RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/it-aint-over-til-its-over/

Marking on Sunday six months since the Oct. 7 massacre, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his weekly Cabinet meeting by listing what he called the “considerable achievements” of the war in Gaza.

“We have eliminated 19 of Hamas’s 24 battalions, including senior commanders,” he said. “We have killed, wounded or captured a large number of Hamas terrorists. We have cleared out Shifa [Hospital in Gaza City] and other terrorist command centers.”

He went on, “We have destroyed rocket factories, command centers and weapons caches. And we are continuing to systematically destroy underground installations.”

Netanyahu punctuated the impressive inventory by stating, “We are a step away from victory.”

Encouraging words, to be sure. Yet, to everyone’s surprise, they were followed by a withdrawal of most of the Israel Defense Forces ground troops from southern Gaza, after four months of fighting in Khan Yunis.

As soon as the IDF announced the pullback, I began receiving frantic calls from abroad and WhatsApp messages at home requesting my take on the move.

“Does it mean that the war is over?” some asked. “Has Israel capitulated to pressure from the White House for a ceasefire with nothing in return?”

Others wanted to know whether Netanyahu and his War Cabinet—despite their repeated assertions—had decided against entering Rafah, where four of the six remaining Hamas battalions are located, along with many of the 133 hostages.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20559/biden-sabotaging-peace-israel-saudi-arabia

Recently, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after meeting with [Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed] bin Salman that there is “good progress” on Saudi Arabia-Israel normalization talks. “I believe we can reach an agreement which would present an historic opportunity… We had a very good discussion about the work that we’ve been doing for many months now on normalization, and that work is moving forward. We’re continuing to make good progress.”

[T]here is good reason to believe that the Saudis will eventually agree to normalize their relations with Israel. In order for that to happen, however, Hamas, which is strongly opposed to any peace with Israel and does not recognize its right to exist, must be defeated and eradicated.

It is no secret that Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries despise Hamas and consider it a threat to their own national security….

There is no doubt that the Saudis, together with the UAE, Bahrain and the even the Palestinian Authority, are quietly praying for Israel to finish the job and get rid of Hamas. These Arabs, understandably, cannot express their views in public lest they be accused of “colluding” with Israel.

Arab states are motivated to sign peace treaties with Israel when they see Israel as a winner.

By pressuring Israel not to invade Rafah, the US administration is sabotaging its own efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to normalize its ties with Israel…

By demanding that Israel refrain from entering Rafah, the Biden administration is actually asking Israel to forget about recovering the 130 hostages being raped and tortured by Hamas every day — which still include six Americans – and to lose the war. This is something that neither Israel nor Hamas’s Arab enemies — nor even Biden — can afford to accept.

When the Iran-backed Hamas terror group invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, it not only sought to kill and kidnap Israelis. The group and its patrons in Tehran undoubtedly had other goals in mind, such as thwarting US-sponsored efforts to achieve normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Fortunately, Hamas has so far been unsuccessful in achieving this goal. In addition, Hamas has failed to drive a wedge between Israel and the Arab countries that have peace treaties with it: Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. None of these countries has cut off its diplomatic relations with Israel, despite their harsh criticism of Israel over the war in the Gaza Strip and pressure from the Arab street.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/unfriendly-fire/

Last week Israel mistakenly attacked with missiles a humanitarian convoy in Gaza, killing seven aid workers. As they have done for eight decades, Israel’s international enemies and alleged friends across the world immediately started demonizing Israel and accusing the IDF of intentionally targeting the aid workers. Biden also suggested just that when he said, “Even more tragically, this is not a standalone incident,” adding that the war in Gaza “has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed.”

Of course, Biden claims as well that Israel’s alleged callous indifference to the lives and well-being of civilians and aid workers “is a major reason why distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza has been so difficult—because Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers.”

Sadly, such unjust reactions and mendacious slurs against Israel have been unexceptional for decades. And only Israel faces incessant criticism over the mistakes and miscalculations that are the tragic, eternal contingencies of war.

In every battlefield throughout history, fighters have had to face the “fog of war”–– the chaos, uncertainty, unforeseen consequences, mistaken intel, dubious tactics, mediocre leadership, faulty training and discipline, plus terror, panic, and a “thousand shapes of death,” as the Roman poet Vergil described the brutal sack of Troy. These all lead to inadvertently killing one’s own troops or civilians.

Moreover, these grim constants of armed combat are multiplied and intensified in unconventional guerilla wars, especially in the complex landscape of towns and cities, where terrorists like Hamas shelter, spring ambushes, hide explosives, store armaments, use civilians of every age and sex as human shields, and employ humanitarian aid vehicles and ambulances to transport killers.

But over the last century, these historical realities of war have come to be understood as residues from more primitive and savage times, anomalies that modernity fancies can be corrected and mitigated with international laws, multinational covenants, institutions like the Red Cross, self-defeating “rules of engagement,” diplomatic intervention, and the conversion of illiberal autocracies into liberal democracies that acknowledge universal human rights and humanitarian restraints on war-making.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20560/us-saving-hamas

Had the Biden administration maintained the strong support for the destruction of Hamas that it showed in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7, the fighting might already have subsided and all the hostages been returned. But every time the Biden administration weakens its support for Israel, it strengthens the determination of Hamas to raise its demands and threaten Israel, to the point that Israel cannot possibly agree.

Where are the threats and the pressure on Hamas, Qatar or Iran?

Although Hamas praised — indeed celebrated — the resolution, it has no intention of complying with its demand regarding hostages. Yet, it expects Israel to comply unilaterally with what is demanded of it.

Recent data show that it is not Israel that causing hunger in Gaza, it is Hamas: “Hamas, which has been hoarding food and stealing from Gazans, is the root cause of Gazans’ suffering.”

[Hamas] must be required to surrender and the people of Gaza must be de-radicalized. Any other endgame will only postpone a repetition of October 7. Except this time, with calls this week for “Death to America” from within the United States, just as terrorism came to a theater near Putin, this time it may be coming to a theater near you.

The Biden administration’s drift away from full support for Israel will cost more Palestinian and Israeli lives. It will encourage Hamas to keep fighting and to keep rejecting proposals for the return of hostages in exchange for a humanitarian cease-fire. It will persuade Hamas that it can win its war, weaken Israel and create distance between the US and Israel.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/genocide-is-not-a-vibe/

“If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren told an audience at an Islamic Center of Boston event last week.

The “they” in this sentence refers to the International Court of Justice. But because the United States is not party to the charter that created the ICJ, and Israel does not recognize the court’s authority, “they” was not the operative word in Warren’s comments. It wasn’t even “genocide,” which has enough rhetorical force that it dominated the headlines that graced reports about her remarks. Rather, the most important and most revealing word in her statement was “believe.”

In the end, Warren did not have the courage of her own stated convictions. According to her office, the senator was “not sharing her views on whether genocide is occurring in Gaza.” Rather, she was merely commenting dispassionately on the ongoing fact-finding process at The Hague. That’s hard to believe.

For months, Warren has supported the idea of conditioning aid to Israel on terms designed to punish “a right-wing government” in Jerusalem “that’s demonstrated an appalling disregard for Palestinian lives.” Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has engineered a “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip by showing no respect for “civilian life,” she said in a highly publicized Senate speech. In that speech, she maintained that “the Israeli government must stop the bombing in Gaza” regardless of the status of Hamas — presumably because, in her view, Hamas’s survival represents the lesser of two evils. If Warren has convinced herself of that, why wouldn’t she also attribute to Israel the crimes of which Hamas is guilty?

We can only assume that Warren’s staff felt it was necessary to walk back her allegations of “genocide” not because those aren’t her true feelings but because the word has a legal definition and Israel’s conduct doesn’t come close to meeting it.

https://www.jns.org/the-only-deal-on-hamass-table-is-defeat-of-the-jewish-state/

In a monologue on Friday during Israeli Channel 12’s current-affairs program “Ofira and Levinson,” the mother of one of the remaining 133 hostages in Gaza called on Benjamin Netanyahu to resign.

“Mr. Prime Minister, you are running out of time,” said Einav Zangauker, whose 24-year-old son was abducted on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists. “You’re not returning Matan; you’re not accepting the hostage-release deal that’s on the table. Go home.”

Zangauker has been expressing this sentiment with increasing frequency. And it’s hard not to shudder sympathetically at what she and the rest of the devastated families have been going through for the past six months.

But where do they get the idea that there’s a “deal on the table” being prevented by Netanyahu? And what do they imagine would happen if he were to “step aside”?

Do they actually believe that a different leader or government in Jerusalem would spur Hamas to soften its stance? Can’t they see that every crack in Israel’s societal armor serves to stiffen the terrorists’ intransigence?

A review of recent history is in order here.

Israel, headed by Netanyahu, agreed in November to a pause in the war and the release from Israeli jails of three Palestinian terrorists per hostage held in Gaza. The exchange, brokered by Qatar and Egypt, took place over the course of a week. It would have continued if Hamas hadn’t violated the deal by refusing to provide a list of the remaining women and children in captivity and blitzing Israel with renewed rocket barrages.

In response, the Israel Defense Forces resumed fighting on Dec. 1. Less than three weeks later, Netanyahu offered another weeklong pause in the fighting and additional humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, in exchange for 40 hostages, including all the women, children and elderly men in urgent need of medical treatment.

I learned a new word this week. It is “blatherskite”. It is a word of contempt, originating in the 17th century, describing a person who prattles empty talk and nonsense. It is a perfect description of the finger pointing of so called journalists who vent bias and libel and disinformation when reporting on Israel’s present war.

The best antidote to the blatherskites is Michael Ordman’s weekly postings about the real and amazing Israel and its contributions even during wartime. rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
After 6 surgeries IDF soldier’s eyesight is restored. (TY WIN) IDF soldier Dor lost his eyesight in the war in Gaza. But thanks to Israeli medical technology and six eye surgeries, he can now see again. “I am born again” he says in Hebrew at the end of the video. Many tears were shed at his final eye test.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-israeli-doctors-restore-eyesight-to-wounded-idf-soldier/amp/
 
Wounded IDF soldier holds newborn daughter. Omer was seriously injured in the Gaza war, when an explosive device was detonated. He was evacuated to hospital, to be treated and rehabilitated just as his wife gave birth to their firstborn daughter. Their private victory gave Omer strength to recover and return to his unit.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/387797
 
You don’t need to be a spokesperson to speak up for Israel. Eylon Levy has been an excellent spokesperson for Israel since Oct 7.  He has now established a Civilian Public Diplomacy initiative called “the New Israeli Discourse”. It includes his State of the Nation podcast.  https://www.stateofanationpodcast.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypEyo4XWc-8  (About his initiative)
https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/donation-targets/124800/about (to support him)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-stunning-rise-curious-suspension-and-insistent-return-of-israels-star-spokesman/   
 
The Diaspora donates. Israel’s Diaspora Ministry reports that world Jewry has donated NIS 5 billion to Israel since Oct 7. Also, some 60,000 volunteers came to Israel.  https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-794568
 
Supporting and investing in Israel. Since Oct 7, Israel Bonds has raised more than $1.5 billion worldwide. This article explains why this is so important, why it’s a win-win activity, and how you can be a part of it.
https://www.jns.org/forever-changed-after-a-trip-to-israel/
 
70% of Gaza periphery residents return home. Nearly six months after Oct 7, most evacuees from the Gaza periphery have made the decision to return to their homes. The towns located between 4 and 7 km from the Strip (including the city of Sderot) have seen the return of 75% of residents.
https://www.jns.org/70-of-gaza-periphery-residents-return-home/
 
 
ISRAEL’S  MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Stem cell injections benefit MS sufferers. (TY Nevet) A study of 23 progressive multiple sclerosis patients at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem highlighted significant beneficial effects of repeated stem cell injections. They improved neurological function, cognition, and quality of life with no adverse effects.
https://www.hadassah.org/story/research-at-hadassah-shows-promising-results-for-patients-with-progressive-ms
 
Possible therapy for bone cancer. (TY Nevet) Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered in the laboratory that two existing medicines can be used to enhance treatments against bone cancer. It is important as bone cancer is often the result of metastasis (spreading) in breast cancer patients.
https://tps.co.il/articles/cocktail-of-repurposed-drugs-offers-hope-to-breast-cancer-patients/
https://aacrjournals.org/cancerdiscovery/article-abstract/doi/10.1158/2159-8290.CD-23-0762/734997/
 
3rd clinical trial for gastro leakage sensor. The xBar sensor from Israel’s Exero Medical (see here previously) is about to begin a Phase 3 pivotal clinical trial in the USA and Israel. The device aims to immediately detect post-operative leakage following gastro surgery, which is fatal in 40% of affected cases.
https://nocamels.com/2024/04/life-saving-sensor-monitors-dangerous-fallout-of-stomach-surgery/
 
Live greener, live longer.  What seems to be an obvious statement has been proved in a study by Tel Aviv University researchers. They examined over 3,000 heart bypass patients and found that patients who live in a “greener” environment are at a lower risk of mortality than those who live in a “non-green” environment.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-794536
https://www.aftau.org/news_item/heart-patients-live-longer-in-a-greener-environment-tau-study-finds/
https://journals.lww.com/epidem/abstract/2024/01000/residential_greenness_and_long_term_mortality.6.aspx
 
Video game app to combat chronic pain. The pain-relieving video games from Israel’s TrainPain (see here previously) are now available to download on iPhone and Android phones. You also need to order (fees required) the haptic pod and cables. Available in the US only.
https://nocamels.com/2024/03/new-video-game-aims-to-train-the-mind-to-stop-sensing-chronic-pain/
https://www.trainpain.com/
 
Using AI to find cures for diseases. (TY Nevet) An interesting article explaining how Israel’s CytoReason (see here previously) is using AI and big data from the medical companies themselves to help reduce the cost and time required to bring a new remedy to market. 
https://nocamels.com/2024/02/using-ai-made-models-to-find-cures-for-disease/
 
400 French doctors & dentists seeking to make Aliyah. The first European MedEx event took place in Paris, gathering more than 400 doctors and dentists from France and Belgium. At MedEx, potential immigrant medics can convert licenses and engage directly with representatives from Israeli healthcare institutions.
https://www.jns.org/more-than-400-doctors-and-dentists-attend-aliyah-fair-in-paris/
 
Global Change-maker. (TY Nevet) The prestigious Nature magazine named Israeli Tal Patalon, outgoing head of the KSM research and innovation center of Maccabi Healthcare Services, as one of the world’s change-makers in medical research. Her team’s COVID-19 research changed vaccination policies in the United States.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00754-w 
https://www.ksminnovation.com/member/dr-tal-patalon/
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-784798

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-truth-about-israels-friendly-fire/

David Cameron has got some front. The Foreign Secretary is haranguing Israel over its tragic unintentional killing of seven aid workers in Gaza, and yet he oversaw a war in which such ‘friendly fire’ horrors were commonplace. In fact, more than seven people were slain in accidental bombings under Cameron’s watch.

It was the Libya intervention of 2011. In that Nato-led excursion, in which Cameron, then prime minister, was an enthusiastic partner, numerous Libyans died as a result of misaimed bombs. Things got so bad that the West’s allies took to painting the roofs of their vehicles bright pink in an effort to avoid Nato’s missiles.

In one awful incident, 13 people were slaughtered by our ‘friendly fire’. Their number included not only anti-Gaddafi rebels but also ambulance workers. It was in the wake of this calamity that the rebels got out the pink paint. ‘How to avoid friendly fire? Libya rebels try pink’, said a headline at NBC News.

Yet now Cameron is on his high horse over Israel’s bombing of trucks carrying volunteers from the World Central Kitchen. He is demanding a ‘full, transparent explanation of what happened’. Fine. Three of the dead were British nationals, so it makes perfect sense Britain wants answers. But you would think a former PM who was involved in wars in which other accidents happened would understand that ‘friendly fire’, sadly, is all but inevitable in bloody conflict.

This is not to downplay the horror of what happened in Gaza on Monday. That civilians were killed while trying to help people, while trying to deliver food, is horrendous. It is fitting that the Israeli president Isaac Herzog has apologised for the bombings, and that the Israeli government has promised to get to the bottom of what happened.

And yet there is something off, even something nauseating, in all the Western finger-wagging. It isn’t only Cameron. US president Joe Biden has also weighed in, saying he is ‘outraged’ by the killing of the aid workers. You can’t help but wonder whether he directed similar outrage at his own nation’s military when 37 Afghanis at a wedding party, mostly women and children, were killed by mistake in a US airstrike.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13276141/BORIS-JOHNSON-insane-Britain-ban-arms-sales-Israel-sooner-denounce-idea-better.html

“Israel has no choice but to defend itself because the charter and aim of Hamas is to destroy Israel, and indeed to liquidate the entire Jewish people. The Hamas massacre on October 7 was plainly designed to further that end: the moral and political destruction of Israel.”

If you want an example of the death wish of Western civilisation, I give you the current proposal from members of the British establishment that this country should ban arms sales to Israel.

If you want evidence of government madness, it appears that Foreign Office lawyers are busily canvassing the idea — which has not, as far as I can tell, yet been rejected by the Foreign Secretary himself. He seems to have gone into a kind of purdah on the subject.

More alarming still, we are told that an Israeli arms ban is the subject of an active row in Cabinet, with only a handful of ministers positively sticking up for Israel.

The contagion has spread pretty wide, and very fast. The proposed embargo is now supported by MPs on all sides, by the former head of MI6, by some former Supreme Court Justices, and by about 600 members of the legal profession, all of them clamouring for us to turn our backs on the only democracy in the Middle East.

We are being asked to shun the Israelis, to mount a total moral repudiation of Israel — when that country has only recently suffered the biggest and most horrifying massacre of Jewish people since World War II; and when 130 hostages, including, for heaven’s sake, a baby, are being kept in dungeons in Gaza by their jihadi captors; and when the release of those hostages, it cannot be stated too often, would mean the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli Defence Forces and the end of the conflict.

How can we get things so wrong, so upside down? What has come over us?

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/04/07/a-letter-from-israel/

Hamas must be eradicated.’

You can rely on taxi drivers the world over to deliver blunt opinions. Unusually for Israel today, my taxi driver is a Netanyahu supporter. He has lost family in the war with Hamas. ‘Our minds were broken’, he says of the 7 October atrocities, ‘but now we are fighting back’. This, I soon discovered, is a common sentiment in Israel. Netanyahu remains deeply unpopular, but the war on Hamas is the one policy of his that the vast majority of Israelis back.

I ask the taxi driver if the pressure from the US and the rest of the outside world to hold back is having any effect. ‘No’, he says, ‘nobody likes us now, but they will respect us when we win’.

My two-week stay in Israel began in Tel Aviv, at the main station, Savidor. It looks like a normal rush hour, except for the fact a large proportion of the commuters are in army uniform. Many look ridiculously young – just kids, really. Their uniforms often don’t fit very well. But there are also serious-looking men and women in smarter uniforms, all carrying submachine guns. This is what a nation under arms looks like.

From Tel Aviv, we head to Ashkelon, just north of Gaza. This is the terminus, as the line further south runs too close to the Gaza border to be safe. On arrival, the train empties and I am surrounded by soldiers waiting to be picked up and deployed. It’s from Ashkelon that I meet the taxi driver, who takes me further south, to Sderot.

As I’m being driven through the military checkpoint at the entrance to Sderot, I hear the boom of Israeli artillery. The intermittent barrages will become a permanent feature of my 10-day stay in the Gaza Envelope, the towns and villages of Israel that run to the east of the Gaza Strip.

I am joining up with Livnot, a volunteer organisation based in Sderot, which is dedicated to renovating and fixing buildings in the Gaza Envelope. Sderot is a town of just over 30,000 and only one mile from the border of northern Gaza. On 7 October – always known here as 7/10 – Hamas terrorists invaded without warning, killing at least 50 civilians and 20 police officers, before eventually occupying the Sderot police station. Rather than risk losing any more lives, an IDF tank destroyed the police station with the terrorists inside it.