RUTHFULLY YOURS

During your first official visit to Washington, DC, you’ll have to choose between two options:

*Blurring your deeply-rooted, assertive Israeli positions on the future of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), which would be welcome by the Biden Administration, yielding to short-term political convenience and popularity inside the beltway;

or

*Tenaciously advocating your deeply-rooted, principle-driven positions, which would underscore a profound disagreement with the Biden Administration and the “elite” US media, while granting you and Israel long-term strategic respect, as demonstrated by some of your predecessors.

For example, the late Prime Minister Shamir honed the second option, bluntly introduced his assertive Israeli positions on Judea and Samaria, rebuffed heavy US pressure – including a mudslinging campaign by President Bush and Secretary of State Baker – suffered a popularity setback, but produced unprecedented expansion of US-Israel strategic cooperation. When it comes to facing the intensified threats of rogue regimes and Islamic terrorism, the US prefers principle-driven, reliable, patriotic, pressure-defying partners, irrespective of disagreements on the Palestinian issue.

Assuming that you shall not budge on the historical and national security centrality of Judea and Samaria, it behooves you to highlight the following matters during your meetings with President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, National Security Advisor Sullivan, Secretary of Defense Austin and Congressional leaders (especially the members of the Appropriations Committees):

1. The 1,400-year-old track record of the stormy, unpredictable, violent and anti-“infidel” Middle East, which has yet to experience intra-Arab peaceful-coexistence, along with the 100-year-old Palestinian track record (including the systematic collaboration with anti-US entities, hate-education and anti-Arab and anti-Jewish terrorism) demonstrates that the proposed Palestinian state would be a Mini-Afghanistan or a Mega-Gaza on the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria.

It would dominate 80% of Israel’s population and infrastructures in the 9-15-mile sliver between Judea and Samaria and the Mediterranean, which is shorter than the distance between RFK Stadium and the Kennedy Center.

Thus, a Palestinian state would pose a clear and present existential threat to Israel; and therefore, Israel’s control of the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria is a prerequisite for its survival.

https://www.meforum.org/62587/mandelbaum-bidens-middle-east-policy-challenges

Michael Mandelbaum, professor emeritus of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and author of The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth, spoke to a July 26 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about the Biden administration’s foreign policy challenges, specifically regarding the Middle East.

According to Mandelbaum, the Biden administration is handicapped by the fact that its foreign policy team is dominated by Obama administration personnel who formulated their worldviews during the “post-Cold War” era in which the U.S. “faced no serious threats.” We now live in what Mandelbaum calls the “post-post-Cold War world,” in which the U.S. faces three “major challengers”: China, Russia, and Iran. The Biden administration “has no experience dealing with what is the central issue in foreign policy when there are challengers, namely whether, when, and how to use and threaten force.”

Biden is being “dragged pretty far … to the left of where good American foreign policy should be.”

The administration is also handicapped by the fact that the Democratic Party has “moved sharply to the left.” As a result, the Biden administration is being “dragged pretty far … to the left of where the country is, and I would say to the left of where good American foreign policy should be,” said Mandelbaum. Although “every administration has to navigate when it comes to foreign policy between politics and policy, that task seems to me to be perhaps unusually complicated and difficult for this administration.”

While Mandelbaum observed that the Biden administration has “adapted to the new circumstances” with respect to China and Russia, at least rhetorically, “the necessary, or at least desirable, adjustments are not in evidence … [regarding] four relevant issues in American policy toward the Middle East, namely Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran.” He discussed each of these in turn.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/bennett-cant-have-it-both-ways-with-biden/

(August 24, 2021 / JNS) It’s hard to figure out what Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett meant when he told his Cabinet on Sunday that in his upcoming visit to the White House, he intends to present U.S. President Joe Biden with an “orderly plan that we have formulated in the past two months to curb the Iranians, both in the nuclear sphere and vis-à-vis regional aggression.”

After all, Israel has been leading the battle against the regime in Tehran for decades, ever since it was taken over by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. This fight hasn’t been merely rhetorical, though former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu devoted much of his career articulating, verbally and in print, the dangers that a nuclear Iran would pose to the Middle East and the rest of the world.

He understood, as Bennett surely does, that since the Jewish state is a key target of the mullahs’ genocidal aims against the “infidels,” Israel has had no choice but to try to persuade other countries to wake up to the threat—or go it alone.

Some American administrations have recognized this more than others; the same applies to different constellations of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

It hasn’t been a question of accepting Israel’s warnings about Iran. Rather, it’s been an issue of how best to keep the Islamic Republic’s race for the A-bomb in check.

Left-wing politicians and pundits from both the “Great Satan” (America) and the “Small Satan” (Israel), tend to believe that the only way to do this is through a deal. Those on the right think that negotiating with a state sponsor of global terrorism is as pointless as doing so with its proxies, which happily dispatch “martyrs” to undertake the up-close-and-personal dirty work. You know, the kind that enables them to watch the blood and gore that they extract from their victims.

When Biden’s immediate predecessor and former boss, President Barack Obama, entered the picture, Israel was in trouble. Fans of the “hope and change” candidate on either side of the ocean would come very quickly to attribute the soured relations between Washington and Jerusalem to Netanyahu.

They were wrong to do so.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/08/unrwas-jihad-against-israel-part-two

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East or “UNRWA was nurtured from its beginnings to avoid any permanent solution to the plight of the refugees” from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. So documented Center for Near East Policy Research (CNEPR) Director David Bedein in his previously discussed insightful 2014 book Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict—UNRWA Policies Reconsidered.

As Bedein explained, UNRWA has caused the 1948 “Arab refugee crisis to persist longer than any other refugee situation in the world.” This longevity results from UNRWA’s definition of Palestinian refugees as including not just those who lost their homes in what became Israel in 1948-1949 but also their multigenerational descendants. Simultaneously, UNRWA has insisted that this community may only end its refugee status through a “right of return” to what is now modern Israel.

Contrary to UNRWA, Bedein observed, the “1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees makes no mention of descendants.” This convention also “exempts from refugee status a person who ‘has acquired a new nationality,’” he added. While such acquisition of new citizenship usually ends refugee status, UNRWA’s refugee “definition makes no mention of newly acquired nationality.

Meanwhile a Palestinian right of return “has no legal precedence in history and, indeed, has not been applied in other cases of wartime refugees throughout the twentieth century, which witnessed a record number of such refugees,” Bedein noted. Proponents of this claimed right often wrongly invoke the December 11, 1948, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. Yet at this time, UN officials “were concerned that an international guarantee of the ‘right of return’ for refugees could be applied by the millions of Germans” who lost their homes in Eastern Europe following World War II.

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

Another week and Michael Ordman brings us another dazzling compendium of Israel’s achievements, contributions, and social programs which give the lie to the unrelenting turpitude of anti-Israel groupies. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Coronavirus booster progress. Some 1.2 million Israelis have now had a third coronavirus vaccination and wider rollout is imminent. Maccabi Healthcare Services reported 37 (all non-serious) infections in Israelis over 60 who have been triple-vaccinated, compared to 1,064 (many serious) for those who have had only two doses.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/08/18/israeli-hmo-initial-results-show-covid-19-booster-shot-86-effective/

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/312034

Covid treatment is too cheap? Professor Eli Schwartz of Israel’s Sheba Medical Center was unable to publish the results of his successful double-blind trial of ivermectin on 89 coronavirus patients. Interesting reading.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-scientist-says-covid-19-could-be-treated-for-under-1day-675612

Trial approved for Alzheimer’s treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s SciSparc to commence a Phase 2a clinical trial of its SCI-110 (formerly THX-110) treatment for patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and agitation. The study will be conducted at the Israeli Medical Center for Alzheimer’s.

https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/scisparc-to-commence-phase-iia-clinical-trial-of-sci-110-for-the-treatment-of-alzheimers-disease-and-agitation-301326828.html

New therapies for mental illness. Israel’s Nextage Therapeutics is developing technology to deliver to the brain tiny quantities of controversial chemicals, to treat depression and other neurological disorders.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-team-aims-to-treat-neurological-disorders-with-psychedelics-676923

How the brain maps 3D space. Scientists from Israel’s Weizmann Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have unveiled how 3-dimensional space is represented in the brain’s “GPS” system. They mapped out how “grid cells” work in bats and the findings have turned the previous theory “on its head”.

https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/when-brain%E2%80%99s-gps-goes-grid

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03783-x

First 3D printed active tumor. After Researchers at Tel Aviv University have printed an entire active and viable glioblastoma (brain cancer) tumor using a 3D printer. It includes simulated brain tissue and blood vessel-like tubes through which blood cells can flow and treatments can be (and have been) tested.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israel-prints-worlds-first-3d-living-malignant-brain-tumor-677079

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUjuFyLF5nM

Rejuvenating the immune system. (TY UWI) The reason the elderly are vulnerable to Covid, is their immune systems fail to recognize a new virus. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute, Sourasky (“Ichilov) and Rambam hospitals have demonstrated that removing most of the memory B lymphocytes rejuvenates these immune cells.

https://www.israel21c.org/study-reveals-why-elderly-at-more-risk-from-covid-19/

https://doi.org/10.1182/blood.2021012428

Take your blood pressure with your smartphone. Israel’s Binah.ai (see here previously) is in the final stage of validating its iPhone blood pressure functionality at Israel’s Sheba medical center. The technology records video at up to 120 frames per second, to analyze skin color changes for monitoring vital signs.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startup-lets-users-check-vital-signs-by-looking-at-their-smartphones/

Google health subsidiary sets up Israeli R&D center. Verily Life Sciences, an independent subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, is establishing a Research and Development center in Israel.  The company focuses on digital health, applying AI to medical problems. In Israel it will target colorectal (colon) cancer.

https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-googles-verily-life-sciences-to-set-up-israel-rd-center-1001380819

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-google-project-in-israel-aims-to-use-ai-to-help-detect-colon-cancer/

Online support. Israel’s Circles has developed a platform designed to help users overcome life’s challenges. It matches groups of 6-8 people who are facing similar difficulties such as divorce, grief, or medical diagnoses, and connects them together for one-hour video meetings. People don’t have to face their struggles alone.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3915387,00.html

ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL

ww.jihadwatch.org/2021/08/unrwas-jihad-against-israel-part-one

Congressional Republicans have recently introduced legislation to reenact President Donald Trump’s cutoff of American aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Closing UNRWA and ending a decades-long, multigenerational “refugee” status for over five million Arabs is long overdue, as documented in the 2014 book Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict—UNRWA Policies Reconsidered.

The book’s author, David Bedein, director of the Center for Near East Policy Research in Jerusalem, provided a detailed, damning indictment of UNRWA. Founded in the wake of Israel’s 1948-1949 War of Independence, UNRWA had the mission of providing for Arabs who lost their homes in the territory that became Israel. Various estimates of their number ran between 540,000 and 750,000.

“When UNRWA launched its operations on May 1, 1950, it was thought that, since the refugee situation would soon be resolved, UNRWA would have a limited life span,” Bedein wrote. Yet ever since UNRWA’s mandate has been “renewed every three years by the UN General Assembly.” As a later article will analyze in detail, the key to UNRWA’s longevity lies in UNRWA’s refusal to apply ordinary resettlement processes to these refugees and their multiplying “refugee” descendants. Rather, UNRWA insists that they “return” to modern Israel.

UNRWA is anomalous in other ways, for it demonstrates an inordinate global attention to Palestinian refugees. As Bedein wrote, “UNRWA remains the only UN organization dedicated to handling exactly one ethnic group of refugees.” Thus, UNRWA “stands in sharp contrast to” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who “works on behalf of all refugees in the world.”

 For more than 20 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, anti-Zionism was a regional phenomenon—a clash between Arab and Jewish national movements in the Middle East. In the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe the Soviets exploited antisemitism for political purposes, but it was rarely part of international debate until after the Six-Day War in 1967. By the end of the 1960s, and since 1975, anti-Zionism became international in scope. It first appeared in the universities in the West where the New Left, in cooperation with the Arab student associations, attacked Israeli policy. [1]

 When the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 on November 10, 1975 and declared “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” it significantly expanded anti-Zionism into the sphere international non-governmental organizations and therefore into the Third World countries. This was done by an alliance of the Arabs and the Soviet Union. They endowed anti-Zionism with legitimacy and official recognition. [2]  

 After the First World War, the Arabs expected Greater Syria—which included Palestine and Lebanon—to become a vast united and sovereign Arab empire. Instead the French and the British divided the area into what the Arabs considered “irrationally carved out” entities that became the present-day states of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Trans-Jordan (later Jordan), Iraq and Israel. They were outraged that a “non-Arab embryo state in Palestine” had been inserted into an area where they would never be accepted. They claimed that this shattered their dreams of unification and impeded their search for a common identity.  [3]  

 The Fight for “Dignity and Independence”

The fight against a Jewish homeland became an integral part of their struggle “for dignity and independence.” Israel’s existence, they claimed, “implied that not only a part of the Arab patrimony, but also parts of Islam had been stolen. For a Moslem there was no greater shame than for that to happen.” The only way to eliminate this deeply felt affront—this “symbol of everything that had dominated them in the past”—was to rid the area of “imperialist domination.” [4]  

Zionists were the official enemy of the Arab national movement, but Arab governments have long been accused of using the Arab Israeli confrontation to divert attention from their own critical domestic social and economic problems. When confronted, they respond that if this were not a real concern, it would not resonate so strongly among the Arab masses. [5]

The late Bernard Lewis, the dean of Middle Eastern scholars, said Arab preoccupation with Israel is the licensed grievance. In countries where people are becoming increasingly angry and frustrated at all the difficulties under which they live—the poverty, unemployment, oppression—having a grievance which they can express freely is an enormous psychological advantage.” [6]

https://unitedwithisrael.org/in-medical-first-israeli-doctors-freeze-out-cancerous-bladder-tumors/?utm_source=newsletters_

Doctors at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital are hopeful the procedure will eventually become an outpatient treatment.

Doctors at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital removed cancer tumors from the bladders of four patients by freezing them out rather than by cutting. The procedure has never been tried before and offers tremendous potential to reduce bleeding, infection, pain and other risks.

All the patients were discharged without side effects and will be monitored over several weeks.

“Normally, the tumors are frozen by injecting the freezing agent using needles, but this can’t happen with bladder cancer,” said aide Dr. Isaac Hoffman, who operated with his colleague Prof. Gilad Amiel.

Instead, an Israeli medical company, Vessi Medical, based near Nahariya, developed a process to spray a freezing agent on the cancerous cells. Ice forms around and within the cancerous cells without damaging the bladder muscles.

The bladder is unlike other organs, explained Eyal Kochavi, CEO of Vessi Medical. “It’s mostly muscle and very flexible. It has the ability to change its volume in a way that we don’t pay attention to. So, for example, we don’t feel any urge to urinate until it fills to almost half a liter.”

Said Hoffman, “Here we are actually spraying liquid Co2 instead of cutting out the tumor, a process that causes scarring of healthy tissue…

“We are very happy that we succeeded in freezing the tumor, after which the cancerous cells die off without them needing us to cut them out.”

Hoffman added that the procedure could eventually be administered as an outpatient treatment. “The aim is to release the patient from the hospital on the same day as the procedure.”

Bladder cancer affects around two million people globally. According to the Mayo Clinic, risk factors for bladder cancer include family history, a personal history of chronic bladder irritation or infection, age, smoking and exposure to certain chemicals used to manufacture dyes, rubber, paint and other textiles.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

This issue is packed full of life-saving examples. They include successful coronavirus treatments, UV sterilizing, and vaccine boosters; new treatments for bladder cancer, Parkinson’s, heart arrhythmia, back pain, damaged cartilage, stroke, allergies and more. There are also heart-warming stories from two Israeli life-saving organizations. Those citizens with disabilities and special needs can expect new opportunities for a better life and Israeli firefighters are helping save Greek citizens from deadly fires. New Israeli water innovations plus agricultural projects and startups are saving millions from drought and starvation. Finally, new international agreements will save many more lives in the future. Michael Ordman

Fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah, Israel’s contributions truly set a light unto the nations.

“And unto your light, nations shall walk, and kings unto the brightness of your rising” Isaiah 60:3. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Hospital kills Covid with UV light. Tel Aviv’s Sourasky (Ichilov) is the first hospital to use ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect medical spaces. The J. Protect system, from Israel’s Juganu (see here) uses UV-A in occupied rooms and UV-C when the room is empty. Bacteria, fungi and viruses (e.g., Covid-19) are killed in one hour.
https://worldisraelnews.com/israeli-hospital-first-ever-to-use-light-to-disinfect-spaces/
 
Covid treatment trial extended. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Health Ministry has approved a Phase 2 trial of Covid-19 treatment MesenCure (see here previously) from Israel’s Bonus BioGroup. The treatment helped 15 out of 17 severe Covid cases, to be released from hospital just one day after receiving their final dose.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israel-to-expand-use-of-covid-drug-that-gets-88-percent-of-patients-out-of-hospital-676397
 
Pfizer booster vaccine works. (TY Hazel) Researchers at Israel’s Beilinson Medical Center have found that twice as many organ transplant recipients developed antibodies after their 3rd anti-covid jab compared to their 2nd dose. There were also good results in the over-60s, of which over 750,000 have had their 3rd vaccination.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/3rd-covid-shot-highly-potent-in-israels-immunocompromised-early-study-shows/
 
Freezing bladder cancer. In a global first, doctors at Israel’s Rambam Medical Center in Haifa performed cryotherapy to treat superficial bladder cancer in a 60-year-old patient. The technology was developed by Israel’s Vessi Medical (see here previously). Bladder cancer is the most common cancer in men over 50.
https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/cryotheraphy_breakthrough.aspx  https://www.vessimed.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00cr009GQ2g
 
Defibrillator on a string. Israel’s Newpace has developed. the Implantable Subcutaneous String-cardio Defibrillator (ISSD) – a low-invasive heart rhythm defibrillator that is implanted under the skin and is recharged and monitored wirelessly using Bluetooth. Newpace is now to use the battery system from Israel’s Powermat.
https://powermat.com/news/press-releases/newpace-selects-wireless-power-market-leader-powermat-technologies-to-develop-advanced-wireless-charging-technology-for-innovative-life-saving-devices/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1BNfklrA8s  https://www.newpacemedical.com/products
 
European approval for spinal fusion system. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s ZygoFix (see here previously) has obtained the European CE mark for its minimally invasive screwless zLOCK Spinal Fusion system for the treatment of chronic back pain. The system has been in clinical use for over three years in Hungary and Israel.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zygofix-receives-ce-clearance-for-its-zlock-spinal-fusion-system-301320845.html
 
Successful trials for knee cartilage replacement. Israel’s CartiHeal (see here previously) has just announced successful results in the two-year trial of its Agili-C implant for 251 patients with damaged knee cartilage. Over 77% of patients said their condition had improved, compared to 33% of those who had conventional treatment.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-cartheal-succeeds-in-clinical-trial-for-cartilage-treatment-1001380565
 
Israel’s medical robotic revolution. Join Technion UK’s webinar on 24th Aug at 2pm UK time. Professor Alon Wolf, Head of Robotics and Vice President of Israel’s Technion Institute, will talk about his work. His startup Medrobotics is now transforming his search & rescue robotic snake into an anatomical surgery tool.
https://technionuk.org/event/the-medical-robotics-revolution/
https://technionuk.org/video/snake-robots-technion-biorobotics-biomechanics-lab-alon-wolf/
 
Hi-tech stroke rehab. Ben Gurion University has established a new rehabilitation lab for stroke victims. It is based at ADI ALEH Negev Nahalat Eran Rehabilitation Village in southern Israel (see here previously). Patients spend 3 – 5 hours per day with cutting-edge equipment that utilizes the brain’s plasticity to repair itself.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/bgus-negev-lab-is-bringing-stroke-rehab-into-the-future-675273
 
Preventing allergies in babies. Israel’s MyOR uses AI models and predictive data from studies worldwide to forecast which newborns are at risk of developing food allergies and atopic dermatitis (eczema). This, plus a sophisticated skin test, gives pediatricians a tool to guide parents on how to prevent allergies.
https://www.israel21c.org/this-startup-aims-to-predict-and-prevent-allergies-in-babies/  
https://www.myorcare.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktJt2jT7E7A  (Bamba story at 8:15 mins)
 
Diagnosing cancer in Midwest USA. Alverno Laboratories, one of the largest integrated laboratory networks in the United States, is to deploy the Galen AI platform from Israel’s Ibex Medical Analytics (see here previously) to help pathologists provide accurate cancer diagnosis for patients.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3914741,00.html
 
Treating symptoms of Parkinson’s. Former Member of Knesset Michael (Miki) Eitan (aged 77) was once completely debilitated by Parkinson’s disease. In Feb 2021, he underwent Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) at Hadassah Ein Kerem in Jerusalem. Now, although the disease continues, most of his symptoms have gone.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/28-year-ex-likud-mk-staves-off-parkinsons-with-rare-brain-treatment/
 
Ethiopian’s 20-year heart guarantee. Israel’s Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) recently flew 33-year-old basketball coach Luleseged Kassa from Ethiopia to Israel, so that surgeons at could fix a faulty heart valve. The valve was one of two that SACH surgeons replaced (again for free) when Luleseged was just 13 years old.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/addis-ababa-man-battling-heart-defect-gets-second-free-treatment-in-israel/
 
The downs and ups of an EMT. Baruch, a United Hatzalah paramedic, lost vital minutes when the daughter of a heart attack victim gave the wrong address. He finally arrived to take over CPR from the patient’s exhausted wife and save her husband’s life. And a busy previous day meant that his medical kit was fully replenished.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/311474