RUTHFULLY YOURS

Michael Kuttner is a Jewish New Zealander who for many years was actively involved with various communal organisations connected to Judaism and Israel. He now lives in Israel and is J-Wire’s correspondent in the region.

It soon turned out to be the gnashing of teeth and wailing laments emanating from Washington and Brussels accompanied by dirges of disbelief from every media journalist and political pundit.

The week prior to Election Day saw a huge influx of media from overseas most of whom based themselves in Jerusalem. They pontificated from their own little bubbles and preconceived prejudices. Virtually all of them sent reports back to their offices predicting doom and destruction for Netanyahu and his Likud party. These premature eulogies were written by journalists with a transparent agenda who salivated at the prospect of an electoral massacre and waxed joyously at the prospect of their left leaning idols being swept to power by an Israeli electorate fed up and eager for peace at any price. In this skewed perception they were not alone because their left wing Israeli colleagues also enthusiastically contributed to this chorus of the politically correct.

Early last year, he began posting stern religious pronouncements and snippets of scripture. By April 2, a day after turning 20, he hailed Islamic fighters: “If the sky would be proud of the existence of the stars, the land should be proud of the existence of the Mujahideen.”

On May 29, the day he disappeared, he posted, “I Thank Allah For Everything No Matter What!” Soon he was in Turkey, rebuffing his mother’s and sister’s anguished pleas to come home. In late July, he declared, “What A Beautiful Day in Raqqa,” the de facto capital of the Islamic State in Syria. Last Aug. 7, he posted a picture of himself online with his finger on the trigger of a Kalashnikov.

Mr. Nur had become one of a small number of Americans enticed by the apocalyptic religious promise of the self-described Islamic State, which has seized large sections of Syria and Iraq and claims to be building a caliphate.

Last Sunday, Tzipi Livni passed through the noisy hall of her Tel Aviv campaign headquarters. It was two days before Israel’s election, and Livni—who, a few months earlier, had been the chief negotiator with the Palestinians and the Justice Minister under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—was feeling bullish about her chances, with running mate Isaac Herzog, of unseating her former boss. Netanyahu is “the one who broke his own government, and he regrets it now,” she told us. Livni turned around and flashed two fingers at one of the blue-and-white posters featuring her and Herzog. “Because of this.”

“This”—the merger between Herzog’s Labor Party and Livni’s upstart Hatnuah—was the big story of the campaign. It resurrected Livni as a candidate and put Labor in serious contention to form a government for the first time since 1999. For months, Herzog and Livni’s Zionist Union and Netanyahu’s Likud had traded a one-seat edge in the polls, but over the past week the opposition had opened a three-to-four-seat lead. Suddenly, Israelis were seriously considering the prospect that someone other than Netanyahu might be Prime Minister. But now, less than forty-eight hours before the polls opened, the campaign had taken a turn, and just about everyone at the Zionist Union headquarters but Livni seemed worried.

After months of carefully projecting an aura of invincibility, Netanyahu had suddenly launched what was being dubbed the “gevalt campaign” (after a Yiddish expression of alarm), warning that Israel was at imminent risk of being taken over by “a left-wing government supported by the Arabs” that would “create a second Hamastan in Judea and Samaria” (the right’s preferred name for the West Bank). Internal polls in all campaigns were detecting a last-minute exodus of voters from Naftali Bennett’s hard-right Jewish Home party to Likud.

“The gevalt is working,” Amos Yadlin, Labor’s candidate for defense minister, admitted in the same hallway—a claustrophobic space plastered with campaign signs and movie posters with Herzog’s face pasted onto James Bond and Captain America. Yadlin was still optimistic that Herzog would get more seats than Netanyahu, but he noted that the final outcome would depend on whom some of the smaller parties supported the morning after.

“Shocked and appalled by their failure to finish him off politically –
only to see him reelected stronger than ever – the Left immediately
intensified its campaign of distortion and demonization.”

In the most educated and progressive circles, who is considered to be
the archfiend of the Middle East, the person who most imperils life
and freedom and the safety of the world?

Yes, we’ve reached the point where France’s Socialist president is more hard-line on Iran than Obama. But then again I can’t think of anyone outside Moscow who is softer on Iran than Obama.

When Claude Angéli says that both France’s Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, and its President, François Hollande, have told friends that they rely on “the support of the US Congress” to prevent Obama from giving in to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it is the kind of quote you can take to the bank.

Well I guess maybe Boehner should invite Hollande to speak. If for no other reason than that the exploding liberal heads might look a lot like the Kingsman finale.

Currently France, yes France, is blocking Obama’s Iran nuke sellout.

“We have been negotiating with Iran for 12 [years]. We shouldn’t be rushed into an agreement which will have to be comprehensive,” the French ambassador to Washington, Gerard Araud, tweeted during the talks. “For France, any agreement to be acceptable will have to give concrete guarantees on all issues. We won’t bypass any of them.”

Obama’s clumsy attempts to interfere may have helped more than hurt Netanyahu.

Israeli voters on Tuesday sent Obama a two-word message, and it was not Shabbat shalom.​

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defied pollsters’ predictions of impending doom and surged to a stunning victory. His Likud party’s strength in the Knesset swelled from 20 seats today to 30 in the incoming parliament. He is expected easily to build a majority coalition of at least 61 center-Rightists in the 120-member chamber.

Netanyahu’s election-eve promise to block a Palestinian state drove Likud members and other conservatives to the polls. Also helpful: Obama’s petulant and unconcealed disgust with America’s closest ally in the Middle East.

Recall that a senior Obama aide last October called Netanyahu “a chickens**t.” Another, also quoted in The Atlantic, called him a “coward.”

The last thing the Middle East needs is still another genocidal, totalitarian, racist state, run by Islamic extremists such as Hamas.

“The BDS movement is immoral because it violates the core principle if human rights: namely, ‘the worst first.’ Israel is among the freest and most democratic nations in the world. It is certainly the freest and most democratic nation in the Middle East. Its Arab citizens enjoy more rights than Arabs anywhere else in the world. They serve in the Knesset, in the Judiciary, in the Foreign Service, in the academy and in business. They are free to criticize Israel and support its enemies.” — Alan M. Dershowitz, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Law School.

What these dictators and tyrants evidently calculate, is that if Israel can just be made to go away, their own people will no longer be able to compare the restrictions at home to the limitless opportunities they can see so temptingly in the oasis next door.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Electronic lenses that help you see straight. Israeli start-up DeepOptics has developed electronic multifocal lenses. Using sensors, they detect what the eye is focusing on as well as the viewing distance – adjusting the power of your spectacles to ensure that whatever is being looked at comes into focus, whether near or far.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-tech-promises-a-sharper-pair-of-glasses/

Safe robotic syringe. The robotic dispensing system from Israel’s RescueDose makes the preparation and administration of liquid medication safer by adding accurate doses automatically and minimizing human contact. RescueDose is already used to dispense radiation treatments for cancer patients.
http://www.israel21c.org/headlines/dont-touch-that-syringe/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii9F5kxlrDU

Sound analysis of sleep disorder. The term “sound asleep” is very appropriate to the discovery by Ben Gurion University researchers of a simple, cheap way to evaluate sleep disorders. Using their innovative breath sound analysis (BSA) algorithm, patients with sleep quality, snoring and sleep apnea problems can be analyzed easily.
http://aabgu.org/bgu-finds-new-ways-to-evaluate-sleep-disorders/

UK and Israel to tackle dementia. A delegation of senior British scientists and companies is in Israel, to work with Israel on dementia. They are following up on December’s joint meeting of the British Neuroscience Association and the Israel Society for Neuroscience in Eilat.
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.646203?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.223%2C
http://www.bna.org.uk/events/view.php?permalink=7G8RPFSPJT

Link between weaning and diabetes. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered that the pancreatic cells of some young mice fail to produce insulin in response to glucose during the transition from mother’s milk to calcium-enriched food. It may explain why some children develop Type 1 diabetes.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/25747 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1534580715000258

Israel has the brains to solve brain problems. Great praise from US congressman Chaka Fattah – the man in charge of appropriating federal money for science and medical research and development programs. Fattah, was a keynote speaker at BrainTech 2015 event in Tel Aviv. Per capita, Israel leads the world in neuroscience.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-has-the-brains-to-solve-brain-problems-says-us-congressman/

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Israeli university joins International energy consortium. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev will be part of an international academic, research and corporate consortium to create a Ph.D. program on thermal energy storage (TES) technologies. TES heats or cools a storage medium so that the stored energy can be used later.
http://aabgu.org/bgu-joins-thermal-energy-storage-consortium/

Altair extends battery life on 4G devices. Israel’s Altair Semiconductor has developed a new chipset that will help the LTE batteries that power 4G devices to run with 10 times less power and half the cost of using current LTE technology. Current 4G devices include smart meters and alarms and many more are in development.
http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2015/3/3/israeli-companys-chipset-could-extend-battery-life-for-devices-using-4g-networks#.VPYL9vnF8z4=

Tech to repair the world. The first ever TOM (Tikkun Olam – repair the world) Maker event took place in Nazareth. It focused on helping people with special needs to integrate better in the community – find a job, to sit with friends in cafes, stroll the streets etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz7Jo V5hiNU http://www.tomtlv.org/?page_id=780

Australia receives Israeli research delegation. Assistant Minister for Defense, Stuart Robert met with a defense research delegation from Israel to discuss areas of mutual interest including science and technology.
http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/2015/03/11/assistant-minister-for-defence-israeli-defence-research-delegation-visits-australia/

Israelis get smarter phones. Israelis bought 2.85 million smartphones in 2014 – a rise of 19% on 2013.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israelis-buy-285m-smartphones-in-2014-1001018031

Stop texting and start Gliding. Read more about the instant video messenger from Israel’s Glide and watch this demo of how easy and practical it is to use.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/stop-texting-and-start-gliding-why-glide-is-my-new-fave-app-of-2015/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FjHg9sLoUI

Israeli technology for Norwegian desalination. (TY Michelle) Norwegian company, EnviroNor, is recruiting Israeli expertise to provide the water-processing technology necessary for its project to convert secondhand oil barges into floating desalination and wastewater treatment plants.
http://www.desalination.biz/news/news_story.asp?id=7960&title=Norwegian+desalination+barge+venture+seeks+Israeli+expertise+

Security for water. Jerusalem’s regional water & wastewater utility, Hagihon, has placed itself at the forefront of the cyber protection arena with a breakthrough project. Even if an employee does something unauthorized, like using an unrecognized USB flash drive, the system will send out an alert.
http://israelnewtech.com/2015/03/hagihon-launches-breakthrough-security-solution-for-protection-of-the-water-wastewater-utility/

Restoring Beer Sheva’s river. (TY Roberta) Untreated wastewater from Palestinian Arab towns has been polluting the Besor-Hebron-Be’er Sheva River for decades, thanks to international water laws. Now a 3-year project has been agreed between Israel, the PA and the Bedouin community to clean up the river.
http://arava.org/2015/03/restoration-of-the-besor-hebron-beer-sheva-river/

How Israel solved its water crisis. (TY Michelle) An excellent short article describing how, faced with severe drought and a full-blown water crisis, Israel made itself self-reliant by investing $4 billion between 2002 and 2010 to develop water technology that keeps its population and industries alive. And the innovations continue.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/turning-air-to-water-how/1726940.html

Korea learns Israeli pest control. South Korea’s Minister of Agriculture, Lee Dong-Phil visited Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu’s “BioBee” factory to learn about natural solutions to the global decrease in the wild bee population. BioBee is one of the global leaders in biological pest management, natural pollination and Medfly control.
http://www.israel21c.org/news/south-korea-likes-israeli-natural-pest-control/

U.K.-Israel science partnership is booming. Sir Mark Walport – chief scientific adviser to the British Government – says that Israel and the UK are scientific superpowers, working together on neuroscience, stem cells, nanoscience and water science. In 2015, hundreds of Israeli researchers will work in U.K. universities.
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.646203?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.223%2C

Weeding with technology. Israeli biotech Evogene is using its PointHit platform to analyze molecules in weeds and identify key plant macro-molecules responsible for essential biological processes in weeds. By targeting those processes, herbicides can be developed that will be more effective in killing weeds.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-agri-tech-firm-weeds-out-food-insecurity/

There are crises, and there are what I am going to call “root crises.”

Crises are what we read about in the headlines: Obama’s latest post-Constitutional/dictatorial act; the most recent episode in population replacement; the next terrifying Supreme Court decision; the predictable disaster of Iranian nuclear negotiations, or continued American military presence in Afghanistan; the looming threat of the United Nations empowered by an “internationalist” US president.

“Root crises,” however, don’t make headlines, are never addressed, and are rarely articulated, especially by elected officials and others with lawful authority or even media platforms. For this reason, the crises that grow from root crises only multiply, and are never dispatched.

A recent, incipient exception — and ray of light — was Sen. Cotton’s website letter addressed to the theocratic rulers of Iran. Cotton exposed the root crisis from which the crisis of Iranian nuclear negotiations arises — the Constitutional crisis at home in which an administration (not the first) runs amok, unbounded by checks and balances.

From the April 6, 2015, issue of NR
Why on earth are you writing about Unity Mitford, I used to be asked in the course of researching her biography. All she ever did was to make an exhibition of herself as a Nazi and anti-Semite. Settling in Germany and learning German, she had picked Adolf Hitler up in February 1935 by the simple expedient of sitting day after day with a friend, Mary Wooddisse from Nottingham, in the Munich restaurant where he liked to spend time with his cronies. He sent Wilhelm Brückner, one of his adjutants, over with an invitation to join his table, and fantasy became reality. While peace lasted, these two ideological soulmates met frequently in Munich, Berlin, and the Eagle’s Nest retreat of Berchtesgaden. Eager to please and flatter him by word and deed in private and in public, she undoubtedly touched what passed as the heart of that emotionally handicapped freak.
Born in the opening week of World War I, she was christened Unity Valkyrie, both names loaded with premonition. Lord and Lady Redesdale, Farve and Muv to her, and their one son and six daughters were just in time to enjoy the privilege of the British upper classes to do as they pleased and plead eccentricity if they went off the rails. None of them ever had contact with the workaday lives of other people. Shifting alliances and enmities were the constant feature of a family so numerous and enclosed in itself; sister Nancy Mitford’s novels reduce this hothouse competition to an ongoing comedy of manners. One of Unity’s nicknames was Bobo, and photographs show her growing into a heavy blonde Valkyrie whose set expression conveys resolve to keep up with her more beautiful and more intelligent sisters. If she had any talent at all, it was for drawing. The sample of her letters and diaries that came into my hands did little or nothing to clarify how and why devotion to Hitler had come to fill her whole being or what she may have hoped would be its outcome. The language is embarrassingly childish, her writing unformed, with a line through the letter s that gives it the look of a dollar sign. She shows no powers of observation or description, and worse, no self-consciousness.