RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19467/eu-obsession-israel

What [EU] Representative [Sven] Koopmans forgot to mention that it is the Palestinians who have built tens of thousands of illegal structures in the West Bank, especially in Area C, which, according to the Oslo Accords, is under full Israeli security and civilian jurisdiction.

Koopmans also forgot to mention that the EU is helping the Palestinian Authority (PA) with the mass-scale illegal construction, paving the way for the de facto annexation of the territory.

The EU does not interfere anyplace else on the planet other than Area C — not for the Kurds, the Assyrians, the Yazidis, the Uyghurs, the Kashmiris, the Tibetans or the Greek Cypriots. The Palestinians continue to be the only group on the EU’s list of people with whom to interfere. This inordinate attention appears to stem not so much from love for the Palestinians as from hatred for Israel.

The EU, it seems, has funded literally thousands of illegal Palestinian modular buildings in territory that is legally under Israeli jurisdiction.

Lately, the EU has been concentrating more on agricultural land: one can acquire a much larger area for a much smaller investment.

By doing so, the EU is encouraging the Palestinians to engage in unilateral actions in violation of the agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel.

This is the same EU that continues to warn Israel not to take any “unilateral actions,” and that continues to criticize Israel for building and expanding “illegal” settlements in the West Bank.

As of 2022, the EU has built 81,317 illegal structures in Area C….

The EU’s commitment to the expansion of illegal Palestinian settlement in Area C persists in full disregard of the Oslo Accords, which the EU purports to uphold.

“The object is to create continuous Palestinian settlement throughout the West Bank and thereby isolate and strangle Israeli communities,” wrote Hillel Frisch, professor of Political Science and Middle Eastern History at Bar-Ilan University, in 2019.

The 2009 “Fayyad Plan” (officially titled “Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State”) was — and remains — a proposal to create facts on the ground that would end up as a Palestinian state if negotiations do not work out, thereby bypassing the need to negotiate with Israel as agreed to in the Oslo Accords.

The catch is: If the Palestinians believe that they can be handed a state by some external entity, such as the EU, at no cost to themselves, why should they ever bother to negotiate? For years, in fact, they have avoided coming to the negotiating table, presumably in the hope of precisely such a windfall.

The best interests of the Jahalin Bedouin were not the main concern of the Palestinian Authority. What was important to the PA was the land — to take possession of it and then make whatever was built on it appear irreversible.

[T]hese new facts on the ground, of course, encourage the Palestinians not to negotiate. Why should they, if they can get everything they want by just taking it?

Fayyad’s unilateral plan to create facts on the ground is totally in violation of the Oslo Accords, which state that “neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.”

At the end of last year, a secret document by the EU’s mission in east Jerusalem showed that Brussels is also actively working with, and on behalf of, the Palestinian Authority to take over Area C of the West Bank.

Koopmans and other senior EU officials apparently know they are acting illicitly: they are doing their utmost to hide the fact that they are actively helping the Palestinians to break the law and violate the agreements signed with Israel.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-733911

Following pressure last month from the Israel-based Zionist NGO Im Tirtzu, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem rector Tamir Sheafer informed all members of his staff that they were not at liberty to promote their political agendas through the open-source-learning platform Moodle.

“Contact with students through [this online tool] is intended only for pedagogical purposes that are directly related to course content,” he wrote. “It may not be used for other purposes, even if those appear very justified and important to the course lecturer.”

It doesn’t take a PhD to realize that the issue at hand, which spurred complaints in the first place, was – what else? – judicial reform. More precisely, it was a call to action against what the “resistance” has been referring ridiculously to as the government’s evil moves to become a theocratic dictatorship.

Sheafer can be commended for reminding educators on the government-funded HU payroll to reserve their ideological pursuits for their free time, an abundance of which happens to be a perk of their profession. But he’s got a lot more to confront at the moment than professors imposing their views on malleable minds. That phenomenon is practically taken for granted these days on campuses around the world, including in Israel.

No, he and his fellow HU honchos need to go well beyond such a mild measure as a memo where the latest, far worse, transgression is concerned. The fact that it emanated from the “diversity” department, however, likely means it will be glossed over or excused through some rhetorical trick.

THE TRAVESTY was revealed on Monday, when an e-mail – signed by HU Vice President for Strategy and Diversity Prof. Mona Khoury and Diversity Unit director Sharon Ben-Aryeh – listed “Nakba Day” as one of the holidays/days of mourning coming up in the next semester.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19440/palestinians-new-terror-groups

If the Biden Administration were serious about de-escalating tensions and preventing further violence between Israelis and Palestinians, it could have achieved this goal by demanding that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas take action against the numerous armed gangs roaming Palestinian streets.

Instead of holding a summit in Jordan or any other country, the Biden Administration needs to make clear to Abbas that he cannot have it both ways. He cannot turn a blind eye to the terror groups operating under his nose, and at the same time condemn Israel for launching counter-terrorism operations to protect Jews and prevent further terrorist attacks.

The Biden Administration could at least have demanded that Abbas rein in the terror attacks against Jews instead of glorifying terrorists and rewarding them and their families financially as part of his “pay-for-slay” incentive to go murder Jews.

Instead of condemning terrorism, Abbas and senior Palestinian officials… regularly castigate Israel for launching pre-emptive operations to prevent terror attacks that harm its people.

The Biden administration seems not to understand that by failing to condemn the murder of innocent Israeli civilians, Abbas is signaling to his people that he has no problem with the terrorists so long as they target only Jews and not him.

“Except for the Palestinian Police and Israeli military forces, no other armed forces shall be established or operate in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” — Oslo Accords Interim Agreement, September 28, 1995.

[N]ot only do both the West Bank and Gaza Strip have dozens of militias and terror groups; worse, the Gaza Strip — which was handed by Israel to the Palestinian Authority in 2005 — is currently controlled by terror organizations such as the Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Abbas is saying that the Israelis have no right to defend themselves or go after those who are planning to kill Jews.

[I]t means that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization, which is backed by Iran, could penetrate the security forces of Abbas’s Fatah.

The US State Department, after the summit in Jordan, published a “joint communiqué” that totally ignored the role of the Palestinian terror groups in the latest flare-up of violence. The communiqué did not include a commitment by the Palestinian leadership to rein in the terrorists operating in Palestinian-controlled areas. It did not include a demand to the Palestinian leaders to halt their poisonous incitement against Israel. It did not even call for Abbas to stop financially rewarding terrorists for murdering Jews.

The communiqué instead talked about the need for Israelis and Palestinians to “end unilateral measures for a period of 3-6 months.” The only measure it mentions, however, is the building of new housing for Jews.

The Biden Administration appears to believe that building a home for a Jew constitutes a greater threat than gangs and terror groups carrying out lethal attacks against Jews.

As part of its effort to de-escalate tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, the Biden Administration invited the two parties to a summit in Jordan on February 26 to discuss ways to “prevent further violence.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-two-state-solution-hoax/

Yair Lapid, while leading as Israel interim Prime Minister, declared a few months ago at the UN podium that he was in favor of the two-state solution: one next to the other, Israel and Palestine in peace.

Why not adopt this revolutionary solution in European states that are suffering from an uninterrupted migratory invasion of Muslims? A quick question for our Western friends: who among you would like to have Arab-Palestinians as your neighbors?

The idea of putting the two-state solution back on the negotiating table is aimed above all at the naive and gullible Israeli Left, because it is impossible to implement. It is also the desire of Israeli Arabs who already form an antagonistic element in the Israeli government with unscrupulous Jewish deputies who yearn for their votes.

It’s not without reason that, since the deadly Oslo agreements, this solution has not been implemented despite the West and the U.S.’s ridiculous and tenacious insistence. No one can impose peace when one of the parties is fundamentally against it. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

First of all, for all those who still believe in this chimera, there is no Palestinian entity capable of executing this solution and creating a normal, functioning state structure. The non-existent Palestinian people are, in large part, nothing more than a vulgar collection of small groups of terrorists, who hold in their iron claws the few Arabs originating from all the neighboring countries and whom the Russian KGB has baptized “Palestinian people”.

Then, there is a basically insoluble geographical problem. Israel can never accept the suicidal 1948 armistice lines — the so-called green line that leaves a distance of only 39 km between Nablus and Netanya, not to mention other cities whose distance from Palestinian villages is maybe two or three kilometers.

We must also take into consideration the very nature of said Palestinian people, a significant number of whom are radical, Islamist, anti-Semitic, barbaric, unscrupulous, and lazy individuals who use their co-religionists as human shields, in Gaza and/or in Judea and Samaria.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/netanyahus-judicial-reform-doesnt-go-far-enough-reasonableness-attorney-general-standing-knesset-policy-supreme-court-2d3d1664?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Judges and attorneys general throughout the world—I’ve served in both capacities in the U.S.—wield substantial authority. In any sound legal system, such authority is subject to clear, objective limits. That seemingly unexceptional principle might help clarify the debate roiling Israel over the country’s Supreme Court justices and attorney general, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposals to change that authority and the method of selecting justices.

Unlike the U.S., Israel doesn’t have a constitution to constrain court rulings. It doesn’t require that a party bringing a case have standing—a direct and personal stake in the outcome of the dispute. In Israel, anyone may file a case on any issue, which raises the ante in the current debate. Nor do Israeli courts recognize the distinction between legal issues—resolved in the U.S. by courts—and policy issues, including military tactics and cabinet appointments, which in the U.S. are left to the political branches.

Moreover, Israel’s Supreme Court has taken on the authority to base its decisions on whatever it determines is “reasonable.” The court has applied even that tenuous standard inconsistently. In 1999, when Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to close the Palestine Liberation Organization’s headquarters in Jerusalem, the court held that the step was unreasonable because parliamentary elections were only months away. But five days before the 2022 parliamentary elections, the court sustained the power of Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s government to enter into an agreement yielding portions of what were claimed to be Israel’s territorial waters to Lebanon.

The Supreme Court’s authority often is exercised in tandem with that of Israel’s attorney general, who serves a six-year term and isn’t part of the elected government. Since 2000, the attorney general’s role as legal adviser to the government has expanded into legal authority over the government. Israel’s courts treat any directive by the attorney general as legally binding on the government. Initially by attorney general directive in 2002, and later by order of the government in 2009, the attorney general has the authority to control the legal advisers within each ministry and government office. In addition, the attorney general may appear in court to argue against the government’s position and can ban the government from seeking private counsel to defend its policies. In such cases, the government’s own lawyer in effect denies it representation.

The international media is obsessed with anti-Israel bias. Headlines explode with air-brushed and inaccurate accounts of protests against the government occurring daily. What they often fail to mention is that the government was elected in a scrupulous untainted election; that the protesters are not dispersed or harassed; or that in the background, as Michael Ordman catalogs, Israel’s state of the art scientific, medical, institutions work 24/7 bringing hope to the entire world as well as entertainment, and social institutions and cuisine, and music, and freedom to all its diverse citizens.

BDS for sure: Israel is Beautiful, Democratic, Sensational ….  rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Sniffing out cancer. Israel’s SpotitEarly (see here previously) has just reported a 93% success rate in its study using a combination of dogs, sensors, and AI software to detect and identify breast, lung, colon, and prostate cancer. And another Israeli startup Early Labs reported similar results using trained rats to detect lung cancer.
https://nocamels.com/2023/02/dogs-93-percent-success-rate-at-sniffing-out-cancer/  
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-lab-teaches-rats-to-detect-lung-cancer-with-93-accuracy-by-sniffing-urine/  https://earlylabs.io/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlOnSdKPAxU
 
Preventing kidney failure. Israel is the first country in the world to ban treatments with glyoxylic acid, a common ingredient in hair-straightening products. Scientists at Israel’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center showed that the chemical is absorbed by the skin, often causing pain, vomiting and acute kidney injury.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/some-hair-straightening-products-can-cause-kidney-failure-israeli-study-finds/  
 
Better than antibiotics. Israel’s Mileutis (see here previously) is “bullish” about its Imilac peptide alternative to antibiotics in dairy cows. Imilac boosts the immune system to fight infections and doesn’t increase antibiotic resistance. The cows also produce more milk. Mileutis says the same technology could even protect humans.
https://nocamels.com/2023/02/antibiotic-alternative-today-cows-tomorrow-humans/   https://mileutis.com/
 
Microclimate suit manufacturer revealed. (TY UWI) Israel’s Rambam Medical Center has been testing a microclimate suit that evaporates fluids to help heart failure patients (see here previously). The manufacturer – Israel’s AquaPass Medical – states that patients no longer need daily diuretics or periodic six-hour infusions.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-microclimate-suit-rids-heart-patients-of-fluid-buildup/ 
https://aquapass-medical.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuiB0BdgNOM
 
Field hospital treats hundreds. (TY Hazel) Israeli medics treated around 470 injured victims of the Turkish earthquakes at their field hospital outside the Turkish city of Kahramanmaraş. They included 150 children and several Syrian refugees. The teams also performed ten surgical and orthopedic operations.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-treating-hundreds-idf-medical-delegation-to-quake-hit-turkey-back-in-israel/
 
Thousands of AR surgical procedures. Israel’s Beyeonics (see here previously) is now rolling out its 3D Byeonics One Augmented Reality (AR) surgical headset across Europe. It has already been used for 2,000 surgeries in the US including recent endothelial keratoplasty, to remove abnormal matter from the cornea.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/from-cockpit-to-cataract-ops-israeli-flight-headsets-adapted-approved-for-surgery/  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36508107/
 
AI to increase cancer awareness. The Israel Cancer Association has used Artificial Intelligence in a new campaign to highlight the importance of early cancer diagnosis. Videos show people asking AI to show them as a grandparent, or at their child’s wedding, but the future will only become reality if the person avoids cancer.
https://nocamels.com/2023/02/ai-art-increases-awareness-of-early-cancer-diagnosis/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDl052gSEp4
 
The most memorable moment at OurCrowd Summit. My highlight at the OurCrowd Global Investor Summit in Jerusalem last week was 10-year-old Itai, saved thanks to Surgical Theater’s Augmented Reality system. Itai ran on stage to greet Surgical Theater’s CEO, Alon Zuckerman – Itai’s father.  Please watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JuC8_LMmyc

https://www.jns.org/incitement-in-eastern-jerusalem-schools-produces-child-terrorists/

February saw three terror attacks by Palestinian youths, two of whom were 13 years old and one of whom was 14. All were from eastern Jerusalem. The attacks have refocused attention on anti-Israel incitement in Arab schools, including in the capital.

“Arab children in east Jerusalem are marinated in incitement,” said Maor Tzemach, chairman of Lech Yerushalayim, an NGO that focuses on Jerusalem-related issues.

Of roughly 110,000 Arab students in eastern Jerusalem, 85 percent use the Palestinian Authority curriculum, according to Tzemach.

“The Palestinian Authority, which is frankly the enemy of Israel, pushes the Palestinian narrative,” he said. “Israel tries to fight this through a type of censorship, but it’s not succeeding within the schools.”

A new report by Tzemach’s group calls the P.A. study materials the “foundational layer” of incitement. While noting the difficulty in uncovering the incitement taking place behind school doors, the report nevertheless presents specific examples.

One involves a graduation ceremony in June 2021 at a high school in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa, at which students and parents chanted enthusiastically: “With spirit, with blood, we will redeem Al-Aqsa”—a religious rallying cry often associated with terrorism. Students also participated in a dance featuring PLO flags. Noteworthy is the fact that this particular high school was within the Israeli school system.

Terrorist supporters like Muhammad Alian are invited to visit the schools as honored guests. Alian, the father of a terrorist who carried out a 2015 attack that killed three and wounded over a dozen others, himself reportedly has close ties to Hamas. Another honored guest was Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, former grand mufti of Jerusalem, whom the report describes as “the main inciter in Jerusalem in recent decades.”

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-732582

Explaining his party’s decision to exit from the Knesset plenum on Monday and boycott the proceedings surrounding the first reading of two initial bills relating to judicial overhaul, Yisrael Beytenu chairman MK Avigdor Liberman tweeted: “The very vote, even a ‘nay’ vote, is legitimizing a series of laws that contradict the Declaration of Independence, and since [they do], I call on President [Isaac] Herzog not to sign them.”

Israel’s Declaration of Independence was also highlighted during anti-government rallies the preceding Saturday night. A huge replica of the document was spread out, like a massive carpet, on a street in Tel Aviv.

Elsewhere in the White City, protesters marched around holding a similarly massive one above ground. Others carried long banners with a quote from the Declaration, in Hebrew and English, reading, “The State of Israel will be founded on freedom, justice and peace.”

Two days earlier, Yom Kippur War veterans invoked the document, as well. The now-aging retired IDF soldiers placed a blown-up copy of it on the side of a tank that they stole from a memorial site in the Golan Heights to use as a prop in the protests and signed their names to it. Meanwhile, a separate armored vehicle from the existential 1973 battle was nicked from the area and bore the sign in block-capital English letters: “Defending Israel’s Declaration of Independence.”

It’s no accident that many of the streamers and posters waved in the ongoing demonstrations – held, ostensibly, to decry the ruling coalition’s judicial-reform moves, but actually staged in reaction to the rise of a “full, full, right-wing government” in Jerusalem – are in English. For one thing, foreign NGOs are paying for them, with help from the US State Department. For another, they’re much more photogenic when written in a language that CNN and the BBC can broadcast internationally without subtitles.

https://worldisraelnews.com/eye-opener-south-african-activist-abandons-bds-movement-after-trip-to-israel/?

South African university student Klaas Mokgomole couldn’t find a blacks-only restroom at Ben-Gurion International Airport.

By David Karsh, TPS

Desperate to find a restroom after a nearly nine-hour flight from Johannesburg, South African university student Klaas Mokgomole grabbed his carry-on and hurried off the plane.

Urgently searching out a gate agent at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport and praying that the man understood English, Mokgomole asked, sincerely, “Can you please show me to the blacks-only restroom?”

The agent’s eyes widened in disbelief. He told Mokgomole in no uncertain terms that he never heard of such a thing and pointed him to a nearby bathroom.

That’s when it was Mokgomole’s turn to be confused.

Mokgomole — then a South African university student and outspoken youth leader of the anti-Israel, Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement — stood in the busy airport restroom dumbfounded as Jews and Arabs went in and out. They would have been oblivious to the transformation taking place as they stepped around him on that day in July 2015.

Recalling that seminal moment, Mokgomole explained to the Tazpit Press Service during a recent visit to Jerusalem, “I was taught very emphatically, racism in Israel runs so deep, that the Jews do not even share their toilets with blacks or Arabs.”

“To see within the first few moments after landing in Israel that this clearly is not the case marked a turning point for me,” he told TPS.

His curiosity sparked, Mokgomole began what would become a transformational journey from virulent anti-Israel activist to passionate peacemaker and bridge-builder between Israel and the rest of the world.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-passes-law-to-strip-terrorists-of-citizenship/

The Israeli parliament on Wednesday passed a law to strip terrorists of their citizenship for receiving financial rewards from the Palestinian Authority.

The new legislation, which received 94 votes in a 120-member Knesset, also gives the Israeli government the power to deport terrorists to the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank, as well as bar their reentry into Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government presented the bill after Israeli Arabs gave a “hero’s welcome” to a terrorist who was released after serving a 40-year prison sentence for kidnapping and murdering an Israeli soldier in 1983. Karim Younis, an unrepentant terrorist, “was greeted by family, friends and supporters chanting and carrying him through the streets on their shoulders,” the Jerusalem Post reported January 5.

The Arab Knesset members were enraged at the new legislation. They slammed the law for being “racist” towards convicted terrorists who happen to hold Israeli citizenship. “The decision, which could potentially affect hundreds of Palestinian citizens and residents of Israel, was condemned as racist by Arab lawmakers as well as Palestinian officials,” the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz lamented.

“Knesset passes law to strip terrorists who receive PA stipends of Israeli citizenship,” by Carrie Keller-Lynn, The Times of Israel, February 15, 2023:

The Knesset approved a law on Wednesday to strip convicted terrorists with Israeli nationality of their citizenship — provided they receive funding from the Palestinian Authority or an associated organization.

The law, an amendment to Israel’s 1952 Citizenship Law, applies to both Israeli citizens and permanent residents incarcerated following a conviction for terror, aiding terror, harming Israeli sovereignty, inciting war, or aiding an enemy during wartime, and enables the interior minister to revoke their status after a hearing.