RUTHFULLY YOURS

Read this episode of pluck and fairness in the American spirit:

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA )waves Israeli flag from his roof after pro-Hamas protesters gather outside his Pa. home: https://nypost.com/2024/01/27/news/john-fetterman-mocks-pro-hamas-protesters-with-israeli-flag/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

And here is a fact of ironic truth:

Among the protesters and Congressional legislators and journalists who harbor and promote anti-Israel bias, you can bet that the majority, whether in diagnosis, illness and cure, or in their cameras, cellphones and computers, or in general security technology, profit from Israeli research and development in some form every single day.

Michael Ordman’s catalogs of the foregoing are essential reading. rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Druze woman saved Jewish town. On Oct 7, Druze IDF Sgt Maj Iyyad Yousef captured two Hamas terrorists who invaded the Jewish town of Yated where he lived. His wife Nasreen then interrogated them in Arabic and extracted vital information that helped IDF forces to eliminate the threat to their town.
https://worldisraelnews.com/how-a-druze-woman-saved-her-jewish-town-on-october-7/
 
Foreign students maintain Gaza border dairies. (TY Hazel) Dairy farms near Israel’s Gaza border have been supplying milk uninterruptedly since the outbreak of the Oct 7 war thanks to a few staff that remained behind while most residents were evacuated. Among those who stayed are university students from Africa and Asia.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/undeterred-by-oct-7-massacre-foreign-interns-keep-gaza-periphery-dairy-farms-afloat/
 
Good news from Bet Shemesh. (TY Yanky) Journalist Hanoch Daum offered to pay a Tel Aviv restaurant owner for the meals of the IDF soldiers sitting at a table. The owner replied, “you’ll have to get in line, six other people have offered to do the same thing before you!”  (more articles below)
https://www.shemesh.co.il/en/highlights/good-news-corner-11th-january-2024/about
 
Read all about it. Don’t miss these: A wallet lost in Gaza 10 years ago returned to its owner. A record 39,000 ADI organ donor cards were issued in 2023. 31,000 Jewish Israeli babies were born since Oct 7. Volunteers present soldiers with gift packages for them to give to their wives on returning from Gaza.  And more…
https://www.shemesh.co.il/en/highlights/good-news-corner-11th-january-2024/about
 
In Gaza together, re-united in maternity ward. IDF reservists Eliya Rosen and Daniel Novogrotzky fought together for six weeks in Gaza. They were drafted on Oct 7, to join the same IDF unit. They were astonished to meet up again when they discovered that their wives were sharing a maternity room at the same hospital.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/383577
 
IFCJ donates $19 million in 100 days. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) provided $19 million in aid and assistance to thousands of Israelis in the first 100 days of the war with Hamas. IFCJ will continue to support evacuees and displaced war victims with basic needs and other essentials throughout 2024.
https://www.jns.org/wire/ifcj-provides-19-million-in-aid-in-first-100-days-of-war/
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-782687
 
14 ambulances donated. North Carolina based Samaritan’s Purse has donated 14 new MDA ambulances to replace those destroyed by Hamas on Oct 7. In addition, the organization is donating seven armored ambulances to MDA, which are still in production and will be dedicated this spring.
https://www.jns.org/samaritans-purse-replaces-14-mda-ambulances-lost-on-oct-7/
 
Something is afoot. There are a great many happy feet in the IDF due to the thousands of pairs of US-certified military-grade boots being delivered each week. 10,000 pairs of boots have been distributed to Israeli soldiers, thanks to some $850,000 of donations, raised mainly from individuals in the US at private funding events.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/something-is-afoot-volunteers-fit-idf-soldiers-with-us-military-boots-amid-hamas-war/
 
Asylum seekers cook for IDF soldiers. Dozens of Eritrean migrant workers hosted hundreds of IDF soldiers serving on the border with Gaza to a festive barbecue dinner. The Christian Orthodox Eritreans self-funded the cost of all the steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, kebabs, and salads.
https://www.jns.org/eritrean-migrants-barbecue-for-israeli-soldiers-near-gaza-border/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Finland gives $1 million to MDA. (TY Hazel) The Finnish government is to donate $1 million to Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service. Finland’s ambassador to Israel Dr. Nina Nordström signed the agreement after she toured the MDA 101 Emergency Call Center in Kiryat Ono.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/finland-to-donate-1-million-to-magen-david-adom/
 
US approval for ultrasound software. Israel’s Techsomed Medical Technologies (see here previously) has received US FDA approval for its BioTraceIO groundbreaking ultrasound-based liver ablation software. It helps surgeons to see the real-time status of liver tumors while they use thermal ablation therapy to destroy them.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/techsomeds-biotrace-solution-achieves-de-novo-clearance-from-fda-as-the-first-ultrasound-based-software-for-tissue-response-prediction-in-liver-tumor-ablation-302028369.html   https://nocamels.com/2024/01/israeli-company-gets-fda-clearance-for-liver-tumor-software/
 
A sensor to guide the endoscope. Israel’s SwiftDuct has developed a smart endoscope for navigating the complex and dangerous route needed to check the condition of the bile duct. 20% of the 2 million annual ERCP procedures cause damage to the nearby pancreatic duct. SwiftDuct’s sensor and guidewire solve this problem.
https://nocamels.com/2024/01/unique-sensor-offers-safe-solution-for-tricky-intestinal-procedure/
https://swiftduct.com/
 
Boosting survival rates for wounded IDF soldiers. The current 6.7% mortality rate for wounded IDF personnel is half of that during the 2006 2nd Lebanon war. This can be attributed to faster evacuations, better protective equipment, and medical tech from Israeli founded companies such as Mazor Robots and Aidoc.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-cutting-edge-israeli-med-tech-is-boosting-survival-rates-of-war-wounded/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaEdmYrNAO0
 
DNA sequencing to combat pathogens. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s Sequentify (see here previously) was awarded a grant by the Israel Innovation Authority to help develop a targeted DNA sequencing panel for infectious disease research, focusing on pathogen diagnosis and antibiotic resistance surveillance.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sequentify-awarded-grant-by-israel-innovation-authority-for-infectious-disease-sequencing-panel-302031466.html
 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20343/gaza-civilian-deaths

Critics of Israel almost never cite comparable data from other military encounters. This omission creates the false impression that the civilian death tolls in Gaza are among the highest in history, when they are in fact among the lowest.

The New York Times’ conclusion that the new data suggests that it is “wrong to accuse [Israel] of wanting to maximize civilian deaths” is highly relevant to the false charges of genocide that are being considered by the International Court of Justice.

The decreasing civilian death rate among Gazans should also end the campaign to impose a ceasefire on Israel before the IDF completes its legitimate mission to destroy Hamas’ military capacity. Successfully completing that mission will save civilian lives in the long run, by reducing Hamas’ capacity to keep its promise of repeating the barbarism of October 7 and also by reducing its use of civilian shields.

The time has come, indeed it is long overdue, for the world to stop imposing a double standard on the nation-state of the Jewish people. Double standards are a form of bigotry, and when bigotry is addressed to the only nation-state of the Jewish people, it becomes a form of international anti-Semitism against the Jew among nations. It must stop.

Israel’s military actions have produced far fewer deaths and a far lower ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths than in any comparable urban warfare. This is especially significant considering the reality that Hamas deliberately increases civilian deaths by using women and children as human shields and by hiding its military personnel and equipment among civilians.

You wouldn’t know it from the hectoring decision just rendered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel, but the death toll among civilians in Gaza — even including children and women — is among the lowest in the history of comparable warfare. Over the past several months, it has become even lower.

According to The New York Times, “The daily death toll in Gaza has more than halved in the past month,” and has fallen almost two-thirds since late October. Moreover, the percentage of civilian to combatant causalities has gone down considerably as well.

In a massive understatement, The New York Times also reported that these considerable reductions in civilian deaths have been “somewhat overlooked” by the media and critics. “Somewhat”! They have been totally buried and ignored. The New York Times also opined that Israel’s “harshest critics are wrong to accuse it of wanting to maximize civilian deaths.”

It is no accident that this reduced civilian death toll has been “somewhat overlooked” by the media and by Israel’s critics, including previously by The New York Times itself. Israel is subject to a discernible double standard when it comes to covering its military actions.

Even before the recent dramatic reduction in civilian deaths, Israel’s military actions produced far fewer deaths and a far lower ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths than in any comparable urban warfare. This is especially significant considering the reality that Hamas deliberately increases civilian deaths by using women and children as human shields and by hiding its military personnel and equipment among civilians. The current ratio of civilian-to-combatant is well below two-to-one, which compares extremely favorably with ratios achieved by other Western democracies in urban warfare.

Critics of Israel almost never cite comparable data from other military encounters. This omission creates the false impression that the civilian death tolls in Gaza are among the highest in history, when they are in fact among the lowest.

Every actual death of an innocent civilian — especially among babies and very young children — is a tragedy. It is these deaths that are always highlighted by Hamas to the media, but no one knows how many such deaths are actually among this most vulnerable segment of the population, and how many of those are the result of Hamas deliberately using young children as shields.

The Hamas figures for total deaths do not purport to distinguish combatants from what they consider civilian deaths. They never give the ages of the “children” they claim have been killed, although they regard anyone under the age of 19 as a child, even if they are active combatants. Hamas has recruited fighters as young as 13 to 19. The Hamas figures also do not count the Gazans who were killed by errant rockets launched by terrorists, or Gazans who were killed by Hamas for refusing its orders not to move to safer locations.

The New York Times’ conclusion that the new data suggests that it is “wrong to accuse [Israel] of wanting to maximize civilian deaths” is highly relevant to the false charges of genocide that are being considered by the International Court of Justice.

Nations engaged in genocide do not go to such great lengths trying to reduce civilian casualties, including placing its own soldiers at heightened risk by employing focused ground forces instead of relying exclusively on air and sea bombardments. The ICJ should immediately reject the genocide charges against Israel and initiate war crime charges against Hamas and Iran, both of which willfully try to increase civilian deaths.

The decreasing civilian death rate among Gazans should also end the campaign to impose a ceasefire on Israel before the IDF completes its legitimate mission to destroy Hamas’ military capacity. Successfully completing that mission will save civilian lives in the long run, by reducing Hamas’ capacity to keep its promise of repeating the barbarism of October 7 and also by reducing its use of civilian shields.

Israel’s conduct in its defensive war, started by Hamas, has been exemplary. It satisfies all international standards, and its effort to minimize civilian deaths while accomplishing its legitimate goals has generally been successful. There is always a tradeoff between reducing enemy civilian deaths and increasing risks to one’s own soldiers and civilians. Israel has struck a better balance than most, following the unprecedented Hamas barbarisms.

The time has come, indeed it is long overdue, for the world to stop imposing a double standard on the nation-state of the Jewish people. Double standards are a form of bigotry, and when bigotry is addressed to the only nation-state of the Jewish people, it becomes a form of international anti-Semitism against the Jew among nations. It must stop.

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School, and the author most recently of War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute, and is also the host of “The Dershow” podcast.

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