Israel Update 15.6.23

There will be no Israel Update next week 22 June. HRG

 

 

TERROR ATTACKS

 

Five Israelis, including four soldiers, were wounded in two drive-by shooting attacks in the northern West Bank on Tuesday.Read more here

 

 

 

COUNTER TERRORISM

 

 

 

A Palestinian policeman, Alaa Khaled Qatto, was recently arrested by Israel for plotting to assassinate Samaria Council head Yossi Dagan. He confessed during his interrogation  that he planned to kill Dagan and carry out other attacks with a firearm. Read more here

 

 

 

 

ISRAEL’S “PEACE PARTNERS” – JORDAN & EGYPT

 

 

Despite being officially at peace with Israel for almost three decades, 84% of Jordanians across all age groups oppose having business deals with Israeli companies even if it would help their economy, according to a public opinion poll conducted in March/April. 76% agreed that “in case of an earthquake or other natural disaster, as we just saw in Syria and Turkey, Arab countries should refuse any humanitarian aid from Israel.”
60% of Jordanians view Hamas firing missiles at Israel at least somewhat positively. Only 12% perceive the Abraham Accords positively. 69% oppose Arab cooperation with Israel to combat Iran.
78% of Jordanians agree that “in the war going on now between Russia and Ukraine, the best outcome would be a Russian victory, including the annexation of significant Ukrainian territory to Russia.”  Read more here

 

 

In response to a recent attack in which a member of Egypt’s security forces opened fire on Israeli troops, killing three IDF soldiers, the Egyptian government has sought to keep the attacker from becoming a national hero and complicating its ties with Israel. But its effort to clamp down on praise for the attacker on the street, which has for decades rejected official efforts at normalization and is still largely hostile toward Israel, appears to have largely failed.In public discourse and on social media, many Egyptians lauded his actions. Commentators… describe him as a national hero and martyr,and justify the attack on Israeli soldiers seeing the act as evidence that the Egyptian people oppose peace. Read more here

 

 

 

U20 FIFA WORLD CUP

 

 

Having lost to eventual tournament winners Uruguay 1-0 in the semifinal round, the Israeli U20 team went on to beat South Korea 3-1 on Sunday to take the third place title.Read more here

 

 

The team returned to Israel yesterday wearing their bronze medals. photos here

 

UKRAINE

 

 

Israel’s Foreign Ministry donated hundreds of thousands of litres of water and over 10 tons of food to the victims of the destruction of Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka dam. The supplies were purchased in Ukraine in order to shorten delivery times and help the Ukrainian economy. Read more here

 

 

 

Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska will visit Israel next week at the invitation of her Israeli counterpart, Michal Herzog, to discuss trauma care and rehabilitation.  The itinerary will probably include a visit to wounded Ukrainian soldiers undergoing rehabilitation in Israel.  Read more here

 

 

 

 

Israel is concerned that weapons provided by the U.S. and other Western nations to Ukraine will end up in the hands of Israel’s foes in the Middle East, including Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas. An Israeli commander noted that some of the U.S. small arms seized in Afghanistan have already been observed in the hands of terrorist groups operating in Gaza. Read more here

 

 

 

DEFENCE

 

 

Israel’s Rafael defence contractor has been developing a first-of-its-kind anti-hypersonic missile defence system. The Sky Sonic interceptor missile will be shown for the first time at the Paris Air Show next week. The announcement comes after Iran earlier this month  claimed it had developed a new hypersonic missile. Read more here

 

 

 

Germany, seeking to bolster its defences in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has approved an advance payment for the purchase of the sophisticated Arrow 3 air defence system from Israel for nearly four billion euros ($4.3 billion). The long-range Arrow 3 system, designed to shoot down missiles above the Earth’s atmosphere, is powerful enough to offer protective cover for neighbouring EU states. Read more here

 

 

MEDICAL INNOVATION

 

 

Avner Spector founded Medispec in 1992 and today his company operaties in 44 countries, with over a dozen products  offering solutions from urology and cardiology to orthopaedics using eHAT, an acoustic wave treatment using lower intensity than traditional shockwave treatments. Three years ago, Spector founded Curespec whose first developed and introduced product is Nephrospec using eHAT to treat chronic kidney disease (CKD) by promoting new blood vessel formation and restoring damaged tissue function.Read more here

 

 

Israeli company InnoCan Pharma  has created a combined magnesium and cannabis-based solution specifically for alleviating pain and itching.Read more here

 

 

A revolutionary transformation of healthcare could result from a new collaboration agreement signed on June 13 between the ARC innovation centre of Sheba Medical Centre, Israel’s largest hospital and Deloitte Consulting.  Sheba’s ARC (Accelerate, Redesign, and Collaboration) platform has already been implemented in medical centres from North America to Australia, including Bahrain.  The collaboration will focus on bringing medical innovation and implementation to hospitals, health systems, governments and policymakers worldwide. Read more here

 

 

NATIVE AMERICANS

 

 

Native American leaders are seeking to establish an Embassy in Jerusalem. Chief Joseph Riverwind and his wife Dr Laralyn Riverwind say: “The story of the Jewish people, the indigenous people of Judea, brings us hope. For a tribal nation that has been able to return home, to their sacred sites, their culture, their tradition, their language,” Read more here

 

 

 

RENEWABLE ENERGY

 

 

 

Enlight Renewable Energy has begun to test the first of 39 General Electric wind turbines at the Genesis Wind project in the Golan Heights in northern Israel, which when operational will be the largest of all renewable energy projects in the country, including solar. By September, the whole project is expected to be up and running, supplying 207 megawatts of renewable energy, equivalent to the yearly consumption of 70,000 households and will save 180,000 tons of global warming carbon emissions annually. Read more here

 

 

 

AUTO TECH

 

 

Volvo, the European car giant and world leader in automotive safety, is making a strategic investment in CorrActions, an Israeli startup that monitors driver behaviour to prevent accidents. CorrActions uses AI and machine learning to detect driver behaviour and brain activity that reveal a wide range of cognitive states indicating potentially dangerous or even fatal driver impairments, such as intoxication, fatigue, stress, as well as motion sickness. Read more here

 

 

 

ARCHAEOLOGY

 

 

Lydia Marner who was walking on the Palmachim beach in southern Israel with her husband a few weeks ago, found an ancient figurine of an Egyptian goddess believed to be more than 3,000 years old. Read more here

 

 

ALBERT EINSTEIN MUSEUM

 

 

The Einstein House, a new museum due to open on the Hebrew University campus next year, will deepen the scientist’s longstanding ties with the university. In 1923, Einstein delivered the university’s inaugural scientific lecture, and he bequeathed all his literary materials to its archives upon his death. A major part of the exhibit will be an accessible explanation of Einstein’s groundbreaking general theory of relativity.Read more here

 

 

 

COMMENT & OPINION

 

 

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi: We must acknowledge the reality on the other side of the border with Egypt. Over half of the Egyptian population openly identifies with the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian society remains extremely hostile towards Israel, even after more than 40 years of peace. Egyptian culture and media are rife with antisemitic tropes and hatred towards Israel.
Despite our best efforts and tremendous assistance to the Egyptian military in its counter-terrorism efforts in Sinai, Egypt still isn’t behaving like the partner in peace we are worthy of – not along the border, not in educating its population, and not in the way it allows the uninterrupted flow of weapons from Sinai to terrorists in Gaza through the tunnel highways under Rafah. Full article here

 

 

Douglas Bloomfield: (With former President Trump’s indictment over his handling of classified documents in the news this week, it should be noted that) Israel’s closely guarded secrets were among the earliest that Trump revealed to a hostile foreign power. He leaked information that Israeli intelligence had uncovered evidence that the Syrian ISIS had developed bombs that could be concealed in laptop computers, undetectable by airport security, to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador. Trump hadn’t cleared this leak with Israeli officials or even his own intelligence people, who rightfully feared Moscow would immediately share it with their allies in Iran and Syria.

Reportedly as a result of the Israeli intel, the US and Britain banned laptops and other electronics on planes, particularly from certain countries, until they were able to improve detection measures. Full article here

 

 

Anne Bayefsky: The UN “Commission of Inquiry” has released its third report that launches an unprecedented attack on Israel and its defenders. The inquisitors make findings of “war crimes” and “grave breaches of international humanitarian law” by Israel only, and then appeal to accelerate international criminal prosecution.
The report specifically names Palestinian (and Israeli) victims of alleged Israeli crimes but doesn’t name a single Israeli victim of a Palestinian crime. The report couldn’t locate a single Palestinian terrorist or terrorist organization. There are only Israelis guilty of wrongly labelling them as “terrorists.” Full article here: Full article here