RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/bashing-bibi-helps-hamas/

Relatives of hostages held in Hamas captivity gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday outside Defense Ministry headquarters. The purpose of their makeshift press conference/protest was to demand that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu resign or be ousted.

The Bibi-bashing event kicked off with a statement by the daughter-in-law of 80-year-old captive Yoram Metzger.

“We’ve all seen how Netanyahu sabotages hostage-release deals,” announced Ayala Metzger. “We’ve seen how his political self-interest repeatedly drives his decision-making, and how concern for the stability of his coalition takes priority over his duty to bring home our loved ones.”

She went on: “We were told to sit quietly; we were told to travel around the world [to garner international sympathy and enlist support for pressure on Hamas]. But after six months, the hostages are still in Gaza. This is a complete failure. This is a deliberate failure!”

Echoing her sentiment, Einav Zangauker, mother of 24-year-old hostage Matan, referred to Netanyahu as the “obstacle that consciously and deliberately prevents a deal.”

As a result, she stressed, the families now have no choice but to “do everything in our power to remove that obstacle…and start a new phase in our struggle. From now on, we will work for [Netanyahu’s] immediate replacement.”

Yael Or, aunt of Dror, 49, then called on Knesset members “whose consciences are shouting at them” to “help Israel make the most urgent and correct decision right now. Replace those who thwart the deal for personal reasons.”

Addressing ministers without Portfolio Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot—as well as MKs from the prime minister’s Likud Party—she announced, “Rescuing the hostages is your moral obligation. Do what is necessary to replace Netanyahu immediately.”

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Terrorists and their accomplices chant:” From the River to the sea!”

I will paraphrase it in peaceful terms:

From the Jordan River to the Sea of Okhotsk- between Russia and Japan, and to the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, and to the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caspian, Baltic, Java, and Black Seas, to name a handful, Israel’s research and development of technology, science, medicine and agricultural innovations make lives better and longer and safer for citizens in every continent. Michael Ordman’s prodigious weekly catalog proves the foregoing even during wartime. Rsk

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Reserve IDF commander has life-changing surgery. (TY OurCrowd) 57-year-old Motti Ben-Lulu served 4 months reserve duty as a platoon commander in Gaza. But he was unable to hold a weapon due to tremor. Now, after MRI-guided focused ultrasound treatment from Israel’s Insightec (see here previously) he is a new person.
https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/hk65ad406
 
“Superhero” cocoa seedlings. Ellen Graber, a soil chemistry expert at Israel’s Volcani Center expected her experimental cocoa seedlings growing near Gaza had perished after 3 months of neglect. But 20 plants survived and flourished. A recent NIS 20 million government investment could make Israel a cocoa plant global supplier.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-surviving-oct-7-israeli-cocoa-plants-could-help-stave-off-world-shortage/
 
Brothers for Life. (TY Sam Kramer) The BFL Medical Project was created to address the needs of IDF soldiers suffering from complex injuries and chronic pain. It invited two highly skilled and specialized doctors from the USA to come to Israel to perform complex reconstructive surgery on many injured soldiers. See video.
https://www.brothersforlife.com/bfl-emergency-progress-report-240216/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZjtzF54I0s
 
Remarkable Resilience – BGU Webinar. Register for this free May 8th webinar from Israel’s Ben Gurion University. BGU was heavily impacted by the Oct 7 events but now stands as a beacon of hope for the future of Israel and a vital part of Israel’s rebuilding and recovery efforts. See how BGU is leading the Way Forward.
https://americansforbgu.org/events/rr4/   https://americansforbgu.org/events/rr4/#speakers
 
 
ISRAEL’S  MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Repairing the spine via the nose. Some 500,000 spinal cord injuries are sustained annually. Israel’s NurExone takes exosomes (nanoscopic particles released by cells to pass messages to one another) from bone marrow, adds siRNA to help regenerate cells, and delivers them via the nose and blood brain barrier to heal the spine.
https://nocamels.com/2024/03/nasal-therapy-that-could-help-people-with-spinal-injuries-walk-again/  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLEi98oE4RU   https://nurexone.com/
 
Artificial veins for successful transplants. Israel’s Bonus Biogroup (see here previously) has developed microscopic biodegradable tubes that run through an engineered transplant organ, supplying a steady flow of blood. This vastly increases the viability of artificial organs and the success rate of transplant operations.
https://www.israel21c.org/organ-transplant-advance-artificial-veins/
 
War of yeast infections. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have discovered a benign species of yeast named “Kazachstania weizmannii” in homage to Chaim Weizmann. It prevents the spread of Candida albicans, a strain of yeast which causes candidiasis, a fungal infection responsible for around 200,000 deaths per year.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-fungus-discovery-could-stop-deadly-yeast-infections/
 
AI-driven cell therapy. Israeli-founded Somite.ai can revolutionize stem cell therapy. Its first target is Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. When muscle stem cells are injected into an existing muscle, the muscles can rebuild and regain function. Somite will then move on to creating brown fat cells for the treatment of diabetes.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-stem-cells-meet-ai-1001472419  https://somite.ai/index.html
 
Developing treatments since 1949. (TY Atid-EDI) Rafa Laboratories is one of Israel’s oldest pharmaceutical companies. For example, it has been supplying autoinjectors for over 30 years, for global medical conditions including seizures and now (partnering USA’s BARDA) to counter nerve agent and pesticide poisoning.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/enhancing-national-preparedness-rafa-laboratories-partners-with-barda-to-advance-the-development-of-a-new-design-for-rafas-pediatric-atropine-autoinjectors-302094562.html
https://www.rafa.co.il/en     https://www.rafa.co.il/en/therapeutic-areas
 
Better than before. (TY Nevet) Scientists at Israel’s Technion have developed a robotic hand that allows the wearer to play the piano and type on a keyboard. The device is intended to be used as a prosthetic for those who have lost limbs, e.g., in the War, and can give the wearer skills that they never had before.
https://ats.org/our-impact/giving-prosthetics-a-hand/
 
Wearable devices to fix mobility problems. (TY Nevet) Zuckerman Faculty Scholar Dr. Arielle Fischer runs the Fischer Biomechanics and Wearable Technology Lab at Israel’s Technion Institute. Her lab develops biomechanical tools and wearable devices to detect, prevent, and correct musculoskeletal movement disorders.
https://www.zuckerman-scholars.org/lab/fischer-biomotion-lab/
 
Hebrew University Trauma Institute. A new Trauma Institute has been established at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It will design new clinical approaches to and train therapists to deal with the nationwide traumas following the Oct 7 Hamas attacks. The new Institute has raised 25% of its budget and is seeking support.
https://www.afhu.org/2024/03/16/new-hebrew-university-trauma-institute-established-to-design-new-clinical-approaches-and-train-therapists-following-october-7th-attacks/  https://www.afhu.org/weareone/  (US donors)
 
Innovative trauma treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Madrigal Mental Care is based in Kibbutz Reim – one of the communities devasted by Hamas on Oct 7.  So, it is remarkable that it has just announced the successful completion of its pivotal nanotechnology research on using Ketamine as a treatment for PTSD & depression.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/madrigal-announces-groundbreaking-ketamine-research-for-ptsd-treatment-and-upcoming-in-human-clinical-trials-302088144.html
 
New treatment for depression.  (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s PsyRx has developed a radically new treatment for depression. It combines an approved medicine from the SSRI family with a low dosage of ibogaine. PsyRx has just completed a successful lab toxicological safety study for the treatment to help it progress to human trials.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/psyrx-advances-clinical-trial-exploration-with-successful-completion-of-toxicological-safety-study-in-rats-302098275.html   https://www.psyrx.co/
 
Addressing women’s health. Israeli-founded Impact.51 is the first startup studio in the world to focus solely on women’s health. 51% of the world receives insufficient funding, research, & support. Impact.51 aims to create inventive solutions addressing critical gaps in women’s health. After Oct 7, the priority is trauma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVktA8EihyU   https://www.impact-51.com/
 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-794069

A seemingly small detail in a news report caught my eye. The firebombs were “filled with nails,” a police spokesperson revealed. That was a new one for me, and I follow this kind of news closely.

A few days ago, Israeli police officers arrested two Palestinian Arab terrorists for throwing firebombs at Jewish homes in the mostly Arab Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina. Beit Hanina is not some remote area: it is just five miles from the Western Wall Plaza and less than three and a half miles from Hebrew University.

It’s alarming how quickly the public has become accustomed to such assaults. Imagine if two white supremacists tried to burn down the homes of African-Americans in Washington, D.C. There would be an outpouring of angry condemnations—and rightly so—from political leaders, civil rights groups, and American Jewish organizations. But not a word is heard when Palestinian Arab attackers try to burn Jews alive in Jerusalem.

A seemingly small detail in the news reports about the incident caught my eye. The firebombs were “filled with nails,” a police spokesperson revealed. That was a new one for me, and I follow this kind of news rather closely.

A terrorist is carefully filling a bottle with gasoline. He is just about to stuff a rag into the top, which he will light when he is ready to turn it into a firebomb. But before adding the rag, he and his comrade pause. “Wait a minute,” one must say to the other. “In addition to setting Jews on fire, this could fire nails at high speed when it explodes. Let’s put a bunch of nails in the bottle, so the Jews will both catch on fire and be stabbed by sharp, high-velocity pieces of metal!” 

It seems as if Palestinian Arab terrorists are constantly trying to invent new ways to inflict pain on Jews. Of course we saw unimaginably horrible new types of savagery on October 7. But before anybody thinks that such behavior is unique to Hamas, or to Gazans, let’s not forget that Palestinian Arab terrorists in Judea-Samaria, whether affiliated with Fatah, Hamas, or other organizations all use the same playbook.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/28/gaza-truths-behind-all-the-lies/

“Occupied Gaza.” Prior to October 7, there were roughly two million Arab citizens of Israel but no Jewish citizens in Gaza. Gazans in 2006 voted in Hamas to rule them. It summarily executed its Palestinian Authority rivals. Hamas cancelled all future scheduled elections. It established a dictatorship and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid to build a vast underground labyrinth of military installations.

So Gaza has been occupied by Hamas, not Israel, for two decades.

“Collateral Damage.” Hamas began the war by deliberately targeting civilians. It massacred them on October 7 when it invaded Israel during a time of peace and holidays. It sent more than 7,000 rockets into Israeli cities for the sole purpose of killing noncombatants. It has no vocabulary for the collateral damage of Israeli civilians, since it believes any Jewish death under any circumstances is cause for celebration.

Hamas places its terrorist centers beneath and inside hospitals, schools, and mosques. Why? Israel is assumed to have more reservations about collaterally hitting Gaza civilians than Hamas does exposing them as human shields.

“Disproportionate.” We are told Israel wrongly uses disproportionate force to retaliate in Gaza. But it does so because no nation can win a war without disproportionate violence that hurts the enemy more than it is hurt by the enemy.

The U.S. incinerated German and Japanese cities with disproportionate force to end a war both Axis powers started. The American military in Iraq nearly leveled Fallujah and Mosul by disproportional force to root out Islamic gunmen hiding among innocents. Hamas has objections to disproportionate violence—but only when it is achieved by Israel and not Hamas.

“Two-state solution.” Prior to October 7, there was a de facto three-state solution, given that Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza were all separate states ruled by their own governments, two of which were illegitimate without scheduled elections.

It was not Israel, but the people of Gaza and the West Bank who institutionalized the “from river to the sea” agenda of destroying its neighbor.

Israel would have been content to live next to an autonomous Arab Gaza and West Bank that did not seek to destroy Israel in their multigenerational efforts to form their own “one-state solution.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-if-the-us-helps-hamas-win-schumer-biden-mideast-war-israel-gaza-1a6aa3c6?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Let’s imagine that Israel yields to the pressure. Pushed by an American president already under fire from a segment of the electorate that objects to his support for a “genocidal” state, Israel refrains from entering Rafah to finish off Hamas’s four surviving battalions. Israel agrees to the general cease-fire of indeterminate duration that the U.S. administration seems to push amid increasingly virulent antisemitism.

The idea that Washington unconditionally supports Israel is a longstanding myth. While the U.S. often vetoes anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations Security Council, the one that passed Monday was far from the first exception. Recall Resolution 1701 (2006) to halt Israel’s Lebanon offensive at the Litani River—thus sparing what remained of the Hezbollah units.

So the supposition that the U.S. pushes Israel into capitulating isn’t implausible. It is the path forward that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who styles himself the Jewish state’s shomer, or protector, has chosen. It isn’t hard to picture an Israel that is sermonized, impeded and prevented from dealing with Hamas the way the U.S. dealt with Al-Qaeda and ISIS a few years back—an Israel forced into defeat.

If that came to pass, what would happen? Hamas would declare victory—on the verge of defeat, then the next minute revived. These criminals against humanity would emerge from their tunnels triumphant after playing with the lives not only of the 250 Israelis captured on Oct. 7, but also of their own citizens, whom they transformed into human shields.

The Arab street would view Hamas terrorists as resistance fighters. In Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—nations that signed the Abraham Accords or were leaning toward doing so—Hamas’s prestige would be enhanced. In the West Bank as in Gaza, Hamas would quickly eclipse the corrupt and ineffective Palestinian Authority, whose image would pale next to the twin aura of martyrdom and endurance in which Hamas would cloak itself.

http://bit.ly/3IPDd5S

Palestinian demographic numbers are highly-inflated, as documented by a study, which has audited the Palestinian data since 2004.  For example:

*500,000 Arabs, who have been away for over a year, are included in the census, contrary to international regulations. 325,000 were included in the 1997 census, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, and 400,000 in 2005, according to the Palestinian Election Commission. The number grows steadily due to births.

*350,000 East Jerusalem Arabs are doubly-counted – by Israel and by the Palestinian Authority. The number grows steadily due to births.

*Over 150,000 Arabs, who married Israeli Arabs are similarly doubly counted. The number expands steadily due to births.   

*A 413,000 net-emigration (since the 1997 first Palestinian census) is ignored by the Palestinian census, overlooking the annual net-emigration since 1950. A 23,445 net-emigration in 2022 and a 20,000 annual average in recent years have been documented by Israel’s Population and Migration Authority in all international passages.  

*A 32% artificial inflation of Palestinian births was documented by the World Bank (page 8, item 6) in a 2006 audit.

https://worldisraelnews.com/a-new-word-to-trick-israel/

A change from ‘demilitarized’ to ‘nonmilitarized,’ didn’t just slip through without anybody noticing.

Nineteen Democratic U.S. senators have called on President Biden to “recognize a nonmilitarized Palestinian state.” Until now, congressional supporters of Palestinian statehood have always used the term “demilitarized.” Why the sudden change?

There’s just no way it was an accident. Letters signed by U.S. senators are reviewed and revised by a large team of writers and public relations advisers. In this case, the staffs of nineteen different senators reviewed and approved this letter dated March 20. A change like this, from “demilitarized” to “nonmilitarized,” didn’t just slip through without anybody noticing.

Especially when “nonmilitarized” is such a peculiar term. Throughout modern history “demilitarized” has always been the conventional term. Somebody made a conscious decision to change the word. Here’s a theory as to why. It involves two reasons.

The first reason for the change is rhetorical. A major problem for advocates of “demilitarization” is that it has a long history of not working. The most famous example is the German territory of the Rhineland, which was supposed to be demilitarized after World War One—that is, until Hitler decided to remilitarize it. And the world stood idly by.

https://www.jns.org/americas-abstention-gives-hope-to-hamas/

All one needs to know about U.N. Security Council Resolution 2728 is that Hamas was pleased with its passage. Following Monday’s near-unanimous vote—from which the United States disgracefully abstained—the terrorist organization that openly aims to annihilate the Jewish state praised the UNSC for its decision.
In an online statement, the murderous regime that rules the Gaza Strip called on the United Nations to “pressure the occupation [its name for Israel] to adhere to the ceasefire and stop the war of genocide and ethnic cleansing against our people.”

Never mind that Hamas carefully planned and proudly executed the Oct. 7 massacre, committing the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust. Forget that its foot soldiers chose the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, which fell on the Sabbath, to go on a sadistic spree of sexual abuse, torture, arson and abduction of innocent men, women and children.

Ignore the fact that it still holds 134 hapless victims of its carefully planned rampage in brutal captivity. The simple truth, which Hamas grasps and uses as an additional weapon in its now-shrinking arsenal, is that the world cannot bear to see Israel fight back; certainly not against Palestinians or their Islamist backers in Tehran.
Imagine Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar’s dismay, then, when the Obama-cloned White House and State Department not only paid lip service to “Israel’s right to defend itself,” but put its money where its mouth was with a supply of arms to assist in the war effort.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-abstains-united-nations-security-council-vote-israel-hamas-ceasefire-biden-6dd91dee?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

In his State of the Union address, President Biden made a promise to the families of U.S. hostages held by Hamas: “We will not rest until we bring their loved ones home.” At the United Nations on Monday, he undermined that pledge.

The U.S. withheld its veto and abstained as the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that demanded a cease-fire in Gaza but didn’t make the cease-fire contingent on Hamas releasing its 134 hostages. That condition, on which the U.S. had previously insisted, has been dropped.

Instead, the resolution’s two demands—“an immediate cease-fire for the month of Ramadan . . . leading to a lasting sustainable cease-fire” and “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”—each stand on their own. To Hamas, the diplomatic pressure will be meaningless. To Israel, it can be perilous, as Mr. Biden well knows. His fence-sitting opens up Israel to more pressure to end the war while Hamas still reigns in part of Gaza.

White House spokesman John Kirby says, “Nothing has changed about our policy—nothing.” He explains that the U.S. abstained because the Security Council resisted a last-minute amendment condemning Hamas. Yet the U.S. had previously vetoed resolutions that wouldn’t condemn Hamas for Oct. 7. The moral arbiters at the U.N. still won’t do that.

The reactions to the resolution tell the real story: Hamas welcomed it and Russia, China and Algeria voted for it, while Israel called it “a clear departure from the consistent U.S. position,” adding that it “gives Hamas hope that international pressure will force Israel to accept a cease-fire without the release of our hostages.” Israel also canceled some high-level meetings.

Biden officials push the line that the resolution is nonbinding and Israel is overreacting. Yet this is how Mr. Biden has turned against Israel: one half-step at a time.