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July 2022

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GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL

By on July 10th, 2022

It may be the start of the summer holidays, but the busy pace of Israel’s positive activities remains at the highest level. Israeli scientists and medics have been busy kick-starting the immune system, boosting the body’s repair system, and (yes still) healing Ukrainian refugees. Israelis have been feeding the poor, swimming the Kinneret, schlepping baby formula to the US, training farmers, installing water pumps for the thirsty, and eradicating plagues of locusts. Innovative Israel startups are busy removing CO2 from the atmosphere, powering vehicles efficiently, heating and cooling offices without energy, securing and speeding up construction work, making production smarter, and helping businesses search their data. Israeli trade with Arab states is at unprecedented levels, Israeli technology is making on-line business safer and can help busy airlines and airports get travelers to their destinations quicker. Finally, Israel is busy welcoming numbers of tourists and new immigrants not seen for years.    Michael Ordman

 

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Rebooting the immune system. Israel’s NeoTX (see here previously) is now conducting a Phase 2 trial of its naptumomab estafenatox (NAP) bacteria-coated, immunotherapy cancer treatment on 30 patients in the US. It is also enhancing an AstraZeneca checkpoint inhibitor. NeoTX has 3 Nobel prizewinners in its team.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-cancer-treatment-fools-the-immune-system-to-attack/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/neotx-announces-successful-first-stage-120000979.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntk8XsxVDi0  https://neotx.com/
 
How we fight fungal infections. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have made a vital discovery in how Candida infections are countered in healthy humans. Until the immune system’s TH17 T-Cell lymphocytes turn up, rare lymphoid cells (Aire-ILC3s) spring into action to hold back the potentially dangerous fungal infection.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/355598  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-022-01247-6
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/curbing-candida-cells-keep-fungal-infections-bay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu7Qj5quVwM
 
T-Time. Dr. Elad Jacoby – Head of cell therapy, Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center talks at Talpiot xmed 2022 about how they re-educate T-cells in the immune system to destroy cancers that used to take the lives of young children. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4oCvOtTgu4
 
Bacteria may help cancer patients. Israel’s Biomica (see here previously) has given 12 cancer patients, who had poor responses to immunotherapy, pills containing bacteria missing from their gut microbiome. In 2020, doctors at Sheba hospital used fecal bacteria to shrink the tumors of three cancer patients.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-company-to-test-if-fecal-bacteria-pills-boost-cancer-immunotherapy/
 
Smart fabric accelerates repair of nerves. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute have developed an ultra-thin silicon-based membrane that speeds up the repair of damaged nerves. The material is wrapped around the nerve while the wound is open. When the wound is closed, the material is stimulated using near-infrared light.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-smart-fabric-uses-electricity-to-fast-track-repair-of-nerves/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-022-01249-7
 
Diagnosing diseases in space. Scientists at Tel Aviv University and Israel’s Volcani Institute developed the kit that Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe tested on his mission on the International Space Station. It proved that even under zero gravity, diagnosis known as CRISPR-Cas can identify viruses and bacteria infecting crew members.
https://www.aftau.org/news_item/tau-experiment-uses-crispr-cas-to-successfully-diagnose-diseases-in-space/
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-scientists-invent-space-age-diagnosis-method/
 
Warning of patients at risk of hospitalization. Suboptimal polypharmacy is when medication for two or more chromic conditions clash. Israel’s FeelBetter has been deployed by Israel’s Leumit Healthcare and preliminary results show it can identify 70% of elderly patients at risk of hospitalization in the next 3 to 9 months.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-tech-works-to-avert-hospitalizations-by-flagging-problems-with-clashing-meds/   https://www.feelbetter.healthcare/
 
Joint medical research with UAE. Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services HMO and health organizations in the United Arab Emirates have signed several deals to promote joint medical research and tech innovation. They focus on advancing personalized medicine and includes building a genomic research registry for the UAE.
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/all-news/article-710960

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Brussels: Capital of Europe or Eurabia? by Giulio Meotti

By on July 10th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18695/brussels-europe-eurabia

“Molenbeek would love to be forgotten, because it is the very example of the failure of the multicultural society, which remains an untouchable dogma in Belgium”. — Alain Destexhe, honorary Senator in Belgium and former Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders, Le Figaro, May 3, 2022.

“[I]n the Brussels region as a whole only a quarter of Belgians are of Belgian origin…. Molenbeek is in fact only the tip of the iceberg of the progressive Islamization in all the major Belgian cities. Islam is increasingly visible in the public space of Molenbeek, and in the month of Ramadan almost all the shops and restaurants in the city are closed during the day. In many neighborhoods, women are no longer able to dress however they want or go out at night, and homosexuals have no right of citizenship. There are, however, hardly any voices to worry about this development, as if French-speaking Belgium, anesthetized in unison by the multicultural media, had resigned itself”. — Alain Destexhe, Le Figaro, May 3, 2022

“Today the Muslim Brotherhood… continues its lobbying and blame games with its imaginary Trojan horse: Islamophobia”. — Assita Kanko, Belgian MEP, who fled Burkina Faso to look for freedom in Europe; Euractive, December 20, 2021

“The aim is clear: normalise radical Islamic codes and ways of life in order gradually to transform our Western societies instead of adapting to our European way of life. As a black woman and a secular Muslim, I know what it is to live under Islamic pressure and I know what it takes to emancipate oneself in order to finally live in dignity…. Europe must urgently pull itself together and reaffirm its commitment to its own values….” — Assita Kanko, Euractive, December 20, 2021.

“Where will we be in 50 years? All of Europe – inshallah – will be Muslim. So, have children!” — Brahim Laytouss, president of the Islamic Cultural Center of Belgium, dhnet.be, March 5, 2019.

The greatest form of cultural racism in Europe today is that of EU elites who censor or support this spectacular change of civilization.

“Of all the European capitals, Brussels is the one through which the Islamist project intends to spread to Europe. Their lobbies are powerful there, so it is much easier for Islamists to break into the system and gradually transform it”. — Djemila Benhabi, Camadian journalist, lecho.com.

“[I]n exchange [for oil], the Saudi king asked the Belgian king Baudouin to grant Arabia a monopoly on representing Islam and appointing imams in Belgium”. The Belgian government officially recognized the Islamic religion. It was the first European country to do so. There followed the inclusion of the Islamic religion in the school curriculum. — Alain Chouet, former “number two” of the DGSE, the French counterintelligence service, from his new book: “Sept pas vers l’enfer” (“Seven Steps to Hell”).

“Eurabia” was born in those years, the years of an energy crisis, European weakness and the great rise of Islam. Sound familiar?

While Lieven Verstraete, an acclaimed Belgian journalist who hosts the program, “De Zevende Dag” (“The Seventh Day”), was recently interviewing two members of the Green Party, he raised the issue of immigration and called Brussels “the perfect example of a city whose neighborhoods are conquered one by one by newcomers”.

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Ukraine War: Unified Command Needed by Amir Taheri

By on July 10th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18693/ukraine-war-unified-command

Soon, the ringside spectators will see that the threat to the world order, or, to be more exact, the international order is bound to affect them in ways that they might not welcome.

In reality… [Zelensky] is not and cannot be [in full command] because he does not control the resources needed for war. He is an effective communicator on behalf of his beleaguered nation and a paragon of courage in adversity. However, he does not have the key to the war chest and the passcode for arsenals of necessary weapons. Nor does he control the flow of electronic and space-based intelligence gathering that plays a crucial role in modern warfare.

[T]he Western democracies will soon face the need to put their armaments industries in high gear. And that means a massive increase in military budgets. Yet, most NATO members are still proceeding with old plans to reduce the size of their armed forces and switch arms production from what is needed in a classical war, such as the one we witness in Ukraine, to warfare in cyberspace or outer space.

It is time for everyone to realize that the war to destroy Ukraine is not a sideshow. This is not a low-intensity war in which one is involved only vicariously. True, it’s Ukrainian blood that is shed on the battlefield. But citizens of almost all other countries also pay a price in galloping inflation, widespread shortages and a growing threat to security.

It is time for NATO, the EU and allies to move beyond the welcome, though largely symbolic, show of unity through symbolic gestures and develop a common analysis of what is involved and what needs to be done to curb Putin. And that would require a mechanism for unified overall political leadership, with Zelensky as field commander.

As a shorthand phrase “the war in Ukraine” may please headline writers and politicians keen on facile simplifications. The phrase gives the impression that the war is going on in a remote place called Ukraine and only tangentially affects the rest of the world. The rest of the world is divided into three categories.

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Trumped Up J6 Hearings Pump Trump Up If Trump is the candidate, Americans will vote for him not in spite of January 6, but in part because of it—especially the deep-state response to it.  By Roger Kimball

By on July 10th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/09/trumped-up-j6-hearings-pump-trump-up/

It’s been an eventful week. Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, was forced to resign. Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister of Japan, was shot dead while delivering a campaign speech. And Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Sri Lankin prime minister, offered to resign after thousands of protestors stormed his residence and burned it to the ground. 

On the home front, various groups unhappy with some recent rulings by the Supreme Court have offered bounties for people who report on the whereabouts of the justices. A 73-year-old man in North Philadelphia was set upon and beaten to death by a pod of rampaging black teens. And it was widely reported that Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, would be traveling to Utah to meet with conservative donors. 

It was that last item that really set the collective heart of the punditocracy all pit-a-pat. You could tell this by the number of reporters who breathlessly described the event as a meeting with “mega-donors,” “mega” being the favored intensifier du jour. It means, “This is serious. Pay attention.”

For those with an active imagination, what that event signaled was the prospect—glorious or terrifying, depending on the political coloration of the reporter—of a DeSantis candidacy for president in 2024. 

That would suit me just fine. I think DeSantis is one of the very best governors in the United States. He is also the one most often spoken of together with the word “president.” The prospect terrifies anyone on the Left who preserves even a slender tether to reality, for it is clear that set against a drooling, senile puppet such as Joe Biden or a clownish relative of Nancy Pelosi like Gavin Newsom, DeSantis would wipe the floor, dry the dishes, and tidy up the laundry with them. 

For many on the Right, DeSantis is the handkerchief with which they can mop their furrowed brow. For he is conservative. He is quick on his feet. And, above all, he is not Donald Trump. 

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President Biden and His Admiral Have Boarded a Sinking Ship By Jay Tucker

By on July 10th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/president_biden_and_his_admiral_have_boarded_a_sinking_ship.html

Admiral (not a Navy admiral) “Rachel” Levine is a so-called transgender woman, a pediatrician, and now a U.S. asst. secretary for health.  Levine has joined President Biden and many others in the LGBT campaign to promote “gender-affirming care” for youths.  “There is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care[.]”   

Levine’s “no argument” assertions are hogwash for many obvious reasons.  Here are three.

First, the 2012 Report of the American Psychiatric Association Task Force (Report), at 4, emphasized that there is no consensus regarding treatment of children with GID (now called G.D.), because “opinions vary widely among experts” as to treatments.

Second, the 2012 World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care asserts that social transition for children, which would include use of opposite-sex bathrooms and participation in opposite-sex sports, “is a controversial issue.”

Third, the American College of Pediatricians has concluded: “Ethics alone demands an end to the use of pubertal suppression with GnRH agonists, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgeries in children and adolescents.  The American College of Pediatricians recommends an immediate cessation of these interventions, as well as an end to promoting gender ideology via school curricula and legislative policies.”

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Don’t blame America for Brittney Griner’s fate Bringing her home is on Biden’s State Department Stephen L. Miller

By on July 10th, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/america-brittney-griner-russia-cannabis-biden/

I sympathize with Brittney Griner. The WNBA star currently detained in Russia is arguably the face of her sport. This week Griner pleaded guilty in court to possession of hash oil upon her entry to Russia. She has been detained for several weeks now; her and her family have made several pleas to the Biden administration to step in and free her, which they should — without giving up notorious Russian arms dealers or criminals. (President Biden, meanwhile, has been remarkably lenient towards the Russian nationals who use illicit substances with his son — but that’s a tale for another time.)

The conflict in Ukraine and the Biden administration’s proxy war against Russia complicates this matter further — once again, Biden and his State Department find themselves in a jam.

The sensitive diplomatic work of bringing Griner home is vital. But alone it is not important enough for the national media, who would prefer to view the Griner case through the same narrow scope of racial grievances. It’s not enough to suggest the Biden administration appears to be once again dragging its feet and acting without a sense of urgency. For some members of the media, the very country, the United States and the people who reside in it, is also responsible for Griner’s detainment. The reason, they say, is because we are a racist institution, and to a minor degree, a sexist one as well. Apparently Griner’s ongoing detention in Russia for her own actions is the fault of white male privilege, just like everything else.

According to Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, “If Brittney Griner were Tom Brady, America would be losing its mind…Where is the outrage over the hostage superstar? I think I know…” This Tom Brady analogy grossly oversimplifies the Griner case and the geopolitical tectonics it involves.

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It’s Not Just About Taiwan By Janet Levy

By on July 10th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/its_not_just_about_taiwan.html

“China’s goal is not just to dominate the world, but to reduce the rest of us to subservience.” With that terrifying projection, China expert Steven Mosher has been trying to rouse America from its complacency and caution the Biden administration over its appeasement of the Red Dragon. He reads clear and present danger in a leaked video showing Chinese military commanders discussing a 90-day countdown to a Taiwan invasion. Mosher says the video is authentic, and that the Biden administration’s mixed signals on Taiwan smack of a fecklessness that will only embolden China.

Other experts, too, warn of the government’s “strategic ambiguity” toward China as the “reunification” rhetoric with Taiwan has become more aggressive.  There is a growing fear that Chinese President Xi Jinping, having suffered few consequences for his forays into the South China Sea and his crackdown in Hong Kong, will be emboldened to take on U.S. allies and attack American assets.  On July 6th, it was announced that China would join Russia and Iran in war drills in our hemisphere, a clear threat to the security of the United States.

Mosher is no armchair theorizer. He’s fluent in Chinese and was the first American social scientist to visit China, as early as 1979. He is the author of Bully of Asia:  Why China’s Dream is the New Threat to World Order, an overview of China’s ambitions in South Asia. He has served in the Navy, and is a member of the Committee on the Present Danger China (CPDC), an independent task-force based in Washington, D.C.  Mosher’s assessment on Taiwan was presented recently on the Securing America podcast, anchored by Center for Security Policy (CSP) founder Frank Gaffney.

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Why is the Flawed Palestinian Cause So Prominent on the Hard Left? by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on July 10th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18696/palestinian-cause-hard-left

Why does the Palestinian cause get so much attention, when there are much more compelling causes around the world such as those of the Kurds, Uyghurs, and other stateless and oppressed people? There are more demonstrations on university campuses against Israel than against Russia, China, Belarus and Iran. Why?

The answer has little to do with the Palestinians, and everything to do with Israel, as the nation state of the Jewish people. It is a political manifestation of international antisemitism. It is only because the nation accused of oppressing Palestinians is Israel.

It has little to do with the merits and everything to do with antisemitism. It calls itself anti-Zionism, but it is only a cover for anti-Jewish bigotry.

A recent example is the decision of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to boycott parts of Israel, while continuing to sell to countries in which far greater abuses occur. When asked why Ben and Jerry’s limits their boycott only to Israel, its founders admitted they had no idea.

Who is leading the crowd of antisemitic bigots? The movement to single out the nation state of Israel for boycott, known as BDS, was originated by a Palestinian radical named Omar Barghouti, who does not hide the fact that his goal is the destruction of Israel….

Do the Palestinians deserve a state? Yes, but no more so than the Kurds and other stateless people. Why no more so? Because the Palestinians have been offered statehood numerous times and have rejected it.

Palestinians were offered a state on the vast majority of arable land, as part of a United Nations proposed two state solution; the Jews were offered a state on a far smaller area of arable land. The Jews accepted the compromise two state solution. The Arabs rejected it and went to war against the new Jewish state seeking to destroy it. It was this act of unlawful military aggression that resulted in the Palestinian refugee situation, which they call the “Nakba” (“catastrophe”). But it was a self-induced catastrophe. And many current Palestinian leaders and followers fault their predecessors for not accepting the two-state solution offered by the United Nations 75 years ago.

The Palestinians could have had a state in 1948, 1967, 2000-2001, 2005 and 2008. They still preferred no Jewish state to a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel. They can have a state now, if they would negotiate a compromise instead of fomenting terrorism.

I wonder how many of those who demonstrate against Israel have any idea of this history.

The anti-Israel claims of the Palestinians, though deeply flawed, have become a central part of hard left ideology, especially among those who adhere to so-called intersectionality.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

BDS at Harvard The university’s treatment of Israel raises questions about the quality of its education. eye on the news BDS at Harvard The university’s treatment of Israel raises questions about the quality of its education. J. J. Kimche Angelique Talmor

By on July 10th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/bds-at-harvard

Harvard University provides its students with unparalleled knowledge, skills, and experiences. Yet, as we Jewish students have witnessed, the routine vilification of the State of Israel—both inside and outside the classroom—indicates that something in the contemporary Harvard education has gone seriously awry. In the latest example of this trend, the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson endorsed the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish state in an April 29 editorial. BDS represents the economic arm of a global effort—spearheaded militarily by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran—to destroy the Jewish state.

That a majority of the Crimson’s 87-member editorial board believes this movement to be part of the global struggle for social justice has significance both for Harvard and American society more broadly. The hostility toward Israel that has permeated our campus—which often involves the endorsement of anti-Semitic attitudes, assumptions, and activities—is symptomatic of larger trends: a retreat from robust critical thinking and a surrender to the most hysterical, least rigorous elements of campus activism. Such trends at Harvard are regrettable not merely because BDS is fundamentally anti-Semitic but also because its advocacy rests upon several falsehoods. The most pernicious is the idea that Jews don’t belong in Israel, that their presence constitutes an act of colonialism against the native Palestinian population. Such a position betrays an often-contrived ignorance of the millennia-long connection between the land of Israel and the Jewish people. It is also a denial of the right of self-defense for history’s most persecuted minority.

Yet this view has become de rigueur in a contemporary Harvard education. The Chan School of Public Health hosts courses such as “The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health,” which focuses on demonstrating how Israel’s “settler colonial” society undermines the health of “indigenous people.” Harvard Divinity School’s program of Religion and Public Life has hosted a year-long series of anti-Israel seminars, platforming numerous speakers who advocate for the “decolonization” and even the “de-Judaisation” of Israel. It is hard to imagine that any other national entity would be subject to seminar after seminar informing them that their own national aspirations are uniquely illegitimate.

This makes Harvard less welcoming for Jewish students. Those who wish to enter the classes of Amos Yadlin, a retired Israeli general and politician, at Harvard Kennedy School have had to walk through a gauntlet of protesters accusing them of complicity in genocide. Jewish students have had to walk next to the “apartheid wall” constructed in Harvard Yard during Passover, which employs Holocaust imagery to depict Israel’s behavior toward Palestinians and declares that “Zionism = Racism.” Inside many classrooms, Jewish students are too intimidated to speak out against the new intellectual and social orthodoxy that deems Israel to be the world’s worst human-rights violator. Having witnessed this process repeat itself across the university, we can’t avoid the suspicion that such hatred of the world’s largest Jewish collective is a smokescreen for something darker.

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