%20(1)%20(4)%20(1)%20(1).jpg)
PARENTS MATTER.
To support our children, provide for their education, promote their well-being, and secure a brighter future, We the Parents of the United States enjoin this Parents Bill of Rights:
1. Right to know what’s being taught in schools and to see reading material
2. Right to be heard
3. Right to see school budget and spending
4. Right to protect their child’s privacy
5. Right to be updated on any violent activity at school
You just read the Parents Bill of Rights, which House Republicans unveiled this week. We pledged to create a future that’s built on freedom and that includes ensuring that parents have a say in their child’s education – something Washington Democrats are implementing policies to prevent.
Prominent Democrats openly admit in hearings that children need to be protected from their parents. The Secretary of Education says that parents should not be the “primary stakeholder” in their child’s education. The FBI labeled concerned parents as “domestic terrorists” for making their voices heard in school board meetings. (Don’t believe me? Check out this video).
Left unchecked, parents could end up being locked out of school buildings completely!
Parents, not the government, know what’s best for their children. Cutting them out of schools isn’t just wrong – it’s detrimental to the next generation’s future and well-being.
If you want updates about this legislation and to send a message to the Washington Democrats that YOU want a say in your child’s education, click here.
++++++++++++++++
Late but necessary:
Time for a Reckoning Against the Mexican Cartels and ChinA
And:
Parents and Children Are the GOP Future
By Josh Hammer
Finally:
Kamala Harris's Husband Has a Message For All the Super-Progressive, Woke, Liberal Men Out There
By Sarah Arnold
=============
We just received a MAJOR UPDATE about John Durham’s investigation and final report. We can’t explain every detail in this email so please read our full update as soon as you open this email.
| READ THE FULL UPDATE+++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
In this exciting, first-of-its-kind, webinar, our own Hussein Aboubakr Mansour will discuss the regnant role of the image of the Palestinian within both modern Western intellectual thought and within the Arab mind. What were the academic factors that shaped this romantic notion? How true to actual life is this notion, and the idea of the Palestinian struggle? In which circles is it the most regnant? And how can this romantic notion be replaced with reality on the ground?
Here to answer these questions is Hussein Aboubakr Mansour.
About the Speaker: Hussein Aboubakr Mansour
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour is the Director of EMET’s Program for Emerging Democratic Voices from the Middle East. Hussein was born in Cairo, Egypt into a family who raised another son to be an Imam inspiring young people to become Jihadists.
His critical intellect led him to find out more about Israel and Jews and to forge friendships with Israelis. As a result, he was arrested and tortured by the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak under suspicion of being an agent of the government of Israel.
Hussein received political asylum in the United States under President Barack Obama in 2012 and worked as an instructor for language and culture at the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California. He then went on to work as an educator and public speaker for StandWithUs, educating students about cultural and geopolitical issues in the Middle East and helping them counter antisemitism.
Hussein wrote an autobiography, Minority of One: The Unchaining of the Arab Mind, and his articles have appeared in Commentary, Newsweek, the Jewish Journal, JNS.org, Times of Israel and Mosaic Magazine. Hussein has worked for EMET since September 2020, and has been integral in crafting the ideas behind the Israel Normalization Act of 2021, based on his own personal experiences.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Israel Under Attack: Biden's Coup to Get Iran the Bomb
By Guy Millière
Pictured: Anti-government protesters try to break through a police line, in an attempt to block a road in Tel Aviv, Israel on March 4, 2023. (Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
"U.S. support for demonstrations in Tel Aviv isn't about the future of Israel's judiciary. It's about handcuffing Israel while Iran gets the bomb," writes Lee Smith in Tablet Magazine.
The world has learned a lot watching America's Middle East freedom agenda.... The first of these lessons is that when U.S. policymakers selectively deploy the rhetoric of democracy and human rights against target governments, their words are typically accompanied by practical measures to destabilize those governments, including U.S. allies....
"In reality, the maritime agreement was just the latest in a series of initiatives to realign U.S. interests with those of the terror regime in Tehran while alternately sweet-talking and threatening traditional U.S. allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia to fall into line...
"Netanyahu, however, is a problem for an administration still determined to reenter the nuclear deal from which Donald Trump withdrew... But there's no guarantee the famously cautious Netanyahu wouldn't launch an attack now, especially with a right-wing government at his back and the U.S. seemingly preparing to accept Iran as a member of the nuclear club, so long as the terror regime's capacity is limited to just one bomb, or maybe just a few."
"Maybe just a few"? As if Iran's regime would honor a commitment like that any more than they have honored their other commitments? (sampling: here, here , here, here, here and here)
In reality, Iran's mullahs will most likely blackmail the Biden Administration for billions of dollars not to use their new bombs "on my watch", as then President Barack Obama put it in 2015. With a new administration, there can be a new blackmail.
The United States, under the Biden Administration, is has been trying to "thwart the will" of Israel's voters -- again (here and here).
Begin with Friday night, January 27 in Neve Yaakov, a Jewish neighborhood in northern Jerusalem. Jews are at a synagogue to pray. An Arab terrorist starts a murder rampage, shooting seven people dead and seriously wounding three others. Scenes of joy erupt in the Arab towns of the West Bank, ruled by the Palestinian Authority, and in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Sweets are given out and fireworks are set off to celebrate the murder of Jews.
The next morning, a 13-year-old Arab boy shoots two Jews in Jerusalem near the Old City, seriously wounding them.
On February 10, an Arab terrorist rammed his car into a crowd of Jews at a Jerusalem bus stop, killing three people, including two children. The Neve Yaakov terrorist and the 13-year-old Arab boy were residents of Jerusalem; the bus stop terrorist was an Israeli citizen. Arab children who knew the boy were interviewed on television. They described him as a hero and said that if they had a gun, they would have done the same thing.
The Palestinian Authority's "pay-for-slay" jobs-program, paid for by "over $200 million" fungible U.S. taxpayer dollars in funding reinstated by President Joe Biden, incentivizes and rewards the murder of Jews.
"[I]f we had one single penny left, we would spend it on the families of martyrs and prisoners," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said.
Abbas' Fatah faction boasted of carrying out 7,200 terror attacks in 2022 against Israel, while criticizing Hamas for not attacking Israel.
Many Israelis have no illusions anymore. They see that the Palestinian Authority incites Jew-hate, whips up terrorism and tells Arab children and adults that to be a martyr for Islam allows them direct access not only to paradise, but also to generous funds for the terrorists and their families.
The Palestinian Authority payments amount to $300 million annually. Not bad for a Middle East jobs program, funded by the US and the European Union (here, here, here, here, here and here).
Meanwhile, Europe is involved in efforts to block accountability of how their NGO funds are used. No reports on payments to the families of murderers; no reports on terror tunnels or other military infrastructure being built; no reports on how Europe is funding massive land theft by Palestinians of areas that officially belong to Israel. How convenient.
Israelis can see that a growing number of Muslim Arabs residing in Jerusalem have been incited by hate propaganda by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad; that the number of deadly terrorist attacks have been on the rise, and that Israel's former Bennett-Lapid government was unable to stand its ground in the face of the Biden Administration.
Israelis can also see that the Biden Administration has continually made decisions hostile to Israel, including once again funding the Palestinian Authority without even requiring that it renounce terrorism. The Administration also brought back the goal of a "two-state solution": if a Palestinian state were to emerge, it could -- and most likely would -- be used as a launching pad from which to attack Israel, as promoted in the Palestinian "Phased Plan": Get whatever land you can, then use that to get the rest.
Mainly, Israelis saw that the Biden administration never gave up trying to enable to enable the mullahs' regime in Iran to have unlimited nuclear weapons -- all while the mullahs have made the genocidal destruction of Israel their overriding goal.
Accordingly, on November 1, 2022, millions of Israelis elected Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's Prime Minister, heading a broad coalition government. As in any democracy, they stand ready to respond to the expectations of the majority who brought them to power. These expectations include fighting firmly against terrorism and other threats, and, as is the first obligation of any government, ensuring the security of the country. The coalition also pledged to restore the balance between the Knesset and the Supreme Court.
In the United Kingdom, Parliament has the final say -- not the High Court. For the last 30 years, this has not been the situation in Israel.
In the 1990s, Israeli Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, declaring that "everything is justiciable," executed a "judicial revolution," through which the Court has arrogated virtually all political power, including the ability to override laws and even operational decisions by the Ministry of Defense and the IDF.
The government's proposed reforms would simply restore the checks and balances and the separation of powers that Israel had before Barak's "revolution."
Since Barak's tenure, Israel's Supreme Court and the Attorney General have become a self-selecting group, unelected by the public or their representatives. Their decisions, lacking a constitution, were increasingly based not on law but on their invented doctrine of "reasonableness" -- often resulting in "whatever I think is reasonable".
At present, Israel's Supreme Court, among other freewheeling entitlements, may overrule a quasi-constitutional Basic Law based on 'reasonableness"; accept petitions from anyone regardless of standing (even if the petitioner would not be directly affected by the outcome -- a provision that has resulted in a firehose of lawsuits by "concerned" non-governmental-organizations); and veto political appointments. According to the columnist Ron Jager:
"The Israeli Supreme Court has over the past three decades created in Israel a judicial reality in which there are literally no limits to its authority, and it recognizes no limits or restrictions to intervene and exercise judicial review by governmental action and/or legislation... The judicial reforms are not out to destroy Israel's democracy but to save and restore it."
Former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey pointed out:
"[I]n view of the court's sweeping self-imposed authority, it is difficult at times to describe the current condition as the rule of law..... Real reform would recognize the distinction between legal issues that can be decided in court and policy issues relegated to the political arena. It would also permit cases to be brought only by parties with a direct and personal interest."
The new Netanyahu government immediately faced radical hostility from both from its political opponents and much of the Israeli media, starting even before it was sworn in.
For years, many Israelis had gotten used to turning to the Supreme Court for favorable "final say" decisions that they were not able to obtain through the elected parliament, the Knesset. Overnight, they now find themselves losing their perch.
The new Israeli government has not violated any of the rules of Israeli democracy. In a democratic country that held a free and fair election, the one thing that does not seem democratic is to demand that the decision of the voters be overthrown.
Nevertheless, on December 1, outgoing interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid declared of the oncoming Netanyahu cabinet: "This is the government that was elected democratically, but wants to destroy democracy". Former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon last month called for a general strike and -- entirely innocent of the of the irony -- alleged that the new Israeli government wanted to make Israel "a fascist, racist, messianic and corrupt state". On January 15, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak said:
"[T]his government is legal but clearly illegitimate because of its plan to crush Israeli democracy... This is an assassination of the Declaration of Independence, and democracy must defend itself..."
On February 13, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai threatened:
"[I]f a country becomes a dictatorship via the democratic process, it will only be restored as a democracy via bloodshed."
Demonstrations continue, but even if 100,000 protestors turn out, it is still only a small number compared to the 2.4 million citizens who voted for Israel's new government.
Behind this subversion, it turns out, is none other than the U.S. State Department, which for years has reportedly been channeling funding to a "far left", "anti-Netanyahu" non-profit organization, the Movement for Quality Government (MQG) .
The journalist Caroline Glick notes:
"MQG began its current campaign of delegitimization, subversion and demonization immediately after the Netanyahu government was sworn into office on Dec. 29. The next day, MQG petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent Shas leader Aryeh Deri from serving as a minister in the government.
There was no legal basis for the petition. But that didn't bother the lawyers at MQG....
"Never mind that the justices have a conflict of interest since it is their powers the government's proposed reforms would check. Never mind that in a bid to prevent politicized judges and prosecutors from overturning the will of the voters, the law explicitly permits prime ministers to serve not only while standing trial, but even if convicted. And never mind that the charges against Netanyahu have fallen apart in Jerusalem District Court.
"Justice Minister Yariv Levin described MQG as 'a gang of lawyers who do not respect the outcome of the election, working to carry out a coup and remove the prime minister from office.... This effort to oust the prime minister in contravention of the law, while trampling on the democratic election, is no different from a coup that is carried out with tanks. The goal is the same...'
"Since MQG's primary activity is subverting democracy in Israel by waging lawfare and sowing chaos in a bid to block democratically elected right-wing governments from fulfilling their pledges to voters, it's fairly clear that when MQG refers to 'democracy education,' it doesn't mean majority rule.
Israel's Supreme Court, by excessive overreach, apparently doomed itself.
Ironically, in Washington D.C., a "January 6th Committee", without due process -- no cross examination, no independent selection of members, no right to counsel, no exculpatory evidence -- pretended to "investigate" as criminal the very same activity that the Biden Administration is backing in Israel: trying to change the outcome of a free and fair election.
On January 6, 2021, Americans had the audacity to enter their own government buildings while police held the doors open for them. For these "crimes", the "January 6th Committee" proceeded as a kangaroo court (here, here and here), with a result called "predetermined."
Israel is and will remain a very much a democracy – just as it was before Justice Aharon Barak arrogated virtually unlimited powers to its Supreme Court. Calls for uprisings and civil disobedience, combined with false accusations of "fascism" -- and the whole focus-group supermarket of pejoratives -- appear to be just sore-loser propaganda.
The Israeli government is trying to restore the democratic institutions that it used to have, of which it has been stripped.
The demonstrations -- despite what the Biden Administration might wish -- are just the loud last gasp of upper-class "elites" who have been entrenched in powerful unelected positions for decades.
That all this undemocratic disruption being done in the name of "defending democracy" just makes matters worse. The reality, sadly, is quite the opposite.
The situation has, of course, created an ideal opportunity for Israel's enemies to vilify and demonize the country even further.
The European media, which generally does not hide its antipathy towards Israel, has published virulent diatribes against the new Israeli government. They say that Israel is ruled by an "extreme right", and speak of Israel's decline and fall. They present the recent terrorist attacks as consequences of a "dangerous government" coming to power in Israel. It was, in fact, terrorist attacks that partly led to the "sweeping victory": most Israelis evidently thought that the new government would do a better job of protecting them.
The French newspaper Le Monde dyspeptically predicted that the "colonization" of the "occupied Palestinian territories" will accelerate and that "Jewish supremacists" will rule Israel unchecked.
The Guardian in the UK wrote that a "full-blown Palestinian uprising" is to be expected, and presented the recent Palestinian terrorist attacks on civilians as responses to an IDF arrest raid in Jenin in which "nine Palestinians" were killed. The article omitted to say that the Palestinian terrorists whom the IDF came to arrest opened fire on the soldiers and were killed in the exchange of fire.
The American mainstream media have also been taking harsher anti-Israeli positions. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, anti-Israel for years, wrote that "The Israel we know is gone". "[M]any ministers" in the new Israeli government", he threw in, "are hostile to American values".
Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer and former Middle East peace envoy Aaron David Miller published an column in the Washington Post saying that the new Israeli government possesses "anti-democratic values unfriendly to U.S. interests," and recommended that the Biden administration impose a partial arms embargo on Israel and punish Morocco, Bahrain, the UAE and Sudan for signing normalization agreements with Israel.
At a time when terrorism has struck and with a U.S. administration unfriendly to Israel, it is revealing that professed friends of Israel can talk in such an irresponsible way. They speak of a threat to Israeli democracy? They are a threat to Israeli democracy.
The Biden Administration can barely conceal its contempt for the new Israeli government. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Israel at the time of two of the Jerusalem terror attacks, rather than condemn them clearly and unambiguously, spoke mushily of a "horrifying surge in violence... we will be encouraging the parties to take steps to calm things down", as if Israel had been the one promoting violence.
Blinken insidiously added that the relationship between the United States and Israel is rooted "in shared values that includes our support for core democratic principles and institutions, including respect for human rights, the equal administration of justice for all, the equal rights of minority groups, the rule of law, free press, a robust civil society." He was giving a lesson in democracy to Prime Minister Netanyahu -- not Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who openly calls for Palestinians to murder Israelis. How thoughtful.
"[T]he vibrancy of Israel's civil society has been on full display of late," Blinken concluded -- meaning that calls for revolt and civil disobedience are in his eyes signs of the "vibrancy" of a civil society -- unless perhaps one is referring to January 6, 2021. During Netanyahu's recent visit to Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a similar homily.
Many left-wing American Jewish organizations have made clear their rejection of Israel's new government. More than 300 American rabbis from the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements signed an open letter saying they would not allow "extreme ministers" from the Israeli government to address their congregations. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism said, "the current Israeli government is really pushing away the majority of Jews in North America and the diaspora."
On February 1, more than a hundred prominent American Jews, including former leaders of major mainstream Jewish organizations, published a text accusing the Israeli government of "endangering the very existence of the State of Israel and the Israeli nation." They added, "Israel can be likened to a ship sailing the high seas. The current government is taking out the keel, consciously dismantling the state's institutions."
The Israeli government is trying to prevent the murder of innocent Jews and to stop terrorist attacks. Those, however, do not appear to be the goals that everyone has.
What endangers the State of Israel or any nation is not a government dedicated to the safety of its citizens, but people who seem blind to the real dangers: whether from the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Iranian regime, the Chinese Communist Party.
The greatest danger comes from those who cling to the illusion that diplomacy without the credible threat of military consequences will have any effect. These irresponsible individuals seem to prefer avoiding conversation about such dangers, or else try to downplay them. It is much less frightening to talk about gender pronouns than China's preparations for war.
The organizers of the anti-government protests in Israel, backed by the Biden Administration, are apparently trying to "create anarchy" to force another election.
"I call on the leaders of the opposition: stop this," said Netanyahu. "Stop deliberately plunging the country into anarchy. Come to your senses and show responsibility and leadership".
"There is a new reality in Israel," writes Rabbi Joseph Gabbay, "and the left is incapable of coming to terms with this new reality."
"The demography and ideology of the nation has moved to the right, aspiring to a society based on traditional Jewish heritage and moral values. This is an irrefutable reality. The left which has run the country for decades with the help of an autocratic Supreme Court and which believed without an iota of a doubt that the country belonged to them, and only to them, cannot swallow the idea that the party is over... It is time to calm down and respect the voice of the majority."
According to Lee Smith:
"The anti-Bibi coup looks and feels like the anti-Trump operation because it's run by the same people—the Obama operatives who hunted Trump and now run the Biden White House. It was Obama's spy chiefs who fabricated Russiagate, the politically funded smear campaign designed to destabilize the Trump presidency. And it's Obama's State Department that created the machinery to take down Netanyahu nearly a decade ago by funding anti-Bibi election campaigns with U.S. taxpayer dollars."
Iran must not be allowed to get the bomb -- or even "maybe just a few".
Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
+++++++++++++
When Israeli leaders concentrate on the issues …
... there comes a bit of progress in the Knesset.. And less of what can be called BDS, Bibi Derangement Syndrome. Op-ed.
(JNS) Some good political news from Israel—yes, there actually is some. On the question of whether terrorists with blood on their hands should be sentenced to death, the Knesset is working like a legislature whose parties are motivated by ideas, not a slave-like commitment to a party and not by Bibi Derangement Syndrome.
The coalition has given its members the right to vote their conscience, and lo and behold, they are. The result is that a haredi coalition party is opposing the coalition’s position because they believe it contravenes Jewish law. And Yisrael Beyteinu, normally devoted above all other things to bringing down the coalition, is voting with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The haredi party, United Torah Judaism, is taking a position normally associated with the left: That judges, at least today, simply don’t have the right to order the execution of another human being.
For many on the nonreligious left, the taking of human life is always wrong, no matter what heinous act was committed by the human whose life is at stake. For the UTJ Knesset members, the position is driven by the halakhic principle that, since the Temple was destroyed, Jewish courts don’t have the right to order execution. The claim is that when the Messiah comes and the Temple is rebuilt, there will be such power; but until then, the Jewish people lives without sufficient connection to Heaven to be entitled to order the death of another human being. So UTJ will be voting with Labor and the other left-wing parties that always oppose the death penalty.
UTJ’s votes are being replaced by a somewhat unlikely source. Yisrael Beyteinu, Avigdor Liberman’s party, is on the right on many issues with two enormous exceptions: It’s fundamentally opposed to governmental support for haredi yeshivah students and their exemption from army service; and Liberman, the party’s head, is opposed to Netanyahu’s being prime minister (or anything else in an Israeli government).
But on the issue of executing terrorists with blood on their hands, Liberman’s party’s right-wing principles trump his antipathy to Bibi. Often in Israel, a party out of power is so eager to make the ruling coalition fall that it will vote against even legislation that its members and constituents believe in because they hope that the legislation’s failure will destabilize their political adversaries. But Yisrael Beyteinu attaches sufficient importance to the imposition of the death penalty on terrorists who’ve killed Israelis that its members will vote in support of this coalition-backed bill.
The actions of these two parties suggest what’s possible in the Knesset today on other issues: people voting their conscience—not voting to advance their own careers—yields legislative results. The issue is independent of whether one thinks the death penalty should be imposed—a result that is, at this point, still quite a ways away. And in any event, the legislation would only authorize and not require a sentencing court to order execution. Whether that will ever result in the actual carrying out of a death penalty order is a question that will take quite a long time to answer even if the legislation ultimately passes.
The willingness of these parties to vote according to their principles is a lonely beacon in Israel right now. As is clear from this video collecting their prior statements, the parties opposing judicial reform are led by people, like Yair Lapid and Gideon Sa’ar, who have in the past made clear their belief that the Israeli Supreme Court needs to be reined in, and that democracy is offended by the current rule allowing justices to strike down any Knesset law simply because the judges think the law “unreasonable.” Yet these men are so eager to see the Netanyahu government fail and fall that they are leading demonstrations not only against the law but against any negotiation about any aspect of the law unless the coalition first surrenders. After that, these minority leaders, who lost the last election, might then deign to talk.
UTJ and Yisrael Beyteinu show the way forward. Israel has, to put it mildly, grave problems. If its leaders vote on the issues—and not on personalities or on how a vote will affect their careers—then the Knesset will wind up taking principled actions that are chosen by people giving serious thought to what is best for the country and not for themselves.
Jerome M. Marcus is a lawyer and a fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem.
+++++++++++++
How I Marketed Trump's Middle East Policy
with Len Khodorkovsky
Just as marketing has a key role in business development, so it does in U.S. foreign policy, as Ben Rhodes made notoriously known in selling the Iran deal. Marketing also played a significant part in the Trump administration's Middle East accomplishments, including the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the Abraham Accords, and the "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran's regime. How did these efforts come into being? What did marketing accomplish? What general conclusions can be drawn?
Monday, March 6, 2023
1:00pm - 1:30pm. ET
Online:
Click here to join just before 1:00pm ET
+++++++++++++
Israelis just can't stop doing good. This week's life-enhancing medical advances include discoveries to prevent the brain from stopping prematurely, due to Alzheimer's or cancer. They include a medication that cannot be stopped by the skin, and systems that ensure the elderly won't stop enjoying life in their own home. There are devices that mean you no longer need to stop off at a dentist or an eye specialist for a check-up. And Israel's medical teams certainly haven't stopped saving lives in Turkey and Ukraine.
There's no stopping Israelis from protecting the environment with renewable fuels, or preserving rare species. Pests, diseases and the weather can't stop Israeli indoor cultivation of valuable plants. And there is no stop to Israel's amazing water technology developments and help given to drought-afflicted countries.
There is no stopping Israel's economy, and Tel Aviv, the city that never stops, has won acclaim for its unstoppable cycling ecosystem.
Finally, a New Jersey couple showed that extreme age doesn't have to stop you from making the move to Israel. And there is no handicap that can stop Israeli children from enjoying the Jewish festivals.
In the 5th Mar 23 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
- A new Israeli treatment avoids risk of damage to vital organs.
- Israeli medics are still working in Turkiye (Turkey) and Ukraine.
- NASA are assisting Israel on two groundbreaking space projects.
- Two Israeli developments in generating hydrogen - the fuel of the future.
- Israel’s national water company is working in seven Argentinian provinces.
- Two international gold medals for Israeli judokas.
- No Israeli child is left behind on the Jewish festival of Purim.
- Click here to see the 26th Feb newsletter on IsraelSeen, Ruthfully Yours with a diverse message, IsraPundit and United With Israel with extra feature on Medical. Also (TY Sandra) in German here plus (TY Stuart Palmer) posted here. Also (TY Zachy) in Hebrew here plus (TY Stuart Palmer) posted here. Please pass on this newsletter to German and Hebrew-speaking contacts. Also (TY Esty) please visit the https://www.facebook.com/
verygoodnewsIL Facebook page.
- Please click here, to donate (a small or large amount) to help me publicize VeryGoodNewsIsrael.
- If someone wishes to be added to the free email subscription list, they should either click here or send a request (with their name) to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.
com
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
A new target for protection against Alzheimer’s. Researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University found a new approach for treating Alzheimer’s disease. The developed a new molecule VBIT-4 that prevents the over-expression of the protein VDAC1, which controls mitochondrial activity and cell life and death.
https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/
https://www.jpost.com/health-
Protein trigger for brain cancer. Tel Aviv University researchers have discovered that the secreted protein LCN2 facilitates the formation of aggressive brain metastases (secondary cancers). In lab tests, reducing LCN2 in the blood halts the advance of the inflammatory process that causes tumors in the brain.
https://www.jpost.com/health-
https://www.nature.com/
Medication that gets directly to the problem. (TY WIN) Israel’s LDS Biotech has developed the Lyotropic treatment delivery system. Medications can be applied directly to the problem area without causing damage to organs such as the liver. It was successful in compassionate use and clinical (human) trials are being planned.
https://www.israel21c.org/
Computer-designed antibodies. AION Labs, the Israeli innovation lab for startups (see here previously), has helped launch DenovAI – a startup that will harness artificial intelligence and biophysics to build a platform for computer-designed antibodies from the start, geared to the development of new treatments.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
A virtual dentist. Israel’s Grin is literally changing the face of dental visits. Why waste time with a face-to-face appointment with your dentist or orthodontist when they just want to see your teeth. Sign up; send off for the Grin Scope; download the Grin App; scan your teeth; and schedule a virtual meeting with your dentist.
https://www.israel21c.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Scanning the eye in Massachusetts. Israel’s AEYE Health (see here previously) is trialing its AI-based retinal camera on 500 patients at UMass (University of Massachusetts Amhurst) medical school. The camera detects retinopathy (eye disease) and is operated by a family doctor or nurse, without the need for an eye specialist.
https://www.umassmed.edu/news/
AI to help you live longer. Several Israeli startups are involved in helping people to live longer. Longevity.AI has developed a comprehensive system for hospitals, health funds, and other medical organizations that allows them to track and monitor the health of their patients in real-time. It says it is never too early to grow younger.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Keeping an eye on your loved ones. Israel’s SenterCare claims to have the only un-obstructive technology that can differentiate between people in the same home. It notifies about safety incidents, with AI to predict falls and recommend interventions. Its aim is to preserve and prolong the senior’s quality of life and reduce health costs.
https://www.sentercare.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?
ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL
Special help for rescue teams. The speedy response of Israel’s teams sent to rescue victims of the Turkish earthquake was primarily due to members of the IDF Special In Uniform program. The highly trained soldiers with physical and mental disabilities and autism worked all hours to prepare medical and emergency equipment.
https://www.
AI English lessons for Jerusalem Arabs. The Jerusalem Municipality has engaged Israeli AI language platform MagniLearn (see here previously) to teach English to its Arab residents. MagniLean’s "linguistic engine" understands a student’s weaknesses (e.g., grammar, reading, etc.,) and adapts its lessons accordingly.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-
PA Arab woman plays in Israeli basketball league. (TY Hazel) Mirna Sayeh, 22, from Bethlehem becomes the first female Palestinian Arab basketball player in the Israeli Premier League. She joined the ASA Jerusalem women’s basketball team and was expected to play in the match against Elitzur Ramla.
https://www.archysport.com/
https://www.ynetnews.com/
The humanitarian work of Sheba hospital. If you thought all Israeli medics had left Turkey and Ukraine, this video will inform you otherwise. Sheba has mobile medical units travelling around Ukraine. Sheba staff are working in Turkish hospitals. They are also bringing back wounded and injured to Israel for rehabilitation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Saving the African wild donkey. (TY TPS) Around 500 African wild donkeys exist in the world, and Ramat Gan Safari Park in Tel Aviv is a key player in keeping the species from extinction. The park recently celebrated the birth of Broko, which translates to “blessing” in the Amharic language.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/
On your bike, Tel Aviv. (TY Nevet) Normally anti-Israel CNN has ranked Tel Aviv one of the world’s most bike-friendly cities. It says, “Israel’s sophisticated, Bauhaus-styled city on the Mediterranean Sea has the makings of a bicycling paradise.” Meanwhile, the Israel21c article lists Yalla Bike’s favorite bike-lane routes.
https://edition.cnn.com/
https://www.israel21c.org/the-
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
11.8% renewable. For the first time ever, Israel has exceeded 10% in connected renewable energy production facilities. The Electricity Authority reported 4,765 megawatts of renewable energy facilities installed at the end of 2022 - an annual production capacity of 11.8% compared to 9.4% in 2021.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-
NASA to assist Israel’s moonshot. The Israel Space Agency (ISA) has signed an agreement with NASA to cooperate on the SpaceIL Beresheet2 lunar Mission. NASA will participate in the selection of landing sites and join the mission’s science team. It is also expected to coordinate with the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
https://www.gov.il/en/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
NASA to launch Israeli space telescope. NASA will launch Israel’s first space telescope – the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite, or ULTRASAT – into high-Earth orbit in early 2026. The telescope is expected to revolutionize detection and analysis of cosmic events such as neutron star mergers and supernova explosions.
https://www.
BGU’s “Remarkable 3” virtual event. Israel’s Ben Gurion University is holding a free virtual experience on 23rd Apr (1pm ET, 8pm Israel). It celebrates BGU’s latest innovative breakthroughs in the fields of 3D printed science, cancer research, biomedical engineering and much more. Hosted by celebrity Dr Mike Varshavski.
https://americansforbgu.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Cultivating plants in the lab. (TY UWI) Like growing animal protein in labs instead of farms, plants can be grown from cells in labs instead of fields. They are protected from the weather, pests, diseases, and pollutants. Israel’s ReaGenics has 60 bioreactors producing valuable plants (e.g., saffron) and vital plant molecules.
https://www.israel21c.org/
Cocoa in Israel. (TY WIN) Celleste Bio (see here previously) is another Israeli startup using cell cultivation of plants – this time cocoa. It says one of its 800L bioreactors can produce as much as one hectare of cocoa trees.
https://www.israel21c.org/
https://www.trendlines.com/
Accidental anti-bacteria discovery. Israeli Yehoshua Maor was researching natural treatments for pancreatic cancer at his Phytor lab when he discovered a plant resin that killed bacteria spores. He founded Resorcix (see here previously). Phytor, however, continues to research natural solutions for cancer and brain diseases.
https://www.israel21c.org/a-
Turning barren desert soil into fertile wine country. (TY Nevet) Israel’s Negev winemakers pioneer growing techniques that could be adopted widely across the Middle East. The Merage Foundation aims to create a Negev wine “appellation”. Israeli vineyards mentioned in this article include Galai and Yatir,
https://circuit.news/2023/02/
Purifying global water supplies. This article features Atlantium Technologies (see here previously) which has installed its patented Hydro-Optic UV technology in 3,000+ locations in nearly 70 countries. Its systems are used by Coca-Cola, Schweppes, Pepsi, Carlsberg, Tuborg, Kraft, Canada Dry, Unilever, and many more.
https://nocamels.com/2023/02/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Handling too much water. Israel’s SMBIT (see here previously) is installing wireless sensors in the Israeli city of Herzliya to prevent flash flooding. The sensors provide the municipality with constant updates on what’s happening in its underground drainage system.
https://nocamels.com/2023/02/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Robot window washers. (TY Diane M) Nice article comparing the two leading robotic window cleaning companies - both Israeli. Skyline Robotics (see here previously) and Verobotics (see here previously).
https://www.axios.com/2023/02/
Lenovo Cybersecurity Center. Lenovo™ has established the Lenovo Cybersecurity Innovation Center (LCIC) in Beer Sheva, in cooperation with Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. It follows the launch of the Fujitsu Cybersecurity Center of Excellence in Israel in 2021 (see here previously).
https://news.lenovo.com/
https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/
Israel’s most advanced data center. (TY Amir) Israel’s Techtonic is investing over $140 million to build one of Israel's largest data centers. The 15,000 sqm underground facility in Beit Shemesh aims to be completed by mid-2025. It is intended to be resilient against malfunction and missiles.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Hydrogen powder. Israel’s Electriq-Global (see here previously) is to build a manufacturing plant in the Port of Amsterdam to turn hydrogen gas into powder. The powder can then be transported and then turned into electricity by Electriq Global’s special dehydrogenation system. The plant will cost some 50-million Euros.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Jerusalem Press Club Tour. (TY Sharon) My Real Jerusalem Streets friend Sharon went straight from the OurCrowd summit to a tour of nine Israeli startups. It included Beit Shemesh’s Bioplasmer (biodegradable plant pots); QD-SOL (Solar-powered splitting hydrogen from water); Autonomous Pivot; and Rewind.
http://rjstreets.com/2023/02/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://qd-sol.com/ https://www.youtube.com/
The last word in AI. This must be the “final frontier” in Artificial Intelligent text generation. Israel’s Empathy (see here previously) has developed “Finding Words” – a tool that helps mourners honor their loved ones by composing the initial draft of a thoughtful and comprehensive obituary.
https://www.israel21c.org/ai-
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
Fitch still gives Israel an A+. Ratings agency Fitch affirmed Israel’s A+ credit rating with a stable outlook citing the country’s “diversified, resilient, and high value-added economy and strong external finances”.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
International tourism exhibition. (TY Hazel) The International Mediterranean Tourism Market at Tel Aviv Expo featured a record 750 exhibitors, 158 booths, ambassadors, and delegations from over 40 countries including Morocco, Dubai, Japan, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, Italy, Montenegro, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan.
https://time.news/the-
Morocco invests in Israel. Casablanca-based VC UM6P Ventures is seeking Israeli technologies to help scale up biotech solutions in Africa. It has invested in Israel’s ClimateCrop which edits crop genes to store more carbon and energy, to produce higher yields. Also Biotic (see here) bio-plastic polymers from sea algae.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
https://www.climate-crop.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?
First flight over Oman. The El Al pilots of the very first Israeli flight over Oman, travelling from Tel Aviv to Bangkok said, “The Israeli flag will fly over Oman for the first time. Our flight time will be shortened by two and a half hours, which is very significant. We are very happy and excited to be here.”
https://www.
Israel and Taiwan tech ties. (TY UWI & I24 News) These two tiny countries pack a punch when it comes to technology. Israeli Arab Yoseph Haddad explores the Israel-Taiwan tech relations in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Water to Argentina. Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, has signed agreements in Argentina, worth some NIS 11 million, to build comprehensive plans for the water sector in the provinces Catamarca, La Rioja, Rio Negro, Formosa and Santa Cruz. These add to previous plans with provinces Mendoza and San Juan.
https://www.jpost.com/
Israeli jewelry business is sparkling. Israel’s jewelry industry is on an upsurge. Worldwide exports totaled $873 million in 2022, compared with $791 million in 2021 and just $552 million in 2020. The main countries to which Israel exports are the US (65%), India, the UK, Sweden, Turkey, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/
Things are not as bad as the media portrays. Financial expert Aaron Katsman experienced the recent OurCrowd Global Investment Summit in Jerusalem and sums up the current investment situation.
https://www.jpost.com/
Exits, mergers and acquisitions. US Molekule has acquired Israel’s Aura Smart Air for $8 million.
Investment in Israeli startups to 5/3/23: Hexa raised $20.5 million; Gable raised $12 million; Quak raised $12 million;
CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT & SPORT`
Music from Kviv to Israel. The Kviv Virtuosi troupe brings classical music to Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba, Ness Ziona and Herzliya (Mar 4-10). They will perform works by Vivaldi, Grieg, De Falla and Isaac Albeniz. Also, Jewish Ukrainian composers including composer in residence Alexey Shor, who made Aliyah in 1991.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-
https://kupatbravo.co.il/
Backstreet Boys are back. (TY Hazel) The Backstreet Boys will perform in Israel for the third time at Live Park in Rishon Lezion on 13th May. Their last sell-out concert at the same venue in 2018 was to 16.000 fans.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/
Guns & Roses. American hard rock hall of famers Guns N’ Roses. including Slash and Axl Rose, will be returning to Israel for a show at Park Hayarkon in Tel Aviv, on 5th Jun. Their previous concert at the same site in 2017 attracted some 60,000 fans. https://www.jpost.com/israel-
Why Israel is the most kid-friendly destination. I don’t normally include non-news articles, but this was too cute to leave out. https://www.israel21c.org/10-
Swimming championships. (TY Hazel) The Israeli city of Netanya will host the World Aquatics Junior Swimming Championships (4 - 9 Sep). Over 600 promising young swimmers from 100+ national federations are expected to compete at the Wingate Institute - Israel's National Centre for Physical Education and Sport.
https://www.fina.org/
“King” Solomon scores in the UK. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Manor Solomon scored twice in two games to earn consecutive wins for his UK Premier League soccer club Fulham. The Israeli midfielder is on loan from Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk. He escaped last year via Poland to Israel to evade the war in Ukraine.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-
Golden judokas. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Raz Hershko won gold in the 78kg women’s event at the Judo Grand Slam in Tel Aviv. The previous day, Israel’s Sagi Muki won the 81kg men’s event (see videos). Of the other Israelis, Tamar Malca won a silver and Timna Nelson Levy won a bronze.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
THE JEWISH STATE
See Israel through Sephardic & Mizrahi eyes. Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) is hosting (May 29 – Jun 5) what it believes to be the first-ever trip to Israel for those who want to experience the country through the lens of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. Registration is open until April 1.
https://www.jns.org/group-
https://www.j2adventures.com/
Israeli-American women reconnect to Israel. Gvanim Ramon is designed for Israeli American women living in the US for several years, as well as for the second generation of Israeli immigrants to the US. It strengthens their connection to Israel and Jewish identity. It organizes delegations to Israel in Spring (15-23 May) and Fall.
https://www.gvanimramon.org/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Purim costumes for mobility challenged children. Israeli charity Beit Issie Shapiro and the Holon Institute of Technology have partnered to design adaptive costumes so that children with mobility issues can still celebrate the Jewish festival of Purim this coming week. Each design comes with a 3-min instruction video for parents.
https://www.israel21c.org/diy-
https://en.beitissie.org.il/
Never too late to move to Israel. Last week a 100-year-old Israeli man got married. This week 101-year-old Sandy Goldstein and his 97-year-old wife Rosalie made Aliyah to Netanya from New Jersey. They join their daughter Risa, five grandchildren and their spouses, and 12 great grandchildren, all of whom live in Israel.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/
https://www.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Woke Wrecking Machine
By Victor Davis Hanson:
Almost everything that has followed from the woke mass hysteria gripping the nation since 2020 has proved disastrous.
Wokeism destroys meritocracy in favor of forced equality of result - history’s prescription for civilizational decline.
If we continue with the woke hiring of administrators, air traffic controllers, ground crews, pilots, and rail workers, there will be even more news of disasters and near-miss airline crashes.
Wokeness demands a McCarthyite suppression of free expression. No wonder a woke FBI recently hired out social media censors to suppress stories it deemed unhelpful.
Soviet-style, wokeism mandates strict ideological party-line narratives under the cover of “science.” No wonder a woke government lied that requiring vaccines would prevent both infection and infectiousness.
Woke substitutes race for class in its eternal neo-Marxist quest to divide permanently the nation along racial lines, between victims and victimizers.
Yet wokeism recently has embarrassed itself as never before.
Take the COVID pandemic.
The Department of Energy has joined the FBI and is now attributing the origins of the pandemic to a leak of a likely engineered virus from the top-security virology lab in Wuhan, China.
Wokesters had long suppressed that reality, demonizing any who rejected its orthodox lies and spoke a larger truth: A dystopic China is not our global partner in greening the planet. Criticizing Stalinist China is not “racist.” China is not building a progressive society that is a model for others.
The ongoing environmental catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio, following the train derailment revealed more woke moral bankruptcy.
Ostensibly the ensuing toxic spill and noxious plume have poisoned a poor and working-class small town. It should have galvanized the old Democratic Party that once voiced loud support for all green causes and championed the lower American classes.
But woke ended all that—substituting racial chauvinism for class concerns and ideology for genuine worry over the environment.
Woke dogma mandates that pollution and poverty are no longer concerns—if they affect the white poor who are stereotyped collectively as privileged victimizers.
Wokesters insisted that California is the greatest casualty of “climate change” defined as permanent drought.
Purported climate change required radical new bureaucratic rules and antidemocratic mandates over irrigation supplies, ground water, and contracted water deliveries from public reservoirs.
But then it rained. And it snowed. And it became terribly cold in supposedly scorching California.
Southern California is blanketed in snow.
Even so, for much of this cold, wet winter, state officials continued to claim the man-made drought was in full force. But finally, the most recent frigid, wet weather strangled the woke drought—and with it the credibility of our climate change Cassandras.
Americans sympathize with Ukraine’s plight as Vladimir Putin seeks to destroy its autonomy. But woke brooked no deviation from the party line that Ukraine’s Volodomyr Zelenskyy is a saint, while Russia is near bankrupt due to sanctions, and doomed to lose the war.
Accordingly, the United States was obligated to give Ukraine a veritable blank check given Kyiv’s commitment to freedom. Zelenskyy’s team now even talks of a victorious Ukrainian armored counteroffensive into Moscow’s Red Square.
This week, however, we are learning the Russian economy is nearly as strong now as it was before the war. It has mobilized 700,000 troops to ensure that eastern Ukraine becomes a Verdun-like killing field where tens of thousands more will be ground up.
Ukraine bars dissidents and maintains a government media monopoly. And the more Joe Biden promises another $2-3 billion in biweekly aid, the more Zelenskyy acts as if it is a pittance given what supposedly stingy Americans should be capable of supplying.
Meanwhile, at home, new woke protocols mandate race as essential rather than incidental to the human experience. Supposedly such fixations will heal racial wounds.
Under the new reparatory and compensatory diversity, equity, and inclusion rules, those deemed non-white were to be hired and admitted to colleges in greater numbers than their demographics. Even the old mandated proportional representation quotas were no longer enough.
But racial chauvinism, nonstop talk of reparations, and the new campus segregation have not resulted in better racial relations.
Polls show that there are greater racial tensions than ever before.
Data on interracial and hate crimes show even sharper racial disproportionalities. The incidence of both black violent criminal perpetrators and black crime victims are near historical highs.
Woke policies of no cash bail, downgrading felonies, and no jail time only spiked violent lawlessness.
Our elite universities are now fully woke. Almost weekly an embarrassing story further erodes their credibility and reputation.
Ridiculous lists of taboo words are issued on woke campuses, barring incendiary words like “American” and “immigrant.”
Bragging of segregated dorms, graduations, and safe spaces recalls Jim Crow, not woke racial utopias.
Grades and standards are deemed counterrevolutionary, even as incompetent graduates increasingly fail to impress employers.
Someday wokeism will disappear because it is inherently nihilistic and cannibalistic.
But in the meantime, Americans should end it now before it ends America first.
No comments:
Post a Comment