RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-710246

During a heated parliamentary session on Wednesday, when Israeli lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of the initial bill to dissolve the Knesset, acting coalition whip MK Boaz Toporovsky (Yesh Atid) made a speech that undoubtedly did his party leader, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, proud. But Lapid, who will serve as head of the interim government until the next one is formed, may be too obtuse to realize how terrible Toporovsky’s sentiments came across.

His colleagues in the plenum probably didn’t notice. They’re used to the mutual mud-slinging that causes much of the public to cringe while providing fodder for the Twittersphere.

In this case, the legislators were too busy shouting over one another’s words to listen to the likes of Toporovsky. But his message unwittingly exposed the cause of both the birth and ultimate demise of the outgoing government, led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

It’s old news and no secret that hostility to former prime minister and Likud Party leader Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu was the magnet that drew disparate factions to join forces just over a year ago. The same animosity, both to him and the opposition he chairs, has been the glue holding the motley crew together since then.

SO, WHEN Toporovsky referred to the collapse of the coalition as a “sad day for democracy,” the whole country yawned. If we Israelis had a shekel for every abuse of that term, we wouldn’t be setting up tent camps to protest the exorbitant cost of housing.

What wasn’t missed in his tirade, however, was the self-congratulatory piety that has characterized the Bennett-Lapid gang from the get-go. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t coupled with an overarching arrogance towards the general electorate.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-fall-of-the-israeli-government-and-the-upcoming-election/

 The moment that some Israelis have been dreading and others happily anticipating finally arrived on Monday. Though the announcement by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid of a call for the disbanding of the Knesset was virtually a foregone conclusion, it came as a bit of a surprise.
Earlier in the day, it was reported that Bennett had bought his teetering coalition an additional week. This was attributed to the fact that Likud Party and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu was postponing a no-confidence motion for several days.

Still, the public response has been similar to that surrounding the death of someone who suffered a long and drawn-out illness; despite the inevitability of the demise, the end is slightly jolting. Nevertheless, nobody skipped a beat—certainly not the politicians or reporters scrambling to address the new reality—at the sound of the government’s last breath.

Judging by the polls, those who had hoped it would survive aren’t numerous, but they have begun to reiterate the rhetoric of the anti-Netanyahu camp. Sadly, some voters who experienced buyers’ remorse at having opted for Bennett in the first place—as he represented for them the uncompromising Zionist who would annex Judea and Samaria—are singing the same tune about Netanyahu.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/06/israels-disastrous-coalition-government-collapses-daniel-greenfield/

I was in Israel some years back and no one believed that there would be a second election. Now the country is on track to a fifth election that may put Netanyahu back in power. Anything has got to be better than the abominable leftist-Islamist-RINO equivalent nightmare that’s been running the country into the ground.

Israel is based on a European-style parliamentary system. The only unifying theme of the coalition was to force out Netanyahu and the Likud Party.

In the service of that, Communists, the Muslim Brotherhood, assorted leftist parties and a former “conservative” party worked together. 

And the only amazing thing is that it lasted this long. 

Explaining the insanity is hard, but here’s a sample.

Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar blamed the downfall of the government on “irresponsible behavior by Knesset members in the coalition,” referring to its multiple rebels. He said the goal of the next election would be to prevent Netanyahu from returning to power and “mortgaging the country to his own personal interest.”

There is still a chance that Netanyahu will succeed in forming an alternate government within the current Knesset. This would happen if members of the coalition, from New Hope and Yamina, switch sides and join Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc.

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

Another week, another incredible compilation of the outsize contribution of Israel to medicine, technology, science, sports, energy, the arts, global economy, and cuisine.  This dazzling list is compiled by Michael Ordman.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Israel’s most advanced cardiology hospital. The new NIS 200 million Eyal Ofer Heart Hospital has just opened on the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa. Besides “normal” cardiology treatments, it will advance research into the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases and disorders, benefiting the whole world.

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-708300  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btNFNOOf9Ok

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-709383

Coming soon – 3D-printed skin. (TY UWI) Hebrew University Professor Oded Shoseyov is developing Second Skin – a nano-thin 3D-printed film that mimics natural healthy skin. Burn victims or scarred patients can avoid painful skin grafts, simply applying the film like a tattoo.

https://www.israel21c.org/coming-soon-human-skin-you-can-print-at-home/

Better heart imaging. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s DiA Imaging (see here previously) is partnering California’s ScImage to integrate DiA’s LVivo Seamless AI-based automated cardiac ultrasound solution into ScImage’s unique Cloud architecture and improve the efficiency of echocardiography (heart) analysis.

https://www.dia-analysis.com/post/scimage-and-dia-imaging-analysis-team-up-to-infuse-ai-into-echocardiography-labs

The stuttering birth of a special education learning startup. To treat the stutter of their son, Niv, Biomedical Engineers Yair and Shirley believed they could develop a hi-tech solution. The result was Israel’s Amplio (see here previously). Their groundbreaking system now helps hundreds of thousands of special needs children.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sku3g7hf5   https://ampliolearning.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4BZJc3OCrk

The first AI med-tech research institute. Israel’s Technion Institute is establishing the Zimin Institute for AI Solutions in Healthcare. Headed by Professor Shai Shen-Orr, it will research human health and medicine, using big data and computational learning. It aims to benefit hospitals, new treatments, home therapy and wearables.

https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2022/06/zimin-institute-to-be-established-at-the-technion-will-focus-on-ai-in-medicine/

Heart ops on International Children’s Day. Four children from different countries were brought to Israel on International Children’s Day to undergo life-saving heart surgeries by Israeli NGO Save a Child’s Heart. They were Florim from Kosovo, Robert from Ghana, Kauthar from Zanzibar and Kidus from Ethiopia.

https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/bkd2kqro5

Land of milk, honey, and magic. In the same hour, volunteer EMTs from Israel’s United Hatzalah used their Epipens to save the lives of two Israelis who suffered anaphylactic shock from severe allergic reactions to dairy products. One paramedic was Aharon, whose main profession is a children’s magician (see here previously).

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/354926

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/mahmoud-abbas-hosts-american-delegation-ramallah-hugh-fitzgerald/

Joe Biden will be visiting the Middle East this July, but what he hopes this will accomplish — other than allowing him to be seen to be doing something about the Middle East other than appeasing Iran in Vienna – is unclear. He will no doubt be repeating the Bidenites’ new mantra, that both Israelis and Palestinians “deserve equal measures of freedom, security & prosperity.” By way of preparing the ground for Biden’s visit, an American delegation met with Mahmoud Abbas on June 11. A report on the meeting is here: “Palestinian Authority President Hosts US Delegation in Ramallah,” Algemeiner, June 12, 2022:

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas hosted Saturday a US delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, ahead of an expected visit of US President Joe Biden.

Abbas reiterated his requests to remove the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the US list of terrorist entities during the meeting, his office said.

The PLO is not only a terrorist entity, but the earliest of Palestinian terror groups, spreading murder and mayhem ever since its founding in 1964, years before the PFLP (1967), Hamas (1987), and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (1987) existed. The fact that the PLO has in recent decades been overshadowed by other terror groups, especially Hamas, does not mean that it has forsworn terrorism as a tactic, but only that it has been less active than other groups. It was morally intolerable that the PLO was ever allowed to open a Washington office, in the naïve aftermath of the Oslo Accords, when Washington was prepared to believe the assurances of the PLO’s leader, Yasir Arafat, that the organization now abjured terrorism. It was, like every other statement by Arafat, a lie. The PLO continued to praise and promote terrorist attacks; right up to the present, it has never denounced any of them. Yet in his insensate desire to appease the Palestinians, Joe Biden promised, as a presidential candidate, to reopen the PLO office in Washington that Trump had closed in 2017.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18613/palestinians-house-demolitions

The raid on the village came after the Hamas-controlled Land Authority in the Gaza Strip ruled that the residents must be evacuated because they had built their homes on “state-owned” lands.

Sources in the Gaza Strip said that there are 28 more villages slated for demolition by Hamas on the pretext that they were illegally built on public lands.

“The Hamas security forces prevented the ambulances from entering the village…. That’s why we had to take the injured to hospital in our cars.” — Yahya Abu Thariyeh, a resident of Umm al-Nasr, independentarabia.com, June 11, 2022

While Hamas has been trying to present itself as the defender of the Bedouin citizens of Israel, it is targeting the Palestinian Bedouin living under its control in the Gaza Strip by demolishing their homes and confiscating their lands, according to Egyptian author Ali Rajab.

Hamas’s ongoing efforts to raze entire villages in the Gaza Strip is seen by many Palestinians as…. part of widespread corruption in Hamas, whose leaders want to seize lands for their personal use.

By turning a blind eye to the atrocities of Hamas, the journalists and human rights organizations are once again engaging in a dangerous double standard. Their obsession with Israel allows Hamas to persist in committing violent crimes against the Palestinians without receiving negative media coverage — much less being held accountable for pillaging and devastating Palestinian communities.

While the international community and media continue to condemn Israel day in and day out about a host of grievances, including the demolition of houses built without proper permits, no one seems to be interested in the ongoing human rights violations against Palestinians by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

The United Nations and many foreign journalists are so obsessed with Israel that they have paid no attention to the latest crime committed by Hamas against residents of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Nasr in the northern Gaza Strip. The village was established nearly 80 years ago, long before Hamas was founded in 1988.