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October 2018

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GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on October 21st, 2018

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Israeli heart surgery for Iraqi-Kurdish newborn. (TY Nevet) An Iraqi baby born with a congenital heart defect is being flown to Israel for life-saving surgery after an emergency appeal to Israel’s Interior Ministry. Baby Ahlam, from Iraqi Kurdistan, suffers from the reversal of the main arteries carrying blood from the heart.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/iraqi-kurdish-baby-heads-to-israel-for-urgent-surgery-after-minister-intervenes/

US approval for brain scan software. I reported previously (Nov 2016) on Israel’s Aidoc whose AI image software helps radiologists in fast detection of acute brain bleeds in CT scans. Aidoc’s system has now received US FDA approval and is currently in use at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-brain-scan-reading-ai-based-software-gets-thumbs-up-from-fda-time/

US approves Teva’s cancer treatment. (TY Arlene) The US FDA’s oncology committee has approved CT-P10 – Teva’s monoclonal antibody biosimilar to Rituxan (rituximab) for the treatment of various forms of cancer. The development of biosimilars has the potential to increase accessibility to therapies for patients.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-teva-receives-fda-nod-for-rituxan-biosimilar-cancer-drug-1001256084

“Moses” blasts bladder stones. Conventional treatment of bladder stones uses a laser that causes the stone to be repelled, extending the time taken to destroy it. Israeli biotech Lumenis’ laser technology (named “Moses”) keeps the stone in place, saving time, anesthesia and money. Nice simple video demonstrates this.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/moses-a-new-stone-striking-method-seen-as-game-changer-for-urologists
https://www.youtube.com/embed/eU4sdpa9rLM?rel=0

A replacement for the “forgotten valve”. Israeli startup Trisol Medical is developing a minimally invasive device that can replace a faulty tricuspid heart valve. The tricuspid valve is known as the “forgotten valve” as other bio-techs have focused efforts developing replacements for the aortic and mitral valves.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-trisol-medical-raises-27m-1001256513

Contact lenses for the nose. Israel’s Beck Medical has developed NozNoz – a silicon nasal insert that curbs the appetite by blocking the senses of smell and taste. The effect is to prevent stimulating the body’s olfactory bulb that controls hunger and food preferences. NozNoz is comparable to contact lenses for the nose.
https://www.israel21c.org/the-contact-lenses-for-the-nose-that-might-help-you-lose-weight/

Hope in sight for vision impaired. (TY WIN) Israeli startup ICI Vision has developed Orama – digital glasses to help the visually impaired to see more clearly. Orama uses artificial intelligence (AI), eye-tracking software, a built-in 3D camera and more, to map and project images onto an individual’s remaining healthy retina cells.
https://www.israel21c.org/digital-glasses-offer-hope-of-sight-for-vision-impaired/
https://www.youtube.com/embed/BrR_CbsHLkU?rel=0

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Extremist Persecution of Christians, May 2018 by Raymond Ibrahim

By on October 21st, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13156/extremist-persecution-christians-may

“Churches and individual Christians have faced increased restrictions in recent months, raising concerns that these pressures signal a coordinated campaign of intensified action against churches by the governing authorities.” — Middle East Concern, Algeria.

A Muslim man walked into a cathedral and threatened to blow it up for preaching the Gospel and not the Koran. — France.

“The Indonesian government should revisit the country’s blasphemy law…. To honor religious freedom as enshrined in Indonesia’s constitution, the government must respect all religions and stop criminalizing Christians when they are merely exercising their right to free speech.” — International Christian Concern, Indonesia.

The Extremists’ Slaughter of Christians Inside Churches

Indonesia: Six suicide bombers from one Muslim family attacked three churches on May 13, during Sunday Mass services; at least 11 worshippers were killed. The suicide bombers consisted of a father, mother, and four children, two boys and two girls, aged 9,12, 16, and 18. According to the report:

“More than 40 people were injured in the blasts. The first attack that killed four people, including one or more bombers, occurred at the Santa Maria Roman Catholic Church… The father of the family accused of carrying out the suicide bombing had detonated a car bomb during his attack. The incident was followed by a second explosion at the Christian Church of Diponegoro that killed two people. In a third attack, at Pantekosta Church, two more died, police said.”

A witness described one of the attacks, where the mother and the two youngest jihadis detonated themselves. Because she was carrying two suspicious bags (apparently of explosives), “officers blocked them in front of the churchyard, but the woman ignored them and forced her way inside. Suddenly (the bomb) exploded.” The father “was very active in the mosque,” said an acquaintance; “he never missed any of the five daily prayers, but he avoided discussing religion.” “The four children were studying in schools run by the Muhammadiyah,” long thought the most moderate Islamic school in Indonesia, said a family neighbor. “To me they were normal people,” he added.

Russia: Four gunmen stormed a church in Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Muslim-majority Republic of Chechnya, and killed three people, a churchgoer and two police officers, on May 19. The attackers — who were also armed with knives, hatchets and homemade explosives — were also killed in the gunfire exchange with security forces at the Church of Michael the Archangel. According to the report:

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Dominatrix Party By Ilana Mercer

By on October 21st, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/21

Throughout Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s recent ordeal, Democratic women and their house-trained houseboys attempted to derail the decent part of the process, rendering a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing into a small-minded, mean-spirited, undignified, and gossipy affair.

In tenor, Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings resembled a tabloid, a woman’s magazine, or the female-dominated Trump-watch panels, assembled daily by the Fake News networks.

As to the women folk in the gallery: They were plain gaga. These libertine “ladies” appeared constitutionally incapable of abiding by standards of decency and decorum, as demanded in such a solemn setting.

Thank our lucky stars we must that Democratic distaff are not yet disrobing, as do their Russian heroines. Pussy Riot, the Putin-hating, all-girl pop band, specializes in desecrating holy places and flashing holey places.

This kind of abandon, albeit moderated, extended to liberal lady senators. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and her soul sisters in the Senate conducted themselves like kids who can’t quit interrupting the grownups, nagging for license to break protocol, so as to harangue and harass the “bad” man in the chair.

On the day the Democrats lost—and Kavanaugh won his seat on the high court—a primal, collective, atavistic howl rose from the Senate gallery’s female quorum.

In response, a journalist in attendance quipped that this is “what the Left sounds like.” He ought to have stated the obvious. Sure, there are a few male eunuchs among these girls gone wild. But this is predominantly what women of the Left sound like.

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ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss — Lara Alqasem’s enablers: Caroline Glick

By on October 21st, 2018

http://carolineglick.com/bret-stephens-and-bari-weiss-lara-alqasems-enablers/

For the past two weeks, Israel-bashers have had a brand-new poster child. Her name is Lara Alqasem.

Alqasem is an American citizen registered in a masters degree program at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is also a key operative in the so-called BDS or “boycott, divestment and sanctions” campaign against Israel.

Alqasem flew to Israel two weeks ago. Upon landing at Ben Gurion Airport, in accordance with Israeli law, which bars BDS activists from entering Israel, Alqasem was denied entry and immigration officials attempted to deport her.

Rather than agree to go home, Alqasem called in a battery of attorneys to appeal the decision in court. The move went from one judicial body to another, gathering the force of a massive media storm from day to day until it landed on the laps of three justices in Israel’s radical Supreme Court.

The three justices, who care more about looking good to the Left — and the New York Times — than the law, predictably ignored the law and let her in.

How did an expulsion order against a 22-year-old graduate student cause such a maelstrom? How did it come about that Alqasem was immediately defended by a battery of lawyers? Why did Israel’s leftist media outlets and the world media immediately embrace her as a heroine, and so ensure that Israel’s radical justices would pounce at the opportunity to prove their leftist credentials and let her into the country?

To understand how Lara Alqasem became an instant celebrity for Israel-haters and an attractive victim worth saving for Israeli leftists, we need to understand a few basic truths.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

THE JEWS OF SARAJEVO AND LADINO:By Susanna Zaraysky

By on October 21st, 2018

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181017-the-bosnians-who-speak-medieval-spanish

On our way to Sarajevo’s Ashkenazi Synagogue for the Friday evening Shabbat (Sabbath) service, my friend Paula Goldman and I walked down cobblestone streets through the Baščaršija, the old Ottoman area of the city, passing mosques, shops and a madrasa (Islamic school). It was the year 2000, and the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina still bore the scars of the Balkans War. A Nato tank rolled by as we crossed the Miljacka river.

As we entered the second floor of the salmon-coloured stone building with its four onion-shaped domes, light flooded through doors set with stained glass images of the Star of David and into the synagogue. We took our seats among the congregation as cantor David Kamhi took his place in front of the ark that held the Torah (a scroll containing the Five Books of Moses). Soon, the synagogue filled with the harmonies of prayer. Paula and I looked at each other strangely when we heard ‘Adonaj es mi pastor. No mankare de nada’ (The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want) from Psalm 23 recited in what we thought was Spanish. After the service, I asked Blanka Kamhi, the cantor’s wife, why the congregation was praying in Spanish.

“That wasn’t Spanish,” she responded. “We were praying in Ladino.”

Like many Bosnian Jews, Kamhi and his wife are descendants of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain by the Edict of Expulsion in 1492. During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews who did not voluntarily convert to Catholicism were expelled from the country, killed or forcibly converted. Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire invited the displaced Sephardic Jews to settle in the Balkans, where they were permitted to maintain their religion and customs. Many chose to move to the Ottoman Empire, while others moved to North Africa, the Netherlands and the Americas.

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