RUTHFULLY YOURS

Bruce Hoffman’s Anonymous Soldiers is a deftly written account of the Jewish revolt against the British in 1940s Palestine. Despite its scholarship—it draws heavily on recently declassified British documents—and its significant bulk, it is a page-turner that leaves the reader feeling sorry once the book is finished.

Unlike most accounts of the Jewish underground, this one tells the story from the British point of view, though without taking Britain’s side. It leaves the reader with no doubt that it was the Irgun, and to a lesser extent the much smaller Lehi, that drove the British from Palestine, and not, as the longtime mythology of Israel’s Laborites would have it, David Ben-Gurion’s skillful politicking.

It was Lehi that began the terror war against the British in 1940. Its members were completely isolated at first, perceived by the Yishuv—a term for Palestine’s Jewish community—as a criminal gang. Lehi was led by Avraham (Yair) Stern, whom Hoffman describes as a man “of grandiose dreams and half-baked plans,” an outstanding classics student at Hebrew University, and a poet. The title of Hoffman’s book comes from a poem written by Stern, which would become Lehi’s anthem. Stern was killed by the British in 1941, and the group’s remaining members killed or captured. The group was revived in 1943 under the leadership of Yitzhak Shamir, decades later to become Israel’s prime minister.

In 1898, the top Jewish demographer, Simon Dubnov, projected 0.5mn Jews in Israel in 2000. He was off by 5.5mn Jews.

In 1944, the founder of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, Prof. Roberto Bacchi, projected 2.3mn Jews in 2001, a 33% minority. He was wrong by 3.7mn Jews.

In 2015, there are 6.5mn Jews and 3.4mn Arabs in the combined area of Judea, Samaria and pre-1967 Israel: a 66% majority, benefitting from a fertility and migration tailwind.

In June 2015, there is a 1.1mn gap between the real number of Arabs in Judea & Samaria (1.7mn) and the number claimed by the Palestinians (2.8mn).

The 1.1mn excess consists of the inclusion of 400,000 Arabs living abroad for over a year, in defiance of internationally accepted standards, which stipulate their inclusion in the count of their new country of residence.

When former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee raised the specter of the Holocaust in his evaluation of President Obama’s Iran deal, he touched a raw nerve because Huckabee got it right: The Holocaust taught us that evil is not satiated after it consumes Jews. A deal that is catastrophic for Israel is also catastrophic for the United States. The Governor reminded us that imagining the deal means losing some purportedly tolerable number of American servicemen to Iranian terror, somewhere “over there,” is morally and empirically wrong.

Critics, however—starting with the President—jumped on the Governor’s remarks – misread and misrepresented. What the Governor actually said to Breitbart News on July 25, 2015 was as follows: “This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”

The wide sidewalk behind a gleaming new building on the small campus of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art has become a stomping ground for homeless vagrants doing disgusting things.

The shenanigans of the scruffy drifters are on full display for Cooper Union students, faculty members and staffers thanks to the impressive glass facade of $111 million building, reports the New York Post.

“I have seen drug deals, public urination, defecation, masturbation in broad daylight in the Taras Shevchenko alley,” one Cooper Union professor told The Post.

Cooper Union, a prestigious and historic school in New York City’s East Village neighborhood, also houses Preschool of the Arts, a pricey private daycare.

New residential permits surge as developers rush to qualify for tax break
New York City is entering what could be the biggest building boom in a generation, census figures show, as work gets under way on hundreds of residential projects in neighborhoods across the city.

In the first six months of the year, developers received new residential building permits for 42,088 apartments and houses in the city, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, already more than in any full year since 1963, when nearly 50,000 permits were issued.

The surge in permits this year followed a rush by developers to start foundation work on many residential projects by June 15, in time to qualify for a valuable property-tax abatement that was scheduled to expire.

“There is a lot of digging going on,” said David Schwartz, a co-founder and principal of Slate Property Group, who helped shepherd six apartment projects through the permit process in late May and early June to meet the tax-abatement deadline.

Frederick Law Olmsted and Robert Moses’s Priceless Riverside Park .Riverside Park is a one-of-a-kind piece of infrastructure, seamlessly bringing together park, highway, railway and river.

In 1914 Robert Moses, who would become the park- and highway-building czar of New York City, was taking a ferry across the Hudson River from Manhattan’s Upper West Side. As he looked back at the receding shore he could see Riverside Drive, a curving tree-lined boulevard that fronted a sinuous line of grand mansions and stolid apartment houses. Below lay the boulder-strewn slopes of Riverside Park.

It wasn’t much of a park in 1914, rudely gashed by a rail line that ran along the waterfront with clattering trains belching dense coal smoke and carrying reeking livestock to slaughter.
Less than 25 years later, Moses could cruise the Hudson River and see the fragments of Riverside Park knitted together in rounded slopes and swales of trees and lawns that descended in gentle terraces. Stone walls retained those terraces and buried the rail line, making room for an auto parkway lined with greenery along the water’s edge.

A masterpiece is usually thought the work of a single artistic or design intelligence. But Riverside Park (including Riverside Drive, for they are inseparable as experienced) is the work not only of Moses, but of Frederick Law Olmsted, the great landscape genius behind Central Park, and the almost unknown Clifton Lloyd, the architectural engineer whom Moses picked to realize his vision.

Repression lifted slightly in the 1990s but the economy did not, and state-sponsored terrorism abroad continued.

Most backers of the nuclear accord with Iran hopefully insist that the theocratic regime will moderate once sanctions are lifted. Plugged back into the global economy, Iran will become less militant. The “pragmatists”—those surrounding President Hasan Rouhani, who supposedly want better relations with the West, will grow in strength; the “hard-liners”—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the ideologically ardent clergy—will weaken.

This is an unlikely scenario. Consider what happened after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, died in 1989. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the mentor of Mr. Rouhani, was elected president shortly afterward and remained in office until 1997. Mr. Rafsanjani, with Mr. Rouhani always at his side, encouraged and welcomed European engagement. A regime of global sanctions did not exist, and American sanctions were far less effective then. Tens of billions of dollars in foreign investment and trade arrived.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Liver cells produced from stem cells. Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have successfully engineered large amounts of functioning liver cells from stem cells. It is a major breakthrough as currently, biotechs testing new liver treatments have to rely on donated or purchased organs.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=155111&CultureCode=en

Simple test for smoke inhalation damage. Researchers at Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center have devised a simple blood test to determine the extent of damage done to the lungs of smoke inhalation victims. High levels of free DNA in the blood indicates greater damage and will determine resuscitation and treatment requirements.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Simple-blood-test-can-predict-how-much-damage-is-suffered-by-victims-of-smoke-inhalation-410315

Award for 3D denture scanning. Israel’s HoloDent produces a 3D holographic image of the mouth, reducing the time taken to produce dentures to just 30 minutes. (see Sep 2013 newsletter) The students on the BioDesign program that designed HoloDent at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have won Startup Open Israel award.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/27308

Successful trials for novel treatment. Israeli biotech Peritech announced successful results in its pivotal trials for PP-110 – an advanced treatment for hemorrhoids. Worth reading here about how PP-110 works.
http://www.peritech-p.com/?p=183

One device to check them all – anywhere. (TY Michelle) Israeli startup Tytocare is developing a handheld diagnostic device that enables a local nurse to check a patient’s ears, throat, heart and lungs, skin, temperature etc. and then send data and photos electronically to a medical specialist. Tytocare has just raised $11 million.
http://www.imedicalapps.com/2015/07/tytocare-smartphone-stethoscope-otoscope/
http://www.geektime.com/2015/07/14/israeli-tyto-care-raises-11-million-with-an-astounding-solution-for-parents/ http://tytocare.com/

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

A green park on top of Tel Aviv’s highway. Tel Aviv’s congested Ayalon highway is to be transformed into an oasis of greenery. The Ayalon Roofing Project will create a 593-acre public space for recreation, while enabling traffic to continue flowing below. It will be Israel’s largest municipal project, costing over NIS 2bn.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Environment/Tel-Aviv-approves-mega-project-for-green-oasis-above-Ayalon-Highway-409868

Keeping your computer healthy. Israeli startup Fixico has been chosen by IBM to export its remote Endpoint Management product to the private market. Now you can download Fixico to check your computer’s functions, disk and programs upon startup. Fixico has free basic features or paid-for advanced service.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/automatic-pc-repair-uses-ibms-tech-to-keep-computers-clean/

Chickenhawk is a political term used in the United States to describe a person who strongly supports war or other military action (i.e., a war hawk), yet who actively avoids or avoided military service when of age. Trump’s accounts of serial deferments and why he did not serve in Vietnam are a tad vague….rsk

Janet Levy writes:

I’ve been confounded by the so-called “conservative” electorate’s infatuation with this bloviating buffoon. There’s almost nothing conservative or even moderate about his views. If Trump is clueless enough to vilify Pam Geller’s Draw Mohammed contest as
“disgusting” and “insulting,” how will he fight the global jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of America?

For all of you conservatives out there, did you know that the Donald was pro-abortion, has supported and donated to Hillary Clinton, has been pro-illegal immigration, is good buddies with Chuck Schumer, has favored a single-payer health care system (Obamacare) and is unopposed to the Kelo decision, which enables the state to confiscate private property?

Trump is hardly a trailblazing conservative who will scale back the “fundamental transformation of America.”

“There are districts where immigrant gangs are taking over entire metro trains for themselves. Native residents and business people are being intimidated and silenced… The reasons for this: the high rate of unemployment, the lack of job prospects for immigrants without qualifications for the German labor market and ethnic tensions among migrants.” — Der Spiegel.

“Every police commissioner and interior minister will deny it. But of course we know where we can go with the police car….[O]ur colleagues can no longer feel safe there in twos, and have to fear becoming the victim of a crime themselves. We know that these areas exist. Even worse: in these areas, crimes no longer result in charges. They are left to themselves. Only in the worst cases do we in the police learn anything about it. The power of the state is completely out of the picture.” — Bernhard Witthaut, Chief Police Commissioner of Germany.

“The gangs traffic in heroin and cocaine, run brothels or are active in the contraband smuggling business. The brutality with which they carry out their activities has made them very powerful, the police are afraid of them. The state is passive with respect to these clans, the politicians ignore the phenomenon… This negligence has, over the years, enabled the emergence of a criminal parallel society. This would not have happened if the authorities had acted early and decisively.” — Der Spiegel.