RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-pregnant-woman-critically-injured-in-shooting-attack-in-samaria

A pregnant woman was among six people injured after 9 p.m. in a shooting attack outside the commmunity of Ofra, north of Jerusalem. Her condition is critical. The others are in light to moderate condition.

“Shots were fired at Israeli civilians standing at a bus station from a passing Palestinian vehicle. IDF troops nearby responded by firing towards the vehicle, which fled. IDF troops are currently searching the area,” the IDF tweeted.

https://carolineglick.com/israels-gatekeepers-vs-democracy/

Israel has no written constitution – but all the same, it is steeped in a deep and dangerous constitutional crisis. In the balance hangs nothing less than the country’s ability to remain a democracy, where the people elect their leaders and the elected leaders govern the country.

Presently, a powerful group of unelected, self-appointed “gatekeepers” is challenging the foundations of Israel’s democratic order. These self-empowered “gatekeepers” seek to end Israeli democracy by acting as a wedge between the people and their elected leaders and preventing those leaders from using the power vested in them by voters.

The present crisis was revealed starkly on Tuesday in an otherwise unimportant and deeply boring hearing on Israel’s dairy industry at the Knesset’s Economic Affairs Committee.

But to understand what happened, it is important to go back to November 5. That day, Deputy attorney-general Dina Zilber was asked to represent the position of the government regarding a controversial bill that would block state funding to artists and productions that campaign against Israel. Rather than present the government’s position, Zilber brutally attacked the bill. In an outburst entirely bereft of legal argumentation, Zilber effectively said that Israel was losing its soul.

This statement was in keeping with Zilber’s long record of abusing her power as the deputy attorney-general to advance her far-Left political agenda on everything from undermining the development of Israeli communities beyond the armistice lines to requiring religious groups to either permit men and women to participate in their events or be denied access to public facilities.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Israeli innovations in this week’s newsletter are illuminating – so very appropriate for Chanukah, the Jewish festival of lights. Israel’s “Maccabees” are making the world safer with medical treatments and devices, genetic matching, paramedics, safe harbor, security for the G20 Summit, the UN in Africa and South Korea, and protection against mortars, terrorists, cyber attacks, dangerous driving and toxic fuel.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Cell-therapy for advanced kidney disease. Israeli biotech KidneyCure is developing personalized cell-therapy technology for treating advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD). An estimated 30 million adults in the US have CKD (most are undiagnosed) with 600,000 on dialysis.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3750177,00.html

Non-Hodgins lymphoma treatment approved. Israel’s Teva has received US FDA approval for its Truxima treatment for several conditions of the deadly non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. Truxima is a bio-similar (tested low-cost alternative) to Rituxan (Rituximab) manufactured by Roche.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3750979,00.html
https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/InformationOnDrugs/ApprovedDrugs/ucm627035.htm

Good results in H. pylori treatment. Israeli biotech Redhill announced positive top-line results from its confirmatory Phase 3 study using its TALICIA treatment for H. pylori Infection. Of 455 trial participants, the antibiotic-resistant infection was eradicated completely in 85% of cases compared to 58% using an alternative.
https://www.redhillbio.com/RedHill/Templates/showpage.asp?TMID=178&FID=1384&PID=0&IID=10196

Giving an amputee a reason to live. 72-year old Israeli Yehuda lost both legs after an infection and was considering ending his life. But when volunteers from NGO United Hatzalah’s ‘Ten Kavod’ project heard of his plight, they took him swimming in the sea and even on a yacht trip. It has totally changed his life.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-team-of-angels-gives-amputee-a-reason-to-live/

Boosting Israel’s life-science powerhouse. Israeli NGO 8400 Network is building a network of 400 top Israeli health-tech brains over 8 years (hence 8400). These leaders are using the best practices of global life-sciences ecosystems to initiate projects that promote growth in the health-related industry in Israel.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-medicine-converges-with-technology-israel-faces-tremendous-opportunity/

EU award for cancer breath-test inventor. Israel Technion Professor Hossam Haick (see here) received the European Commission Innovation Prize in Lisbon for inventing the SniffPhone, a smartphone device to detect cancer in the breath. He was “the most innovative scientist realizing an idea in the field of electronic systems”.
http://nocamels.com/2018/11/hossam-haick-technion-eu-award-sniffphone/

Nursing training for Ethiopian-Israelis. Israeli NGO JobKatif has established Achotenu – a program at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital, for Ethiopian-Israelis to earn a degree in nursing and long-term employment. The current program has 58 students including those in this inspiring video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCnL9EzT9D8 http://www.achotenu.org/stories/

Israeli leads the cardiovascular world. (TY Hazel) Israel is number one in the world for medical patents per capita. These patents have led to numerous revolutionary cardiovascular procedures and devices. E.g. aortic valve replacement, mitral valve repair, tiny pacemakers, heart monitoring chips and especially stents.
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Shaare-Zedek-lauds-Israeli-innovations-in-cardiology-572747

Charity’s 3,000th transplant. Israeli charity Ezer Mizion is celebrating the 3,000-milestone for the number of life-saving stem-cell transplants performed as a direct result of its bone-marrow registry. Prior to Ezer Mizion, chances of a Jewish patient finding a genetic match was 8%. Now, 76% of requests receive a positive response.
http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/because-of-you-57/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/the-u-n-gives-palestinian-terrorists-a-free-pass/

The General Assembly expresses solidarity with the Palestinians by endorsing violence against Israeli civilians.

On Thursday the United Nations had an opportunity to speak with moral clarity and denounce the terrorist group Hamas. Instead, the General Assembly (UNGA) rejected a U.S.-sponsored resolution that called for an end to violence, encouraged intra-Palestinian reconciliation, and condemned terrorism.

A disappointed Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., lamented, “Over the years, the UN has voted to condemn Israel over 500 times . . . and not one single resolution condemning Hamas. That, more than anything else, is a condemnation of the United Nations itself.”

Moreover, the U.N. indicated that Jews’ praying at the Western Wall is more worthy of condemnation than Hamas’s lobbing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians. The UNGA passed another resolution calling for an end to “Israel’s occupation . . . including of East Jerusalem,” the location of Judaism’s holiest shrine.

This was the seventh anti-Israel resolution in as many days. Last week, on November 29, the U.N. celebrated its annual Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People with a series of anti-Israel speakers and resolutions highly critical of the Jewish state.

Marc Lamont Hill, one of the speakers, endorsed violence against Israelis and a boycott of the Jewish state and called for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” That slogan is widely understood to be a euphemism for destroying Israel, and it led to his termination from CNN.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/refute-palestinian-lies-to-promote-mideast-peace-1544139570

‘Our demand for fairness for Israel is actually a demand for peace,” declared Nikki Haley in July. It’s important for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to stress fairness, and above all truth, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because Palestinian rejection of peace frequently hides behind falsehoods. Ending the acceptance of these falsehoods is critical to putting Middle East diplomacy on a path toward peace.

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.

Mr. Clinton may have been surprised, but the Palestinian denial of any historic Jewish connection to the land is nothing new, and it continues. Since the Palestinians know that hardly anyone outside the Arab who would agree with them, they rarely say it in English.

Oman’s unique geo-strategic location has enticed China’s recent $10BN investment in an industrial park at Oman’s southern port of Duqm on the northern Indian Ocean/Arabian Sea. Moreover, the Port of Rotterdam – the largest port in Europe – has played a key role in the impressive expansion of Oman’s Port of Sohar, located near the Strait of Hormuz and one of the fastest growing ports in the world. Furthermore, Denmark’s Maersk, the largest shipping company in the world, has played a major role in the development of Oman’s largest port, Salalah, which is situated near Yemen on the northern Indian Ocean.

Oman adheres to the moderate Ibadiyyah branch of Islam, and is ruled by the effective, but ailing, 78-year-old Sultan Qaboos, who is diversifying the economy, attracting foreign investment and moderating internal tribal rivalry, which could haunt the country upon his departure. Homeland security-driven attempts are being made to reduce the number of foreign laborers, who account for about 40% of Oman’s 4.8MN population.

Oman is located at the strategically critical Strait of Hurmuz, which is the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean (the Gulf of Oman/Indian Ocean), the route of 20% of the global petroleum.

Oman is sandwiched between Iran’s megalomaniacal Ayatollahs (21 nautical miles apart), Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – which are threatened by the Ayatollahs’ subversion, terrorism and conventional military – and the volcanic Yemen, which is a major platform of Islamic terrorism, extending the Ayatollahs’ reach in their attempt to topple the House of Saud.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13391/palestinians-hamas-fatah-difference

It is supposedly fine for Mahmoud Abbas and his officials to condemn Hamas on a daily basis. It is supposedly not fine, however, for the US administration to condemn Hamas for its terrorist attacks against Israel.

“The proposed [unseen] US resolution is harmful to the Palestinians’ right of resistance.” — Emad Omar, Palestinian political analyst.

This is obviously a short-lived honeymoon that will end the day after the UN General Assembly vote on the anti-Hamas resolution. The morning after the vote, Abbas will wake up to the realization that Hamas was a strange bedfellow indeed.

Has Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas changed his position toward his rivals in Hamas? This is the question that some Palestinians have been asking in the wake of Abbas’s opposition to a US-sponsored draft resolution that asks the United Nations General Assembly to condemn Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets at Israel and instigating violence.

Abbas’s hatred of Hamas is far from secret. For years – and until today – Abbas has used every available platform to launch scathing attacks on Hamas.

He accused Hamas of foiling Arab efforts to end the dispute with his ruling Fatah faction.

He accused Hamas of masterminding a series of explosions targeting the homes of some of his senior Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip.

He accused Hamas of staging a coup in 2007 against his Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip and seeking to establish a separate Palestinian there.

He accused Hamas of standing behind the botched assassination attempt on his prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, in the Gaza Strip earlier this year. He even made a metaphoric remark that, “shoes will be pouring on the heads of Hamas leaders.”

In his last speech at the UN General Assembly, Abbas repeated his charges against Hamas and threatened to impose new punitive measures against the Gaza Strip unless Hamas allows his government to assume full control over the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.