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Israeli-Made Oral Vaccine for Coronavirus on Track, but Testing Will Take Months

An effective Israeli-developed vaccine for coronavirus is on track to be ready for testing within “a few weeks,” though it won’t be available for months because of the lengthy and sometimes bureaucratic testing and approval process, a member of the development team said Tuesday.

Chen Katz told The Times of Israel that the new oral vaccine for adults and children could “turn this disease into a very mild cold.” He said that for many people who are inoculated and then infected by COVID-19, “potentially it will not affect them at all.”

The rapid potential progress by the state-funded Migal Galilee Research Institute stems from the fact that the institute has been working for four years toward a vaccine that could be customized for various viruses, and has now adapted that work to focus on the coronavirus, he said.

Nonetheless, while Israel’s science ministry made headlines last week by touting the institute’s work and saying that its vaccine could be three months away, Dr. Asher Shalmon, the Health Ministry’s director of international relations, has warned against placing “false hopes” in it.

The vaccine will consist of a specially produced protein, and Katz said he expects to be clutching a bottle of it within “a few weeks.” But then comes clinical testing, which will take place in conjunction with a partner, and the paperwork, both of which will take time. (Read more from “Israeli-Made Oral Vaccine for Coronavirus on Track, but Testing Will Take Months” HERE)

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Two-Week Isolation Ordered for All Who Enter Israel (VIDEO)

All people entering Israel from abroad will be required to spend 14 days in home isolation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday. The measure became effective at 8 p.m. Monday night.

“After a day of complex discussions, we have made a decision: Whoever arrives in Israel from abroad will enter quarantine for 14 days,” Netanyahu said in a video statement Monday as 50 Israelis were diagnosed with coronavirus. “This is a difficult decision but it is essential to maintaining public health, which takes precedence over everything.

The message came less than an hour after Israel’s Health Ministry announced that three more people were diagnosed with coronavirus: patients No. 40, 41 and 42. It also came two hours before patients No. 43 through 50 were announced. . .

The Health Ministry is asking that these tourists follow five guidelines: 1) Call Magen David Adom if they experience any symptoms; 2) pay careful attention to their personal hygiene; 3) stay away from public gatherings; 4) understand that they cannot leave and then return to the country and; 5) report on their whereabouts while in Israel.

The quarantine does not apply retroactively, explained Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov. Though he cautioned that any Israeli or tourist who has landed in the country in the last 14 days and shows symptoms of the virus – fever, cough or difficulty breathing – should call MDA and be tested. (Read more from “Two-Week Isolation Ordered for All Who Enter Israel” HERE)

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WATCH: Israel Unleashes New Laser Weapon That Shoots Down Drones

A military defense company in Israeli released video this week that shows off a new laser weapon that it has developed that is able to shoot down small drones, which are increasing terror threat in many parts of the world.

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems announced on Thursday that it had conducted the first live demonstrations of its new Drone Dome-L counter-unmanned aircraft systems (CUAS) system which features an “integrated hard-kill high energy laser effector.”

“The system achieved 100% success in all test scenarios,” the company said in a statement. “Drone Dome is designed to address threats posed by hostile drones both in military and civilian sites, offering advanced solutions for maneuvering forces and military facilities, critical border protection, as well as civilian targets such as airports, public facilities, or any other sites that might be vulnerable to the increasing threat of both terror and criminal drones.”

“The Rafael-sponsored demonstration, conducted in southern Israel in December 2019 but only disclosed by the company on 11 February, provided for end-to-end detection, tracking, and laser interception of ‘multiple UAS, including manoeuvring targets’ by Drone Dome-L’s laser capability. The event was preceded by a two-year internal test campaign, which, in the past six months, has brought the Drone Dome-L system to a sufficient level of maturity to enable Rafael to stage the multiple intercept demonstration,” Jane’s reported in an article that the company linked to. “Rafael used Phantom-class quadcopter UAS systems as the threat targets in the demonstration; engagement ranges and specific laser dwell time required to defeat the threat was not disclosed.” (Read more from “Watch: Israel Unleashes New Laser Weapon That Shoots Down Drones” HERE)

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The Democrat Palestinian ‘Peace’ Plan: Immoral and Indefensible

Democrats have a real problem with borders. Even as emphatic as the Left is about demanding that Trump destroy our secure borders, leftists seem to go absolutely apoplectic over his support for Israel’s right to secure its borders. Democrats condemned Trump’s peace plan in unison, regarding his generous proposal for a demilitarized Palestinian state as not substantial enough for their Hamas allies. “Trump’s ‘peace plan’ is a rubber stamp for annexation and offers no chance for a real Palestinian state,” fumed Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

So what do the Democrats and leftists want? The global elites and leftists repeat their mantra of a two-state solution and a Palestinian state like mindless robots without any regard for the geography, security situation, or logistical reality of such a proposition. It’s become a punch line without any meaning – much like the need for “comprehensive immigration reform” or “criminal justice reform.”

Regardless of the history of the Holy Land and how we’ve gotten to this point in history, it makes no sense to push for another state west of the Jordan River at this point – unless the objectives of those pursuing it are more sinister than a mere credulous desire to make peace with terrorists.

A geographically impossible approach

If one were to come to Earth from Mars and listen to the world leaders discuss Israel and a two-state solution with a laser focus on every last morsel of land (the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, Golan), he would come away with the impression that the land in dispute is a massive territory – one in which can be created two viable, contiguous countries. In reality, modern-day Israel, even without the so-called West Bank, is only 8,522 square miles, roughly the size of New Jersey. When coupled with the “West Bank,” that area only expands by 2,180 square miles.

New Jersey has almost 8.9 million residents and is already the most densely populated state in the United States. Israel’s population is roughly 8.7 million and is rapidly growing. Just based on geography alone, does it make any sense to deny Israel the 2,180 square miles it was originally granted and won back in a defensive war?

Moreover, none of the proponents of this mythical yet unassailable solution have ever explained how two independently contiguous states could be created by uniting Gaza with Judea/Samaria. Presumably, there is an unspoken plan to grab even more land from the heart of Israel in the south to make a proposed Arab “Palestinian” state contiguous in all its territory. An underground tunnel will not suffice in the long run.

Let’s take this a step further. The Arab/Muslim countries constitute a land mass 640 times the size of Israel. Does it make sense to squeeze the last few thousand square miles from the only Jewish state in order to create an Arab national state in the Holy Land for the first time in history, if there are well over 12 million square miles of Muslim lands?

Indefensible “Auschwitz borders”

It is clear that anyone peddling a two-state solution without the conditions Trump prescribed has either never looked at a map of the region or is implicitly supporting a “final solution” of pushing the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea. Just consider the consequences of Israel’s surrender of Gaza and extrapolate those grave dangers to Judea and Samaria.

When Israel surrendered the Gaza Strip in 2005, it immediately came under attack by short-range and medium-range rockets, attacks that continue to this very day. It was during one iteration of the rocket war that Israel discovered an even more serious threat to its existence. Hamas had dug a series of complex tunnels from Gaza underground that extended for miles deep into Israeli territory. Hamas planned to use those tunnels to commit mass terror attacks and conduct kidnapping missions throughout southern Israel.

Now consider the fact that Gaza is located in the southwest corner of Israel, the “least” perilous location for a tiny country defending against a genocidal enemy. Imagine if Hamas were allowed to create a state in Judea and Samaria – the heart of Israel? There would not be a single square inch of the remainder of Israeli territory that would not be subject to a perennial threat of terror attacks and infiltrations.

Were Israel to cede Samaria, even if the “Palestinian” state were demilitarized (which in itself is a pipe dream), any two-bit terror cell could paralyze the country indefinitely with cheap surface-to-surface, surface-to-air, and shoulder-fired rockets. Samaria is a mountainous region overlooking Israel’s coastal plain – the area containing 70 percent of the Jewish population and 80 percent of the country’s industrial base, as well as its only international airport. This tiny geographical strip, at its narrowest point, is nine miles wide. There is no way to defend it against the rockets and tunnels. This is exactly what Israel’s legendary diplomat Abba Eban meant when he referred to such an idea as “Auschwitz borders.”

Worse, once a recognized state is created, Israel would have no ability to conduct counterterror operations to halt the inevitable terror attacks. Any incursion would be regarded acts of war. Also, the newly created Arab government would play good cop/bad cop with the local terror networks and accuse Israel of launching a war of aggression against a peaceful government.

The only conclusion one can draw from leftist politicians and world leaders pushing an Arab Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria is that either they are ignorant of the security situation and geography of the land, or they are seeking something much more sinister than a “two-state solution.”

The immoral double standard of a two-state solution

If the dangerous motives of the two-state solution aren’t apparent already, consider one final point that speaks to the immoral dichotomy inherent in creating an Arab Palestinian state. Israel is the only Jewish state in the world, yet despite its relatively tiny size, there are two million Arabs – mostly Muslims – living within the “pre-1967” Israeli borders. They enjoy full civil rights, voting rights, and representation in the Israeli parliament. Their elected officials have been free to side with Israel’s enemies while serving in the Knesset. Their members have even been free to walk out while the Israeli national anthem is played.

Now let’s examine the nature of the proposed Arab Palestinian state. What is the unspoken, yet implicit, directive of creating a Palestinian state? To make that land completely Judenrein – deracinating every last vestige of Judaism from the heart of the inherited land.

When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it used its own military to physically uproot every last Jewish resident of the region. Jewish houses, businesses, and farms were destroyed and the Jews exiled from their land. What’s worse, far from the painful concession fostering a peaceful reconciliation, Israel had to exhume every last Jewish grave in Gaza so that Jewish cemeteries would not be desecrated by the inevitable violence of the local Arabs. The Israeli government was originally going to destroy the synagogues but left them intact after the State Department and the Palestinian Authority promised to guard them. Yet within minutes of the Arabs occupying the land, the synagogues were torched and destroyed, vividly conjuring up images of Kristallnacht.

This is the Orwellian peaceful “solution” that would occur for the hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Judea and Samaria, along with their cemeteries and holy sites, were Democrats and world leaders to successfully “promote a just and durable agreement,” as Bernie Sanders promised. In addition, remember, they also want to negotiate flooding the remaining skeleton borders of Israel with potentially millions more Arabs in addition to the two million already there.

If this double standard – forcing Israel to accept an unlimited number of hostile Arabs in a land the size of a broom closet on the geographical map while forcing out every Jew from the lands trodden by Abraham in Judea – is not inherently racist, then the oft-overused term has no meaning.

Hence, there is no moral, historical, or practical justification for pushing the creation of an Arab state west of the Jordan River other than ensuring the destruction of the only Jewish state in the world. And that’s exactly what these Democrat presidential candidates want. They despise Israel’s sovereignty and its desire to protect its people as much as they despise our own sovereignty and the security of our people. (For more from the author of “The Democrat Palestinian ‘Peace’ Plan: Immoral and Indefensible” please click HERE)

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A Third of Israeli Males Are Mentally Unfit for Service

Nearly half of Israeli youth do not start or finish their military service, with at least a third of males getting exemptions for mental health reasons.

The alarming figure based on IDF data, first published by Yediot Aharonot, shows that 32.9% of men will receive an exemption from the army. With an average of 15% dropping out during their service, nearly half of men (47.9%) do not complete their military service. . .

According to the report in Yediot, the figures show a clear downward trend in IDF enlistment among both sexes. For example, in 2007 a quarter of males did not enlist in the IDF, and in 2015 the figure rose to 26.9% for men and 30% last year.

In addition to the skyrocketing increase in medical exemptions for mental health reasons, the general recruitment figures for combat units have also seen a general decline over the past decade, to less than two-thirds (65%) in 2018 from four-fifths (81%) in 2011. (Read more from “A Third of Israeli Males Are Mentally Unfit for Service” HERE)

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Cease-Fire Reached With Israel to End Gaza Fighting

The Islamic Jihad militant group early Thursday announced it had reached a cease-fire with Israel. The deal, brokered by Egyptian mediaries, took effect at 5:30 a.m. local time, Islamic Jihad spokesman Musab al-Berim said.

The reported truce followed two days of violence that left at least 32 Palestinians dead, according to the Associated Press.

Berim said the cease-fire came after his group submitted a list of demands late Wednesday, including a halt to Israeli targeted killings of the group’s leaders and an easing of Israel’s 12-year blockade of Gaza.

Earlier Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was “raining rockets” across the country, with Islamic Jihad firing one projectile every seven minutes since a senior commander of the terror group was killed by the Israeli military in a targeted airstrike Tuesday morning.

Bahu Abu al-Ata, 42, and his wife were killed as they slept in their home in eastern Gaza, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said. Conricus added that Ata was responsible for a number of recent rocket attacks on southern Israel and claimed he was actively planning new attacks.

(Read more from “Cease-Fire Reached With Israel to End Gaza Fighting” HERE)

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WATCH: Rocket Explodes on Israeli Highway in Broad Daylight

The citizens of Israel are under siege from terrorists who are indiscriminately firing rockets into the country, hoping to murder civilians. The barrage comes in response to the Israeli military’s pinpoint-accurate strike against a senior Islamic Jihad militant, who was targeted and killed today. The Wall Street Journal reports some of the details:

Israel’s military killed a senior leader of the second-largest militant group in Gaza on Tuesday, prompting fighters in the Palestinian enclave to fire at least 160 rockets into Israel that set off sirens and forced people into bomb shelters across the country. Israel’s military said it killed Baha Abu Al-Ata, senior leader of the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic, in a targeted airstrike. It accused the militant commander of orchestrating numerous rocket attacks against Israel in recent months and of planning another imminent attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Mr. Abu Al-Ata as “a ticking bomb” who threatened Israeli civilians, while speaking to reporters at Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv…Israeli authorities said schools and nonessential work across southern Israel and the Tel Aviv region were suspended after rockets reached the area. Israeli medical authorities said they treated at least 39 people: 20 injured from running to bomb shelters, including an 8-year-old girl in critical condition, 17 suffering from shock, and one injured by shrapnel.

An extraordinary detail from AFP underscores the lengths to which Israel went to limit the collateral damage from its strike, as well as the quality of its intelligence into the liquidated terrorist’s specific whereabouts:

The initial Israeli raid in the early hours of Tuesday, thought to have been carried out by a drone, killed Islamic Jihad commander Baha Abu Al-Ata, 42. Islamic Jihad confirmed his death along with that of his wife….Nadav Argaman, the head of Israeli domestic security agency Shin Bet, which took part in the targeted strike, said the operation “allowed us to reach the level of the bed in which he slept, the small room in which he lived, in which he hid.”

(Read more from “Watch: Rocket Explodes on Israeli Highway in Broad Daylight” HERE)

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Israeli Develops Piston Engine That Runs on Water, Alcohol – No Gas

In the annals of business, successful companies that originated in the garages of their founders have assumed an almost mythic significance. Corporate giants such as Apple, Google and Hewlett-Packard all began in small workshops adjacent to their creators’ homes. Now, another small, garage-based family business run by three Israelis near Miami, Florida, that says that they have succeeded in reinventing the internal combustion engine is aiming to join the elite group of legendary garage-based startups.

The company is called MayMaan Research, LLC, and it has developed a system to operate a traditional piston engine with a combination of 70% water and 30% ethanol (or any other alcohol) – no gasoline or diesel required. This revolutionary system can be applied, say its founders, with simple yet sophisticated modifications of existing engine designs, and saves 50% on fuel costs, produces far fewer emissions than gasoline or diesel, and is up to 60% more efficient than gasoline. MayMaan has built four operating prototypes to date, including a car, a generator and various engines. While the company has outgrown its garage-based origins, and has grown into a research laboratory facility, it remains imbued with a start-up spirit.

MayMaan is the brainchild of Yehuda Shmueli, 81, a talented inventor, engineer and master mechanic. Assisted by sons Eitan and Doron, and backed by an impressive executive management team, including Joe Nakash, founder and chairman of Jordache Enterprises; Yedidya Ya’ari, company chairman and former president and CEO of Israel’s Rafael Armament Development Authority; Malcolm Hoenlein, CEO and executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents; and other distinguished individuals, MayMaan’s disruptive technology plans to revolutionize the world of transportation, from passenger cars, to trucks, locomotives and even ships. (Read more from “Israeli Develops Piston Engine That Runs on Water, Alcohol – No Gas” HERE)

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Pontius Pilate-Commissioned ‘Lost’ Road to Temple Mount Uncovered

A 2,000-year-old street believed to have been created under the orders of Pontius Pilate has been found in Jerusalem.

A research published in Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology details a hidden road that has been excavated for the past six years. More than 100 coins that date back to 31 A.D. were founding underneath the paving stones, which “provides strong evidence that the street was commissioned by Pontius Pilate,” according to a statement announcing the findings.

“Dating using coins is very exact,” said one of the study’s co-authors, Donald Ariel, an archaeologist and coin expert with the Israel Antiquities Authority, in the statement. “As some coins have the year in which they were minted on them, what that means is that if a coin with the date 30 CE on it is found beneath the street, the street had to be built in the same year or after that coin had been minted, so any time after 30 CE.”

“However, our study goes further, because statistically, coins minted some 10 years later are the most common coins in Jerusalem, so not having them beneath the street means the street was built before their appearance, in other words only in the time of Pilate,” Ariel added.

The newly discovered stretch of road spans 220 meters (721 feet) and goes from the Pool of Siloam to Temple Mount. This roadway likely used by worshippers who were headed toward Temple Mount, considered a holy site by Christians and Jews. (Read more from “Pontius Pilate-Commissioned ‘Lost’ Road to Temple Mount Uncovered” HERE)

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Actress Forced to Apologize for Visiting Israel

Pop superstar Demi Lovato has apologized after facing backlash for visiting Israel, and insisted that “no one told” her that there would be any issue with her visiting the country.

Lovato uploaded several pictures from Israel to her Instagram account on Wednesday, including photos of her being baptized in the Jordan River, visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and touring the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum. . .

However, the 27-year-old singer faced an immediate backlash from anti-Israel campaigners, who accused her of undermining the Palestinian cause in the ongoing conflict.

“I’m extremely frustrated. I accepted a free trip to Israel in exchange for a few posts. No one told me there would be anything wrong with going or that I could possibly be offending anyone,” she complained. “With that being said, I’m sorry if I’ve hurt or offended anyone.”

“Sometimes people present you with opportunities and no one tells you the potential backlash you could face in return,” she continued. “This was meant to be a spiritual experience for me, NOT A POLITICAL STATEMENT and now I realize it hurt people and for that I’m sorry.” (Read more from “Actress Forced to Apologize for Visiting Israel” HERE)

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