Bennett "The Mediator" in Moscow

 Video Of The Week – Bennett Visits Putin - https://tinyurl.com/32p9t9yt

For the full article by Pesach Benson go to- https://tinyurl.com/565yyatf

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett returned to Israel on Sunday morning after making a surprise visit to Moscow to discuss the Russia-Ukraine crisis with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

From Moscow, Bennett headed to Berlin where he updated German chancellor Olaf Scholz before flying back to Israel in time to lead Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting.

Israel has historically kept a low diplomatic profile in international power games. So despite days of buzz about possible Israeli mediation — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been calling for it — Saturday night’s news still stunned Israelis.

An Israeli premier was the first Western leader to meet with Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine. The mission had American and European blessings. Underscoring the gravity of the gravity of the situation, the Sabbath-observant Prime Minister departed for Moscow on Saturday morning.

It’s too soon to know if Bennett’s trip will bear any fruit. Certain aspects of his three-hour meeting at the Kremlin may not be known for years, if ever.

But the talks clearly have significant implications for Israel and the Jewish people. Here are four takeaways.

1. Israeli diplomacy is on the map.

No European country is suited to mediate. Russia is their neighbor. The European Union’s decision to send arms to Ukraine is the first time it has ever sent weapons to a conflict zone. Finnish public opinion suddenly supports joining NATO — which prompted menacing comments from Moscow to Helsinki.

Even ever-neutral Switzerland is freezing the assets of Russian individuals and organizations on the EU blacklist.

Spearheading an effort to end the war in Ukraine carries great rewards and great risks. Israel has opened the door on a new level of international diplomacy, which reflects three particular changes.

• Buoyed by the Abraham Accords, Israel has more secure standing in the Mideast.

• American and European trust in Israeli mediation seems to reflect that Washington, Paris and Berlin don’t believe that so many world problems will disappear if Israel would just make peace with the Palestinians.

• Israel’s insistence on striking Iranian targets in Syria — despite Moscow’s occasional objections — has apparently earned Putin’s grudging respect.

Those are all reasons to be optimistic.

2. Israel will be better poised to evacuate Jews from the Ukraine.

The biggest perk of being mediator is the extra access and leverage it provides.

If Russia is trying to extricate itself from the conflict, what better goodwill gesture than to create humanitarian corridors and safe zones for refugees — including Jews?

And if Russia proves to be insincere, having Putin’s ear will be all the more important if an emergency evacuation of Jews proves necessary. According to Haaretz, Israel had contingency plans in the late 1980s for an emergency airlift of large numbers of Jews from the Soviet Union. Those plans are being dusted off and updated now.

Israel’s last major airlift was Operation Solomon, a covert operation in which 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were evacuated within 36 hours amid a civil war in 1991.

3. Israel will be better poised to influence Iran nuclear deal.

Israel’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program were never taken seriously by the West. That could change.

That’s because Moscow created a new linkage between the Iranian nuclear deal and its own interests. Specifically, Russia wants written guarantees that its own trade and military cooperation with Iran won’t be impacted by sanctions the West is levying in response to the Russian invasion. Washington and Tehran panned Moscow’s demand as “unrelated” and “not helpful.”

But the U.S. is relying on Russian help to finalize the nuclear agreement. That could give Israel room to exploit improvements in the deal.

Putin also has leverage over Iran’s presence in Syria — when it chooses to exercise it. Once upon a time, in 2018, Russian officials talked of keeping Iran and its proxies at 85 km (53 miles) from the Israeli border.

Iran has also endangered Russians by smuggling weapons through the Syrian port of Latakia. Perhaps Putin will take Tehran’s recklessness more seriously now that Israel has his attention.

4. This is Bennett’s chance to shine.

When news broke from the Kremlin, plenty of Israelis imagined Benjamin Netanyahu eating his heart out. After all, It wasn’t so long ago that Netanyahu’s re-election campaign prominently featured him with Putin and then-President Donald Trump.

The campaign’s message was powerful. Netanyahu was the only heavyweight Israeli capable of standing up for Israel’s interests with the world’s super powers.

Yes, Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid have paid historic visits to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. But they were building on the Abraham accords which were finalized on Netanyahu’s watch.

Bennett put himself in this position by navigating between U.S. and popular Israeli demands for stronger criticism of Russia with sensitivity to Jerusalem and Moscow’s security coordination in Syria. Whether or not Netanyahu could’ve done it too is beside the point. Bennett pulled it off.

Mediating the Ukraine crisis is Bennett’s accomplishment and his opportunity to put a unique stamp on Israeli and international diplomacy.

What will that look like? Will he succeed?

Only time will tell.

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Ukrainian Jews Arrive in Israel

 Video Of The Week -Ukraine's Jews Face Russian Attacks -  https://tinyurl.com/2p87arc2

An estimated 10,000 Ukrainian Jews will arrive in Israel in the coming weeks, according to Israeli government officials.

By Zvika Klein

Israel's government estimates that around 10,000 Ukrainians will immigrate to Israel in the coming weeks, government officials told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday. 

The Ministry of Immigration and Absorption would not comment on this estimate, but responded saying: "The Ministry of Immigration and Absorption is prepared for the emergency immigration of Ukrainian Jews, and in view of the escalation in Ukraine, the ministry, headed by Minister Tamano Shata, is preparing all sectors to assist and absorb any Jew seeking to immigrate to Israel."

"In light of the drastic increase in applications for immigration from Ukraine and in view of the security situation in the region", the ministry said that Tamano-Shata and Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman agreed on providing additional budgets to actualize the emergency immigration operation from Ukraine.

The Ministry of Immigration and Absorption convened an emergency discussion last Thursday during which Tamano-Shata assembled an inter-ministerial team to remove bureaucratic hurdles for potential olim and to issue immigration visas digitally, in light of a drastic increase in applications. This is in addition to reinforcements in the Absorption Division at Ben Gurion Airport and the cooperation with the IDF.

The Ministry concluded, "We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel - your home."

In the entire year of 2021 a total of 13,006 Jews made Aliyah from Eastern Europe to Israel. Therefore, 10,000 immigrants from Ukraine in one month is substantial and dramatic.

 As revealed by the Jerusalem Post, Israel offers fleeing Jews from Ukraine free shelter and meals. The Ukrainian Jews will be offered to stay in hotels for a time of two weeks till one month – with possibilities to extend this time further.

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Amnesty International’s Obsessive Fixation with Israel

 Video Of The Week -Whoopi Gets Whipped -  https://tinyurl.com/ytp45dpa      

For the full article from JCPA by Alan Baker, go to https://tinyurl.com/ha2mppcz

·       The January 2022 Amnesty International report alleging that Israel practices apartheid against the Palestinians reveals a bitter fixation,  extreme prejudice, and blatant hatred of Israel, even to the extent of questioning Israel’s very legitimacy and right to exist.

·       The Amnesty report willfully and deliberately distorts and misrepresents the circumstances surrounding the historic development of the State of Israel. Moreover, it ignores, sidelines, and downplays the existential dangers that Israel continues to face from its neighbors since its establishment, including ongoing Palestinian terror directed against Israel’s civilian population and territory.

·        Amnesty alleges that Israel “coerces Palestinians into enclaves within the State of Israel…and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” In every multicultural society throughout the world, people of shared cultures and languages live together in their own communities as part of their national whole. This is a natural, social inclination and such social fragmentation is not apartheid.

·        Amnesty deliberately misled its readers by claiming that Israel was “forcefully evicting Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem in order to transfer Jewish settlers.” The issue is a long-running, civil real-estate litigation that has been under scrutiny in Israel’s courts since 1972. It involves competing property claims by Jewish owners and Palestinian tenants and squatters.

·        The Amnesty report presents the flawed claim that six “prominent Palestinian civil society organizations” are innocent human rights organizations, manipulating readers into believing that Israel randomly and illegally outlawed such organizations. Yet the Israeli decision to outlaw NGOs with direct connections to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror organization was in full accordance with international law and obligations set out in international counter-terrorism conventions.

·        South African Judge Richard L. Goldstone, who headed a UN Human Rights Council investigation of the 2008-2009 Gaza War, wrote in an article in the New York Times on October 31, 2011, entitled “Israel and the Apartheid Slander”: “In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the Rome Statute.” The central elements of apartheid, and specifically the “intent to maintain an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group,” simply do not exist.

·        The Amnesty report repeats the phrase “occupied Palestinian territory (OPT)” as a given, ignoring the historical and legal claim by Israel and the Jewish People to the territory. Yet the “West Bank” territory of Judea and Samaria has never been determined by any authoritative and binding legal document, treaty, resolution, or declaration to be “Palestinian.” On the contrary, the territory is subject to a dispute, the settlement of which is to be negotiated between the parties.

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Robots Eye the Spine

 Video Of The Week -  President Isaac Herzog in UAE  ttps://tinyurl.com/2p9ecef4

For the full article By Avi Jorisch go to: https://tinyurl.com/54xvx4kn

Medtronic, an Irish-American medical device company, announced last Friday that it was purchasing Israel’s Mazor Robotics for a hefty $1.64 billion, the biggest exit ever for an Israeli biotech company. Mazor’s signature piece of technology, a robotic-assisted procedure, represents the future gold standard of spine surgery, which is now poised to be implemented globally. Israeli innovations are improving the lives of millions of Americans and other people around the world, and this technology’s proven track record should encourage more American hospitals to adopt it.

Until about 15 years ago, spinal surgery was a lot like grasping in the dark. In order to even understand what procedure was necessary, doctors had to open up the spine. But a leading Israeli robotics professor, in conjunction with the Cleveland Clinic, developed a procedure that uses advanced artificial intelligence to help doctors perform previously unthinkable surgeries. 

Prof. Moshe Shoham teaches at the Technion, the so-called MIT of Israel. In the late 1990s, Shoham began studying the spine because of its critical role in human mechanics, with the idea that the latest robotic technology could help doctors in the operating room. One of the first things he learned about spinal surgery is that it can be a nerve-racking experience not only for patients, but also for doctors, who often place large screws into small slots in the vertebrae by hand. If the doctor is slightly off, there is a high risk that the patient will be paralyzed for life. These types of procedures often require extensive tissue dissection and can result in blood loss and infection.

But Shoham believed that if a more accurate procedure could be developed, the probability of swift recovery would increase. While researching the issue, he was shocked to discover that during about two to three percent of spinal surgeries patients suffered nerve damage, which can result in weakness, muscle atrophy, twitching and paralysis. To his mind, that was unacceptably high.

In 2000, Shoham approached the Technion’s incubator – whose mission is to provide startups with operational support, management training and office space – and started a company, today known as Mazor Robotics. After four years of research and development, he began testing a robot capable of assisting surgeons in the operating room. He started with cadavers at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel and the Cleveland Clinic in the United States. Shoham and his team set out to prove that their invention could reduce operating-room time, minimize invasive surgeries, reduce the risk of infection and blood loss, and expedite recovery. The system wasn’t meant to replace surgeons, but to help them achieve better results.

By the end of 2004, not only did Mazor have a fully working product called SpineAssist, but it had been approved for sale by health authorities in Europe and the United States. “I was really astonished,” says Sho - ham. “We got it quite early.”

SHOHAM AND HIS PARTNERS created a unique imaging system. Prior to surgery, the patient undergoes a CT scan of the spine. On the day of the procedure, doctors take another two X-rays of the spinal column, one from the back and another from the side. A technician then merges the two sets of images using SpineAssist’s algorithms to create a three-dimensional blueprint. This allows surgeons to accurately see the spine in a way that was never possible before. After examining and approving the system’s recommendations, the doctor implants the screws using Shoham’s robot, which can accurately insert a spinal implant and reduce the danger of damaging nerves and vital organs. Finally, the system directs surgeons to the exact spot where they need to operate.

The holes for the screws can be placed within one millimeter of the desired location – about one-fifth the width of a human hair. This accuracy enables surgeons to reduce the chances of damage to the spinal cord and blood vessels during the operation. “With the robot we can be very precise,” says Dr. Andrew Cannestra, a neurosurgeon at Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida, who specializes in minimally invasive procedures. “It’s difficult to get the screws into the bone because there’s just not that much real estate... The robot allows us to put the largest screw possible into the smallest space.”

The system also has the added benefit of lowering radiation exposure during surgery for both patients and surgical teams. According to Mazor, use of the robot means that surgeons can now carry out procedures they would previously never have attempted – from spinal fusion to biopsies for suspected tumors. Medical procedures will never be the same.

Mazor has continued to win over doctors and patients, one procedure at a time. More than a decade after it received permission to sell its product in the United States and Europe, surgeons around the world are performing over a hundred operations a week using its technology. And not one patient who has undergone a procedure with Mazor’s robot has been crippled or experienced any kind of nerve damage.

There are currently just under 100 US hospitals utilizing Mazor’s artificial intelligence. The robot’s success speaks for itself, and every major medical center that performs spine surgery would be wise to integrate the technology as quickly as possible.

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Ignoring Violence against Israelis

 Video Of The Week-Palestinian Peace Activist Speaks - https://tinyurl.com/4xmr2r7k

For the full article from Yisrael Hayom by David M. Weinberg go to; https://tinyurl.com/8vw2rntc

There has been a lot of kerfuffle lately about "settler violence" in Judea and Samaria, focusing on recent "settler rampages" in Huwara and Burin (south of Nablus) and attacks on Palestinians harvesting their olive crop.  The UN has an entire bureaucracy (the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA) devoted to cataloging the "precipitous rise in settler violence." It has a "Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967" who harps on "settler violence" non-stop, as well. The UN says that in the first ten months of 2021 (latest statistics available) there were 410 attacks by settlers against Palestinians – 302 attacks against property and 108 against individuals.

American Jewish groups have now joined the outcry against "settler violence" too, with the Anti-Defamation League, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Israel Policy Forum, National Council of Jewish Women, Rabbinical Assembly, Union for Reform Judaism, and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism writing recently to Prime Minister Bennett and his foreign and defense ministers to condemn these attacks. The seven groups called the attacks "terrorism and political violence" committed by Jewish Israeli extremists.

As Bennett said to The Jerusalem Post last week, "In my view, this violence by Jews, which does not reflect the half million normative Israeli citizens in Judea and Samaria, is shameful, and whoever does it wants to dismantle Israeli statehood… I will not allow this to continue." Indeed, in December he convened Israeli security chiefs and ordered them to use all the tools necessary to put an end to such violence.

Foreign Minister Lapid responded this week to the Jewish organizations, also assuring them that Israel is cracking down on violence against Palestinians. At the same time, Lapid warned that "we should not allow (reports of such violence) to be abused to tarnish the entire State of Israel or to be manipulated by those who seek to delegitimize the State of Israel."

According to an important new study published this week – which unsurprisingly was ignored by the global media, by the UN, by "human rights" NGOs, and even by American Jewish organizations – over the past year there were over 4,000 rock and bomb throwing incidents in Judea and Samaria, perpetrated by Palestinian extremists and terrorists against Israeli Jews.

These attacks included over 500 Molotov cocktail attacks (firebombs), leading to the injury of more than 150 Israelis. There was a 210% rise in rock throwing incidents in 2021 over 2020, and a 156% rise in bomb throwing incidents in 2021 over 2020.

Worse still – according to the study authors, Lt. Col. (res.) Yaron Buskila and Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch of "Habithonistim: Israel's Defense and Security Forum" – is that the Israeli prosecution and courts have done much too little to deter and punish Palestinian perpetrators of violence.

In 95% of the rock and bomb throwing cases brought before Israeli civilian and military courts in 2019-2020, the sentences handed down against perpetrators were far below the maximum sentences possible in Israeli law. Some sentences were miniscule, amounting only to days of incarceration.

Worse yet still is that not all Palestinian attackers were prosecuted. In 2020, only 21% of rock throwers (in reported and documented incidents) were indicted and prosecuted, and only 33% of bomb throwers were indicted and prosecuted.

Col. Hirsch, who was head of IDF military prosecution in Judea and Samaria until 2016, adds that Palestinian terrorists are incentivized twice over to commit acts of violence: once by weak Israeli prosecution, and once again by the Palestinian Authority's pay-for-slay program, which provides NIS 600 million a year in salaries for jailed terrorists and their families.

Col. (res.) Amir Avivi, CEO of Habithonistim, believes that the entire issue of "settler violence" has been blown out of proportion by ill-meaning NGOs and European governments, and this certainly this is true when compared to Palestinian attacks on Israelis. "Without meaning to diminish the ugliness of extremist attacks on Palestinians," he says, "300 or so attacks a year against Palestinian property and 100 attacks against individuals pales in comparison to 4,000 Palestinian rock and bomb attacks a year aimed at killing Israeli civilians!"

"And 300 attacks on property and 100 attacks against individuals committed by a few extremists at the fringes of a half-million-person strong and peaceful community of Israelis who live over the Green Line calculates to a level of violence that is lower than the level of violence (by Israelis against Israelis) that afflicts greater Tel Aviv."

Given such dangerous and escalating Palestinian violence, and given Israel's weak response to such violence, one would expect to hear (but disappointedly cannot hear) a call from American Jewish organizations for an Israeli crackdown.

In this vein, it is not late for liberal American Jewish organizations to pen another, more loving public letter to Israeli leaders. They might also want to write (and write first) to the American government, insisting that Washington use its aid levers to force an end to Palestinian attacks; so that Palestinian leaders terminate financial support for, and glorification of, terrorist attacks on Israelis.

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Amnesty International’s Bigoted Anti-Israel Report

 Video Of The Week - 98 Year Old Holocaust Survivor Speaks. https://tinyurl.com/2p887rxm 

For The Full Article go to “Camera” -  https://tinyurl.com/4zmets5v

Today Amnesty International released its new Report in which, following the lead of B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch, it attempts to make the case that Israel is an apartheid state. The report, titled “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: A Look Into Decades of Oppression and Domination,” had previously been distributed to journalists on an “embargo,” which expires today. Thus, we can expect to see multiple news outlets reporting on it today.

CAMERA was able to obtain an advance copy of the report, and has written a Detailed Article Debunking some of its many lies on our website. As we wrote there, the report repeatedly twists the facts to fit a preconceived and bigoted anti-Israel narrative, including by ignoring terror attacks against Israel that were the reason for the very security measures that Amnesty uses to malign Israel as apartheid.
 
In fact, the very first line of the report is a willful misquote of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Amnesty further distorts issues around land ownership in Mandatory Palestine, and even the nature of what it calls “mandate Palestine” itself. Amnesty even portrays Israel’s decision not to draft Israeli Arabs – who have a right to enlist in the IDF if they choose – as discriminatory.

Notably, in the originally circulated version of the report, Amnesty tipped its hand, writing, “this system of apartheid originated with the creation of Israel in May 1948…” and recommending the “dismantling this appalling system of apartheid.” After widespread condemnation, in the final English language version that was publicly released, Amnesty changed it to read, “this system of apartheid has been built and maintained over decades….” But the group’s meaning is still clear. Amnesty thinks the Jewish State needs to be dismantled.

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Unilever posts $26 Billion in losses since Boycotting of Judea and Samaria

 Video Of The Week-Israeli Startup Aims to Solve Traffic Jams-https://tinyurl.com/2p85am6w

For Full Article from JNS, go to: https://tinyurl.com/m7h2nt7w

Unilever’s stock has plunged 20.7% in the six months since it informed Avi Singer, the owner of Ben & Jerry’s Israel, that his contract was over unless he stopped selling the company’s ice cream in Judea and Samaria.

That amounts to a $26 billion loss, according to Channel 12 News, which first reported on the story. Losses amounted due to numerous factors including failing to reach profit targets.

“It doesn’t pay to boycott Israel,” tweeted Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked in response to the news of Unilever’s loss, quoting the book of Genesis: “I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you.”

In addition to primary sources of profit losses, Unilever has also absorbed withdrawals of investments, holdings and pension funds by dozens of U.S. states who have anti-boycott laws in place, such as New York, Illinois and Texas.

“This is a tremendous boost to the dogged struggle I am waging these days against Unilever’s unfounded demand not to see ice cream in all parts of Israel,” said Singer, according to the report.

The ice-cream manufacturer announced in July that it would be ending sales of its ice cream in “occupied Palestinian territory.”

The decision sparked backlash both from the Israeli government and Jewish organizations worldwide, with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stating that Ben & Jerry’s had “decided to brand itself as anti-Israel ice-cream.”

Bennett took the matter up with Unilever CEO Alan Jope, telling him on July 20 that the Jewish state was taking the move very seriously and warning that there would be “severe consequences. … [Israel] will take strong action against any boycott directed against its citizens.”

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan announced the same day that he had written to 35 U.S. governors noting that the decision by Ben & Jerry’s violated individual states’ anti-BDS legislation.

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