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ISRAEL

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL EVEN DURING WARTIME FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

At the site see a photo is of Israel’s Walter Bingham, the world’s oldest journalist, who celebrated his 100th birthday by skydiving over Israel.

Bravo to Walter Bingham! Nothing can match his view, but on the ground, nothing can match the stories of Israeli resilience, creativity, and contributions even during wartime delivered weekly by Michael Ordman. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
He absorbed a bomb but didn’t give up. (TY UWI) Amichay Shindler saved his family by absorbing a bomb planted by Hamas terrorists outside the door to their safe room. Ten months and one prosthetic hand later, it is still not clear how he is alive today. His wife Avital manages a group for the wives of injured Israeli reservists.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2024/08/07/he-never-gives-up-how-one-israelis-miraculous-oct-7-survival-inspired-support-soldiers-families/
 
Soldier’s recovery and mission. (TY UWI & I24 News) Captain Israel Ben Shitrit, a reservist serving in Khan Yunis, tells his story and future plans. A Hamas terrorist hit his unit with an RPG and he was badly wounded. After three and a half months in rehabilitation, he declares that he is proud to be a Captain in the IDF.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1ivSSk2J7c
 
Wounded soldier returns to his tank. In Nov 2023 IDF tank crewman Sergeant Aharon Shmuel Bryce was severely wounded by a Hamas-fired RPG missile that hit his tank. After 10 months of surgeries, reconstructions and rehabilitation, he has returned to serve in Gaza in the very same tank that he was injured in.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/395922
 
Druze girl recovers after Hezbollah attack. Kai Marai, the 11-year-old Druze girl, most seriously wounded in the July 27 Hezbollah rocket attack on the Golan Heights, regained consciousness on Aug 13 surprising doctors at Haifa’s Rambam children’s hospital. Kai’s mother thanked the medical team for saving her daughter’s life.
https://www.jns.org/doctors-surprised-by-rapid-recovery-of-11-year-old-druze-girl-badly-hurt-in-hezbollah-attack/
 
Oct 7 survivor receives her medical degree. Elai Hogeg Golan awoke from a coma 51 days after Hamas terrorists firebombed her home on Oct 7. In May she received her medical degree at an emotional ceremony. She is now finishing her medical internship at Sheba Medical Center, while receiving rehabilitation treatment.
https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/bjoe4ijqr
 
A nation of superheroes. Rony Ben-Zvi Elimelech is completing her doctorate at Israel’s Technion Institute. She is also a mother of two boys, ages 6 years and 16 months, and chief executive officer of Wisemama, which supports women who are combining parenthood and academic studies. Then she was called up for reserve duty.
https://ats.org/our-impact/rony-ben-zvi-elimelech-israel-is-a-nation-of-superheroes/
 
Cooking up resilience. Israel’s Technion Institute held a hackathon, attended by 140 science students, who worked with mental health experts to develop solutions to improve mental resilience. The winning team developed a technology to treat post-traumatic stress disorder through cooking, using a virtual reality headset.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2024/07/technology-for-mental-resilience/
 
US doctor volunteered and then made Aliyah. In Nov, cardiothoracic anesthesiologist Dr. Eugene Rapaport volunteered for two weeks at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center, treating some unique injuries and diverse patients. Then in June he realized his dream and made Aliyah through Nefesh b’Nefesh. A fascinating article.
https://www.jns.org/us-doctor-makes-aliyah-after-volunteering-to-treat-oct-7-victims/
 
Volunteers make a difference. (TY Yanky) Angie Jacobs and Naomi Frankel write about their experiences as volunteers on Kibbutzim, Moshavim, Army bases, children’s homes and more. They really made a difference.
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/i-needed-to-make-a-difference-why-we-went-to-israel-to-volunteer/
 
Making chocolates under fire. (TY Rhoda) Rhoda’s great-niece Chana Koenig shows typical Israeli resilience by making gourmet chocolates (without preservatives) in Nahariya, northern Israel. For the last 11 months, she has endured near-incessant aerial attacks by Hezbollah from exploding UAVs and rocket fire.
https://davebender.substack.com/p/from-rockets-to-rosh-hashana-an-israeli (link in article is incorrect)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5yO41eBStU  https://www.cacaohagalil.co.il/ (link here is correct)
 
A wish comes true. Miri and her fiancé Roy are both IDF reserve officers and had to postpone their wedding several times due to the war. When they finally fixed the date, they pleaded on Instagram for help getting Miri’s paralyzed, holocaust-survivor grandfather Kim to attend. Thanks to Israel’s Wish Ambulance, he got there.
https://israfan.com/p/wish-ambulance-reunites-holocaust-survivor-at-wedding
https://www.mdais.org/en/activities/wish-ambulance
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Positive early results of heart repair trial. Israel’s Endospan (see here previously) shared good early news from the trial on 22 patients of its Nexus Aortic Arch Stent Graft System. The trial is being extended to 110 patients. 120,000+ patients suffer thoracic aortic arch disease every year in the USA and Europe.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240130700861/en/Endospan-Releases-Early-TRIOMPHE-IDE-Study-Results-at-Society-of-Thoracic-Surgeons
 
Detecting high risk of pulmonary embolism. Researchers at Ben Gurion University and Israel’s Sheba Medical Center used AI to detect nearly 2,000 patients at high risk of developing a pulmonary embolism (lung blood clot). Sheba used the BGU algorithm to analyze the records of 46,000 patients who were admitted to ER.
https://nocamels.com/2024/08/sheba-study-ai-can-spot-patients-at-risk-of-pulmonary-embolism/
https://www.jmir.org/2024/1/e48595
 
Non-invasive cancer treatment. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute have developed a sonodynamic cancer therapy – ultrasound that targets sensitive nanoparticles accumulated in the cancerous tissue to treat deep-seated tumors. It destroys tumors without damage to healthy cells.
https://ats.org/our-impact/technion-researchers-develop-promising-treatment-for-tumors/
https://t3.technion.ac.il/technology/drug-delivery-nanoparticles/
 
Valve replacement startup gets approval & funds. Israel’s TruLeaf Medical has received approval from the Helsinki Committee to begin human trials of its minimally invasive Mitral Valve Replacement procedure. The Israel Innovation Authority awarded TruLeaf an additional NIS 1.5 million, to make a total of NIS 11.5 million.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/a-new-era-in-heart-surgery–israeli-biomed-company-truleaf-medicals-two-needle-sticks-procedure-for-mitral-valve-replacement-302194644.html
 
Aquatic plant is good for diabetics. An Israeli clinical trial shows that diabetics who drink a beverage with the Mankai cultivated aquatic plant after meals can reduce blood sugar levels by 20%. It confirms the results of initial tests that Israel’s Ben Gurion University scientists conducted five years ago (see here previously).
https://nocamels.com/2024/08/study-aquatic-plant-reduces-blood-sugar-in-diabetics/
 
A better fish farm. Traditional aquatics uses the wastewater from fish farms to grow hydroponic vegetables. Now scientists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have also made use of the solid waste from fish by means of anaerobic digestion. The new system produces biogas, higher crop yields, using less energy and less water.
https://www.bgu.ac.il/en/news-and-articles/bgu-researchers-offer-proof-of-concept-for-unique-aquaponics-system/   https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344924003100?via%3Dihub
 
Real-time medical translator. Current and ex-students from Israel’s Technion Institute have developed CommU – a real-time language translation platform that allows doctors to converse with patients in Hebrew, English, Arabic, Russian, and most other European languages.
https://nocamels.com/2024/08/automatic-translator-breaks-language-barrier-for-doctors-patients/
https://commu.ai/
 
AI devices for the hard-of-hearing. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Bettear provides Auracast-based assistive listening solutions to enhance sound experience. Its B-CASTER streamer integrates with hearing aids and cochlear implants. Other products support tour guides, teachers, entertainers, and museums.
https://www.bettear.com/solutions
 
AI contest for Parkinson’s FOG detection. Tel Aviv University researchers ran an international contest to develop an algorithm to detect “Freeze of Gait” (FOG) in Parkinson’s sufferers, using data from 100 patients. The prize of $100,000 attracted nearly 25,000 solutions from AI researchers in 83 countries.
https://english.tau.ac.il/research/fog-detection-ai  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49027-0
 
Treating and reversing DDD. Israel’s Discure Technologies is developing an implantable bioelectronic device designed to treat and reverse degenerative disc disease (DDD). The Discure System restores fluids and nutrients to the affected discs. DDD accounts for 35% of all lower back pain, at a cost of $100 billion in the US alone.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjvw00d62c
https://www.hcs-capital.com/portfolio/discuretechnologies/

The Only Deal Hamas Wants: Israel’s Surrender by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20941/hamas-deal-israel-surrender

Abandoning the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt would enable Hamas to carry on with its decades-long practice of smuggling weapons into the enclave. It would also allow the new head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, to escape – along with many of the hostages with whom he is thought to be surrounding himself for protection — through the tunnels into Egypt’s Sinai Desert.

The most recent statement from Hamas makes it clear that the terror group wants Israel to leave the Gaza Strip before any hostages are freed.

According to some reports, Hamas has stated that it is willing to free the hostages in stages. It undoubtedly wants to hold on to as many hostages as possible as an “insurance policy” that Israel will not resume the war against the terror group and that the terrorist group will be able to have a free hand to attack Israel in the future. This implies that a large number of the hostages remain captive in the hands of the terror group for years. It is important to note that for the past 10 years, Hamas has been holding hostage two Israeli civilians who are believed to be still alive, as well as the remains of two IDF soldiers.

Hamas is willing to fight to the last Palestinian. The terror group does not care if tens of thousands of its own people lose their lives as a result of the war it began. Its No. 1 priority is to hold on to power after the war. Hamas is evidently hoping that a ceasefire-hostage deal will help it achieve its goal of retaining control over the Gaza Strip.

If the Biden-Harris administration wants to understand the real intentions and aims of Hamas, it just needs to look at what the terror group is saying in Arabic. Hamas and its allies are saying in Arabic that the only deal they would accept is one that results in Israel raising a white flag.

If Hamas is permitted to win the war, Iran and its other terror proxies, such as Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis, will gain confidence and feel more empowered. In addition, this will convey to Muslim Jihadis worldwide that Israel and the West are too weak to protect their people and values against Islamist terror organizations. This weakness will lead to more terrorism not only against Israel, but also the US and most Western nations.

Instead of applying pressure on Israel to end the war, the Biden-Harris administration needs to demand firmly that the Hamas murderers and rapists totally surrender, disarm, cede control over the Gaza Strip, and release all the hostages unconditionally.

All this needs urgently needs to take place before Iran breaks out its nuclear weapons and sets about attacking its oil-rich neighbors, such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, again.

The Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has repeated its demand that Israel withdraw completely from the Gaza Strip in order to reach a ceasefire-hostage agreement with Israel. Hamas, in other words, is demanding that Israel lose the war so that the terrorist group can regroup, rearm and prepare for more attacks on Israel like the one it launched on October 7, 2023. In that assault, 1,200 Israelis were murdered, with many raped, tortured and burned alive. Another 240 Israelis were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, where 101 are still being held as hostages, many of them already murdered (see here and here).

Hamas Has More “Humanitarian Aid” Than It Knows What To Do With “We have everything. In the meantime, we have no room in the stores.” by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hamas-has-more-humanitarian-aid-than-it-knows-what-to-do-with/

The Gaza famine hoax promoted by the media and endorsed by top elected officials, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, was always a lie. (Much like the previous Yemen famine hoax spread by the same network of Iranian, Qatari, and leftist activists which allowed the Houthis to build up enough firepower to terrorize the waterways and sink civilian ships.)

The twofold purpose of the Gaza famine hoax was to attack Israel’s campaign against Hamas and to funnel money into the coffers of the Islamic terrorist group. It’s working so well that Hamas has no idea what to do with the unprecedented amounts of “humanitarian aid” that it’s been reselling to fund its terrorism.

Channel 12 news plays intercepted recordings purporting to show Hamas operatives discussing how to disperse overflowing Gaza aid that they had seized.

In the recordings of radio conversations, one operative says, “We have trucks overflowing with goods.” The second operative declines the offer, saying “we have everything. In the meantime, we have no room in the stores.” He then suggests they send the goods to Khan Younis.

The report says the recordings indicate the difficulties in applying pressure on Hamas, which is making millions off control over the hundreds of trucks of international aid that enter Gaza every day.

The report also says that the IDF plans to reexamine efforts that allow private traders to import goods into Gaza because Hamas has been taking 20% of all the profits from the deals.

No one, in politics or the media, will ever admit to the lie no matter what. The closest thing to an admission is that they’ve mostly stopped pushing the famine hoax in favor of other hoaxes.

The Biden-Harris administration had initially promised Israel that the aid wouldn’t go to Hamas. And that there would be consequences if it did.

Like so much else that was also a lie.

Hamas makes half billion from ‘humanitarian’ aid, pays its terrorists By David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/hamas-makes-half-billion-from-humanitarian-aid-pays-its-terrorists/

Hamas has profited by at least a half billion dollars from humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip, Channel 12 reported on Tuesday.

Approximately 200 aid trucks enter the Palestinian enclave daily. “It’s actually become the main oxygen pipeline for the terrorist organization,” reported Channel 12‘s Almog Boker.

Hamas steals the humanitarian aid and sells it to the population. It then uses the money to finance recruitment, Boker said, noting that 3,000 terrorists have been added to Hamas’s payroll in northern Gaza.

Israelis on both right and left have condemned the ongoing aid theft by Hamas, their anger rekindled by last week’s murder of six Israeli hostages in captivity.

The Tzav 9 (“Order 9”) protest group has led the movement against Jerusalem’s decision to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Strip.

“It is up to the entire nation to stand up so that this miserable and intolerable reality will end. We’ve been saying this all along: we cannot on the one hand fight the enemy and on the other hand feed it and give it the oxygen it needs to fight us another day,” the group said.

“We understand the civilians need humanitarian aid and we are not against it—but where Hamas is in place—no aid should pass,” it added.

Although the estimated $500 million that Hamas is reaping was first reported back in May, the government treats the aid as proof of its positive conduct towards Gazan civilians, with spokespeople for the Prime Minister’s Office regularly counting off the number of trucks entering the Strip during press briefings.

However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the issue of Hamas exploiting aid for its benefit at a Sept. 4 press conference in Jerusalem, promising that Israel would in time strip the terrorist group of its ability to use the aid for financial gain.

Normalizing Atrocities Landmarks of shame. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/normalizing-atrocities/

Hamas’ orgy of rape, murder, and callous, indiscriminate cruelty such as mutilation, torture, burning alive, and beheadings that began last October 7 and is continuing almost a year later, marks an escalation extreme even by the standards of that blood-stained region. Morally horrific have been the “protests” on prestigious U.S. university campuses, abetted by simpatico, or cowardly, professors and administrators. These riotous displays also feature property damage, record-breaking assaults against Jews, and chants explicitly or implicitly calling for another Holocaust, and celebrating the Nazis’ Final Solution.

Yet another landmark of shame has been the covert and overt support for Hamas by European governments and the E.U., including America’s president who for electoral gain poisoned the materiel support given to Israel, and is still pressuring Israel’s government to come to an agreement with genocidal murderers, instead of destroying them and degrading their capacity to slaughter more innocent Israeli citizens.

What the West has done is to normalize unspeakable atrocities, and legitimize blatant antisemitism that in the postwar period used to be a hatred mainly typical of marginalized political freaks. How does that transformation––from a widely proscribed and condemned hatred, to one exuberantly flaunted during protests, and legitimize by government policies––happen? And what has to change to put such beliefs back into the realm of cranks and conspiracy mongers?

The first question has a general answer found in humanity’s universal practice of dehumanizing enemies. Historically, human beings’ default stance toward strangers and those different from one’s tribe is distrust and dislike, if not hatred. The idea of our elite’s “citizen of the world” cosmopolitanism arose in ancient Greece, but parochial loyalties and hatreds remained powerful in Greek poleis. The tendency to prefer those like ourselves, whether culturally, politically, ideologically, or ethnically, is particularly obvious today in political factions, and ideological identity politics. Like James Madison’s “factions,” this tendency is “sown in the nature of man.”

A byproduct of this sorting is some level of dehumanization. In a relatively peaceful society such as ours today, the “other” is typically identified linguistically by insulting or demeaning epithets, on the left many of them compounds sporting the suffix “-phobic.” Sometimes metaphors using animals or insects make the dehumanization explicit. All such insults, however, don’t necessarily lead to mass murder or other atrocities. Pace wannabe censors, words are not violence. But heinous actions by definition are, and such crimes invariably call on a catalogue of dehumanizing epithets.

The pro-Hamas protests and display of support, however, are extreme even by the standards of advocacy apparent during the antiwar protests in the Sixties or during the post 9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, antiwar activists, many of them Marxists, did give aid and comfort to the enemy, lied about the actions of our troops, and worked to discredit the war in the minds of voters and Congressmen.

The New UK Government’s Anti-Israel Policy Is a Disgrace by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20926/uk-anti-israel-policy

The pretence that the UK’s new Labour government has moved away from the blatant anti-Semitism that was rife under former leader Jeremy Corbyn has been brutally exposed by the actions of David Lammy, the party’s new Foreign Secretary.

It was during Corbyn’s stint as Labour leader that his party faced constant accusations of anti-Semitism. A damning report produced by the Jewish Labour Movement in 2019 said the party harboured “endemic, institutional anti-Semitism” and that there was “overwhelming evidence that anti-Semitic conduct is pervasive at all levels of the party.”

Having been a close political ally of two prominent Labour politicians accused of anti-Semitism, it is hardly surprising therefore that two of Lammy’s first initiatives since his appointment as Labour’s new foreign secretary in July have been aimed at discrediting Israel.

His [Lammy’s] first act was to withdraw the British government’s official objection to attempts to persuade the International Criminal Court to issue an injunction for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges.

At the same time Lammy confirmed that the UK was to restore its funding to UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for supporting Palestinian refugees, after support for the organisation was withdrawn by a number of countries — including the US — over claims its staffers were directly involved in the October 7 attacks carried out by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists against Israel.

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-israel-attack-united-nations-unrwa-0ec8d325

Lammy has now added to his anti-Israel stance by suspending a number of UK arms contracts to Israel, a decision that was announced on the same day that Israel buried the latest group of hostages to be murdered by Hamas terrorists, a decision that was denounced as “shameful” by Netanyahu.

Israel’s True Enemy: Hamas, Not Netanyahu by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20925/israel-enemy-hamas

More than 30 years ago, these “elites,” overwhelmingly on Israel’s political “left” (think “peace,” as if most people in democracies do not want peace) played a significant role in convincing the Israeli government to sign the Oslo Accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), headed by Yasser Arafat. The assumption back then was that if you bring Arafat’s PLO from the Arab countries to Gaza and the West Bank and help them create a government and police force, the Palestinians would renounce terrorism and give up their dream of destroying Israel.

The Palestinian Authority, established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1994, had no intention of making peace with Israel, and still has not.

Palestinian leaders continue to praise terrorists as “martyrs” and “heroes” and pay monthly salaries to their families.

Many Israeli “elites” chose to turn a blind eye to the Palestinian leaders’ support for terrorism and incitement of violence and hatred against Israel. Some Israeli peace activists continued to argue that Abbas who, since 2014 has refused to resume peace negotiations with Israel, is somehow a credible peace partner.

“He [Arafat] did not negotiate in good faith; indeed, he did not negotiate at all. He just kept saying no to every offer, never making any counterproposals of his own.” – Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted by Benny Morris from interviews in late March and early April 2202.

The Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip in 2005 to enable the Palestinians to create a Dubai on the Mediterranean, instead enabled Hamas and other terror groups to turn the coastal enclave into a huge base for Jihad (holy war) against Israel. With the help of Iran, the terror groups smuggled weapons into the Gaza Strip from Egypt in tunnels dug under the border, and were taught to manufacture rockets and missiles. The Gazans also built a vast network of tunnels throughout the Gaza Strip, with many extending into Egypt.

It turned out the belief of Israeli “elites” that the expulsion of Jews from the Gaza Strip would contribute to peace with the Palestinians was a catastrophic mirage.

The Palestinians did not see the “disengagement” as an indication that Israel wants peace. Instead, many Palestinians viewed the withdrawal as an Israeli display of weakness and retreat in the face of rockets and suicide bombings. The thinking among the Palestinians became, “Oh, it’s working! So let’s do it more!”

In a similar way, Iran, Qatar, Hamas and Hezbollah have been gaining more confidence from the current anti-government protests in Israel, especially since the Biden-Harris administration began pressing Israel to make concessions, but never Hamas, Hezbollah, Qatar or Iran.

“Continue to exert psychological pressure on the families [of the hostages], both now and during the first phase [of the ceasefire] so that public pressure on the enemy government increases…. Arab forces should serve as a buffer to prevent the enemy [Israel] from entering after the war in Gaza ends, until they [Hamas] have reorganized their ranks and military capabilities.” — Hamas document, written in March for the terrorist group’s leader Yahya Sinwar, discovered on a computer allegedly belonging to him that was seized by the IDF.

The BBC’s Israelophobia is even worse than you think A new report exposes the true, shocking extent of the BBC’s moral decay.Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/09/the-bbcs-israelophobia-is-even-worse-than-you-think/

Remember when the BBC went nuts at Nigel Farage over comments made by some of the candidates for his Reform Party? It was in the run-up to the General Election. Farage was taking part in a BBC debate. Presenter Fiona Bruce huffed and puffed at him for half the show about three candidates who’d said nasty things about immigrants, including calling them ‘savages’ who should ‘get off [their] lazy arses’. Looking back, we can see what a load of old cant that was, for the BBC employed far worse bigots than those Reform racists. It employed people who openly praised the worst act of Jew murder since the Holocaust.

A new report on the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas War in the aftermath of Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October is a sobering read. It’s outright jarring in parts. Some of it is pretty ‘dog bites man’. Anyone who’s watched any of the Beeb’s pained output since 7 October will not be surprised to learn it has exhibited a ‘deeply worrying pattern of bias’ against Israel. But they’ll be horrified – I hope – to read that the BBC used journalists who had ‘shown sympathy for Hamas’. Including one who described Hamas’s pogrom as a ‘morning of hope’, and another who appeared to mock the Jewish State even as its citizens were being raped and murdered, saying that ‘Israel… is crying in the corner’.

The Beeb has done many awful things of late. There’s its Brexit-bashing. Its indoctrination of schoolkids with bollocks about ‘white privilege’. Its gratingly woke podcasts, including one asking how ‘white women’ can avoid becoming ‘Karens’. Its transformation of Doctor Who into naff LGBTQ propaganda in an effort to stir the throng from its supposed bigoted stupor. But this – its association with journalists so anti-Israel that one defended a Lebanese reporter who had said ‘Sir Hitler, rise, there are a few people that need to be burned’ – is surely the worst. We’re paying for this fascist-adjacent nonsense?

The new report is called ‘The Asserson Report: The Israel-Hamas War and the BBC’. It was overseen by Trevor Asserson, the British-Israeli lawyer. He deployed around 20 data scientists and 20 legal minds to analyse no fewer than nine million words of BBC output from the four-month period of 7 October 2023 to 7 February 2024. The researchers claim to have identified a total of 1,553 breaches of the BBC’s own guidelines on impartiality and accuracy. Time and again after the 7 October pogrom, they say, the BBC’s output soft-soaped Hamas’s atrocities while depicting Israel as ‘militaristic and aggressive’.

Bibi’s Fault? The answer should be obvious. Cal Thomas

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bibis-fault/

President Biden says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to win the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza by the terrorist group Hamas.

As the saying goes “with friends like these, who needs enemies?”

In his first statement since the recovery of six hostages murdered by Hamas, including American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Netanyahu refused all entreaties by the U.S. administration and other governments and protesters in Israel and the U.S. to agree to a ceasefire as a way to gain the release of the other hostages. What critics forget is that Hamas has refused all ceasefire offers, largely I suspect, because it knows the world will keep pressuring Israel to”do more” and not the terrorists to do less.

Too many seem to have forgotten, or ignored, the real culprits. It was Hamas that kidnapped and murdered innocent Israelis and took hostages last October. It is Hamas that has a covenant which calls for the creation of an Islamic state in all of Palestine and the obliteration of Israel. How do you negotiate with an enemy who believes their god has given direct orders to eliminate the Jewish state by any means necessary?

The answer should be obvious, but it isn’t to many who have the false view that what Israel does or does not do matters to her enemies. Pressuring Israel has also been the incorrect approach over several U.S. administrations and Labor governments in Israel. Hamas and other terror groups get land, ceasefires, prisoner exchanges and financial help, but give nothing in return.

A Wall Street Journal editorial puts the blame where it belongs: “(the hostages) were killed in Rafah, where Biden and Harris delayed Israel’s entry with threats and by withholding weapons.”

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL EVEN DURING WARTIME FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

 www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

When mainstream news about Israel is biased and bleak, I always turn to Michael Ordman for positive news. Here is another dazzling compilation to lift one’s spirits. Israel lives and enjoys the many blessings of democracy and freedom and success with incredible advances in medicine and technology that benefit the entire world. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
The breath of life. (TY Sam Kramer) Kfir Zar’s lungs were badly damaged when Hamas fired a rocket at his tank in Gaza. He was put on a heart-lung machine until he received a double lung transplant at Sheba Medical Center from fallen soldier Dor Zimel. Kfir has now been discharged after nine and a half months of recovery.
https://www.afsmc.org/2024/05/dor-gave-kfir-the-gifts-of-breath-and-life/
 
Volunteers saved $50 million of produce. Israeli charity Leket Israel reported that since Oct 7, hundreds of thousands of volunteers, from Israel and around the world, helped rescue over 35,000 tons of Israeli agricultural produce that otherwise would have gone to waste.
https://www.jns.org/volunteers-saved-50m-in-israeli-produce-during-war-study-finds/
 
Navigating the “new normal”. Interesting article highlighting the resilience of Israelis who continue their “normal” lives in a war situation. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israelis-navigate-normal-life-amid-danger-and-anxiety-from-war-and-iranian-threat/
 
Respite in Connecticut. World ORT Kadima Mada brought a group of 21 Israeli teens to the USA for a two -week break with summer camps, parks, and counselling. Each student had lost a family member or friend in the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 or in the months of violence against Israel since.
https://www.jns.org/the-love-of-country-in-their-eyes/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Robot surgery to remove pancreas (and more). (TY Aubrey) Surgeons at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya are the first in Israel to use a robot to completely remove a patient’s pancreas and other organs. The 78-year-old patient had multiple cystic (non-malignant) tumors. After a few days, he was discharged home.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/in-israel-first-robot-is-used-by-doctors-to-completely-remove-patients-pancreas/
 
Robot can help rehabilitate stroke patients. Ben Gurion University researchers published the first long-term study of stroke patient rehabilitation using Socially Assistive Robots (SARs).  The robots used speech, facial expressions, and gestures to guide and coach patients and improve outcomes.  (See also here previously).
https://www.bgu.ac.il/en/news-and-articles/socially-assistive-robots-improve-stroke-rehabilitation/
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10496321
 
Hope for colorectal cancer patients. (TY Ron) Early results of a study at Israel’s Rabin Medical Center of 29 patients showed new treatment for colorectal cancer eradicated tumors in 65% of patients and prevented surgery for most. Combined immunotherapy and chemoradiotherapy substantially improved survival and quality of life.
https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/s11krhyq0
 
Big data is revealing. A 2-year study by Tel Aviv University researchers is being hailed as a test for vaccines and also to give early warning of a potential pandemic. Smartwatch sensors from Israel’s Biobeat (see here previously) monitored the heart, lungs, blood oxygen, temperature, blood pressure, etc. of some 5,000 patients.
https://english.tau.ac.il/research/smartwatches-pandemic-prevent
https://nocamels.com/2024/08/smart-sensors-take-the-sting-out-of-studying-vaccine-safety/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666776224001017
 
New AI medical solutions. Israel’s AIDOC (see here previously) has announced seven new CE-approved AI solutions for European healthcare. They help analyze blocked blood vessels; a tear in the aorta; spinal fracture; a malplaced tube for opening the airway in the throat, and three cardiovascular and neurological conditions.
https://nocamels.com/2024/09/israeli-healthcare-firm-unveils-new-ai-solutions-for-europe/
 
Papaya to treat cystic fibrosis? Israel’s ODE Pharma has discovered that a molecule, code named ODE-001 and derived from the papaya fruit, reduces inflammation and deterioration in organs adversely affected by cystic fibrosis. One scientist who originally suggested the molecule is Nobel laureate Aaron Ciechanover.
https://nocamels.com/2024/08/startup-sees-potential-of-papaya-to-treat-cystic-fibrosis-in-kids/
https://pollen-group.com/portfolio/   https://odepharma.com/
 
Looking to stop cancer at cell level. Dr Gabriel Frank at Israel’s Ben Gurion University employs microscopy – examining cells using BGU’s powerful cryo-electron microscope, He has discovered that cancer cells rely on iron ions. The body’s Nuclear Receptor Coactivator 4 (NCOA4) controls the ion level and can kill the cancer.
https://www.bgu.ac.il/en/news-and-articles/bgu-microscopy-discovers-drug-candidates-for-cancer/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48151-1
 
Upgrading emergency dispatch. Israel’s volunteer emergency medical organization United Hatzalah has just enhanced its dispatch center’s capabilities by upgrading to the APEX cloud-based system from Israel’s Carbyne (see here previously). United Hatzalah partnered with Carbyne (see here) after the Turkish earthquake.
https://israelrescue.org/stories/united-hatzalah-boosts-emergency-response-with-cutting-edge-technology/
https://carbyne.com/solutions/apex/
 
Oncologists base decisions on Israeli tech. (TY OurCrowd) A study published in Clinical Lung Cancer finds that 93% of oncologists adjust their treatment recommendations with the help of PROphetNSCLC, a test developed by Israel’s OncoHost (see here previously).
https://www.ourcrowd.com/startup-news/clinical-lung-cancer-publishes-study-93-of-oncologists-adjust-treatment-recommendations-with-oncohosts-prophetnsclc-test
https://www.clinical-lung-cancer.com/article/S1525-7304(24)00138-4/fulltext