RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Jewish Policy Center Proudly Presents
Israel – Refuge and Renaissance

Our Spring 2018 issue features:

an inFOCUS interview with Ambassador Danny Ayalon

Lela Gilbert – My Sojourn Among the Saturday People
Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni – A Prism on the Diversity of the Israel Defense Forces
Jennifer Tzivia MacLeod and Megan E. Turner – The JNF You Should Know
Colonel Uri Naaman – Israel and NATO: History and Progress
David Koren – The End of an Era for Jerusalem’s Arab Residents
Yoram Ettinger – Jewish-Arab Demography Defies Conventional Wisdom
David M. Weinberg – Israel is Worthy and Winning
Albert H. Teich – Israel and the U.S: Partners in Science
Pnina Agenyahu – Ethiopian Aliyah: An Identity-Building Journey
Eric Rozenman – Israeli College Connects Globally; Institute Trains Future Leaders
Sean Durns – The News Media and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Today

Shoshana Bryen reviews Jerusalem: The Biography

The modern State of Israel – pioneers and the Jews who never left the historic Jewish homeland – welcomed the devastated survivors of Nazi rule and then 700,000-plus impoverished brothers and sisters expelled from the Arab/Islamic world. Yemeni, Ethiopian, and Russian Jews followed. JPC Executive Director Matt Brooks explains, “Together, the people of the Jewish State are building a high-tech, secure, democratic, wealthy and socially open country.”

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The Balfour Declaration of 1917 elicited euphoria among world Zionists. It was to be short lived as a chain of betrayals truncated the land promised to the Jews and limited their immigration.

The 1922 White Paper (also known as the Churchill White Paper) averred that Jews were in Palestine by right, but bowing to Arab pressure, ceded 76 percent –all the land East of the Jordan River–to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah. It was renamed Transjordan, and closed to Jewish settlement. The remaining land- the West Bank of the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea was to be the Jewish state. In explanation the British stated:

“England…does not want Palestine to become ‘as Jewish as England is English’, but, rather, should become ‘a center in which Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride.’ (Ironically today Israel is poised to become more Jewish than England is English given the very real prospect that Muslims will become a majority in that nation.)

The Jews of Palestine had no choice but to accept the partition of 1922, but Arab thirst for all of Palestine resulted in murders and terrorist attacks, the Hebron massacre of 1929 and later the 1936-39 “Arab Revolt.”

The British responded with the White Paper of 1939 all but eliminating Jewish immigration to Palestine. This occurred after the infamous Evian conference of July 1938. With the exception of the Dominican Republic, all the participants refused to alter their immigration policies, thereby trapping Europe’s Jews. The Nazis were to kill one of every three Jews in the world.

In 1982, Sir Harold Wilson, who had been a member of Clement Attlee’s Cabinet when Israel became independent in 1948 and served as Prime Minister during the Six-Day War, wrote The Chariot of Israel-Britain, America and the State of Israel in which he described the British actions in 1939 as shameful and inexcusable.

Cherry tomatoes were engineered in Israel.
Israel is the only county to have more trees today than it did 50 years ago.
After Tokyo and New York City, Tel Aviv has the most sushi restaurants per capita.
People of the book: Israel publishes more books per capita than any other country.
Israel has the world’s highest rate of entrepreneurship among women.
Israel has the highest number of university degrees per capita than any other country.
Buses around Israel have signs that quote the biblical passage, “You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old.”
One million notes are left in the Kotel (Western Wall) each year. They are cleaned out twice a year, before Passover and Rosh Hashanah.
Beersheva has the largest number of chess grandmasters per capita of any city in the world.
Israeli bank notes have Braille on them to assist the blind.
Microsoft has more employees in Israel than it does per capita anywhere in the world.
Israel has the highest number of museums per capita in the world.
Israel has more orchestras per capita than any other country.
Israeli academics produce more scientific papers per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Israel has more computers per capita than any other country.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the number of Christians is increasing.
Relative to its population, Israel has absorbed more immigrants than any other country, with newcomers from more than 100 countries.
Voicemail technology was developed in Israel.
Life expectancy in Israel is among the highest in the world, at 82 years.
Israel has won more Nobel Prizes than all other Middle East countries combined.
Jerusalem has over 1,500 public parks and gardens.

I am on my way to Israel to celebrate the 70th birthday of the Jewish state. Having experienced many of Israel’s birthdays before, when the country was noticeably less mature or prosperous, this birthday is a special occasion. With all the glory attached to the coming of age, there are also sets of precedents that require caution and good judgment.

The number 70 has meaningful commutations in Jewish tradition. It recalls the 70-year Babylonian Exile that led to the start of the Second Jewish Commonwealth in 530 BCE. The return to the Land of Israel occurred through the Charter given by the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great, allowing Jews who wished to return to “Jerusalem that is in Judah” and build a “House for the God of Heaven” to do so. Prime Minister Netanyahu, in praising Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, compared him to King Cyrus the Great. Similarly, President Harry Truman was told that in recognizing the Jewish state, he would become another King Cyrus for Jews everywhere.

Zerubbabel, a descendent of King David, led the first wave of returnees to Jerusalem. The second wave come with the Scribe Ezra (book of Ezra in the third portion of the Hebrew Bible called Ketuvim). The third stage of mass return to the land occurred with Nehemiah, a high official in the Persian Empire administration.

The first returnees had to deal with the Samaritans and the Ammonites, in the same way the 19th and 20th century returnees had to deal with the Arabs. The Samaritans, like the Arabs of later times, were brought into the land of Israel by the Assyrian kings at the end of the Eight Century BCE in place of the Israelites they had deported. Arabs settled in the Land of Israel following the deportation of the Jews (most but not all) by the Romans in the aftermath of the Jewish rebellion, which ended in the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Matching treatments to patients. (TY Hazel) Israel has launched the Israel Precision Medicine Partnership – an innovative $60 million program to enable researchers to target the best treatments for a patient’s disease (e.g. cancer). Precision medicine uses genetic sequencing to predict an individual’s response to specific treatments.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-launches-60m-initiative-to-boost-tailor-made-meds/

Artificial cell factory kills cancer from the inside. (TY NoCamels) Researchers at Israel’s Technion have successfully treated a cancerous tumor using a “nano-factory” – a synthetic cell that produces anti-cancer proteins when it comes into contact with the tumor tissue. The proteins can be varied to fit each patient.
http://ats.org/news/synthetic-cell-produces-anti-cancer-drugs-within-a-tumor/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adhm.201701163

Treatment for Adnoid Cystic Carcinoma. I wrote previously (10th Dec) about Israeli personalized cancer biotech Ayala and its partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb. One of the results of this tie-up is AL101 – a new treatment for metastatic Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma (ACC), which could also treat triple-negative breast cancer.
https://www.globes.co.il/en/article-cancer-drug-developer-ayala-pharmaceuticals-raises-17m-1001231474

Israeli medical databases. Israel’s four health companies maintain databases of 5 million records that (anonymized) will benefit medical researchers in the discovery of new treatments. The Maccabi health fund (see here) is already doing this. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3735645,00.html

Anaphylactic shock alert. Scientists from Bar-Ilan University partnered with Israel’s Magen David Adom to develop “EPIMADA,” a smartphone app that issues a local proximity alert in the event of a severe allergic reaction, known as anaphylactic shock. Anyone with an EpiPen (syringe containing adrenaline) can save the victim. http://nocamels.com/2018/03/israeli-researchers-emergency-app/

Predicting kidney disease in diabetics. I reported previously (see here) on the predictive artificial intelligence (AI) systems of Israeli biotech Medial EarlySign. Its AI algorithms can now predict which sufferers of diabetes will develop kidney dysfunction within a one-year time-frame. Early treatment can then improve their outcome.
http://nocamels.com/2018/02/israeli-ai-startup-diabetes-kidney/

Spinal surgery for Ethiopian children. (TY Hazel) Eleven medics from Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center spent a week performing surgeries to fix severe spinal deformities in Ethiopia. In addition, the Israelis also provided training to medical staff at the Ayder hospital in the Northern Ethiopian city of Mekelle.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-doctors-perform-lifesaving-spinal-surgeries-in-ethiopia/

Crash led to new medical device. Another Israeli medical “miracle”. After a motorcycle accident, doctors found that Avi Yaron had a brain tumor. They couldn’t remove all the tumor, so Avi founded Visionsense that developed an imaging device to help in similar ops. Medtronic has just bought Visionsense for $75 million.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-exclusive-medtronic-to-buy-israeli-co-visionsense-for-75m-1001230992

EU supports Israeli electric socks. I reported previously (see here) on Israeli startup ElastiMed and its smart socks that improve circulation to treat swelling, blood clots, chronic wounds, sports injuries etc. ElastiMed is now to receive a $1.6 million grant from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3735625,00.html

Daniel Johnson: One of the issues that I know you’ve been very much embroiled in is this question of whether Israeli law will apply to the West Bank. This is clearly in the interests of not just settlers but Arabs too, Palestinians as well, so how are we going to resolve that and how are you going to present this to the world not as a bid to move the goalposts, but simply as doing justice?

Tzipi Hotovely: For many years the real argument about the settlements was not made. We made security the only issue. But since I got to the foreign ministry, I have put the issue of justice on the table. I think it’s very important to do so because if you make security the top issue then you end up with many countries saying, well, if this is not your land, we don’t care about your security interest, we might be tolerant about it but just give this land to whoever it belongs to. So I stood in the foreign ministry in my first speech and I said, “This is our land, this is the land of the Jewish people.” I think that, as simple as it sounds, this is a real revolution in the way we defend the case. For many years we said, “This is a conflict area, there are 200 areas under conflict in the international arena, please look at that like you look at any other.” What I am saying is, “No, this is where Israel started.” You can’t defend Tel Aviv if you don’t defend Hebron and Jerusalem, because this is where the heritage started.

There are two Israeli stories. One is of modern Israel — a modern state, re-established in 1948, the Zionist story of 100 years. This story is problematic — you know why? Now I am, of course, a big Zionist, and I think the Zionist movement is maybe one of the biggest miracles of the 20th century if not all humankind, this revival by re-establishing a state after 2,000 years in exile. But what is missing from the story is: what makes a bunch of people coming from Russia, Yemen, Morocco, Britain, from America, re-create a state in the Middle East?

I love telling this story: Arthur Balfour is asking Chaim Weizmann why he insists on establishing Israel in this region, because this is a very problematic area. And Weizmann said, “Would you like to have Paris as your capital?” To which Balfour replied, “Excuse me, Mr Weizmann, London belongs to the British people.” So Weizmann looks at him and says, “Well, Jerusalem belonged to the Jewish people way before London was established.” I use that as an anecdote when I meet audiences because I want them to have the sense of feeling that this is not occupation. We are not occupiers in our own land, as I always say. I fight this concept of occupation. This year is the 50th anniversary [of the Six Day War]. The thing that I put on the table in the foreign ministry is to fight the very basic idea of occupation. We’re not occupiers, even according to international law. Because there was never a Palestinian state.

The ruthless rhetoric the Palestinians are using against the US suggests that they have decided to put the Americans on an equal footing with Israel. They miss the days when the State Department sometimes seemed to be more pro-Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves.

We are talking about the same Palestinian Authority (PA) that continues to receive millions of dollars in US aid annually. The same PA whose security forces are trained and equipped by Americans and Europeans. The same PA that has a “diplomatic mission” in Washington that is actively taking part in the campaign of incitement against the US and its leader.

The anti-US campaign paves the way for terrorists to kill Americans. It feeds into the ideology of the Islamic State terror group, Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, which considers the US the “Great Satan.”

Hate speech and incitement make up the core of the Palestinian narrative.

For several decades now, the Palestinians have been waging a massive and vicious campaign of incitement against Israel. This campaign has made it impossible for any Arab to even think about the prospects of peace with Israel. Notably, the Palestinian hatred of Israel is not linked to anything Israel does or does not do. Rather, the Palestinian hatred of Israel is based on Israel’s existence. Palestinians hate Israel because they believe that Jews have no right to a sovereign country of their own in the Middle East.

Palestinian hate speech against Israel is part of the global landscape: by now, no one even expects anything else from them. A Palestinian mosque preacher calling Jews “descendants of monkeys and pigs” is no story at all — just more of the same. Similarly, a Palestinian maiming or murdering a Jew has become the norm.

The day will come — and it is not far away — when reports of Palestinians not inciting against Israel and Jews will be a remarkable one. The day will come when the only story worth reporting is when a Palestinian did not carry out a terrorist attack against a Jew that day.

The world “should wait for our great move,” said a top Hamas leader, speaking to Palestinian protestors during violent clashes with Israeli forces along the Gaza border, “when we breach the borders and pray at al Aqsa.”

With hundreds around him chanting, “We are going to Jerusalem, millions of martyrs,” and with 20,000 Palestinians protesting along the border – some burning tires, others throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks – Yahya Sinwar declared during April protests that Hamas was “following in the path of martyr Yasser Arafat in resisting the enemy” and “if we explode we will explode in [Israel’s] face.”

That Sinwar and other Hamas leaders made clear that their “March of Return” is only the latest tactic in their efforts to destroy Israel, however, hasn’t convinced much of the global community, the West, or the media to abandon its comfortable narrative – of a peace-loving Palestinian people in Gaza, driven to violence by an iron-fisted Israel.

Such is life as the world’s only Jewish state – with Hamas and other terrorist groups across its border in Gaza; with the more dangerous Hezbollah across its northern border in Lebanon; with terrorists roaming the Sinai; and with Hezbollah and Shi’a militias implanted amid the chaos of Syria.

However carefully it responds to violent efforts to breach its borders and attack its people, Israel finds itself falsely portrayed, second-guessed, and ultimately condemned. Thus, the current turmoil along Israel’s border with Gaza is playing out along predictable lines in the court of public opinion.