RUTHFULLY YOURS

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

This week’s amazing list of Israel’s varied, outsized, and vital contributions is about “connections” prompted by the news that Israel is building infrastructure to establish the Jewish State as a communications and solar energy hub connecting Europe and Asia. Meanwhile, Israel’s connections with the UAE prevented a major cyber-attack on the Gulf state. Its connections with Africa provided food for the disadvantaged in Senegal and saved the lives of children from Eswatini (Swaziland).

It evoked a memory in me of the late Menachem Begin’s first visit to the United States as the elected Prime Minister. In one of dozens of speeches, Begin used the word “connection” referencing the bonds between Zionists in every corner of the world and the State of Israel. That “connection” stokes the pride that I and all friends and supporters  share with every issue of Very Good News from Israel. Thank you Michael Ordman! rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Programming tumors to self-destruct. (TY WIN) Researchers at Tel Aviv University encoded a toxin into mRNA (messenger RNA) molecules and delivered them directly to cancer cells. The cells were instructed to produce the toxin that eventually killed them. Another breakthrough from the lab of Professor Dan Peer.
https://en-lifesci.tau.ac.il/news/2023/peer/cells  https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-748548
https://www.thno.org/v13p3497.htm
 
A molecule to prevent tooth decay. Scientists in Israel, China and Singapore have discovered a molecule 3,3′-Diindolylmethane (DIM – also known as bisindole) reduces the biofilms that produce dental plaque and cavities by 90%. The molecule is also found to have anti-carcinogenic properties and could be added to toothpastes.
https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/Kushmaro_cavities_DIM.aspx
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-748213  
 
Proton Irradiation Center opens. Israel’s P-Cure (see here previously) has opened its Proton Irradiation Center (PIC) in Modi’in. Dozens of Israeli cancer patients will now be able to receive treatment with proton irradiation. Permission has been given for the PIC to treat hand-and-neck cancers and recurring brain cancers.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-748050
 
US approves treatment for lazy eye. Israel’s NovaSight (see here previously) has received FDA approval for its CureSight digital therapy device for amblyopia (lazy eye). Clearance was given following a multicenter, randomized, controlled trial of 103 participants under 9 years of age. 79% of children improved in the trial.
https://nocamels.com/2023/06/children-watch-tv-to-cure-their-lazy-eye/
https://eyewire.news/news/novasight-announces-fda-510k-clearance-of-curesight-digital-therapy-for-amblyopia
 
Safe removal of varicose veins. Israel’s VVT Medical has received US FDA approval for its Sclerosafe medical device for the treatment of varicose veins. Its unique, dual syringe injects a sclerosing substance into the vein through one syringe while simultaneously removing blood and residuals through the second syringe.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/vvt-medical-receives-fda-510k-clearance-for-its-sclerosafe-system-301857362.html  https://www.vvtmed.com/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZqSIcWT4Hk
 
Another Israeli spine surgery navigation system. The 3D Optical Navigation System from Israel’s PathKeeper Surgical performed its debut commercial spine surgery on US patients. It was used in two successful lumbar spinal fusion surgeries for degenerative disc disease at VHC Health in Arlington, VA.
https://www.path-keeper.com/post/pathkeeper-surgical-commercializes-spine-navigation-system-with-first-u-s-cases    https://www.path-keeper.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfhhLUgcHxg
 
Prolapse treatment gets European funding & US approval. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Escala Medical (see here previously) has received €5.5 million from the European Innovation Council for its non-surgical, incision-free 20-minute solution for patients suffering pelvic prolapse. It also recently received US FDA clearance.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/escala-medical-awarded-5-5-million-eic-funding-to-revolutionize-pelvic-organ-prolapse-treatment-301862578.html
 
Israeli surgeons reattach Palestinian Arab boy’s head.  This sounds like science fiction. 12-year-old Suleiman internally decapitated his head in a bicycle accident that detached the base of his skull from the top of his spine. Hadassah surgeons performed an extremely rare and complex operation to save Suleiman’s life.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hadassah-surgeons-reattach-boys-head-to-his-neck-after-internal-decapitation/

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

Israel’s military operation in Jenin has ended and the IDF has withdrawn from the Palestinian town. You can see some of the results here and weapons caches in mosques here. Evidence of Iranian-sponsored terror organizations living in the middle of the civilian Palestinian population can be seen here.

Even Haaretz journalist Amos Harel almost acknowledged that Israel avoided Palestinian civilian casualties, although the IDF entered a densely populated area of the city. However, he did not note that the reason the IDF was there was because terrorists deliberately located themselves in the heart of this area.

Harel also suggested a sort of “tit for tat” aspect to the Palestinian response: “There was a stabbing attack in Bnei Brak and a vehicular ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv.”

Indeed, the headline of the piece was “Macabre Dance will Persist.”

So, for Harel this is a “dance.” Palestinian terrorists attempt to kill Israeli civilians while burrowed in among their own civilians—two war crimes in one—and this is the same thing as the IDF’s attempt to eliminate the source of this terror.

Harel is not alone in his view. As you watch and read media coverage of the Jenin raid—especially in The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC and Al Jazeera—remember that this is not Israel’s first incursion into Jenin.

During the so-called “second intifada,” Israel took the initiative and removed terrorist emplacements in the city. Western media reported Palestinian claims of 1,000 civilians killed and buried in mass graves as fact. But eventually, Western reporters proved that “about 50 Palestinians had fought and died in a ferocious battle that also cost the lives of 23 Israeli soldiers.”

With that in mind, note a recent New York Times headline: “Jenin Has a Long Legacy as a Bastion of Palestinian Armed Struggle.” The town, the article said, has “nurtured an ethos of defiance.”

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-748976

Using legal and humanitarian arguments to justify Palestinian demands ignores Israel’s legitimate claims to Judea and Samaria and its security needs.

According to the European Union, which influences policymaking in the international community, Israel’s occupation of the “West Bank” (areas that the IDF conquered in 1967) is a “violation of international law” – the Hague and Fourth Geneva Conventions – and is illegal; therefore, Israel must withdraw to the 1949 Armistice lines.

While this is a powerful and effective emotional and psychological weapon against Israel, few understand that, for Palestinians, “the occupation” includes all of Israel, everything “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”

The EU’s position, however, is baseless

The League of Nations recognized the right of the Jewish people to a homeland in the area; this was incorporated into the UN’s Charter (Article 80). The FGC defines “occupation” as occurring between states (“high contracting parties”); only Israel qualifies.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, however, declared that Israel was guilty of illegally “occupying Palestinian territory.” And, since the ICRC has special observer status at the UN and a special position in the FGC, its decisions are considered authoritative. The EU and UN adopted this as “humanitarian law.”

Although Israel withdrew from Areas A and B in Judea and Samaria as stipulated in the Oslo Accords, and assisted the Palestinian Authority to develop its institutional structure, the focus turned to denying Israel’s legal and historical claims to Area C, where all of the “settlements” are located. The debate over further territorial concessions, however, ended because terrorism and incitement continued unabated. Moreover, Iranian proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip – were empowered. The mantras of “land for peace” and “the two-state solution” became irrelevant, even for many in the international community.

http://bit.ly/44cJNfV

According to the late Prof. John Galbraith, the enemy of conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of facts, which may expose conventional wisdom as useless or dangerous.  Prof. Galbraith also suggests that conventional wisdom does not accommodate itself to the real world, but to a certain view of the world.

Indeed, the march of Middle East facts has exposed the alarming flaws of the Palestinian-oriented Western conventional wisdom, which has attempted to reshape Middle East reality in accordance with its own worldview.

For example:

*Since 1948, contrary to Western conventional wisdom, Arab countries have never flexed their military (and barely their financial and diplomatic) muscle on behalf of the Palestinian cause, as evidenced by the July 2023 war/battle between Israel and Palestinian terrorism, the previous 2021, 2014, 2012 and 2008 wars against Gaza Palestinian terrorism, as well as the 2nd (2000-2005) and 1st (1987-93) Intifada and the (1982) war against the PLO in Lebanon.

*Since 1948, Middle East reality has demonstrated that in contradiction of Western conventional wisdom, Arab national interests transcend – and often conflict with – the Palestinian issue. Therefore, no Arab-Israel war (1948/49, 1956, 1967 and 1973) erupted due to – or on behalf of – the Palestinian issue. Moreover, the six Israel-Arab peace accords with Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and the Sudan were concluded because they bypassed the Palestinian issue, eliminating the Palestinian veto power, which has been enshrined by Western conventional wisdom, torpedoing all Western peace proposals.

*Moreover, no Israel-Arab peace treaty has been suspended due to Israel’s wars/battles against Palestinian terrorism. Arabs concluded peace with Israel, in order to advance their own interests, and do not sacrifice these interests on the altar of Palestinian interests.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/04/what-israel-is-fighting-against/

Israel’s large-scale military incursion into Jenin on the northern West Bank has drawn widespread international condemnation. Starting on Monday morning, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) deployed over 1,000 troops with armoured vehicles, military bulldozers, drones and helicopter gunships to move into a refugee camp. The military operation is expected to last for a few more days. It is Israel’s largest operation in the West Bank in over 20 years.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), the organisation that officially controls the Palestinian population centres in the West Bank, set the tone for the criticism. A spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called the operation ‘a new war crime against our defenceless people’.

According to this narrative, the massively powerful IDF is engaged in yet another brutal and senseless attack against the Palestinians. At the time of writing, the Israeli military has killed at least 10 Palestinians in Jenin and wounded over 100, with 20 people in critical condition. Another Palestinian was killed yesterday, in an Israeli military raid on the West Bank town of Ramallah. About 3,000 Palestinian civilians have fled Jenin in the face of the onslaught.

Israel, in contrast, argues that its operation, unofficially named Bayit Vagan (Home and Garden), is focussed on what it calls ‘terrorist infrastructure’. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry: ‘Over the past two years, Jenin has become a major hub of terrorism and an Iranian stronghold close to Israeli population centres. Most of the terror attacks against Israelis originated from Jenin.’ The IDF’s goals include targeting armed men, arresting wanted men, as well as destroying weapons labs and command-and-control centres. Israel says it is trying its best to minimise civilian casualties.

Israel’s latest incursion marks an uptick in a conflict that has been escalating for a while. This year so far, about 29 people on the Israeli side (including foreigners) have been killed and 270 have been wounded by Palestinian military groups.

As Michael Ordman reminds us in this week’s dazzling list of Israel’s contributions to medicine, technology, agriculture, and water technology to name only a handful, Tel Aviv is also ranked as the happiest city in the world due to “Rich cultural heritage, kind people, and abundance of food, shopping, and learning” “as well as “a global hot spot for spring break and vacationing as a whole.”(https://www.thetravel.com/happiest-cities-in-the-world/#tel-aviv-israel)

All this from a post-colonial Jewish nation which is the size of New Jersey, Lake Michigan, Wales, or Kruger National Park, and the eighth smallest nation in Asia with a high standard of living and one of the world’s most educated work forces.

Read it all. rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
4,000+ spine operations. The xvision Augmented Reality Spine System from Israel’s Augmedics (see here previously) has now been used to treat over 4,000 patients and implant more than 20,000 pedicle screws across 21 U.S. states. It consistently demonstrates 97-100% accuracy across multiple patient studies.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/bjfbm8fu3  https://augmedics.com/
 
Hope for children with epilepsy. Researchers at Tel Aviv University and elsewhere have developed therapy in the laboratory to treat Dravet syndrome – a life-threatening form of epilepsy in children caused by a mutation in the SCN1A gene. The scientists used a harmless virus containing normal SCNIA genes to “infect” the brain.
https://www.aftau.org/news_item/tau-discovery-may-help-children-suffering-from-dravet-syndrome/
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/159316
 
Converting skin cells into placenta cells. Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have converted human skin cells into functional human placenta cells. The breakthrough can help cure pregnancy-related diseases and infertility issues by generating placenta cells that won’t be rejected as foreign tissue.
https://www.jns.org/colleges-universities/hebrew-university-of-jerusalem/23/6/21/297061/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39104-1
 
When women should take their meds. Israel’s Levana.ai is an AI-based solution that personalizes women’s prescriptions based on their cycle. It’s a platform for women who are taking long-term medication and provides doctors with recommendations regarding when and how much medication to prescribe to their patients.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/s1iydoovh   https://levana.ai/
 
Brain block may cure addicts. (TY Nevet) Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have identified in the laboratory that the claustrum area of the brain is vital to preventing addiction to certain medications. Existing remedies could help susceptible individuals increase their resistance and self-control.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-discovery-could-help-brain-block-urge-for-highly-addictive-fentanyl/
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)00737-6
 
All fingers and thumbs. Arab Israeli Dr. Firas Mawase is head of the Neurorehabilitation and Sensorimotor Neuroscience Laboratory at Israel’s Technion. He is investigating rehabilitating the dexterity of brain-damaged patients (e.g., from a stroke), using engineering and computational tools and functional imaging of the brain.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2023/05/all-fingers-and-thumbs/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0H0uATaJPA
 
US approval for safe epidural device. The EpiFinder device from Israel’s Omeq Medical (see here previously) has just received US FDA approval. A limited US launch is planned for early 2024.
https://www.israel21c.org/smart-device-aims-to-improve-safety-of-epidurals/
 
Partnership with UAE healthcare system.  Israel’s Sheba Medical Center has partnered UAE’s PureHealth, the largest integrated healthcare platform in the Middle East. The two will conduct joint research, promote advanced technology in healthcare, collaborate on staff training, and boost bi-lateral health tourism.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/sheba-medical-center-enters-partnership-with-largest-uae-healthcare-system/
 
Technion and Toronto medical AI partnership. Israel’s Technion Institute and the University of Toronto Artificial Intelligence Centers have partnered to develop AI solutions in the field of medicine. The first workshop took place in Ein Gedi in May. https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2023/05/changing-medicine-with-ai/
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-742749
 
Quick-thinking saves mother and baby. Rachel, a nurse midwife attending a mother in labor at Ziv Medical Center in Safed, noticed that the baby’s head was moving in the wrong direction. She rushed them to ER, where doctors diagnosed a complete rupture of the uterus, delivered baby, and later reconstructed the mother’s womb.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/quick-thinking-israeli-midwife-saves-mother-and-baby/
 
Research training for doctors. The Israel Science Foundation has launched Israel’s MAVRI initiative (Hebrew for “one who heals”). The ISF will award grants totaling $100 million over five years, to create a select team of Medical PhDs who will conduct clinical research that will ultimately benefit patients.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-science-foundation-announces-new-program-to-support-physician-

https://www.wsj.com/articles/netanyahu-revives-judicial-overhaul-stripped-of-most-controversial-piece-33160de?mod=hp_lead_pos7

JERUSALEM—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would drop the most controversial part of his plan to remake the country’s court system, pushing ahead with legislation stripped of a provision that would have given the national legislature the power to overturn rulings by the Supreme Court.

“It’s out,” Netanyahu said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that also touched on relations with the U.S., his decision not to supply weapons to Ukraine and his concerns about deepening ties between Russia and Iran.

Netanyahu’s initial judicial-overhaul plan, which sparked large-scale unrest that paralyzed the country earlier this year, was opposed by many secular and liberal Israelis who said they feared the measures would give the government too much power and lead to a rollback in civil liberties.

“I’m attentive to the public pulse, and to what I think will pass muster,” said Netanyahu, who has previously said he wouldn’t support an “unlimited override clause.”

Netanyahu allowed lieutenants to advance the initial legislation, but he has taken control of the plan’s substance and messaging since he paused the effort in March after civil unrest. The prime minister also said he would revise another controversial piece of the legislation, which would have given the ruling coalition more power to appoint judges, though he said he wasn’t sure yet what the new version would look like.

The revisions are unlikely to persuade opposition politicians to support the plan, and risk alienating the religious far-right and ultraorthodox parties that play a critical role in Netanyahu’s coalition government and see the country’s courts as too activist and hostile to their agenda.

It is unclear whether they go far enough to forestall a repeat of mass protests that grew so severe that Netanyahu in March suspended the legislation and started compromise talks with the opposition. He said the sides failed to reach an agreement and that he would move forward with his own revised plan.

He said that with his new version of the law he was determined to find a middle ground so any changes would “stick for a generation.” The opposition says Netanyahu risks plunging the country back into turmoil if he doesn’t return to the negotiating table.

The prime minister said he has also sought a middle ground in Israel’s response to the war in Ukraine.

Netanyahu rejected calls from some Washington lawmakers and Ukrainian officials to join the West’s effort to arm Ukraine, saying, “We have concerns that I don’t think any of the Western allies of Ukraine have.” He said he needs to ensure Israel has “freedom of action” in Syria, where Israeli pilots often bomb Iranian targets in the vicinity of Russia forces, which prop up the Damascus government.