported:

“We think it’s a balance. We want to be a welcoming city where you don’t have a woman with a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old sleeping outside in a tent in ten-degree weather in a snowstorm. That’s one of our values. And we also want to be able to provide high-quality public services to all the taxpayers. That’s also one of our values. And in this context, without any federal support, to do both of those things requires shared sacrifice, it requires compromise. So, we are both making cuts to city budgets to meet this financial need, and we are making cuts to the amount of services we can provide to the migrants that arrive and to the number of folks that we can serve.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Golden Gate: A Novel by Amy Chua

Posted By on April 13th, 2024

Her last book was Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in 2011 

Her novel is a great read….rsk

Amy Chua’s debut novel, The Golden Gate, is a sweeping, evocative, and compelling historical thriller that paints a vibrant portrait of a California buffeted by the turbulent crosswinds of a world at war and a society about to undergo massive change.

In Berkeley, California, in 1944, Homicide Detective Al Sullivan has just left the swanky Claremont Hotel after a drink in the bar when a presidential candidate is assassinated in one of the rooms upstairs. A rich industrialist with enemies among the anarchist factions on the far left, Walter Wilkinson could have been targeted by any number of groups. But strangely, Sullivan’s investigation brings up the specter of another tragedy at the Claremont, ten years earlier: the death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the Bainbridge family, one of the wealthiest in all of San Francisco. Some say she haunts the Claremont still.

The many threads of the case keep leading Sullivan back to the three remaining Bainbridge heiresses, now adults: Iris’s sister, Isabella, and her cousins Cassie and Nicole. Determined not to let anything distract him from the truth—not the powerful influence of Bainbridges’ grandmother, or the political aspirations of Berkeley’s district attorney, or the interest of China’s First Lady Madame Chiang Kai-Shek in his findings—Sullivan follows his investigation to its devastating conclusion.