RUTHFULLY YOURS

Charles D. Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel, is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center. His new book, Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change, is forthcoming from Oxford.

Israel’s relationship with the United States is a fundamental pillar of its national security. Militarily, diplomatically, and economically, American support has for decades been a vital strategic enabler. For consultations on emerging events, Washington is usually Israel’s first and often sole port of call, almost always the foremost one, and inevitably the primary address when planning how to respond to such events. Indeed, Israel’s reliance on the United States is so great today that the country’s very survival is at least partly dependent on it—with, as we shall see, a variety of consequences not all of which are salutary.

I. The Origins and Growth of a “Special Relationship”

First, some historical background. Contemporary readers may be surprised to learn that, until the late 1960s, the Israel-U.S. relationship was actually quite limited and even cool. Only in the aftermath of the Six-Day War (1967) and especially the Yom Kippur War (1973) did it begin to evolve into a more classic patron-client setup, and not until the 1980s did it start to become the institutionalized and strategic “special relationship” we know today.

And it truly is a special relationship: a largely unprecedented arrangement for the U.S. and a critical one for Israel, encompassing ties in all spheres of national life—military, political, economic, diplomatic, and cultural. Even through episodes of government-to-government disagreement and discord, not to mention the continual criticism of various Israeli polices by American elites of one stripe or another, popular support for Israel remains high in the U.S., by some measures higher today than ever, and the security relationship itself remains not only fundamentally strong but extraordinarily close.

Let’s count the ways. Economically, the United States is Israel’s single biggest trading partner (only the EU taken as a whole is larger), with bilateral trade in 2016 running at approximately $35.5 billion. The two countries signed a free-trade agreement in 1986, the first such bilateral deal ever concluded by the U.S. Over the years Washington has, in addition, provided emergency economic assistance and loan guarantees.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Treatment for Fabry disease fast-tracked. I reported previously (Jan 2015) on the promising trials for the Fabry disease treatment PRX-102 from Israel’s Protalix. PRX-102 is currently in Phase III trials and has just been granted fast-track status by the US FDA. Fabry disease damages the kidneys and heart and has no cure.
https://www.globes.co.il/en/article-fda-fast-tracks-protalixs-fabry-disease-drug-1001221935

How iron levels are maintained. Researchers at Israel’s Technion have uncovered the mechanism by which the body transports the essential protein ferritin around the body. Ferritin maintains iron levels in the red blood cells that bring oxygen to the brain. Iron deficiency is a major cause of many brain diseases.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2018/01/the-bodys-golden-gate-to-iron-traffic/

Breakthrough brain device. I reported previously (4 times) on Israel’s MedyMatch, whose software gives more accurate assessments about strokes and intracranial bleeds. MedyMatch has now been granted Expedited Access Pathway and Breakthrough Device designation by the FDA for intracranial hemorrhage detection.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/medymatch-tech-for-pinpointing-brain-bleeds-gets-fda-nod-for-quick-approval/

$18 million donation for Health Discovery tower. I reported previously (30th Apr) about the new 20-story medical research tower being built at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. Now the Helmsley Trust is donating $18 million to the project and the building is to be named the “Helmsley Medical Discovery Tower”.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/E-NEqhoEJdk?rel=0

Recovery is in the balance. Israeli startup Bobo has developed a smart board that records, analyses and gives feedback to physiotherapists on a patient’s ability to maintain balance during rehabilitation following surgery or treatment. Trials in Hadassah Medical Center have proved Bobo’s usefulness and it is now heading to the USA.
http://bobo-balance.com/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/7ofYpHGtBeg?rel=0
https://www.youtube.com/embed/MuGD_xRSCYU?rel=0

Latest news on POP repair device. I reported previously (Aug 2016) on the minimally-invasive inter-uterine device from Israel’s POP Medical that repairs Pelvic Organ Prolapse (POP) affecting 50% of women. The FDA-approved NeuGuide is soon to undergo new trials in the US and Israel to build confidence and data.
https://www.israel21c.org/a-new-mesh-free-way-to-repair-pelvic-organ-prolapse/

Disaster training for 1000. (TY Nevet) The fifth IPRED international conference led by Israel’s Ministry of Health and the Home Front Command attracted 1000 emergency responders from 35 countries. It ended with a simulated mass-casualty exercise in Petah Tikva that received media attention from as far away as China.
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5073053,00.html
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/29/c_136931804.htm

New Center for Translational Medicine. Tel Aviv University is establishing an innovation center for translational medicine. The aim is to reduce the time for bringing a new treatment to market by combining academic research with clinical trials. Only afterwards will the treatment be licensed to a commercial company.
https://www.globes.co.il/en/article-tel-aviv-university-sets-up-medical-research-center-1001221781

The first International Biomedical Informatics conference. In December, Israel’s Technion hosted the first international conference on biomedical informatics – where data collected by universities, hospitals and health funds is analyzed and the results used to adapt treatments to individual patients.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2018/01/biomedical-informatics-at-technion/

Truth be told, the virus of Nazi anti-Semitism was exported to the Arab and Muslim world as early as the 1930s. It gave ideological inspiration to Arab nationalist parties like the Ba’athists in Syria and Iraq and paramilitary groups like Young Egypt, founded in 1933. Anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are the central plank of the totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, and their ideological cousins, Islamic State, who sought to impose Allah’s kingdom on Earth through jihad and forced conversion of non-Muslims.

On the day that the world commemorated the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, the U.K. liberal newspaper The Guardian declared in an editorial :

“The Arabs, meanwhile, cannot be blamed for feeling that Europe’s blood debt to the Jews was paid with what they see as their territory.”
The myth of the Arabs as innocent bystanders, who had no responsibility for the Holocaust—and indeed, paid the price for a European crime when Israel was established—is widely believed.

The Arabs, like other third-world peoples, are only ever seen as victims of Western oppression and colonialism. They cannot themselves be guilty of oppressing others.

The West self-righteously deplores the old European anti-Semitism of the “far right.” But a new Green-Brown-Red anti-Semitism—encouraged by an alliance of the Far Left, the Greens and Islamist sympathizers—is studiously downplayed, ignored by the media, or blamed on Israel.

Truth be told, the virus of Nazi anti-Semitism was exported to the Arab and Muslim world as early as the 1930s. It gave ideological inspiration to Arab nationalist parties like the Ba’athists in Syria and Iraq and paramilitary groups like Young Egypt, founded in 1933. Anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are the central plank of the totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, and their ideological cousins, Islamic State, who sought to impose Allah’s kingdom on Earth through jihad and forced conversion of non-Muslims.

The Holocaust was, in the words of author Robert Satloff, as much an Arab story as a European. In spite of efforts to trumpet the stories of individual “righteous” Muslims who rescued Jews (particularly in Albania), scholars continue to uncover evidence of Arab sympathy and collaboration with Nazism.

While Israel uses “administrative detention” as a tool to thwart terrorism, the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership holds people without trial as a means to silence them and prevent them from voicing any form of criticism against Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders.

While administrative detainees in Israel are entitled to see a lawyer, receive family visits and appeal against their incarceration, the Palestinians detained by the PA are denied basic rights. Yet, Israel-obsessed human rights organizations seem uninterested in this fact.

Particularly disturbing, however, is not that the PA leadership is acting as a tyrannical regime, but the abiding silence and indifference of the international community and human rights organizations. Those who scream bloody murder about Israel’s security measures against terrorism would do the Palestinians a better service by opening their mouths about how human rights are ravaged under the PA.

For many years, Palestinians and their supporters around the world have been condemning Israel for arresting suspected terrorists without trial.

It turns out, however, that the Palestinian Authority (PA) also has a similar policy that permits one of its senior officials to order the arrest of any Palestinian, regardless of the nature of the offense he or she commits.

Israel holds suspected terrorists in “administrative detention” on the basis of laws such as: Israeli Military Order regarding no. 1651 Security Provisions, Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law and Defense (Emergency) Regulations, a law that replaces the emergency laws from the period of the British Mandate of Palestine (1920-1948).

It is worth noting that Israeli citizens, and not only Palestinians, have also been held in “administrative detention” over the past few decades. This means that Israel does not distinguish between a Palestinian and an Israeli when it comes to combatting terrorism.

While the campaign against Israel’s “administrative detentions” has been going on, the Palestinian Authority has been, according to Palestinian human rights activists and lawyers, conducting unlawful and arbitrary arrests against its own constituents.

Once again, the double standards of the Palestinians and their international supporters have been exposed.

Unless Trump intends to humiliate himself and America and sell Israel down the river like his predecessors did, the peace process will not be resuscitated.

On Tuesday in Bethlehem, the Palestinians demonstrated the choice the Americans now face in their dealings with Fatah – the supposedly moderate PLO faction that controls the Palestinian Authority and the PLO. President Donald Trump and his advisers can play by Fatah’s rules or they can walk away.

On Tuesday a delegation of diplomats from the US Consulate in Jerusalem came to Bethlehem to participate in a meeting of the local chamber of commerce. When they arrived in the city, Fatah members attacked them. Their vehicles with diplomatic license plates were pelted with tomatoes and eggs by a mob of protesters calling out anti-American slogans.

After the Americans entered the hall where the meeting was scheduled to take place, some of the rioters barged in. They held placards condemning America and they shouted, “Americans Out!”

Some of the demonstrators cursed the Palestinians present, accusing them of treason for participating in a meeting with Americans. According to the news reports, the scene became tense and violent. The American officials beat a speedy retreat. As they departed the city, the Fatah rioters continued attacking their cars, kicking them and throwing eggs at them, until they were gone.

The attack on Tuesday was a natural progression.

Israel’s red lines in Syria’s civil war have included returning fire against any entity that fires into Israel (whether Syrian, rebel, Hizb’allah, or Iranian); not permitting Iran or Hizb’allah or any of their Shiite proxies in Syria to establish permanent bases within a specific distance of the Israeli Golan border; and not permitting weapons beyond a certain level of lethality and sophistication to move from Syria to Hizb’allah. To enforce those lines, the Israeli Air Defense Force is suspected of carrying out attacks on a “scientific research center,” artillery positions, a “munitions factory,” and more. The Israeli government rarely confirms such strikes, but acknowledges that the Russians are informed of Israeli activity when necessary in an agreed-upon effort to limit the damage and not engage Russian forces themselves.

This has morphed into one of the most quietly effective relationships in the Middle East. Not an alliance, certainly, but the pragmatic leaders of both countries have concluded that each benefits by coordinating with the other.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a full agenda this week, as he went to Moscow for a five-hour meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Davos. High on the list was Israel’s growing concern about the expansion of Hizb’allah missiles and missile production facilities in Lebanon – facilitated by Iran. “It’s no longer a transfer of arms, funds or consultation. Iran has de-facto opened a new branch, the ‘Lebanon branch.’ Iran is here,” wrote IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis. “In Lebanon, Hezbollah does not conceal its attempt to take control of the state.”

But on this and other issues, Russia, Syria’s longtime ally, is looking to reduce its exposure. As the shape of the Syrian war changes, Israel may find its working relations with Russia undermined by Moscow’s desire to exercise influence in Syria generally from afar, and by its shifting relations with Iran.

Since the start of the civil war in 2011, Moscow has enhanced its political position in Damascus and across the region. It has also strengthened its security position by upgrading its naval bases at Tartus and Latakia, while acquiring an airbase at Hmeimim. Russia is leery of committing troops to the war (Afghanistan looms large here), and there are, in fact, very few Russian soldiers on the ground. Now, as fighting on some fronts wanes, the Russians want to pull even those back. Visiting Syria last month, Putin said he would withdraw most of the troops while maintaining the bases. According to Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, Putin told assembled Russian troops, “Friends, “the homeland awaits you.”