RUTHFULLY YOURS

This is an appalling concession. The people in Amona came to build in and live in peace . ……rsk

TEL AVIV—Israel’s government on Sunday forged a last-ditch deal to relocate Jewish settlers from homes built on Palestinian land to another part of the West Bank, avoiding a potentially violent confrontation but underscoring state support for controversial settlements.

After weeks of talks with 40 families of Jewish settlers that had constructed an outpost of trailer homes in the Palestinian territories north of Ramallah, Israel’s conservative government agreed to move most of the settlers to nearby plots, a spokesman for the families said.

Israel’s Supreme Court in 2014 ruled that the outpost, called Amona, was built illegally after claims were lodged by Palestinians over the land. The court ordered the site be evacuated by Dec. 25.

The ruling pitted the judiciary and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against members of his conservative ruling government coalition who supported Amona and have since put forward new legislation to legalize other outposts in the West Bank.

In recent days, hundreds of supporters of the settlers had camped out at Amona ahead of plans by the police and military to forcibly remove the families. Earlier Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu urged the settlers to take the deal offered by the government and evacuate peacefully. CONTINUE AT SITE

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Technion opens new integrated cancer center. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel inaugurated the Technion Integrated Cancer Center (TICC) in Haifa. The center is a first-of-its kind hub for global cancer research, which will expedite the discovery of new diagnostic tools and treatments through a collaborative “bench-to-bedside” approach. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/220756

Israeli wins $25,000 neuroscience award. (TY Karen) Israel’s Dr. Gilad Evrony was awarded the Eppendorf and Science Prize for Neurobiology by Science magazine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr Evrony sequences and analyzes the genomes of individual brain cells to detect mutations.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-american-researcher-wins-25000-prize-for-young-scientists/
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/220303

First US medical center to use Israeli hi-tech scanner. I reported previously (Dec 4) that the US FDA approved the P-ARTIS innovative upright CT proton scanner from Israel’s P-Cure. Now the Northwestern Medicine Chicago Proton Center will be the first in the US to use it for patients being treated for lung cancer.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/375973

Facebook screens live brain surgeries from Israeli hospital. More than half a million viewers have been watching live broadcasts on Facebook of Israeli brain surgeons at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba removing a benign tumor. The purpose was to promote the work at the new brain center.
http://www.jta.org/2016/12/13/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/facebook-screens-live-brain-surgery-from-israeli-hospital

Israel’s first health informatics program. The Jerusalem College of Technology and the University of Toronto have jointly developed Israel’s first degree program in the field of health informatics. Health informatics involves managing and analyzing data to support the best treatment for patients.
http://www.jct.ac.il/en/jct-university-toronto-collaborate-health-informatics-program

1,000 new defibrillators. In what may be the largest purchase of defibrillators ever made in Israel, volunteer emergency medical services (EMS) organization United Hatzalah recently purchased 1,000 defibrillators – one for each of its volunteers. The aim is that no one in Israel will die from a treatable cardiac arrest.
http://www.jems.com/articles/news/2016/11/united-hatzalah-purchases-1-000-new-defibrillators-to-distribute-among-fleet-of-ems-volunteers.html

ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL

Jerusalem to distribute Xmas trees. Jerusalem’s Municipality continues its tradition of distributing free Christmas trees to the capital’s Christian residents. On Dec. 20, 150 trees will be distributed at the Jaffa Gate Plaza upon presentation of a valid ID card. Christian areas will be decorated and assistance given for fairs etc.
http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Jerusalem-Municipality-to-distribute-150-free-Christmas-trees-475255

Islam in Israel – facts and figures. (TY Bennett) Excellent summary of Israel’s 1.454 million Muslim population. E.g. It highlights just how free religion is, with a 500% growth in the number of mosques since 1988 (from 80 then to 400 now).
https://israelforeignaffairs.com/2016/06/behind-the-headlines-facts-and-figures-islam-in-israel/

Why is Israel treating wounded Syrians? (TY BIG) This video was produced by Mohammad Magadli & Mohammad Al-Kassim. It features Moslems who cannot understand why Israel is treating Syrian wounded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jgdjoi0KFBQ

Twice as much water for Jordan. (TY Bennett) Israel’s national water carrier Mekorot is to build a new pipeline from Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) to Jordan. It will provide Jordan with 100 million cubic meters of water annually, roughly double the volume Israel currently supplies to the kingdom.
http://www.thetower.org/4298-israel-set-to-double-annual-water-supply-to-parched-kingdom-of-jordan/

Hands-free Smartphone reaches 1200 users. Latest news on Israel’s Sesame Enable smartphone for the disabled (see previous) is that it now has reached more than 1,200 customers globally, including in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, in the three years since it was set up. See video of the phone’s paralyzed co-founder.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/hands-free-phone-opens-worlds-for-paralyzed-users/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no4ks4INcL0

Helping Ugandan children. Project TEN, a project of the Jewish Agency for Israel, has set-up its third volunteer center in Africa. Partnering with a coalition of organizations, the center in Namulanda, Uganda (between Kampala and Entebbe) will focus on education, healthcare, agriculture, and the arts.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/return-to-uganda-by-jewish-peace-corps/2016/12/11/

Israel welcomes new Turkish Ambassador. Mekin Mustafa Kemal Okem presented himself to Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem and officially assumed the post of Turkey’s first ambassador to Israel in five years. He hailed a “new beginning” in bilateral ties and called the Jewish state Ankara’s “partner and friend.” http://www.timesofisrael.com/taking-up-post-turkish-envoy-hails-new-start-with-friend-israel/

What Israel can do for Rajasthan. (TY Karen) Israel’s MASHAV has three centers of excellence in the Indian State of Rajasthan. They are working on producing high-quality seedlings, intensifying cultivation, better irrigation and fertilization. Israel can also help increase milk production, crop shelf-life and pest control.
http://swarajyamag.com/insta/israels-best-practice-ideas-that-can-exponentially-increase-the-dairy-output-of-rajasthan

PM visit to Muslim Azerbaijan. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed bilateral agreements governing tariffs, agricultural cooperation, and to advance further cooperation in science, technology, health, trade, and other economic matters. http://www.thetower.org/4292-netanyahu-israels-ties-with-azerbaijan-symbolize-muslims-and-jews-working-together/

Michael Andrew Gove is a British Conservative politician, who was Secretary of State for Education from 2010 to 2014 and Secretary of State for Justice from 2015 to 2016. He has been the Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath since 2005. He is not Jewish. God bless him!!!!!rsk

How do you know if someone’s an anti-Semite? They don’t all perform stiff-arm salutes for the camera and offer interesting 140-character thoughts about race theory on Twitter. Although those are helpful clues, as the American alt-right, Hezbollah and Iran’s leadership prove.

But anti-Semitism isn’t a prejudice restricted to the likes of Richard Spencer, Hassan Nasrallah and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As befits the world’s oldest and most durable hatred, it has many more adherents and has taken many different forms.

In medieval times, when individuals made sense of their world through the prism of faith, anti-Semitism was a religious prejudice. In the 19th and early 20th centuries – the age of Darwinism – anti-Semitism clothed itself in the white coat of the scientist. Biological metaphors were deployed to modernise hate. The Jews were carriers of “racial contamination” who had to be eliminated as a pathological threat to humanity’s future.

That belief led to history’s greatest crime. The extermination of six million powered by hatred of one thing – Jewish identity. It should have been the case that anti-Semitism died in the furnaces of the Holocaust. But the hatred survived. And, like a virus, mutated.

Anti-Semitism has moved from hatred of Jews on religious or racial grounds to hostility towards the proudest expression of Jewish identity we now have – the Jewish state.

No other democracy is on the receiving end of a campaign calling for its people to be shunned and their labour to be blacklisted. The Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement is a growing force on our streets and campuses. Its campaigners argue that we should ignore ideas from Jewish thinkers if those thinkers come from Israel and treat Jewish commerce as a criminal enterprise if that business is carried on in Israel.

This is anti-Semitism, impure and simple. It is the latest recrudescence of the age-old demand that the Jew can only live on terms set by others. Once Jews had to live in the ghetto, now they cannot live in their historic home.

It is to this country’s eternal credit that we rejected centuries of prejudice one hundred years ago and pledged to extend to the Jewish people the rights enjoyed by Germans and Italians, Japanese and Mexicans – the right to a land they could call their own. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was followed in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel. Since then, that state’s success has been near miraculous.

US President-elect Donald Trump won’t even take office for another month, but he has already killed the status quo.

During the election, Trump trounced the untouchable consensus on NATO’s post-Cold War purpose. Questioning the purpose of an alliance formed to fight a war that ended 25 years ago is indisputably a reasonable thing to do. But until Trump came around, no one did.

Since November 7, Trump has continue to reject accepted wisdom. For 44 years no US president would speak with the president of Taiwan. And then President-elect Trump took a call from Taiwan’s President-elect Tsai Ing-wen.

It’s not clear where Trump stands on either NATO or Taiwan. But it is eminently apparent that by ignoring protocol, Trump expanded his maneuver room in his dealings with NATO and China.

Then of course, there is Jerusalem. Since 1948 the US has refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – or even as part of Israel. This policy of non-recognition – embodied by the US refusal to transfer the US embassy to Jerusalem – has been maintained by a bipartisan consensus despite the fact that for the past 20 years, US law has required the State Department to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the embassy to Jerusalem.

When Trump promised to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, his words were greeted with cynicism.

But then this week his senior advisor Kellyanne Conway said Trump is serious about moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

In one fell swoop, the 68 year old consensus is gone.

35 years ago, on December 14, 1981, Israel took a Trump-like step. Israel took a wrecking ball to received wisdom.

That day, the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law. Then prime minister Menachem Begin decided on the initiative the day before. In less than 24 hours, the law when from an idea in Begin’s head into the law books.

The Golan Heights law cancelled the Military Government and Civil Administration that had governed the area since 1967 and replaced them with Israeli law and administration.The Reagan administration was livid. Begin had neither asked Ronald Reagan for permission nor given Reagan a head’s-up on what he was about to do.

Begin was clearly operating on the basis of the “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission” protocol.

In the event, the Americans weren’t really mad.Reagan prevented the UN Security Council from sanctioning Israel for its action.

The Syrian regime did nothing. The Arab world yawned.

Israel was spared international condemnation in large part because of the way Begin explained the purpose of the law.

The day before the Knesset passed Begin’s law, the Syrian regime announced it would prefer to fight Israel for 100 years than live at peace with it. That statement, like hundreds of similar ones over the 13 years since Israel took over the strategic plateau reinforced yet again, the basic truth that Israel would be responsible for the Golan Heights for a long, long time.

After the law was passed, Begin and his advisors insisted its purpose was administrative. Israel couldn’t wait for a hundred years to register births and deaths and marriages, they explained. The Syrian legal code, through which the Military Government administered the areas was unsuited to a modern democracy. There was no way to protect the rights of Golan residents so long as Syrian law was the law of the land.

On Monday, Israel took delivery of its first two F-35I “Adir” multi-purpose fighters. Barring any unexpected cost overruns, Israel is slated to take delivery of a further 48 of these machines, reckoned to be the most advanced in the world. The acquisition will add to Israel’s already formidable fleet of F-16I, F-15I and F-15C fighter bombers.

The following day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, paid an official state visit to Azerbaijan to meet with his counterpart, President Ilham Aliyev, to sign various trade agreements and solidify understandings. Despite the fact that Azerbaijan is predominantly Shia, the Muslim nation maintains very good relations with Israel.

The two events are seemingly mutually exclusive but must be viewed within a wider geo-political context involving the Islamic Republic of Iran, its militarized nuclear program and the JCPOA, more commonly referred to as the Iran Deal.

In any strike against Iran, the F-35, with its stealth capabilities, advanced avionics and large payload, will be the tip of the Israeli spear. These aircraft along with F-15 and F-16 fighter jets will be at the forefront of any operation targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Israel also has an undisclosed number of Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missiles that can accurately deliver a payload of 1,000 kilograms of high explosives over a distance of 6,000 kilometers – well within range of every square inch of the Islamic Republic. The Jericho can also be fitted with an unconventional warhead. It is silo-based but there have been reports that Israel possesses a mobile tracked or wheeled version as well.

There will be a role for Israeli Navy as well. Its recent acquisition of the INS Rahav, its fifth submarine, will significantly enhance Israel’s offensive and defensive capabilities. The craft can accurately deliver the Israeli version of the American Tomhawk cruise missile called the Popeye Turbo, and do so virtually undetected. The Popeye Turbo can also be equipped with an unconventional warhead. Israel’s advanced submarine platforms will also be tasked with carrying out covert operations.

But Iran is large and distant. Its nuclear facilities are well protected, fortified and scattered about the country. Israel will need to covertly partner with other nations bordering Iran to ensure maximum success.

When J Street expresses outrage at your choice for ambassador to Israel, there’s very good reason to think you made a good pick. So it is with David Friedman, Donald Trump’s selection for that post.

Friedman, a bankruptcy attorney, is a long-time friend of the president-elect. He served on Trump’s Israel advisory committee during the campaign.

Friedman’s views on Israel are sound and will be a breath of fresh air. He does not believe Israeli settlements are an obstacle to peace (they are an excuse) and he says that a “two-state solution” is not a priority for the U.S. (why should it be?).

Friedman predicts that, as ambassador to Israel, he will be working from Jerusalem. He calls that city “Israel’s eternal capital.”

Presidential candidates routinely speak in favor of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It is, after all, Israel’s capital and therefore the seat of its government.

No president has moved the embassy. Donald Trump seems prepared to do so. His selection of Friedman reinforces this impression.

Here is a 16-point position paper that Friedman co-wrote for the Trump campaign. I can barely find an unsound sentence in it.

Highlights include:

A Trump Administration will ensure that Israel receives maximum military, strategic and tactical cooperation from the United States, and the MOU will not limit the support that we give. Further, Congress will not be limited to give support greater than that provided by the MOU if it chooses to do so. Israel and the United States benefit tremendously from what each country brings to the table — the relationship is a two way street [note: and it ain’t J Street].

The U.S. should veto any United Nations votes that unfairly single out Israel and will work in international institutions and forums, including in our relations with the European Union, to oppose efforts to delegitimize Israel, impose discriminatory double standards against Israel, or to impose special labeling requirements on Israeli products or boycotts on Israeli goods.

‘These Conservative Friends of Israel lunches are always special.

But this year feels extra special. Not only is this CFI’s biggest ever lunch, with over 800 people and over 200 Parliamentarians.

It is the first time that I have come here as Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party.

And it is a special time, for we are entering the centenary year of the Balfour Declaration.On the 2nd of November 1917, the then Foreign Secretary – a Conservative Foreign Secretary – Arthur James Balfour wrote:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

It is one of the most important letters in history. It demonstrates Britain’s vital role in creating a homeland for the Jewish people. And it is an anniversary we will be marking with pride. Born of that letter, and the efforts of so many people, is a remarkable country. No one is saying the path has been perfect – or that many problems do not remain.

Of course, people are correct when they say that securing the rights of Palestinians and Palestinian statehood have not yet been achieved. But we know they can be achieved. We in Britain stand very firmly for a two-state solution. And we know that the way to achieve that is for the two sides to sit down together, without preconditions, and work towards that lasting solution for all theirpeople.

None of this detracts from the fact that we have, in Israel, a thriving democracy, a beacon of tolerance, an engine of enterprise and an example to the rest of the world for overcoming adversity and defying disadvantages.

As most of us here know – and as I realised during my visit in 2014 – seeing is believing.

For it is only when you walk through Jerusalem or Tel Aviv that you see a country where people of all religions and sexualities are free and equal in the eyes of the law.

It is only when you travel across the country that you realise it is only the size of Wales – and appreciate even more the impact it has on the world.

It is only when you meet our partners in eradicating modern slavery – one of the main reasons I visited in 2014 – that you see a country committed to tackling some of the world’s most heinous practices.

And it is only when you witness Israel’s vulnerability that you see the constant danger Israelis face, as I did during my visit, when the bodies of the murdered teenagers, Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah, were discovered.

So seeing isn’t just believing; it is understanding, acknowledging and appreciating.

That is why I’m so pleased that CFI has already taken 34 of the 74 Conservative MPs elected in 2015 to Israel.

We saw in that video what a powerful experience it can be. We are so grateful to the people in this room for making it happen – but, of course, there is more to do.

We meet at a moment of great change for our country. In the wake of the referendum, Britain is forging a new role for itself on the world stage – open, outward-looking, optimistic.

Israel will be crucial to us as we do that. Because I believe our two countries have a great deal in common.

As the Ambassador Mark Regev said, we have common values; we work together, on health, counter-terrorism, cyber security, technology; and we can help each other achieve our aims.

First, we both want to take maximum advantage of trade and investment opportunities, because we know enterprise is the key to our countries’ prosperity.

Our economic relationship is already strong. The UK is Israel’s second-largest trading partner. We are its number-one destination for investment in Europe, with more than 300 Israeli companies operating here. And last year saw our countries’ biggest-ever business deal, worth over £1 billion, when Israeli airline El Al decided to use Rolls Royce engines in its new aircraft.

We should celebrate that, we should build on that – and we should condemn any attempt to undermine that through boycotts. I couldn’t be clearer: the boycotts, divestment and sanctions movement is wrong, it is unacceptable, and this party and this government will have no truck with those who subscribe to it.

Our focus is the opposite – on taking our trading and investing relationship with Israel to the next level. That is why one of the first places Mark Garnier visited as a minister in the Department for International Trade was Israel.