RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

The bad news:

Terrorism has again reared its ugly head in Israel, bringing grief and fear to all its citizens. Politics, as usual in a freewheeling democracy, is fractious with the biased media having a heyday in misinformation.

Is there good news? Definitely! Just read Michael Ordman’s weekly compilation of Israel’s remarkable achievements in every aspect of human endeavor to heal, give succor, and enrich the lives of billions of citizens throughout the world. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Israeli women are world’s 9th healthiest. (TY Hazel) In the 2021 Hologic Global Women’s Health Index (measured by Gallup) published this week, Israel is 9th overall and 2nd for life expectancy. The report aims to heighten awareness and guide actions that increase the life expectancy and quality of life for women globally.

https://hologic.womenshealthindex.com/sites/default/files/2022-09/Hologic_2021-Global-Women%27s-Health-Index_Full-Report.pdf

Medication to prevent antibiotic toxicity. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Israel’s Tissue Dynamics again used their “sensors on a chip” to bypass animal testing in developing a new treatment. They proved that the diabetic drug empagliflozin blocks the toxicity of aminoglycoside antibiotics in kidney disease patients.

https://en.huji.ac.il/news/breakthrough-antibiotic-safety-bionic-technology-blends-sensors-and-human-tissue

New anti-microbial compound. Scientists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have created a new compound by combining copper with a polysaccharide derived from the marine red microalga Porphyridium sp. The long, dense spikes on the surface of the compound kills bacteria and fungus by poking holes in their membranes.

https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/red_algae.aspx   https://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/20/12/787

A natural remedy for IBD. Israel’s Sheba Medical Center has developed CurQD – a botanical combination of Curcumin (Tumeric) and QingDai for treating Ulcerative Colitis. Phase 1 and 2 human trials were successful and a spin-off company Evinature is now marketing the product.

https://www.israel21c.org/a-natural-plant-based-treatment-for-ulcerative-colitis/  https://evinature.com/

Smart partnership to find IBD treatments. Israel’s CytoReason (see here previously) is partnering France’s Sanofi to identify novel therapies to treat Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Sanofi will pay CytoReason millions of dollars to use the Israeli startup’s computational AI-discovery disease model platform.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/sanofi-extends-cooperation-with-israels-cytoreason-for-bowel-disease-drug-discovery/

More research about healthy aging. Ben Gurion University’s Dr Debra Toiber and her international colleagues have made more discoveries about the role of the protein SIRT6 in the aging process (see here previously). They have now found that SIRT6 prevents mitochondrial disfunction that causes brain diseases.

https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/toiber_aging.aspx  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41419-022-05542-w

Treating Autism and Alzheimer’s. The American Friends of the Hebrew University is hosting an evening with the University’s Dr Haitham Amal on 31 Jan in Florida. Dr Amal will discuss the groundbreaking development of therapies for Autism and Alzheimer’s disease. https://www.afhu.org/event/towards-the-groundbreaking-development-of-therapeutic-drugs-for-autism-and-alzheimers-disease/

Solutions for today’s medical challenges. The Tel Aviv University MedTech Hackathon attracted 200 students and 120 mentors. The winner OReye utilizes cutting-edge computer vision technology for a safer operating room. Runner up was a wellness app for the early diagnosis and treatment of peripartum depression.

https://english.tau.ac.il/news/medtech_hackathon_2023

Using the mind to benefit the body. Dr. Amit Abraham of Ariel University’s Department of Physiotherapy uses Dynamic Neurocognitive Imagery (DNI) to improve the lives of amputees and Parkinson’s sufferers. DNI also improves the performance of dancers and athletes such as Israel’s Olympic rhythmic gymnastic team.

https://www.ariel.ac.il/wp/en/discovering-how-mental-imagery-boosts-physical-performance/

Gala raises $1.1 million for HU medical center. The 2023 Palm Beach Scopus Award Gala raised over a million dollars for the Hebrew University’s Center for Computational Medicine in Jerusalem. The center will develop data-driven personalized health solutions, to replace “one size fits all” medical treatment.

https://www.jns.org/wire/2023-palm-beach-scopus-award-gala-raises-over-1-million-for-the-hebrew-university-center-for-computational-medicine/

CNN features Israeli medical company, but….  How CNN can publish a detailed article featuring Israel’s Insightec without mentioning the word “Israel” is quite revealing. It describes the company as “a leading maker of focused ultrasound machines”.  Here in the IsraelActive archives are the full facts about Insightec.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/15/health/focused-ultrasound-tremor-depression-ocd-wellness/index.html

Largest increase to health basket. Israel has increased its health basket of Government-provided services, medications, supplies, and medical equipment by a record NIS 650 million. More than 120 new medications and treatments were added, benefiting 350,000 citizens and permanent residents.

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-728878 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/who-was-really-behind-the-jerusalem-terror-attack/

On Thursday, Jan 26, the Palestinian Authority announced that it was suspending “security coordination” after Israel broke up a Jenin terror cell that had been planning a major attack.

On Friday, Jan 27, an Islamic terrorist opened fire outside a Jerusalem synagogue killing 7 Israelis, including Asher Natan, a 14-year-old boy, Eli and Natali Mizrahi, a married couple who rushed out to help the victims, and Shaul Hai, a 68-year-old synagogue sexton.

The shooter, despite being branded a “lone wolf” with no previous connection to terrorism, was described as having advanced shooting skills. And the death rate testifies to that. It seems highly likely that he was selected and secretly prepped to carry out this attack.

On Saturday, Jan 28, a second shooting in Jerusalem injured two other Israelis. Another armed terrorist was taken out by the town’s security team in Kedumim. That may not be the last of it.

There is nothing coincidental about the timing of this surge of violence: the deadliest in years.

CIA director Bill Burns arrived in Israel on Thursday. The same day the PLO announced the end of its security coordination. Secretary of State Blinken is expected to visit Israel this week. Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan came to Israel the week before. The PLO’s suspension of security coordination and the attacks that followed were put on for their benefit. 7 Israelis thus far were killed to help the Biden administration pressure Israel.

Had Israel not taken out the terror cell in Jenin, the numbers might be far higher.

The last time attacks on this scale took place was when 11 Israelis were killed in three attacks in late March 2022. Those attacks also came after the Palestinian Authority had suspended “security coordination” a month earlier and overlapped with the Negev Summit featuring Arab leaders and Secretary of State Blinken.

What is happening is not random terror, it’s carefully calculated terror, executed, as usual, through plausibly deniable attackers who will be rewarded by the PLO’s pay-to-slay fund.

https://www.jns.org/new-israel-fund-suspected-of-tax-fraud-report-says/

New research suggests that the New Israel Fund (NIF) directed donors to make contributions through another NGO so that they could claim tax benefits, an apparent violation of Israeli law.

Research by Ad Kan and Lavi, first reported by journalist Elhanan Gruner of online Israeli news site HaKol HaYehudi on Tuesday, indicates that NIF may have acted fraudulently, telling its donors to give money through an NGO called “Signing Anew.”

As the NIF is incorporated in Israel as a foreign company, its Israeli donors aren’t entitled to tax benefits. According to article 46a of Israel’s Income Tax Ordinance, only donors giving to recognized public institutions under the article are entitled to such benefits.

HaKol HaYehudi reported that about a month ago, the NIF held an end-of-year fundraising campaign. According to the NIF, the campaign raised 2,300,000 shekels (~$683,199). Unable to offer tax benefits to donors itself, according to the report, NIF directed major contributors to Signing Anew, which is registered as an eligible association under article 46a. Text conversations that came into the possession of Hakol HaYehudi appear to show NIF personnel directing donors in real-time as they made donations through Signing Anew.

When one donor wanted to understand how Signing Anew would know that his donation was intended for the New Israel Fund, he was allegedly told that all funds that went to Signing Anew would ultimately be part of a grant from Signing Anew to NIF.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/terror-in-jerusalem-plo-flags-in-tel-aviv/

 Neither the terrorist slaughter of seven Jewish worshipers and the wounding of three others in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood, nor the near-fatal shooting the following morning of a father and son at the entrance to the City of David National Park in the Israeli capital, prevented the anti-government protests from proceeding as scheduled.

Lest they lose an inch of their self-claimed moral high ground, however, those who came out in disputed numbers for the fourth Saturday night in a row—ostensibly to decry Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s plans to overhaul the judiciary—kicked off their demonstrations with a moment of silence for the victims.

Given the personal and national tragedy of the previous 24 hours, the gesture was warranted. Still, nixing the rallies would have been far more appropriate under the circumstances.

Organizers reportedly considered this option, but decided against it. That the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee was set on Sunday to step up discussions on judicial-reform legislation tipped the scales in favor of virtue signaling in town squares.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the business-as-usual spectacle that followed the 60-second acknowledgement of the occasion was abhorrent. Participants prancing around bemoaning a concocted danger—the so-called “death of Israeli democracy” at the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition—made a mockery of the actual mass murder of innocents.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-proposed-judicial-reforms-arent-extreme-economists-credit-rating-balances-knesset-politics-standing-11675014190?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Hundreds of Israeli economists signed an “emergency letter” on Jan. 25 warning that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms will lead to economic calamity for the country. The authors worry about putting “great political power in the hands of a ruling group without strong brakes and balances.”

This statement is notable for two reasons. First, many of these economists supported political parties that opposed Mr. Netanyahu’s free-market reforms while he was finance minister from 2003 to 2005. These reforms have allowed the country’s economy to boom for almost two decades. Second, Israel’s unelected Supreme Court—not the Knesset, its elected parliament—is the branch of government that actually holds unchecked political power. Rather than endangering economic growth, these proposed judicial reforms provide a necessary check on the one court in the Western world with nearly unlimited power to dictate economic and political life.

The economists mischaracterize Mr. Netanyahu’s proposed reforms as an attack on the independence of the judiciary. But judicial independence does not mean a judiciary independent from constraints. As it stands, the Israeli Supreme Court’s dominance over the Knesset is unrivaled by any other parliamentary or presidential system.

Compare the U.S. legal system, the preferred forum of the global economy, with the Israeli system. In Israel, judges are appointed by a committee that consists of three unelected Supreme Court judges, two unelected lawyers from the bar association, and only four legislators and members of the government. In contrast, in the U.S. the president appoints judges to federal courts subject to confirmation by the Senate. These judges have the power to strike down laws, but they are guided by a written constitution. Israel has no formal constitution and so its judges are guided by their own judgments and the quasi-constitutional “Basic Laws,” which the Israeli Supreme Court itself can strike down. The American political-question doctrine counsels judges to stay out of economic and political affairs. This has not harmed the U.S.’s standing as an economic powerhouse. Israel’s judges, on the other hand, can strike down everything from military strategy to energy policy to trade agreements.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/struggle-israel-democracy-netanyahu-supreme-court

The Netanyahu trial and bottom-up demands for judicial reform have melded together into a hugely consequential showdown between patricians and plebs

The Israeli election in November was, in large part, a referendum on the Netanyahu trial. The jury came back with a clear verdict: not guilty. Israelis, or at least enough of them, became convinced that the trial was a political affair, not a legal one: Israel’s left-leaning elites had given up on beating Netanyahu at the ballot box, and so turned to other means to expel him from politics.

But the majority of Israel’s voters did more than acquit Netanyahu in the court of public opinion. A majority of Israeli voters made clear that they will no longer put up with the hollowing out of Israel’s democracy by the administrative state—judges, law enforcement officers, legal advisers and the bureaucracy in general will have to stop substituting their own preferences and dictates for those of the Israeli electorate.

The Netanyahu trial and bottom-up demands for judicial reform have thus melded together into a hugely consequential showdown between patricians and plebs, between the old elites and the public at large, between the court and the elected branches of government—and at root, between the power of the administrative state and democratic politics. It is, as the press is now screaming in Israel and outside it, a struggle over soul of Israel’s democracy. Only the press has got it backwards. Yariv Levin, Netanyahu’s new justice minister, is not out to destroy democracy. He is out to restore it.

Back in 2017, a bestselling conservative Hebrew book articulated the growing frustration on the right in its title: “Why do you vote right and get left?” The book, by journalist and former Netanyahu aide Erez Tadmor, made the answer clear, and it became the operating manual for a new generation of Likud members. The reason the right never really rules, Tadmor argued, is that the left controls the important power centers outside of electoral politics: the mainstream press, the arts, academia, and above all the judicial system and its auxiliaries in law enforcement and Israel’s powerful bureaucracy.

At the summit of the judicial-bureaucratic power structure, which exists outside the purview of the consent of the governed, sits the Supreme Court, which in Israel holds powers more awesome than any judiciary in any Western democracy. In the court’s own view, there are literally no limits to its authority. It recognizes no limits on standing, and it exercises judicial review over any government action and any and all legislation, including judicial review of what the court itself declared to be Israel’s constitution—our so-called “Basic Laws.”

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-729794

“Taub should celebrate his cancellation and continue to remind the majority of Israelis that their “lying eyes” are far more reliable than the false truths of democracy-doomsayers with a less-than-noble agenda.”

Israel’s radical daily Haaretz is calling on the public to “join its struggle for democracy.” The self-described “newspaper for thinking people” has always aimed its content at a certain type of high-brow reader, but it long ago ceased pretending to be a professional broadsheet, opting instead to serve as a proud vehicle for left-wing activism. 

Its current campaign is focused on delegitimizing the new government in Jerusalem, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The slogan of its ad – “Democracy doesn’t end with elections” – is perfect for the endeavor. 

It also reveals the true nature of the Saturday-night demonstrations in the streets of the country’s major cities. Though ostensibly about Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s plans to reform the judicial system, they’re actually an expression of disappointment at the loss of the November 1 Knesset elections to the Right.

The best way to obfuscate this inconvenient fact is to pull a twofer: denigrate the victors who won through a democratic process, and accuse them of posing a threat to democracy by virtue of their being in the majority. It’s a neat trick that has some fellow travelers fooled and many others intimidated.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-arsenal-of-democracys-stockpile-in-israel-weapons-arms-supply-chain-operations-conflict-war-zone-11674681905?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

A relatively unknown U.S. arms depot in Israel has become a stockpile of democracy in recent months, as the Biden administration has transferred its artillery shells to Ukraine. Although the transfer serves Ukrainian interests, it also offers an opportunity for America to replenish the depot with updated weapons and transform it into a valuable hub for the U.S., Israel and other regional allies.

If the war in Ukraine has reminded us of one thing, it’s that building supply chains to deliver weapons to war zones takes time. It is far more effective to pre-position weapons in peacetime. We learned this lesson the hard way during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when by the time America replenished Israeli materiel, it had only limited tactical benefit for Israel’s war effort.

To address this incapacity, in 1984 the U.S. established the War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel, or WRSA-I, a forward-deployed arms depot that could serve as a readily accessible reserve for American forces in case of regional conflict. The station was also meant to function as an insurance policy for Israel, allowing it quick access to weapons and ensuring what’s known in U.S. law as its “qualitative military edge” over adversaries.

The arrangement worked as designed for several decades. Israel covers the facility’s maintenance costs and has used the stockpile at least twice—during its 2006 conflict with Lebanon, and again in 2014 during its war with Gaza. The U.S. benefited from this, too, in helping a critical ally defend itself against Iran-backed terror organizations.

Yet in recent years WRSA-I has stopped serving its strategic purpose of contributing to Israel’s military superiority. Israeli forces use some of the most sophisticated weapons in the world—including F-35s carrying precision-guided munitions, or PGMs, drones, missile interceptors and lasers. The existing WRSA-I stockpile, however, has become obsolete, housing only shells and other “dumb”—or unguided—munitions that are now of little use to Israel’s advanced forces. Senior Israeli military officials have told us repeatedly that the depot hasn’t been upgraded since before the Obama administration.