RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/no-coronavirus-vaccine-can-inoculate-against-anti-vaxxers-623377

In a televised address on Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued the latest of what have become additional near-daily directives aimed at preventing the contracting and spreading of COVID-19.

“Citizens of Israel, we are still at the height of an international tsunami,” he said. “The coronavirus pandemic is washing powerfully over continents and countries…. All of us are making a gargantuan effort to overcome the virus… but this doesn’t mean that the danger is behind us. We cannot fall into the trap of complacency.”He added that Israeli is at a crossroads from which it either can progress or regress.

“Over the past day in New York alone, a person died every four minutes. In Spain, the situation is similar…. We are doing everything in our power not to reach that point.

I know that this has caused severe economic damage… but our first priority is to save the lives of thousands and thousands of Israelis.”

Netanyahu then demanded that everyone wear masks in public. Those who don’t possess store-bought ones can improvise with scarves or other face-coverings, he said, “to minimize the spread of the virus to others.”

He also stressed that only family members already sharing a household may celebrate Passover together, even if it means forfeiting the presence at the Seder of daughters, sons, siblings and particularly grandparents, who are in the highest risk group.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15805/coronavirus-palestinians-gaza

The Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership has done virtually nothing to help the Gaza Strip confront the coronavirus pandemic. Ironically, the only country that has been helping the Gaza Strip in the past few weeks is Israel.

The question is, why is the PA ignoring calls to help the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip in their effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus? One explanation — that accords with history — is that if a large number of Palestinians living in Gaza there are infected… the PA leadership wants the world to blame Israel.

It is important to emphasize that there is no Israeli “siege” on the Gaza Strip. First, the Gaza Strip shares borders not only with Israel, but also with Egypt. It is Egypt, not Israel… that is effectively blockading Gaza.

The United Nations, regardless, is also trying to pave the way for holding Israel responsible for the possible spread of the virus in the Gaza Strip.

Mahmoud Abbas is undoubtedly looking forward to a day when he can hold Israel fully responsible for the outbreak of the coronavirus in the Gaza Strip. He is also likely waiting for the UN and many in the international community to join him in blaming Israel and Jews for the spread of the pandemic among his people while ignoring his own responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

After the discovery of the first coronavirus cases in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is ignoring appeals to lift a series of sanctions it imposed on the two million Palestinians living there. Actually, the PA leadership has done virtually nothing to help the Gaza Strip confront the coronavirus pandemic. Ironically, the only country that has been helping the Gaza Strip in the past few weeks is Israel.

The question is, why is the PA ignoring calls to help the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip in their effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus? One explanation — that accords with history — is that if a large number of Palestinians living in Gaza there are infected with the disease and there is a huge catastrophe there, the PA leadership wants the world to blame Israel.

The Palestinian Authority has a long record of hiding its own responsibility for the suffering of its people, and instead blaming Israel for the woes of the Gaza Strip.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/israel-gives-palestinians-desperately-needed-covid-19-aid-gets-bizarre-blood-libels-in-return/

Israel has been providing the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza with crucial aid against the coronavirus—not simply out of love and charity, but because populations in such close proximity to each other have a mutual interest in tackling the problem. Israel fears the security implications of a meltdown of Palestinian society in either or both enclaves, which could result in massive rocket fire or large numbers of desperate people storming Israel’s borders.

For now, the aid and cooperation have prompted even the United Nations, known for obsessive and severely disproportionate criticism of Israel, to sing the praises of the Jewish state.

The Palestine branch of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs—not considered one of Israel’s greatest fans—reported that the Israeli and Palestinian Authority ministries of health, along with Israel’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), have been meeting regularly.

“As part of this effort,” the UN agency said, “COGAT is facilitating four trainings for Palestinian medical teams, while the Israeli [Health Ministry] donated over 1,000 testing kits and thousands of PPEs [Personal Protective Equipment] to the West Bank and Gaza.”

https://www.jns.org/opinion/haredi-statistics-show-that-social-distancing-works/

The carry-on about the dangerous spread of COVID-19 within the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community in Israel is understandable. While the rest of us are cooped up at home, with increasingly severe limitations on our freedom of movement, certain ultra-Orthodox towns and neighborhoods have been conducting business as usual.

Indeed, the contrast between Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood and the city of Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv with the shuttered shops and empty playgrounds of cities from Metula to Eilat naturally causes rage on the part of a populace forced to comply with regulations aimed at flattening the curve of the coronavirus. Video footage from a funeral in Bnei Brak this past Saturday night—attended by masses of members of an extreme haredi sect all huddled together, yet not arrested by police for ignoring the two-meter-apart rule—elicited furious reactions from secular and religious Israelis alike.

For the past month, health officials have bemoaned the situation in the nation’s hospitals and warned that the exponential rise in infection, due to the incredibly contagious nature of the virus, would result in disaster. More specifically, it would lead to a situation in which the number of patients requiring ventilation outweighed the equipment. At such a point, doctors would face dilemmas about which people to put on respirators. It is imperative—the authorities tell us ad nauseam—for everyone to comply. No exceptions.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15825/gaza-hamas-coronavirus

The rocket attacks against Israel appear aimed at distracting attention from the failure of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to provide their hospitals with medical equipment and medicines to curb the spread of the disease. In the past decade, the two groups have invested millions of dollars in amassing weapons and building tunnels to infiltrate Israel and kill or kidnap Jews.

These leaders [of Hamas and PIJ] would rather see Palestinians die of the disease than join forces with Israel — which has doing its utmost to help the Palestinians by providing them with tests kits, protective gear and training sessions for medical professionals….

The good news is that a majority of Palestinians disagrees with PIJ. A public opinion poll published last week by a Palestinian center found that 68% of respondents support the medical cooperation with Israel.

A statement issued by Hamas on March 30 said that “the only way to liberate the land is through resistance.” The only “resistance” Hamas knows is the one that includes launching rockets and missiles at Israel or carrying out suicide bombings against Israelis.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are again paying the price of failed leaders who care more about fighting Israel than saving the lives of patients and medical teams.

As the world is busy pursuing the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) groups in the Gaza Strip have found the time to remind everyone that they remain committed to pursuing the fight against Israel.

While many international media outlets and human rights organizations, including the United Nations, are warning of a “catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip after the discovery of nine coronavirus cases there, Hamas and PIJ — the two dominant groups that have been ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007 — seem to care less about the safety and health of their people.

http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Over 70 Israeli companies fight coronavirus. (TY UWI & Algermeiner) Israeli non-profit Startup Nation Central (SNC) has created a comprehensive directory of more than 70 relevant Israeli med-tech startups that are helping combat COVID-19. The areas are treatment, diagnostics, prevention, monitoring, and social.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3803022,00.html

https://finder.startupnationcentral.org/startups/search?list_1_action=and&list_1_tag=coronavirus

Hebrew U and coronavirus. Anti-coronavirus research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem includes: a genetic biobank to help prevent its spread, faster diagnostic kits, boosting the immune system, developing new proteins as a basis for a vaccine and treatments to block infection and reduce tissue damage.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-university-mobilizes-faculty-to-battle-coronavirus/

Ben Gurion U and coronavirus. A summary of 15 of 50+ projects that Israel’s Ben Gurion University has launched to mitigate COVID-19 or its repercussions. Highlights are neutralizing antibodies, anti-viral air filters, emergency drones, automatic sanitizers and anti-viral microalgae. And 100+ students help at Soroka hospital.

https://aabgu.org//wp-content/uploads/2020/03/BGU-COVID-19-Response-Projects-3-19-25.pdf

https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/corona_labvolunteers.aspx

Technion and coronavirus. Israel’s Technion Institute has 20 labs working on solutions for coronavirus. It has 4 diagnostic testing projects, 2 projects developing vaccines, 4 therapeutics projects and 7 projects developing aids for medical teams. Plus, numerous emergency projects. You can even join its voice study (click here)

https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2020/03/technion-researchers-covid-19/  https://vocalishealth.com/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startup-aims-to-identify-coronavirus-carriers-using-their-voice/

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/right-from-wrong-netanyahus-trustworthy-coronavirus-leadership-622523

As he has been doing regularly of late, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the nation on Wednesday night to justify the latest set of regulations aimed at flattening the curve of the COVID-19 outbreak. The government had put into effect additional restrictions on the public’s freedom of movement four hours earlier, with stricter police enforcement and the imposition of fines for violators.
 
In a particularly somber tone, Netanyahu said the steps taken thus far have not been sufficient, “since the number of patients is doubling every three days, and in two weeks, we are liable to find ourselves with thousands of patients, many of whom will be in danger of death.” 
 
He then issued a warning that was more like a declaration of a done deal. 
 
“I am already telling you that if we do not see an immediate improvement in the trend, there will be no alternative but to impose a complete lockdown, except for essentials, such as food and medicines,” he threatened. “This is a matter of a few days. We are making all of the requisite logistical and legal preparations for it.”
 
It appears, then, that a complete countrywide lockdown – which most Israelis have been both fearing and expecting – is inevitable. It certainly is what Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov has been pushing for, to prevent Israel from ending up in a similar predicament to that of Italy and Spain.
 
In an interview with Channel 12’s Ilana Dayan on Tuesday, Bar Siman-Tov admitted that he had “no idea” when the coronavirus crisis will be over.
 

https://www.jns.org/opinion/benjamin-netanyahus-fatal-flaw/

It’s not often that a world leader’s greatest weakness is so nakedly displayed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t know how to bind political talent to him. To say he doesn’t command loyalty is putting it gently. He inspires vindictive rage in his former confidantes. The problem is that Netanyahu seems to know only one way to handle potential rivals—suppress them.

It’s a stark contrast to the other longest-serving Israeli prime minister: David Ben-Gurion. Throughout his decades-long leadership of Israel’s Labor movement, he was rarely challenged. In 1965, when he split from Mapai to form the Rafi Party, all the young Turks went with him, among them Moshe Dayan, Chaim Herzog, Teddy Kollek and Shimon Peres (who was not exactly known for steadfast loyalty).

Such an event couldn’t be imagined with Netanyahu, who sends young Turks scattering at great political cost. Two of them—Naftali Bennett, a former chief of staff to Netanyahu, and Moshe Feiglin, a former Likud Party Knesset member—cost him the first election last April, what would be the first of three consecutive elections in a year’s time. The two parties they founded failed to pass the electoral threshold, sending hundreds of thousands of right-wing votes into the trash. Had they passed the threshold, Netanyahu would have had his majority, sparing the country the following elections in September and earlier this month.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-diseased-attitude-of-the-coronavirus-rebels/

The least that those backpackers could do after the “enormous effort and expense” that was spent on repatriating them was sign a quarantine declaration.

Dozens of the 1,100 Israeli backpackers airlifted from Peru a few days ago threw a hissy fit upon landing at Ben-Gurion International Airport. Though greeted graciously by ground crew, the exhausted 20-somethings, who had begged the government to rescue them from their treks in South America when they were unable to find flights back home before the coronavirus-necessitated border closures left them stranded, behaved like a bunch of entitled brats.

Peru, like practically every country in the world, was about to go on lockdown for an unspecified period. To get stuck in a foreign land—far away from one’s family and without fluency in the local language—is nothing to sneeze at, especially when every sneeze these days is interpreted as a symptom of COVID-19.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz promptly responded to the tearful pleas for help from the young travelers, who were encountering great difficulty in purchasing airline tickets due to a dearth of available seats and to the exorbitant fees now being charged for them.

In a mission of the sort that does the Jewish state proud, Katz dispatched four El Al 787 Dreamliners to Lima to pick up the distraught Israelis and return them safely to Tel Aviv—at no cost to them or their anxious parents, many of whom, by this point, had been fired from their jobs or put on unpaid leave, thanks to the shuttering of businesses.