RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvnTA_l-sUQ&feature=youtu.beVIDEO

Israelis and Israeli innovations that save lives are so prominent in this week’s positive Israel newsletter. Medical research breakthroughs and programs; vital medical devices and emergency responders; global initiatives to reduce hunger, poverty and drought; rescue operations, doctors and surgeons treating non-Israelis overseas; technology to prevent plane crashes, maintain emergency services and reduce CO2 levels; and organizations and activities that rescue animals.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Another breakthrough in pancreatic cancer research. Israeli scientists and doctors have induced the self-destruction of pancreatic cancer cells in mice. A small molecule, PJ34, normally used to treat stroke victims, reduced cancer cells by up to 90 percent a month. There were no adverse effects. Normal cells were unaffected.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-possible-breakthrough-molecule-destroys-pancreatic-cancer-cells-in-mice/
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-scientists-find-way-to-treat-deadly-pancreatic-cancer-in-14-days-609647  
 
US approvals for AI image analyses. Israel’s Zebra Medical has received several approvals from the US FDA. They include detecting heart disease, (see here) pneumothorax (lung trauma – see here), intercranial hemorrhages (brain bleeds – see here). It has just received another for detecting fluid on the lungs.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/zebra-medical-gets-fda-nod-for-device-that-detects-water-in-lungs/
 
Green light for finger prick blood test. As predicted previously, (13th May) the OLO finger prick blood test device from Israel’s Sight Diagnostics flowed through the US FDA approval process.  It enables use of the CBC (Complete Blood Test) device in laboratories run by hospitals, diagnostic providers, and outpatient clinics.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/unlike-theranos-startups-blood-test-device-delivers-on-promise-with-fda-nod/
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/04/reuters-america-u-s-fda-clears-israeli-startup-sight-diagnostics-finger-prick-blood-test.html
 
Israeli doctor runs Canadian AIDS clinic. (TY Robert) To coincide with World AIDS day, Robert Sarner wrote this article about Israeli-born Dr Neora Pick. As medical director of Canada’s only multidisciplinary clinic for women and children with HIV, she treats some of the 63,000 (and increasing) Canadians with HIV.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-born-doctor-fights-for-her-patients-at-canadas-only-holistic-hiv-clinic/
 
Increasing US-Israeli medical cooperation. (TY Janglo) 21 bipartisan US lawmakers have requested that the US establishes an FDA office in Israel to facilitate collaboration in life-saving research. They wrote that Israel’s world class medical research programs have positively impacted the global health system.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-lawmakers-call-for-a-food-and-drug-administration-office-in-israel/
 
Teva partners Israeli universities for new cancer treatments. (TY Nocamels) Israel’s Teva and Tel Aviv University have signed an R&D agreement in the fields of cancer and brain studies. Teva has also partnered with Israel’s Weizmann Institute to identify the next generation of innovative antibodies for cancer treatment.
https://www.tevapharm.com/news/Teva_and_Tel_Aviv_University_sign_a_collaboration_agreement.aspx
 
Showcasing Israeli digital health tech. Over a thousand participants gathered in Tel Aviv for the second annual Digital.Health.Now conference. It focused on showcasing advanced Israeli innovations in telemedicine, digital healthcare, and general wellness aided by technology.
http://nocamels.com/2019/11/virtual-hospitalnav-app-blind-ar-microscope-israel-digital-health-tech/
 
How blind people use Smartphones. One Israeli startup at the Digital.Health.Now conference was RightHear. (see here). This video shows how the blind use its technology to access the functions on a Smartphone. Also, (TY Jacques) RightHear is supporting the first official blind-friendly street in Israel, and possibly the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkQk8ZbToNo
http://israelbetweenthelines.com/2019/12/05/the-israeli-startup-leading-the-blind/
 
Calm down. Another Israeli product showcased at Israel’s Digital.Health.Now conference was Calmigo. Its advanced technology provides immediate, drug-free relief for moments of distress, anxiousness, and stress by regulating your breathing patterns and stimulating your senses.
https://calmigo.com/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ktjXiRCGOo
 
Reducing injuries. Zone7, founded by IDF veterans, uses AI to foresee and prevent injuries to sports people. It advertises an 80% reduction in injury days and provides coaches, trainers and sports scientists with intervention strategies. Zone7 is partnering its platform with global medical company Garmin Health.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zone7-raises-2-5-million-seed-round-to-help-professional-sports-franchises-and-ncaa-athletic-departments-predict-injury-risk-300803592.html  http://zone7.ai/
 
A day in the life. Last week 50 members of our synagogue were privileged to be given a tour of Emergency Service United Hatzalah’s headquarters in Jerusalem.  United Hatzalah’s volunteer EMTs arrive at the scene of an incident within three minutes, often saving lives in Israel.  Click the link to read a recent typical example.
https://israelrescue.org/blog/early-cpr-intervention-saves-truck-driver/   https://israelrescue.org/
 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15232/gay-palestinians

“Israel has always embraced this path [of liberty] in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different.” – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the U.S. Senate, 2011.
Adam and Rami are among scores of Palestinian members of the LTBGQ community who, in the past few decades, have fled their homes to seek shelter in Israel. Yet, their plight is totally ignored not only by human rights organizations, but by but by people who purport to be advocates of gay rights. This is part of a far more malignant story: when Israel looks good, the international community looks away.
Hate for Israel has blinded people to the point where they align themselves with their own executioners.
alQaws pointed out that some Palestinian groups actually celebrated the police threat against the LTBGQ community, “raising (yet again) disturbing questions about the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to human rights.”
Palestinian gays have two choices: hide their sexual preferences and lead double lives in their villages, or flee to Israel and live as normal human beings. Groups such as Queers for Palestine, though, are too busy bashing Israel on college campuses and the streets of San Francisco to take much notice of the sanctuary to which their gay Palestinian friends have chosen to relocate.

Members of the Palestinian LTBGQ community continue to flee to Israel, where, unlike under the Hamas and Palestinian Authority regimes, they are free to lead normal lives.

The gay community in the West, however, has evidently chosen to ignore the plight of their friends living under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and under Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Remarkably, rather than reaching out to help the Palestinian LTBGQ members, several gay groups in the West, including in the US, continue to spout hate against Israel, the only country in the Middle East where the LTBGQ community feels safe and secure.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a 2011 speech to the US Senate:

“Israel has always embraced this path [of liberty] in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different.”

Groups such as “Queers for Palestine” and “Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism” have long been inciting against Israel, even as Palestinian gays are fleeing persecution and the threat of death under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Both groups, rather than helping gays, noisily advocate financial divestment from Israel, and their members regularly demonstrate at gay pride marches and collaborate with extremist Muslim organizations.

The Western members of the LTBGQ community are eagerly joining forces with the very parties who are persecuting and killing their Palestinian allies — as long as that advances the anti-Israel agenda of those who hate Israel more than they care about gays.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-wrong-Politics-and-indictments-aside-610

Something uncanny is happening in Israel. Though plagued by an unprecedented political deadlock that is almost certain to guarantee a third round of Knesset elections in less than a year, the so-called “interim” government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is engaging in crucial high-level diplomacy and meeting serious military challenges without skipping a beat.

This is no small feat due to a number of factors, chief among them Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit’s announcement that he intends to indict Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. As if this didn’t make the incumbent PM’s job any harder than it already was, it coincided with the failure of Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz to form a coalition – following weeks of negotiations – and a decision within Netanyahu’s Likud Party to hold new leadership primaries.

In other words, Netanyahu has been forced to focus, simultaneously, on interrogations, internal politics and international policy. It is a rare statesman who can pull all that off with such apparent aplomb. But then, Netanyahu is sui generis – as even his fiercest critics grudgingly admit – which is why he has been in power longer than any of his predecessors, including the country’s first and previously most legendary leader, David Ben-Gurion.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/12/another-opportunity-to-miss-an-opportunity/

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has declared that Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria will, for the US, no longer be regarded as illegal. This reversal of long-standing policy is no less than a change of paradigm. This declaration, however, does not change the US position on Judea’s and Samaria’s jurisdiction – it is for the parties to determine. 

This seemingly unexpected announcement in mid-November triggered a firestorm of condemnation, denunciations and threats around the globe, including from morally upright, ‘woke’ Australians. The shock and ensuing venom with which anti-Israeli mobs reacted cannot be overestimated. It ranged from hysterical proclamations of ‘Death of the peace process, irresponsible behavior and the breach of international law’ by the Palestinian Authority ‘moderates’, to traditionally blunt Iranian threats to annihilate the Jewish State, and to further barrages of the Gaza Strip jihadis’ rockets.

The supposedly pro-Western Jordanian Government’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi,was ‘concerned’ about ‘dangerous consequences’ and warned that “Israeli colonies in occupied Palestine ignore international law and prevent the possibility of conflict resolution by the creation of two states for two people.”

He did not explain under which international law Jordan has occupied Judea and Samaria for 20 years and then settled these areas with then Jordanian citizens. The paradoxical aspect of this hypocrisy is that he will claim that Jordan did not break any international law by moving citizens to disputed areas. He will be correct, because no law prohibits settling in a territory under no-one’s jurisdiction.

Judea and Samaria have always been the historical heartland of the Jewish people. They have maintained an unbroken record of connection to this land since Biblical times, some three thousand years ago. They have never formed part of any Arab state, which could possibly have legitimately claimed them – because there were no Arab states. International law, often cited as being broken by Israel, does not apply to areas under nobody’s jurisdiction, the legal status of these territories when Israel re-conquered them. 

This situation has an historical precedent – the Reconquista of  Spain. The Christian armies, after their loss of the Iberian Peninsula and after centuries of Moorish rule, defeated the  occupiers and retrieved their native land by force of arms.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/12/03/rewriting-the-history-of-israels-1948-war/

Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) was a great artist. But that doesn’t mean that every world leader he painted deserves our admiration — nor should we assume that Syzk admired every one of them, either.

In a recent essay in The Algemeiner, Samantha Lyons and Irvin Ungar presented Syzk’s 1941 portrait of King Abdullah I of Transjordan. Lyons and Ungar hailed Abdullah as an “Arab peacemaker.” But Abdullah was nothing of the sort.

Lyons and Ungar also claimed that Syzk’s portrait “reveals his admiration for a moderate Middle Eastern leader.” But they present no convincing evidence that Syzk felt that way. The fact that the painting was a “dignified rendering” of Abdullah says nothing about what Szyk thought of him.

Let’s remember that Szyk was an active member of the Bergson Group, which was created and led by activists from the Jabotinsky movement. They regarded Transjordan as a part of historic Eretz Yisrael, which had been illegally and immorally torn from the rest of Mandatory Palestine by the British authorities in 1922.

As the unelected leader of Transjordan, Abdullah was the fascist dictator of a country that was little more than a work of fiction. There were no “Transjordanians.” Their “nation” was concocted by the British in order to give Abdullah a “country” to rule over, after they disappointed him by giving the throne of Iraq to his brother. So they severed the eastern 78 percent of the Palestine Mandate and handed it to him on a silver platter as a consolation prize.

It hardly seems likely that Syzk “admired” the illegal Arab occupier of 78 percent of Israel.