RUTHFULLY YOURS

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Two Israeli inventions can save the lives of stabbing victims.
Israeli ultrasound brain surgery has cured an Israeli of Parkinson’s.
An elite IDF unit is helping Arab-Israeli startups.
A Dubai woman named her son after the IDF officer that helped deliver him.
A new Israeli innovation keeps fruit and vegetables fresh.
Shh… an Israeli company helped the FBI unlock a terrorist’s iPhone.
A sale of $1.5 billion Israeli bonds was five times oversubscribed.
The BBC bought an Israeli story to base its new drama series about autism.
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Preventing lung collapse. (TY Dan) Another innovation from Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s BioDesign students. They developed ThoraXS – a one-handed thoracic portal opener that shortens the procedure time of chest-tube insertion from minutes to less than 30 seconds. It is timely for saving victims of terror stabbings.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/29654 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ3fhZmgyiY

Stopping uncontrolled bleeding. Gallium is a bio-metal currently used to stop bone loss in cancer patients. Moshe Rogosnitzky, a researcher at Israel’s Ariel University, has discovered that Gallium in liquid form (known as gallium nitrate) can rapidly halt bleeding from deep wounds, without causing blood clots.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/209371#.Vv53uUfn95R

Leukemia trial results. Latest reports of Phase II trials of BL-8040 from Israel’s Bioline Rx (see Nov newsletter), show that 38% of patients with acute myeloid leukemia, went into complete remission after just two cycles of the treatment. All these patients had previously failed to recover from other leukemia treatments.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-biolinerx-reports-positive-phase-ii-leukemia-drug-results-1001113425

How bacteria escape their enemies. A joint team of scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and from the Netherlands have discovered that the common E. coli bacteria plays “hide and seek” to avoid detection from the predatory B. bacteriovorus bacteria. It extends research into combating antibiotic resistant bacteria.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/29284 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/283/1824/20152154

Gene enhances insulin production. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered that the gene p16 enhanced insulin secretion in beta cells of mice that suffer from diabetes, thereby partly reversing the disease and improving the health of the mice. Similar results in human cells are expected.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/29587

Mending hearts again in Tanzania. Surgeons from Israel’s humanitarian organization Save A Child’s Heart returned to Tanzania in March to perform more life-saving operations on African children. (See July newsletter for previous mission) http://www.israel21c.org/healing-childrens-hearts-in-tanzania/

$25 million to fund new blood center. Israel’s emergency service Magen David Adom received its largest ever donation – $25 million – to build a new blood services center in Ramle. The Marcus National Blood Services Center will replace a facility in Tel Hashomer that is vulnerable to rocket attacks from Gaza.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/magen-david-adom-blood-center-gets-largest-donation-ever/

Exercise center for the brain. (TY Jacques) Swiss Ambassador to Israel Andreas Baum inaugurated Israel’s first BrainPath in Neve Eshkol, near Gaza. The fitness parlor, adjoined to the region’s largest senior citizen center, has eleven exercises that stimulate blood-flow to the brain. http://www.neveshkol.org.il/page_50511
http://israelbetweenthelines.com/index.php/2016/02/05/make-way-welcome-to-israels-first-real-brainpath/

China seeks Israeli remote health tech. Renming Zhu of China’s Truth Enterprises is seeking Israeli startups for its new incubator in Shanghai. Of particular interest are solutions to bring medical care out of the doctor’s office and into the field. China’s vast geography and aging population puts a huge strain on its healthcare costs.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-remote-health-tech-sought-for-chinas-healthcare-system/

Israeli woman cured of Parkinson’s. The focused ultrasound brain surgery of Israel’s Insightec has been used 500 times around the world. In its first procedure in Israel, surgeons at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center successfully cured an Israeli woman of her uncontrollable shaking. (Video had 570,000 views in 2 days).
http://www.onlysimchas.com/news/28445/first-in-israel-surgery-that-removes-shaking-due-to-parkinson-disease

John McAdams – a conservative university professor in Wisconsin – has been suspended indefinitely for criticizing a fellow professor for not allowing debate about same-sex marriage in her classroom. McAdams may return to Marquette University as professor in January of 2017, only if he admits that he was “guilty.”

It all started at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Catholic university in 2014 when a student recorded his encounter with his philosophy professor Cheryl Abbate regarding the issue of same-sex marriage. Abbate had told her class that the issue of “gay rights” was not up for debate, that “everybody agrees on this, and there is no need to discuss it.”

After class, the student discussed the issue with Abbate, but the professor eventually suggested to the student that he drop the course, adding that “some opinions are not appropriate, such as racist opinions, sexist opinions…You don’t have a right in this class to make homophobic comments.” She stated, “In this class, homophobic comments, racist comments, will not be tolerated.”

The conservative university professor John McAdams wrote a post on his blog Marquette Warrior in 2014 exposing the student-professor encounter and criticizing Abbate for her intolerance. He concluded, “Like the rest of academia, Marquette is less and less a real university. And when gay marriage cannot be discussed, certainly not a Catholic university.”

When French President Francois Hollande met with President Barack Obama at the White House on Thursday to share ideas on how the two countries can fight Islamist terrorism, it probably didn’t occur to him that saying the words “Islamist terrorism” would be a problem. But in the Obama White House, putting the word “Islamist” (or Islamic) next to the word “terrorism” is a faux pas worthy of being struck from the record.

Via the Federalist:

While the official transcript available on the White House web page includes Hollande’s use of the phrase “Islamist terrorism,” the White House video of the remarks muted the audio during that portion of Hollande’s remarks. The audio of the French-to-English interpreter stops right before Hollande characterizes “Islamist terrorism” as the root of terrorism in Syria and Iraq.

“But we’re also well aware that the roots of terrorism, Islamist terrorism, is in Syria and in Iraq,” Hollande told Obama, according to the transcript of the exchange provided by the White House. “We therefore have to act both in Syria and in Iraq, and this is what we’re doing within the framework of the coalition.”

Blogger “Allahpundit” made the point at Hot Air that Hollande actually chose the term carefully for the sake of accuracy. And it was still rejected by the Obama White House.

You know what the worst part is? Hollande didn’t say “Islamic terrorism,” which is the supposedly objectionable term. He said “Islamist terrorism.” “Islamist” was, I thought, a term that came into use precisely because it gave the speaker an efficient way to distinguish between “moderate Muslims” and the more jihad-minded. “Islamic” describes all things Muslim; “Islamist” describes a supremacist view in which Islam is the highest authority of the state. Many critics of Islam would dispute that there’s a meaningful distinction between those two, but Obama and Hollande certainly wouldn’t. ISIS may not be Islamic to Obama but it’s certainly Islamist. Point being, Hollande chose his words carefully here according to the White House transcript so as not to conflate the average Muslim with the jihadis he’s discussing — and the White House still censored him. That’s the point we’re at.

A French paper noticed the omission and wondered if it was a “technical problem or a real deliberate act of censorship.”

The White House has not definitely said. But it’s all the same a strange moment that Francois Hollande experienced, Thursday March 31 at Washington, even if the President of France wasn’t fully aware of it.

Since last Thursday, when an Israeli soldier shot a subdued terrorist in the head, the issue of the IDF’s Code of Ethics has been debated to death. Arguments about whether the usual rules of engagement should apply to situations like those that have grown so commonplace over the past six months are not at all new in the Jewish state; they are as old as its enemies’ repeated attempts to wipe it off the face of the earth in one way or another.

The current method has taken the form of a “lone-wolf intifada,” the term coined to describe a disorganized war of attrition waged mostly by young, knife-wielding Palestinians on Jew-killing rampages. That it is not deemed an official “uprising” by the Palestinian powers-that-be who encourage it passively while actively egging it on is the only thing that differentiates it from previous waves of terrorism to which Israelis were accustomed.

The soldier who has become the topic of every dinner-table conversation from Metula‎ to Eilat is now serving as a symbol for all sides of the dilemma that our boys and girls must face as soon as they finish high school and don an IDF uniform. It is impossible to know what his parents told him before he got on the bus to go off to basic training. But I admit to telling my own children, each in turn, that I’d rather visit them in a military prison than in a graveyard.

That particular sentiment was born of watching my kids grow up in a society whose underlying message was that it was just as important to be armed with a law book as a gun when forced to fight enemies with no rules of engagement whatsoever. Other than useless slaughter, that is. And backing from an “international community” with extremely high double standards.

Indeed, the first time I allowed my 7-year-old to walk by himself to school, a report on the radio that a terrorist was on the loose in our neighborhood sent me tearing down four flights of stairs, with babies in my arms, to make sure he was safe. As it transpired, my son had made it to his classroom, but an 18-year-old female soldier named Iris Azoulay was not so lucky. After kissing her own mother goodbye before heading to the bus stop to return to her base, a Palestinian laborer — who had worked in the area for years painting houses and the like for Jewish families he knew well — went on a stabbing spree with a 15-inch knife and slashed her to death. Right in front of her home.

His birthday was March 26th just a few days ago. Also known as Abu Mazen….an Arafat in a suit….within days of his election his buddies in the Brigades of Al Aqsa killed six Israelis as another “peace”offering….rsk

Last night the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas appeared on Israelis’ television screens to tell them that peace is still possible. He even conceded that there have been some incidents of incitement in the Palestinian media. As for the relentless wave of stabbings that have plagued Israeli cities in recent months, well that is just a matter of Palestinians losing hope in Netanyahu’s commitment to a two-state solution, Abbas explained.

In some senses Abbas is right. Peace, like many eventualities, is certainly possible. But not while Abbas is around. Because while Abbas might graciously concede that some of his state controlled media outlets may have regrettably dabbled in the occasional anti-Semitic terror incitement, such a lamenting tone would suggest that all this has been going on contrary to his own wishes.

The Palestinian Authority’s mandateless president has always cut a pretty disingenuous figure – the quintessential phoney moderate – but if he expects Israelis to believe that he hasn’t been at the forefront of the incitement that has already got so many of them killed, then he must think Israelis are as gullible as he clearly believes his own people to be.

WASHINGTON — Police have stepped up security for Jewish students at a major state university in upstate New York after graffiti threatened to “kill all kikes,” using a derogatory term to refer to Jewish people.

A picture of the vandalism, scrawled on a men’s bathroom at the State University of New York at Buffalo, was obtained by The Times of Israel.

University police were notified of the incident last week, after a Jewish student noticed the inscription and told the school’s Hillel director, Dan Metchnik, who then informed university officials.

Police ordered university facilities to remove the language from the bathroom stall and opened an investigation. They further specified that they believe it to be an isolated incident.

The university put out a statement condemning the hate crime and confirmed that, in response, university police had increased patrols near the Hillel office and elsewhere on campus where students were celebrating the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Metchnik, an Israeli, was shocked to learn of what happened. “We’ve had some anti-Israel and anti-Zionist expression on this campus in the last few years,” he told The Times of Israel. “But we haven’t seen this kind of vicious and explicit anti-Semitism, not for awhile.”

There is a famous photo of Anjem Choudary, the head of multiple banned organizations calling for imposing Sharia law on the UK whose follower was responsible for the Lee Rigby beheading, getting drunk as a young law student. Friends recall “Andy” smoking pot and taking LSD, sleeping around and partying all the time. Andy was really well integrated, but he still turned back into Anjem.

While the proliferation of segregated Muslim areas, no-go zones in which English, French or Dutch is the foreign language, is a major problem, it is a mistake to think that “integration” solves Islamic terrorism.

It doesn’t.

The Tsarnaev brothers who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings seemed integrated. Nobody noticed anything wrong with Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino shooter, or Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber. They weren’t lurking in a no-go zone. They had American friends, an education and career options if they wanted them. They didn’t want them. And that’s the point.

Bilal Abdullah was a British-born doctor who tried to carry out a terrorist attack at Glasgow International Airport. He wasn’t marginalized, jobless or desperate. He had a cause.

Quite a few converts have become Muslim terrorists. If integration were the issue, white converts to Islam wouldn’t be running off to join ISIS or plotting terrorist attacks like Don Stewart-Whyte, who converted to Islam and planned to blow up planes headed from the UK to the US. Along with his friend Oliver Savant, the son of a secular Iranian father and British mother, they are the reason why you can’t carry liquids onto a plane.

Muslim terrorism is not caused by failed integration, but by a conscious disintegration. What is often described as “radicalization” is really a choice by “integrated” Muslims to become religious and to act on their beliefs. Muslim men who formerly dressed casually begin growing beards and wearing Salafist garb. They consciously reject what Western society has to offer because they have chosen Islam instead.

Vermont, the state that gave us unrepentant socialist, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is home to another radical liberal breed named Patrick Leahy (D-VT). Along with Sanders, Sen. Leahy represents the left flank of the Democratic Party and often finds himself at loggerheads with its more centrist members.

Not unsurprising, Leahy is also a visceral critic of Israel, the Mideast’s only democracy and stalwart U.S. ally. In 2011, citing alleged human rights violations, he proposed a bill that would have cut funding to three elite Israeli units that conduct counter-terror operations in Judea/Samaria and Gaza, prompting intervention by Israel’s then defense minister, Ehud Barak.

In 2012, Leahy employed veiled anti-Semitic rhetoric to oppose an amendment proposed by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) that called for the State Department to provide a more accurate accounting of which actual Palestinian refugees were being serviced by U.S. tax dollars. In opposing Kirk, Leahy implied that those who favored the amendment had other interests and not those of the U.S. in mind thereby invoking the blatantly anti-Semitic “Israel firster” canard, which implies divided Jewish loyalties.

Leahy now seems to have set his sights on obtaining “justice” for Arab terrorists neutralized by Israel while conducting terror attacks against Israelis. He recently sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking the State Department to investigate “gross violations of human rights” alleged to have been committed by Israel’s security forces. The letter, which also names Egypt as an offender, claims that Israel may have engaged in extrajudicial killings and torture.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently featured an article lamenting the lack of “diversity” in my discipline. Philosophy, so goes the article, just hasn’t been welcoming toward minorities and women.

Thankfully, such enlightened departments as that found at Penn State University have endeavored to “decolonize the canon.”

Of course, academia isn’t in the least bit interested in promoting the only diversity that can, or should, mean something in an institution of “higher learning.” Its equation of “diversity” with gender and racial representation is part of the problem.

Indeed—and I say this as someone who is an academic who happened to have grown up in a lower-middle class neighborhood in Trenton, NJ—there exists far more intellectual diversity at the corner bar than can be found in your average college or university.

Not only does the data confirm the endless anecdotal evidence that legions of academic dissidents like myself have acquired over the years. The data reveals that academics are moving even further to the left.

The most recent study available was conducted by the University of California. Its findings were released a little more than three years ago in the November of 2012 issue of Inside Higher Education.

The study identifies five ideological or political categories: “far left,” “liberal,” “middle of the road,” “conservative,” and, finally, “far right.” What it finds is that faculty of all ranks from both universities and colleges, institutions that are private and public, large and small, religious and non-religious, self-identified as “far left” to a significantly greater extent than they had just three years earlier: In 2008, 8.8% so self-identified. In 2011, that number had risen to 12.4%.

Earlier this month, the Israeli authorities planned to launch a criminal investigation into the conduct of left-wing organization Breaking the Silence for collecting classified military information. This came following an expose on Channel 2 news that showed Breaking the Silence, which collects testimonies of reported wrongdoing in the Palestinian territories from IDF soldiers, soliciting operational information. The Israeli NGO claims to be a human rights organization, but it has compelled young people to divulge sensitive information about troop movements and other operational maneuvers.

It is difficult to make a case for how collecting sensitive, classified information about the IDF can possibly help the Palestinian cause, short of planting the illusive hope in the minds of Israel’s enemies that they can defeat the Israeli militarily. And the sooner the Palestinians wake up from that corrosive illusion, the more lives will be saved, on both the Palestinian and the Israeli side of the conflict.

Yet, with a criminal investigation hanging over them, Breaking the Silence still gave a talk at the Brown University-Rhode Island School of Design Hillel and was scheduled to give another at the Columbia/Barnard Hillel on Thursday.

This is not the first time Breaking the Silence has gone on tour to distort and air Israel’s dirty laundry to American Jewish college students. In 2013, Breaking the Silence appeared at the Hillel houses of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. This is, however, the first time that they are on tour while under criminal suspicion.