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Terror Wave in Judea and Samaria Continues as Israel Heads to Elections

A Hamas-affiliated terrorist opened fire with an M-16 rifle in the Givat Ha’avot neighborhood of Kiryat Arba near Hebron on Saturday night, killing one and wounding five. This is yet another terror incident in a wave of terror attacks in Judea and Samaria as Israel heads to elections to decide the 25th Knesset.

While initial reports claimed that the shooting targeted the home of MK Itamar Ben-Gvir, an outspoken member of Israel’s right-wing bloc and chairman of the Otzma Yehudit party, the IDF later clarified that the terror attack did not target the lawmaker, despite being carried out near his home.

The victim was identified as Ronen Hanania, a 49-year-old resident of the area. Hanania’s son Daniel, who was in the car with his father at the time of the attack and one of the wounded, told Channel 12 News: “We were shot at; my father was hit in the head and I watched him die. I knew there was no chance he’d survive.” After escaping the car, the younger Hanania was helped by several Arabs in a shop, who bandaged his hand and applied a homemade tourniquet to his wound before he was eventually evacuated to a nearby hospital.

Ofer Ohana, a Kiryat Arba community activist and paramedic, was shot and seriously injured as he responded to the scene. The Rescuers Without Borders organization issued a statement, saying, “We are all praying for the recovery of Ofer Ohana, a Rescuers Without Borders Judea and Samaria volunteer who was wounded in the attack near Kiryat Arba when he rushed to the scene to save a life.” Two Israelis and an Arab were also among the other victims, all of whom sustained minor injuries. (Read more from “Terror Wave in Judea and Samaria Continues as Israel Heads to Elections” HERE)

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Human Embryos Without Heads to Be Grown in Mechanical Wombs

. . .Apparently, a team of Israeli entrepreneurs is planning to grow human embryos in artificial wombs. After they grow, organs could be harvested from such infants. To avoid ethical dilemmas, human embryos will be grown without heads. No kidding. The article does not explain how growing human embryos without heads would “avoid ethical dilemmas”, leaving the reader needing to figure it out on their own. . .

Although Hanna doesn’t think an artificial embryo made from stem cells and kept in a lab will ever count as a human being (NO S**T — I.C.), he has a contingency plan to make sure there is no confusion. It’s possible, for instance, to genetically engineer the starting cells so the resulting model embryo never develops a head. Restricting its potential could help avoid ethical dilemmas. “We think this is important and have invested a lot in this,” says Hanna.

The article does not say this out loud, but perhaps a large target market would be all old people who destroyed their immune cells through “Covid vaccine” injections and want to reverse the effect the vaccine had on their immune systems.

Anyway, the plan, to be explained in simple language, would be something like this: if I get older, and need a replacement organ that is not affected by aging, I could pay this startup to grow an artificial infant, without a head, but otherwise, a copy of me when I was an infant. Then they could harvest organs from that headless infant to transplant into my aging body, avoiding immune rejection seen with regular transplants.

Note that the transplants are not EXACTLY a copy of my organs, since they carry modified genetic code that was altered to prevent the formation of a head in the womb. That small distinction is, apparently, lost on the promoters of this idea. (Read more from “Human Embryos Without Heads to Be Grown in Mechanical Wombs” HERE)

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Four U.S. Tourists Among Seven Victims Shot by Arab Terrorist in Jerusalem

An Arab resident of eastern Jerusalem shot seven people, including four American citizens, near Jerusalem’s Old City overnight Saturday, before turning himself in to police after an intense hours-long manhunt.

Amir Sidawi, 26, was arrested at a police station in Jerusalem after coming there of his own will with the gun he used to during the terror attack.

The previous night, Sidawi had opened fire on groups of Israelis on a bus in a parking lot near the Western Wall, injuring passengers on and off the bus as well as a pregnant woman sitting in a nearby car. The victim, 35, was evacuated to a local hospital where she underwent an emergency C-section.

She and her newborn are in critical condition.

Four of the other victims were U.S. citizens, members of a Satmar Hasidic family from Brooklyn, NY, who were visiting Israel as tourists. (Read more from “Four U.S. Tourists Among Seven Victims Shot by Arab Terrorist in Jerusalem” HERE)

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Ben & Jerry’s Tells Court It Doesn’t Want ‘Judea and Samaria’ Flavor

Could the new owner of Ben & Jerry’s Israeli business interests rename a flavor “Judea and Samaria”?

Avi Zinger, who bought the company’s Hebrew and Arabic branding from parent company Unilever last month, recently told an Israeli news outlet that he had the right to do so, and even proposed renaming “Chunky Monkey” the Biblical name for the West Bank.

And that threat, Ben & Jerry’s lawyers say, is reason enough why the sale shouldn’t legally go through. (Read more from “Ben & Jerry’s Tells Court It Doesn’t Want ‘Judea and Samaria’ Flavor” HERE)

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Israel, Palestinian Militants Declare Gaza Truce

Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group declared a truce late on Sunday, raising hopes of an end to the most serious flare-up on the Gaza frontier in more than a year.

Israeli forces pounded Palestinian targets through the weekend, triggering rocket attacks against its cities, which largely tapered off by the time the truce came into effect at 11:30 p.m. local time.

It was announced in separate statements by Islamic Jihad and then Israel, who both thanked Egypt for mediating the ceasefire.

The three-day clashes echoed preludes to previous Gaza wars, though they were relatively contained as Hamas, the governing Islamist group in the Gaza Strip and a more powerful force than Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, had so far stayed out. (Read more from “Israel, Palestinian Militants Declare Gaza Truce” HERE)

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Scientists Create the First Synthetic Embryos

Researchers in Israel have created the world’s first “synthetic embryos” in a landmark study, without using sperm or egg cells.

Scientists at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, were able to make stem cells taken from mice form early embryo-like structures, including a gastrointestinal tract, a beating heart, and the early stages of a brain. The embryos are considered “synthetic” because they were not derived from a fertilized egg — but preliminary results suggest that “synthetic embryos” are fairly similar to natural embryos.

“Remarkably, we show that embryonic stem cells generate whole synthetic embryos, meaning this includes the placenta and yolk sac surrounding the embryo,” said Dr. Jacob Hanna, who headed the study. “We are truly excited about this work and its implications.”

Researchers believe that this breakthrough could offer alternatives to animal experimentation and pave the way for new stem cell growth for human transplants. Skin cells could be potentially transformed into bone marrow stem cells, for example, to help treat patients suffering from leukemia. The demand for donated organs often outstrips the supply, and the immune system naturally attacks foreign cells, requiring already weakened patients to take immunosuppressant drugs after a transplant. Being able to grow tissues from a patient’s DNA could bypass many of the compatibility issues current transplants face and greatly increase the availability of the treatment.

The synthetic embryos are not thought to have the potential to develop into fully-formed animals, and only 0.5% of the observed stem cells combined to grow distinctive tissue, although those tissues seemed fully functional and “95%” similar to natural tissues in basic structure. (Read more from “Scientists Create the First Synthetic Embryos” HERE)

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Israel’s War on Cash Is About to Get More Drastic

Starting Monday, it will be a criminal offense in Israel to pay more than the equivalent of $1,700 in cash to a business or $4,360 in cash to individual, as the government intensifies its ongoing war on tangible money.

It’s a war that began in earnest with the 2018 passage of the Law for the Reduction in the Use of Cash. Israeli businesses and individuals began facing limits on cash transactions in January 2019. However, on Aug 1, those limits are being slashed nearly in half.

“We want the public to reduce the use of cash money,” Tamar Bracha, who’s responsible for carrying out the law for Israel’s Tax Authority, told The Media Line.

“The goal is to reduce cash fluidity in the market, mainly because crime organizations tend to rely on cash. By limiting the use of it, criminal activity is much harder to carry out.”

Israel also limits the extent to which cash is used in transactions involving multiple payment methods. If the total transaction value is more than the above thresholds, cash may only be used for 10% of the purchase. Car purchases are given a higher, 50,000 NIS (New Israeli Shekels) limit — about $14,700. (Read more from “Israel’s War on Cash Is About to Get More Drastic” HERE)

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‘In Honor of the Holocaust’: Biden Majorly Slips up During Speech in Israel (VIDEO)

President Biden slipped up in a speech while referring to the Holocaust during his welcoming ceremony in Israel on Wednesday. He told the crowd to “keep alive” the “honor of the Holocaust,” before correcting himself.

“What am I doing now?” President Biden asked as he stepped off Air Force One in Tel Aviv, Israel on Wednesday. Israel is the first of multiple Middle Eastern countries he is visiting during his four-day trip to secure U.S. ties with allies in the region.

During his welcoming ceremony, he started to announce his plan to visit the nation’s Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, to “honor the six million Jewish lives that were stolen in a genocide and continue…To keep alive the truth and honor of the Holocaust…” before quickly correcting to say, “horror of the Holocaust.” (Read more from “‘In Honor of the Holocaust’: Biden Majorly Slips up During Speech in Israel” HERE)

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Immediately After U.S. Rejects Roe v. Wade, Israel Makes It Easier to Get an Abortion

For the first time in 30 years, the Knesset Health Committee approves sweeping abortion reforms under which women will be able to have an early-stage pharmaceutically induced termination at a clinic instead of a hospital and will not need to appear in front of the much-criticized abortion panels, the Health Ministry says.

According to previously announced changes, women will be able to complete the necessary paperwork online, instead of having to do it in person.

In addition, a woman requesting an abortion will not be required to initially meet with a social worker. If they do wish to meet with one, the social worker’s job will be to provide support.

The new regulations will take effect within three months, the Health Ministry said.

Although the planned reforms have been in the works for some time, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz hails the changes as a response to last week’s ruling in the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. (Read more from “Immediately After U.S. Rejects Roe v. Wade, Israel Makes It Easier to Get an Abortion” HERE)

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Scientists Make Huge 2,100-year-old Discovery In The Holy Land

Archeological researchers announced Wednesday that they have discovered a 2,100-year-old farmstead in Israel along with coins that may date back to the second century B.C.

Researchers at the site near Israel’s northern Sea of Galilee discovered the farmstead essentially “frozen in time” with many household items still intact, suggesting the homeowners may have left in a hurry when the site was abandoned, Live Science reported Friday. Most of the items remained where they were left by the former occupants, who possibly disappeared quickly due to a military invasion, the outlet continued.

“We were very lucky to discover a time-capsule, frozen in time, in which the finds remained where they were left by the occupants of the site,” archaeologist Amani Abu-Hamid said in a statement referenced by the outlet. “It seems that they left in haste in face of an impending danger, possibly the threat of a military attack.”

One theory on the former occupants is that they were members of the Seleucid Empire that fled their home in an effort to escape forces coming from the independent Hasmonean Kingdom based in Jerusalem, according to Live Science. (Read more from “Scientists Make Huge 2,100-year-old Discovery In The Holy Land” HERE)

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