RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Taylor Force Act is gathering momentum in Congress. Named for a West Point graduate who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian during a 2016 trip to Israel, the bill would cut American aid to the Palestinian Authority until it takes “credible steps to end acts of violence” and stops paying stipends to convicted terrorists. The legislation recently passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with rare bipartisan support, and last week Sen. Lindsey Graham attached it to the 2018 Foreign Operations budget, all but guaranteeing it will go into effect next year.

That means the clock is now ticking for the Palestinian Authority, which receives around $350 million from the U.S. each year. The Taylor Force Act wouldn’t block humanitarian or security aid, meaning U.S. funds wouldn’t be zeroed out, but our sources say the total could fall as low as $120 million, depending on how far Congress and the Trump administration want to go. At the same time the PA’s support from other donors is dropping, putting further strain already on the government in Ramallah.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his coterie say they cannot roll back the practice of paying convicted terrorists, which dates to 1964. They say failing to pay the salaries—estimated at around $350 million a year—would create an opening for the terror group Hamas or even Iran. They further argue that pulling the funding would deprive thousands of families of their livelihoods, which could spark protests and threaten the Palestinian Authority’s rule.

Congress will rightly reject these arguments. The PA’s obstinacy is the reason the Taylor Force Act is so close to becoming law. Lawmakers and the White House signaled for months that a cutoff was coming, yet Mr. Abbas refused to take action.

There is one step Mr. Abbas could take to demonstrate that he is taking Congress seriously: He could issue a definition of terrorism to his own people. Remarkably, the Palestinian Authority’s “Basic Law” does not mention terrorism. The State Department says that although the PA has criminalized acts of terror, it lacks legislation “specifically tailored to counterterrorism.”

The PA’s security forces do regularly raid terror cells and detain operatives across the West Bank. In late July, for example, they nabbed Hamas members in four major cities. But the PA typically justifies such actions under presidential decrees, such as one that prohibits “harming public security.”

In the past, PA forces also had claimed jurisdiction under a combination of legal parameters, including the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Revolutionary Penal Code of 1979 and a set of Jordanian military codes. But since Mr. Abbas’s election in 2005, and especially after the 2006 elections and the devastating 2007 civil war with Hamas, he has governed almost exclusively by executive decree.

A law passed by the PA’s parliament that defines and criminalizes terrorism would carry greater weight and almost certainly garner more respect from the Palestinian people. But internecine conflict has rendered the parliament defunct, making a new law all but impossible to pass.

Mr. Abbas’s decrees provide the Palestinian security forces with a broad mandate for arresting terror operatives who plot attacks against Israel or the PA. Mr. Abbas issued an order in 2007 that states “all armed militias and military formations . . . are banned in all their forms.” At times, he has condemned acts of terror, such as last month after three Arab-Israelis killed two police officers in Jerusalem. The PA’s news agency reported that Mr. Abbas called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “expressed his strong rejection and condemnation of the incident.”

Yet the PA continues to pay stipends to people convicted of such attacks. The Palestinians could buy considerable goodwill merely by defining what the PA considers terrorism. Setting out such a definition would not change Congress’s demands or prevent the Taylor Force Act from passing. But it would signal the PA is taking steps to address the problem. From there, the PA’s next step would be to cut off money to convicted terrorists, pursuant to its new definition. CONTINUE AT SITE

One of the standard arguments of leftists who want to see Israel destroyed, but won’t admit to hating Jews, is that Israelis are colonists, outsiders who came into the land that rightfully belongs to the indigenous population. You probably know the drill, which pushes many of the buttons of the international left: Racism (the Arab Semites are ‘People of Color” while the Jews are “Europeans”); colonialism (The Jews are outsiders); imperialism (the Jews are more successful and richer than their neighbors, so it is unfair); and Marxism (Israel has a flourishing market economy and is now a hi-tech powerhouse, so it must be at the expense of exploited people).

All of this is looking at history through the wrong end of the telescope. Dr. Alex Joffe of the Begin-Sadat Center refutes this bogus narrative. In fairness I can only briefly excerpt, but read the whole thing, if you want to understand the real history.

The entrance of Caliph Umar (581-644) into Jerusalem, 19th century colored engraving, via Wikipedia

The idea of Jews as “settler-colonialists” is easily disproved. A wealth of evidence demonstrates that Jews are the indigenous population of the Southern Levant; historical and now genetic documentation places Jews there over 2,000 years ago, and there is indisputable evidence of continual residence of Jews in the region. Data showing the cultural and genetic continuity of local and global Jewish communities is equally ample. The evidence was so copious and so incontrovertible, even to historians of antiquity and writers of religious texts, some of whom were Judeophobes, that disconnecting Jews from the Southern Levant was simply not conceived of. Jews are the indigenous population.

As for imperial support, the Zionist movement began during the Ottoman Empire, which was at best diffident towards Jews and uncomfortable with the idea of Jewish sovereignty. For its part, the British Empire initially offered support in the form of the Balfour Declaration, but during its Mandatory rule (1920-48) support for Zionism vacillated. The construction of infrastructure aided the Yishuv immensely, but political support for Jewish immigration and development, as stipulated by the League of Nations mandate, waxed and waned until, as is well known, it was withdrawn on the eve of World War II. This is hardly “settler-colonialism.”

Ironically, the same cannot be said for the Palestinian Arabs. A recent analysis by Pinhas Inbari reviewed the history of Palestine (derived from the Roman term Palaestina, applied in 135 CE as a punishment to a Jewish revolt). Most notably, he examines the origin traditions of Palestinian tribes, which continue even today to see themselves as immigrants from other countries. Inbari’s review, along with many additional sources of information he did not address, demonstrates that modern Palestinians are, in fact, derived from two primary streams: converts from indigenous pre-modern Jews and Christians who submitted to Islam, and Arab tribes originating across the Middle East who migrated to the Southern Levant between late antiquity and the 1940s. The best documented episodes were the Islamic conquests of the 7th century and its aftermath, and the periods of the late Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Trials success for gastroenteritis treatment. Israeli biotech Redhill has announced that the Phase 3 trial of its BEKINDA treatment for acute gastroenteritis and gastritis, on 321 patients in 21 US clinical sites, met its targets for efficacy and safety. There are some 179 million cases of gastroenteritis annually in the US.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-redhill-says-gastroenteritis-drug-found-safe-in-study/

Fighting infections via DNA. I reported previously (July 2015) on Tel Aviv University Professor Udi Qimron’s research into bacterial viruses (phages) that can kill resistant bacteria. His DNA delivery method is now much more sophisticated and he has just received a $700,000 grant from TAU’s Momentum fund.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/dna-delivery-technology-joins-battle-against-drug-resistant-bacteria/2017/06/19/ http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/abstract/S1097-2765(17)30310-6

Algorithm finds new treatments. Professor Amiram Goldblum at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has won a 2017 Kaye Innovation award for his Iterative Stochastic Elimination (ISE) algorithm, which helps discover new molecules to treat diseases. It identifies candidate treatments in months rather than years.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/35036

Life-changing tech for the visually impaired. I reported previously (May 2016) on the text to speech MyEye device from Israeli startup Orcam. MyEye now clips onto your spectacles and can read text in English, Hebrew, Chinese, French, Italian and German. It can also store names and faces to help identify the people you meet.
http://nocamels.com/2017/08/orcam-visually-impaired-glasses-read-text/
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZgFGMZTvoX0?rel=0 https://www.youtube.com/embed/Je6f-awtwTg?rel=0

Games therapy for the brain. More about Israeli startup Intendu that I reported on previously (2nd July). Designed by neuroscientists, clinicians and games developers, the home training console is designed to enhance and possibly rehabilitate, eight cognitive functions. It is currently on trial at the UK’s Hull Royal Infirmary. https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorclawson/2017/08/31/the-therapy-gap-startup-offers-hope-for-brain-impaired-patients/#134ac0944a5c

Israel’s new school of medicine. (TY Atid-EDI) Ariel University recently held a ground-breaking ceremony for a new medical school. The $28 million facility will vastly enhance Ariel’s current pre-med program and 30 research labs. Currently, 4000 students are studying medicine at Israel’s five medical schools.
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4983189,00.html

Israeli bio-techs in San Diego. 23 Israeli companies (listed here) exhibited at the Bio International Convention in San Diego – the world’s largest conference in the field of life sciences, with over 16,000 delegates from some 76 countries. http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/israeli-firms-share-innovations-at-bio-international-convention-in-san-diego/2017/06/13/

What goes around, comes around. 15 years ago, Batya donated a kidney to save her daughter’s life. Shortly afterwards, her daughter gave birth to a baby girl. 15 years later, Batya contracted Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and needed a bone marrow transplant. Thanks to the Ezer Mizion database, a 100% match was found.
http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/what-goes-around-comes-around/

“You’ve scurried along the gutter floor for too long, unnoticed. Your prejudice towards Muslims deserves to be put on blast. I’ll do that!” pompously proclaimed “Islamophobia” expert Nathan Leanto me on Twitter on June 23. His subsequent insulting Twitter conversations with me over the summer would give a revealing insight into this deceitful, hateful, and shallow leftist thug, an ideological clone of the demagogic Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Lean had previously revealed his character and intellectual deficiencies during a humorous Twitter spat he initiated with me around New Year’s 2014, the subject of one of my previous articles. After a few weeks of debate, Lean had answered my Twitter responses to his politically correct rants by blocking me. Yet suddenly on June 16, he emerged like a bolt from the blue of cyberspace to snarl at me again.

Lean initially objected to my rejection of the totalitarian term “Islamophobia” underlying his fraudulent career. This postulated “irrational fear” seeks to suppress criticism of Islamic ideas by conflating that criticism with prejudice against Muslim individuals. He indicated as much, statingthat “religion is more than a mere disembodied collection of ideas. It is integral to identity.” Therefore he effectively condemned critique of Islam as the “suggestion that Islam is merely a belief system is a loophole for you to malign Muslims with impunity.”

Lean’s concern for beliefs as “integral to identity” did not stop him from irreverently using Jesus’ name as a curse when he tweeted to this Christian that “Jesus Christ, you’re a character.” Surprisingly, while Lean’s research interests include “Muslim-Christian relations,” he admitted, “I actually don’t care for religion at all — any of them. I do care, however, about prejudicing people based on their religious identity.” The corresponding theological illiteracy of this “expert” appeared when he reiterated the hackneyed canard that the “Bible is full of vicious & violent stuff, and is no different than the Quran.”

Yet Lean nonetheless wants to appear as an authority on Islam on the basis of his graduate school and Arab language studies while condemning me as having “zero education in anything related to Islam; no Arabic.” He thus tweeted following the recent Barcelona, Spain, vehicular jihad attack that “Barcelona suspect Driss Oukabir doesn’t represent Islam. He doesn’t represent Muslims. He represents only himself, and only he is to blame.” This statement notwithstanding, Lean contradicted himself, tweeting to me in answer to my question about jihad’s meanings among Muslims that “I’m not the spokesperson. Ask the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims.”

Lean also presents himself as an authority on Israel, a country that draws his consistent scorn, irrespective of how much the ancestral Jewish homeland is “integral to the identity” of Jews. He crudely caricatures Jewish national liberation under Zionism as an “ideology which asserts that a certain group of people have the ‘right’ to a certain tract of land, and can thus expel all others.” “You’re damn right I’m condemning Zionism,” he forthrightly tweets, and claims that the radical Linda “Nothing is creepier than Zionism” Sarsour “is a champion of human rights. Zionism is bad.” He not surprisingly calls Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “leader of an apartheid project,” although Lean qualifies this by saying that this slander does not apply to Natanyahu’s “entire country. The Occupied Territories, for sure, though.”

In the early morning hours of Thursday, Syria’s al-Tala’i military research facility located in Masyaf was reduced to ash and flames. The Jerusalem Post reports that contemporaneous with the strike on al-Tala’I, a Hezbollah weapons convoy in the vicinity was also hit and destroyed. According to Western intelligence sources, al-Tala’i is a center for the production of chemical weapons. Syria blamed Israel and claimed that at least two regime soldiers were killed in the attack. The regime issued a banal and somewhat hypocritical warning of the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region.”

Israeli officials were mute but Israel’s defense minister Avigdor Liberman issued a terse statement shortly after the attack making it clear that Israel reserves the right to act when its interests are affected. “We are not looking for any military adventure in Syria but we are determined to prevent our enemies from harming, or even creating the opportunity to harm the security of Israeli citizens,” he said. This is as close to an admission that we’re likely to witness.

According to former Israel Air Force Head Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel, Israel has carried out over 100 precision strikes in Syria in the past five years, mostly aimed at thwarting arms transfers to Hezbollah. Other strikes, like the one carried out on January 18, 2015, have been aimed at sending a message to Iran and Hezbollah that Israel will not tolerate the creation of Iranian or Hezbollah bases near the Golan Heights border. Twelve Iranian and Hezbollah operatives, including the son of Imad Mughniyeh, and an Iranian general, were killed in that raid.

The al-Tala’i facility is located in northwest Syria near the Russian naval base at Tartus and lies 70km southeast of Russia’s largest and most important airbase in the Mideast, Khmeimim air force base. Russia maintains formidable air defenses in Syria, including the S-400 anti-aircraft platform but the Russians refrained from firing. Perhaps the Israeli aircraft simply didn’t register on the S-400’s radar system – Israel is known to possess a sophisticated array of electronic counter measures – or perhaps there is an unspoken understanding between the Israeli and Russian militaries – the two nations maintain effective liaisons to prevent military mishaps. No one can say for certain why the Russians held their fire but either way, it was a clean operation with no Israeli casualties, no collateral damage and no political fallout.

There is speculation that Syria was prepared to hand over the facility to its ally, Hezbollah. This theory was forwarded by former Israeli national security adviser, Maj.-Gen (ret.) Yaakov Amidror. Amidror, who is currently an analyst at Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, cited a recent visit to Damascus by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah where the terror leader requested control of the facility. The acquisition of a WMD facility in the hands of the world’s most dangerous and best armed terrorist organization would represent a strategic threat to Israel, and one that the Jewish State could not easily ignore. Amridor’s theory seems plausible and if accurate, would explain the urgency of the Israeli action.