RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last week Hamas once again launched a test rocket into the Mediterranean Sea.

A senior IDF officer said that over the past few months, Hamas has hardly launched a single test rocket that had a range longer than 30 kilometers, according to a Makor Rishon report.

The IDF believes that Hamas learned from Operation Protective Edge, that their long range rockets are easily shot down and ineffective against Iron Dome.

In additional the longer range rockets require more fuel and explosives, and Hamas is having a hard time acquiring both since the operation ended.

In a strange sequence of partisanship and bipartisanship, legislation to require Congressional approval of the Iran deal is only three votes away from a veto-proof majority.

In what may be the most significant direct result of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the joint session of Congress last Tuesday, March 3, Democrats and Republicans are now within spitting distance of ensuring that Congress will be able to review the details of the nuclear capabilities agreement the administration and the other members of the P5+1 are currently negotiating with Iran.

Just a few days ago it did not look as if any bipartisan breakthrough was in the cards any time soon, especially given several real tangles between the parties before, during and immediately after Netanyahu’s speech.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Ovarian cancer treatment works for brain tumors too. I reported in Mar 2014 that Professor Dan Peer of Tel Aviv University had developed chemotherapy using nano-particles to target ovarian tumors. It has now been engineered to target Glioblastoma multiforme – the most aggressive of brain cancer.
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/03/01/tel-aviv-u-researcher-stops-tumor-proliferation-with-nanoparticples/

Israeli snack prevents peanut allergy. Long ago, UK Professor Gideon Lack discovered that hardly any Israeli infants developed peanut allergy. Now his new study has proved that the reason is the common practice of feeding Israeli children the peanut snack Bamba. It reverses conventional “wisdom” of avoiding peanuts.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-kids-help-prove-early-exposure-to-peanuts-prevents-allergies/
http://www.israel21c.org/headlines/israels-top-snack-bamba-prevents-allergy/

Helping premature babies to hear. Without mentioning he is Israeli, the BBC World Service featured Dr Amir Lahav who has proved that the sound centers in preemies’ brains grow quicker when played recordings of their mothers’ voice. So follow Dr Lahav’s fascinating journey from the IDF, to volleyball coach, to musician, software designer, neuroscientist and Harvard pediatric professor.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02kbhq0#playt=0h19m49s
http://www.bu.edu/research/spotlight/magazine/06/students/lahav.html

Israelis are among the world’s healthiest eaters. A new study in February’s The Lancet Global Health Journal places the diet of the average Israeli the 9th healthiest out of 187 countries surveyed. The study, led by Dr Fumiaki Imamura of the University of Cambridge, covered 4.5 billion people.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israelis-among-the-healthiest-eaters-study/

Understanding irregular heartbeats. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have revealed the detailed mechanisms that control the beating of the heart. Heart disease can cause individual heart filaments to lose synchronization. Replacing diseased cells in a structured manner can re-establish a regular rhythm.
http://nocamels.com/2015/03/heart-disease-irregular-heartbeat-treatment/

Microlabs in space. (TY Michelle) Israeli innovations in space include SpacePharma’s laboratory that fits in the palm of your hand and will orbit in a nano-satellite, allowing scientists to conduct experiments and watch them happen on their smart phones.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/04/israel-space-idUSL5N0W040020150304
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRX6MT_EWXs

Boost for ALS and diabetes treatment. Israel’s Kadimastem’s recent news includes success in pre-clinical tests of its stem cell treatment for ALS. The technology also induces pancreatic cells to produce insulin and Kadimastem has begun research with Ramot, Tel Aviv University’s technology transfer company.
http://www.israel21c.org/headlines/stem-cell-therapy-for-als-diabetes/

On the day that Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu was leaving for the United States to give what the Washington Post called “the most important speech of his life,” my grandchildren were watching Big Hero 6. When I heard the smallest of the animated characters say, “We didn’t set out to be super-heroes, but sometimes life doesn’t go the way you planned,” it sounded like the tagline for Bibi’s launch as hero of the free world.
Can such a hero prevail? Elected leaders of democratic societies can rarely rise to courage or bravery of heroic proportions because of the compromise it takes to get reelected and because critical electorates feel compelled to cut leaders down to their size. In his nine nonsuccessive years heading Israel’s government, Netanyahu has taken as much political firepower as Israel has from its enemies. Nonetheless, like the country he heads, Netanyahu has grown stronger in every round. Despite attacks against him from both sides of the Atlantic, he gave Congress one of the boldest speeches in its great history—a speech its audience knew was as consequential for America as it was for the Jews.

“We love death more than you love life.” —Islamic extremist saying, for the ears of Israeli Jews and Christians

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” —Elie Wiesel

Netanyahu’s Protest

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech to a joint session of the US Congress for the third time in his career. The prime minister said that any deal with Iran cannot be trusted, since Iran has never changed its behavior of promoting terrorism worldwide or of threatening the State of Israel with destruction. An active terrorist rogue state can never be trusted to own nuclear weaponry. Netanyahu pointed out that a treaty with Iran will only delay the timeframe by which Iran may, with international permission, eventually acquire nuclear bombs, saying that a path forward to a deal with Iran would not be a “farewell to arms, but a farewell to arms control.” (For the full text of the speech use this link: http://www.ibtimes.com/netanyahu-speech-congress-full-text-read-bibis-entire-remarks-iran-1834610.)