RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/21/the-lethal-narcissism-of-joe-biden/

What is more important: Joe Biden winning the votes of America’s entitled coastal elites, or Israel protecting itself from an army called the Party of God that has sworn itself to the eradication of the ‘cancerous’ Jews from the Middle East? This would have been a no-brainer a few years ago. Most people – aside from Israelophobic hotheads on the far right and hard left – would have agreed that defending the Jewish State from fanatics who view Jews as ‘evil’ and ‘blasphemous’ is of greater moral import than a president’s longing to get back in the good books of woke voters. And yet today, such simple moral clarity is in alarmingly short supply.

Right now, nothing fills the Biden set with greater dread than the prospect of war between Israel and Hezbollah. And it’s not because they’re peaceniks. Biden voted in favour of the catastrophic invasion of Iraq in 2003. He was vice-president to the drone-happy Barack Obama, who dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone. In Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan. If Biden is now of an anti-war bent, it’s been a recent conversion. No, it is self-preservation, not anti-militarism, that underpins Biden’s fear of an Israel-Hezbollah war. It’s the potential death of his presidency, not potential death in the Middle East, that keeps him up at night.

Tensions have exploded between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terror group whose name means Party of God. Unsurprisingly, the West’s ‘anti-war’ activist class has had little to say about Hezbollah’s blitz on northern Israel. Hezbollah, which is allied with Hamas, has been firing rockets into Israel almost every day since Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October, with the aim of ‘pulling Israeli forces’ away from Gaza. That is, with the aim of aiding the anti-Semites of Hamas in their holy war against the Jewish nation. Entire ‘swathes of northern Israel’ have been engulfed by fire as a result of Hezbollah’s rockets. Tens of thousands have been evacuated.

Now, Israel is talking about taking decisive action against Hezbollah. You can almost hear the West’s activist class buffing their anti-Israel placards and rummaging around for their keffiyehs in order that they might hit the streets and damn Israel for plotting yet another ‘genocide’. In these people’s minds, fried by the binary moralism of identity politics, ‘white’ Israel is to blame for everything in the Middle East, while ‘brown’ Gaza and Lebanon are pure, sad victims, responsible for nothing. If Israel were officially to declare war on Hezbollah, they would rage and splutter, with not one thought for the rockets from Lebanon that have rained on Israel almost every day for the best part of eight months.

Even Hezbollah’s threats against Cyprus were not enough to rouse the concern of the West’s supposed peace lobby. This week, the leader of the Party of God – Hassan Nasrallah – warned that Cyprus would feel his wrath in the event of war between Israel and Hezbollah. It is presumably the fact that Cyprus has let Israel use its territory for military training that led to this outrageous threat against its sovereign integrity and social peace. Where are the peaceniks? Where are the anti-war activists who’ve been marching every week against Israeli militarism? It’s almost as if it’s not war they hate, so much as the world’s only Jewish state.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20712/biden-administration-seeks-to-silence-consensus

The letter provides irrefutable evidence and undeniable testimony that the humanitarian aid provided to Gaza, ostensibly to the civilian population, is invariably commandeered by Hamas: The letter cites statements to this effect by the US embassy in Israel, the US government itself, the IDF, UNRWA – and even Fatah officials.

“The shocking truth is that the United States is providing material support to a terrorist organization that is waging a brutal war against the only democratic ally the US has in the middle east, and the US-funded and trained Palestinian Authority Security Forces are no different than Hamas. Exposing the terrorist nature of the US’s ‘partner for peace’ is ‘inconvenient,’ to put it politely, so the Administration has decided to attack the messenger in order to suppress the message.” – Meir Deutsch, Director General, Regavim.

Biden Administration seeks to silence consensus civil society organizations in Israel with sanctions typically used against terrorists: “A draconian measure that harks back to the days of colonialist oppression.”

A team of legal experts submitted a sharply worded letter to the US State Department following the announcement of Executive Order 14115 sanctioning the Tzav 9 Movement. “The Executive Order is an anti-democratic attack on free speech and the right to protest.”

Earlier this week (Monday), following publication on Friday, 14 June 2024 of a US Executive Order imposing sanctions on the Israeli protest movement Tzav 9, a team of lawyers headed by Attorneys Marc Zell, Noam Schreiber, Jerome Marcus and other experts in US and international law, on behalf of the Regavim Movement, sent a request for clarification to the US State Department.

The sharply-worded letter decried the Executive Order as vague and unsubstantiated, describing it as an attempt to stifle free speech and the right to protest. The legal team called upon the US government to explain both the basis for the sanctions and the practical implications for Tzav 9 and Regavim, one of several civil society organizations that helped the Tzav 9 activists organize.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/06/israel-embodies-the-tension-at-the-heart-of-the-west/

Alongside high-tech marvels, a love of ancient traditions

El Al Airlines, the flagship carrier of the State of Israel, is the only commercial airline in the world that equips its fleet with anti-missile-defense systems. At times, that might have seemed excessive. But in 2024, no one is questioning that necessity as El Al 787s take off and land at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, just an hour away by car from the Gaza Strip.

Security considerations have forced El Al to become arguably the world’s most modern and technologically advanced airline. It may also be the world’s most traditional. Passengers flying on El Al have access to a host of Western movies and TV shows, but many choose instead to spend their time 30,000 feet in the air watching or listening to one of El Al’s many Torah-study videos and podcasts. As I listened to one while above the Atlantic last week, I couldn’t help but notice the contrast: the ancient words of the Torah alongside the modern flourishes of the 787 aircraft. In many ways, it’s that tension, between the truly ancient and the decidedly modern, that defines the Jewish state.

After I exited the plane in Tel Aviv, I passed through the arrivals hallway in Ben Gurion Airport, which I had walked through many times as a child. This time, the hallway looked different. From beginning to end, it was lined with posters of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas — the Jewish state ensures that no visitor who arrives at Ben Gurion leaves the airport unaware of the ordeal the country now faces.

My face transformed from frown to smile as my gaze shifted from the hostage posters to my two cousins, both members of the IDF, who had come to pick me up. This was a tearful reunion, for my family had narrowly escaped the tragedy faced by so many other Jewish families in Israel since October 7. On that day, when my younger cousin was home for the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, his unit was manning a base in southern Israel near the Gaza Strip. When Hamas invaded, they murdered one of his best friends. In the weeks and months that followed, my older cousin was one of the heroes tasked with fighting Hamas in Gaza. He told me of the horror he felt as he accidentally stepped on a land mine, likely one of the many booby traps the Hamas savages had placed for soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces. When he stepped off the mine, however, something miraculous happened: It didn’t explode. As I walked with my cousins past the airport’s large statue of David Ben-Gurion, I thanked God for the chance to see them again, and I remembered the words of Israel’s first prime minister: “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”

 www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

This week’s compilation of Israel’s outsize contributions to humanity starts off, most appropriately, with celebrating the rescue of four hostages and stories of their life during imprisonment.

We are fast coming into July fourth and the 48th anniversary of the Entebbe Operation launched in response to the hijacking of an international civilian passenger flight by Palestinian terrorists who diverted the flight to Uganda, where they landed at Entebbe Airport with 248 passenger hostages. 148 non-Israeli hostages were released. The 94 remaining passengers, most of whom were Israelis, and the 12-member Air France crew continued to be held as hostages.

The daring raid by the IDF coinciding with the American tri-centennial, rescued the passengers and the crew with three exceptions. Jonathan Netanyahu, brother of Israel’s Prime Minister was killed commanding the historic rescue.

On November 28, 2002 in Mombasa, Kenya, a two-pronged attack  was launched against an Israeli-owned hotel and a plane belonging to Arkia Airlines. An all-terrain vehicle crashed through a barrier outside the Paradise Hotel killing 13 and injuring 80. Arkia airlines and Israeli tourists flew home to Israel escorted by Israeli F-15 fighter jets deployed by the IDF.

Bravo to the IDF and its determination to rescue hostages and to Michael Ordman for presenting truth in the face of libels and bias.  rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
“The diamonds are in our hands”. In one of the most daring operations since Oct 7, Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Shlomi Ziv, and Andrei Kozlov, who were kidnapped from the Nova party, were rescued in “Operation Arnon.” This is how the action unfolded, minute by minute. Some other very good links below.
https://www.israelunwired.com/revealed-the-diamonds-are-in-our-hands-minute-by-minute-in-operation-arnon/
https://israfan.com/p/israeli-forces-rescue-hostages-gaza  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXxl0cptnJ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQO76ZTce08  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCXQjkHW4o8
 
Israelis never miss an opportunity.  What do you think Almog Meir Jan did during his 8 months as a hostage of Hamas?  He learned two languages of course.  Arabic from watching Al Jazeera, and Russian from speaking with his fellow captive Andrey Kozlov.  He also had been able to keep a journal while in captivity.
https://worldisraelnews.com/rescued-hostage-learned-arabic-and-russian-in-captivity/
 
Israelí hero – Arnon Zmora. (TY Rabbi Taff) Just a few of the tributes to Arnon Zmora who led the elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit that rescued 4 Israeli hostages in Gaza. 
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hero-of-israel-thousands-pay-last-respects-to-officer-killed-in-hostage-rescue-op/  https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-ultimate-sacrifice-remembering-arnon-zmora-%D7%96%D7%9C/
https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/tributes-pour-in-for-sweet-and-charming-father-of-two-idf-officer-36-killed-in-hostage-rescue-f0zuxdwc  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MRSUNBksgA
 
Still recycling. Jack (Tato) Bigio is co-founder and CEO of Israel’s UBQ (see here previously). He describes the purpose of his garbage recycling company, and about the loss of key employees on Oct 7. It hasn’t affected his desire to protect the environment or his determination to avoid being taken-over.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-ubq-turns-household-waste-into-organic-plastic-1001481267
 
Wedding at last. (TY Sam Kramer) A year and a half ago Nadav took two bullets in the stomach, was seriously injured but managed to neutralize the terrorist who shot him and his father while they were spending Shabbat in Jerusalem. Thankfully, he recovered, rejoined his unit, and on Jun 13 he got married! Mazel Tov!
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-since-jerusalem-terror-shooting-seriously-hurt-idf-officer-puts-uniform-on/  https://x.com/MOSSADil/status/1801282364124852309
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Triggering your brain to heal your body. A detailed article about Israel’s Remepy (see here previously). It has completed three clinical trials involving 200 patients, using its digital molecules to treat cancer, MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment) and Parkinson’s. It aims to bring its first product to market within three years.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-app-can-trigger-your-brain-into-enhanced-healing/
 
Championing mental health. In Nov 2023, Olessia Kantor founded Israel’s Lev Esh (Fire Heart) project to address the mental health crisis that has intensified since Oct 7. Lev Esh serves as a vital lifeline, connecting trauma sufferers with a network of practitioners, including psychologists, psychiatrists, and holistic therapists.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-804942   https://www.sashacenter.com/lev-esh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0v4FaNj5BY  (In Hebrew only)
 
 
ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL
 
She loves Tech. Two female-led startups will be representing Israel at the “She Loves Tech” competition semi-finals in Amsterdam. They are Feminai (wearable medical cancer screening) and JOB360 (see here previously).
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/skmrudqbc   https://www.feminai.com/
 
Arab swims for Israel at Olympics. (TY Hazel) With his 100-backstroke victory at the Israeli Olympic Trials on Thursday, Adam Maraana became the first Arab citizen of Israel to qualify for the Olympics since 1976, and the first ever in the sport of swimming. His 53.60 seconds was almost a second faster than his previous best.
https://swimswam.com/adam-maraana-set-to-become-first-arab-swimmer-to-represent-israel-at-the-olympics/
 
Joint meeting of IDF, USA & Arab military. (TY Hazel) The heads of the IDF, US Central Command, met in Manama Bahrain with senior generals from Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. Although not publicized, it signified regional security cooperation.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/artc-idf-chief-meets-senior-arab-officers-in-bahrain-to-discuss-security-cooperation
 
Protecting friendly ports. Israel Aerospace Industries has installed its ELI 3320 Port Guard coastal and offshore critical infrastructure protection system at an Asian port. Port Guard’s sensors track all events on land, air and underwater, feeding information into the command-and-control system, where it is analyzed.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-iai-deploys-port-protection-system-in-asian-country-1001481378
 
Saudi textbooks remove anti-Israel material. The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE) has reported that Saudi Arabia has removed practically all antisemitism and anti-Israel material from its schoolbooks. It no longer teaches that Israel is racist or denies Jewish history.
https://www.jns.org/saudi-arabia-removes-antisemitism-from-schoolbooks/
 
Huge rally for Israel in Toronto. Some 50,000 Israel supporters joined the annual Walk with Israel annual march in Toronto, Canada. It was described as the largest gathering of Jews in Canada’s history.
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/more-than-50000-march-walk-with-israel-toronto-rally
https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-50000-canadian-jews-march-in-solidarity-with-israel/
 
Manhattan Institute award for Douglas. One of Israel’s best advocates, UK’s Douglas Murray, won the 2024 Alexander Hamilton Award in May. He chose to speak on the subject “Choose Life, Not the Death Cult”.  So true – please watch the whole 23 minutes!  The 2nd video is of his more recent (10 min) speech in France.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rud4Jq51Lx8  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFi3O4Dg5rI
https://manhattan.institute/article/2024-alexander-hamilton-awards-ayaan-hirsi-ali-and-douglas-murray
https://manhattan.institute/event/2024-alexander-hamilton-award-dinner

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20709/israel-work-permits-palestinians

Prior to the October 7 massacre, more than 170,000 Palestinians were working in Israel, constituting an important source of income for the Palestinian economy…. The Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who were permitted to work in Israel received many of the same rights as Israeli workers, including health insurance and pension plans.

“I will be able to earn about $120 dollars a day [in Israel], while I cannot even earn $250 dollars a month in Gaza. Due to the difficult political and economic conditions, the people of the Gaza Strip suffer greatly from poverty and are unable to build a future for their children like their parents.” — Mohammed Kamal, a 38-year-old father of four from the Gaza Strip, newarab.com, March 24, 2022.

It appears that the murderers and rapists from the Gaza Strip saw Israel’s goodwill gestures as an indication of Israel’s weakness. In addition, they apparently saw the controversy in Israel surrounding the Israeli government’s judicial reform plan as a sign that Israel had become extremely weak, especially when anti-government protesters threatened to boycott military reserve service.

The October 7 atrocities serve as a reminder that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about improving the living conditions of the Palestinians or strengthening their economy. Instead, the conflict is about the desire of the majority of Palestinians to slaughter Jews and destroy Israel.

Pre-and post-October 7 public opinion polls have consistently demonstrated that the majority of Palestinians back Hamas and believe that the atrocities committed on that day were “correct.”

Now, Palestinians can blame Hamas not only for dragging them into a disastrous war with Israel, but also for having left tens of thousands of families jobless in the wake of their loss of permits to work in Israel.

Instead of brainwashing and indoctrinating their people against Israel and Jews, Palestinian leaders need to be required to focus on creating job opportunities and boosting the Palestinian economy, which the flow of international handouts have relieved them from doing.

The Palestinians would also greatly benefit if they would realize that there are actually dire repercussions when they “bite the hand that feeds them.”

After the October 7 atrocities, it would be absurd to assume that Israel will once more welcome tens of thousands of laborers from the Gaza Strip. Many of those workers to whom Israel opened its doors were apparently working in Israel by day, and by night returning to Gaza and providing Hamas with highly detailed maps and drawings of every house in Israel’s border communities, and reports about everyone in them, including the pet dogs.

A massacre was not the outcome many had expected after the Israelis’ willingness to help to improve the lives of their Palestinian neighbors.

“Black-and-white depictions of Gaza before the war are not only inaccurate but fail to capture the color-rich realities that existed, in which the potential for coexistence and peace was present in daily occurrences; human-to-human connections between Palestinian workers and Israelis were a window of what the future could look like.” — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, former resident of the Gaza Strip, x.com, June 16, 2024.

https://truthofthemiddleeast.com/herta-muller/?fbclid=I

The writer and Nobel Prize winner read this text at the October 7 Forum of “Jewish Culture in Sweden” in Stockholm on May 25.
She is one of the greatest contemporary German writers. Now, Nobel Prize winner Herta Muller has written a shocking wake-up call to the West – The madness that has gripped parts of Western society since Hamas attacked Israel
They turned into monsters

In most narratives about the war in Gaza, the war does not begin where it began. The war did not start in Gaza. The war began on October 7, exactly 50 years after Egypt and Syria invaded Israel. Palestinian Hamas terrorists committed an unimaginable massacre in Israel. They filmed themselves as heroes and celebrated their bloodbath. Their victory celebrations continued back home in Gaza, where the terrorists dragged severely abused hostages and presented them as spoils of war to the jubilant Palestinian population. This macabre jubilation extended all the way to Berlin. In the Neukölln district there was dancing on the streets and the Palestinian organization Samidoun distributed sweets. The internet was buzzing with happy comments.

More than 1,200 people died in the massacre. After torture, mutilation and rape, 239 people were abducted. This massacre by Hamas is a total derailment from civilization. There is an archaic horror in this bloodlust that I no longer thought possible in this day and age. This massacre has the pattern of annihilation through pogroms, a pattern that the Jews have known for centuries. That is why the whole country has been traumatized, because the founding of the state of Israel was intended to protect against such pogroms. And until October 7, it was believed to be protected. Although Hamas has been sitting on the state of Israel’s neck since 1987. The Hamas founding charter clearly stated that the destruction of the Jews was the goal, and that “death for God is our noblest wish”.

Even though there have been changes to this charter since then, it is clear that nothing has changed: the destruction of the Jews and the destruction of Israel remain the goal and desire of Hamas. This is exactly the same as in Iran. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the destruction of the Jews has also been state doctrine since its foundation, that is, since 1979.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-806327

Hamas and other terrorist organizations proclaim “Free Palestine” as code words for destroying Israel and committing genocide.

Unfortunately, the failure to understand what Hamas is has led many people to support it as an Islamic organization that embraces monotheism and a “national (Palestinian) liberation movement” – with disastrous consequences. It claims to be both but is neither.

The problem is that although Islam claims to have a moral code with values and ethics, it does not apply to non-Muslims (“infidels”). This became apparent on October 7. That’s why Muslims ignore and deny the massacre and support Hamas’s attack in the name of Islam. Infidels don’t matter and can be killed with impunity. Support for such savagery, moreover, is taught in mosques and Islamic schools and institutions around the world. Islamic leaders declare, “Death to Israel; Death to America.”

Is that consistent with Islamic claims to be monotheistic and connected to the tradition of Abraham?

Is that what Muslims believe that Allah/God wants?

Hamas and other terrorist organizations proclaim “Free Palestine” as code words for destroying Israel and committing genocide. To gain legitimacy and acceptance, they present themselves as representatives of Islam. For this reason, the majority of Islamic authorities, Muslims, and numerous non-Muslims support Hamas.

But Hamas is an Islamic totalitarian organization that opposes any form of individuality, creativity, or human rights. Life has no meaning outside of its rules. Although it uses Islamic religious terms, such as Jihad, to justify its atrocities, it is contrary to any genuine religious belief.

https://www.jns.org/secular-coercion-and-double-standards/

Thousands of worshipers gathered at Charles Clore Park on Sunday morning to celebrate Eid al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice. The practice at this location, where Tel Aviv meets Jaffa, is nothing new. The grassy open space along the coast of the Mediterranean, perfect for picnics and other outings, is a choice venue for nightly family break-fast barbecues during the Islamic month of Ramadan.

Nor is it out of the ordinary for Muslim-Arab citizens of Israel to engage in gender separation during prayers, which they did at the event in question—with physical barriers dividing between the men at the front and the women at back.

Two things made this annual religious ceremony at the location in question noteworthy. One is that this year, it included signs calling for a ceasefire, with the slogan: “The innocent people of Gaza are in Jaffa’s heart.” But even that wasn’t novel, judging by the behavior of Israel’s Arab citizens, including residents of Jaffa, during Operation Guardian of the Walls against Hamas in Gaza in 2021.

Far more significant was the apathy to the happening on the part of all the secular leftists who spent years blocking any attempt by Orthodox Jews to separate men and women in public areas. The adage that “it takes one to know one” is particularly apt here, as the chattering classes constantly accuse the right of opposing “freedom,” while being guilty of just that.

After the Knesset elections on Nov. 1, 2022, while Benjamin Netanyahu was in talks to form what would become the current governing coalition, the Religious Zionist and United Torah Judaism parties were demanding that legislation be enacted to enable gender segregation at publicly sponsored events without its being deemed discriminatory. Their aim was to prevent a repeat of a court-ordered cancellation in 2019 of a sold-out concert by renowned singer Motty Steinmetz at the Afula Municipal Park.

The ruling—one of many that backed anti-Orthodox appeals over the years—was spurred by a “Women’s Lobby” petition challenging the separate seating that had been arranged in advance for the mainly haredi audience.