RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israels-normalization-with-four-muslim-nations

As long as the Jewish state maintains the upper hand—and has the will to survive—its existential enemies will be forced to comply.

Israel recently signed agreements establishing relations with four Muslim nations: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

Both good and bad news surround this development.

The bad news is bland and predictable: a permanent peace between Israel and its Muslim neighbors is, according to Islamic law, or sharia, impossible: any land that was once part of Dar al-Islam—that is, any land that was ever conquered by Muslims for any length of time—is always part of Islam and must be recovered by any means necessary—preferably jihad.

As it happens, the territory consisting of the modern state of Israel was conquered by Muslims in the year 637; from then until the creation of Israel in 1948—minus some two centuries of Crusader presence—it was part of the Muslim world.

To quote Dr. Ali al-Qaradaghi, a renowned Sharia expert and secretary-general of the International Union of Muslim Scholars: “There is a consensus among Muslims, in the past and present, that if an Islamic land is occupied, then its inhabitants must declare jihad until it is liberated from the occupiers.”

https://www.jns.org/opinion/yehuda-meshi-zahavs-crucial-covid-message-to-fellow-haredim/

 The triple tragedy that struck the family of one of Israel’s most righteous Jews in the course of a single month is garnering nationwide attention and sympathy. That COVID-19 caused the deaths of Yehuda Meshi Zahav’s brother, mother and father made the blow particularly relevant to the general public.

But it is Meshi Zahav’s response to his personal loss—and accompanying appeal to those members of the country’s haredi communities who are engaged in a battle against the state over its coronavirus regulations—that is most noteworthy. So distraught is he about both that he gave an interview to Channel 12 on Sunday evening, a day after his father passed away, in the midst of his sitting shiva for his mother, mere weeks after his younger brother’s funeral.

Meshi Zahav is the founder and head of the volunteer rescue and recovery organization ZAKA (the Hebrew acronym for Disaster Victim Identification). Established in 1995, ZAKA became famous in Israel for its painstaking gathering of human remains, tissue and blood from scenes of terrorist attacks to enable the identification and proper, dignified burial of dead bodies in accordance with Jewish law. ZAKA also collects the remains of non-Jews, including suicide bombers, for return to their families.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-lebanon-lessons/

Lebanon was founded to serve as a home for Christians and other minority groups in the region. Over the years, however, it gave up its national character and symbols and began to fall apart from within. If Israel does not learn from the Lebanese case, it could find itself in a situation no less serious.

Lebanon, like Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Israel, was born on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after its lands were conquered by Britain, which, together with France, was given a mandate by the League of Nations to establish independent states in those territories. The idea that dominated the Arabic-speaking intellectual-nationalist world was to set up a big state in the region that would include the Muslim, Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Jewish religious communities.

But many of the Christians in Lebanon, particularly the Maronites, didn’t like this idea, as they were well aware of the fate the Armenians and the Assyrians had suffered in WWI—a dark period during which more than a million Armenian Christians were murdered by Muslims in strange and barbarous ways. They knew a big Syrian state would have a large Muslim majority while the Christians would constitute a minority, just as they had in the days of the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Lebanese Christians saw an opportunity to free themselves of the Muslim majority’s yoke. Their guiding principle was that the Lebanese state could solve their problem as Christians. The French—who held the Syria mandate—identified with the Christians’ yearning for independence and cooperated with the effort to turn Lebanon into a separate state for them.

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

From Cochabamba, Bolivia to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and across the globe citizens’ lives are improved by Israel’s amazing research and development of life enhancing technology, medicine, agriculture development and water recycling techniques. These things don’t make headlines or convince bigots, but the impact is epic. Michael Ordman brings us this good news every week. We are in his debt. RSK

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Vaccination progress. 27% of Israelis (2.4 million) have had their first Covid vaccination and rollout to the over-40s has begun.  Numbers of seriously ill over-60s have fallen by a third and the reproduction rate is below one. Finally, Sheba hospital’s Professor Amnon Afek highlights how Israel’s experience can help the world.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israelis-aged-40-start-receiving-vaccines-in-race-to-halt-record-infections/

https://unitedwithisrael.org/israels-trailblazing-vaccine-campaign-puts-a-dent-in-infections/

https://www.jns.org/israels-covid-19-r-number-drops-below-one-indicating-infections-may-be-slowing/

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israel-will-lead-the-world-back-to-normalcy/

AI monitors progress of Covid patients. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Zebra Medical (reported here previously) has previously adapted its AI imaging analysis platform to detect Covid-19 infection in the lungs. Now it can chart Covid-19 as it progresses in the lungs, to help decide if the patient needs ICU, ventilator, or can be discharged.

https://www.jpost.com/jpost-tech/israeli-ai-tech-aims-to-transform-patient-care-for-the-better-655302

Two Covid webinars. (TY Myer & Geoff F) Two Israeli experts explain about the latest coronavirus vaccines and the pandemic. First, Professor Jonatan HaLevy, President of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. Second, Professor Manfeld Green, now Head of the National Public Health program at the University of Haifa.

https://vimeo.com/497554299   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6WVYTks9mA

Ventilators for California. Israel’s Inovytec (reported here previously) is to provide 1,500 of its advanced portable Ventway Sparrow turbine mobile ventilators to Californian hospitals. The ventilators are lightweight, durable, affordable, low maintenance and enable invasive and non-invasive ventilation for adults and children.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/inovytec-partners-with-california-to-provide-portable-ventilators-amid-covid-19-655306

3D-printing to repair spinal cords. Israel’s Matricelf (reported here previously) has extended its 3D-printing platform for tissues and organs to producing spinal cord implants. The patient’s own cells are re-engineered into stem cells and eventually into a spinal tissue implant that isn’t rejected. Human trials are planned to begin 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebox2Id4lnI   https://matricelf.com/solutions/spinal-cord/

Monitoring coma patients. Israel’s BrainWatch Tech is developing a device that will continuously check a coma patient’s pupils for their reactions to light stimulus. Over a million patients suffer severe brain injury each year. Reaction to light signifies brain stem activity. No response suggests urgent medication or surgery.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/startup-hopes-to-track-coma-patients-condition-with-goggles-that-monitor-pupils/   https://ehealthventures.com/ehealthportfolio/21/

Helping kids grow.  Israel’s Nutritional Growth Solutions (reported here previously) is expanding globally. Independent Medical Co-op (IMCO) will distribute NGS’ Healthy Height product to the US market. NGS is also selling to the Chinese market via Alibaba’s online Tmall; and NGS has just acquired the KidzShake brand.

https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/NGS/02322984.pdf

https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/NGS/02323593.pdf

https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/NGS/02328855.pdf  https://kidzshake.com/

Benefits of a Green MED diet. An 18-month study by researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University found that a Green Mediterranean (MED) diet reduced hepatic fat by 39%. This compared to 20% for the traditional MED diet and 12% for a regular healthy diet. The diet can prevent fatty liver disease, diabetes and heart disease.

https://www.jns.org/study-green-mediterranean-diet-lessens-liver-fat-cuts-non-alcoholic-liver-disease-by-half/

https://gut.bmj.com/content/gutjnl/early/2021/01/04/gutjnl-2020-323106.full.pdf

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/the_problem_isnt_in_palestinian_numbers_.html

Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted out a number this week — <200,000 -- that he says is the State Department estimate of “original” Palestinian refugees from 1948-50 still living. They are differentiated from the descendants of those people, which the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) says is 5,663,790. UNRWA’s numbers are notoriously unreliable, but go with it for a moment. That means there are 5,463,790 extras -- more or less. The incoming administration has made it clear that it hopes to restore aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA), cut off by the State Department for Palestinian financial mismanagement and support for terrorism. There are also reports that the Biden team wants to reopen the PLO Washington office and to increase its contact with the PA in Ramallah. Restoration of the “peace process” is, clearly, on the agenda. But therein lies the dilemma for the U.S. and the irrelevance of the number of actual Palestinian refugees. The notion of a “peace process” presumes that “peace” is the goal. The “two-state solution,” postulates Palestinian acceptance of a split, rump state squeezed in between a hostile Israel and a more hostile Jordan. That they accept that Acre, Jaffa, and the Galilee Triangle will be sovereign territory in the Jewish homeland; Jerusalem, too. Hamas and Fatah, however, are clear about three goals. An independent state without recognizing a legitimate and permanent State of Israel in any territory. Both factions would accept a temporary agreement with Israel on the way to the fulfillment of the PLO Charter to which both are committed. (Reading the Charter will tell you what else they are committed to, and it isn’t a “two-state solution.”) Sovereign control of East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. The right of entry for all remaining 1948–1950 Arab refugees from Britain’s Mandatory Palestine, as well as their descendants, to any place within pre-1967 Israel in which they or their antecedents claim to have lived. The possible outcomes of the Palestinian refugee issue are also only three: to allow them to go to Israel as they choose (the so-called "right of return"); to formulate their resettlement (and compensation) in the new State of Palestine; or formulate their resettlement (and compensation) somewhere else. The first means the dissolution of the State of Israel. Only in the other scenarios would the actual number of people be important. The problem for American diplomacy is that the Palestinians have rejected the second and third outcomes. Out loud. Often.

https://bit.ly/3bZ6j3E
Bipartisan support track record

According to the March 2020 annual Gallup poll of country favorability, Israel benefits from a 74% favorability (90% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats), compared to a 23% favorability of the Palestinian Authority (9% of Republicans and 34% of Democrats).

With the dawn of the Biden Administration, Israel enjoys bipartisan support among most US voters and, therefore, among members of the US House of Representatives and Senate.  However, one should not ignore the gradual – and recently accelerated – erosion of this support.

Conventional wisdom suggests that Israel’s national security policy – and especially its confrontational opposition to the 2015 Iran accord (JCPOA) – is responsible for the erosion of the bipartisan support.

However, US-Israel relations have experienced a number of raucous confrontations between US presidents and Israeli prime ministers – some of them harsher than the Obama-Netanyahu “Iran showdown” – but that did not fracture bipartisan support of Israel.

For example, in 1948-49, during and following Israel’s War of Independence against a military invasion by five Arab countries, Prime Minister Ben Gurion confronted a most brutal pressure by the White House, State Department, Pentagon and CIA to refrain from the application of Israel’s law to “occupied” West Jerusalem and parts of the Galilee, the coastal plain and the Negev. The US Administration claimed that Israel’s “intransigence” would severely undermine US-Arab relations, threaten the supply of Arab oil, serve Soviet interests and further destabilize the Middle East (all of which were resoundingly repudiated by reality). 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/bidens-america-a-cautionary-tale-for-israel-opinion-656280

With newly instated US President Joe Biden now firmly ensconced in the White House after a contentious ballot battle, Israel must turn its attention to March 23, the date set for the fourth Knesset election in two years. And though daily polls on how each of the parties is faring may fill airtime and satisfy viewers’ curiosity, they do not constitute the kind of focus that is sorely needed at this juncture.

In light of the extraordinary rise and ultimate hard fall of Donald Trump, a couple of lessons are in order for the Jewish state that was affected so greatly by his single term in office.

Because the coronavirus crisis is the most pressing issue at the moment, there is a natural tendency to blame the head of one’s country both for the morbidity/mortality rates and for the economic disaster wrought by government-imposed lockdowns. This was a key factor in Trump’s defeat.

Prior to the onset of the pandemic, the US economy was booming. Unemployment, including among minorities, was at an all-time low; the stock market reached record heights. Middle-class Americans were beginning to breathe again. Had the virus not struck, Trump still would have been Trump.

He would have enraged his enemies. He would have grated on the nerves of supporters with genteel sensibilities. And he still occasionally would have embarrassed even a few ardent fans.