RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

On March 27, the holiday of Passover begins in the evening. Families will tell the story of how the Jewish people fled the cruelties and tyranny of the Pharaoh to make their way to Israel. As the Egyptian armies pursued them close behind, the sea parted for their escape, drowning their oppressors. Millennia later after the Holocaust which claimed the lives of one in every three Jews in the world another miracle occurred when the steel hulls of ships parted the waters of oceans on their way to liberated and restored Israel in 1948. Who could have dreamed of the amazing research and development which Michael Ordman catalogs for us every week? To all who celebrate Passover, I wish a wonderful and sweet holiday and to all who celebrate Easter I wish all the blessings of peace and good times.

RSK

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Huge drop in infections. (TY UWI) Israel’s Covid-19 infection rate has fallen such that hospitals are now closing their coronavirus wards. 50% of Israelis are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19. See also the YouTube animation showing relative percentages of each country’s vaccinations over the last 3 months. 

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/HJbiwkpmd

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/298855

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MzBmOURnB8

Together we can do miracles. Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer explains why he chose Israel as the priority destination for his company’s SARS-COV-2 vaccine.  A small population, a good healthcare system, a high degree of electronic data and an obsessive Prime Minister. And the scientific partnership has a great future.

https://www.israelunwired.com/pfizer-ceo-we-placed-the-bet-with-israel-and-we-are-so-happy-with-the-results/

The Covid-19 benefits of Aspirin. (TY UWI) A joint team from Israel’s Leumit Health Services, Bar-Ilan University, and Barzilai Medical Center analyzed records of over 10,000 Leumit patients. They found low-dose aspirin (75mg) reduced Covid-19 infection risk by 29% and shortened virus duration by about two days.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/aspirin-may-protect-against-covid-19-israeli-research-finds/

Successful UK trial of anti-Covid-19 nose spray. Israel’s SaNOtize (reported here previously) has announced that UK trials showed its Nitric Oxide nose spray successfully reduced virus severity in infected patients and prevented it being transmitted to others. Emergency deployment is now being sought in Britain and Canada.

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/israeli-maker-of-nose-spray-that-kills-covid-19-applies-for-uk-rollout/

Portable blood count system for UK hospital. Israel’s Sight Diagnostics (reported here previously) has deployed its lab-grade Sight OLO solution to the UK’s John Radcliffe Hospital, part of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation. The portable system delivers Full Blood Count (FBC) results in just a few minutes.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3898111,00.html

Guiding catheters to the tumor. Israel’s Cortica (reported here previously) has launched another medical spinoff – CORDiguide. It is developing AI-based technology to navigate catheters, using angiographic imaging, to transport miniature treatment devices to a cancer target, along a road map of blood vessels.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3897691,00.html

Reducing nerve damage from cancer treatments. A study of 500 cancer patients at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center found that those who took cannabis prior to oxaliplatin chemotherapy suffered 40% less nerve damage than those who didn’t. Oxaliplatin’s neurological side effects affect 70% of cancer patients.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/cannabis-can-prevent-major-chemotherapy-side-effect-israeli-study-suggest/

Faster recovery from strokes. Israel’s BrainQ (reported here May 2018) reported that the double-blind trial of its AI-based electromagnetic therapy shows that patients recovered 77% faster from the disabilities caused by the stroke and were able to resume normal life. The therapy now has FDA Breakthrough Device Designation.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/study-of-25-stroke-patients-shows-brainqs-wave-therapy-can-reduce-disability/

Safe insertion of feeding tubes. (TY WIN & I24 News) Thirty million feeding tubes are inserted into patients annually. One million are inserted incorrectly, many with tragic consequences. The ENVue electromagnetic wave-guided system from Israel’s Envizion prevents those mistakes. Its use is mandatory at many US hospitals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAyaP0zWOOU  https://www.envizionmed.com/

Saving Eli. Scientists at Tel Aviv University’s Blavatnik Center (see here) are racing to find a cure for 2-year-old Eli Reich from New York, who suffers from the rare FOXG1 syndrome that damages brain development. They have already identified several FDA-approved medications that could repair Eli’s faulty FOXG1 proteins.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/can-israeli-innovation-save-the-life-of-a-2-year-old-jew-from-new-york-662070    http://www.webelieveinacure.org/our-story

Paramedics save Jerusalem mother at 3am. Just before 3:00 a.m., a 56-year-old mother suffered a heart attack at her Jerusalem home. A total of eight United Hatzalah volunteer EMTs ran up five floors to administer CPR and defibrillator shocks. After 12 minutes, the woman’s pulse returned, and she opened her eyes.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/298489

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/lies-cognitive-war-against-israel-richard-l-cravatts/

Editor’s note: Below is Part I in a 2-Part Series on ‘Lies in the Cognitive War Against Israel’. Part 2 will run in our next issue.

“That Israel has become of the embodiment of evil, that its racism, militarism, and oppression now are so powerful that they cross borders and infect minority communities in America, and that the Jewish state can now be held responsible for bigotry on campuses far from its own borders indicates how powerful the anti-Israel narrative has become, and how the obsessive hatred by activists against the Jewish state ensures that the oldest hatred shows itself in yet another hateful permutation.”

In the cognitive war against Israel, supporters of what historian Bat Ye’or called Palestinianism have come to accept the fact that Israel will not be defeated employing traditional tools of warfare. Instead, the Jewish state’s enemies, abetted by the academic and media elites in the West, have been using different, but equally dangerous, tactics to delegitimize and eventually destroy Israel in a cognitive war.

By dressing up old hatreds against Jews and transforming it into what comprises the “new anti-Semitism,” combined with a purported goal of seeking social justice for the oppressed and repackaging ugly biases as academic scholarship, professors, student activist groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Israel’s other ideological foes have found an effective, but odious, way to ensure that the Jew of nations, Israel, is still accused of being: a racist, apartheid oppressor of an indigenous people; white European Jews with no historical connection to the Holy Land who are colonial usurpers of Muslim land; the main impediment to Middle East peace; and a brutal military occupier of land on which illegal “settlements” are built as a way of subjugating an existing innocent population in the quest for a Great Israel that will swallow even more territory to which the Jews have no legitimate claim.

This is the current narrative in what Melanie Phillips has called “the world turned upside down,” an inversion of truth and fiction, calumnies and lies targeting the Jewish state in an effort to elevate the Palestinian cause, delegitimize Israel, and make Israel a pariah in the world community. But this narrative, unfortunately, is based on a presentation of lies, a series of repeated tropes about the malignancy and illegality of Israel that has little to do with facts, history, or reason. These lies are repeated promiscuously until they accepted as fact, a Goebbel-esque tradition which creates a new truth through the unrelenting repetition of falsity, disingenuity, and distortions of reality.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/whos-really-running-israels-elections-caroline-glick/

In about a week, Israel’s polling stations will open and Israelis will elect their representatives to the Knesset for the fourth time in two years. As was the case in the last three elections, the upcoming elections revolve around one issue—Israel’s legal fraternity.

All aspects of public life in Israel today are dictated by the attorney general and the Supreme Court, which have devoured the powers of the Knesset and the government. Over the years, the legal fraternity has acted through judicial and bureaucratic fiat to cancel the checks and balances on its power. Today, the attorney general and the court justices determine their own powers. Not surprisingly, as far as both are concerned, their powers are unlimited.

Whether the issue is deciding who is a Jew, public funding of cultural institutions, public health policy, land use, economic priorities, military rules of engagement, immigration policy, counter-terror policies, or other questions from the mundane to the existential, the only decision makers in Israel are the attorney general and the Supreme Court justices. Elected leaders are at best advisers.

Justice system inspires fear

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/why-israels-anti-vax-party-is-a-cautionary-tale-662507

Of the 39 parties running in Israel’s upcoming Knesset election, the one that least deserves a seat, which it has no chance of garnering in any case, is Rapeh (“Heal”).

Headed by Aryeh Avni, a physician whose license was recently revoked, the newly formed faction is waging war on the country’s coronavirus vaccination drive. More precisely, it is leading a movement against what it deems the government’s “coercion campaign” against the public.

Avni and his followers purport that the reason for his ouster from the medical profession is solely due to his warnings about the dangers of the COVID-19 and other vaccines. In fact, he’s been on the Health Ministry’s radar for years, and has had his license temporarily suspended on a number of occasions.

He has a history of condemning colleagues, particularly oncologists. Indeed, it’s not only vaccines that he opposes; he’s none too fond of chemotherapy and other accepted methods of treatment, either.

Since the onset of the pandemic, however, he’s been especially vociferous in his denunciation of any peer who takes the coronavirus seriously, continues to call on the populace to ignore all directives, and vilifies the vaccine.

In his decision to strip Avni of the right to practice medicine, retired judge Amnon Strashnov stated, “There is no doubt that his harsh and blatant statements in articles he published on his website, Facebook and recently also on YouTube against the coronavirus vaccination pose a real danger to public safety and health. Add to this his unbridled, blatant and baseless insults to the medical community and the heads of the Health Ministry, which go far beyond what is reasonable and permissible in the context of freedom of expression, and you have a clear view of the absolute anarchy that [he] is trying to create.”

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.

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).

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.

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/