LLX News

By: Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

Prof. Ami Schattner: “Initial results are promising to say the least.”

An ancient Greek drug derived from the saffron plant could improve the treatment of people with severe COVID-19 and reduce the COVID mortality rate by as much as 50%, according to a report published earlier this month in the European Journal of Internal Medicine by an Israeli researcher from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Hadassah Medical School.

The drug, colchicine, dates back thousands of years to ancient Egypt, where it was known for its special healing properties. It is one of a few medicines that survived until modern times. Most recently, it has been used to treat and prevent inflammation caused by gout that can lead to painful arthritis and Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF), which is common among Jewish people of North African descent.

Prof. Ami Schattner researched and analyzed all patients treated in controlled trials of this ancient drug for the past 20 years. He found that among its uses and potential uses, colchicine also appears effective in treating COVID-19.

cont’d…

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/ancient-greek-drug-could-save-lives-of-covid-patients-israeli-scientist-688730

By: Yaakov Lappin – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

“India is interested in a multilateral world, in which [it] is an important country. Israel fits in with this vision,” said Professor Efraim Inbar of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.

Israel and India are set to expand their cooperation further just weeks after a historic visit by India’s Chief of Army Staff Gen. Manoj Mukund Naravane.

Navarne met with senior Israel Defense Forces officials, including Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, and IDF Ground Forces Commander Maj. Gen. Tamir Yadai. He heard multiple briefings on Israel’s military capabilities, and the visit is perceived by Israeli defense officials as having enriched and strengthened both the personal and professional connection between the two militaries.

Naravane also toured sites that hold historical significance to both countries, including the Indian cemetery in Jerusalem and the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center. The visit is seen as the latest signal of the deep military and diplomatic connection between Israel and India.

Looking ahead, both countries seek to expand their collaboration in several areas, including the strengthening of their militaries.

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/israel-and-india-look-to-expand-cooperation-boost-military-capabilities/

By: Chris Mitchell – CBN News; cbn.com

JERUSALEM, Israel – The war of words between Israel and Iran is intensifying. The rhetoric comes at a time when the nuclear talks in Vienna to stop Iran’s nuclear program seem stalled. 

When Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz met with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin last week, he reportedly presented a timeline for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program and told Lloyd Israel is “preparing for the Iranian challenge at the operational level.” 

This week the state-affiliated Tehran Times boasted in an article called “Just One Wrong Move!” That Iran can hit Israel anywhere. To drive home the point, they included a map showing targets Iran had already selected throughout Israel.

cont’d…

https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel/2021/december/israel-is-prepared-to-confront-iran-with-or-without-the-us

By: Faygie Holt – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

“We would bring stuff to one person and they would say, ‘I’m sure there’s someone who needs it more than me,’ ” relates Rabbi Shlomo Litvin. “Even as they were taking stock of their homes and everything they lost, they were saying their neighbor two doors down needs the water.”

The last time Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, co-director of Chabad of the Bluegrass, had been in Hopkinsville, Ky., he was joined by thousands of other people to see a total eclipse.

He returned to the area on Monday to find a much-changed landscape after a massive tornado ripped through the western part of the state on Dec. 10, rendering much of it temporarily uninhabitable. The tornado was one of a series of others that struck six Midwestern states on Dec. 10.

“The kindness they had shown to tourists during the eclipse was overwhelming, and to come back now and see the devastation was heartbreaking,” said Litvin, who went to the region with his brother, Rabbi Chaim Litvin of Project Friendship, a social-service arm of Chabad of Kentucky, to deliver 10 pallets of bottled water along with boxes of winter clothing and shoes to the survivors of the tornado.

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/jewish-groups-provide-relief-physically-and-emotionally-after-tornado-devastation-in-kentucky/

Jewish News Syndicate – jns.org

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Ernst & Young Global Limited will no longer audit the Union of Agricultural Work Committees or Defense for Children International Palestine.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Ernst & Young Global Limited (EY), two of the Big Four accounting firms, have confirmed that they will no longer audit two Palestinian NGOs recently designated as terrorist organizations by Israel.

EY is no longer auditing the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), and PwC confirmed it no longer audits accounts for Defense for Children International Palestine (DCI-P), reported UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) in a statement.

The NGOs are among the six listed by Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz as terror organizations on Oct. 22 for their close ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

“Those organizations were active under the cover of civil society organizations, but in practice belong and constitute an arm of the [PFLP] leadership, the main activity of which is the liberation of Palestine and destruction of Israel,” said Gantz.

EY ceased auditing UAWC, even though it only took over the contract in May 2019. PricewaterhouseCoopers had audited DCI-P since 2014, according to UKLFI.

https://www.jns.org/big-four-auditors-ditch-ngos-listed-as-terror-groups-by-israel/

By: Melanie Phillips – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

Claims of moral equivalency are bogus. Bigotry is based on falsehoods, not fact.

One of the most obvious characteristics of anti-Semitism is the double standards it perpetrates, through which Jews are singled out for harmful assumptions and treatment directed against no other people in the world.

Yet the practice of double standards is perpetrated against anti-Semitism itself, as has been demonstrated recently in disturbing developments in both America and Britain.

In America, Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has been accused of Islamophobia because of remarks she made about Muslim Democrat congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

Last month, Boebert referred to Omar as a member of the “jihad squad.” She also made a crack about an anxious police officer having nothing to fear from Omar because she wasn’t wearing a backpack, the signature apparel of a human bomb terrorist.

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/opinion/double-standard-of-anti-semitism-and-islamophobia/

By: Judah Ari Gross – The Times of Israel; timesofisrael.com

IDF chief Aviv Kohavi says new 40-mile above- and below-ground fence is changing the reality along the restive border, where subterranean attacks have dogged the military for years

NETIV HA’ASARA — Standing in the shadow of a 30-foot-high concrete wall, top defense officials announced Tuesday that Israel had completed construction of a massive barrier running the length of the Gaza Strip both above and, critically, below ground.

The NIS 3.5 billion ($1.1 billion) project has taken over three years to complete and is meant to end the threat of cross-border attack tunnels from the Palestinian enclave, which the Strip’s Hamas rulers have utilized to deadly effect.

“This barrier, a creative, technological project of the first order, denies Hamas one of the capabilities that it tried to develop and puts a wall of iron, sensors and concrete between it and the residents of the south,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said at the ceremony on Tuesday afternoon.

cont’d…

https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-wall-of-iron-sensors-and-concrete-idf-completes-tunnel-busting-gaza-barrier/

By: Israel Today Staff – israeltoday.co.il

Resolution passed by 129-11 vote calls on Israel, among other things, to stop unilateral measures in the “occupied Palestinian territories”

On December 1st, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution with an overwhelming majority of 129 to 11 votes denying the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. The resolution calls on Israel, among other things, to end all unilateral measures in the “occupied Palestinian territories.” All states around the world are called upon not to recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders and to provide neither aid nor support for what it calls Israel’s “illegal settlement activities.”

Furthermore, a section on Jerusalem was adopted in which the assembly reaffirmed its determination that all measures by the “occupying power Israel” aimed at imposing its laws and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem are illegal. A press release by the Security Council from 2015 was recalled, which called for the historical status quo at “Haram al-Sharif” to be retained unchanged.

cont’d…

https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/un-again-denies-jewish-connection-to-the-temple-mount/

By: Christina Colter – Daily Mail; dailymail.co.uk

• Col. Eddie Shames, 99, died peacefully in his home on Friday
• The World War II paratrooper in the Easy Company was played by Jonathan May in a 2001  in an HBO miniseries directed by Tom Hank and Steven Spielberg
• Shames parachuted into Normandy on D-Day, fought in Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge
• He was one of the first Jewish American soldiers to be held in the Dachau concentration camp
•  Famously, he and the members of the Easy Company raided Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest after Germany surrendered in 1945
• There, he stole bottles of cognac that he would later use to toast his oldest son’s bar mitzvah, according to his obituary 
• With his death, there is only one surviving member of the Easy Company: 97-year-old Bradford Freeman. 

Retired Colonel Edward Shames, the last surviving officer from the legendary Easy Company of World War II paratroopers whose exploits were featured in the award-winning miniseries Band of Brothers, died at age 99 on Friday. 

Shames died ‘peacefully at home,’ according to an obituary posted by the Holloman-Brown Funeral Home & Crematory. 

Born to Jewish parents, Shames forged his mother’s signature to enlist in the Army in 1942 at just 19, and was one of the officers in charge of the famed Easy Company, part of the US Army’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.

cont’d…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10276189/Edward-Shames-surviving-officer-WWII-Band-Brothers-dies-aged-99.html

By: Benjamin Weinthal – Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

“We will not back off from annihilation of Israel, even one millimeter.”

The spokesman for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s armed forces, Brig.-Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, on Saturday urged the total elimination of the Jewish state during an interview with an Iranian regime-controlled media outlet.

“We will not back off from the annihilation of Israel, even one millimeter. We want to destroy Zionism in the world,” Shekarchi told the Iranian Students News Agency.

Shekarchi’s genocidal anti-Semitic remarks come just days before the nuclear talks are set to restart in Vienna Monday on curbing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s illicit nuclear program. The United States and other world powers are seeking to provide Tehran with economic sanctions relief in exchange for temporary restrictions on its atomic program. Israel and other countries believe Iran’s regime seeks to build a nuclear weapons device.

cont’d…

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/iranian-brig-gen-urges-destruction-of-israel-prior-to-nuke-talks-687248