RUTHFULLY YOURS

The evolution of President Trump’s stance on the Palestinian issue reflects extrication from conventional wisdom, which was embraced by his predecessors and the establishment of the State Department, academia and the media, while systematically crashed against the rocks of Middle East reality.

In contrast to his predecessors, Trump and his advisors – National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Special Emissary Jason Greenblatt and Ambassador David Friedman – have concluded that the bolstering of US national security, morality and common sense behooves the US to take a realistic – and not an artificially neutral – position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Moral equivalence has not advanced national security.

The timing of the official release of President Trump’s policy – the eve of the September 11 memorial of the 3,000 fatalities and 6,000 injured – underlines the awareness that advancing national and homeland security mandates a clear differentiation between entities which combat terrorism systematically and effectively (e.g. the US and Israel), on the one hand, and those who produce, train, educate and incite terrorists (e.g. the Palestinian leadership, Iran’s Ayatollahs and other Islamic regimes), on the other hand.

Unlike his predecessor at the White House, Trump and his advisors realize that the restoration of the US’ posture of deterrence is a precondition to the enhancement of the US’ national and homeland security, requiring the fending off – and not succumbing to – pressure, threats and terrorism. Hence, the disavowal of the self-defeating 2015 Iran Deal, the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State and the restructuring of US policy on the Palestinian issue.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271286/israel-beefs-its-military-ari-lieberman

Israel’s shrillest critics often accuse the Jewish State of exaggerating security threats. Some detractors have even characterized Israel’s security conscience leaders as “paranoid.” We often hear them spew tired and meaningless banalities like “peace of the brave” and “risks for peace” in connection with their calls for unilateral Israeli concessions. But Israelis, who have been compelled to fight seven wars with their Arab neighbors since acquiring hard-fought statehood, know better. They are keenly aware that peace treaties with authoritarian leaders and two-bit kings, generals and sheikhs are worth no more than the paper on which they’re written.

Nothing underscores this concept better than outrageous but unsurprising statements recently made by Jordan’s former prime minister, Abdelsalam al-Majali. In an August 18 televised interview, al-Majali, who was a signatory to the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty, stated, “The Arabs do not have any power. If we ever have military power, will we let them keep Haifa? We’ll take it.” And just in case anyone had any doubts as to the meaning of his words he added, “If tomorrow we become stronger and can take Haifa by force, will we really decline just because we have an agreement with them?”

The comments were made in Arabic to an Arabic audience. This is typical. Arab leaders often speak in forked tongues when the topic centers on Israel and have become adept at this type doublespeak. When addressing Western audiences, they moderate their tones and often employ euphemisms and ambiguities to mask their real intentions. But it is an entirely different affair when they address their fellow kinsmen where their true pernicious intentions are exposed.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/god-said-be-fruitful-and-multiply-1536705344

I was heading for the final leg of my flight to Tel Aviv when something curious happened. As I crossed the Brussels airport, I was joined by other travelers. At each corridor, the crew swelled in size. Kippah-capped men carrying heavy briefcases, young couples wearing Star-of-David embroidered backpacks, older Hasidic rabbis who looked like Moses, families with infants in strollers and several toddlers trudging behind—we were all heading to the same place.

At the gate, I felt as if I’d crashed a family party. A couple of young boys zipped through the crowd on scooters like dive-bombers on a mission, with tzitzis (knotted fringes) and peyes (long side-curls) flying in the air.

Where I had started, the airport was hushed and gray, a space designed for efficiency. Its unadorned industrial motif was utilitarian, if not nihilistic. At my departure gate, I found a vibrant and chaotic scene, alive with color, noise and frolicking kids. I relaxed. As a pediatrician, I recognized the messiness; I work in that universe each day.

My experience vividly displayed how two countries, Belgium and Israel, view children. Israel treasures them. According to a 2018 report from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the fertility rate for Israeli women stands at a robust 3.1, nearly double the level of most European nations. The Belgian fertility rate is 1.7, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271284/oslo-twenty-five-history-delusion-kenneth-levin
Twenty-five years ago, the world watched as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with Palestinian leader and arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn. The Oslo process, launched with the September 13, 1993 signing of the Declaration of Principles as President Clinton looked on, was supposed to lead to genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It never happened because Oslo was based on a delusion, a false belief by many Israelis that they had a partner for peace.

The truth was readily evident. On the evening of the White House ceremony, Arafat broadcast a speech on Jordanian television assuring Palestinians, and the Arab world more broadly, that they should understand Oslo in terms of the Palestine National Council’s 1974 decision. This was a reference to the so-called “plan of phases,” according to which the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) would acquire whatever territory it could by negotiations, then use that land as a base for pursuing Israel’s annihilation.

Why did Oslo’s supporters deny the truth? The Arab siege of Israel had been underway for nearly half a century, since the Jewish State’s founding. Invariably under conditions of such chronic besiegement – whether involving minorities marginalized and victimized by the surrounding majority or small states whose neighbors seek their destruction – elements of the population under assault will shun reality. They will fool themselves into believing that sufficient self-reform and concessions will win relief. They do so out of desperate longing for respite and despite typically overwhelming evidence in the rhetoric and actions of their attackers that the besieged are merely indulging in wishful thinking.

The traditional position of left-leaning Israeli parties had been that Israel needed to await a peace partner who would renounce terror and recognize Israel’s right to exist. But in the years preceding Oslo, this reasonable stance had eroded in the face of the unrelenting siege and the Left’s alienation from governments in which, since 1977, the right-leaning Likud had largely dominated. Growing numbers on the Israeli Left – including an overwhelming majority within the nation’s academic, cultural and media elites – concluded the major impediment to peace was the Israeli Right and its unwillingness to make necessary concessions. The Labor Party’s victory in the 1992 election gave the Left the opportunity to act on its delusion.

VeryGoodNewsIsrael.
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Alpha radiation destroys solid tumors safely. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s Alpha Tau Medical uses alpha radiation to treat various types of solid tumors. Alpha DaRT (Dіffusіng Alpha-emіtters Radіatіon Therapy), developed at Tel Aviv University, is to begin clinical trials in Massachusetts USA.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3744829,00.html
https://www.massdevice.com/alpha-tau-wins-approval-to-test-cancer-targeting-device-in-the-u-s/
https://www.alphatau.com/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/ja2UQdFOueM?rel=0

Israeli leukemia treatment approved for UK children. The breakthrough CAR-T personalized leukemia therapy devised by Professor Zelig Eshhar of Israel’s Weizmann Institute (see here) is now available in the UK. The National Health Service will fund Kymriah – the CAR-T treatment commercialized by Novartis.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/04/nhs-fund-game-changing-personalised-cancer-drug/

Good results for colon capsule scan. Israeli biotech Check-Cap announced positive interim results for its post-CE approval study of the C-Scan system Version 3. Check-Cap’s capsule detects polyps (cancerous or precancerous) in patients without them having to undergo a colonoscopy or even any preparation.
https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/check-cap-announces-promising-interim-results-from-its-ongoing-post-ce-approval-study-of-c-scan-system-version-3-2018-09-04

Preventing hemorrhagic shock. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University and Hadassah Medical Center have developed software named VitalMiner to predict blood pressure instability in intensive care patients. It can give several extra hours’ warning of impending hypotension, where vital organs are starved of oxygenated blood.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-us-researchers-develop-software-that-predicts-blood-pressure-instability/

“Natural” protein to treat osteoporosis. Ben Gurion University scientists have discovered a natural protein in the body that can be tailored to treat osteoporosis. The protein can be modified to inhibit its standard bone destruction function, which avoids many of the side effects common with current treatments.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2002979

Safer transplants. I reported previously (see here) on Israel’s Orgenesis which was developing a treatment for diabetes based on replacing cells in the body. Ogenesis is now working with Ben Gurion University to develop a cell transplantation process that avoids being attacked by the immune system.
http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/orgenesis_bgu.aspx

Auto-adjusting orthopedic brace. Israeli startup OrthoSpin is developing an electric brace to help with bone lengthening, setting complex fractures, and correcting deformities. The system tunes the brace’s position from pre-programmed instructions by an orthopedist who monitors progress remotely.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3742883,00.html
https://www.israel21c.org/let-a-robot-tend-your-fixation-device-after-leg-surgery/

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271245/quaker-event-promotes-blood-libels-against-israel-andrew-harrod

“This is not prison; this is a genocide,” stated an audience member following August 29 movie screenings concerning the Gaza Strip at the Washington, DC office of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). Typifying the Israel-hating audience of about 25 that filled FCNL’s small Capitol Hill presentation room, this woman’s comments demonstrated how Quakers at FCNL and beyond have joined the global demonization of Israel.

The woman, a self-professed member of the radical anti-Israel organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), “was totally sickened” by the evening’s viewings of Gaza in Context and Gaza: A Gaping Wound. These two films formed the latest presentation of Voices from the Holy Land (VFHL), a Washington, DC-area film club that unites local members of Israel’s enemies such as JVP and is well-known to this author. Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorists could not have been more pleased with VFHL’s pseudo-documentaries depicting victimized Palestinians and fiendish Zionists, as the JVP woman declared, “I just want to stand up and salute every Palestinian.”

Such bias belied the supposed objectivity of the evening’s introduction by VFHL’s Deepak Kenkeremath, a member of Manassas Presbyterian Church in Virginia. The “mainstream media” discusses Gaza in terms of “words and phrases like terrorists, and Hamas, and rockets, and suicide bombers, and Israeli Defense Forces,” he stated. Somehow the evening’s agitprop sought to expose a deeper, hidden truth behind the clear meaning of these plain words, and give “context for understanding what is going on in Gaza right now.”