Israel Update 16.3.23

TEL AVIV TERROR ATTACK LAST THURSDAY 9/3/23

Or Asher, 32, was critically wounded, Rotem Mansano, 34, was seriously injured and Michael Osdon, 36, suffered moderate wounds when a Palestinian attacker, opened fire at them last Thursday night 9/3 on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. The terrorist, a Hamas operative who had been imprisoned twice, was killed by police. Read more here

Two Israeli Arabs suspected of driving the terrorist turned themselves in to police.Read more here

OTHER TERRORIST INCIDENTS

Israeli security forces suspect that the Lebanese Hezbollah terror group is behind a blast on a highway in northern Israel that seriously wounded Israeli Shareef ad-Din, 21 earlier this week. The victim’s car, which was around 30 metres (98 feet) away from the device, was hit by shrapnel. Read more here

A Palestinian man armed with knives and bombs broke into a farm near the Israeli community of Karnei Shomron early Friday. He hurled two bombs, one of which exploded, before the owner of the farm shot him.Read more here

Palestinian terrorists opened fire on Israeli troops on Sunday west of Nablus. The IDF solders returned fire, killing three Palestinian gunmen and arresting a fourth.

IRANIAN THREAT

Russia has captured U.S. and NATO-provided weapons and equipment in Ukraine and flown them to Iran, where the U.S. believes Tehran will try to reverse-engineer the systems and make their own version of the weapons. These include Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft systems. Read more here

Iran has reached a deal to buy advanced Sukhoi-35 fighter planes from Russia, Iranian state media said on Saturday.Read more here

A weapons store of Iranian militias in western Syria was destroyed by Israeli aerial strikes on Sunday. Read more here

SAUDI ARABIA

After years of open hostility and proxy conflicts, Saudi Arabia and Iran have agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties at talks hosted by China.Read more here (paywall)

Saudi Arabia refused to give visas to an Israeli delegation invited to participate in a United Nations tourism event.. The UN World Tourism Organization included groups from 22 other countries. The delegation was made up of residents of the Circassian town of Kafr Kama, which late last year was included on the UN list of best villages for tourism. Read more here

INCITEMENT

A report has found that UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, failed to remove hateful content glorifying terrorism and demonizing Israel from its school curriculum. The agency’s staff and schools, which teach Palestinian children throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip and elsewhere, “regularly call for the murder of Jews, and create teaching materials that glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis, and incite antisemitism,” A Syrian UNRWA employee posted a photo of a sleeping Adolf Hitler, calling on the Nazi dictator to wake up because “there are still some people you need to burn.” The post was apparently liked by other UNRWA employees.

THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY (P.A.) ADMINISTERED AREAS

The P.A. is paving a new road through an archaeological site in Sebastia, the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel in the 9th and 8th centuries BCE.During work on the road, a wall from the Herodian era was destroyed and burial caves from the Second Temple period were broken into and looted.Read more here

A new residential neighbourhood for Palestinians who have served at least five years in Israeli prisons for terrorism-related offenses is to be built. Read more here

INNOVATION

Tadiran Group has launched a new device, which when added to wall-mounted air-conditioners purifies the air in indoor spaces and neutralizes the concentration of biological pollutants. The Airow results in a reduction of up to 99% of the viruses, bacteria and molds in the air, within 90 minutes of operating the air-conditioner. Read more here

Pizza Hut at Mazor, central Israel, using Hyper Food Robotics technology, is claimed to be the world’s first fully autonomous fast-food restaurant. The robots clean themselves every 40 minutes using chemical-free ozone-treated water, which breaks down odours, bacteria and viruses, including E. coli and salmonella. Read more here

Bobo Balance is comprised of a wearable sensor that can be attached to a balance board or any part of the body to aid in doing exercises based on protocols developed by physiotherapists. It’s already in use in 5,000 clinics worldwide, including HMO and army clinics here in Israel, as well as by 15,000 customers using it as a home-based device. Read more here

MEDICAL INNOVATION

Researchers at the Rambam Healthcare Campus and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have succeeded in using genetic engineering to treat heart rhythm disorders in their labs. The researchers were able to produce a receptor causing a biological process that regulates the electrical activity in the heart. Read more here

Specialists at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Centre have performed an innovative endoscopic procedure for the first time in Israel that successfully treats patients suffering from heartburn acid reflux, instead of surgery. The safe and innovative treatment, which has been researched and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration was recently included in the guidelines for the treatment of reflux by the American College of Gastroenterology. Read more here

Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Institute for Biological Research have developed the world’s first mRNA vaccine effective against bacteria. Read more here

ISRAEL’S “SAVE A CHILD’S HEART” (SACH) PROGRAMME

The programme, founded at Wolfson Medical Centre in 1995 to treat children from countries where access to pediatric cardiac care is limited or nonexistent, has saved over 6,000 children from 66 countries. One of them, Aklil Woldegiworgis from Ethiopia was treated in 2001 as a 2 year old. Now 24, she became a paediatric cardiac nurse inspired by the role model of the Ethiopian nurse Salamnesh who accompanied her and her mother during that difficult but lifesaving half year in Israel. This month, she returned accompanying 10 Ethiopian children needing urgent cardiac procedures. Read more here

Highlighting just one case, Naznet, a nine-month-old Ethiopian girl returned home last week after receiving life-saving surgery in Israel to correct a heart defect. At the age of four months, she had been diagnosed in a hospital in Addis Ababa with a congenital heart defect called truncus arteriosus, a life-threatening condition requiring urgent medical intervention. Read more here

SPORT

The chairman of the Soccer Association of Indonesia, Erick Thohir has asserted Indonesia’s readiness to host the Under-20 World Cup from May 22 to June 11 and provide security to all participants, the Israeli team included. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, has no diplomatic ties with Israel. Read more here

COMMENT & OPINION

Sean Durns: The Washington Post asserted on March 7 that “More than 60 Palestinians have been killed this year by Israeli security forces…. At least 14 Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians.”
This false equivalency is risible. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians killed have been terrorists, with many of the slain Palestinians claimed by the terrorist groups themselves.
By contrast, all of the Israelis were murdered by terrorists – and all, save one, were civilians.
It is abhorrent to conflate the victims of terrorists with slain terrorists when listing casualties.
Moreover, those Palestinian civilians who were killed died during counter-terrorist operations.
Israel is a small country. The 14 Israelis murdered in Palestinian terrorist attacks in a little more than a month is the proportional equivalent of 500 Americans murdered. Read more here

Tony Badran:The U.S. is proposing to create and train a 5,000-man Palestinian commando force that would ostensibly fight terrorism in the West Bank in place of the IDF. The plan, drafted by U.S. security coordinator Lt.-Gen. Michael Fenzel and presented to the Israeli government and the PA, envisions a special Palestinian force that would supposedly go after militias in Jenin and Nablus.
By creating a working military command structure for a 5,000-strong militia, training it in counterterrorism and commando tactics, and arming and equipping it, the U.S. will be giving the Palestinians military capacities far in excess of anything they can organically create or currently possess. The plan is shockingly at variance with previous U.S. equip-and-train programmes in the West Bank, as evident from the type of training it will receive. Rather than be a gendarmerie or border guard, it would be a well-equipped 5,000-man army.
How such training will be used should not be a mystery. The idea of a Palestinian force actually “countering” Palestinian terror is unprecedented, meaning it has never happened. The terrorists themselves are part of the Palestinian Authority’s security establishment. An Israeli official recently noted that “Some PA security force members have taken to selling ammunition and weapons to [Palestinian terrorist] fighters throughout the West Bank. Read more here