RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/

This may come as some surprise, but only three per cent of the residents of Rafah, in Gaza, were poorly fed in May, according to the United Nations. In Khan Yunis and the central town of Deir al Balah, that figure stood at six per cent. The biggest challenges were faced by those who had failed to evacuate from the north at the start of the campaign. There, 13 per cent were found to be hungry. The overwhelming majority of Gazans had “acceptable” quantities of food.

Now consider the situation before Hamas brought catastrophe to Gaza. Despite billions of dollars of aid money pouring into the Strip, 14 per cent of the population faced hunger in 2022, according to a contemporaneous study by the World Food Programme. So it appears that provisions are better now than they were when Hamas was in charge.

Not that you’d know it from the reporting. In its analysis, the UN grudgingly concluded that it was “unable to endorse” the classification made by the likes of the head of the World Food Programme, who had claimed that Gaza had entered a “full-blown famine”. Was there an apology? Nope. The new line, spun by the UN and amplified by the BBC and fellow travellers, was that Gazans faced “catastrophic levels” of hunger.

Without wishing to minimise the deprivations of war, here was an object lesson in propaganda in the age of mass media. 

Step eagerly forward the Guardian, which on Tuesday published an article headlined “The starvation of Gaza is a perverse repudiation of Judaism’s values”. The author, John Oakes, is a radical American intellectual, whose authority appears to rest on his book about the history of fasting. Whether he knows anything about the conflict or Judaism, or has ever met anybody from Gaza, is unclear. According to his website, his second book will be about the nature of intelligence.

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=

Daniel Hagari, spokesperson of the Israel Defense Forces, recently created a flap when he said that “Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party. It’s rooted in the hearts of the people—whoever thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.”

Hagari added that Hamas would remain in control in Gaza unless Israel “develops something else to replace it.” 

The statement was widely cast as an admission that Israel was not really winning, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office to reply that the Israeli security cabinet “has defined as one of the war goals the destruction of Hamas’s military and governance capabilities…. The Israel Defense Forces is of course committed to this.”

It was a sensible rejoinder, implying that Israel did not actually aspire to vaporize Hamas from the face of the earth, but to break it as an effective military and political force.

Indeed, Nazi Germany was defeated, but almost 80 years since the war ended Nazism certainly still exists as an idea, as do a plethora of neo-Nazi organizations. ISIS was militarily devastated in Iraq and Syria, but still exists not only as an idea but as a terror group that in 2024 has inflicted mass-casualty attacks in Russia and elsewhere. Both entities were defeated but not annihilated.

https://www.jns.org/west-wing-worry-about-bibis-upcoming-speech/

An article published in Politico on Saturday claims that the administration in Washington is worried about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address next month to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

The reason for the anxiety—say the outlet’s White House bureau chief, Jonathan Lemire, and national-security reporter Alexander Ward, citing “senior officials” whom they “granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal deliberations”—is that “no one knows what he is going to say.”

According to the authors and their nameless contacts, the White House fears that Bibi might take the opportunity of the podium on Capitol Hill to (gasp!) criticize President Joe Biden for not sufficiently supporting Israel’s war effort.

Terrifying indeed.

That ship sailed, of course, as the piece makes sure to stress by referring to Netanyahu’s by-now infamous video urging Biden not to uphold arms shipments—you know, the ammo needed for an Israel Defense Forces victory over Hamas. Naturally, no mention of the Israeli premier’s invoking Winston Churchill’s 1941 request of Franklin Roosevelt to give Britain the tools to “finish the job” against Nazi Germany.

Calling the clip “unhelpful,” the op-ed disguised as a news story quotes one of the unspecified inner-circle denizens as saying that Bibi could make things “far worse up there in front of Congress.”

The clarification for those curious about what this actually means is void of information, but rife with partisan speculation.

“Frictions have deepened between Biden and Netanyahu since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, with Biden aides increasingly believing that the Israeli leader is prolonging the conflict to stay in power,” it asserts. “And that he would prefer Donald Trump return to the White House.”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/23/hamas-is-the-enemy-of-the-palestinian-people/

On 7 October last year, Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. Despite this demonstration of anti-Semitic barbarism, many Western anti-Israel activists continue to see Hamas as some sort of ‘resistance’ movement, fighting for Palestinian nationhood.

This view couldn’t be more wrong. As Italian journalist Paola Caridi shows in her largely sympathetic account of the group, Hamas: From Resistance to Government (originally published in 2009 but updated last year), Hamas is not and never has been a national-independence movement. It is above all an intransigent, religious movement set on the destruction of Israel.

The exhaustion of Palestinian nationalism

To get to grips with the nature and development of Hamas, it’s important to understand the broader historical background. The central problem here for Palestinians and Israelis is that their national aspirations are irreconcilable.

Israel was founded in 1948, after Jewish people revolted against Palestine’s British rulers. (With a mandate from the League of Nations, the British took over from the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled Palestine for over four centuries, at the end of the First World War.) During the 1920s and especially the 1930s, Palestine’s indigenous Jewish population was supplemented by refugees from Eastern Europe and later Nazi Germany. This growing and increasingly restive populace rebelled against British occupation, just as neighbouring Iraqis did in the 1920s and 1940s, and Egyptians did in the late 1910s and early 1920s. In doing so, these rebellions laid claim to new nations, which claimed descent from ancient civilisations.

Many Arabs, caught in the crossfire of the often violent Jewish struggle for an Israeli state in the late 1940s, fled to the neighbouring territories of the Egyptian-governed Gaza Strip and the Jordanian West Bank. In 1967, Israel defeated the Arab coalition of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Six-Day War. Through this war, Israel conquered the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, complete with their Arab populations. These became the ‘occupied territories’.

As the Six-Day War demonstrated, the Arab world refused to accept Israel’s existence. Arab nations took Israel as an affront to their own independence. Yasser Arafat, born to Palestinian parents in Cairo in 1929, co-founded the paramilitary organisation, Fatah, in the late 1950s. Its object was to fight for a Palestinian state. In 1967, Fatah joined and became the dominant faction in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which was then a national-independence movement. Arafat became PLO leader in 1969.

Israel’s leaders always understood that the national aspirations of Palestinians were irreconcilable with the existence of Israel. Hence, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir insisted in a 1976 New York Times op-ed that there were no ‘Palestinians’, only Arabs, living in Egypt, Jordan and Israel itself.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20729/hezbollah-beirut-airport

Hezbollah is storing massive amounts of Iranian armaments at Rafic Hariri International Airport, Lebanon’s main civilian airport, staff say.

Hezbollah has been accused of using the Beirut airport for weapon storage in the past, but whistleblowers say it has ramped up the practice since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel.

“This is extremely serious, mysterious large boxes arriving on direct flights from Iran are a sign that things got worse,” an airport worker told The Telegraph. “When they started to come through the airport, my friends and I were scared because we knew that there was something strange going on.”

He feared that an explosion, or an attack on the airport to destroy the weapons, could cause major damage to Beirut, similar to the 2020 port blast that devastated much of downtown. That explosion was blamed on a weapons warehouse belonging to Hezbollah.

“Beirut will be cut off from the world, not to mention the number of casualties and damage,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time before a disaster also happens at the airport.”

Stored weapons include Iranian-made Falaq artillery rockets, Fateh-110 short-range missiles, mobile ballistic missiles and M-600 missiles with ranges of more than 150 miles, The Telegraph reported.

AT-14 Kornet, laser-guided anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), Burkan short-range ballistic missile and RDX, a widely used explosive, are also stored at the airport.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20726/netanyahu-reject-vassal-state

As far as the White House and Democrats are concerned, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing it again. Similar to multiple occasions during the presidency of Barack Obama, Netanyahu is not playing by the rules Washington and the foreign-policy establishment believe are laid down to govern the behavior of client states.

Rather than assume the role of the loyal and pliant vassal to his nation’s superpower ally, there have been several times when Netanyahu has talked back in public to Obama and now President Joe Biden. Washington’s angry response to the video the prime minister released last week, in which he spoke of the way the administration has been slow-walking arms deliveries, made it clear that—assurances of goodwill from both sides notwithstanding—U.S.-Israel relations have reached a crisis point.

In the 49-second video posted on the YouTube page of the prime minister’s office on June 18, Netanyahu said the following:

“When Secretary Blinken was recently here in Israel, we had a candid conversation. I said I deeply appreciated the support the U.S. has given Israel from the beginning of the war. But I also said something else. I said it’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunition to Israel. Israel, America’s closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies. Secretary Blinken assured me that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks. I certainly hope that’s the case. It should be the case. During World War II, Churchill told the United States, ‘Give us the tools, we’ll do the job.’ And I say, give us the tools and we’ll finish the job a lot faster.”

Washington’s anger

In reaction, Washington expressed shock and anger. According to U.S. officials, Netanyahu’s claims were both fictional and a sign of ingratitude after all that Biden had done for him and Israel since Oct. 7, and throughout the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Their story is that despite Biden’s talk of potentially refusing to continue to send arms and ammunition to Israel if it doesn’t obey him and not attack the last Hamas strongholds in Rafah, there have been no such cutoffs. The only exception, they assert, is a review of whether the United States should send a special kind of 2,000-pound bomb that might cause too many civilian casualties in urban areas.

https://www.jns.org/smotrich-details-mega-dramatic-shift-to-tighten-control-of-judea-and-samaria/

Israel’s government is implementing a seismic shift in the way it manages the civil administration of Judea and Samaria by transferring authority from military to civilian hands.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads the Religious Zionism Party, described the advances that had been made, and their significance, to a gathering of leaders from Judea and Samaria at Shacharit Farm, an Israeli community in western Samaria, on June 9.

Smotrich said it was critical that control of civilian matters in Judea and Samaria be taken out of military hands to energize the growth of Jewish communities and block a carefully laid Palestinian Authority plan to establish facts on the ground via illegal construction, part of its quest for a state.

“We are in the middle of a huge job right now to implement a completely new enforcement system in the Civil Administration,” Smotrich said.

“If everywhere else in the State of Israel there are certain goals for enforcement, in Judea and Samaria there is one big consideration. And in the end, it is what to do geopolitically, strategically and security-wise,” he said.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20725/palestinian-plan-gaza-day-after

The Palestinians, meanwhile, appear to have their own ideas about what should happen the day after the war in Gaza: they want to murder even more Jews and carry on the Jihad (holy war) to destroy Israel. Rebuilding the Gaza Strip is not a top priority for many Palestinians. Their primary focus lies in providing support to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations that aim to destroy the sole homeland of the Jewish people.

Hamas says its plan is to “keep the flame of resistance burning…. the [resistance] will not end and will not be extinguished until the comprehensive liberation and the establishment of a fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”

Hamas refers to a variety of terrorist actions as “resistance.” These include suicide bombings, stabbings, car-rammings, shootings, firing rockets, gang rapes, and beheadings. This is the only form of “resistance” Hamas has known and practiced since its founding 36 years ago. As far as Hamas is concerned…[a]ll Jews are “settlers” who need to be killed or expelled from their state.

As Hamas openly states in its charter… “There is no solution for the Palestinian question expect through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

Hamas… is, not surprisingly, also opposed to any plan that seeks to remove it from power in the Gaza Strip. As long as Hamas’s military capabilities are not totally eliminated, neither the Palestinian Authority nor the Arab countries will take over administration of the Gaza Strip.

The only plan Hamas (and many Palestinians) believes in is one that calls on all Muslims to undertake Jihad against Israel. For this reason, the Biden administration is misguided in thinking that Hamas, which enjoys broad support among the Palestinians, would approve of any plan for the day after in the Gaza Strip that does not view terrorism as the only means of eradicating Israel and ethnically cleansing the Jewish people.

The [Palestinian Center For Policy and Survey Research] poll also found that satisfaction with Hamas’s performance has increased to 75%.

Any strategy the Biden administration proposes for the day after the war in the Gaza Strip is bound to fail…. Any legitimate discussion about what the day after looks like in the Gaza Strip must address the radical and Islamist elements in Palestinian society.

“The possibility of defeating Israel is very real…and the possibility of liberating Palestine is very great… Any other option will certainly be rejected, especially if it is accompanied by any non-Palestinian security presence. The Palestinians will consider it a new form of occupation, regardless of the identity of these forces.” — Bassam Naim, senior Hamas official, to Al-Jazeera.

“Israel is a country that has no place on our land…. We must remove it because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation…. We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do it twice and three times. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth….” – Ghazi Hamad, senior Hamas official, Lebanese TV channel LBC, October 24, 2023.

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

In spite of war, blood curdling threats of genocide, and media and academic libel and bias, Israel remains a freewheeling democracy with a model and diverse citizen army. Behind the headlines, as Michael Ordman catalogs every week, Israel’s scientists, doctors, and water, food, and agriculture technologies, bring hope and better lives to citizens throughout the world in disproportionate numbers. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR

Wounded IDF soldier welcomed at NY rehab center. (TY WIN) Due to an overload of war casualties Yonatan, an injured IDF soldier had his follow-up surgeries in Israel delayed. A compassionate doctor and Five Towns Premier Rehab Center in Woodmere, NY, agreed to admit him.

https://jewishbreakingnews.com/injured-idf-soldier-receives-heros-welcome-at-ny-rehab-center/

https://x.com/LivingLchaim/status/1800218431322783777 

96-year-old IDF reservist promoted. (TY Sam) Ezra Yakhin, 96, serves in reserve service as a motivational speaker in the Education Corps “Torchbearer Unit”. Since the beginning of the war, he has been inspiring the soldiers of today with fighting spirit. He has just been promoted to the rank of Command Master Sergeant.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/391836

IDF officer and Prize-winning scientist. When Dr Nir Shlezinger isn’t on duty as an IDF reserve armored corps officer, he lectures Engineering Science students at Israel’s Ben Gurion University. He has also just won a Krill Prize from the Wolf Foundation for Excellence in Scientific Research in digital communications and AI.

https://www.bgu.ac.il/en/news-and-articles/krill-prize-2024-for-nir-shlezinger/

Descendants of Nazis in pro-Israel march. (TY Yanky) Hundreds of Nazi descendants have been marching the streets of Ashkelon, and Jerusalem in solidarity with the Jewish State. Many participated in the March of the Nations because of the events of Oct 7.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA1dbkE4eJs

https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/139222/nazi-march-israel-solidarity

https://www.jewishtimes.com/ten-meters-from-eichmann/

Delivering results. Israeli NGO Social Delivery collects surplus goods, from clothes to furniture, from retailers and offices of tech firms and delivers them to Gaza border communities. For the first three months of the war, Social Delivery sent products to hotels housing evacuees. Now it sends the products to the Gaza border again.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/modern-robin-hood-with-a-social-justice-mandate-helps-returnees-on-path-of-renewal/

US volunteers help Israeli startups. Nonprofit Kachol Balev (Blue at Heart) has enlisted hundreds of volunteers in the US (students and others), with a whole range of hi-tech skills, to work remotely for Israeli startups. They occupy some of the gaps left by tens of thousands of Israelis called up for IDF reserve duty.

https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-tech-industry-gets-helping-hand-from-remote-volunteers/

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Detecting cancer with saliva test. Israel’s Salignostics (see here previously) is working with Israel’s Sheba Medical Center to develop a saliva test for the early detection of oral cavity cancer. It may save some of the 400,000 diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer, of whom only 50% will survive five years after diagnosis.

https://www.israel21c.org/saliva-based-cancer-testing-on-its-way/

$1.2 million to discover a gut feeling. The French-based Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) funds basic research in life sciences. It has awarded a $1.2 million grant to Ben Gurion University Prof Michael Meijler to investigate how certain gut bacteria affect human behavior, such as anxiety and stress.

https://www.bgu.ac.il/en/news-and-articles/meijler-grant-from-hfsp/

20,000 doctors available. Israel’s Air Doctor (see here previously) now has 20,000 doctors registered to its service globally, partnering with insurance companies in 80 countries. It has also added video telemedicine consultations on their platform and reduced insurance claim costs by 54%.

https://nocamels.com/2024/06/the-doctor-is-in-app-connects-foreign-travelers-to-local-physicians/

Booming IVF baby boomers. Israel’s AIVF (see here previously) reports that its EMA embryo analysis platform is 38% more accurate than the eye of a trained embryologist when assessing which IVF embryo is most likely to result in a successful pregnancy. AIVF is active in Europe, Australia, Brazil, and South Korea.

https://nocamels.com/2024/06/israeli-ai-platform-delivering-baby-boom-for-ivf-pregnancies/

New Haifa University Medical School. Haifa University governors laid the cornerstone of the Herta and Paul Amir School of Medicine. The 1,200-bed hospital is due to open in 2025, featuring state-of-the-art medical services; patient-centered care; hi-tech ICUs; and cardiovascular, thoracic, and surgical oncology departments.

https://www.jns.org/wire/haifa-university-inaugurates-medical-school-to-meet-israels-pressing-needs-and-strengthen-the-north/

Top training for top nurses at top hospital. The current 3-month SPARC training course for nurses at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center includes participants from Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, South Africa and the US. It selects innovative nurses who have ideas for life-saving solutions that they can develop into practice.

https://nocamels.com/2024/06/top-israeli-hospital-fosters-innovation-by-practical-creative-nurses/

Technology Pioneer. (TY OurCrowd) The World Economic Forum selected Israel’s BrainQ (see here previously) for the 2024 cohort of WEF Technology Pioneers. BrainQ, will contribute cutting-edge insights and expertise to the Forum’s global initiatives over the next two years, helping to scale their impact.

https://initiatives.weforum.org/technology-pioneers/organization-details/brainq/0010X00004MxJJ2QAN

United Hatzalah Gala raises $20 million. It was Eden Golan day at United Hatzalah’s gala fundraiser event in Manhattan. After delivering the first US performance of her song “Hurricane” and other songs, she received United Hatzalah’s “Hero Award”. The event raised $20 million for ambulances, e-bikes, and other equipment.

https://vinnews.com/2024/06/05/united-hatzalahs-nyc-gala-raises-20-million-in-strong-rebuke-to-protests/

https://www.jpost.com/j-spot/article-805174