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ISRAEL

Palestinian Liberation or Islamic Conquest? Palestinians demand justice for themselves — and injustice for the rest of the world. Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/palestinian-liberation-or-islamic-conquest-raymond-ibrahim/

What drives Muslim animus for Israel: brotherly love for “oppressed” Palestinians or religious hatred for “infidel” Jews?

A recent incident in Jerusalem goes a long way in answering this question.  Hizb al-Tahrir—the “Liberation Party”—held a large, outdoor event near al-Aqsa mosque to commemorate the anniversary of the Islamic conquest of Constantinople (May 29, 1453).  There, as he had done before, Palestinian cleric Nidhal Siam made clear that, from an Islamic perspective, liberation and conquest are one and the same.

After all the takbirs (chants of “Allahu Akbar”) had subsided, Siam spoke:

Oh Muslims, the anniversary of the conquest [fath/فتح, literally, “opening”] of Constantinople brings tidings of things to come. It brings tidings that Rome will be conquered in the near future, Allah willing….  We are approaching the fulfillment of three prophecies, and we pray that Allah will fulfill these prophecies by our hands. The first prophecy is the establishment of the rightly-guided Caliphate in accordance with the way of the prophet. The second prophecy is the liberation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the establishment of Jerusalem as the capital of the state of the Caliphate. The third prophecy is that Islam will throw its neighbors to the ground, and that its reach will span across the east and the west of this Earth. This is Allah’s promise, and Allah does not renege on his promises.

He and the assembled throng then repeatedly chanted, “By means of the Caliphate and the consolidation of power, Mehmed the Conqueror vanquished Constantinople!” and “Your conquest, oh Rome, is a matter of certainty!”

Israel Harshly Criticizes European Union Over Rejection of Trump Middle East Peace Plan

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/04/israel-harshly-criticizes-eu-over-rejection-of-trump-middle-east-peace-plan/

The European Union rejected parts of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the Middle East on Tuesday, prompting an angry response from Israel which has strongly backed the American proposal.

The plan, announced by Trump last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side, was rejected outright by the Palestinians.

The EU, which often takes time to respond to international developments because of a need for unanimity among its 27 members, had said last week that it needed to study the Trump plan before it would give its verdict.

It made its conclusions public on Tuesday in a statement from EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who said Trump’s plan departs from “internationally agreed parameters.”

Corona and the Chinese ambassador’s Holocaust chutzpah Dai Yuming was being a true loyal Communist diplomat, spewing strategic propaganda with a purpose, part of which is to deflect from some inconvenient truths. Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/corona-and-the-chinese-ambassadors-holocaust-chutzpah/

China’s acting ambassador to Israel came under well-deserved fire this week for invoking the Nazi genocide of the Jews to criticize Jerusalem’s preventive measures against the spread of the coronavirus.

At a press conference in Tel Aviv on Sunday, Dai Yuming said that he felt “bad and sad” over the “errors to limit or even ban entries of Chinese citizens” into Israel “because it actually recalled me the old days, the old stories that happened in World War II, the Holocaust. Many Jewish were refused when they tried to seek assistance. Only very, very few countries opened their doors. One of them is China. I hope Israel will never close their door to the Chinese. In the darkest days of the Jewish people, we didn’t close the door on them. I hope Israel will not close the door on the Chinese.”

Dai’s comments could not have been more outrageous.

The outcry that they unleashed in the press and on social media spurred the Chinese embassy in Israel to express regret. In a statement issued to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Beijing’s diplomatic mission basically claimed that its representative’s words had been misconstrued.

“[W]e would like to clarify that there was no intention whatsoever to compare the dark days of the Holocaust with the current situation and the efforts taken by the Israeli government to protect its citizens,” the statement read. “We would like to apologize if someone understood our message the wrong way.”

The Real Reason Arabs in Israel Do Not Want to Live in ‘Palestine’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15516/arab-israelis-peace-plan

Why are the 250,000 Arab Israelis living in the Triangle area strongly opposed to the idea of becoming part of a Palestinian state?

Many Arab citizens of Israel see how Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip are subject to human rights violations on a daily basis.

What the Arab citizens of Israel need now is to elect new leaders who will promote coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Israel, and not engage in anti-Israel rhetoric and actions.

Some of the leaders of the Arab citizens of Israel, particularly a number of Knesset members, have been acting against the interests of their constituents. It is almost as if these purported leaders represent the PA and Hamas instead of the Arab Israelis who voted for them with the hope that they would work to solve problems confronting their communities, such as unemployment.

The Arab citizens of Israel need real leaders who properly represent them in the Knesset and build — not destroy — bridges with Jews. Let the protests on the streets of Arab Israeli communities against becoming part of a Palestinian state serve as a fair warning to Israeli Arab leaders: stand by your people, or get out of the way.

Arab citizens of Israel, who number nearly two million, are up in arms about US President Donald Trump’s plan for Middle East peace, which proposes including some of their communities in a future Palestinian state. Since the unveiling of the plan, thousands of Arabs have been demonstrating to express their rejection of the idea of placing them under the sovereignty of a Palestinian state.

Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan proposes land swaps that could include both populated and unpopulated areas. It suggests that the so-called Triangle area in Israel, consisting of several Arab communities “which largely self-identify as Palestinian, become part of the State of Palestine.” The plan points out that the Arab communities “were originally designated to fall under Jordanian control during the negotiations of the Armistice Line of 1949, but ultimately were retained by Israel for military reasons that have since been mitigated.”

End the Hoax: There Are No Palestinians The “Palestinian people” is a propaganda fiction. It’s time to stop playing along. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/end-hoax-there-are-no-palestinians-robert-spencer/

President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” was a brilliant illustration of his mastery of the art of the deal. This extravagantly generous proposal, and the Palestinians’ contemptuous rejection of it, severely damages the international Left’s claim that the Israelis are the obstacles to peace, and exposes the Palestinian leadership for the genocidal warmongers they are. Now it is time to take one more crucial step: end the recognition of the “Palestinian people” altogether. There is no such nation, race, ethnicity, nationality, or culture, and never was. Returning to reality on this matter will pave the way to the adoption of sane policies for the region.

“The Palestinian people” was born in 1963, when the foes of Israel hit upon a new strategy that would turn the tide of international public opinion against Israel and give new impetus to the jihad against it. Before that, as The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process shows, amid all the drama surrounding Jewish settlement in Palestine, the rise of Zionism, and the establishment of the Jewish state, the Palestinians are nowhere to be seen. Palestine was the name of a region, like Staten Island or Dubuque, not the name of a people.

It is no accident that neither Mark Twain, nor any of the series of English travelers who visited the area, nor anyone else who traveled through desolate Palestine over the centuries ever mentioned the “Palestinian” people. They spoke of encountering Arabs, as well as Jews and Christians and others, but no one, among multitudes of people who wrote about Palestine, ever refers to any Palestinians. Nor do the many British White Papers and other documents the British government produced during the Mandate period ever mention the Palestinians. The opposing factions in those documents are the Jews and the Arabs.

There is a very simple reason for this: there were no Palestinians.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Prioritizing flu vaccinations. Israeli health company Maccabi has partnered with Israel’s Medial EarlySign (see here).  Maccabi will integrate EarlySign’s flu algorithm, which flags people at high risk of developing flu-related complications, to target them with its vaccination campaign.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3777715,00.html
 
New masks to help prevent spread of coronavirus. (TY UWI) Israel startups Sonovia (see here) and Argaman (see here)  are racing to produce production versions of their bio-inhibitive and anti-viral textiles and masks. They could be vital prevention tools in epidemics like the deadly Wuhan coronavirus.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-antiviral-masks-from-israel-may-help-stop-deadly-virus/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opeKFbbZxo8   http://argamantech.com/ https://vimeo.com/214152223
 
Another good trial of colon capsule scan. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Check-Cap has announced positive results from its latest US pilot study of its C-Scan colon capsule system. The dual-center study achieved both primary (safety) and secondary (patient satisfaction and performance) endpoints. C-Scan is already CE approved.
http://ir.check-cap.com/2019-12-30-Check-Cap-Announces-Positive-Results-from-U-S-Pilot-Study-of-C-Scan-R-System
 
Success at Phase 3 for acne cream. (TY Atid-EDI) Following on from good Phase 2 trials (see here) Israel’s Sol-Gel reported excellent results from pivotal Phase 3 clinical trials of its Twyneo treatment of patients with acne vulgaris. The trial significantly reduced moderate-to-severe acne in 858 patients aged nine and older.
http://ir.sol-gel.com/news-releases/news-release-details/sol-gel-announces-positive-top-line-phase-3-trial-results
 
Treating genetic diseases.  Israeli-founded Emendo Biotherapeutics, based in New York, utilizes protein engineering for precision gene editing, to treat certain genetic disorders and diseases. It has seven treatments in early stages of development. Emendo has just raised $61 million of funding.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3777874,00.html https://emendobio.com/
 
Optical discovery from shrimps. (TY WIN) Scientists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University and Weizmann Institute have discovered how shrimp can see in the murky depths of the sea. The biocrystal coating of their retina light detectors may inspire the development of new optical coatings and specialized paints.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/20/c_138721546.htm
 
More about low-cost X-rays. As reported previously (see here), Israel’s Nanox has developed technology to lower the cost of X-ray imaging and make it more accessible to the developing world. Nanox has just received $26 million funding for its Nanox.Arc digital X-ray device and accompanying Nanox.Cloud software.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-company-aims-to-make-medical-imaging-accessible-to-all-615156
 
A future end to dialysis. (TY UWI) Researchers at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center found that damaged kidneys can be rejuvenated by extracting healthy kidney stem cells from diseased cells, multiplying the healthy cells in a laboratory and reintroducing them into the kidney. Israel’s KidneyCure (see here) has begun human trials.
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/scientists-in-israel-make-breakthrough-in-fight-against-kidney-disease/
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/275123 https://www.kidneycure.com/approach
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/pdfExtended/S2211-1247(19)31704-8

Notable & Quotable: Max Singer on ax Singer R.I.P.-Truth and Mideast Peace ‘Parroting Palestinian falsehoods harms the cause of peace.’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-max-singer-on-truth-and-mideast-peace-11580513960?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

From “Refute Palestinian Lies to Promote Mideast Peace” by Max Singer, a founder of the Hudson Institute, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 7, 2018. Singer died Jan. 23 at 88:

The U.S. has already acted to gain recognition of three key truths that had long been diplomatically ignored: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel; very few of the Palestinians that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency supports are actually refugees; and the U.N. has been unacceptably biased against Israel.

Now the U.S. can tip the political balance toward peace and stability by insisting on two other truths. First, despite widespread use of the term in diplomatic documents and debate, there is no such thing as “occupied Palestinian territory” because there has never been a Palestinian territory to occupy. As some Palestinians point out, they have never had a state of their own. This is far more than a game of semantics. If the land was Palestinian, then Israel could have stolen it. If the land isn’t Palestinian, then Israel couldn’t have stolen it. It’s critical that the U.S. actively combat the falsehood that Israel exists on stolen Palestinian land.

The second falsehood is married to the first. The Palestinians not only claim that all the land is theirs, they also deny any Jewish connection to it. During the failed Camp David talks in 2000, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat stunned President Clinton by asserting the Jews had no connection to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the place where the first and second Jewish temples stood.

Trump Middle East Plan: Last Chance for the Palestinians? by Alain Destexhe

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15503/trump-middle-east-palestinians

Israel and the future Palestinian state could sign bilateral agreements and cooperate for their mutual benefit in many areas where Israeli expertise is recognized: agriculture, water, scientific research, technology, medicine. Why should the Palestinians be the only people not benefiting from it? The Trump deal could provide a dazzling future for those Palestinians who prioritize their economic situation over ideology.

It is also highly unlikely that any potential Democrat administration would come up with a more Palestinian-friendly plan that could also be accepted by Israel. And… there is little chance that the Palestinian cause will return to the center of the international agenda and find new allies, except on European and American university campuses.

Instead of openly supporting the Trump Plan, the European Union has already reacted in its usual way: by saying nothing substantial — which is tantamount to preferring the current impasse and encouraging the Palestinians in their rejection of the Trump Plan and Israel. Cynicism will continue to prevail in European diplomatic circles.

Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority may remain self-righteous and draped in their claims, but it would unmask their real role as corrupt and autocratic leaders, intent on keeping their people as destitute and unempowered as possible.

President Donald Trump just unveiled his long-awaited Middle East peace plan, “Peace to Prosperity”, a strategy offering the Palestinians a state, $50 billion in international investment, and a US embassy in the newly-created state. This is a major step forward that the Palestinian Authority would be smart to accept as a starting point for discussions with Israel.

Every Time Palestinians Say ‘No,’ They Lose Things rarely go well for those who try to live history backward.By Bret Stephens

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/opinion/middle-east-peace-plan.html?emc=rss&partner=rss

egarding President Trump’s peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the instant conventional wisdom is that it’s a geopolitical nonstarter, a gift to Benjamin Netanyahu and an electoral ploy by the president to win Jewish votes in Florida rather than Palestinian hearts in Ramallah.

It may be all of those things. But nobody will benefit less from a curt dismissal of the plan than the Palestinians themselves, whose leaders are again letting history pass them by.

The record of Arab-Israeli peace efforts can be summed up succinctly: Nearly every time the Arab side said no, it wound up with less.

That was true after it rejected the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan, which would have created a Palestinian state on a much larger footprint than the one that was left after Israel’s war of independence. It was true in 1967, after Jordan refused Israel’s entreaties not to attack, which resulted in the end of Jordanian rule in the West Bank.

It was true in 2000, when Syria rejected an Israeli offer to return the Golan Heights, which ultimately led to U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty of that territory. It was true later the same year, after Yasir Arafat refused Israel’s offer of a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, which led to two decades of terrorism, Palestinian civil war, the collapse of the Israeli peace camp and the situation we have now.

It’s in that pattern that the blunt rejection by Palestinian leaders of the Trump plan — the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, denounced it as a “conspiracy deal” — should be seen. Refusal today will almost inevitably lead to getting less tomorrow.

Trump’s game-changing speech of the century Those of us who trusted Trump not to pull such a stunt – since nothing in his behavior indicated he would – were not worried about the contents or upshot of the deal. Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Trumps-game-changing-speech-of-the-century-616005

US President Donald Trump’s speech on Tuesday in which he outlined the “Deal of the Century” that has been three years in the making, was nothing short of Earth-shattering. The fact that Israelis across the political spectrum have been arguing over the proposal – called “Peace to Prosperity” – is thus as understandable as it was inevitable.

Unfortunately, however, much of the debate has been focused on the details and viability of the plan, rather than on the significance of how Trump presented it, and why his words were revolutionary. In an effort to downplay the momentousness of the event, his left-wing detractors ridiculed his mispronunciation of “al-Aqsa Mosque” and “United Arab Emirates” with memes and tweets.These are the same haters who have been accusing Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of conspiring to bolster each other’s chances of electoral success, the former in November and the latter on March 2.

These are the Israelis with the moral and occasional financial support of their counterparts abroad who blame the Jewish state for the plight and antisemitism of the Palestinians. Luckily, such people are in the minority, albeit a vocal one.

The majority of the populace came to realize long ago that the “land for peace” formula is nothing but a recipe for an escalation of the ongoing war against the very Jews begging to resolve the conflict through self-flagellation and appeasement.