RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Jewish state doesn’t take attacks on its citizens lying down. Why should the U.S.?

One of the great and enduring mysteries of American foreign policy is the ongoing, bipartisan tolerance for Iranian efforts to kill Americans by the hundreds. Iran has been waging an undeclared war against the United States since the Hostage Crisis of 1979–1981. Its hostile acts against the United States are almost too numerous to list, but the lowlights include the Beirut Marine barracks bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing, a successful Quds Force plot to kidnap and kill American soldiers in Iraq, and the hundreds of American deaths and injuries due to Iranian-designed and -supplied explosively formed penetrators, the most deadly form of IED in Iraq.

Yet time and again the American response has been muted at best and downright meek at worst, as in the case of the Obama administration’s dreadful Iran deal, when the world’s most powerful nation went hat-in-hand to the jihadist enemy that was killing its soldiers and actually empowered that enemy’s violent expansionism.

Iran has surged its forces throughout the Middle East. Iranian-backed militias threaten American allies in Iraq. Hezbollah, the Iranian Quds Force, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have helped preserve the Assad regime and tip the balance in the Syrian civil war. Yemen is a killing field. And now, capitalizing on battlefield gains in Syria, Iran has worked to threaten Israel directly, building a military infrastructure that allows its forces to strike immediately across the border.

America should not fear Iran. For too long, we’ve allowed a paper tiger to kill our citizens. Israel has no such patience. We can learn from its example.

But Israel is not the United States. It has far less patience with threats to the lives of its citizens, and the Trump administration’s support allows it greater freedom of action to meet such threats vigorously.

Witness what happened last night: Iran attacked Israel, and Israel responded with devastating force. Utilizing its military assets close to the Israeli border, Iranian forces launched 20 rockets at Israeli positions in the Golan Heights. The Israelis claimed that the attacks were ineffective; the rockets either were intercepted or fell short of the border. Rather than respond tit-for-tat, the Israelis escalated, launching comprehensive attacks against Iranian positions in Syria. In the words of Israel’s defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, “If there is rain on our side, there will be a flood on their side.”

What’s more pathetic: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ latest blast of ugly anti-Semitism, or the hopes that the global community has long invested in him as a true Israeli partner for peace?

If, as Albert Einstein reportedly said, insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” than U.S. and Western investments in Abbas over the years seem to fit the bill.

When, however, even the New York Times editorial board – which almost never misses an opportunity to blame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Israel – writes that Abbas’ vile words showed that it’s “time for him to leave office,” then perhaps Western elites are beginning to see the light.

“The Jews who moved to Eastern and Western Europe had been subjected to a massacre by one country or another every 10 to 15 years, since the 11th century and until the Holocaust in Germany,” the 82-year-old Abbas declared in an April 30 address.

“They say it was happening because they are Jews,” Abbas said. But, he explained, “the anti-Jewish [sentiment] was not because of their religion, but because of their function in society, which had to do with usury, banks, and so on.”

Israel’s military carried out strikes against Iranian targets in Syria after it said Iranian forces based there fired rockets at its soldiers in the Golan Heights, raising the risk of a wider regional war just a day after President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the international nuclear deal with Tehran.

Iran’s attack in the Golan appears to be the first time Iran has opened fire from Syria on Israeli targets. The Israeli military said dozens of Iranian military sites across southern and central Syria were struck. The Israeli military called the strikes—which focused on sites related to logistics, intelligence and ammunition storage—its largest-ever operation against Iranian positions in Syria.

“It will take substantial time for the Iranians to replenish these systems,” said Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman.

In a separate incident, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen fired a barrage of missiles into Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. The pair of attacks were an early indication that Iran and its allies are flexing their muscles in the Middle East after Washington’s move.

The strikes heightened tensions in a region already on edge and underlined the risk of direct confrontation between Iran and Israel following the U.S. exit from the nuclear agreement. Iran, until now, had held back from any retaliatory response to recent Israeli strikes on its assets in Syria.

President Donald Trump’s move to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal has dramatically brightened the political outlook for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose hold on office was at risk just weeks ago.

Mr. Netanyahu—who has long opposed the Iran deal—has faced spiraling police corruption probes that have entangled his wife and polarized Israelis.

But Israelis have rallied beyond Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing backers to support his policies on Iran, a shift that has scrambled the nation’s politics and boosted his fortunes.

Opposition politicians, who only weeks ago called for the Israeli leader’s resignation over alleged corruption, have lined up alongside Mr. Netanyahu. Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid party and Avi Gabbay, head of the Labor Party, both welcomed Mr. Trump’s announcement, saying Israelis should display united support for renewed U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

Ze’ev Elkin, a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, said those who doubted the premier’s efforts to rescind the deal should now “eat their hats.” CONTINUE AT SITE

If true, the reported concessions that Israel is being asked to make as part of the US administration’s “deal of the century” will not be perceived by the Palestinians as a sign that Israel seeks peace. As the past has proven, they will be viewed by the Palestinians as a form of retreat and capitulation.

As far as the PA is concerned, the more territory it is handed by Israel the better. Territory in Jerusalem is especially welcome as it would give the Palestinian Authority a foothold in the city. A foothold, that is, for much, much more.

Make no mistake: the Palestinians will see their presence in the four neighborhoods as the first step towards the redivision of Jerusalem.

The Palestinians will say that these Israeli concessions are not enough. They will demand that Israel hand them control over all 28 Arab neighborhoods.

Worse, the Palestinians are likely to use the four neighborhoods as launching pads to carry out terror attacks against Israel to “liberate the rest of Jerusalem.”

Why would anyone think that these neighborhoods will not fall into the hands of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the future?

Any Israeli concessions, particularly at this stage, will be interpreted by the Palestinians as a reward to Mahmoud Abbas and his crowd, who are not being required to give Israel anything in return.

Is it appropriate and helpful to reward Abbas and his associates at a time when he is refusing to stop payments to Palestinian terrorists and their families, and at a time when they are continuing to incite their people against the US administration, Ambassador Nikki Haley, and its Jewish advisors, Jason Greenblatt, Ambassador David Friedman and Jared Kushner?

By lending his prestige and support to the Zionist cause Joseph Herman Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, strengthened the movement among both his coreligionists and government officials. The start of his tenure as the spiritual leader of British Jewry began shortly before WWI and ended just after WWII.
Role in Balfour Declaration

Whilst many in the Orthodox world stood aloof from Zionism, Hertz was a robust champion of the cause. In answer to leaders of the organized community who were opposed, Hertz brought the prestige of his office to bear on the side of Zionism.

On May 28, 1917 he wrote a letter to The Times in which he rejected the notion that the recent attack in the newspaper on Zionism by Claude Montefiore of the Anglo-Jewish Association and David Alexander of the Board of Deputies reflected “the views held by Anglo-Jewry as a whole or by the Jewries of the overseas dominions.”

On October 6, 1917 the War Cabinet led by Prime Minister David Lloyd George decided to send out the ‎draft of a planned government statement about a Jewish homeland in Palestine to eight Jews—four anti-Zionists and four Zionists—for ‎comment.

Chief Rabbi Hertz, along with Lord Walter Rothschild and Zionist statesmen Nahum Sokolow and Chaim Weizmann all submitted supporting letters. ‎

Hertz was associated with the Mizrachi Orthodox stream of Zionism which saw the return of the Jewish people to Palestine as part of a Divine plan. In worldly affairs he criticized the British Government’s Mandatory policies as a reversal of the spirit of the Balfour Declaration.

A frequent visitor to Palestine, Hertz took part in the 1925 opening of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus. He went on to serve on the university’s Board of Governors.

Many were the achievements justly celebrated on Israel’s 70th anniversary last month: the country’s prowess in matters military, its world-famous technological knowhow, its record of economic growth and stability, the rich variety of its cultural offerings, the vibrancy of its religious life, the indomitable spirit of its people.

Yet still another achievement, perhaps the most impressive but one that’s mostly unknown, needs to be added to the list: Israel’s stunning demographic success. In this essay, I hope to repair the deficiency.

To do so, it helps first to move briefly backward in time to 1998, the year of the country’s 50th anniversary. Then, too, Israel had many accomplishments to be proud of, but its future prospects seemed far less promising. Especially bleak was the population forecast.

All over the world in those years, Jewish birthrates, consistent with trends in relatively educated and affluent societies, were on a downward slope, and Israel was no exception. Moreover, in Israel there seemed no realistic prospect of a substantial influx of new immigrants. The recent great wave from post-Soviet Eastern Europe in the early and mid-90s had effectively exhausted itself, and Jews in affluent Western lands showed no intention of emigrating to Israel in significant numbers.

Meanwhile, birthrates of Arabs across the Middle East, including in Israel and the Israel-controlled territories of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza, were vastly higher than Jewish birthrates and showed no signs of diminishing.

These facts alone constituted grounds for serious worry that the Jewish majority in Israel would become so thin and attenuated as to pose a threat to the security and perhaps even the survival of the Jewish state. Thus, it was hardly a coincidence that these years also saw an intensification of ostensibly well-meaning calls on Israel to seek peace at almost any price with its Arab neighbors, evacuate the territories taken in the 1967 war, including if necessary eastern Jerusalem, and safeguard its majority within Israel’s pre-June 1967 borders before things got even worse.

And then things did get worse. In September 2000, interpreting repeated Israeli concessions to him as signs of weakness, Yasir Arafat launched the second intifada, ushering in one of the most sweeping and protracted terrorist campaigns ever directed against a civilian population. For the next four years, Israelis were subjected to almost daily murderous attacks. Economic activity declined sharply; diplomatic pressures mounted; and many professed to see only darker clouds on the horizon. Alarmed friends of Israel, prominently including former President Bill Clinton, urged American Jews to exert pressure on their Israeli cousins to reach a deal with the Palestinians before the already dire population statistics, exacerbated by rising numbers of Jews who would surely leave the sinking Israeli ship, turned demographic emergency into demographic catastrophe.

Last Monday, the world was exposed to an unhealthy dose of Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. In a lengthy, rambling rant before the Palestinian National Council, in Arabic of course, the toxic, octogenarian dictator let loose with a torrent of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories so vile that it drew instant condemnation from the European Union and the United States. Even the traditionally hostile New York Times (which frequently shills for the Palestinian Authority) issued a stern rebuke and called for Abbas to step down.

Abbas’s screed can be broken down to four major points;

First, the Holocaust was not the result of inherent German anti-Semitism but was rather brought upon by the Jews themselves due to their “social behavior” and usurious conduct. This position is actually a step up for Abbas, whose 1982 dissertation (which can be readily purchased in any PA bookstore alongside the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion) asserts that gas chambers were never used to asphyxiate Jews and dismissed as a “fantastic lie” that six million Jews perished in the Holocaust.

Second, Hitler was a Zionist sympathizer. Sadly, there are high level members of today’s British Labor Party, a diseased political party rife with antisemitism, who believe this arrant rubbish.

Third, Ashkenazi Jews are fake and descendants Khazars, a central Asian people, who allegedly converted to Judaism in the 9th or 10th centuries. This is pretty standard stuff for conspiracy-prone anti-Semites, who relish in the opportunity to deny the existence of a 3,500 year-old people.

Fourth, Jews are not indigenous to the Land of Israel but were rather a colonialist project hatched by Britain, Germany and other colonialist nations in an effort to extend their influence. In other words, in Abbas’s world view, the recently invented Jews are a foreign, malignant implant in the heart of Arab, Muslim land, whose raison d’être in this world is to advance the interests of the colonialist powers.

Even more shocking than the comments themselves was the fact that of the hundreds PNC members present, not a single one walked out in protest or otherwise bothered to challenge Abbas’s hateful, conspiracy laden narrative. There was one near-comical moment when a member of the audience corrected Abbas after Abbas alleged that Joseph Stalin was Jewish. The audience member noted that it wasn’t Stalin but rather Karl Marx who was Jewish. Aside from that one “correction,” the hundreds of PNC members who were in attendance were in lockstep with Abbas.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Early cancer detection. Scientists at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University and Soroka Medical Center have developed a new non-invasive method to detect the breast cancer biomarker early and accurately. They analyzed breath using electronic nose gas sensors, and urine using gas-chromatography mass spectrometry.
http://nocamels.com/2018/04/israeli-scientists-breast-cancer-new-method/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010482518300775

Zebrafish clue to infant crib deaths. Scientists at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University have found a link between body temperature and disturbed sleep from neuronal noise that may explain Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Their research was advanced by analyzing the effect of rising water temperature on the activity of zebrafish.
https://www1.biu.ac.il/indexE.php?id=33&pt=20&pid=117&level=2&cPath=33&type=1&news=3136
https://www.youtube.com/embed/LxuNCePZi2k?rel=0
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/4/eaar6277?rss=1

Innovative solutions for wounded veterans. 200 Israeli tech innovators participated in a 3-day “make-a-thon” in Tel Aviv to address a variety of challenges faced by 12 wounded war veterans (7 Israelis, 6 Americans and one French). “Makers for Heroes” organized by non-profit RESTART, is the first international event of its kind.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-innovators-muster-to-help-12-injured-soldiers-reclaim-their-dreams/

Protein shake helps children grow. I reported previously (May 2015) on the high-protein growth supplement developed by Professor Moshe Phillip at Israel’s Schneider Medical Center. Professor Phillip then co-founded Nutritional Growth Solutions (NG Solutions) and launched its “Healthy Height” shake in the US and Europe.
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/healthy-height-high-protein-shake-helps-children-grow-681465001.html https://www.healthy-height.com/https://www.healthy-height.com/pages/our-story
https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2016/11/17/Children-s-growth-supplement-wins-GSK-backing

The “secret” of Israeli longevity. (TY Nevet) National Geographic Travel suggests reasons for Israel’s consistent position near the top of the world’s longevity scale. It cites the combination of a Mediterranean-style diet, low alcohol consumption, strong family and cultural values, and an excellent healthcare system.
https://www.israel21c.org/the-secrets-of-israelis-long-satisfying-lives/