RUTHFULLY YOURS

Beyond breaking news and headlines and war, as Michael Ordman’s dazzling compendium shows, Israel’s researchers, scientists, and social institutions remain at work 24/7 to retain resiliency and continue vital development of technology that helps humanity from the Jordan River to distant seas in every continent. rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
Cutting off the head of the snake. By now most readers will have read how Israel caught Iran by surprise with the most audacious and successful preemptive strike since the six-day-war.  The awesome events of Fri 13 June 2025 will be written down in many future history books. See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-857577
 
Air superiority in 48 hours. In just 48 hours, Israel achieved full air superiority over Iranian skies. In Israel’s preemptive military campaign operation “Rising Lion”, 200 Israeli jets struck critical Iranian targets and Israel now operates freely in Iranian airspace. https://israfan.com/p/israel-air-superiority-iran-operation-rising-lion
 
Baby saved after Iranian attack. A 3-month-old baby was pulled out alive and in good condition from the rubble in Rishon Letzion in the aftermath of the 3rd Iranian barrage of ballistic missiles fired indiscriminately at civilian residences in the greater Tel Aviv area. Shortly afterward, the infant’s parents were also rescued.
https://worldisraelnews.com/israeli-rescue-team-pulls-baby-from-rubble-after-missile-barrage/
 
Advanced tech helps rescue Israelis. Police officers rescued a family from the rubble while searching the scene of a projectile impact in central Israel. The police stated that the rescue was conducted using special technological means, which allowed safe entry to the damaged area and removal of obstacles.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/410160
 
Puppies rescued. Israeli rescue forces retrieved two puppies from a Bat Yam home damaged by an Iranian missile strike. The Bat Yam Municipality took custody of the two mixed breed Labrador retrievers, and evacuated them for initial medical treatment while trying to locate the owners.
https://www.jns.org/two-puppies-rescued-from-rubble-in-bat-yam/
 
New Barak Magen destroys Iranian drones. For the first time, the Israeli Navy used its new “Barak Magen” air defense system to shoot down eight Iranian drones. In addition, it can intercept cruise missiles and high-trajectory missiles, thus protecting key infrastructure e.g. offshore gas platforms and cities along Israel’s coast.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israel-navys-new-barak-magen-shoots-down-uavs-1001512977
 
Repatriating Israelis. El Al, Arkia, Israir and Air Haifa are working to bring home thousands of Israelis each day who have been stranded abroad by the closure of Ben Gurion International airport. Israel is unique in that its citizens are desperate to travel from a relatively safe place to a country in the middle of a war.
https://www.jns.org/israeli-airlifts-start-bringing-home-stranded-citizens/
 
Haredi woman captains first repatriation flight. El Al operated the first repatriation flight from Larnaca to Israel, led by the haredi captain Nechama Spiegel from Beit Shemesh. Spiegel, a mother of seven and the first haredi captain in El Al, made the flight as part of a series of flights approved by the government.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/410229
 
Resilience domes. The Municipality of Sderot in southern Israel has launched a Resilience Accelerator to invest in resilience technologies and mental health. It comprises entrepreneurs working from within the crisis who are addressing trauma capacity issues, lack of accessibility, and waiting times.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-858049
 
Iranian state financial systems hacked. A cybersecurity attack has disabled Iran’s Sepah Bank, closely tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Also, Iran’s cryptocurrency exchange, Nobitex, which reportedly has been used to bypass Iranian sanctions, has been hacked, with reported losses estimated at $80 million.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-linked-group-claims-cyberattack-on-iranian-bank/
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj118vge4el
 
From wedding to war. (TY Sharon) Not sure if this is good news, but it includes examples of how Israelis are accustomed to major changes of circumstances from one day to another.
https://rjstreets.com/2025/06/16/leaving-jerusalem-for-a-wedding-and-waking-to-war/
 
Thanks! (TY Yanky) Secular Boaz Golan is the lead presenter on Israel’s Channel 14. Viewers were in for an unexpected surprise when on live TV, Golan announced that the Jewish nation must give thanks to the Lord for the miracles we are witnessing. Donning a big kippah, he recited the gratitude Psalm 100 – Mizmor L’Todah.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1382423826363413
 
You did great. This newsletter editor signed up to be a “champion” in the MyIsrael campaign to raise funds for desperate Israeli families adversely impacted by the war.  The campaign raised over £1.1 million, of which over £12,000 was thanks to generous VeryGoodNewsIsrael readers.  If you still wish to donate, see link below.
https://www.charityextra.com/myisrael/michael-ordman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctVU58TNb6M (info about MyIsrael)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4-wKGM5es-4 (personal plea from MyIsrael CEO Danni Franks)
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Bioengineered skin to speed healing. Researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) and Sheba Medical Center have developed replacement skin for grafting in burn victims. Bioengineered from the patient’s own cells, it is stable, robust, and flexible and can achieve wound closure in half the time of standard therapies.
https://www.aftau.org/news_item/tau-develops-bioengineered-skin-that-can-speed-healing/
https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adfm.202501745
 
Huge EU grant to slow down aging. Prof Liat Ayalon, of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, is one of the United Nations’ Healthy Ageing 50: leaders transforming the world to be a better place to grow older. She has just been awarded a 2.5 million Euro grant from the European Research Council to advance her HALFLIFE project.
https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2025-06/erc-2024-adg-results-sh.pdf
https://cris.biu.ac.il/en/persons/liat-ayalon   https://liatayalon.com/
 
Israeli therapy cured 33% of “no-hope” myeloma patients. (TY Ron M) A third of 97 “terminal” myeloma patients are still alive after five years thanks to Car-T cancer treatment, originally invented by Israeli scientists. These were the findings of an international study, including Israel’s Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center.
https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/s1wwwo11xgl
 
Trial success for delayed-release antibiotic. Israel’s PolyPid (see here previously) reported positive Phase III trial results on its delayed-release antibiotic treatment applied at the site of surgical infections. The reduction in the risk of infection after surgery was 58% in the 800-patient trial.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-polypid-reports-positive-phase-3-surgical-infection-drug-trial-1001512420
 
100,000 bacteria vs virus tests. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s MeMed (see here previously) reached a major milestone of more than 100,000 patients tested with its MeMed BV, the company’s flagship technology that accurately distinguishes between bacterial and viral infections in just 15 minutes.
https://www.ourcrowd.com/startup-news/memed-bv-surpasses-100000-patient-tests-underscoring-adoption-of-rapid-host-response-diagnostics
 
How paracetamol works. For decades, scientists believed that paracetamol relieved discomfort by working only in the brain and spinal cord. Now, Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists show that the AM404 active metabolite which it releases, shuts off sodium channels to stop pain signals while they are still at nerve endings.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-study-finds-acetaminophen-drug-works-by-first-blocking-pain-in-nerves/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2413811122
 
Doctors return on cargo ship. Dozens of doctors, who were at a European medical conference, have boarded a merchant ship on a special rescue voyage back to Israel. Among them are doctors from Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center, Rambam Health Care Campus, and Sheba Medical Center.
https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/syrcegjexg
 
BGU trains more doctors. Israel’s Ben-Gurion University has partnered with the Sagol Network to launch the Sagol Medical School for International Health. Its 4-year MD program, open to all Israeli citizens, uses hi-tech, global health, and AI to train Israel’s medical leaders. Currently, some 160 students are enrolled in the school.
https://www.bgu.ac.il/en/news-and-articles/bgu-launches-sagol-medical-school-for-international-health/

https://niallferguson.substack.com/p/israels-attack-restores-the-credibility

Early Friday morning, Israel launched a historic wave of attacks against Iran—the latest phase of the Israel-Iran war that effectively began on October 7, 2023.

Israel’s Operation Rising Lion included both air strikes and a wave of Mossad-run assassinations across Iran that effectively decapitated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Israel Defense Forces claim to have executed hundreds of strikes spread over five waves in the first phase of the operation, targeting Iran’s military infrastructure, its nuclear sites, and its command structure. As many as 200 fighter jets were involved. The Israelis built a drone base inside Iran to strike the enemy from within, as if to say: Anything Ukraine can do, we can do better.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei declared that Israel would receive a “bitter, painful” response and that has now begun. As of this writing, Israelis were in their bomb shelters. At least one missile has exploded in downtown Tel Aviv.

How to interpret this seismic event—and unfolding war?

The alarmists are already penning their op-eds prophesying World War III. The BBC and most European media will doubtless portray Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a callous warmonger—as opposed to his nation’s Bismarck. The professional Middle East experts will churn out the usual pablum about avoiding a wider conflagration, despite the fact that those experts almost all failed to foresee the beginning of that conflagration on October 7.

Ignore all of them.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/18/israels-clash-with-iran-is-nothing-like-the-iraq-war/

Remember when Saddam Hussein sponsored an army of fascists that invaded the United States and raped and murdered thousands of Americans? And when he funded a gang of religious fanatics to fire thousands of rockets at people in Leeds and Manchester here in the UK? And when he himself pressed the button on ballistic missiles that landed on New York City and London? No, me neither. Which makes it perplexing that Israel’s push against Iran is being compared to the Iraq War of 2003 – for Iran has done all of that to the Jewish nation, and it dreams of doing more.

The debate about Israel / Iran is at risk of being derailed by disinformation. Gaslighting swirls all around it. This is a crazed stab at ‘regime change’, cry Israel’s critics, and we all know what hellish things spring from ‘regime change’. It is an ‘illegal war’ and a ‘war of aggression’, insists the left. And the trump card: it’s Iraq all over again. Both the digital right and digital left are ‘invoking the spectre of Iraq’, in the words of the New York Times. ‘Welcome to Iraq 2.0’, says the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Only worse – Israel’s ‘unprovoked attack’ on Iran has the potential to be ‘far, far more catastrophic’, apparently.

The moral evasion on display here is off the charts. To compare Israel’s fight against its fanatical tormentors in Tehran with America and Britain’s vain and ruinous war on Iraq is to be wilfully blind to both historical truth and moral principle. First, there’s the fact that Saddam’s regime did not attack us. This was a shattered nation, broken by the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s and the West’s sanctions and bombing raids of the 1990s. In 2003, Iraq barely posed a threat to its neighbours, far less to mighty America or Britain. Washington and London’s depiction of this shell of a regime as a threat to the world was the blackest of black propaganda. It was the lie that unleashed untold horrors.

The Israel-Iran clash is wholly the reverse of this. Iran has attacked Israel ceaselessly and ferociously. Its neo-fascist proxies in Hamas sent a 6,000-strong army into Israel in October 2023 where they raped and murdered hundreds. Its most important proxy – Hezbollah – followed up this pogrom with barrages of missiles into northern Israel. Between Hamas’s pogrom and June of last year, Hezbollah fired 5,000 rockets and other projectiles at Israel. This caused the evacuation of 60,000 people and the deaths of scores of civilians, including 12 Druze kids. Iran itself has directly fired missiles at Israel: 120 ballistic missiles in April 2024; 200 in October 2024.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21690/israel-acted-for-all-of-us

Often lost in the media frenzy is that Iran, unprovoked, initiated hostilities against Israel.

The seeming dispute was not about territory, policy or any disagreement that states normally have. It was about ideology. For nearly five decades, Iran and its proxies have waged a war against Israel and the United States, calling for their destruction. From their point of view, neither country, as “disbelievers,” has a right to exist. Full stop.

No other issue, domestic or foreign, was as consistent, prioritized, or systematically pursued as Tehran’s hostility toward Israel, the country blocking its way to destroying the United States. To that end Iran for decades had been preparing “forward bases” in South America, especially Venezuela.

The JCPOA failed to address the fundamental nuclear threat, focused on temporary technical limits while ignoring the regime’s long-term ambitions, and actually agreeing to a “sunset clause” that would have allowed Iran’s regime legitimately to have as many nuclear weapons as it liked — starting this October.

The Biden administration unfortunately repeated Obama’s errors, perhaps under the illusion that if it were nice to Iran, Iran would be nice back. Instead, Iran seized on its good luck to escalate its uranium enrichment to 60% by April 2021 and near weapons-grade (83.7%) in 2023.

President Trump wisely pulled the U.S. out of Obama’s deal – which, it turned out, had not only been fraudulent but totally illegitmate.

Does the world really want a terrorist state to have nuclear weapons? If you look at the damage Iran has been doing without nuclear weapons, you image the damage it could do with them…. Right now, Israel is on the front line doing what others –whose lives and countries Israel is saving — criticize it for doing. Israel’s actions are not about starting a war; they are about stopping a war that has been underway for 46 years before the theocratic tyranny that initiated it enlarge it even further.

Best of all, China, Russia and North Korea are looking on. …Netanyahu’s and Trump’s resolve is not only creating the opportunity for a new, golden age for the Middle East but possibly also providing a deterrent — remember them? — to other enemies of the West that have expressed wishes for its demise.

President Donald J. Trump’s Churchillian defence of the Free World and the West will place him at the forefront of history. Both he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – ans well as the extraordinary Israel Defence Forces — deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for rescuing the world from one of the most toxic regimes since the Third Reich and the Former Soviet Union. Failure by the Norwegian Committee to do so will probably tell us more about them than about one of the greatest triumphs of all time.

Often lost in the media frenzy is that Iran, unprovoked, initiated hostilities against Israel. The seeming dispute was not about territory, policy or any disagreement that states normally have. It was about ideology. For nearly five decades, Iran and its proxies have waged a war against Israel and the United States, calling for their destruction. From their point of view, neither country, as “disbelievers,” has a right to exist. Full stop.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/i-will-not-abandon-this-post-mike-huckabee-texts-trump-saying-he-has-biggest-choice-since-truman-in-1945/ar-

President Donald Trump shared a motivational text Tuesday from U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee reaffirming his support of the president and addressing the potential significance of the Israel-Iran war in the Middle East.

Huckabee said he trusted Trump’s “instincts” and implied that the situation was perhaps the most significant a U.S. president has faced in decades.

“I am your appointed servant in this land and am available for you but I do not try to get in your presence often because I trust your instincts. No president in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Truman in 1945,” Huckabee said, possibly referring to Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb to end World War II.

Huckabee told the president that many will offer him advice but said the decision was up to to Trump himself.

As a former Baptist minister, Huckabee told Trump that God spared his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, so that he could be “the most consequential president in a century — maybe ever.” He invited Trump to listen to God’s voice above all others.

“I believe you will hear from heaven, and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s,” Huckabee said.

The ambassador finished his message to Trump by reaffirming his allegiance to the president and to the U.S. “You sent me to Israel to be your eyes, ears, and voice and to make sure our flag flies above our embassy. My job is to be the last one to leave,” he said.

“I will not abandon this post. Our flag will NOT come down!” Huckabee said.

Trump has faced heavy criticism from many on the right regarding his response to Iran and Israel’s ongoing conflict in the days since the latter attacked nuclear facilities of the former. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said they struck Iranian “nuclear targets” and is believed to have killed multiple senior Iranian officials and nuclear scientists.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/16/the-hilarious-collapse-of-the-cult-of-the-keffiyeh/

Don’t you just hate it when brown people reject your white saviourism? So rude! Such mannerless ingratitude greeted the Global March to Gaza last week. These valiant few from the US, the UK, Ireland and elsewhere had planned to trek to Rafah in Gaza to save poor, hungry Palestinians from Evil Israel. But they came unstuck in Egypt, where instead of welcoming these fearless foreign liberators of the benighted Arabs, local folk ridiculed them, pelted them with plastic bottles and roundly told them to fuck off. Wait, you people don’t want to be saved by a plummy white lady from London in a keffyeh?

I know there’s a lot going on in the world right now, but can we please not overlook how unbelievably hilarious it is that the Global March to Gaza has been thwarted by angry Arabs. That this swarm of pompous gits who fantasised that they would shield the Arabs of Gaza from the ‘genocidal lunacy’ of the Jewish State were instead roughed up by the Arabs of Egypt who don’t want their nation used as a stage for moral masturbation by every puffed-up Palestine fetishist of the West. That instead of getting bottles of water to Gaza, these people had bottles of water lobbed at their own heads by pissed-off Egyptians. The mirth of it all might just get me through the rest of this year.

The Global March to Gaza consisted of 4,000 people from 54 countries. They had planned to walk to the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza where they would have ‘demand[ed] that Israel re-open the border [and] create a humanitarian corridor’. How the Jewish State would have trembled before this mighty delegation that included a gaggle of anoraks from Welsh CND, a British art curator called Tasmin and a bald politician from Ireland! Honestly, one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the unworldly vanity of this dishevelled army of weak-chinned Westerners who really thought they could finger-wag a war out of existence.

Some of the marchers were from North Africa. Others were from the West. Like the self-styled ‘empathetic human’ from the UK who said ‘I endeavour to do what our governments have failed [to do]’ and ‘mobilise [my] passion and humanity’. Or the Brit who lamented her ‘privilege’ of being a ‘white, north European living in relative peace’ and promised to do something worthy for once, like ‘lend my presence to this cause’. Or the Canadian who said ‘I can’t ignore my conscience’. All I’m hearing is I, me, mine. Was it really Gaza they wanted to liberate or their own morbidly obese egos?

Sadly, by which I mean hilariously, their cloying pity for Arabs crashed against the reality of Arab self-respect. I am still not recovered from the sight of these self-loving midwits in their culturally appropriated keffiyehs being shouted down by Egyptians in real keffiyehs. On the road to Ismailia in northern Egypt, the marchers were stopped by security forces. So they gathered in a square by the mosque and chanted ‘Free, free Palestine!’. Locals weren’t best pleased. Well, would you be if a gang of pious pricks from afar rocked up in your town and started yelling political shit near your place of worship? The locals shouted at the ‘empathetic humans’. They threw plastic bottles at them. White Saviour card, declined!

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/16/what-exactly-was-iran-thinking-or-not/

Iran apparently had not adjusted to its new 2025 status—or maybe it had. Most of its bought terrorists are currently either destroyed or anemic.

There is no more ascendant Iranian “Shia crescent” in the Middle East. Russia is no longer a Middle East power, patron, and protector.

The Assad dynasty imploded, flipping Syria from an Iranian proxy into a likely Iranian enemy. Hezbollah, once supposedly the most fearsome of all the Iranian terrorist tentacles, was humiliated and neutered by a series of surreal Israeli operations.

Hamas has been reduced to a subterranean terrorist remnant.

The Houthis’ tit-for-tat encounters with Israel and the U.S. are systematically turning their Yemeni enclave into an impotent dump. At its present rate, the Houthis will likely soon launch their last rocket at Israel or the Red Sea in a country without fuel, electricity, and ports.

Iran itself, last year in a disastrous air war with Israel, lost its air defenses and is now more or less impotent and defenseless against Israeli air incursions. Its oil income has been slashed by 70-80 percent by the renewed Trump sanctions and ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. Israel can destroy all of its oil industry if it wishes and, apparently, send operatives inside Iran itself as it pleases.

Most of the Arab Sunni world is now losing its accustomed fear of Iran. While the weary pan-Islamic solidarity boilerplate of the Middle East remains the same, privately, most Arab nations rely on the U.S. or even Israel to deter Iran—and predicate their own foreign policy on the degree to which they do just that.

With the end of the Biden administration and Obama a distant memory, Iran lost all hope that it could bluster, bluff, and negotiate itself out of sanctions and embargoes—and into nuclear weapons. There are no more John Kerrys or Antony Blinkens in charge, eager to meet Iranian demands. Ben Rhodes’s “echo chamber” Iran Deal is ancient history.

Israel had done more than all of America’s Middle East wars or all of NATO’s global presence to end Iran’s claims on power and the ability to project its brand of terror and fear throughout the Middle East.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/israels-war-of-survival/

Israel faced the Hobbesian choice of passing the point of no return and exposing itself to the risk of a nuclear attack by Iran or taking military action in time to prevent that catastrophe from happening. Israel wisely chose the latter course. Israel conducted “preemptive” strikes against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities (including the Natanz enrichment site), long-range missile facilities, and aerial defenses on June 12th, which also killed several military commanders and nuclear scientists.

The United States did not participate in the Israeli strikes inside Iran. However, when the Iranian regime responded with barrages of drones and ballistic missiles aimed at Israeli population centers, the U.S. helped Israel to intercept as many of them as possible. Although some of Iran’s missiles managed to get through Israel’s multilayered defense systems and hit their targets, many lives were undoubtedly saved by U.S-Israeli defense cooperation.

Israel haters leaped at the chance to blame Israel for taking forceful military action to defend itself against the rapidly approaching existential threat of nuclear annihilation at Iran’s hands.

For example, the extremist leftwing group Code Pink said,

“We strongly condemn Israel’s unprovoked and reckless attack on Iran, which risks igniting a catastrophic regional war. This dangerous escalation threatens millions of lives across the entire Middle East. The U.S. must not continue to support and enable this illegal act of aggression.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) declared:

“We condemn Israel’s offensive strike on Iran and the broader pattern of aggression it represents. Netanyahu is using American weapons and taxpayer dollars to launch illegal and destabilizing wars across the region. President Trump must act immediately to suspend all military support to Israel and stop allowing U.S. arms to fuel war crimes, mass civilian death, and regional collapse.”

Pro-Hamas campus groups in the United States rallied around Hamas’s puppet master Iran. “We reject the US/Zionist attack on Iran, and affirm Iran’s right to self-defense, sovereignty, and self-determination,” Columbia University’s pro-Hamas student organization Apartheid Divest posted following Israel’s strikes. “No to the imperialist was of encroachment — from Syria to Lebanon to Iran — and YES [sic] to the people’s struggle for Palestinian liberation.”

All of this is, of course, pure falsehood.