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ISRAEL

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

These are very exciting times, as Israeli innovations are literally lifting-off. Dozens of Israeli children watched eight of their school-built nano-satellites being launched into space, and there is more good news about another 12 Israeli space projects. Intel has unveiled its latest 12th-generation Israeli-developed microprocessor and Israel’s Mobileye has lifted the lid on its super-computer chip to power autonomous cars. Those suffering from cancer, lupus and autism will have their hopes raised by the latest Israeli medical treatments and research. Afghan refugees and women in India will certainly get a lift from recent Israeli humanitarian initiatives.  Israeli trade and investment is rising to new heights and there are signs that Israeli tourism may be about to take off again. More ancient Jewish artifacts have been lifted from the Land of Israel, and the sight of blossoming trees is lifting spirits throughout the country.  Michael Ordman

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Lupus treatment is right on target. Current treatments for lupus nephritis shut down much of the immune system, with many adverse side effects. A new therapy developed by researchers, including Israel’s Professor Chaim Putterman, targets only the relevant T-cells and is therefore much safer.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/319884

How we adapt to our environment. Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered that our physical bodies react to electrical voltage changes within nerve cells in the brain. So, if we encounter strong smell, a voltage change tells our G-protein voltage-sensitive receptors to reduce sensitivity to the smell.

https://www.jpost.com/science/article-691568   https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27593-x 

Diet can slow brain aging. A green Mediterranean diet, high in polyphenols and low in red and processed meat, seems to slow age-related brain atrophy. Ben Gurion University researchers led an 18-month international randomized control trial on 300 participants – one of the world’s longest and largest brain MRI trials.

https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/green_med.aspx

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ajcn/nqac001/6503596?login=true

Diagnosing autism in infants. Researchers from Bar-Ilan University have been able to diagnose symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in babies up to 15 months old. They then treated those symptoms using Bar-Ilan’s pioneer Mifne Approach to avert severe deviations in the neurodevelopment of the infants identified.

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/mind-and-spirit/article-689985

An Israeli coronavirus expert. Latest webinar featuring Dr. Asher Salmon, of Israel’s Ministry of Health. (2nd link gives his background.) Start from 19 minutes 50 seconds (main talk from 23 mins).  At 1 hour 12 mins, the moderator mentions one of my local surgery’s doctors, sent by Israel to Croatia, to advise on vaccinations.

https://mfafiles.azurewebsites.net/Shares/ca4af3c2-41d8-42e2-9870-206c581ab995

https://socialimpactil.com/dr-asher-salmon-health-for-israelis-the-world/

New cancer treatment center. (TY WIN) Construction has begun on a $265 million cancer treatment center at Tel Aviv Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center. Philanthropist Sheldon Adelson donated $40 million towards the project prior to his death. The center will contain in-patients, proton therapy, rehabilitation, research, and more.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/01/03/adelson-family-donates-40-million-to-tel-aviv-sourasky-medical-center/

All hands to the pump. United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Avinoam revived 40-year-old Yankel, who suffered a cardiac arrest in Be’er Sheva. Passers-by helped with CPR and assisted ventilation. Avinoam’s defibrillator delivered 4 shocks and Yankel’s heart restarted. Next day, Avinoam visited a very grateful Yankel in hospital.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/319904

Professor Ehud Qimron: “Ministry of Health, it’s time to admit failure”

https://swprs.org/professor-ehud-qimron-ministry-of-health-its-time-to-admit-failure/

Professor Ehud Qimron, head of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University and one of the leading Israeli immunologists, has written an open letter sharply criticizing the Israeli – and indeed global – management of the coronavirus pandemic.

Original letter in Hebrew : N12 News (January 6, 2022); translated by Google / SPR. See also: Professor Qimron’s prediction from August 2020: “History will judge the hysteria” (INN).

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Ministry of Health, it’s time to admit failure

In the end, the truth will always be revealed, and the truth about the coronavirus policy is beginning to be revealed. When the destructive concepts collapse one by one, there is nothing left but to tell the experts who led the management of the pandemic – we told you so.

Two years late, you finally realize that a respiratory virus cannot be defeated and that any such attempt is doomed to fail. You do not admit it, because you have admitted almost no mistake in the last two years, but in retrospect it is clear that you have failed miserably in almost all of your actions, and even the media is already having a hard time covering your shame .

You refused to admit that the infection comes in waves that fade by themselves, despite years of observations and scientific knowledge. You insisted on attributing every decline of a wave solely to your actions, and so through false propaganda “you overcame the plague.” And again you defeated it, and again and again and again.

You refused to admit that mass testing is ineffective, despite your own contingency plans explicitly stating so (“Pandemic Influenza Health System Preparedness Plan, 2007”, p. 26).

An anti-Israel Tu Bishvat tribute to remember By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-692470

As is customary ahead of Tu Bishvat, Israelis have begun planting trees in honor of the transition from winter to spring. But the traditionally cheerful endeavor was marred on Tuesday, exactly a week before the actual date of the agricultural/spiritual-Jewish festival, by an Arab protest in the Negev. 

The excuse for the demonstration, which turned violent, was the clearing of land in the Moleda area of the region to make way for the saplings. Resident Bedouin responded to the event by throwing rocks at police officers deployed to protect representatives of Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, the group that organized the happening. 

Some angry Arabs also threw rocks at cars on the adjacent highway, blocked a train and set a vehicle on fire. Two policemen were reported wounded in the fray, and 18 rioters were arrested.

Thankfully, few people were seriously hurt. The episode itself was more than painful, however, as the protest against the tree-planting in the Negev was led by the Ra’am (United Arab List) Party, which is part of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s government. 

Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas even threatened to stop voting with his coalition partners if the planting in the “disputed land” continues.

Arab Racism and the ‘Jewish State’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18098/arabs-racism-israel

First, Mansour Abbas did not “call” on the Palestinian people to recognize Israel. He simply stated the fact that Israel was “born as a Jewish state” and that “it will remain a Jewish state.”

Second, there is no connection between accepting Israel’s Jewish identity and the Islamic holy sites, including the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Since 1967, in fact, Israel has allowed the Islamic religious authorities to have exclusive control over the mosque and other Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem.

Remarkably, since the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, the city has become a haven for coexistence and revitalized religious and cultural expression for all faiths. Freedom of worship at all holy sites is guaranteed for the faithful of all three monotheistic religions.

Ironically, the Palestinian leadership’s false claim that Israel is seeking to “harm” the al-Aqsa Mosque came as Palestinians made two attempts to set fire to Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, only because it is frequented by Jewish worshippers. The attempts, according to reports in the Palestinian media, were foiled at the last minute by the Palestinian security forces.

Third, the Palestinian leadership’s claim that recognition of Israel as a Jewish state “contradicts religion and history” should be seen in the context of the Palestinians’ denial of any traces of Judaism in Jerusalem.

Notably, while the PA says that it is strongly opposed to the idea of Israel being a Jewish state, it has no problem defining itself as “Arab” and “Islamic.”

There are 56 countries in which Islam plays a significant role. Many of them are countries with Islam as the state religion.

The constitutions of several Arab countries, including Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Oman and Yemen, define them as Arab states where Islam is the religion of the state.

It is worth considering the extreme hypocrisy of this situation: the Arabs (and the Palestinians) continue their long-held policy of defining their countries as “Arab” and “Islamic,” while they deny Israel the right to refer to itself what it always has been — the Jewish state.

This does not bode well for any peace process that the Biden administration is hoping to revive between the Palestinians and Israel.

Those who refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state are actually admitting that they do not believe in Israel’s right to exist.

Palestinians and other Arabs are furious because Mansour Abbas — an Arab member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, and head of the United List Party — announced that he recognizes Israel as a Jewish state.

Jews Are Dancing. Flee, Luvvies, Flee! Timothy Cootes

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/luvvieland/2022/01/jews-are-dancing-flee-luvvies-flee/

“Israel is a backer of the Sydney Festival, having contributed $20,000 to stage a production by choreographer Ohad Naharin, and this has prompted the usual look-at-me protests by the artsy Left’s voluble wankerati. Laugh lustily at their claim that Jews in tights present a threat to their safety — yes, really — but also mourn the death of professional curiosity amongst Australia journalists.”

Quadrant readers, I should hope, will be unbothered by Tom Ballard’s absence from the Sydney Festival, as the humourless comedian, at the urging of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, has decided not to participate.

As I write, the list of withdrawals, 30 at last count, is sure to get longer and longer. At what I imagine would be the the panel discussion from hell, Yumi Stynes, Julia Banks and Louise Milligan were scheduled to bang on about the patriarchy and related themes until Stynes, also in solidarity with Palestine, pulled out. Again, for my readers, this may be the cause of amused cheer rather than annoyance.

That said, there is much in this campaign that we should find bothersome: the rebarbative manner in which it has been conducted, the pathetic non-effort by some in the media to question its claims, and what it all may foretoken for the cultural life of the country.

To recap: it came to light that Israel is among the financial supporters of the Sydney Festival, as the Israeli embassy in Australia contributed $20 000 to the staging of Decadence, a production by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin and the Sydney Dance Company. As expected, the news of this funding led to an outbreak of the customary insanity among left-wing academics and activists.

Biden Administration Provides Still More Money to UNRWA Putting “Palestinian refugees” above all other refugees in the world. Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/biden-administration-provides-still-more-money-hugh-fitzgerald/

Hundreds of millions of refugees who have been created by the wars, conflicts, natural disasters, droughts, and famines since the Second World War must share a single U.N. Agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to look after their wellbeing. But there is one U.N. organization, the UN Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, that is devoted exclusively to the care and feeding of one hugely privileged group of refugees, those known as “Palestinian refugees.” Having their very own agency is not the only distinction that puts “Palestinian refugees” above all other refugees in the world. Uniquely, “Palestinian refugees” include all the descendants – children, grandchildren, and so on without end – of the original refugees; no other refugees in the world are allowed to pass on their refugee status as an inheritable trait.

The Taylor Force Act is an Act of the U.S. Congress to stop American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) until the PA ceases paying stipends through the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund to individuals who commit acts of terrorism and to the families of deceased terrorists. This system of stipends to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of terrorists who were killed while carrying out their attacks is known, pejoratively and correctly, as the “Pay-For-Slay” program. The Act was signed into law by U.S. President Donald Trump on March 23, 2018. Several cuts were made to the aid given to the PA, with the last one made on August 24, 2018, ending all direct American aid to the PA.

Also in August 2018, the United States ended all aid to UNRWA, cutting off $300 million. That ending of aid to UNRWA was made for two reasons. First, it was a way to express American outrage with the UNRWA’s use of schoolbooks that remain full of antisemitic passages, despite repeated promises by UNRWA that it would be revising, or replacing, those texts. It has yet to do so. Second, the Trump Administration was expressing its frustration with the unique treatment of “Palestinian refugee” status as inheritable, which has meant that the UNRWA rolls constantly expand. In ending its aid, the Trump administration was putting pressure on UNRWA to halt this inexorable increase in the number of “Palestinian refugees.”

Claims of Occupation and Illegal Settlements as an Excuse to Call for Genocide Why the radical agendas of anti-Israel Jews will not advance world peace. Dr. Schmuel Katz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/claims-occupation-and-illegal-settlements-excuse-dr-schmuel-katz/

For several problematic reasons and for no real benefit to the international community, the State of Israel and the Jewish people have become the punching bag of many entities across the globe.

This change was instigated and stimulated by a variety of factors. Among these reasons we can see the malicious instigation by many of the anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli dictatorships and self-serving countries, who depend on the grace of the 56-state block of the Muslim countries. Many of the country members of the UN depend on them for votes – for oil, for investments, and for protection from eventual terrorism. In their eyes, these benefits are more important than the values promoted by the honorable and democratic State of Israel, and its advanced scientific contributions to Research & Development, which have benefited the entire world.

These days there is a need among some self-absorbed individuals and political leaders to convince themselves that they are doing something good by bashing Israel and the Jewish people. Unfortunately, these problematic individuals and organizations include too many oblivious Jewish leaders, students, and others.

It seems that these Jewish people, even the well-connected and influential ones, are afraid of, or intimidated by, internationally aggressive promoters of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish agendas. They are likely justifying their positions with irrational considerations. Perhaps they assume that if they stand against their own people and give away real national treasures and territorial integrity, they will earn some benefit or respect from vicious Jew haters and Israel haters.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

 

Israel is open again to all foreign tourists, including so many from formerly hostile nations. Tourism is Israel’s best defense against the bias and libels that plague the democratic, diverse, inclusive and free wheeling Jewish State. Many of those tourists are citizens of nations that profit from the dazzling and outsize research and development of life enriching technology that brings succor, hope and light 24/7 to millions of people throughout the globe. To his enormous credit, Michael Ordman catalogs the foregoing as well as Israel’s outstanding social and entertainment institutions in his weekly newsletters.  rsk

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Etta’s cancer breakthrough. Professor Etta Livneh of Israel’s Ben Gurion University has found a peptide (uPEP2) in the body’s messenger RNA that inhibits cancer cell survival, tumor progression, metastasis and more. Amazingly, uPEP2 originates from a gene classified with the Greek letter Eta (Prof Livneh’s forename).
https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/hetta_livne.aspx   https://www.pnas.org/content/118/40/e2018899118
 
Unraveling the genetics of ADHD. Israeli scientists at Ben-Gurion University and Soroka Medical Center have proved that a mutation in a single gene, CDH2, can cause ADHD. Molecular analysis of neurons in mutant mice demonstrated the precise effects of the mutation on the activity of synapses in the brain.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/mind-and-spirit/what-causes-adhd-new-israeli-study-may-have-found-out-687668   https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26426-1
 
First Israeli to receive new Alzheimer’s treatment. (TY WIN) Yirmiyahu Kozari, 57, recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, is the first Israeli to receive Aduhelm (Aducanumab) from Biogen, at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. The treatment removes beta-amyloid from the brain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz39Zt5HZcw
 
First shipment of anti-Covid pill. Israel has received its first consignment of tens of thousands of Pfizer’s COVID-fighting Paxlovid pills – the first country outside the USA to take delivery. Israel has authorized use of the treatment, which is effective if taken within five days of the onset of coronavirus symptoms.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-first-shipment-of-pfizer-covid-pills-set-to-arrive/
 
Dormant insulin-producing cells. Israeli scientists have discovered that babies make insulin in their intestines before birth. The responsible cells are present after birth, but they no longer produce insulin. This means that adults may have a “backup” system that could be reactivated to treat diabetes.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientists-say-humans-may-have-backup-insulin-system-diabetics-could-use/  https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/while-waiting-food-surprising-fetal-gut-cells-make-insulin
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01586-1
 
Haifa’s digital health accelerator launched. Plans to promote tech innovation in Haifa (see here previously) have come to fruition with the launch of Startup City Haifa – Digital Health Accelerator. Led by JVP, Margalit Startup City and others, it will support startups working on advanced medical technology and cybersecurity.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3926027,00.html
 
Coexistence saves Myanmar girl. 8-year-old Hannah from Myanmar was brought to Israel for an urgent operation by Jewish, Muslim and Christian doctors from Israeli non-profit Save A Child’s Heart. The surgeons were led by Dr Hagi Dekel and included Dr Mervat El-Faraha from the PA and Dr Ziwa Modniso from Zambia.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/only-in-israel-jewish-christian-and-muslim-doctors-save-8-year-old-from-myanmar/
 
Brain surgery under local anesthetic. (TY WIN) Israel’s Rabin Medical Center recently completed the world’s first ever operation on a patient’s brain, using ketamine as a local anesthetic. They performed Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), implanting an electrode to cure the tremors of a patient with Parkinson’s disease.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1TYsT0tJoo
 
The world’s smallest needles. Israel’s NanoPass (see here) is partnering Korea’s Micro2Nano to mass-produce the world’s smallest needles.  The tiny needle uses standard syringes, allowing intradermal (between the skin layers) injections, including for coronavirus. These are painless and elicit a better immune response.
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/01/03/nanopass-developed-the-worlds-painless-smallest-medical-needle/
 
Two in a million. An Israeli woman gave birth to healthy twins at the Tel Aviv Sourasky (Ichilov) hospital. The boy and girl only encountered each other after the birth, as the mother was born with a double uterus – a rare condition, known as Uterus didelphys. Less than 15 cases of similar births have ever been reported.
https://worldisraelnews.com/one-in-a-million-israeli-woman-with-two-wombs-gives-birth-to-healthy-twins/
 
 

Israel should declare 3 No’s By Ted Belman

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/israel_should_declare_3_nos.html

In June 1967, Israel defeated five Arab armies in what became known as the Six Day War.  That war actually began when the Arabs invaded Israel immediately after her Declaration of Independence in 1948. The Arabs had hoped to destroy Israel and “drive the Jews into the sea”.

Three months later, the Arab League met in Khartoum and declared their 3 no’s; no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel, Also included was their insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.

Thereafter they resorted to a different battlefield. They began a diplomatic war against Israel in which they used propaganda, extortion and terror to achieve their desired goal. Eventually, they managed to get most of the world to back their false narrative and to support their cause. In particular, the world now believes that the land in question is Occupied Palestinian Land and that international law supports them and holds that the settlements are illegal. These beliefs are supported by the US, the EU and the UN among others.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. For the truth, read International Law and the State of Israel and The Legality of Israel Sovereignty over Judea and Samaria According to International law.

It is long past time for Israel to declare its own 3 no’s; no to a nuclear Iran, no to the two-state solution, no to a bi-national state.

Why so? Because nothing is to be gained by negotiating.

Exposing the Lie of Israel Apartheid by Richard Kemp

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18094/israel-apartheid

The breakdown in Israel-Soviet relations was later compounded by Israel’s defensive victories against the Arabs in 1967 and again in 1973. Over this period all hope of Israel becoming a Soviet client had steadily evaporated. Arab armies sponsored, trained and equipped by the USSR had been humiliated, and so had Moscow. Thus the Soviets progressively developed a policy of undermining Israel. Their primary objective was to use the country as a weapon in their Cold War struggle against the US and the West.

“We needed to instil a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States.” — Yuri Andropov, Chairman of the Soviet KGB, later General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, as reported by General Ion Pacepa, former chief of Romania’s intelligence services.

As well as mobilising the Arabs to the Soviet cause, Andropov and his KGB colleagues needed to appeal to the democratic world. To do so, the Kremlin decided to turn the conflict from one that sought simply to destroy Israel into a struggle for human rights and national liberation from an illegitimate American-sponsored imperialist occupier. They set about transforming the narrative of the conflict from religious jihad — in which Islamic doctrine demands that any land that has ever been under Muslim control must be regained for Islam — to secular nationalism and political self-determination, something far more palatable to Western democracies. This would provide cover for a vicious terrorist war, even garnering widespread support for it.

To achieve their goal, the Soviets had to create a Palestinian national identity that did not hitherto exist and a narrative that Jews had no rights to the land and were naked aggressors. According to Pacepa, the KGB created the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the early 1960s, as they had also orchestrated so-called national liberation armies in several other parts of the world. He says the 1964 Palestinian National Charter was drafted in Moscow. This document was fundamental to the invention and establishment of an artificial Palestinian nationhood.

The details of Moscow-sponsored terrorist operations in the Middle East and elsewhere are set out in 25,000 pages of KGB documents copied and then smuggled out of Russia in the early 1990s by senior KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin and now lodged in the UK, at Churchill College, Cambridge.

The initial charter did not claim the West Bank or the Gaza Strip for “Palestine”. In fact, it explicitly repudiated any rights to these lands, falsely recognising them respectively as Jordanian and Egyptian sovereign territories. Instead, the PLO claim was to the rest of Israel. This was amended after the 1967 war when Israel ejected the illegal Jordanian and Egyptian occupiers, and the West Bank and Gaza for the first time were re-branded as Palestinian territory.

Moscow first took its campaign to brand Israeli Jews as the oppressors of their invented “Palestinian people” to the UN in 1965. Their attempts to categorise Zionism as racism failed at that attempt but succeeded nearly a decade later in the infamous UN General Assembly Resolution 3379.

Zuheir Mohsen, a senior PLO leader, admitted in 1977: “The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity… Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons.”

The Mitrokhin documents show that both Yasser Arafat, and his successor as PLO chief, Mahmoud Abbas, now President of the Palestinian Authority, were KGB agents. Both were instrumental in the KGB’s disinformation operations as well as its terrorist campaigns.

For his dealings with Washington, Ceaușescu told Arafat in 1978: “You simply have to keep on pretending that you’ll break with terrorism and that you’ll recognize Israel — over, and over, and over.”

Ceaușescu’s advice was reinforced by North Vietnamese communist General Vo Nguyen Giap, whom Arafat met several times: “Stop talking about annihilating Israel and instead turn your terror war into a struggle for human rights. Then you will have the American people eating out of your hand”.

Like his predecessor Arafat, Abbas’s consistent rejection of every offer of peace with Israel, while concurrently talking the talk about peace and while sponsoring terrorism, shows the continuing influence of his Soviet masters.

Meanwhile the Palestinian movement created by Moscow, in the words of American historian David Meir-Levi, is “the only national movement for political self-determination in the entire world, and across all of world history, to have the destruction of a sovereign state and the genocide of a people as its only raison d’être.”

Moscow’s campaign was significantly undermined by the 2020 rapprochement between Israel and Arab states. The lesson here is the importance of American political will against authoritarian propaganda, which led to the game-changing Abraham Accords.

Last month the UN General Assembly re-affirmed its implacable hostility to one of its own member states. It voted overwhelmingly — 125-8, with 34 abstentions — to fund an unprecedented permanent Human Rights Council (UNHRC) commission of inquiry (COI) into allegations of war crimes and human rights abuse by Israel. Taxpayers’ funds will pay an eyewatering $5.5 million budget in the first year alone, well over twice that of the UNHRC commission investigating the Syrian civil war.