RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/arab-anti-state-parties-present-ongoing-challenge-for-israel/

Those who think increased budgets for the sector will change things “don’t understand the reality,” Professor Dan Schueftan told JNS.

Arabs citizens today comprise 21 percent of Israel’s population, a significant minority. While their financial situation has dramatically improved over the last 50-plus years, the parties they send to the Knesset are largely “anti-state” in that they reject Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

The problem comes to the fore every election cycle. The Central Elections Committee has attempted to disqualify one or another Arab party in every campaign since 2003. In late September, it disqualified the Balad Party over its anti-Israel platform. The Supreme Court overturned the ban on Oct. 9.

Dan Schueftan, head of the International Graduate Program in National Security Studies at the University of Haifa and the author of a Hebrew-language book about Arab Israelis, a culmination of 11 years’ research, told JNS that when it comes to Arab party platforms, “Some are more blunt, but in the final analysis the distinction is not major.”

Nearly all the Arab leaders, with the notable exception of Mansour Abbas, identify with terrorists, Schueftan said, referring to the Ra’am Party leader who last year for the first time in Israel’s history brought an independent Arab party into a governing coalition. But at summer camps of Hadash, a communist party, children are taught to idolize “a 13-year-old Arab Palestinian who took a knife, and together with his cousin went into a Jewish neighborhood to kill Jews and stabbed and chased Jewish children. This guy is their hero.”

Hadash represents the most educated and modern segment of Arab Israeli society, Schueftan said. That it embraces terrorists demonstrates “the crux of the problem, a dissonance between what the individual Arab knows and wants to do, and what the collective of the Arabs must do, because there is something profoundly wrong with Arab political culture.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19045/americans-europeans-palestinian-terrorism

Instead of assuming its responsibility for halting terrorist attacks from areas under its control, the Palestinians continue to violate the agreements they signed with Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority did not take real measures to stop Hamas from building a massive terrorism infrastructure. Hamas later used its weapons arsenal not only to attack Israel, but also to overthrow the PA regime and seize full control of the Gaza Strip.

The same scenario is now being repeated in the West Bank, specifically in areas controlled by Mahmoud Abbas’s security forces.

This is the twisted logic of the Palestinian leadership: Instead of denouncing the terrorists for targeting Israelis, as they have officially and repeatedly committed to doing, they lash out at Israel for defending itself against the current wave of terrorism.

When a senior Palestinian official such as Habbash says that the terrorists are entitled to carry out “resistance” attacks, he is actually telling them to continue targeting Israelis. Such statements are not only a violation of the agreements the Palestinians signed with Israel, but also incitement to launch more terrorist attacks against Israelis.

The Palestinian leadership, in a policy is known as “pay-for-slay,” already provides monthly stipends to Palestinian terrorists….. The families of the Nablus terrorists will also presumably benefit from these payments.

The Palestinian leadership’s endorsement and glorification of terrorism comes as no surprise. What is surprising – and intensely disturbing – is that those foreign governments that are providing financial and political aid to the Palestinian Authority, especially the Americans and the Europeans, are not calling out Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership for their public support of terrorism and their ongoing breach of the agreements they voluntarily signed with Israel.

“We will not resort to weapons, we will not resort to violence,” Abbas declared in his last speech before the United Nations General Assembly, “we will not resort to terrorism, we will fight terrorism.” His words were directed to the international community, not to his own people.

The silence of the Americans and Europeans toward the actions and rhetoric of the Palestinian leaders is tantamount to a green light to the Lions’ Den and other terrorists to continue their terrorist attacks.

If the Biden administration and the Europeans believe that Abbas or any other Palestinian leader is going to stop a terrorist from murdering Jews, they are engaging in staggering self-deception.

The Lions’ Den is a new terrorist group based in the West Bank city of Nablus, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The group consists of dozens of gunmen affiliated with a number of Palestinian factions, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the ruling Fatah party headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

The PA, which has hundreds of security officers in Nablus, has failed to take any measures to rein in the Lions’ Den terrorists, who have claimed responsibility for a series of shooting attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians in the Nablus area over the past few weeks.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-danger-of-another-israeli-electoral-deadlock/

Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli, the head of Israel’s falsely dubbed “center left” Labor Party, doesn’t even bother these days to temper the radicalism that makes her indistinguishable from Meretz leader Zahava Gal-On.

This isn’t the sole reason that the outspoken feminist—who has boasted of carrying on the legacy of the late (assassinated) prime minister Yitzhak Rabin—is polling so poorly in the run-up to the Nov. 1 Knesset elections.

Her drawing of such a comparison would be merely comical if it didn’t serve a purpose beyond that of self-aggrandizement: making herself appear more mainstream than she actually is. It’s been a tall order, since the extent of her extremism was well known even before she joined the current coalition, that collapsed under the weight of its untenable mixture of contradictory ideologies.

But she has spent the past year and a half glossing over the controversial social issues that long ago became her trademark. Rejecting matrimony is a key one.

“I want all secular states to totally eliminate all registration and regulation of marriage,” she announced in a 2012 TED talk. “I want to cancel the very concept of marriage.”

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-settler-violence-narrative-and-knesset-elections/

The current spike in Palestinian terrorism, marked by dozens of rock-throwing, firebombing, stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks each day, was upstaged last week by what the local press and certain politicians were highlighting as an intolerable “surge in settler violence.”

It’s hard to describe the fervor with which news outlets and the “anybody but Bibi” camp—the parties on the left side of the spectrum vying to prevent former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from returning to power after the Nov. 1 Knesset elections—jump on stories of “settlers” assaulting Israel Defense Forces troops and Palestinians.

Take Thursday’s clash in the town of Huwara, near Nablus, for example.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid promptly labeled the thugs who threw stones at Palestinian vehicles and pepper-sprayed members of the IDF’s 202nd Paratrooper Battalion, wounding the commander and a soldier, “dangerous criminals who must be denounced and brought to justice without hesitation and with all severity.”

They “endanger the lives of our soldiers and harm the State of Israel,” he added.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz took it a step further and attributed the incident to the behavior of his right-wing rivals in the Religious Zionist Party.

Why don’t admirers and supporters of Israel show that B.D.S., the invidious movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel can cut both ways? Our B.D.S. would boycott, divest from and sanction the media, companies, and organizations that routinely slander Israel and distort its democracy, history and legitimacy.

The first step would be to support and circulate Michael Ordman’s compilations of Israel’s outsize contributions to the science and technology that bring health and hope and a better life to billions of people throughout the globe.  rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Diagnosing irregular heart rates in high-risk patients. Prof Mahmoud Saliman of Rambam Health Care Campus is the first in Israel to insert an ultrasound device through a vein (without anesthesia) to safely diagnose a patient suffering from atrial fibrillation (AFib). High-risk patients cannot have anesthesia or blood thinners.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-718736
 
The secret to a healthy heart. Scientists at Israel’s Assuta Ashdod Medical Center found why patients with a high-risk of coronary heart disease (e.g., some diabetics and smokers) have healthy arteries. Their endothelial progenitor cells have longer telomeres and greater function. It can help in developing preventative medicines.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-719269  https://journals.lww.com/coronary-artery/Abstract/2022/11000/Identification_of_protective_biologic_factors_in.4.aspx
 
OrCam for dyslexics. OrCam Learn (see here previously) is a voice-activated, interactive handheld device designed for people with learning challenges. It combines AI with a high-resolution visual sensor, and laser capture. It reads text aloud from any surface, listens to the reader and provides feedback. And much more.
https://learn.orcam.com/en/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuNvoQGB4VU  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6JeNTpAUDE
 
European approval for bone augmentation material. (TY Atid-EDI) The Ivory Dentin Graft™ dentin graft material from Israel’s Ivory Graft has just received the European CE Mark for use in the repair or augmentation of bone defects. Its similarity to bone makes it an ideal grafting material, e.g., in dental procedures.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/ivory-dentin-graft-the-first-and-only-dentin-graft-receives-ce-mark-301629353.html   https://ivorygraft.com/
 
Animal Assisted Therapy – a win-win. HAMA (see here previously) is among the pioneering organizations in AAI – Animal Assisted Intervention in Therapy and Education in Israel. Many of the animals are rescued from abuse and neglect, and have in turn enriched humans suffering from trauma, deep loss, and abandonment.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/mind-and-spirit/article-719815   http://hama-israel.org/
 
Detecting fetal anomalies. (TY UWI) More details about Israel’s IdentifAI Genetics (see here previously) and its Hoobari blood test invented by Tel Aviv University’s Professor Noam Shomron. The test separates the DNA of a 10-week fetus from that of its mother and then checks it for mutations. Much safer than amniocentesis.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-blood-test-may-detect-fetal-abnormalities-at-week-10/
 
Miracle baby. (TY UWI) Before aggressive chemo, Tzvia had ovarian tissue frozen. 20 years later, doctors at Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital defrosted and re-transplanted some of the tissue. It reversed her menopause and Tzvia has now given birth to a healthy baby girl – the longest ever time for a successful post-cancer transplant.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-gives-birth-after-menopause-reversed-with-transplant-of-20-year-frozen-ovary/  

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-720196

With each passing day ahead of the fast-approaching November 1 Knesset elections, the rhetoric against opposition leader and Likud Party chairman Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu increases in volume and vitriol. Gossip disguised as investigative reportage keeps cropping up about the former prime minister vying to return to the premiership. 

This is coupled with, and often overshadowed by, warnings about the perils of a government that includes MK Itamar Ben-Gvir, No. 2 on the Religious Zionist Party slate. The right-wing firebrand is not only certain to retain his parliamentary seat, but – given his soaring popularity in the polls – will be a prominent figure in a Netanyahu-forged coalition. 

The mudslinging consists of rival politicians and leftist pundits shouting daily from podiums and op-ed pages that Netanyahu will stop at nothing to return to the helm; that Ben-Gvir is a fascist; and that a victory for their camp will mean an end to Israeli democracy.

The ridiculous accusations would be funny if they weren’t echoed in the halls of Washington and Brussels by Israel’s ill-wishers, as well as by ignorant fellow travelers.

Less understood outside of Israel is the real reason that the anti-Netanyahu choir has been singing so loudly about Ben-Gvir. Prime Minister Yair Lapid cannot form a coalition without the backing of the Arab parties. Even with all three of them, he still falls short of the necessary 61-mandate majority. 

One of these is the United Arab List (Ra’am). Though it is the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, its chairman, MK Mansour Abbas, became the first of his ilk to join a governing coalition. 

https://bit.ly/3TafFML

The US-engineered and guaranteed Israel-Lebanon maritime/gas accord is supposed to follow in the footsteps of the Israel-Arab peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, reducing regional terrorism and instability, inducing moderation and enhancing US interests.  Does it?

Hezbollah and Lebanon

*The Shiite Hezbollah – Iran’s proxy and globally recognized terrorist organization – is a dominant player in the increasingly imploding, failed-state, Lebanon, politically, militarily, socially, educationally, religiously and journalistically.

Hezbollah has dramatically bolstered its capabilities and clout since its establishment in 1982 – by Iran’s Shiite Ayatollahs – as a vehicle to export the Shiite Islamic Revolution, extend the Ayatollahs’ reach from the Persian Gulf, through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the eastern Mediterranean, and undermine the US strategic posture in the Middle East. 

Hezbollah has collaborated with Iran’s Ayatollahs in the Middle East, West Africa and throughout Latin America, all the way to the US-Mexico border. It has gained substantial sway due to its major contribution to the survival of the Assad regime.  Hezbollah has benefited from the Ayatollahs’ financial support, combat training, and the supply of precise missiles and predator unmanned aerial vehicles.  

*Hezbollah’s dominant role in Lebanon’s decision-making has led the pro-US Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to ostracize Lebanon and suspend financial aid to Beirut, lest it bolsters Hezbollah’s stature.

Israel’s maritime accord vs. Israel-Arab peace treaties

*Israel’s peace treaties with the relatively-stable, pro-US, anti-Iran and anti-terrorist Sunni Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, with the blessing of Saudi Arabia, which generated a critical impetus to the Abraham Accords. Their policy and vision do not extend beyond their own national boundaries.