Israel Update 1.9.22

125^th ANNIVERSARY OF FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS

Speaking at an event in Basel marking the 125th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress, Israel’s President Herzog on Monday called for the reclamation of the word Zionist as a positive term, saying it has been turned into a slur to abuse Jews and Israelis. Herzog said Zionists, people who believe in the right and necessity of Jewish self-determination in the biblical land of Israel, must work to take back the word* to be “an expression of our own national identity, traditions, hopes, pride, enlightened values, justice, and commitment to tikkun olam,” Read more here

*see video at end

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Israeli leaders warmly eulogized former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died Tuesday aged 91. As well as lifting emigration and religious restrictions on Soviet Jews, Gorbachev re-established diplomatic ties between Moscow and Jerusalem in October 1991, just two months before the USSR’s collapse. Read more here

IRAN

A weapons storage facility containing hundreds of Iranian-made ground-to-ground missiles was damaged in an attack attributed to Israel, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday. The missiles were manufactured in a secret scientific research centre supervised by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Read more here

Israel objected to Tehran’s request to end open probes by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), calling on major countries to support the “independence” of the watchdog investigating Iran’s nuclear program. Read more here

Mossad chief David Barnea said that the new nuclear deal with Iran will lead to a strategic disaster because it will facilitate Iran’s efforts to obtain a bomb. He said the deal will infuse Iran with billions of dollars that will be diverted to fund terrorist groups including Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as other proxies, and will pose a challenge for both the U.S. and Israel. Read more here

The Iranian school curriculum calls for a total war against Israel until it is completely eradicated. The existence of Israel blocks Iranian efforts to hegemonize the region. Read more here

THREAT FROM LEBANON

 The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said on Friday that it has recently observed at least four illicit shooting ranges in its area of operations where individuals “dressed in combat attire” were conducting live fire exercises, stating that these “are blatant violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1701″.UNIFIL also said its freedom of movement has been increasingly restricted. Read more here

RECOVERY

18 year old Anna Kosma has made a remarkable recovery in Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital three months after being airlifted from Ukraine when she was in a deep coma and thought to have a tiny (1%-2%) chance of survival. Kosma had been suffering from a rare bacterial or viral infection that caused epilepsy and a range of serious reactions. Read more here

DEFENCE

 As Japan signals intent to boost military spending amid more assertive Chinese conduct in the region, Israeli Defence Minister Gantz concluded up a two-day visit to Tokyo with the signing of a bilateral defence cooperation memorandum. Read more here

Israel Aerospace Industries has signed contracts with Italy worth $550 million for the sale of two more early warning spy planes as well as support and ground logistics services for the Italian air force. The deal brings to 4 the number of special mission aircraft that IAI will have supplied to the Italians. Read more here

EDUCATION

The Jerusalem Municipality has launched a new Arabic-language education programme and 30 schools will begin to teach Arabic to Jewish students this school year. Read more here

COUNTER TERRORISM

Israel Police announced the arrest of an east Jerusalem member of a Hamas-affiliated Kutla Islamiya student cell who sought to purchase an M16 assault rifle for a terror attack in downtown Jerusalem.  Read more here

Guards at a West Bank crossing foiled a planned stabbing attack on Saturday, arresting a Palestinian suspect who was found to be carrying a knife. Read more here

Two Palestinian gunmen suspected of shooting at a security vehicle in the West Bank surrendered to Israeli troops after a lengthy gunbattle on the outskirts of Nablus. Read more here

NEW ROAD

A new entrance to Jerusalem, Route 16, opened Wednesday and is expected to significantly ease traffic.  The 6 km (3.7 mile) section connects motorists from Route 1, the main highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, to the capital’s southern neighbourhoods and includes 4 tunnels, 7 bridges, and 50,000 acres of newly landscaped territory featuring bike paths, walking paths, picnic areas and observation points overlooking the Jerusalem hills. Read more here

INNOVATION

Global telecommunications giant Vodaphone has deployed an Israeli-developed zero- emission fuel cell technology in Romania as part of a pilot project aimed at powering remote cell towers (masts).The GenCell FOX alkaline fuel cell generates electricity using liquid ammonia, an energy-dense and carbon-free hydrogen carrier. Read more here

Aura Air, an Israeli air-purifier, is being installed in thousands of American classrooms and school buses. The purifiers have already been placed in many schools and universities in several US states including New York, Maryland, and California. Aura Air’s award-winning patented technology filters and disinfects indoor air through a unique four-stage purification process that captures and kills 99.9% of viruses, bacteria, germs, and allergens. Read more here

MEDICAL

A groundbreaking study at Tel Aviv University has effectively eradicated glioblastoma, a highly lethal type of brain cancer, in mouse models in the lab. Read more here

PhD student Neta Maimon, from the School of Psychological Sciences and the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, has created a short test in which the subject performs a series of musical-cognitive tasks according to instructions heard through earphones. Measuring 15 minutes of electrical activity in the brain while performing simple musical tasks can detect cognitive decline in old age, according to researchers at Tel Aviv University.  Read more here

Advanced thermal imaging technologies previously used for Israeli military and security purposes will be adapted for use in heart surgery, diabetic foot treatment, surgical incision infections and respiratory monitoring at Israel’s largest hospital, Sheba Medical Centre according to a memorandum of understanding between Sheba and Opgal, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems. Read more here

Elvy.ai a sleep-tech startup based in Tel Aviv, has developed a wireless phone charger with a shield that blocks 95 per cent of electromagnetic radiation. Mobile phones generate low-level electromagnetic radiation, known as radio frequency (RF) energy. Read more here

Fluid from the lungs could be used to develop new methods for diagnosing and possibly treating cancer, according to a new Israeli study by scientists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Sheba Medical Centre. The research found that specific peptides found in fluid from the lungs can “serve as a rich source of biomarkers for tumour diagnosis. Read more here

SPORT

Tennis. Novak Djokovic will take part in the Tel Aviv Watergen Open 2022, competing in his first tournament in Israel for 16 years.  The tournament will take place at the Expo Tel Aviv compound from September 25 to October 2. Read more here

After qualifying for the group stage of the Champions League, Maccabi Haifa was drawn in Group H with Paris St Germain, Juventus and Benfica. Haifa’s first game is away at Benfica on 6/9 before a home match against PSG on 14/9.  Read more here

COMMENT & OPINION

Gerald M. Steinberg: Recently, Israel acted against Palestinian NGOs linked to terrorists. The world media invariably presented the leaders of these organizations as selfless campaigners for human rights, unfairly targeted by Israel. Yet in these accounts, the considerable evidence of hard-core terror involvement is omitted.
These organizations are fronts for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group, a Marxist organization known for airline hijacking and banned from operating in the U.S., UK, and EU. Open-source information shows that 70 individuals occupy dual positions in NGOs and the PFLP, and there are probably more. A publicly available video depicts numerous officials from these NGOs attending a PFLP event…
In the last decade, Western governments funnelled more than $220 million for the PFLP-linked NGO network alone. The evidence of extensive terror links to these NGOs is too blatant to be erased or hidden. Read more here

Emily Schrader:Last month, the Palestinian Authority …openly celebrated the 1929 Hebron massacre in which mobs of Arabs, incited by rumours that the Jews were “destroying al-Aqsa,” mass raped, pillaged and ethnically cleansed the Jewish population of Hebron – murdering 67 Jews and injuring dozens…the Palestinian government’s embrace of the Hebron massacre flies in the face of the presumption by many, disproportionately on the political Left, who claim that occupation is the primary motivator for terrorism today… Palestinian rejectionism is the problem that prevents a long-term solution.Read more here

Bassem Eid:Sometimes a world leader’s toxicity is clear for all to see. Such a moment arrived for the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas when he stood alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin and claimed that Israel had committed “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinians.    Abbas was supposed to be the pragmatist, the moderate, compared to his predecessor, Yasser Arafat.
In hindsight, perhaps Abbas’ remarks should not have been so shocking. In 1982, Abbas wrote a doctoral thesis at Patrice Lumumba University in Soviet Moscow, titled “The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement,” in which he asserted that under a million Jews had died in the Holocaust; a later 1984 introduction challenged the existence of the Nazi gas chambers…Palestinian culture has been brainwashed by decades of official Holocaust denial and antisemitic incitement. For peace to materialize, a whole new generation of Palestinian leadership must step forward. Read more here

*VIDEO

“Proud to be a Zionist” by Antithesis the Rapper as relevant now as it was when released in 2010:  View here