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ISRAEL

WATCH: ‘Apartheid’ Myth Thoroughly Debunked by Arab-Israeli Lawmaker

https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-apartheid-myth-thoroughly-debunked-in-speech-by-arab-israeli-lawmaker/?

While it surely wasn’t his intention to praise Israel, Ayman Odeh cited incredible statistics proving that it is a diverse and inclusive country.

You know the claim that Israel is an apartheid state? Well, this Arab Knesset member proves it couldn’t be more false.

Ayman Odeh is the leader of the Joint Arab List and he is not known for his positive feelings toward the Jewish State, going so far as to collaborate with officials in the Palestinian Authority in condemnation of Israel.

But even Odeh can’t deny reality when he cites these incredible statistics about the Israeli-Arab community, demonstrating that Israel is a diverse, inclusive country. He destroys the false notion that Israel is an apartheid state.

Is Israel Proscribed to Annex Judea and Samaria (West Bank)? Amb. (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://theettingerreport.com/is-israel-proscribed-to-annex-judea-and-samaria

It has been suggested that the next Prime Minister of Israel will be proscribed from annexing parts of Judea and Samaria – for the next three years – due to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s personal commitment to President Trump to refrain from annexation.  This ostensible commitment was never ratified by Israel’s Legislature.

Does a personal commitment by an Israeli prime minister to a US president tie the hands of succeeding Israeli prime ministers?

Not according to the tradition of democratic societies, which aims to avoid Executive tyranny, limiting the power of presidents and prime ministers through a system of checks and balance.

For example, international accords reached by US presidents require ratification by two thirds of the Senate.  Therefore, in 2018, President Trump was able to withdraw from the 2015 Iran Nuclear Accord (JCPOA), since it was never ratified by the Senate.  Moreover, the US is not committed to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was signed in 1999 by President Clinton, but has yet to be ratified by the Senate.

Furthermore, the 1975 assurance of President Ford to Israel’s Prime Minister Rabin “to give great weight to Israel’s position that any peace agreement with Syria must be predicated on Israel remaining on the Golan Heights,” did not commit any of the succeeding presidents, since it was not ratified by the Senate. A similar fate met President Eisenhower’s 1957 non-ratified assurance issued to Israel’s Prime Minister Eshkol, which implied US willingness to deploy its military in the face of Egyptian violations of agreements in the Red Sea and the Sinai Peninsula (which triggered the 1967 War).

Netanyahu: UAE to invest $10 billion in Israel The country’s economy will take a leap forward due to the “staggering” investment, says Israeli premier.

https://www.jns.org/netanyahu-uae-to-invest-10-billion-in-israel/?ct=t%28Daily+Syndicate+3-14-21+%28old%29%29

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed on Thursday that the United Arab Emirates, with which Israel signed a peace deal in September, plans to invest $10 billion in the country.

Speaking during a press conference with his Hungarian and Czech counterparts in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said that Israel’s economy would “take a leap forward” due to the investment, and that “specific projects” were already under discussion.

The press conference came just hours after a planned visit to the UAE was canceled due to a delay in obtaining Jordanian permission to traverse its airspace. According to a statement from Netanyahu’s office, the delay was linked to the cancellation of a planned visit to the Temple Mount by the Jordanian Crown Prince due to a disagreement over security arrangements.

“It took us a good couple of hours to set things straight with Jordan,” he said. “We can fly, and I can fly over Jordan, but [due to the delay] until this coordination was achieved, today’s visit was not possible,” he added.

“Accordingly, I just spoke with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, a great leader, the leader of the UAE, and we agreed on three things: One, to carry out another visit soon; two, to advance the ‘Green Passport’ [program] between Israel and the UAE; and three—and this is very important news for the citizens of Israel—regarding the UAE’s intent to invest, by various means, the staggering sum of $10 billion dollars in Israel,” he said.

Earlier on Thursday, the Czech Republic opened a branch of its Israel embassy in Jerusalem in a ceremony attended by Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi.

Israel Has Good Reason to Be Wary of ICC Probe By Lawrence J. Haas

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/israel-has-good-reason-be-wary-icc-probe-179818

“The investigation,” the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said the other day in announcing her probe of Israeli and Palestinian activity in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, “will cover crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court that are alleged to have been committed . . . since 13 June 2014.”

The starting date is telling, for it mocks Bensouda’s assurances that her office will conduct the investigation “independently, impartially and objectively,” with a “principled, non-partisan approach” that reflects “no agenda other than to meet our statutory duties.”

That’s because it was on June 12, 2014—a day earlier—that the terrorist group Hamas, as it later admitted, kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenage Yeshiva boys from the West Bank, leaving their bodies, as the New York Times put it, “buried under a pile of rocks in an open field about 15 miles from where [they] were last seen.”

It was that attack, which one Hamas leader called a “heroic operation,” that prompted Israel to arrest Hamas leaders in the West Bank, which then prompted Palestinian militants to launch thousands of rockets from Gaza into Israel, which then prompted an Israeli invasion of Gaza from the air and ground. The 2014 Gaza War, as it’s known, extended into August and left more than two thousand Gazans and scores of Israelis dead.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

The Jewish holiday of Passover will begin on the evening of March 27 this year, and thanks to the warp speed development of vaccines and incipient herd immunity families can gather to celebrate the history of the Jewish flight from Egypt. This year so many former Pharaohs have turned to accommodation and recognition of Israel and they too will reap the blessings of Israel’s amazing research and development of life enhancing technology and science which Michael Ordman compiles every week. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

5 million vaccinated. Israel’s five millionth recipient of the Covid-19 vaccine was a pregnant 34-year-old from the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva, Restaurants, cafes, attractions, hotels, event venues, places of worship, most school grades 7-10, and more, have opened. Only 3% of serious Covid-19 cases had received a 2nd shot.

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/1615223985-israel-s-vaccination-drive-passes-5-000-000-mark

https://www.timesofisrael.com/less-than-3-of-serious-covid-cases-are-fully-vaccinated-proving-effectiveness/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKdoAsxY8KE

Learning from our mistakes. One of Israel’s Health Medical Organizations (HMOs) accidentally used a half-sized needle to apply the first Pfizer vaccine into 1,000 Israelis. But when 60% of them were tested three weeks later, they were all found to have high levels of antibodies. The US CDC was pleased to hear the outcome.

https://worldisraelnews.com/right-injection-wrong-needle-israel-accidentally-finds-out-if-the-corona-vaccine-will-still-work/

SARS-Cov-2 treatment subsidiary. Israeli biotech Pepticom (reported here previously) has raised $2.6 million to establish a company that can treat SARS-Cov-2 and its mutations. It will implement AI technology to design, discover and develop novel peptide molecules.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3897696,00.html  https://pepticom.com/

Helping Covid patients to breathe. Israel’s Sheba Medical Center is partnering Israel’s Inspira Technologies in trials of its new respiratory treatment for Covid-19 patients suffering from acute breathing difficulties. The Augmented Respiration Treatment (ART) directly oxygenates blood while the patient remains conscious.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3894246,00.html   https://inspira-technologies.com/

A natural treatment for Covid? IDC Herzliya researchers at Israel’s MIGAL laboratory, with Icelandic scientists, have identified that spirulina algae can reduce the cytokine storm that kills Covid-19 patients. The algae was supplied by Israel’s VAXA (Iceland based) who have EU funding to find natural cures for Covid-19.

https://www.newsrael.com/post/-MUZUMu2rI9dtUFz07He   https://www.vaxa.life/

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-researchers-say-spirulina-algae-could-stop-covid-19-deaths-660064   https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10126-021-10020-z    

 

Breakthrough in protein synthesis. Arab-Israeli Professor Ashraf Brik (see here previously) of Israel’s Technion and his team have overcome a 60-year technical problem to synthesize plectasin, a peptide with promising antibiotic results against multi-resistant bacteria, and linaclotide, to treat irritable bowel syndrome.

https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2021/02/six-decades-old-protein-synthesis-problem-solved-at-technion/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21209-0

New way to diagnose neurological conditions. Scientists at Ben Gurion University have confirmed the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury and stroke from electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns. Analysis of changes in brain blood vessel pathology can provide fast diagnosis of those conditions.

https://www.israel21c.org/scientists-discover-new-way-to-diagnose-neurological-conditions/

Eliminating animal testing. Hebrew University researchers have developed a chip containing human tissue with microscopic sensors to precisely monitor the response of the kidney, liver and heart to specific treatments. It is believed to be the first treatment to be submitted to the US FDA for human trials without animal testing.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israelis-create-cancer-drug-using-human-simulating-chip-instead-of-animal-tests/  https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/13/582/eabd6299

Fast glaucoma treatment in trials. Israel’s Belkin Laser (reported here previously) is conducting a large-scale clinical study of its Eagle laser glaucoma treatment in Europe and Israel. Patients at more than 10 sites are testing the computer-guided device that uses healing lasers far less intrusively than currently approved devices.

https://www.israel21c.org/the-glaucoma-treatment-that-only-takes-seconds/         

Transforming ophthalmic surgery. Israeli startup ForSight Robotics is developing a microsurgical robotic platform for eye surgery. The platform will exceed human surgical capabilities with unprecedented dexterity and maneuverability to within only a few microns.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3897656,00.html   https://www.forsightrobotics.com/

Minimally invasive hysterectomies. (TY Nevet) Some 600,000 hysterectomies are performed annually in the US. The US FDA has just approved the Hominis Surgical System, developed by Israel’s Memic. The surgeon operates using the Robotically Assisted Surgical Device (RASD) via tiny incisions in the patient’s body.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-robotic-arms-get-fda-nod-for-minimally-invasive-hysterectomies/

https://www.memicmed.com/

Israeli women saving lives.  Four women from Israel’s diverse, inclusive society enthusiastically speak about their life-saving work as volunteer paramedics with Israeli emergency service United Hatzalah. 

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

Ask me anything. (TY Nevet) Tel Aviv University Professor Neta Erez made the unusual offer on Reddit.com to answer any questions in one day, about her specialty of cancer research. She answered 61 tough questions.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lws8ge/askscience_ama_series_hi_i_am_tel_aviv_university/

FOR ISRAEL’S BOYS OF SUMMER WAITING TIME

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-03-24/israel-baseball-olympics-p

For Israel’s first Olympic baseball team, it’s wait until next year-  March 2020

Never has Israel won an Olympic medal in a team sport. The chances would have been 50-50 this summer.

Israel had qualified for one of the six spots in the Olympic baseball field. On Monday, Team Israel announced that four-time All-Star Ian Kinsler had obtained Israeli citizenship and signed up for the team.

On Tuesday, the Olympics were postponed, a particularly cruel blow to Israeli baseball officials who have toiled for years to establish the sport in a country that loves basketball and soccer above all. In the 2017 World Baseball Classic, an underdog Israeli team and its “Mensch on the Bench” mascot beat powers Cuba and South Korea in a magical run.

While the WBC is a niche event, the Olympics command a worldwide stage. Because of the size of a baseball team, Israel would have sent its largest delegation ever to the Olympics. And, with Israeli baseball officials planning youth fields outside Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the Olympics could have spurred the development of the sport in Israel like nothing else.

“Baseball is not popular in Israel,” outfielder Jeremy Wolf said. “This was going to make a huge impact with the kids who would see us on television.

“So, when you get rid of the eyeballs of the Olympics, we’re just going to have to keep momentum going so, in 2021, when it happens, people are still going to be interested.”

How Israel Became the World Vaccine Leader The country made a deal with Pfizer: enough shots for everyone in exchange for data on the results. By Tunku Varadarajan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-israel-became-the-world-vaccine-leader-11615576463?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

More than 55% of Israelis over 16 have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in the 12 weeks since the first jab was administered to a wincing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on national TV. That’s the world’s best immunization rate and roughly four times the U.S. rate.

To find out how the Jewish state has become such an overachiever, I interview its national Covid-19 coordinator, Nachman Ash. Dr. Ash, 60, began his medical career in 1987 as a combat physician in the Israel Defense Forces. Before retiring from the service, he rose to the rank of brigadier general and the position of IDF surgeon general. Seated in his spartan office in Lod, south of Ben Gurion International Airport, he tells me he’s fighting a “24/7 war.” His current job is “the most intensive” he’s ever had, “much harder” than being chief medical officer of the Israeli army, even in wartime.

Dr. Ash is Israel’s second Covid czar. He took up the post on Nov. 12, after his less diplomatic predecessor quit amid clashes with Mr. Netanyahu and tussles with (frequently recalcitrant) ultra-Orthodox Jews, who chafed against lockdowns and other social restrictions.

Like all good officers, he’s proud of his victories but quick to credit others. He ascribes Israel’s vaccination successes to its political leaders, who showed foresight in concluding early deals to stockpile the Covid vaccine. Officials had “direct discussions” with Pfizer, in which they offered the company a scientific quid pro quo. Israel got the shots early, and in the quantities it needed, and in exchange Pfizer received access to the results of the vaccinations, tabulated by a country with a first-rate medical system and a reputation for statistical and scientific integrity. Dr. Ash calls it “a win-win deal” and believes Pfizer would say the same.

Palestinians: Why Terrorists Support Mass Murderers by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16931/palestinians-terrorists-murderers-soleimani

For Hamas and Islamic Jihad, what matters is the money and weapons coming from Iran. They see Soleimani as a hero because of his role in providing the Gaza-based terror groups with cash and weapons in order to continue their jihad (holy war) against Israel and Jews.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and all of Iran’s militias throughout the Middle East have a single goal in common: the annihilation of Israel.

“Instead of providing a fish or teaching how to catch a fish, we taught our allies and friends how to make a hook,” Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said, adding that Hamas and Hezbollah are now in possession of advanced missile technologies.

Soleimani, the man responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs, is being commemorated as a hero and martyr by these terrorist groups because he was supplying them with cash and weapons. His death has not stopped Iran from continuing its support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

This is why the next US administration must maintain pressure on the mullahs in Iran. An easing of the sanctions will embolden the terrorist groups and facilitate their mission of pursuing their jihad against Israel. Iran’s proxies want to see Israel obliterated — and if that means aligning themselves with mass murderers such as Soleimani, so be it.

While many Palestinians hold Iran’s slain military commander Qassem Soleimani responsible for committing massacres against Palestinians and Arabs, especially in war-torn Syria, the Palestinian Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad are continuing to heap praise on him for supporting their anti-Israel terrorist activities.

Soleimani, former commander of Iran’s Quds Force, was killed in a US drone attack in Iraq on January 3, 2020. Many Palestinians and Arabs have denounced Soleimani as the “murderer of hundreds of thousands of women and children” in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

The Iran-backed Hamas and Islamic Jihad have marked the anniversary of his death by hanging large billboards with Soleimani’s picture in some areas of the Gaza Strip. The two terror groups say they miss Soleimani, whom they describe as the “martyr of Jerusalem.”

The billboards have provoked many Palestinians, including those living in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, who consider Soleimani a terrorist and mass murderer.

Majdi al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from the Gaza Strip who reportedly tore down a poster of Soleimani, was arrested by Hamas’s Internal Security Force.

Ruthie Blum:Israeli voters are weary, not stupid

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/israel-elections-voters-are-weary-not-stupid-opinion-661754

Stories of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention to fly on Thursday to the United Arab Emirates for a meeting with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) spurred the press to highlight the event’s proximity to the March 23 Knesset elections. The predictable swipe went beyond mere innuendo, however.

Barak Ravid of Beltway-area website Axios supposedly reported, yet in reality opined, that Netanyahu meant to use the occasion – that would be the first-ever official trip by an Israeli prime minister to the UAE and Netanyahu’s first since the signing of the Abraham Accords in September – “to rally his base and stress his foreign-policy advantage over his less experienced rivals.”

Aside from attributing a cynical motive to the move (which was delayed at the last minute, due to his wife’s hospitalization with appendicitis and Jordan’s blocking of his flight from entering its airspace), Ravid went on to explain that “Netanyahu is in need of a boost [as] his right-wing bloc is short of the 61 seats needed for a majority in the latest polls.”

Ravid further claimed that for 10 days, Netanyahu basically begged the hesitant Emiratis to receive him on their soil, and even had Mossad chief Yossi Cohen do his bidding. According to Ravid, they weren’t keen on being perceived as having “interfered” in the Israeli election. In other words, the UAE sheikhs wouldn’t want to give Netanyahu’s campaign some kind of unfair edge.

Against Court and Constitution: A Never-Before-Translated Speech by David Ben-Gurion Israel famously has no constitution. It turns out that’s no accident but rather the will of its first prime minister, who explains his thinking here.

https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/israel-zionism/2021/03/against-court-and-constitution-a-never-before-translated-speech-by-david-ben-gurion

“Idon’t think it’s possible to delegate authority to the court to decide whether the laws are kosher or not.” These incendiary words were not uttered by a contemporary right-wing critic of the power of the Israeli Supreme Court. They were made, rather, by Israel’s founding father, first prime minister, final editor and ultimate author of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, and promoter of liberty and rights for all: David Ben-Gurion. And he spoke them not in off-the-cuff remarks to a journalist but in a prepared speech to the committee charged with drafting a constitution in Israel’s first Knesset.

Delivered on the morning of July 13, 1949, Ben-Gurion’s address to the members of the Knesset’s committee on “Constitution, Law, and Justice” expresses his forthright opposition to “judicial review”—a possibility still rather abstract in the Israel of 1949. Ben-Gurion’s opposition was vociferous and fierce, and he uses the occasion to present a resounding case for the supremacy of the parliamentary process as well as popular authority, and utter rejection of the possibility of investing judges with the power to throw out laws duly passed by the Knesset.

As followers of its politics perhaps know, Israel today is embroiled in a bitter battle over the proper role of judges and the Supreme Court within the political system. Since the 1990s, the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself broad prerogatives to strike down laws. The Israeli right has in response become fiercely critical of the court, and seeks to rein it in both through changing its composition and through passing legislation—such as the controversial nation-state law—that would constrain it. The court has responded with an attempt to expand its remit even further, while many on the left insist that curtailing the prerogatives of the judiciary will undermine democracy itself.