RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-jewish-settlers-israelis-chasing-a-suburban-dream-in-the-west-bank-11573409035

ARIEL, West Bank—When the Jewish settlers who founded this town scouted the land in 1978, they chose a rocky outcrop where Palestinian villagers warned nothing would grow. It was called the Mountain of Death.

“They thought we were crazy,” said Dorith Nachman, 70 years old, recalling the reaction when she, her husband and other Jewish Israelis erected tents on the hillside.

Ariel’s founders used to administer a psychological questionnaire to incoming families to ensure they could tough it out. It wasn’t just the natural environment that was harsh. By establishing Jewish communities on land Palestinians claim as their own, the settlers opened Israel to both domestic and international criticism.

Things have gotten a whole lot easier for Jews living in many of the 132 settlements built on territory Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war. A highway now connects Tel Aviv to Ariel, without the military checkpoints dotting much of the West Bank. Real-estate agents pitch it as a Tel Aviv bedroom community for young families. There are parks, malls, a university with 15,000 students and rows of townhouses and apartment blocs priced as much as 30% lower than in Tel Aviv, some 30 miles away.

Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, one of the most emotional issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have gone mainstream among Israelis. Places once viewed with skepticism, if not downright hostility, by other Israelis are now home to 450,000 Israelis, up from 116,300 in 1993. They account for 15% of the total population of the West Bank, which also includes an estimated 2.6 million Palestinians, and 5% of the Israeli population. An August poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 48% of Israelis support a plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

This is a dazzling compilation of the contribution of Israel, a small country with  outsize technical, scientific, medical, cultural, and social institutions that make the lives of billions throughout the globe better and longer and more productive. And, in spite of being the target of hardened enemies who pose existential threats, the citizens of this marvelous democracy have a haven that respects their religion and their desire for good times. Tel-Aviv is considered one of the prime culinary and entertainment hubs in the world.  rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

US approval for H. pylori treatment. The US FDA has given approval for Israel’s Redhill Biopharma to market its RHB-105 (Talicia) treatment for the treatment of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). It follows successful Phase 3 trials, as reported (here) previously. H. pylori affects some 2 million US patients.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/redhill-gets-fda-nod-for-drug-to-eradicate-gut-infection/

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3773092,00.html

Turning mosquitos against themselves. As reported previously (see here) there are several Israeli innovations developed to help reduce numbers of disease infecting mosquitos. Now Ben Gurion University scientists have discovered and activated bacteria in the male mosquito that is poisonous only to mosquito larvae.

https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/Pages/news/igem_2019.aspx

Genetic cause of atrial fibrillation. Scientists at Ben Gurion University have found that common (mostly night-time) atrial fibrillation (heart rhythm problems) is caused by a mutation in a gene (KCND2). They are now developing an anti-arrhythmia medication, based on their findings. It could save 200,000 lives each year.

https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/on-way-to-cure-israeli-researchers-discover-gene-causing-afib/2019/11/05/  https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCGEN.118.002293

Detecting and treating prostate cancer. For Men’s Health Awareness Month, here are 7 Israeli startups focused on detection and treatment of prostate cancer. Two have not been reported here previously. They are Keren Medical’s anastomosis device for bladder operations; and UC-Care’s ultrasound tumor tracking tools.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3772959,00.html

http://www.kerenmedical.com/index.html   https://www.uc-care.com/

Relieving pain for pancreatic cancer patients. (TY WIN &I24 News) Doctors at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center have managed to substantially reduce the pain suffered by cancer patients. Radiation is targeted at a nerve behind the pancreas. After 3 weeks, the patient is strong enough to embark on further cancer treatment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSU2bexpwNY

The first medical school in Samaria is open. Seventy students were accepted into the first class of the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson School of Medicine at Ariel University. It is the sixth medical school in Israel and the first in Samaria. US Ambassador David Friedman gave the traditional Hebrew ‘Shecheyanu’ blessing. 

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/270643 

Sheba hospital – the Cyprus connection. Several newsletter articles (see here) highlight the humanitarian work done at Israel’s Sheba medical center in Tel Hashomer on behalf of citizens of Cyprus. Another example here is when a Cypriot police officer was shot in the spine and airlifted to Sheba for successful treatment.

https://www.jewishpress.com/news/health-and-medicine/sheba-medical-center/sheba-a-template-for-peace-international-cooperation/2019/10/14/

NATO recognizes Israel as key medical assistance partner. NATO has recognized the Israeli Navy as a key medical-assistance partner in the Mediterranean following a drill held last month practicing emergency evacuations of personnel. “Crystal Sea 2020” involved the United Kingdom, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria.

https://www.jns.org/nato-recognizes-israel-as-key-medical-assistance-partner-as-it-seeks-to-expand-cooperation/

https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-u-s-israel-security-cooperation-is-a-win-win

One of the few points of unbounded bipartisan agreement in Washington has for decades been that U.S.-Israel security cooperation is right, good, mutually beneficial, and worth every nickel spent on it. It is well–grounded in facts and has acknowledged benefits to both sides.

However, at the J Street Conference last week, left-of-center political candidates and hostile-to-Israel speakers questioned the utility of American aid to Israel except, perhaps, as “leverage” to force Israel to meet their left-of-center and hostile-to-Israel demands. Candidates were willing to “explore” the issue. But it was left to J Street president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, to get to the heart of the conversation – Ben Ami isn’t interested in “leverage,” but in de-legitimizing the aid. “American aid is not intended to be a blank check. As Israel receives that $3.8 billion in aid, what is it being used for?”

Actually, it’s not, a secret. The United States is Israel’s ally of first choice. And Israel remains the one country the United States can rely upon to defend itself by itself and in coordination with American interests. And most of the money is then spent by Israel in the U.S.

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Defending-Israels-justice-min

Justice Minister Amir Ohana must have known his address to the Knesset on Wednesday was going to unleash the rabid dogs that have been hounding him for the past six months. After all, ever since he was appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu to the coveted – albeit interim – cabinet post, Ohana’s criticism of the Israeli judiciary in general, and controversial comments about the courts in particular, have aroused the wrath of the self-righteous.

Rather than recoil, however – as a lawyer with blossoming political ambitions might be expected to do – Ohana has remained firm in and vocal about his convictions. This is in spite of the fact that in the immediate aftermath of each of his ostensibly scandalous statements, his detractors have attempted to discredit him in a host of ways, particularly by insinuating that he has no special skills beyond being Bibi’s pet and sycophant.

It’s a ridiculous claim, of course. But it’s a handy one for those who virulently oppose the Nation-State Law that Ohana was instrumental in drafting, for example, (not to mention his support for a bill that would grant a sitting prime minister – in this case, Netanyahu, who is under threat of indictment – immunity from prosecution).

Though it’s true that Ohana is a Netanyahu loyalist, he has been one since long before he entered the Knesset. Furthermore, his continued backing of the PM in the face of the investigations against him has to do with his professional assessment that the cases are legally flimsy, at best, which they are. 

1. According to Standard & Poor, Fitch and Moody’s – the world’s top credit rating companies – Israel and Australia are the only two Western countries whose 2019 credit rating (reflecting economic growth) is higher than it was before the global economic meltdown of 2007/2008. Currently, Israel is rated AA- by Standard & Poor, A+ by Fitch and A1 by Moody’s.

2. According to the London Economist (November 5, 2019), despite short-term political uncertainty, Israel’s economic growth is sustained by a strong domestic consumption, an expansion of natural gas explorations, findings and export, and the continued dynamism of the hightech sector, which has attracted substantial foreign investment. For example,Intel announced its plan to invest $11BN in a new export-oriented semiconductor manufacturing facility in Israel [as a follow up to the 2016 acquisition of Israel’s Mobileye for $15.3BN and investment in scores of Israeli startups].

Israel’s economy features low unemployment (3.7%) and rising real wages. Exports are expected to rise despite the relative global economic slowdown, and independent of the continued appreciation of the Shekel (the strongest currency against the US dollar), but due to the initiation of natural gas exports.
GDP growth is expected to slow to 2.9% in 2020, before recovering to 3.8% in 2021 and 4% in 2022.

3. The NYC-based Centerbridge Partners and Greenwich, CT-based Gallatin Point Capital acquired 32.5% of Phoenix (Israel’s 2nd largest insurance group) for $450MN (Globes Business Daily, Nov. 5, 2019). Germany’s insurance giant, Munich Re, invested $250MN in Israel’s Next Digital Insurance startup, which was founded in 2016 by entrepreneurs who in 2014 sold their previous startup, Check, to the Silicon Valley-basedIntuit for $360MN (Globes, October 8). The Greenwich, CT-based General Atlantic led a $165MN investment in Israel’s Riskified, which develops software preventing fraud and verifying consumer identities (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 5). Israel has become Europe’s Silicon Valley. During the first half of 2019, German investors accounted to 30% of the number of European deals in Israel’s ecosystem, including a branch of Merck, the global pharmaceutical giant. While German investment profile is dwarfed by the USA, 60% of the leading Frankfurt Stock Exchange companies have Israeli branches, seeking Israeli technologies, surging since 2016. In 2018, German investors were 4th in the number of Israeli deals – 5% of total deals foreign investment – between the UK’s 7% and China’s 4% (Globes, August 12).

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/islamic-jihad-fires-weekend-rocket-salvo-israel-ari-lieberman/

As Israelis gear up for the likely prospect of a third election, and the nation is in the throes of political gridlock, Israelis living near the Gaza periphery had to endure yet another spate of rocket attacks from Gaza. Over the weekend, the Palestinian terrorist group, Islamic Jihad, fired 10 rockets at the southern Israeli town of Sderot. Eight of the 10 were intercepted by Israel’s anti-rocket system known as Iron Dome, while one hit a residential building causing structural damage though luckily, no injuries. The family residing in the building, alerted by an early warning system known as “Color Red,” made it safely to the bomb shelter before the rocket struck. The tenth rocket landed in an open area.

Israel responded to the attacks with measured strikes against Hamas targets. At least one terrorist was killed in those strikes. Though Islamic Jihad was the instigator, Israel holds Hamas responsible for everything that goes on in Gaza since Hamas is Gaza’s governing authority.

On the face of it, the rocket attack seems puzzling. Israel is allowing Qatari cash to flow into Gaza and the weekly Hamas-orchestrated Palestinian demonstrations occurring along the Gaza-Israel border are a mere trickle of what they used to be just a few months ago. Israel and Hamas have an unwritten agreement that Hamas will maintain quiet as long as Israel allows Qatari cash to flow into Hamas’s coffers.

That agreement appeared to be holding until it was shattered by the weekend violence, initiated by Islamic Jihad. But in the Middle East, seemingly unrelated events are inexorably intertwined with one another. In Lebanon and Iraq, anti-government demonstrations have paralyzed the governments of those two failed states. Moreover, these demonstrations have morphed into anti-Iranian protests.

November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour

https://quillette.com/2019/10/31/palestine-

From my home on the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv, I hear the Muslim call to prayer every day as it issues from a mosque half a mile away in neighboring Jaffa. Jewish Israelis see Arabic on their money, on street signs, on buses, and on the labels adorning foodstuffs that provide consumers with nutritional information. They hear Arabic in the stores, shopping malls, and cafes they routinely frequent. And if they visit a clinic or hospital, Jewish Israelis will hear Arabic spoken by their fellow patients, and by the doctors and nurses who tend to them. Israel may be the world’s only Jewish state, but Arabs account for roughly 21 percent of its population, so the sounds and sights of the Arabic language are simply part of daily life in this corner of the Levant.

So I was surprised to learn, from an article written by Michael Humeniuk for Quillette, that “when Jewish Israelis hear spoken Arabic, which they perceive as screams, they don’t know if a bomb is about to go off or one guy is simply complimenting another guy’s shoes.” Humeniuk is from Toronto, and his article is a well written and (presumably) well intentioned attempt to look beyond the “solemn stereotypes” he and other Westerners have absorbed of Palestinians “as freedom fighter or terrorist—geopolitical character actors within the grand narrative of what is vaguely described as ‘the Middle East conflict.’” Others, like him, who have travelled to Middle East because they are “touched and troubled by the plight of the Palestinians,” are so preoccupied by the politics of the conflict that they forget to notice “the Palestinian people themselves—how they cook and eat, how they tease and flirt, how they celebrate and mourn.” It is to this unenlightened view that Humeniuk wishes to offer a corrective.

Unfortunately, as Humeniuk relates his experiences in Palestine’s de facto capital, it becomes increasingly evident that he knows little about the region, its people, or its complexities. And so his lesson (audaciously entitled “Ramallah for Beginners”) soon lapses into tiresome clichés that contrast a heavily fortified and paranoid Israeli state with a portrait of peaceable donkey-riding Palestinians quietly tending their picturesque olive groves or enjoying the city’s party life (“cheaper and more welcoming,” we are told, than that offered by Tel Aviv). This perspective not only misunderstands the fraught history and political present of the region, but it unhelpfully caricatures Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs on both sides of the Green Line that separated Israel and the Jordanian-annexed West Bank before the Six Day War of 1967.