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May 2024

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POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on May 26th, 2024

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

In this week’s Positive newsletter are reminders to the President of Ireland that Israeli technology is saving many lives in a Dublin hospital. The President of Brazil should note that an Israeli blood testing machine is early diagnosing fatal diseases in his country.  And the President of Syria need only ask his Israeli neighbor to treat his wife with one of Israel’s many remedies for Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

Meanwhile the UN, ICJ and ICC should bare their heads in shame, knowing that Israeli companies last week announced new treatments for liver cancer, electronic patches to kill bacteria infections, electromagnetic brain rehabilitation after strokes, implants to repair the spine, and remote medical diagnostics in thousands of schools.  Michael Ordman

And by the way what about Norway so swift to recognize a “Palestinian State”? The word “quisling” defined as “traitor- a person who collaborates with the enemy” owes its history to Norway’s Vikdun Quisling, a high government official, who in World War II, volunteered to help the Nazis occupy and rule Norway for Germany. rsk

 

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
IDF heroes speak to the world. The Jewish Agency for Israel organized a group of 90 IDF soldiers that fought on the southern and northern fronts to participate in Israel’s Memorial Day (Yom Hazikaron) and Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut) ceremonies across the globe so they could share details of their experiences.
https://www.jns.org/wire/jewish-agency-shares-stories-of-israeli-soldiers-heroism-worldwide/
 
We will dance again. American singer and influencer Montana Tucker attended the ‘NOVA’ dance tribute at Kibbutz Re’im in memory of the Oct 7 victims. She said, “Israel will dance again.” And in Tel Aviv’s hostage square, “I’ve sung Hatikvah many times but never in Israel. It is so special and powerful to be singing it here.”
https://www.thejc.com/news/showbiz/montana-tucker-its-us-against-the-world-and-we-will-prevail-pbzuvdk3
 
Latest JNF volunteering opportunities. This site lists the dates of upcoming JNF missions to support Israeli evacuees, pick crops, repair kibbutz buildings, and meet soldiers, survivors, and influential figures.
https://www.jnf.org/travel/tours/index/volunteer-in-israel-missions
 
 
ISRAEL’S  MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Saving hundreds of lives in Ireland. (TY Yanky – For my next “boycott Israel” blog) Dublin’s Mater Hospital has implemented the AI X-ray analysis software from Israel’s Aidoc (see here previously). It has already saved hundreds of lives.  No surprise that the Irish National broadcaster RTE didn’t mention that Aidoc is Israeli!
https://www.rte.ie/news/health/2023/1213/1421765-mater-hospital-ai/
https://www.aidoc.com/about/news/mater-hospital-ai-deployment/
 
Alpha DaRT treats its first liver cancer patient. The Alpha DaRT innovative alpha-radiation cancer therapy from Israel’s Alpha Tau (see here previously) has been used to treat a liver cancer patient in a Canadian clinical trial. The trial will include up to 10 patients with liver metastases (secondary cancer) from colorectal cancer.
https://www.ourcrowd.com/startup-news/alpha-tau-announces-alpha-dart-treatment-of-first-patient-with-liver-metastases-of-colorectal-cancer   https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05829291
 
Electronic cure for infections. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Inspira Technologies and Israel’s Ennocure MedTech jointly developed innovative bio-electronic physical stimulation technology (see here previously). Lab blood test showed the treatment cut bacterial growth by 75% in 4 hours and by 100% within 24 hours.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/inspira-ennocure-vitro-study-results-122400051.html
 
Causing brain cancer cells to burn out. Prof Barak Rotblat of Israel’s Ben-Gurion University is making brain cancer cells self-destruct by increasing their growth rate while shutting down their glucose energy source. He is working with BGN Technologies to block 4EBP1, a protein that regulates cancer to survive glucose starvation.
https://www.bgu.ac.il/en/news-and-articles/rotblat-glucose-starvation/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48386-y
 
Helping recovery from strokes. Israel’s BrainQ (see here previously) reported promising results from a 15-center clinical trial that uses an AI-powered electromagnetic field therapy to help reduce disabilities in people after suffering a severe ischemic stroke.
https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/startups-tech/startup-brain-qs-trials-show-promising-results-stroke-patients
 
US approval for spinal fusion. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Zygofix (see here previously) has received US-FDA approval for its zLOCK Lumbar Facet Fixation System.  Zygofix’s already has European CE certification for its adaptable implant, and says it is now positioned to revolutionize spinal fusion surgery.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zygofix-receives-fda-clearance-for-its-zlock-lumbar-facet-fixation-system-302136657.html
 
Remote diagnostics at 2,500+ US schools. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s TytoCare (see here previously) now provides remote care support at clinics in more than 2,500 schools in 31 US states. Recent arrangements include schools in Guilford County, N.C., Title-1 schools across Virginia, and schools in Edmonson County, Kentucky.
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/14/2881531/0/en/TytoCare-Partners-with-Five-New-Health-Systems-to-Expand-School-Health-Initiative-to-100-Additional-Schools-Nationwide.html
 
BioMed 2024. (TY Atid-EDI) BioMed Israel (May 21-23) is the largest and leading meeting venue between Israeli healthcare professionals where more than 100 Israeli life science companies, both promising startups and more established companies, present and exhibit their innovative products and technologies.
https://kenes-exhibitions.com/biomed/

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Hamas barbarism in living color: Ruthie Blum

By on May 26th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/hamas-barbarism-in-living-color/

Footage screened on a digital billboard in New York City’s Times Square on Friday isn’t for the faint-hearted. Still, viewing it is a must for anyone who doesn’t believe, or has forgotten, the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7.

The clip was released on Wednesday by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. It was filmed by a group of Palestinian terrorists armed with deadly weapons and body cameras—the latter to document the spoils of their genocidal attack.

In the video, the men are seen tying up and sexually abusing five female Israel Defense Forces spotters at the Nahal Oz army base, before abducting them violently to Gaza.

The parents of 19-year-olds Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniela Gilboa and Naama Levy decided to allow the three-minute horror show—edited to exclude images of the many corpses of the girls’ compatriots—to be broadcast locally and abroad.

“You dogs, we will step on you!” shouts one of the perpetrators in Arabic.

“Take pictures of them,” instructs another.

“Here are the women who can get pregnant,” a different barbarian announces. “These are the Zionists.”

Staring at the bloodied and bound victims dressed in pajamas, a sleazy predator says in English, “You are so beautiful.”

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‘Groom These Women’: The Persecution of Christians, April 2024 by Raymond Ibrahim

By on May 26th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20663/persecution-of-christians-april

On April 26, a Muslim man named Muhammad Shehroz, led a 4-year-old Christian boy, Moosa Masih to a field where he brutally sodomized and then sought to strangle the child to death. — britishasianchristians.org, May 3, 2024, Pakistan.

Even though it is illegal in Pakistan to marry underage girls, the authorities refused to act on the Christian family’s pleas to recover their daughter, due to a birth certificate that had obviously been forged, which claimed she was 18. A court subsequently ruled that, being of age, Ameen had willingly converted to Islam and married a Muslim man. — britishasianchristians.org, April 28, 2014, Pakistan.

“On April 5th, members of the jirga [Pakistani conflict resolution team] forcibly arrived at my residence and coerced me to accompany them to the police station. They threatened to abduct my daughters if I dared to resist,” said the father of Kainat Pervaiz, a 16-year-old Christian girl who was abducted and raped. They coerced him to drop the case in exchange for 50,000 rupees (USD $180) and the proposed marriage of his daughter to her rapist as a form of “compensation.” — britishasianchristians.org, April 28, 2014, Pakistan.

[A] massive riot broke out in an asylum shelter after some Muslims noticed a resident wearing a cross necklace. — medforth.biz, April 13, 2024, Germany.

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of April 2024.

The Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Uganda: On Apr. 10, a Muslim man murdered his mother for refusing to leave the Christian faith. Two months earlier, Sulaina Nabirye, a 50-year-old widow, had put her faith in Christ. Immediately, her 31-year-old son, Arajabu Mukiibi, began to pressure her to return to Islam, according to a relative (name withheld for security reasons):

“During the month of Ramadan, she complained of her son pressuring her to stop attending church and revert back to Islam, since he was studying to become an imam at Bugembe Mosque. When she refused to convert back to Islam, he stopped visiting her at her house and threatened to chase or even kill her.”

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Bravo! Dina Rubina: Rude and Crude but Definitely Justified

By on May 26th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/israel/2024/05/rude-and-crude-but-definitely-justified/

Pushkin House in London, in collaboration with the University of London, recently invited Israeli author Dina Rubina (above) to a literary discussion on Zoom about her books. Then she received the email below from the meeting’s moderator, Nataliya Rulyova, who demanded she state where she stands “on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” because other invited participants need to “understand your position on this issue before responding”. That note and Ms Rubina’s blistering response are reproduced below.

From: Nataliya Rulyova

Hello, Dina!
The Pushkin House announced our upcoming conference on social media and immediately received critical messages regarding your position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They wanted to understand your position on this issue before responding. Could you formulate your position and send it to me as soon as possible?
— Natasha

Then followed Ms Rubina’s response

From: Dina Rubina
To: Nataliya Rulyova

Dear Natalia! 
You’ve written beautifully about my novels, and I’m so sorry for the time you’ve wasted, because apparently we have to cancel our meeting.

The universities of Warsaw and Torun have just canceled lectures by the wonderful Russian-speaking Israeli writer Yakov Shechter on the life of Galicia’s Jews in the 17th and 19th centuries “to avoid making the situation worse.” I suspected that this would affect me too, since academia is now the main breeding ground for the most disgusting and virulent anti-Semitism, disguised as so-called “criticism of Israel.” I was expecting something like this, and I even decided to write you an email about it… but I put it aside. It’s time for me to publish it.

This is what I want to say to all those who expect from me a quick and obsequious report on my position regarding my beloved country, which currently lives (and always has) surrounded by ferocious enemies who seek to destroy it . My country which is waging a just war today against a rabid, ruthless, deceptive and cunning enemy. The last time I apologized was in elementary school, in the principal’s office, I was 9 years old. Since then, I have been doing what I think is right, listening only to my conscience and expressing exclusively my understanding of the world order and human laws of justice.

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ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Defying the Odds: Trump’s Bronx Speech and Its Impact The man I heard in the Bronx bears scant resemblance to the bumbling yet dangerous ogre that the world has fabricated around the name Trump. Roger Kimball

By on May 26th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/26/defying-the-odds-trumps-bronx-speech-and-its-impact/

Donald Trump’s Bronx rally on Thursday was memorable not only for its display of political virility in a foreign—i.e., Democrat—clime but also for the rhetorical excellence of the speech that Trump, in his usual circuitous manner, delivered.

Tweeting (or X-ing) the column I wrote about the event, I dilated on the suppleness of Trump’s speeches. “I know this sounds odd,” I wrote,

but here goes: Donald Trump has delivered some of the very best political speeches in American history.  We’re not supposed to notice that because, well, Trump.  But it is true.  Go back and listen to his 2017 speech in Warsaw.  It is a masterpiece.  Ditto his 2020 speech at Mount Rushmore. Although delivered in a different register, his speech yesterday in The Bronx will, I predict, turn out to be one of the most significant of the 2024 campaign.  Among other things, it will be seen to mark the moment when Trump’s gathering momentum became unstoppable.

Time will tell whether I am right about that concluding observation. While we wait, I thought I would share some reactions to my column—or, rather, to a misreading of something I said in response to a reader. I was asked “Do we know who writes [Trump’s speeches]?” I replied,  “Well, I do!” meaning I, like many people, know who writes Trump’s speeches, not that I write them myself.

A London-based friend whom I have not seen in a while wrote me an anguished, imploring note:  “Please tell me it isn’t true that you are writing Trump’s speeches. Surely it wasn’t you who advised him to say that immigrants were poisoning the blood of America? Straight out of the Mein Kampf playbook.”

Nope, not I. I am pretty sure the remark in question  was fermented and mis en bouteille by Trump himself.  Tout le monde—at least, the world of the elite media—was appalled by the remark just as they had been appalled by Trump’s calling shithole countries like Haiti “shithole countries,” his referring to Nikki Haley as “bird brain,” or many similar exercises in invective. In my view, none of Trump’s remarks bear any similarity to Mein Kampf, nor do I think he is an “authoritarian figure.”  My friend did say that “I wasn’t implying that Trump was actually a Hitler figure, but that his use of those words showed a staggering ignorance of their historical associations. I don’t see him as a fascist but as an ignoramus.” From “Hitler” to “ignoramus” is a slight upgrade, I suppose,  but not exactly the cat’s meow.

My friend and I went back and forth on Trump. In the course of the exchange, she went from comparing him to Hitler to saying that “most alarmingly he seems to be Putin’s useful idiot.” To that charge, I responded that “I know some people say that. I do note that Putin did not invade Ukraine during Trump’s presidency.  And I doubt Putin regarded Trump’s  destruction of hundreds of Russian troops in Syria in 2018 as a gesture of friendship, but who knows?”

My friend then allowed that “Putin annexed Crimea long before he went for the full invasion. What is most alarming is that Trump seems to feel he has Putin under his influence when it is really the other way around.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Undercover Prosecutor Merchan Helps Bragg Lawlessly Stress Cohen’s Guilty Plea Andrew McCarthy

By on May 26th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/05/undercover-prosecutor-merchan-helps-bragg-lawlessly-stress-cohens-guilty-plea/?utm_source=

The judge in Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial has stacked the deck against the former president.

Editor’s Note: This is the first of two columns on how Judge Juan Merchan has allowed prosecutors from Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to prove a federal campaign-finance crime against former president Donald Trump by relying on blatantly inadmissible evidence — the guilty pleas of Michael Cohen and a non-prosecution agreement David Pecker struck with the Justice Department. The second column will appear tomorrow.

How far out on a limb is Judge Juan Merchan willing to go to help Manhattan’s elected progressive Democratic district attorney, Alvin Bragg, convict former president Donald Trump based on inadmissible evidence?

Very far.

As I’ll discuss in this column and a second one tomorrow, the inadmissible evidence in question consists of (a) guilty pleas by Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to two Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) felonies in a case brought against him by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY); and (b) a non-prosecution agreement that former American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker — Trump’s longtime friend, who controlled the National Enquirer — entered into with the Justice Department because he feared being indicted under FECA. (Relatedly, AMI agreed to pay a fine to the FEC.)

To avoid too much redundancy, let’s focus on Cohen’s guilty pleas, which trigger the same legal objections as the non-prosecution agreement and the fine. The two pleas relate to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that Cohen helped obtain for Trump’s benefit during the 2016 presidential campaign in connection with two women — Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels — who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with Trump in 2006. McDougal, a former Playboy model, was paid $150,000 by the National Enquirer, pursuant to an arrangement Cohen, then a lawyer for Trump and the Trump Organization, made with Pecker. Subsequently, when Pecker balked at paying Stormy Daniels (a porn star whose real name is Stephanie Clifford), Cohen paid for that NDA himself — only after, he claims, Trump promised that he’d be reimbursed, which he was in monthly installments in 2017.

We have been over why the guilty pleas are worthless (see, e.g., here and here). In my opinion, as a former SDNY prosecutor who worked there for nearly 20 years — and was a supervisor there for over a decade — they are worthless as evidence. But you needn’t agree with me on that because it is incontestable that they are worthless — or at least should be — as a matter of law.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Surprise: The more elite the school, the more likely the pro-Hamas encampment By Monica Showalter

By on May 26th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/the_more_elite_the_school_the_more_likely_the_pro_hamas_encampment.html

Hedge fund big Bill Ackman, who’s lit a fire under Harvard over its antisemitism, seems to be still mulling the problems with universities.

He noted this, from the analysis of Washington Monthly:

According to Washington Monthly:

Student protestors at college campuses nationwide, united by their outrage at Israel’s actions in Gaza, can rightly be described as diverse. Despite the masks, it’s clear that they come from different racial backgrounds, and their views range from the belief that Israel should give up on its war effort to the conviction that Israel should be destroyed entirely.

But one thing is not especially diverse about the protests: the campuses on which they’ve been happening.

Many of the most high-profile protests have occurred at highly selective colleges, like Columbia University. But since the national media is famously obsessed with these schools and gives far less attention to the thousands of other colleges where most Americans get their postsecondary educations, it’s hard to know how widespread the campus unrest has really been.  

We at the Washington Monthly tried to get to the bottom of this question: Have pro-Palestinian protests taken place disproportionately at elite colleges, where few students come from lower-income families?

The answer is a resounding yes.

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Declan Leary Can Americans Still Mourn As Americans? For the first time in more than a century, Memorial Day will be observed with a gaping hole in our national memory.

By on May 26th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/can-americans-still-mourn-as-americans

Only a nation can mourn its dead. There is always the abstract reverence for sacrifice, the human awe that acts of valor inspire; that is universal. But to mourn takes something greater. You can admire the Dying Gaul, or Horatius at the bridge; you can only grieve for your countrymen.

This may be, in part, why it took more than a century for Memorial Day to take shape in this country. America was a nation born in war—unlike almost any in history before it—yet the early devotions to its fallen sons were mostly the private remembrances of soldiers’ organizations. A generation of relative peace followed, with fewer than 3,000 battle deaths between 1815 and 1861.

Then came civil war, when secession put the question of the American nation to a mortal test. Recent interpretations left and right have centered slavery at the expense of Union, the principle that Lincoln and other Northern leaders claimed as their motivation: that the American nation was bound by ties of law, of history, of purpose that could not be broken. Ultimately, more than 360,000 Northern men and boys died for that proposition—nearly twenty times as many Americans as had died in all theaters of conflict since 1775.

The war had settled the question: this was one nation. Yet that nation had also been transformed, in no small part because so many thousands of its sons had shed their blood. And so their sacrifice became a central object of the American civil religion: in Lincoln’s famous homage to the fallen men at Gettysburg, in the highly visible practices of the Grand Army of the Republic, and especially in the observance of Decoration Day, when the graves of the war dead would be adorned with flowers, flags, and other objects of patriotic reverence. The remembrance of their sacrifice served doubly to remind the mourners of the cause for which they fought, as a visible illustration of the price by which the Union—the American nation—had been preserved.

This was not the whole story, though. Beside those many Union dead, some 258,000 Americans had fallen in service to the South. Their families and communities would honor them, of course. But what was the nation to do about them?

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Free speech is in dire shape By Jay Bhattacharya

By on May 26th, 2024

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/3016509/free-speech-is-in-dire-shape/

The following are the prepared remarks of Jay Bhattacharya upon receiving the 2024 Bradley Prize, an award to “honor scholars and practitioners whose accomplishments reflect The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation’s mission to restore, strengthen, and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism.”

Thank you! I am so grateful to be honored by the Bradley Foundation today. I am especially thankful
because, in my view, this award is not just to honor me but to acknowledge so many brilliant scientists,
politicians, public servants, teachers, lawyers, firefighters, small business owners, CEOs, and people
from every walk of life who risked their jobs, their reputations, or their family bliss to oppose COVID-19
tyranny. I dedicate this award to each of them.

It’s not hard to see that our pandemic response failed. Official counts attribute more than a million
deaths to COVID in the United States and almost seven million worldwide. By early 2022, about 95% of
Americans had contracted COVID despite the harsh countermeasures in most states, including
confinement of broad populations, business closures, cessation of religious and other gatherings,
school closures, and widespread violation of fundamental civil liberties. Very clearly, these measures
failed to protect Americans from COVID.

Many powerful scientific bureaucrats justified these policies with the idea that all scientists agreed that
the lockdowns would work to suppress or even eliminate the virus. This was known false by spring 2020. For instance, the Swedish experiment with keeping schools open in spring 2020 was a
tremendous success. Lockdowns are inherently leaky because human societies, human health, and
human well-being require physical proximity. It is unhealthy to treat our fellow human beings primarily
as biohazards.

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German Police Stop Muslim Terror Attack on Synagogue One of the Muslim men was shot after attacking a police officer. Daniel Greenfield

By on May 26th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/german-police-stop-muslim-terror-attack-on-synagogue/

We hear a lot of talk about “Islamophobia”, but the proportion of Muslim terror plots against other people’s houses of worship is incredible and a truly global phenomenon. There are so many that all you can do is say, “here’s another one.”

And here’s another one.

German authorities said on Friday that they have arrested two men suspected of plotting a knife attack on worshippers at a synagogue in the southwestern city of Heidelberg, The Associated Press reported.

The pair discussed “the killing of one or more visitors in the attack on the synagogue followed by death as martyrs, whereby the two persons wanted to be shot to death by police,” authorities said in a joint statement quoted by AP.

The two suspects are German citizens, with the 18-year-old also holding Turkish nationality, authorities said. Their names were not released.

One of the Muslim men tried to attack the police.

The 24-year-old, armed with knives, was shot during the search around three weeks ago when he ran towards a police officer and did not respond when spoken to. He was injured. According to earlier statements by investigators, the suspect suddenly fled out of a window with several kitchen knives during the operation. There he deliberately threw a knife at a police officer and ran towards him with other knives.

He was doing what his religion taught him to do. And these two men were far from alone. There is a reason this keeps happening over and over again, and it’s not about Israel or even Jews. It’s about Islam.

The sooner we come to terms with that reality, the sooner we can intelligently address the situation.

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