Israel Update 21.2.19

GAZA BORDER – VIOLENCE CONTINUES

 

Over the past few weeks, Gazans have been rioting every evening. On Sunday they carried out a violent demonstration along the northern part of the Strip, during which tyres were set on fire and rioters hurled explosive devices toward Israeli soldiers. A soldier was wounded by shrapnel to several parts of his neck after an explosive device was thrown at him and he required surgery.                                                                                                                                                                                       Read more here

 

An Israeli Border Police officer was wounded by shrapnel in the leg when a pipe bomb exploded during Friday’s massive border riot.                                                                                Read more here

 

A film released over the weekend shows Hamas using women as human shields by organising them to work with the 11,000 Gazans who rioted last Friday. The terrorists threw explosives and grenades at IDF soldiers, attempting to cut through the fence and directly attack troops.                                                                                                                                                                                              Read more here

 

A balloon carrying an incendiary device from Gaza sparked at least one fire in southern Israel on Tuesday. Also a helium-filled condom with a suspected explosive device attached to it was found outside an Israeli community. The balloon attacks came as dozens of Gazans rioted along the border near Kibbutz Zikim. They burned tyres, threw rocks at soldiers and attacked the security fence. In one case, rioters attempted to throw an explosive device across the border, but it failed to clear the fence.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Read more here

 

On Wednesday, at least three incendiary balloons launched from Gaza landed in Israel or exploded en route. A large bundled cluster of balloons carrying a cardboard model of a drone landed in a field. It was one of the largest airborne devices to reach Israel in months.                                                                                        Read more here

 

In response to several incendiary aerial devices launched towards southern Israel.an Israeli aircraft struck a Hamas outpost in Gaza on Wednesday.                                                                          Read more here

 

ISRAELI BORDER RESIDENTS REACT

 

An Israeli resident reported on Tuesday, “There were between 80-100 explosive devices (aside from the mortar) thrown at the fence, and those guarding it, TONIGHT ALONE” illustrating the report with photographs:                                                                                                                                                                                              Read more here

 

And on Wednesday “the balloons are back. Reports of one exploding in the air, others, landing.” More photographs.                                                                                Read more here

 

THE UK

 

The UK and Israel signed a trade continuity agreement on Monday to take effect after Brexit. The Department for International Trade said the move would “deliver significant savings and help to safeguard British jobs.” and that UK consumers would “continue to benefit from more choice and lower prices on goods imported from Israel, such as pharmaceutical products”. Israeli companies are currently major suppliers of pharmaceuticals to the NHS. Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli company, is the world’ largest manufacturer of generic medicines.                                                                                                                                                                              Read more here

 

VENEZUELAN REFUGEES

 

Friends of Ziv Medical Centre, a hospital in Northern Israel, is conducting a campaign to provide vaccines, medicines, and to send teams of experienced Israeli doctors to come and support hospitals and health-care personnel in countries bordering Venezuela that are providing medical assistance to Venezuelan refugees. Thousands of Venezuelans cross the border every week seeking medical attention and medicines, unavailable in Venezuela. The demand has overwhelmed the Brazilian health system. In particular the lack of vaccination in Venezuela has spurred a series of epidemics, including measles.                                                              Read more here

 

BOYCOTT  DIVESTMENT & SANCTIONS (BDS)  – IRONY ALERT

A Dutch BDS supporter sits for hours on his mobility scooter in Amsterdam’s Dam Square, waving Palestinian flags and anti-Israel posters three times a week. The scooter is the Breeze S3 model of the Kalnoit brand, designed and assembled in Kibbutz Afikim, Israel.                                                                                                                                                                                                       Read more here

 

A BDS supporting Congresswoman used Israeli technology to set up her personal website.                                                                                                                                                       Read more here

 

WARSAW MID-EAST SUMMIT LAST WEEK

 

The Israeli P.M’s office leaked a video in which the foreign ministers of three Arab countries can be seen harshly attacking Iran and defending Israel, and in one case saying that confronting Iran is more pressing than solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Read more here

CO-OPERATION

 

A joint Israeli-Arab initiative was launched in Jerusalem on Wednesday with the objective of integrating economic planning and advancing joint entrepreneurship between Israelis and Arabs who live in Judea-Samaria/West Bank. The project is led by the JSC, an organization founded by Avi Zimmerman, an Israeli, and Ashraf Jabari, an Arab. “We are working on taking down borders, and both Israelis and Palestinians need to take part in this,” said Jabari, a businessman and community leader from Hebron.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Read more here

 

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

 

Danny Yaakobson, suffered a serious leg injury two years ago, and became the world’s first patient to receive a lab-grown bone implant made from his own fat cells to replace a missing section of his shinbone. He recently competed in a triathlon. BonoFill, a novel tissue-engineered bone graft, composed of the patient’s own cells, was developed by Israeli biotechnology company Bonus Biogroup.                                                                                                                                                                   Read more here

 

HemaShock a simple emergency solution invented by an Israeli physician redirects blood to core organs from limbs in case of hemorrhagic shock or cardiac arrest.                                        Read more here

 

Researchers at Tel Aviv University say they have developed a new, noninvasive method of discovering genetic disorders that can let parents find out the health of their foetus as early as 11 weeks into pregnancy.                                                                                                                                                                                                            Read more here

 

TECHNOLOGY

BMW Group, the German car and motorcycle maker, plans to open a “Technology Office” in Tel Aviv in mid-2019 with a dedicated team to scout for technologies developed by Israeli startups and acadaemia.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Read more here

 

MOON LAUNCH

 

Israel hopes to become the fourth country in the world to land a spacecraft on the moon, with the launch of the unmanned spacecraft Beresheet from Florida’s Cape Canaveral this Friday. If successful, the 160-kg, four-legged spacecraft will also be the smallest and cheapest spacecraft to land on the moon.                                                                                                                                               Read more here

 

The launch window opens Thursday at 8:45 p.m. EST (01.45 am GMT) and may be watched live here:
Watch streaming here

 

COMMENT & OPINION

 

Evelyn Gordon: An international aid agency reported that Gaza hospitals are severely short of doctors and lack 60% of necessary medications, including basics like painkillers and antibiotics. The Palestinian Authority receives international aid for humanitarian needs in both Gaza and the West Bank. It ostensibly budgets $41.3 million a year for medical supplies for Gaza, but it hasn’t paid this money in months. The same PA has no trouble finding $330 million a year to pay salaries to jailed terrorists. Nor will Hamas divert any of the hundreds of millions of dollars a year it spends on its own military to ease Gazans’ humanitarian plight. What motivates both Palestinian governments and many ordinary Palestinians isn’t the desire to have their own state, but the desire to eradicate the Jewish one.         Read more here

 

Yossi Klein Halevi: Israelis vehemently reject the notion that their country is primarily responsible for the impasse with the Palestinians. In 2000, when President Clinton proposed a two-state solution, the Israeli government said yes and Palestinian leaders rejected the offer, opting for four years of suicide bombings known as the second intifada. Then in 2005, when Israel unilaterally uprooted its settlements and army bases in Gaza and withdrew to the international border, that withdrawal was met by years of rocket attacks launched from Gaza on Israeli communities.
Israelis believe the conflict is ultimately about the right of a Jewish-majority state to exist in any borders.                                                                                                                                    Read more here

 

Gerald Steinberg:  Palestinian leaders are stuck in 1948, still hoping to reverse the creation of Israel altogether…At the same time, terror and incitement continue… The “international consensus” that presses Israel to take all the risks, while exempting the “powerless” Palestinians from any responsibility, has no traction in Israel.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Read more here

 

Ahron Shapiro: Israel cannot make peace on its own, nor can it be expected to accept the creation of a hostile, armed state on the doorstep of its major cities without a viable peace agreement. Unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood would be rewarding the Palestinians for continuing to say “no.”                                                                                                                                                                          Read more here