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February 2024

ISRAEL Comments turned off

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on February 18th, 2024

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

In 1922 the infamous British White Paper bowing to Arab pressure ceded 76 percent of the Palestine Mandate- all the land east of the Jordan River to the Hashemites who forbid Jewish settlement.

The British justified their betrayal with the statement: “England…does not want Palestine to become ‘as Jewish as England is English’, but, rather, should become ‘a center in which Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride.’ 

Well Michael Ordman’s weekly catalog does indeed inspire interest and pride and current demographics show that Israel is far more Jewish than England is England. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Dramatic rescue of two Israeli hostages. (TY WIN) All of Israel celebrated the news that IDF special forces had rescued two Israeli-Argentinian hostages in a daring overnight operation in Rafah. The President of Argentina had just completed his historic visit to Israel and was also delighted with the outcome.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1707714683-idf-rescues-2-hostages-during-op-in-rafah
 
Rescue app saves lives.  The app Digital 101 is one of the technical innovations that has vastly improved survival rates of wounded IDF personnel during the current war. The app, developed by Israel’s K Health (see here previously) and two army reservists, transfers medical data about the wounded from battlefield to hospital.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/ryc9a00yia
 
Critical gear for female IDF soldiers. Operation Israel is a group of over 100 volunteer professionals and experts. They have shipped millions of dollars’ worth of critical gear to the IDF. They are now responding to urgent requests from female IDF soldiers for properly fitting shoes, helmets, vests, uniforms, and backpacks.
https://www.jns.org/wire/operation-israel-launches-girl-power-to-equip-women-idf-soldiers-with-critical-gear/
https://www.operationisrael.org/   https://www.operationisrael.org/girlpower
 
‘Falafel King’ donates 25,000 portions to IDF. Shimon Biton, owner of Falafel Biton in Be’er Ya’akov, south of Tel Aviv, has been dubbed the “King of Falafel.” He has donated 25,000 portions of Israel’s national snack to IDF soldiers fighting in Khan Yunis in Gaza. In addition, security personnel always eat free at his restaurant.
https://www.jns.org/falafel-restaurant-donates-25000-portions-to-israeli-soldiers/
 
The biggest homecoming yet. 80% of southern moshav Shokeda’s 132 families have returned to their national-religious community, 4 miles from Gaza. The homecoming was the largest single movement of people into the Tekuma Region near Gaza since its evacuation following Oct 7. Some immediately began mowing their lawns.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/4-miles-from-war-in-biggest-homecoming-yet-hundreds-of-evacuees-return-to-shokeda/
 
Malawi kibbutz workers sing for hostages. In recent months, agricultural workers from Malawi in Africa have been working at Kibbutz Zikim. The issue of the kidnapped Israelis touches their hearts and prompted an acapella band to make a new arrangement of the song; “Home” and a music video filmed in Malawi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzJpEwpYsLA
 
Gaza mystery (TY UWI) While the IDF was fighting Hamas in the Bani Suheila neighborhood of Khan Yunis, they discovered a desk in one of the houses. On it was an inscription which read: “The table of the late Levi Eshkol.” Donation of Dubek Ltd. 1981.” How did the desk of Israel’s ex-Prime Minister (1963-69) get there?
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/385142
 
Oct 7 Heroes medal. (TY UWI) “The President’s Medal for Civilian Heroism,” is to be awarded to civilians who showed outstanding heroism on October 7. The announcement said it is to honor ordinary citizens, who risked their lives, “out of a sense of unity of fate and mutual Israeli guarantee, with the aim of saving lives.”
https://www.algemeiner.com/2024/02/13/israels-president-announces-new-civilian-heroism-medal-for-heroes-of-october-7/
 
Bedouin Oct 7 heroes honored. Military service for members of the Bedouin tribes is not mandatory, yet more than 1,500 are presently serving in the IDF. Public figures came to the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem as a tribute to 13 civilian Bedouin who saved men, women, and small children while being fired at by Hamas.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-786571  
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Another breakthrough in dementia research. Tel Aviv University researchers found a method of preventing memory deterioration in the animal model of Alzheimer’s disease. They detected physiological changes that appear 10 to 20 years prior to cognitive decline. They also hope to prevent cognitive issues from anesthesia.
https://www.jns.org/israeli-team-prevents-memory-deterioration-in-alzheimers-animal-model/
 
A gut feeling. (TY UWI) Researchers from Israel’s Bar-Ilan University have uncovered a potential link between Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the composition of the gut microbiome. Certain bacteria were more prevalent and diverse in those with ASD. It could lead to the development of possible treatments.
https://tps.co.il/articles/israeli-research-points-to-gut-microbiomes-role-in-autism-spectrum-disorder/
 
Neurofeedback device effective for treating PTSD. (TY Dr Salem) In a recent trial, the Prism neurofeedback device from Israel’s GrayMatters Health (see here previously) significantly improved the condition of 67% of the chronic PTSD patients in its recent trial. Almost one third achieved remission after three months of therapy.
https://nocamels.com/2024/02/brain-activity-monitor-proves-efficacy-in-ptsd-therapy-study-finds/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178123006613
https://www.graymatters-health.com/clinical-publications
 
Doctors removed 3lb tumor from 4-year-old. (TY UWI) Surgeons at Israel’s Emek Medical Center in Afula successfully removed a huge Wilms tumor (see here previously) weighing 1.3 kg from a four-year-old child. The tumor, in the right kidney, measured 16 cm by 12 cm and constituted over 7% of the girl’s body weight.
https://tps.co.il/articles/israeli-doctors-remove-1-3-kilo-tumor-from-toddler/  
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/wilms-tumor/symptoms-causes/syc-20352655#
 
Hadassah’s new rehab center. Wounded IDF soldiers from Gaza are being treated at the new Gandel Rehabilitation Center in Jerusalem, part of the Hadassah Medical Organization, which opened in January 2024. Construction sped up after Oct 7, thanks to $29 million from the government plus $5.5 million donations.
https://www.jns.org/wounded-warriors-find-multiple-ways-to-heal-at-hadassahs-new-rehab-center/
 
Egyptian girl treated in Israel. The daughter of an Egyptian official was injured in a traffic accident and hospitalized in Cairo. She was then transferred to Hadassah Hospital, where there is a dedicated ward for complex trauma in children. Israel approved the transfer as a humanitarian gesture.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/384823

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

And The Winner Is — Hamas! by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on February 18th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20399/and-the-winner-is-hamas

What will happen if Hamas is allowed to win this war? If Hamas is permitted to accomplish what it intended by its mass murders, kidnappings and rapes? If the victims of these atrocities— the people of Israel and all countries fighting terrorism — lose? If the prospects for peace in the region and the Free World are seriously damaged? If the relationship between the US and Israel, and the loss of faith in the US as the guarantor of freedom, continues to be fractured?

Instead, the Biden administration may be rewarding Palestinian terrorists by unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian State, which will, of course, soon become militarized.

The anti-Israel left-wingers are not going to vote for Trump, who is more pro-Israel than Biden. Nor are they likely to stay home on Election Day and help Trump. Centrist voters, on the other hand, are likely to vote against Biden if they think he is beholden to the Squad or other anti-American woke extremists.

As important as are the domestic electoral implications of Biden’s weakening support for Israel, the international implications are far more consequential. The world will be a far less safe place if Israel is prevented from defeating and dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities.

Israel is doing everything reasonable to decrease civilian casualties, while Hamas tries to increase them on both sides. American policy should be to help Israel defeat Hamas and prevent the recurrence and spread of its terrorism against civilians, rather than to help Hamas secure a victory by tying Israel’s hands.

So, unless the Biden administration changes course and encourages Israel to achieve its legitimate military goal of defeating Hamas, terrorism will win and civilization will lose.

What will happen if Hamas is allowed to win this war? If Hamas is permitted to accomplish what it intended by its mass murders, kidnappings and rapes? If the victims of these atrocities — the people of Israel and all countries fighting terrorism — lose? If the prospects for peace in the region and the Free World are seriously damaged? If the relationship between the US and Israel, and the loss of faith in the US as the guarantor of freedom, continues to be fractured?

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

2024 and the invasion at the southern border The destruction of the country for the sake of temporary partisan advantage seems a high price to pay Roger Kimball

By on February 18th, 2024

https://thespectator.com/topic/2024-invasion-southern-border/

Donald Trump crushed the New Hampshire primary, as every poll in Alpha Centauri predicted he would. Nevertheless, his sole remaining opponent for the GOP nomination, Nikki Haley, “vowed to fight on.” Why? A cynical person might suggest the interaction of two volatile liquids: cash, on the one hand, and consultants, on the other. Haley is swimming in both. The cash is coming from two sources: brittle, establishment faux conservatives like the Kochs and wily Dem operatives like the billionaire Reid Hoffman who, in addition to shoveling gobs of money to Nikki Haley, is also funding such entrepreneurial activities as E. Jean Carroll’s bizarre lawsuit against Donald Trump.

In a sane world, the support of a malignant figure like Hoffman would be disqualifying for Haley. Will Haley have dropped out (“suspended her campaign”) by the time you read this? Maybe. I predict, though, that as long as there is cash in the kitty, Haley’s consultants will “advise” her to “fight on.” After all, consultants are people, too, and they have mortgages and therapy to pay for.

But whenever the money runs out and Haley disappears, one thing that is not going to change is the overriding issue of this campaign. People are worried about inflation, yes; the economy, of course; America’s overextension in the foreign wars that have started since Joe Biden’s tremulous hand lay on the Bible and he promised faithfully to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” you betcha.

But as Iowa and New Hampshire and every poll taken across the fruited plain remind us, the one overwhelming, all-absorbing, keep-you-up-at-night concern is the southern border, which is to say the lack of a southern border. People everywhere, in the trenches in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, as well as far-off Iowa and New Hampshire, are terrified by the hordes of trespassers pouring over the southern border.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Defacing the Constitution Should Land You in Prison By Kayla Bartsch

By on February 18th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/defacing-the-constitution-should-land-you-in-prison/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=

Among this past week’s brainless and woke happenings (but I repeat myself), one event in particular stuck out. Two “climate activists” decided that desecrating the nation’s most sacred document, the U.S. Constitution, was the best way to garner support for their cause.

These two men — who look like malnourished vegans paying out-of-pocket for a Ph.D. in Peace Studies — dumped reddish-pink powder over themselves and the Constitution’s display case on Wednesday afternoon.

Why the reddish-pink powder? Who knows. (It probably symbolizes the blood of an endangered wombat, or something.) What is certain, however, is that the particulate substance has been hard to remove.

Subsequent analysis revealed that the powder dumped on the case was a mixture of pigment powder and cornstarch. The resulting substance was so fine that an industrial vacuum could hardly pick it up, nor could the powdered pigment be cleaned with water because it would just turn into paint.

While none of the substance penetrated the bulletproof case, the stunt still proved a headache for the Archives staff to clean and forced the National Archives to stay closed for days — a major letdown for all of the families visiting the capital with the express purpose of making a pilgrimage to the text’s temple.

The pasty duo enacted their stunt unhindered by the “security guards” at the National Archives. Nearly four minutes passed before the clods were stopped.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Mayorkas Is Not the Right Target for Impeachment over the Border….That person is President Biden. Andrew McCarthy

By on February 18th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/02/mayorkas-is-not-the-right-target-for-impeachment-over-the-border/

There is one official in the United States who has the undeniable statutory and constitutional authority to end the border catastrophe — for which that official is wholly responsible. That official is not Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It is President Joe Biden. This is not to say Mayorkas is undeserving of the impeachment that House Republicans approved on Tuesday — only after losing a similar, party-line squeaker last week in a fit of incompetent vote-counting. But since this is merely a gesture — since there is not the slightest possibility that the Democrat-controlled Senate is going to convict and remove high-ranking Biden administration officials for carrying out Biden policy Democrats support — why not aim the gesture at the right target?

Like many of us, I’ve been ambivalent about the Mayorkas-impeachment gambit. Notwithstanding the ill-informed insistence of Representative Ken Buck (R., Colo.) in a National Review column this week, there’s no real doubt that the willful failure to secure the border is an impeachable offense, and that Mayorkas has willfully failed to secure the border, his main job. Nevertheless, in my 2014 book on impeachment, Faithless Execution, in discussing the debates that led to the congressional impeachment power that Madison regarded as “indispensable,” I made much — because the Framers had made much — of the interplay between impeachment and the constitutional concept of the unitary executive.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Western Farmers: Fork in the Road by Amir Taheri

By on February 18th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20398/western-farmers

Globalization rules enabled many nations to use their comparative advantage in terms of climate, richness of soil, less expensive labor and variety of products to claim a growing chunk of the traditional Western markets. At the same time, Western farmers had to cope with the growing cost of environmental measures concocted by the “save-the-planet” lobby.

The real world is divided into nation-states with frontiers, different cultures and legal systems, and resistance to the one-size-fits-all sought by ultra-globalists.

Protesting European farmers demand a “level-playing field”, something that, if regarded as a perfect model, does not and cannot exist in every human transaction. The “win-win” concept peddled by ultra-globalists is a myth. What matters is that the sum-total of relations among nation-states does not favor some and hurt others in the medium and long term.

Most polls show that most Europeans sympathize with their farmers. But will they continue doing so if the price is more expensive and less varied food and ditching part of the ecological dogma?

In the past few weeks European farmers have taken to the streets of their capitals to advertise a rebellious mood that few expected to see.

Having enjoyed a comfortable life for decades, thanks to subsidies from their respective governments and the European Union’s Common agricultural Policy (CAP), they were not expected to invade the grand capitals together with their sheep, cows and tractors with a litany of woes.

The question of food security was first raised after World War II as a top priority for Western European nations as they tried to rebuild their shattered economies.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The antisemitism crisis is out of control In both Britain and America, politics is becoming increasingly distorted Melanie Phillips

By on February 18th, 2024

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-antisemitism-crisis-is-out-of?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The war in Gaza is prying open a potentially game-changing fissure in British politics that has wider implications for the western world.

Last weekend, a recording surfaced of a meeting of the Lancashire Labour Party in late October. It revealed that Azhar Ali, who was subsequently selected as the Labour Party candidate for a parliamentary by-election that will be held in Rochdale later this month, said Israel deliberately allowed the October 7 pogrom to occur in order to give itself “the green light” to invade Gaza.

Despite this blood libel, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who has pledged to rid the party of antisemitism, said he was satisfied that Ali had made a genuine apology for the statement.

Nearly two days later, after it emerged that Ali had also blamed people in the media “from certain Jewish quarters” for Labour’s suspension of one of its MPs for using the phrase “between the river and the sea,” Starmer stripped Ali of Labour support.

This was too late to stop Ali from standing in the by-election. Since Labour has withdrawn its endorsement, the party now has no candidate.

This chaos is potentially disastrous. Rochdale is 30 per cent Muslim. Also standing for election, as the candidate for the Respect party, is the demagogic, virulently anti-Israel George Galloway — who was himself expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 for opposing the “war on terror”. He is now well-placed to capitalise on the explosive Muslim hostility to Israel and win the seat.

Shortly after Ali was finally disowned, it was revealed that, at the same Lancashire meeting, Graham Jones — a former MP who is now a parliamentary candidate seeking to regain his former seat — repeatedly referred to “f***ing Israel”.

He also ranted that Britons who volunteer to fight for the Israel Defence Forces “should be locked up,” claiming falsely that such volunteering was illegal. Jones was suspended by the party, this time immediately.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

State Department Threatens Congress Over Censorship Programs A year after its censorship programs were exposed, the Global Engagement Center still insists the public has no right to know how it’s spending taxpayer money Matt Taibbi

By on February 18th, 2024

https://www.racket.news/p/state-department-threatens-congress?

The State Department is so unhappy a newspaper published details about where it’s been spending your taxes, it’s threatened to only show a congressional committee its records in camera until it gets a “better understanding of how the Committee will utilize this sensitive information.” Essentially, Tony Blinken is threatening to take his transparency ball home unless details about what censorship programs he’s sponsoring stop appearing in papers like the Washington Examiner:

The State Department tells Congress, which controls its funding, that it will only disclose where it spent our money “in camera”

A year ago the Examiner published “Disinformation, Inc.”, a series by investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky describing how the State Department was backing a UK-based agency that creates digital blacklists for disfavored media outlets. Your taxes helped fund the Global Disinformation Index, or GDI, which proudly touts among its services an Orwellian horror called the Dynamic Exclusion List, a digital time-out corner where at least 2,000 websites were put on blast as unsuitable for advertising, “thus disrupting the ad-funded disinformation business model.”

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Many Reporters Paid for Covering the Russiagate Story Matt Tiabbi

By on February 18th, 2024

https://www.racket.news/p/many-reporters-paid-for-covering?

Three years ago, on February 25th, 2021, Aaron Maté at RealClearInvestigations ran “In Final Days, Trump Gave Up on Forcing Release of Russiagate Files, Nunes Prober Says.” Extensively quoting former Principal Deputy to the Acting Director of National Intelligence Kash Patel, Aaron wrote a section on “Assessing the ‘Intelligence Community Assessment,’” detailing a lot of the same story Michael Shellenberger, Alexandra Gutentag and I ran in Public and Racket Thursday. Describing a 2018 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) report on the subject, Aaron wrote:

The March 2018 House report found that the production of the ICA “deviated from established CIA practice.” And the core judgment that Putin sought to help Trump, the House report found, resulted from “significant intelligence tradecraft failings that undermine confidence in the ICA judgments.”

Many of us who followed this story — a number of reporters on both sides of the aisle did so obsessively — have long had a good idea about the general direction of that House investigation. The tale of improper CIA and FBI surveillance mixed with manufactured intelligence has been in the ether since late 2017 and early 2018.

I’ll list just a few of the names who reported stories in this direction over the years, in some cases day after day on broadcast shows.

An attentive reader will notice nearly everyone on the list has been denounced at some point by the mainstream commentators who got this story horribly wrong. Aaron, considered a traitor by former mainstream colleagues, faced pressure from staff at The Nation, was denounced by The Guardian as part of a “network of conspiracy theorists,” and failed to gain support from any major media outlet or press advocacy organization when the FBI passed on an outrageous request from Ukrainian secret services to remove him from Twitter.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Michael Shellenberger: Obama Partisan Wrote False 2017 Russia Intelligence Assessment, Says Insider House Intelligence report that debunked the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian election interference was written by “introverted, wonky, and nerdy professionals” not “political hacks”

By on February 18th, 2024

https://public.substack.com/p/obama-partisan-wrote-false-2017-russia

Around 10 a.m. on a Saturday in August 2018, someone made the extraordinary decision to show a White House staff member a top-secret report written by investigators working for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), which is universally pronounced as “hip C.”

The still-secret, never-released HPSCI report concluded that the Russian government wanted Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, to win the 2016 election and that then-CIA Director John Brennan had manipulated a January 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment,” or ICA, which had come to the opposite conclusion.

“There was the top-secret version I was shown,” said the man, who came forward after reading yesterday’s report by Public and Racket. “There was an even more highly classified version that I was not shown, which had more details.”

The HPSCI offices are located in a large complex underneath the capitol visitor’s center. “It was built after 9/11,” he explained. “It’s a huge underground facility that the public never sees. The whole office is a SCIF.”

A SCIF is a Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility and is pronounced “skiff.”

The former White House staffer did not want to say who brought him into the HPSCI SCIF to read the report. They did so secretly. There is no record of him reading the report.

“About one-quarter of HPSCI staff are former intelligence officers,” he said.

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