Happy Chanukah to those readers who will celebrating from Sunday evening.

MOROCCO

 

Israel’s Defence Minister Gantz signed a memorandum of understanding with his Moroccan counterpart on Wednesday, the first such agreement between Israel and an Arab state. The agreement formalized the defence ties between the two countries, allowing for smoother cooperation between their defence establishments   Read more here

 

 

 

Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces have purchased five Israeli Skylock Dome anti-drone defence systems.
Last year, Morocco purchased three Israeli Heron drones for reconnaissance to combat insurgent groups in Western Sahara. Read more here

 

 

CO-OPERATION

 

 

 

Israel and Jordan on Monday signed their largest-ever co-operation agreement, which will see the construction of a major solar power plant in the Hashemite Kingdom to generate electricity for the Jewish state while a desalination plant established in Israel will send water to Jordan. The agreement was brokered by the United Arab Emirates, which hosted a signing ceremony at the Dubai Expo.. Read more here

 

 

 

PRESIDENT HERZOG’S OFFICIAL VISIT TO THE UK

 

 

 

During the visit, the President met Prince Charles at the latter’s Highgrove home, for a discussion including climate change, regional threats, and Holocaust education. In a “special gift” to the prince, the president announced a nursing scholarship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem dedicated to the prince’s paternal grandmother Princess Alice.

The president also met PM Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and held talks with MPs at Westminster. He took part in a tribute to former British Chief Rabbi the late Lord Jonathan Sacks and held meetings with leaders of the Jewish community. Read more here

 

 

 

 

CORONAVIRUS IN ISRAEL

 

(Figures from last week’s Update where available in brackets for comparison)

 

 

On Wednesday 605 new cases  were reported. 122  (138) patients are in serious condition, 78 (91) of them on ventilators. (Hebrew) Read more here

 

 

 

As of Wednesday, Israel had 6,500 active cases. The number had dropped as low as 5,000 in previous days. 603 cases were identified on Tuesday. A week earlier there were 558, and two weeks before that there were 517. Read more here

 

 

Currently, the vast majority of new cases are registered among those who are unvaccinated, among them over 50% are children younger than 12.

In the past week, 77% of the new virus carriers identified were never vaccinated, and another 10% were among those whose vaccine is considered expired, but around 9% of the cases were recorded among Israelis who had received a booster (although it isn’t known if the booster had had time to take full effect).

682 corona cases were registered on Monday, the highest number since the end of last month, 463 of whom were schoolchildren.

The R rate continued to climb on Tuesday reaching 1.08. On Monday, it stood at 1.04. (Last Wednesday it stood at 0.95.) An R over 1 indicates that the disease is no longer declining..  Read more here

 

VACCINATION CAMPAIGN

 

 

Israel began vaccinating children aged 5-11 on Monday afternoon.Read more here

 

 

 

The children’s Pfizer-BioNTech shots, each just one-third the size of the adult doses, are packaged differently to prevent mix-ups. Read more here

 

 

Children aged 12-15 should be given a third booster vaccine shot against the coronavirus, a panel of experts advising the Health Ministry on COVID-19 inoculation policy has recommended, 5 months after the 2^ndshot. They also recommended that there should be a 3-week wait between the first and second shots given to children aged 5-11, as recommended by the US FDA.     Read more here

 

 

TREATMENT

 

 

MesenCure, an Israeli treatment for severe COVID-19, has been found to reduce mortality by 70% in a Phase II clinical trial conducted at three major hospitals. MesenCure was also found to shorten the hospitalization period of the treated patients by 45% from an average of 17.2 days to only 9.4 days.  Read more here

 

 

 

 TERROR ATTACKS 

 

 

 

A Hamas terrorist from eastern Jerusalem, opened fire in Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday morning with a Beretta M12 submachine gun, killing one Israeli and wounding four others. Eli Kay, 26, who was employed at the Western Wall as a guide, was shot dead. Rabbi Zeev Katzenelnbogen, and yeshiva student Aaron Yehuda Imergreen were injure and two police officers were lightly hurt. Israeli security forces killed the terrorist. Read more here

 

 

Hundreds of Palestinians marched in East Jerusalem on Sunday in support of  the Hamas terrorist . Read more here

 

 

A terrorist from Jenin who was in Israel illegally, stabbed an Israeli man, 67, in the back five times and attempted to stab his wife in Jaffa before he was arrested.Read more here

 

 

Two Border Police officers were wounded last Wednesday (17/11) in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem’s Old City. The Palestinian assailant was shot dead by Israeli forces. Read more here

 

 

COUNTER TERRORISM

 

 

Israeli security forces arrested over 50 members of a Hamas cell that was in the advanced stages of planning major terror attacks in the West Bank and Israel. Large quantities of weaponry were seized, including the materials needed to make at least four explosive belts for suicide attacks. An undisclosed amount of money was also seized in the raids. Read more here

 

 

 

During 2018, Israeli communities adjacent to Gaza came under a relentless assault of hundreds of explosive and incendiary kites and balloons.In response, the IDF called up for reserve duty 15 of the most experienced drone operators to intercept the balloons and these experts have downed hundreds of kites and balloons, controlling the drones intuitively with virtual-reality goggles. Further, a new drone operating system enables soldiers with very little training to fly drones. Read more here

 

 

 

INNOVATION

 

 

 

 

Financial services giant Mastercard officially opened a new innovation lab in Beersheba this month, with a mission to work with early-stage Israeli startups on fintech (financial tech) and cybersecurity solutions for the payments and energy industries worldwide. Read more here

 

 

 

An Israeli startup Nostromo Energy has developed an ice brick that can be installed in commercial & industrial buildings to store solar energy for space cooling. Read more here

 

 

 

 

 ECONOMY

 

 

 

 

Fitch Ratings on Nov. 11 reaffirmed Israel’s A+ rating with a stable outlook. Fitch said the improvement in Israel’s finances in 2021 has been “driven by the strong economic rebound, the gradual withdrawal of pandemic support measures, and particularly buoyant fiscal revenue from high-tech sectors. Read more here

 

 

 

 

INNOVATION

 

 

 

Gary is a robot capable of doing household chores such as picking up toys or socks, watering plants and stripping bedsheets The height of a 10-year-old, with a speed of 3.1 miles per hour and a weight of about 40 kg (88 pounds), Gary is coming in early 2022 from Petah Tikva-based startup Unlimited Robotics.Read more here

 

 

 

 

WATER TECH

 

 

 

Israeli water tech startup Alumor has developed a solar-powered water purifying domestic device called Miriam’s Well witha water purification technology based on ultraviolet LED light, which can purify any type of surface water, including lakes, rivers, lagoons, and pools.  Alumor says “The product is low cost, easy-to-use, and cleans the bacteria from water to the highest industry standards,” It’sthe company’s goal for this “very important piece of technology” is to have a place in “every single country in Africa.” Read more here

 

 

 

ARCHAEOLOGY

 

 

 

A 2,000-year-old silver coin from the period of the Great Revolt against the Romans was found in Jerusalem by Liel Krutokop, an 11-year-old girl.    On one side it features a cup and the inscription “Israeli shekel” and “second year,” referring to the second year of the revolt (67-68 CE). On the other side, another inscription reads “Holy Jerusalem” in ancient Hebrew script. Read more here

 

 

 

MALAYSIA

 

 

Malaysia is refusing to grant visas for Israeli players to participate in the squash world championship next month. The Israel Squash Association said it plans to turn to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland if the World Squash Federation can’t resolve the issue. In 2019, Malaysia was stripped of the right to host the World Para Swimming Championships for threatening to refuse entry to Israeli athletes. Read more here

 

 

 

SEASONAL

 

 

 

Israeli authorities will  permit 500 members of the Gaza Strip’s tiny Christian community to enter Israel and the West Bank to celebrate Christmas.COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, announced the permits allowing people to visit relatives and holy sites and will also increase access to Jerusalem for Christians in the West Bank while allowing some 200 Gazan Christians to travel through Israel to Jordan for journeys abroad.Movement out of Gaza also has been restricted since an 11-day war last May between Israel and the territory’s Hamas rulers. In recent months, however, Israel has begun to ease some of the restrictions, granting several thousand Gazans permits to work inside Israel. Read more here

 

 

 

COMMENT & OPINION

 

 

Ian Austin:Home Secretary Priti Patel’s decision to ban Hamas in its entirety should be welcomed by all those who oppose terrorism. Hamas is not – as some of its sympathizers intimate – a legitimate campaign for Palestinian rights. It is an armed group of genocidal terrorists that wants to wipe Israel off the map and murder both the Jews and Arabs who live there. It has subjected the poor people of Gaza to a brutal dictatorship ever since it seized power in a bloody coup 15 years ago.The group is opposed not just to the idea of any sort of peace process with Israel but rejects the very existence of the Jewish state in the first place. In fact, its founding charter contains disgusting racist language calling for the death of all Jews worldwide. Funded by Iran, it presents an existential threat to the Middle East’s only democracy.
Earlier this year, Hamas provoked a conflict with Israel by firing thousands of rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians. Had it not been for the country’s Iron Dome missile defence system, thousands would have been slaughtered. Several of their missiles misfired and killed Palestinians.The UK decision will mean that showing support for Hamas could result in imprisonment under the Terrorism Act. That will prevent the group raising funds here. Moreover, it will deal with some of the disgusting anti-Semitic racism we have seen on British streets during the recent conflict, like pro-Palestinian demonstrators wearing the Hamas-style headband traditionally worn by its suicide bombers. The decision is showing that the supporters of anti-Semitic terror will not be tolerated on the streets of Britain. Read more here

 

 

Emily Schrader: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with the Women’s March, nothing to do with Black Lives Matter, nothing to do with climate change, with police brutality, with hate crimes against Asians, with Miss Universe, with Britney Spears, or with the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict.

The cynical attempts to hijack causes and make them about Palestinians is simply tragedy tourism on the part of anti-Israel activists, not to mention it is disrespectful to the causes they are hijacking. There’s a difference between showing solidarity and using the publicity of another cause to promote your own propaganda.

These anti-Israel activists should not be welcomed in spaces where they cannot show genuine solidarity; these cynical hijackings show their true colours. Read more here