RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-well-deserved-detriment-of-the-anti-bibi-rioters-635339

The recent rallies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem illustrate not only that the “anybody but Bibi” mantra is alive and well, despite the diverse camp’s three-time failure in the course of a year to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the ballot box.

They also reveal why the Left has been unable to garner sufficient backing from the so-called “center” to foment a real revolution in the Jewish state of the kind that is taking place in the United States.There is no question that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated whatever societal malaise existed in Israel and the rest the world before the virus struck China and spread to other countries. There is nothing like health anxiety combined with money woes, after all, to cause a combination of hysteria and despair well beyond the norm.

Adding government-imposed isolation and separation from loved ones to the mix makes people feel as though they are living in a giant pressure-cooker with a minuscule steam-release valve. Under such circumstances, the smallest rise in temperature can ignite an explosion.

NETANYAHU’S REALIZATION of this in May, when the novel coronavirus curve appeared to have flattened, led him to reopen the economy, and not as gradually as health officials would have liked.

His one demand of the public – desperate to resume school, synagogue, work and play – was that it follow three simple directives, all of which had been in place for weeks: Wash hands, wear masks and practice social distancing.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16242/peter-beinart-final-solution

If Israel were to end its existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people — as Beinart advocates — and become a Jewish “homeland” in a single binational, bi-religious state, a demographic war would become inevitable, in which Jews and Muslims would compete to become a majority. As soon as a Muslim majority materialized, the Jewish “homeland” would become precisely the kind of “Bantustan” that Beinart has railed against in the context of South Africa.

The Jewish minority would be ruled by the Muslim majority, even if it were given some degree of autonomy. Their protection would be largely in the hands of the Muslim majority, many of whom believe there is no place for a Jewish entity anywhere in the region.

A Palestinian majority would not allow persecuted Jews from around the world to seek asylum, as they can today under Israel’s Law of Return. Instead, the Palestinian state would enact its own law of return that would allow millions of exiles to “return” and assure a permanent Muslim supermajority.

Peter Beinart’s New York Times op-ed advocating the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people is a study in historical ignorance, willful deception and arrogant rejection of democracy.

Beinart proposed that a single binational, bi-religious state in what is now Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip replace current Israel, whose Jewish population would then be given a “homeland” within the new nation. But Beinart is woefully ignorant of previous attempts to create or maintain binational or bi-religious states.

Beinart ignores the lessons of history surrounding the former Yugoslavia — Tito’s failed effort to create a single artificial nation from different ethnicities and religions — which ended in genocide, tragedy and its breakup into several states now living in relative peace. He omits any mention of Lebanon — a failed experiment in sharing power between Muslims and Christians. He writes as if Hindu India still included Muslim Pakistan, instead of having been divided after considerable bloodshed and divisiveness. He focuses instead on two countries, Northern Ireland and South Africa, which bear little relationship to current-day Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Northern Ireland is a country whose population is ethnically similar, with only religious differences at a time when religion is playing a far less important role in the life of many secular Northern Irish. South Africa was a country in which a tiny minority of whites dominated a large majority of Blacks, and is now a dominantly Black nation.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/judea_and_samaria_should_return_to_their_rightful_owner.html

When we dig into history books, we can hardly find people or countries that have gone out of existence for as long as 2,000 years and then reappeared and been reborn.  Thus, it is indeed accurate to say that the rebirth of Israel, this beautiful ancient culture, people, and land, is truly a miracle from God.

I believe that the time has come to unite all Israel.  Historically and biblically, both Judea and Samaria undeniably have been part of the heritage of the Jewish people.  They belonged to Israel 2,000 years ago, and they belong to Israel now.  Arabs have absolutely no historic ties to Judea and Samaria.  Historic ties are the basis of assertions to a geographic area.

Annexation of these two historical Jewish lands will stipulate a strong and well defined standing for West Bank Arabs.  Israeli equal justice under the law will apply to all people.  All terrorists’ infrastructures will be eradicated.  The residents of those regions will be subjected to Israeli rules and regulation and will be dealt with in the same fashion that all countries deal with domestic insurgent, treachery, and lawless organizations.

“The Jewish people didn’t wake up one day saying ‘Jews are connected to the Land of Israel.’  The whole story, the history and the destiny of the Jewish people, is geared toward the idea that we were there and we are coming back.”

Let us clarify this now and forever: historically and otherwise, there has never been a Palestinian state, nor a political body that is owned by Palestinians.  According to the advancement of international agreements from 1917 until 1947, the land of Israel was renamed Palestine by the Romans in the 2nd century.  It was later divided into three states: Jordan, a Jewish state, and an Arab state.  While the Jews swallowed this excruciating deal, shrinking the size of their ancestral land by over 75%, the Arabs snubbed and rejected it altogether.  As a result, the Arabs launched an invasion against the newly established State of Israel in 1948.  Jordan managed to occupy the area of Judea and Samaria and illegitimately annexed it.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/reflections-on-aliyah/

This week marks the 43rd anniversary of my aliyah. In July 1977, I arrived in Israel for what I had thought was going to be a 12-month stint. But when I completed the one-year program for overseas students at the Hebrew University the following summer, I returned to the United States not to remain there, but to tie up loose ends. These included informing the University of Chicago, where I had spent my freshman and sophomore years, that I wouldn’t be back in the fall, and persuading my parents in New York that I hadn’t lost my marbles.

The latter turned out to be less of a problem than I had anticipated. I wasn’t dropping out of school, after all; just finishing my degree at about one-tenth of the price—and in a much warmer climate, both literally and figuratively.

Indeed, the campus of the U of C hit arctic temperatures in the winter, requiring everyone to wear down coats, fur-lined water-proof boots, thick gloves and ski masks with which to confront the fierce winds. It was also a chilly environment for a teenager like me, who registered as a Republican in my second semester as soon as I turned 18, preferred Motown to what the kids on the block in my largely Hispanic and black neighborhood in Manhattan called “white music” and announced to my uber-liberal peers—all of whom read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and called marriage “no more than a piece of paper”—that I was in college to find a suitable husband.

As if that weren’t sufficient cause for being ostracized or not taken seriously, I openly argued against affirmative action and disagreed with the mantra that abortion is an issue of a woman’s right to reign over her “own body.”

Nor did I join the “amen crowd” ranting against the recently ended Vietnam War and looking askance at the lone veteran among us. He impressed me as a hero—manly in the way that I believed a guy should be, not someone whose flaws or misfortunes prevented him from dodging the draft. Nothing like the liberal Jewish boys I knew, whose way of impressing a date in those days was to let her pay for her own dinner.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16222/palestinians-abbas-hamas

By courting Hamas, Abbas and Fatah are emboldening an Islamist movement that seeks to extend its control from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. Hamas’s declared goal is to replace Israel with an Iranian-style Islamist state.

Abbas may also be using his renewed ties with Hamas as a way of pressuring the international community into providing him with more financial aid.

Hamas evidently wants to use the West Bank as a launching pad for carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel.

Hamas also does not appear to be headed towards recognizing Israel’s right to exist. As such, Abbas seems to be handing Hamas the noose that eventually will be tied around his own neck.

After renouncing all agreements and understandings with Israel and the United States, including security cooperation, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his ruling Fatah faction are now cozying up to their rivals in Hamas — a move that may prove to be counterproductive and pave the way for the resumption of massive anti-Israel violence.

By courting Hamas, Abbas and Fatah are emboldening an Islamist movement that seeks to extend its control from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. Hamas’s declared goal is to replace Israel with an Iranian-style Islamist state.

Abbas may also be using his renewed ties with Hamas as a way of pressuring the international community into providing him with more financial aid. The message he is sending to Western donors is: “If you don’t fully support us and exert pressure on Israel, I will throw myself into the arms of Hamas.”

The apparent rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas began earlier this month when the two parties held a joint press interview by videoconference, during which they announced their intention to work together to “topple” both Israel’s plan to apply its sovereignty to parts of the West Bank and US President Donald Trump’s Peace to Prosperity vision for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The appearance of Jibril Rajoub, Secretary-General of the Fatah Central Committee, alongside senior Hamas official Saleh Arouri, a founding commander of Hamas’s military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was aimed at sending a message to the Palestinians and the rest of the world that when it comes to Israel and the US, the Palestinians are prepared to lay aside their differences and stand united against “conspiracies aiming to liquidate the Palestinian cause and national rights.”

Although he holds the title of “Deputy Chairman of Hamas’s Political Bureau,” Arouri, who is currently based in Lebanon, is anything but a politician.

In 2018, the US Department of State offered a reward of up to $5 million for information that would lead to the identification or location of Arouri and two senior Hezbollah military operatives. In addition to his political activity in recent years, Arouri has played a major role in forming ties between Hamas and Iran and Hezbollah. He also deals with the construction and handling of Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank, where Rajoub lives and works.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

http://www.jpost.com/Blogger/Michael-Ordman

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
The best test for Covid-19 antibodies. Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a serological test that from one blood sample can, for the first time, identify all three of the key antibodies that counter Covid-19. The test is extremely sensitive and accurate to around 98-99 percent, better than current tests.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-researchers-develop-more-efficient-accurate-antibody-test-report/
 
Another fast Covid-19 test. Israel’s AID Genomics has developed a coronavirus test kit that gives results in just 30 minutes. It uses different enzymes from current tests with much higher sensitivity. AID Genomics has partnered with the Chinese-owned BGI Group, which will be distributing the test in Israel and globally.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/30-minute-covid-19-test-developed-in-israel-inventor-predicts-it-will-go-global/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AElVxSQqpHc
 
Fix the heart before treating cancer. Researchers at Israel’s Technion Institute have made a breakthrough discovery that cancer progresses much faster in patients with heart problems. To improve their survival chances, these patients should have their heart treated first before beginning cancer therapy.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/major-israeli-cancer-discovery-treating-heart-problems-early-a-key-to-survival/
 
How deep we sleep. Neuroscientists at Tel Aviv University working with others at Israel’s Weizmann Institute, UK’s Bristol and France’s Montpellier universities, have discovered the brain’s mechanism for deep sleep. The locus coeruleus in the brainstem secretes the chemical noradrenaline and too high levels prevent deep sleep.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/how-did-you-sleep-through-your-alarm-tau-study-reveals-how-deep-we-sleep-634118   https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/15/eaaz4232
 
Innovative gastro stent technology. (TY Hazel) Gastro stents are essential for clearing clots in the bile ducts and pancreas. Israel’s Endo GI Medical has received US FDA approval for its Stenting Placement Delivery Systems that reduce risk of infection from repetitive insertions of singular stents.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-medical-company-receives-fda-approval-for-life-saving-tech-633756   https://www.endo-gi.com/
 
Breakthrough device for dialysis patients. (TY Atid-EDI) The US FDA has awarded breakthrough designation to the VasQ from Israel’s Laminate Medical (reported here previously). The device provides safe connections to dialysis machines.  https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vasq-external-support-awarded-breakthrough-device-designation-by-the-fda-301071728.html
 
Monitoring cancer post-surgery. (TY Atid-EDI) At its Israeli R&D center, C2i Genomics has developed a personalized, real-time solution for monitoring recurrence and treatment response for various types of solid cancers. It employs a breakthrough tumor DNA pattern recognition approach for liquid biopsy.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-cancer-recurrence-monitoring-co-c2i-genomics-raises-12m-1001331769
https://c2i-genomics.com/
 
Mobile X-rays for five more countries. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Nanox (reported here previously) has signed multiple new deals to deploy over 1000 of its mobile X-ray devices to Russia, Belarus, Taiwan, Singapore and Italy.  Previous deployments include to Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea and Vietnam.
https://www.nanox.vision/news-en
 
Autism Research and Treatment. The latest Ben-Gurion Briefing, “Autism Research and Treatment” featured 4 leading Israeli experts from Ben-Gurion University and Soroka University Medical Center. They discussed whether early autism diagnosis can lead to the eradication of symptoms of autism later in life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KqM0RN6Ubo
 
Saving lives is vital. An exciting article about a United Hatzalah paramedic who, on the eve of her final chemistry exam, rushed to save the life of a heart-attack victim.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/283030
 

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

The United States believes that Israel has waited long enough to redeem promises by the United Nations, and in the absence of Palestinian engagement, Israel is entitled to begin the process of securing its border in the east: in Judea and Samaria.

As Israel considers how and when to apply sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria—drawing its map in cooperation with the United States and leaving a chair at the table for the Palestinian Authority—American Democrats, the European community, parts of the international Jewish community and to an apparently lesser degree the Gulf Arab countries have been busy pronouncing themselves “troubled” by the whole process. The silent party has been the Palestinian Authority.

Until now.

In a text message to “the Quartet” (the “peacemaking” group consisting of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia), the P.A. declares itself “ready to resume direct bilateral negotiations where they stopped” in 2014. The Palestinians are ready, the message says, to consider “minor border changes that will have been mutually agreed, based on the borders of June 4, 1967.” It helps to know that the June 4 line is not a border. It is the 1949 Armistice Line that was rejected by the United Nations as a border for Israel in U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

Israel’s pre-1967 waistline was shorter than the length of DFW Airport in Texas and the distance between RFK Stadium and Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; equal to the distance between JFK and La Guardia airports and between Columbia University and Wall Street in New York City.

National security requirements in the Middle East

National security requirements are a by-product of the geo-strategic environment.  The more predictable and peaceful the environment, the lower the security requirements. The more unpredictable and non-peaceful the environment, the higher the security requirements.

Thus, Israel’s national security requirements are determined, mostly, by the 1,400-year-old tectonic Middle East reality: unpredictability, instability, highly-implosive, violent intra-Arab intolerance, no intra-Arab peaceful coexistence, systematic intra-Arab terrorism and subversion, Islam-dominated societies and minority despotic regimes, which are as tenuous as are their policies and agreements.

Realistic Middle East national security requirements must be capable of overcoming worst case scenarios of surprise offensives, not good-case-scenarios, which are rare in the Middle East.

The transition from Middle East peace to war could be as precipitous as Middle East politics (e.g., the toppling Mubarak by the Muslim Brotherhood, which was toppled by A-Sisi) and intra-Arab relations (e.g., Jordan’s support of Saddam Hussein and availing its territory for anti-Israel Palestinian terrorism).