RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/gazans-chant-the-people-want-to-topple-hamas/

While the IDF continues to provide safe corridors for civilians fleeing from Khan Yunis, Hamas operatives try to hold them back, for they are the human shields Hamas relies on to discourage IDF attacks. Now Gazans are openly expressing their anger with Hamas, which wants to keep them imperiled, and also has been appropriating much of the humanitarian aid that has been trucked into the Strip. More on this public display of anger directed at Hamas can be found here: “Gazans call for overthrow of Hamas as they flee through IDF humanitarian corridor,” by Gadi Zaig, Jerusalem Post, January 27, 2024:

The IDF has established a humanitarian corridor in recent days for Palestinian residents of western Khan Yunis to move from combat areas to the town of Al-Mawasi in southwestern Gaza, IDF Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee announced on Saturday.

Adraee said that Gazan residents would be safe in Al-Mawasi and that the corridor has been opened to evacuate civilians every day so that the IDF can focus on fighting the Hamas terrorist organization and deepening its incursion into Khan Yunis without the risk of civilians being injured in the process.

Tens of thousands of Gazans have already passed through this corridor safely, according to the spokesperson.

Adraee also quoted a number of Gazan civilians passing through the corridor, who informed IDF soldiers that Hamas was preventing them from leaving combat areas, using threats and violence. Additionally, IDF soldiers were also assisting civilians at the scene, including the elderly and sick.

The humanitarian corridor remains open until 4 p.m. for residents to cross over to Al-Mawasi.

https://www.jewishmediaresources.com/2283/the-return-of-another-bad-idea-the-two-state

Students of American Mideast diplomacy will be quickly be struck by the number of doctrines that have persisted long past their “sell by” dates and after having been refuted by events.

For decades, it was a fundamental tenet of the State Department that the Arab-Israeli conflict lay at the heart of the failure to thrive of virtually every Muslim regime, as if Muslim leaders deliberately kept their countries backward and unfree to spite Israel. And then came the Arab Spring of 2010.

As Jackson Diehl, deputy editor of the Washington Post editorial page, wrote in late March 2011, “A reasonable person might conclude from the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, et al., that the Middle East’s deepest problems have nothing to do with Israel and that the Obama administration’s almost obsessive focus on trying to broker an Israeli-Palestinian settlement in its first two years was misplaced. But Obama isn’t one of those persons.”

Another article of faith of American policymakers was that no Arab country would make peace with Israel absent resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But then came Anwar Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem, followed by the 1978 Camp David Accords. Forty years later came the Abraham Accords between Israel and three Arab states.

And Saudi Arabia was widely seen as likely to join the Abraham Accords prior to October 7, despite the absence of a Palestinian state. Indeed, that prospect is thought by many to have lain behind Hamas’s October 7 attack, orchestrated by Iran.

Yet at the recent World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan confidently asserted that Saudi Arabia would never join the Abraham Accords absent a clear pathway to Palestinian statehood. In that they may be right, but only because their public pronouncements made it impossible for the Saudis to move forward with Israel. Diplomatic relations with Israel, however, would not be an act of largesse by the Saudis toward Israel, but rather a calculated strategic decision that Israel is their best possible ally against Iran and an assessment of the economic advantages of partnering with the more advanced Israeli economy.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2024/01/31/advisers-to-families-of-hostages-held-in-gaza-backed-by-qatari-funding-

Some of the families trying to free their loved ones held hostage by Hamas in Gaza are getting advice from individuals and entities that have received funding from Qatar, Daniel reports — an unusual arrangement given Qatar’s role as one of the chief mediators between Hamas and Israel and that the country is home to Hamas’ political leadership.

— As hostage families work to keep their relatives in the news and urge the Qataris to get Hamas to release them, a consultant working for the Qataris, Jay Footlik, has also met with the families in both Washington and Israel to prep them for their meetings with Qatari officials and also help organize them, according to two people familiar with the matter.

— Footlik’s consulting firm ThirdCircle Inc. has been registered under FARA since 2019 to help arrange trips to Qatar for American elected officials on behalf of the Qatari Embassy, which pays the firm $40,000 per month, according to filings with the Justice Department.

— Footlik, a former special assistant to former President Bill Clinton and liaison to the American Jewish community, told PI his work with the hostage families began because he had a long-standing relationship with Israeli businessperson Eytan Stibbe, who asked for his assistance since Footlik had relationships with Qatar.

— He said that he then contacted Qatari ambassador Meshal Al-Thani and asked if he would meet a relative of several of the Israeli hostages, Avichai Brodutch. Al-Thani immediately agreed and soon asked Footlik to help facilitate direct communication with hostage family members who wanted to meet with Qatari officials, he said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/world-court-advances-south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel/

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) decided in its January 26th provisional ruling to move forward with a peculiar case that South Africa brought against Israel, alleging that Israel has been committing genocide against Palestinians living in Gaza. South Africa claimed that it was simply enforcing rights protected by the international Genocide Convention to which both countries are signatories.

The ICJ is enabling South Africa to weaponize against the Jewish State of Israel the Genocide Convention, which was enacted in 1948 when the genocide of Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust was still fresh in peoples’ minds. To hurl an accusation of genocide against Israel, where at least one of the nearly 150,000 Holocaust survivors still living in Israel was killed during Hamas’s October 7th attack, is obscene.

Hamas initiated the war with Israel when it invaded Israel on October 7th and went on a genocidal rampage against Israeli civilians. Israel’s military operations in Gaza following that attack are a legitimate exercise of Israel’s inherent right of self-defense, which is recognized in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter when “an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.”

The ICJ deferred making a final judgment on the merits of South Africa’s genocide claims, which could take months or even years to decide. However, the ICJ issued provisional orders to take immediate effect, which are prejudicial to Israel’s inherent sovereign right of self-defense. Fortunately, the ICJ has no mechanism to enforce its ruling, although technically it is legally binding. Nevertheless, the ICJ’s decision that South Africa has presented a plausible case of genocide against Israel will put increased pressure on Israel to quickly wind down its military operations in Gaza.

While the ICJ did not order an immediate ceasefire, it did order Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this [Genocide] Convention.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20357/israel-gaza-culpable-ignorance

Sir William Shawcross’s much delayed and now recent report on “Prevent” – the British Government anti-radicalisation programme – which has documented the failure of efforts at integration and the degree of risk residing within Muslim extremism has secured this disturbing knowledge its place on the public record.

In a climate of Israelophobia, where moral compasses go haywire, Hamas is not being held to account. Predictably, the BBC has presented international law as superior to national law and the International Court of Justice as a higher court than any national court. Neither is true. Under the guise of “human interest”, the BBC repeatedly broadcasts prurient details of injuries to individual children in Gaza. Why? It is designed to shock and anger the listener and to demonize Israel; and it leaves those implications unspoken, hence deniable.

Predictably, the BBC has presented international law as superior to national law and the International Court of Justice as a higher court than any national court. Neither is true. The former Director of BBC Television asks, “When do individual errors add up to something more? When do ‘mistakes’ become a clear pattern of institutional bias? These are questions the BBC must answer when it comes to its reporting of Israel’s conflict with the terrorist group Hamas.” He then lists nine other cases of gross error since 7/10 where the bias has been always the same, namely anti-Israel. “…Is the BBC just unlucky that this keeps happening? The answer is no.”

Hamas has nowhere to hide under Geneva 4. Its crimes are war crimes of the highest order. The ICJ’s interim ruling is vexatious and, while unable to make an objective finding, tarnishes that Court by implying that Israel might in the future commit “genocide” when there is neither evidence of intention nor a community which meets the criteria to be victims of genocide. The same day as its ruling, evidence arrived that UNRWA on which in part it had relied had itself now been discredited by evidence of its operatives’ involvement in 7/10. This is the latest form of Holocaust denial.

It is a matter of moral and legal judgment about how a country with high moral standards wages war against a terrorist enemy that has none. The framework for such an assessment has not been satisfactorily spelled out.

Israel’s entire ground force is part of an interactive all-arms cyber/air/sea/land concept of operations optimised for precision targeting to minimise collateral casualties, maximise the extinction of Hamas terrorists and ensure the effectiveness of its own force protection.

Hamas, conversely, has only a homicidal interest in its own Gaza civilian residents. Bluntly, for its purposes, the more that are killed the better because their deaths can then be blamed on the IDF and added to the undifferentiated butcher’s bill in which Western media take figures issued by Hamas uncritically as being all civilian. Hamas repeatedly obstructed Gazans trying to evacuate south of Wadi Gaza, blocking the route — even shooting them — when, before the first phase of ground operations began, the IDF gave civilians notice to move.

The devil’s spreadsheet therefore brings the ethical terms of engagement squarely front and centre. Israel did not bring war on 7th October. It has Just Cause, is fighting by just means, and has clear precedent.

So the relevant ethical compass is all too clear. It is Hamas and by extension its supporters wherever they are – on the world’s streets, even in the BBC it seems – who carry all moral blame for the fate of Gaza and its people.

In the modern trope of woke “intersectionality”, as victims of purported “white, Jewish colonialism”, Arabs are licensed to do freely any depraved act; and by definition Jews can never be victims.

[F]ar from being an agent of indiscriminate warfare, the IDF is probably the most successfully discriminate modern army. Has the comparison with other modern armies been heard or discussed in BBC analyses? The genocide case was just an attempt to smear with loose language… and has no relevance to Israeli conduct, which will not stop attempts to claim that it has.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-uns-terrorist-teachers-israel-unrwa?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Many who watched the October 7 massacre likely wondered how a man’s mind can become so warped that he not only commits heinous acts of murder, rape, and mutilation, but proudly films this carnage for the world to see.

It is a complicated question. But one of the primary answers is found in the schools that mold the minds of young people in their formative years. In Gaza, the organization that does much of the molding is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA. That organization pays the salaries of teachers who call for the murder of Jews. 

On Friday, UNRWA said it had fired some employees accused of participating in Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel. Over the weekend, in an unprecedented rebuke of the agency, more than a dozen of its donor states, including the U.S., Germany, France, Japan, Canada, and the Netherlands, announced their suspension of funds to UNRWA. The latest revelations follow numerous other reported cases of UNRWA’s entanglement with Hamas terrorism. 

This agency was chartered after the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. Since 1950, UNRWA has provided the bulk of social services at Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza, including the crucial task of teaching Palestinian children and adolescents. 

But the notion that it is primarily an agency for the relief of refugees is a front. UNRWA’s main task is political. Palestinians who work for UNRWA call it “the main political witness to our cause.”

UNRWA exists to perpetuate Palestinians as refugees. Unlike the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which since World War II has been responsible for the welfare of all refugees in the world, and has worked toward their resettlement and relocation, UNRWA deals only with the Arabs from Palestine and has a completely different objective.

Millions of Palestinians who attend UNRWA schools in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza are taught that the war of 1948 is not over, and that they have a “right of return”—meaning, to dismantle and take over Israel. 

The UN betrays its mission by signaling to the Palestinians that the war is not over, and to keep fighting. 

UN Secretary General António Guterres said he was “horrified” to discover that UNRWA employees participated in the invasion and massacre of October 7. But in reality, their actions merely translated UNRWA’s core message into action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F57xdV_mIsA

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20356/unrwa-jihad-against-israel

“Hamas is involved in everything. Hamas has their hands on UNRWA administration workers. Hamas manages UNRWA. They are those in charge in the agency. From the day Hamas came to power, they took control of everything. The UNRWA employees are from Hamas. The heads of the departments and the senior staff are Hamas members.” —Palestinian from the Gaza Strip to an Israeli officer in a recorded call, X (Twitter) December 27, 2023.

It is now clear that the UN heads were lying when they said they were unaware of the involvement of their employees with terror groups. In fact, they knew but did their utmost to appease Hamas.

In a moment of rare honesty, in 2021 the UN acknowledged that UNRWA’s school curriculum referred to Israel as “the enemy,” taught children mathematics by counting “martyred terrorists,” and included the phrase “Jihad is one of the doors to paradise” in Arabic grammar lessons.

“Before UNRWA, this terrorist accomplice [Abdallah Mehjez] worked for the BBC…” — Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

“Now is the time for reform. Reform for rehabilitation – so that the minds of Palestinian children can no longer be poisoned. So that there can be a shared vision of peace in this land.” — Lt. Col. (res.) Peter Lerner, X (Twitter), January 27, 2024.

Western taxpayers should not be funding terror groups disguised as humanitarian organizations.

UNRWA was established to support the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees, not to support the development of terrorism.

It is time to dismantle UNRWA and end the farce of Palestinian “refugees.” There are no real refugees. There are millions of Palestinians living — often in unspeakable conditions (so that Israel can be blamed) — under the control of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

It is the UN that enables and perpetuates this human rights abuse. These Palestinians live under Palestinian and Arab regimes that should long ago have absorbed them instead of keeping them in “refugee camps” with the cheery “humanitarian” promise that they will one day flood Israel, turn the Jews into a persecuted minority in their own country, then bring about its demise.

https://www.jns.org/israeli-defense-conference-paints-day-after-scenario-with-israel-firmly-in-control/

 While the world pressures Israel, even before its war against Hamas has ended, to turn the Gaza Strip over to the Palestinian Authority, Israeli security experts delivered the opposite message at a security conference Thursday, saying Israel must remain in Gaza for a long time.

The Israel Defense Conference 2024, which took place in Ashkelon on Jan. 25, was organized by the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF). Thursday’s conference was the third held by the organization, and the most successful, with 500 attending.

The IDSF has grown in reputation following Oct. 7 as it has been warning for years that Israel needs to reevaluate its security posture. The group, comprising thousands of former security officers, was founded in 2020 by senior retired IDF personnel concerned that Israel was entering a dangerous period.

“For two years now, we have warned that the State of Israel has been on the road to war,” said Israel Defense Forces Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi, co-founder and chairman of IDSF, in his opening remarks.

“We predicted that Israel was going to face a Six-Day War scenario, or a Yom Kippur scenario, in which we would find ourselves completely surprised.”

In the 1967 SixDay War Israel struck first, quickly defeating its enemies. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War Israel was taken by surprise, hesitated to carry out a last-minute preemptive strike, and suffered heavy losses.

“Unfortunately, we found ourselves in the Yom Kippur reality that we so feared, a surprise scenario that caught Israel off guard,” he said, referring to the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas invasion.

Read this episode of pluck and fairness in the American spirit:

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA )waves Israeli flag from his roof after pro-Hamas protesters gather outside his Pa. home: https://nypost.com/2024/01/27/news/john-fetterman-mocks-pro-hamas-protesters-with-israeli-flag/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

And here is a fact of ironic truth:

Among the protesters and Congressional legislators and journalists who harbor and promote anti-Israel bias, you can bet that the majority, whether in diagnosis, illness and cure, or in their cameras, cellphones and computers, or in general security technology, profit from Israeli research and development in some form every single day.

Michael Ordman’s catalogs of the foregoing are essential reading. rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Druze woman saved Jewish town. On Oct 7, Druze IDF Sgt Maj Iyyad Yousef captured two Hamas terrorists who invaded the Jewish town of Yated where he lived. His wife Nasreen then interrogated them in Arabic and extracted vital information that helped IDF forces to eliminate the threat to their town.
https://worldisraelnews.com/how-a-druze-woman-saved-her-jewish-town-on-october-7/
 
Foreign students maintain Gaza border dairies. (TY Hazel) Dairy farms near Israel’s Gaza border have been supplying milk uninterruptedly since the outbreak of the Oct 7 war thanks to a few staff that remained behind while most residents were evacuated. Among those who stayed are university students from Africa and Asia.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/undeterred-by-oct-7-massacre-foreign-interns-keep-gaza-periphery-dairy-farms-afloat/
 
Good news from Bet Shemesh. (TY Yanky) Journalist Hanoch Daum offered to pay a Tel Aviv restaurant owner for the meals of the IDF soldiers sitting at a table. The owner replied, “you’ll have to get in line, six other people have offered to do the same thing before you!”  (more articles below)
https://www.shemesh.co.il/en/highlights/good-news-corner-11th-january-2024/about
 
Read all about it. Don’t miss these: A wallet lost in Gaza 10 years ago returned to its owner. A record 39,000 ADI organ donor cards were issued in 2023. 31,000 Jewish Israeli babies were born since Oct 7. Volunteers present soldiers with gift packages for them to give to their wives on returning from Gaza.  And more…
https://www.shemesh.co.il/en/highlights/good-news-corner-11th-january-2024/about
 
In Gaza together, re-united in maternity ward. IDF reservists Eliya Rosen and Daniel Novogrotzky fought together for six weeks in Gaza. They were drafted on Oct 7, to join the same IDF unit. They were astonished to meet up again when they discovered that their wives were sharing a maternity room at the same hospital.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/383577
 
IFCJ donates $19 million in 100 days. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) provided $19 million in aid and assistance to thousands of Israelis in the first 100 days of the war with Hamas. IFCJ will continue to support evacuees and displaced war victims with basic needs and other essentials throughout 2024.
https://www.jns.org/wire/ifcj-provides-19-million-in-aid-in-first-100-days-of-war/
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-782687
 
14 ambulances donated. North Carolina based Samaritan’s Purse has donated 14 new MDA ambulances to replace those destroyed by Hamas on Oct 7. In addition, the organization is donating seven armored ambulances to MDA, which are still in production and will be dedicated this spring.
https://www.jns.org/samaritans-purse-replaces-14-mda-ambulances-lost-on-oct-7/
 
Something is afoot. There are a great many happy feet in the IDF due to the thousands of pairs of US-certified military-grade boots being delivered each week. 10,000 pairs of boots have been distributed to Israeli soldiers, thanks to some $850,000 of donations, raised mainly from individuals in the US at private funding events.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/something-is-afoot-volunteers-fit-idf-soldiers-with-us-military-boots-amid-hamas-war/
 
Asylum seekers cook for IDF soldiers. Dozens of Eritrean migrant workers hosted hundreds of IDF soldiers serving on the border with Gaza to a festive barbecue dinner. The Christian Orthodox Eritreans self-funded the cost of all the steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, kebabs, and salads.
https://www.jns.org/eritrean-migrants-barbecue-for-israeli-soldiers-near-gaza-border/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Finland gives $1 million to MDA. (TY Hazel) The Finnish government is to donate $1 million to Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service. Finland’s ambassador to Israel Dr. Nina Nordström signed the agreement after she toured the MDA 101 Emergency Call Center in Kiryat Ono.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/finland-to-donate-1-million-to-magen-david-adom/
 
US approval for ultrasound software. Israel’s Techsomed Medical Technologies (see here previously) has received US FDA approval for its BioTraceIO groundbreaking ultrasound-based liver ablation software. It helps surgeons to see the real-time status of liver tumors while they use thermal ablation therapy to destroy them.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/techsomeds-biotrace-solution-achieves-de-novo-clearance-from-fda-as-the-first-ultrasound-based-software-for-tissue-response-prediction-in-liver-tumor-ablation-302028369.html   https://nocamels.com/2024/01/israeli-company-gets-fda-clearance-for-liver-tumor-software/
 
A sensor to guide the endoscope. Israel’s SwiftDuct has developed a smart endoscope for navigating the complex and dangerous route needed to check the condition of the bile duct. 20% of the 2 million annual ERCP procedures cause damage to the nearby pancreatic duct. SwiftDuct’s sensor and guidewire solve this problem.
https://nocamels.com/2024/01/unique-sensor-offers-safe-solution-for-tricky-intestinal-procedure/
https://swiftduct.com/
 
Boosting survival rates for wounded IDF soldiers. The current 6.7% mortality rate for wounded IDF personnel is half of that during the 2006 2nd Lebanon war. This can be attributed to faster evacuations, better protective equipment, and medical tech from Israeli founded companies such as Mazor Robots and Aidoc.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-cutting-edge-israeli-med-tech-is-boosting-survival-rates-of-war-wounded/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaEdmYrNAO0
 
DNA sequencing to combat pathogens. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s Sequentify (see here previously) was awarded a grant by the Israel Innovation Authority to help develop a targeted DNA sequencing panel for infectious disease research, focusing on pathogen diagnosis and antibiotic resistance surveillance.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sequentify-awarded-grant-by-israel-innovation-authority-for-infectious-disease-sequencing-panel-302031466.html