RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/opposition-rhetoric-impedes-compromise-on-judicial-reform/

The opposition rhetoric being heaped on the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform plan kicked up a notch on Monday. Public figures spoke of fighting in the streets, moving to a new, warlike stage, and restoring Israel’s democracy through bloodshed. The extreme discourse is making it much harder to conduct a rational dialogue, analysts told JNS.

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai made headlines on Monday when he said that countries become dictatorships through the democratic process but “do not become democratic again except through bloodshed.” Vying with Huldai was former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Nodding toward the Knesset walls, he said, “It’s good to see 100,000 people here, but that’s not what will lead the real fight. The real fight will break through these fences and take us into a real war.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid Party told an estimated 60,000 protesters at the Knesset on Monday that “a corrupt extremist government wants to destroy the country at record speed.”

National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz told the crowd that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “destroying Israeli society from within.”

Noteworthy is that these are all mainstream leaders, not fringe elements.

Netanyahu on Monday called on the opposition to lower the flames following the protest outside the Knesset and a tempestuous Knesset committee meeting, in which opposition members jumped on tables and had to be forcibly expelled.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-731824

Most reports on the protests in Israel include the assertion that participants hail from “across the political spectrum,” with aerial shots of mass rallies to prove it. The implication is that the bulk of the public is united in opposition to Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s plan to clip the wings of the Supreme Court in favor of the legislature. 

Anyone pointing out that the demonstrators decrying the ostensible onset of a fascist dictatorship are in the minority – as the results of the November 1 Knesset elections illustrate – is met with two conflicting claims. 

One is that a growing number of those who cast their ballots for the parties in power are suffering from “buyers’ remorse.” The other is that “majority rule” is evil; or, as the ad plastered on the Azrieli mall in Tel Aviv reads, “Democracy doesn’t end with elections.”

The sophistry is impressive, but not surprising. After all, the movement to stage a coup against the new government in Jerusalem is rife with members of the educated elite who are well-versed in the art of turning a phrase.

The hypocrisy on display is also par for the course. Had the current coalition’s detractors garnered the lion’s share of the vote, they’d be lauding “majority rule” and insisting that their success at the polls was a sign of democracy in action. 

https://bit.ly/3lFI3tZ

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan believe that the expansion of the Abraham Accords, the enhancement of Israel-Saudi defense and commercial cooperation and the conclusion of an Israel-Saudi Arabia peace accord are preconditioned upon major Israeli concessions to the Palestinian Authority.

Is such a belief consistent with Middle East reality?

Arab interests

*The signing of the Abraham Accords, and the role played by Saudi Arabia as a critical engine of the accords, were driven by the national security, economic and diplomatic interests of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and the Sudan.

*The Arab interest in peace accords with Israel was not triggered by the realization that the Jewish State was genuinely seeking peaceful-coexistence, nor by a departure from the fundamental tenets of Islam. It was motivated by the assessment that critical concerns of the respective Arab countries would be effectively-served by Israel’s advanced military (Qualitative Military Edge), technological and diplomatic capabilities in the face of mutual and lethal enemies, such as Iran’s Ayatollahs and Muslim Brotherhood terrorism.

*Saudi Arabia and the six Arab peace partners of Israel (including Egypt and Jordan) are aware that the Middle East resembles a volcano, which occasionally releases explosive lava – domestically and/or regionally – in an unpredictable manner, as evidenced by the 1,400-year-old stormy intra-Arab/Muslim relations, and recently demonstrated by the Arab Tsunami, which erupted in 2011 and still rages.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19404/palestinian-lies-eu-biden

By turning a blind eye to Palestinian lies, fabrications and antisemitism, the Biden administration and the EU are sending a message to the Palestinians that it is perfectly fine to continue demonizing Israel and Jews.

Needless to say, the statement by France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the US totally ignored Abbas’s ongoing campaign to vilify Israel, demonize Jews, deny their history and rights to Israel and the Western Wall. In fact, the EU has even been working with the Palestinians to seize as much land as possible to create “facts on the ground” in the large region of “Area C” that officially belongs to Israel.

The statement also totally ignores Palestinian leaders’ glorification of terrorists and the Palestinian “pay-for-slay” jobs program that incentivizes Palestinians to murder Jews by rewarding the murderers and their families afterwards.

For the EU and the Biden administration, building new homes by Jewish families is more dangerous than the antisemitic remarks and genocidal rhetoric of Abbas and other Palestinians.

The representatives of France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the US are lying to everyone’s face when they claim that the construction of new homes for Jews would “exacerbate tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and undermine efforts to achieve a negotiated two-state solution.”

The representatives of Italy, Germany, France, Britain and the US know that the Israeli-Arab conflict started long before the construction of even one house for Jews in the West Bank. All they need to do is listen to what Abbas himself said in Cairo, where he made it clear that the Arab’s problem with Israel started already back in 1917, when the Jews were promised a homeland of their own. When Abbas states that the Arabs have exclusive rights to Jerusalem and Palestine, he is actually saying that Israel has no right to exist.

By ignoring Abbas’s remarks, those who issued the joint statement that denounces Israel for intending to build new housing units for Jewish families are complicit in the Palestinian campaign of lies and fabrications regarding Jewish history and rights.

By failing to call out the Palestinian leader for his lies, distortions and incitement, the officials from Italy, Germany, France, Britain and the Biden administration are again demonstrating their unbending bias against Israel.

It is time for the EU and the Biden administration to wake up to the fact that the Palestinian leaders are not interested in peace with Israel. They are interested in peace without Israel. The Palestinians do not distinguish between a Jew residing in the West Bank and a Jew residing in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

The Palestinian leaders are part of the problem, not part of the solution. The EU and the Biden administration’s double standards and failure to see reality as it is, instead of as they wish it to be, are also part of the problem. Only when the EU and the Biden administration take this in will it be possible to start talking about the prospects of a “negotiated solution” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, continue to twist, misrepresent and rewrite the history of the Jews as part of an ongoing campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel and the Jewish people. The campaign aims to negate and reject the connection between the Jews and the Land of Israel and foster hatred for Israel and the Jews.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/after-biden-sent-1b-to-plo-israeli-deaths-rose-900/

When Secretary of State Blinken met with PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas, he boasted of the over billion dollars in aid that the Biden administration had programmed for the terrorist territories.

That aid has come with a very heavy price.

In Feb 2019, President Trump’s total cutoff of aid became official. That year, 10 Israelis or people in Israeli controlled areas were killed in stabbings, shootings, rocket and other attacks, down from 12 the previous year, and 15 in 2017, and 16 in 2016.

In 2020 however only three Israelis were killed.

These numbers reflected the diminished capacity of the Islamic terrorists. The reduction in numbers was not due to the pandemic. 2020 still saw attacks, including firebombings, rocket launches and stabbings, but the success and lethality rates for these attacks were lower.

The numbers turned around dramatically once again in 2021.

In April 2021, the Biden administration restored aid to the PLO. Terror incidents, reflecting attack attempts, shot up sharply from 91 in February and 89 in March to 130 in April.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-israelis-have-moved-to-the-political-right/

Western governments and media critical of the newly elected government coalition led by Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu failed to ask themselves how it happened that the likes of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir are now prominent ministers in Netanyahu’s government. The same critics in the west labeling Smotrich and Ben Gvir “extremists,” haven’t attached that title to Mahmoud Abbas.

Had the western critics of Israel bothered to consult history as it unfolded since the Oslo Accords of 1993, they could easily grasp the political shift that occurred in Israeli politics. In fact, the turn to the political right began in May 1977, when Menahem Begin became Israel’s first right-of-center Israeli prime minister. It was because of disillusionment with the socialist, center-left Labor party who led stagnant economies, and failed to bring the yearned-for peace. Menahem Begin, who like Smotrich and Ben Gvir was labeled an “extremist” and “terrorist” by some in the western media, made peace with Israel’s most important Arab foe – Egypt.

The Israeli public elected Itzhak Rabin in 1992. It was an endorsement of the peace platform with the Palestinians that the Labor coalition initiated. The Oslo negotiations were supposedly secret, hinted at by the Israeli media of a breakthrough and a final peaceful solution with the Palestinians. Earlier, at the 1991 Madrid conference initiated by the Bush Senior administration following the US triumph in the Gulf War, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was excluded from the negotiations that included a Syrian, Israeli, and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation comprised of Palestinian notables. Intimidated by Yasser Arafat and the PLO, little progress was made on the Israeli-Palestinian track.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/three-jewish-funerals-and-an-israeli-hate-fest/

Imagine the scene on Saturday night at 8-year-old Asher Menachem Paley’s funeral. The previous morning, he and his brother, Yaakov, 6, had been among a group of Jews targeted by an Arab terrorist on a car-ramming rampage in Jerusalem’s Ramot neighborhood.

Yaakov was killed on the spot. He was laid to rest a few hours later, before the onset of Shabbat.

Asher was rushed, in critical condition, to Shaare Zedek medical center. Despite doctors’ efforts to save his life, he died of his wounds the next day.
Their 10-year-old brother, Moishie, whose injuries from the attack were far lighter, was treated and quickly released from the hospital. This enabled him, along with his five other siblings and their mother, to be present at both burials.
Their father, Avraham, on the other hand, couldn’t attend either. The 42-year-old had been with the above three of his six kids when Hussein Karaka, 31—an Israeli citizen residing in Issawiya in eastern Jerusalem—accelerated his Mazda into them and the several other people standing at a bus stop.

Avraham’s “moderate” condition didn’t allow for him to part properly with his little boys or be present to comfort his devastated wife and surviving children. He was forced to remain, in physical and emotional pain, at the Hadassah Medical Center/Mount Scopus.

The third victim slain by Karaka (who, thankfully, was fatally shot by a police officer who happened to be in the vicinity) was 20-year-old newlywed Alter Shlomo Lederman. His funeral, like that of Asher Paley, was held on Saturday night.

You know what else took place on Saturday night? The usual, pre-scheduled anti-government protests at select locations in major cities.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

The state of the State of Israel combines triumphs and grief. This week two brothers aged six and eight died of wounds sustained in a terrorist car ramming attack in Jerusalem. On that very day Israel’s Army Search and Rescue Mission was saving lives in the rubble of the massive quakes in Turkey with the blessings of the Chief Rabbi to work through the Sabbath.

As Michael Ordman reminds us, during the same week Israelis were training Kenyan medics, providing critical pediatric equipment to Moldova, and developing technology to help millions of hapless citizens throughout the entire world.

And they were also enjoying jazz and dance performances, concerts, restaurants with varied and delicious cuisine, and welcoming the growing number of new arrivals.

Israel chooses life! L’Chaim!….rsk

 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Proteins in focus for AMD. Tel Aviv University researchers have identified two genomic proteins LHX2 and OTX2 that affect the chances of contracting Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). The discovery is a key stage in understanding the genetic mechanisms related to AMD and other complex genetic diseases.
https://english.tau.ac.il/risk_factor_amd
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001924
 
New peptides to target Alzheimer’s culprit. (TY UWI) Scientists at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, working with Canadian scientists have developed peptides (small proteins) that in laboratory tests prevent the production of oligomers – small polymers that are the true culprits of the neuron damage in Alzheimer’s disease.
https://www.israel21c.org/treatment-for-very-early-alzheimers-under-development/  
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2210766119
 
World’s most advanced children’s hospital. (TY Hazel) The Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital just inaugurated at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, features unique early genetic tests for detecting and treating rare diseases. It will also treat children from the Palestinian Authority, Gaza, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco.
https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/byhmjk1to
 
Dental center for patients with disabilities. The Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine is establishing the Robert I. Schattner Oral Health Center for People with Disabilities. The state-of-the-art facility will provide accessible, optimal care for patients and specialized training for dental professionals.
https://www.afhu.org/hebrew-university-hadassah-school-of-dental-medicines-robert-i-schattner-oral-health-center-for-people-with-disabilities/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGLPsB_EQjs
 
AI to build UK care center. AI technology from Israel’s Buildots (see here previously) is constructing the new maternity, pediatrics, emergency, and critical care center at Royal Bournemouth Hospital. It is the first UK healthcare facility to be built using Artificial Intelligent tech to increase efficiency and decrease costs.
https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-ai-construction-technology-helps-build-uk-hospital/
 
Partnering for medical air rescue service. Israel’s Magen David Adom and America’s Hatzolah Air are partnering to provide any future emergency medical evacuations in Israel. MDA’s flight paramedics will board Hatzolah Air and MDA Medevac helicopters to perform rescues via MDA’s Tiberias and Beer Sheva air bases.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/366974
 
Universities partner to study the brain. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Kentucky have received a joint $1 million grant to study new aspects of RNA biology. They will try to discover why humans have more complex brains than other organisms with roughly the same number of genes?
https://www.bfhu.org/2023/02/03/university-of-kentucky-and-hu-partner-to-study-brain-complexity/
 
Non-animal testing in Dubai. (TY Atid-EDI) UAE’s MBZUAI has signed an agreement with Israel’s Quris-AI (see here previously) to establish a world-class Bio-AI center in Abu Dhabi, that will support development of personalized medications, specifically tailored to the MENA (Middle East Nort Africa) region population.
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/01/18/2590734/0/en/Quris-AI-and-MBZUAI-to-launch-world-class-Bio-AI-center-in-Abu-Dhabi.html  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTKg274ehgU
 
Training Kenyan navy to treat casualties. For the first time ever, experts from Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, including doctors, nurses, and simulation specialists, helped prepare Kenya’s navy for mass casualty scenarios. They worked alongside military and civilian personnel from Kenya, the US 5th fleet, Qatar, and Denmark.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-730225

https://www.frontpagemag.com/6-year-old-murdered-by-islamic-terrorist-in-jerusalem/

The wave of terrorism really kicked off with the Palestinian Authority’s announcement that it was ending security cooperation with Israel prior to Biden administration personnel visiting Israel. While the media is trying to make it look like a series of lone-wolf attacks, there’s nothing coincidental about them. Or the focus on Jerusalem.

The latest is another Jerusalem terror attack, this time using the familiar Car Jihad tactic.

A murderous drive-by attack in Jerusalem: 20-year-old Habarach Alter Shlomo Lederman and a 6-year-old boy were killed and five others were injured, some seriously, when a terrorist driving a car crashed into a bus stop at the corner of Golda Meir and Binyamin Mintz streets in the capital’s Ramot neighborhood. The terrorist driving

Lederman “had been standing at the bus stop with his wife, whom he married only six months ago, at the time of the attack. The two were waiting for a bus to the city of Elad, where they had planned to spend Shabbat with his parents. The wife was unharmed.”

The 6-year-old boy has been killed.

Jacov Yisrael Fali, a six-year-old boy. Fali was laid to rest in a small funeral before the start of Shabbat, at the request of his family. Fali’s father, who was moderately injured in the attack, is hospitalized and could not attend his son’s funeral.  Jacob’s 8-year-old brother is still fighting for his life, while his father is also hospitalized in a moderate condition and another brother is in a mild condition

It was another horrifying scene in a long line of horrors perpetrated by Islamic terrorists.

MDA emergency medic Shraga Rosenthal said: “When we arrived at the scene, the sight was shocking. We saw a car near the bus station after it hit pedestrians who were waiting at the station. We saw 6 victims lying next to each other. Of these, 2 children were about 6 years old who were unconscious with severe multisystem injuries. A 27-year-old man and a 30-year-old man were unconscious and 2 other victims were fully conscious with injuries to their limbs. We gave them primary medical care and performed CPR on both children. This is a very difficult event.”