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Israel Update 29/10/21-11/11/21

CORONAVIRUS IN ISRAEL

 

(Figures from 4 Nov. Update in brackets for comparison)

Israel’s Health Ministry reported Thursday morning that 489  (642) Israelis have tested positive for coronavirus over the previous 24 hours, putting the country’s positivity rate at 0.65%. Israeli hospitals were treating 146 (238) COVID-19 patients in serious condition, 102 (139)  of whom were connected to ventilators. Unvaccinated patients accounted for 85% of all severe cases and 94% of all severe cases in the 60 plus age group. Read more here

 

 

 

Israel has approved coronavirus vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 in child-size doses, following the lead of the United States. Read more here

 

 

 

Israeli medical teams have started making nutrition-rich ice cream for the elderly, after watching with dismay in recent weeks as many patients stopped eating because of pandemic blues and refused dietary supplements. Read more here

 

 

TRAVEL TO ISRAEL

 

 

On 1stNovember Israel opened its borders for the first time since March 2020 to some tourists who are vaccinated against COVID-19 or have recovered from it. Not all tourists will immediately be eligible to visit Israel, and those who do come will face restrictions. Additionally, the vast majority of children will not able to visit Israel, as they are not vaccinated.Read more here

 

 

The rules are set out here: Read more here

 

 

 

 

It was announced on  Monday,  that members of tour groups of up to 40 people, unlike individuals, will be allowed to enter the country with just two vaccine doses without booster shots, but will have to act as a “pod” during their time in Israel, not mixing with those outside of their designated group.Read more here

 

 

ORAL VACCINES

 

 

 

The Israeli inventors of an oral coronavirus vaccine, Oramed Pharmaceuticals, have received the green light to start clinical trials for their Oravax pill in South Africa.  The trial is expected to run concurrently with a Tel Aviv trial which is also expected to start soon.Read more here

 

 

A COVID-fighting coalition heavily funded by Bill Gates has awarded $4.3 million for development of an Israeli variant-proof vaccine in tablet form. Israel’s MigVax is aiming not only to produce a tablet vaccine, but also to make it particularly sturdy against new variants as well as adaptable to future viruses.Read more here

 

 

 

RESEARCH

 

 

A recently published (in The Lancet)  large-scale Israeli study showed that a third booster shot was 92% effective in preventing serious illness compared to those who had received only two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine. Read more here

 

 

 

A study conducted by Beilinson Hospital using a detailed scanning technique to examine patients with symptoms of a heart muscle condition after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, found that damage was rare, mild, and expected to heal.  Read more here

 

 

 

 

 

INTERNATIONAL AID

 

 

 

Israel this week sent a medical team and 40 oxygen concentrators to Romania, which is facing its worst wave of Covid-19 infections since the pandemic started. Read more here

 

 

 

Haim Taib, president of Save a Child’s Heart Africa, told Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi (during a recent visit to Israel)  that the Israeli organization would be bringing its first group of Congolese children to the country for life-saving heart surgery. Five children aged 1-12 will be flown to Israel in the coming weeks. Read more here

 

 

COP 26

 

 

Israel will set up a special fund to encourage local tech entrepreneurs to invest in green technology P.M. Bennett said prior to the climate conference COP 26.Read more here

 

Text of P.M. Bennett’s speech in which he told the conference (inter alia) that Israel will make its greatest contribution to the global war on climate change by leveraging the technological creativity and inventiveness of its people to find solutions “that have not yet even been imagined.” Read more here

 

 

 

JORDAN

 

 

Israel’s Economy Minister Orna Barbivai and her Jordanian counterpart Yousef Alshamali met in Jordan recently to discuss bilateral ties, the first such meeting in a decade. Read more here

 

 

 

 

MOROCCO

 

 

Morocco’s national carrier Royal Air Maroc is to start regular direct flights linking Casablanca and Tel Aviv on Dec. 12. Read more here

 

 

 

BLUE FLAG EXERCISE

 

 

The multinational Blue Flag aerial exercise hosted in October in Israel was the largest and most advanced ever held. It included 80 fighter jets from the U.S., Germany, Italy and Greece, as well as the UK, France and India, and 1,500 foreign personnel.On Friday, a German military photographer posted pictures on social media revealing that two Jordanian F-16 fighter jets also took part.  Read more here

 

 

 

In October, RAF fighter jets streaked over the Negev desert as part of Israel’s Blue Flag exercise part of a deployment of 150 personnel and six Typhoon FGR4s.  In the past few years, RAF fighter jets and aerial tankers taking off from Cyprus have routinely crossed Israeli airspace to carry out missions against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq. Britain’s acquisitions of Israeli military hardware have multiplied, including guided missiles, drones and training simulators for pilots and submarine crews.

The last time Royal Air Force fighter planes took off from Israel was in May 1948, when Spitfires covered the withdrawal of British mandate forces Read more here

 

 

DEFENCE

 

Israeli defence electronics company Elbit Systems has announced  that it has  signed a $100 million, 13-year contract to provide electronic warfare (EW) systems to Britain’s Royal Navy.
Elbit  also announced it had signed an $88 million deal to provide and operate training aircraft for Britain’s Royal Air Force. Read more here

 

 

The German Federal Ministry of Defence has announced the successful completion of trials of Israel’s Trophy tank protection system on Germany’s Leopard 2 tanks.The Trophy system has also been sold to the U.S. Army and is installed on Abrams tanks.Read more here

 

 

 

Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defence system is being tested in Guam by U.S. military planners concerned about Chinese missiles. Read more here

 

 

 

AUTO-TECH

 

 

US carmaker Ford is partnering with Israeli water-from-air tech company Watergen to deliver a built-in drinking water generator in their adventure and recreational vehicles. The Watergen Mobile Box, which buyers can have installed in new Ford Ranger vehicles, can make up to 20 litres of fresh drinking water a day. Read more here

 

 

 

 

MEDICAL

 

 

Israeli-designed molecules that slowed Alzheimer’s and ALS in mice are to begin the approval process to become a drug for humans.Read more here

 

 

 

COMMENT & OPINION

 

 

Col. Richard Kemp:When I arrived at the University of Essex in the UK to give a talk last week, I was met by protesters chanting: “Free, free Palestine – from the river to the sea.” What river? What sea? I doubt many of them knew. But they were demanding an end to the Jewish national homeland – tearing down the State of Israel and replacing it with an Islamic state.
As Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar explained at a recent conference in Gaza: “The full liberation of Palestine from the sea to the river” is “the heart of Hamas’ strategic vision.” He meant from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, in other words, the entire territory of the State of Israel.
Those arguing that the Palestinian Authority has a different agenda from Hamas are wrong. The PA shares the same “river to the sea” doctrine for the destruction of Israel that British university students find so attractive. This is a constant theme in official PA media, publications and school textbooks.
In an era where opposition to racism and discrimination against all other peoples is rightly at the top of university authorities’ and students’ priorities, why does this not apply to Jews? Calls for the violent erasure of the one and only Jewish state are not only tolerated but are actively encouraged by some professors, faculty bodies and students union leaders. Read more here

 

 


Matthew Levitt : A Blurred Line between Civil Society and Terrorism: Examining Charges of NGOs Funding the PFLP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)

EXTRACT (Recently), Israel designated six Palestinian civil society NGOs on charges of supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist group. The designations were the result of a terrorism financing investigation run by the Israel Security Agency and Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing.…. For example, the Union of Health Work Committees (UHWC) is accused of defrauding European donors by manipulating records to cover funds “in the eight figures” diverted from the NGO to the PFLP ….One of the arrested UHWC employees explained that “the PFLP-affiliated institutions are inter-connected and serve as the organization’s lifeline financially and organizationally.” One NGO would learn how to conduct various types of fraud and money laundering, then pass this knowledge on to the others. The NGOs forged documents and receipts to significantly inflate the cost of a given project as presented to donors. The difference would go to the PFLP…For example, the UHWC forged receipts indicating that a Spanish-funded project to supply medicines in eastern Jerusalem would cost $800,000, but the actual project cost only $32,000 and the remaining funds were redirected to the PFLP. In another case, the UHWC told donors a project to vaccinate Palestinian children would cost 245,000 euros, when the actual cost was less than 700 euros. Employees were sometimes listed under two different salary systems. One salary went to the employee, while the second went to the PFLP.
Read more here

 

 

Emily Schrader: Palestinian social media would like you to believe that Israel is bulldozing Palestinian graves in Jerusalem in order to build a theme park.
The Palestinian Authority news agency WAFA claimed that “dozens” of bodies had been dug up by Israel.The reality is that no Israeli forces are bulldozing anything; there were construction workers doing landscaping work for an archaeological park, but no graves have been desecrated or moved and no drilling, demolition or excavation is occurring.   Read more here