RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/05/02/how-anti-semitic-tropes-crept-back-into-the-mainstream/

The Guardian has apologised for its cartoon of former BBC chairman Richard Sharp, which has been widely condemned for containing anti-Semitic tropes. Martin Rowson’s cartoon depicted Sharp with an impossibly large nose, clutching a box marked ‘Goldman Sachs’, containing a puppet of UK prime minister Rishi Sunak and what appears to be money. It essentially painted Sharp as a grasping Jewish puppet-master.

At the weekend, the Guardian removed the cartoon from its website and issued a mealy mouthed apology. It was the kind of apology that was clearly scripted by in-house legal advisers. The cartoon, the Guardian said, ‘did not meet our editorial standards’. The newspaper made clear it ‘apologises to Mr Sharp, to the Jewish community and to anyone offended’, but it has not explicitly acknowledged that the cartoon features anti-Semitic tropes. As for Martin Rowson, he tweeted to say that he ‘screwed up pretty badly’. He later published a lengthy apology / explanation on his website. ‘This is on me, even if accidentally or, more precisely, thoughtlessly’, he wrote.

What I find most disturbing about this affair is not so much the sight of yet another grotesque depiction of a Jewish person, or the use of classic anti-Semitic tropes. Rather, it is the casual manner in which such incidents are treated. You could easily get the impression that the cartoon is really no big deal. The Guardian seems to think that a perfunctory half-apology will be enough to put things right. Rowson, while effusive in his apology, has only really admitted to being careless.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19573/confront-religious-hatred

As Jews around the world gather this week to observe the holiday of Passover and as Christians celebrate Easter, and Muslims, Ramadan, it comes at a time when violent acts of anti-Semitism and the slaughter of Christians have spiked as incidents have been reported around the world.

It is one of history’s oldest and most virulent of prejudices where Jews have cynically been used as scapegoats by empires and despots to ensure their own survival.

As early as 1899, following a year in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the iconic American author Mark Twain observed that the leaders of the Habsburg Empire directed scorn at the Jewish community to maintain unity within their precarious empire.

Twain would take stock of the Jewish will to survive throughout multiple epochs by writing, “He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him.”

The Passover holiday that observes the Jewish exodus from Egypt is just one more chapter in the history of a people that have been singled out for persecution. While history, and today’s headlines, remind us there are others who have suffered violent religious bigotry, none were the victims of an organized genocide that enlisted the power of a modern state to commit murder on an industrialized scale.

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

I missed the December 5th posting of Israel’s remarkable advances in medicine, assisting NASA on space projects, generating hydrogen, water projects in Argentina and heartening stories of Israelis doing good 24/7. But Michael Ordman never disappoints and here is another list of Israel’s dazzling contributions to science, technology, medical innovations and treatments and a host of social institutions that provide succor and hope to the rest of the world.

Remember that the acronym BDS cuts both ways. Instead of Boycott, Divest and Sanction think

Beneficial, Developments in Science. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

A vaccine against bacteria. For the first time worldwide, researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Institute for Biological Research have developed an mRNA-based vaccine that is 100% effective against plague bacteria, lethal to humans. It also works against antibiotic resistant bacteria.

https://english.tau.ac.il/mrna_vaccine  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fyhk_6GmsQ

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg1036

Alzheimer’s ultrasound treatment in Florida. Delray Medical Center is the first hospital in Florida to treat an Alzheimer’s disease patient using non-invasive focused ultrasound technology from Israel’s Insightec. The FDA-approved clinical trial will test reducing excessive protein buildup to open the blood-brain barrier.

https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/alzheimers-focused-ultrasound-study

The best medicine. Israel’s Protai has built a proteomics AI-based platform that comprehensively maps the course of a disease on the protein level. It can identify which patients will respond to a given treatment, as well as identifying identify diseases that a therapy should be able to treat.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hkp39nye2   https://www.protai.bio/

US approves pain-monitoring device. The US FDA has granted marketing authorization to the PMD-200 monitor developed by Israel’s Medasense Biometrics (see here previously). The device monitors pain in non-communicating (e.g., anaesthetized) patients and already has made an impact in multiple countries.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hyfvzhsrs

Preventing migraines. The Nerivio device from Israeli startup Theranica (see here previously) already has US FDA approval to treat acute migraines. It has now been approved for preventing migraines. Recent trials of 248 participants showed a huge improvement for those using Nerivio compared to those on a placebo device.

https://nocamels.com/2023/03/vibrating-armband-approved-for-migraine-prevention/

https://headachejournal.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/head.14469

The right time to do a C-Section. A nationwide study led by Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital discovered that pregnant women brought into the Intensive Care Unit seriously ill with Covid-19, were more likely to improve if they gave birth (by Caesarian section) before their condition deteriorated. The data will save many lives.

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-732866

Israeli radiation treatment – a first-hand review. Please read newsletter reader Lili Eylon’s personal account of Alpha DaRT radiation cancer therapy developed by Israel’s Alpha Tau (see here previously). Lili was one of 56 patients in DaRT’s human study at Hadassah Medical Center – its second skin cancer human study in Israel.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/revolutionary-new-weapon-developed-in-israel/

Dying of cancer in Russia; saved in Israel. (TY Hazel) 20-year-old Kalim was sent home from hospital to die in St Petersburg after doctors said they could not treat his acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He immigrated to Israel where five months of CAR-T treatment at Rambam Health Care Campus gave Kalim back his life.

https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/b1ygx4fyn

What to do after retirement – save lives of course. 61-year-old EMT Joelle Cohen retired from the medical field and joined United Hatzalah as a volunteer EMT. When a man in his 70s suffered a sudden cardiac arrest at a diabetes clinic in Jerusalem, Joelle revived him, saying it gave her one of the most incredible feelings.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/367911

https://unitedwithisrael.org/horrifying-antisemitic-campus-sponsored-display-featured-at-cuny-students-get-academic-credit-for-participating/?

‘Horrifying, Antisemitic, Campus-Sponsored’ Programs at CUNY; Students Get Academic Credit for Participating

Pro-Israel and Jewish students and faculty at the Borough of Manhattan Community College were appalled by a “horrifying, antisemitic, campus-sponsored display” featuring antisemitic, anti-Israel propaganda, including support for terrorism.

S.A.F.E. CUNY, a non-governmental and nonprofit organization that “advocates for Zionist Jews systemically discriminated against and excluded” at CUNY, announced Thursday morning on social media and in a press release that “yesterday, we were tipped off to a horrifying, antisemitic, campus-sponsored display at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC-CUNY).”

“In addition to sympathizing with Intifada (a call to murder Israeli Jews), among the falsehoods and tropes leveled at Jews and Israel are that Israel ‘targeted’ journalist Shireen Abu Akleh for murder, that Israel is guilty of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and that Israel is a settler-colonial state, and more,” the announcement read.

The display claims to document a “timeline of occupied Palestinian land” but is riddled with falsehoods and antisemitic tropes,” the organization said.

Dr. Jenna Hirsch, Associate Professor of Mathematics at CUNY- BMCC, told United with Israel that the exhibit was up Wednesday morning at 9 a.m., “located prominently next to the vice office of student affairs.”

“I went into the office and asked them if they were responsible for the exhibit. They said no, and when I asked them who was, they told me the women’s resource center.  I asked them if anyone else had complained, and they told me one student came in really distressed about it,” Hirsch said.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19475/china-war-warnings

The world needs to look at what the Chinese leadership is in fact doing. Xi Jinping appointed what is now known as his “war cabinet” in October, at the Communist Party’s 20th National Congress; he is implementing the largest military buildup since the Second World War; he has been trying to sanctions-proof his regime; and he is mobilizing the civilian population for war. Communist Party cadres, for example, are taking over privately owned factories and converting them from civilian to military production.

In the latest move, China’s regime is establishing National Defense Mobilization Offices across the country. The Reservists Law went into effect the first of this month.

Whatever China intends, its intended victims need to match its preparations. There has never been a time when it has been more important to deter the People’s Republic of China.

Even if all this is the biggest bluff in history, the Chinese military is provoking incidents that could lead to war, especially in the tense climate Xi Jinping has created. In December… a Chinese fighter jet dangerously intercepted a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the South China Sea.

Moreover, beginning January 28, China’s large spy balloon intruded into American airspace, then proceeded to surveil nuclear weapons sites, including Malmstrom, F. E. Warren, and Minot Air Force Bases, which house all of America’s Minutemen III intercontinental ballistic missiles….. This path suggests China is gathering intelligence for a nuclear strike on America’s strategic weapons — and shows Beijing’s utter disrespect for the United States.

Whatever China’s intentions… this cannot end well. The problem is complacency. Xi Jinping and Qin Gang, whatever they are doing, are establishing a justification to strike America — and they are making preparations to do so.

“If the U.S. doesn’t hit the brakes and continues to barrel down the wrong track,” China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang said on March 7, “no amount of guardrails can prevent the carriage from derailing and crashing, and there will surely be conflict and confrontation.” He also spoke of “catastrophic consequences.”

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