Jerusalem hospital shows off a new vaccine that destroys cancer

From YourJewishNews.com, 9 April 2012:
Early human test results suggest a vaccine can train cancer patients' bodies to seek out and destroy tumour cells.
The therapy, which targets a molecule found in 90 per cent of cancers, eventually could provide an injection that would allow patients' immune systems to fight off common cancers including breast and prostate cancer.
The first results of trials in people, at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, suggest the vaccine can reduce levels of disease. The human work is so preliminary it has yet to be published in a scientific journal.
The scientists behind the vaccine hope to conduct more extensive trials to prove it can be effective against a range of cancers. They believe it could be used to fight small tumours if they are detected early or to help prevent the return and spread of disease in patients who have undergone conventional treatment.
In the safety trial at Hadassah, 10 patients with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, received the vaccine. Seven have finished the treatment and the developer, drug company Vaxil Biotherapeutics, reported all had greater immunity against cancer cells compared with before they were given the vaccine. Vaxil added that three patients were free of detectable cancer following the treatment.
Cancer cells usually evade a patient's immune system because they are not recognized as a threat. While the immune system usually attacks foreign cells such as bacteria, tumours are formed of the patient's own cells that have malfunctioned.
Scientists have discovered that a molecule called MUC1, which is found on the surface of cancer cells, can be used to help the immune sys-tem detect tumours. The new vaccine, ImMucin, developed by Vaxil and researchers at Tel Aviv University, uses a section of the molecule to prime the immune system so it can identify and thus destroy cancer cells.
Vaxil suggested that if large-scale trials prove as successful, the vaccine could be available within six years. Initial research on the vaccine, in mice, was published in the journal Vaccine, and suggested the treatment induced "potent" immunity in mice and increased their survival from cancer.
Cancer charities gave the vaccine a cautious welcome. Dr. Kat Arney, at Cancer Research UK, said: "These are very early results that are yet to be fully published, so there's a lot more work to be done to prove that this particular vaccine is safe and effective in cancer patients."

Israel warns Hizbollah over Iran

From The Telegraph, 6 May 2012, by Adrian Blomfield, on the Israel-Lebanon border:

Any Hizbollah retaliation to an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would prompt Israel to launch a war in Lebanon so ferocious that it would take a decade to rebuild the villages it destroys, a senior Israeli military officer has warned.
Despite the inevitable international outcry, Israel would be left with no choice but to lay waste to swathes of southern Lebanon because Hizbollah has entrenched itself so deeply within the civilian population, he said.
The unusually stark warning comes after months of heightened speculation that the Israeli government is considering unilateral military action against Iran's nuclear installations...
...Hizbollah and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza ...movements [that] have long been funded and armed by Tehran and have built up vast stockpiles of rockets capable of reaching deep into Jewish territory. But Israel has also sensed an unexpected opportunity as a result of the Arab Spring, which has significantly diminished Tehran's regional clout.

Hamas has begun to reorient itself towards the resurgent Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and is seen as increasingly unlikely to join a regional war should Iran come under attack.
Unlike Sunni Hamas, Hizbollah remains far more dependant on its fellow Shia patrons in Iran but its popularity in the Arab world has suffered because of its support for the Assad regime in Syria, which has long backed the group.
... the officer urged the Lebanese people not to be drawn into a war for which they, rather than Iran, would bear the brunt of Israel's anger.
"The situation in Lebanon after this war will be horrible," the officer, a senior commander on Israel's northern border with Syria and Lebanon, said.
"They will have to think about whether they want it or not. I hope that Iran will not push them into a war that Iran will not pay the price for but that Lebanon will."
... the officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, suggested that Israel had taken too cautious an approach in the [2006] conflict, leading to the deaths of dozens of Israeli soldiers.
No such mistake would be made in the next conflict, he said, especially as Hizbollah had built military sites in the centre of many villages and towns in southern Lebanon. Pointing to a satellite map of the town of Khiam, he identified a series of buildings that the movement had allegedly taken over for military purposes.
"In these villages where Hizbollah has infrastructure I will guess that civilians will not have houses to come back to after the war," he said.
"The Lebanese government has to take this into consideration. Many of the villages in southern Lebanon will be destroyed. Unfortunate, but we will have no other solution. The day after (we attack) the village will be something that it will take 10 years to rebuild."
Since the war in 2006, Hizbollah has acquired a stockpile of 50,000 rockets of greater sophistication and range than it had before and is capable of striking at Tel Aviv, more than 70 miles away, according to Israeli intelligence assessments.
The conflict in Syria has also made it easier for Hizbollah to smuggle weapons into Lebanon, the officer said, and there is concern that some of the Assad regime's stockpile of chemical weapons could end up in the group's hands.

Hitler's Long Shadow over Israel

From American Thinker, May 4, 2012, by Karin McQuillan:

Why do so many Arabs sound like Nazis when they talk about Jews? The answer lay buried for decades in the archives of the Third Reich. Then a generation of younger German scholars expanded their attention beyond the death camps of Europe to Hitler's activities in the Middle East. What they discovered: it was Hitler who financed the modern jihadi movement.

Nazi-Arab collaboration was crucial to the Final Solution. The Third Reich financed and trained the Muslim Brothers of Palestine and Egypt in terrorism and focused their anti-modernity rage on Jews. One of the first people Hitler told about his plans to kill Europe's Jews was the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, the infamous mufti of Jerusalem, Yasser Arafat's cousin. Hitler and the mufti shook hands on a plan to exterminate all the Jews of the Middle East. The Reich preserved the memo, the minutes, and a photo of their famous handshake.
Husseini was passed along to Goebbels, who established him as the Nazi voice to the Middle East. It was the most popular radio program of the long war years, broadcast daily into every café. This Nazi station was listened to by the entire male population, Arab and Persian, including most famously Ayatollah Khomeini. It was an intoxicating mix of militant Islam, Nazism, and war propaganda.
The Palestinian leadership and Hitler successfully collaborated on a crucial step of the Final Solution -- mob violence and a reign of terror pressured Britain to shut down Jewish immigration to what is now Israel. They trapped the Jews in Europe, where six million perished in the killing fields and death camps. Adolf Eichmann's deputy, Dieter Wisliceny, stated at his Nuremberg trial that the mufti's importance "must not be disregarded[.] ... [T]he Mufti had repeatedly suggested to ... Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry[.] ... The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of the plan."
Winston Churchill spoke in the House of Commons against the shutting down of Jewish immigration to today's Israel. He clearly saw the Nazi hand behind the Arab riots: "We are now asked to submit, and this is what rankles most with me, to an agitation which is fed with foreign money and ceaselessly inflamed by Nazi and by Fascist propaganda."
Hitler's influence has been permanently embedded in Arab culture. During World War II, there was a popular song among Arabs: "Allah in heaven, Hitler on earth." Sheikh al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood today, in his weekly sermon broadcast on Al Jazeera to an audience of 60 million, prayed about the Jews: "Oh Allah, kill them, down to the very last one." "Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by [Adolf] Hitler." In Tahir Square, a mob of Arab Spring celebrants screamed, "Jew, Jew, Jew" as they raped blond American journalist Lara Logan. We are all too familiar with Iran's plans for their nuclear program -- to carry out Hitler's dream.
The Palestinian national movement was founded by Hitler's henchman, al Husseini, mufti and the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The founder of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, was trained by German Nazi army officers who were welcomed in Cairo after the war. He adopted the name "Yasser" to honor the Muslim Brother's terror chief of the 1930s, who kidnapped Arabs in Western clothes and threw them into pits of scorpions and snakes. Their corpses would be left in the street for days, shoes stuck in their mouths, as a lesson for any Arab who believed in tolerating Jews or welcoming modernization. During Oslo, Arafat's personal bodyguard had sons named Hitler and Eichmann, according to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's book, A Place Among the Nations.
The continuity is striking. Reich set the Brothers up with a printing press and fake photos of alleged torture of Arabs by Jews -- just as today, Iranian, Egyptian, and Palestinian state TV broadcasts dramatizations of Jews stealing Arabs' eyeballs and killing Arab children to use their blood in matzoh. Organizing in mosques, schools, and workplaces with Hitler's funds, the Brothers spread lies that Jews planned to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and trample on the Koran -- the same exact lies Yasser Arafat used to launch the second intifada. On the Ramadan after 9/11, Egyptian President Mubarak launched a 41-week dramatization of that Nazi favorite, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in an emotional call for genocide against the world's Jews.
Hitler has never left the Middle East. For almost 70 years, the Arab world has been pickled in Nazi Jew-hatred. In the words of Matthias Kuntzel, author of Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11,
"[i]f there is one theme ... which unites Islamists, Liberals, Nasserites and Marxists, it is the collective fantasy of the common enemy in the shape of Israel and the Jews, which almost always correlates with the wish to destroy Israel." 
Jew-hatred is indispensible to Arab leaders, from Egypt to Saudi Arabia to Iran to the Palestinian Authority, in their fight against democratic Western values.
Nazi jihadism didn't win without a fight from the modernizing forces in Egypt. Many signs indicate that Israel would have been a welcome neighbor. Religious leaders fought the Brotherhood's attempts to politicize Friday prayers with false claims that Jews were attacking Al Aqsa and the Koran. The rector of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's most important university, forbade anti-Jewish propaganda. Ali Mahir, Egyptian King Farouk's top adviser, called for a united Palestinian state based on mutual tolerance and regulated immigration for both Jew and Arab.
Today, the fight is lost. All of those institutions are firmly entrenched in Nazi-jihadi anti-Semitism. The coalition government of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which is a terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organization, are united in their denial of Israel's right to exist. Jew-hatred is so popular that it is possible that no Arab leader can speak out against it. It explains why the Palestinians have turned down a state of their own four times. They are holding out for Hitler's solution. Peace is the last thing they want. Otherwise, peace would be here today.
Obama is quite wrong. If desired by both sides, peace is easy. It is Nazi-Islamic propaganda that is so hard to solve.

US military drills Day One after strike on Iran, deploys F-22s to Gulf

From DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 28, 2012:

USAF F-22s deployed to Persian Gulf

US Navy, Air Force, ground, intelligence and special forces units based at home, in Europe and the Middle East, took part this week in a special exercise ordered by President Barack Obama to simulate reactions to a potential US-Israel strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities...

Sunday, April 22, the US also transferred a number of advanced stealth F-22 fighter bombers, believed to be from the 302nd Fighter Squadron 302, from the joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska to the Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.
According to our sources, the F-22 jets will join the F-15s of the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 104th Fighter Wing which were transferred to the Al Udeid base a month ago.
Their mission will be to destroy the Iranian air force and air defense batteries so as to clear the way for US and Israeli bombers to go into action against Iran’s nuclear sites and the strategic infrastructure of its army and Revolutionary Guards Corps.
This unprecedented US buildup of air might - supplementing the aircraft on the decks of the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Enterprise, to be joined by a third carrier as soon as the offensive gets underway – shows Tehran that the Obama administration is serious about using military means as extra pressure on Iran to give way in diplomatic negotiations – both with the six powers and with the US through clandestine channels.
Both moves took place as the United States and five other world powers prepares for the second round of talks with Iran scheduled for next month to rein in its nuclear program.
The comment Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz made to AP on April 26 about “other countries” having readied their armed forces for a potential strike “to keep Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons” referred to the deployment of the F-22 stealth jets. He did not name the other countries.
His comment was received in Washington as Israel’s strongest message till now that it will not be alone in attacking Iran but will have partners, presumably the US - and possibly also Britain, France, German, Holland or Italy.
At the end of the US exercise simulating Day One of this attack, debkafile reports that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey submitted to the White House three conclusions:
1. Iran’s response to a military strike will be “measured,” both to limit the damage to the regime and to conserve military resources for a possible follow-up attack;
2. The Iranians will go back to work on building a nuclear weapon within a short time;
3. The destruction of core elements of its nuclear program is expected to change Iran’s attitude in negotiations, making it less cocky and more submissive to international demands.

How Anti-Zionism Seduced the Intellectual Left

From Quadrant, Volume LVI Number 5, May 2012, by Leslie Stein:

[From the Introduction]
Can one be an anti-Zionist without being an anti-Semite? Many years before the establishment of the State of Israel one could reasonably adopt the view that the very notion of Zionism was a chimera, for the chances of successfully launching and then consummating the Zionist project seemed rather fanciful. Accordingly, the sprinkling of Zionist pioneers making their way to Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were mocked as naive idealists by the many Russian Jews fleeing to America. In Western Europe, Jews wishing to assimilate into the mainstream community feared that the spread of Zionism would subject them to the charge of dual loyalty. Marxists attacked Zionism on the grounds that it that diverted the attention of Jewish workers from the class struggle. Finally, extremely devout Jews regarded Zionism as a blasphemous attempt to pre-empt the work of God.
The Zionist movement never commanded a Jewish majority until after the Second World War. Clearly, Jews themselves, not to speak of non-Jews, could and did adopt anti-Zionist positions without any concomitant anti-Semitic overtones. It may seem strange to think of any Jew being anti-Semitic but under certain circumstances, the oppressiveness, continuity and pervasiveness of anti-Semitism can propel some of its victims to seek a way out by associating with and internalising the views of their persecutors. It is not my intention to labour this point but rather to emphasise that in the past, anti-Zionism did not have the same connotations as it has today and that people holding such views did not necessarily do so with malice. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case....

[From the Concludsion]
....The adverse effects of anti-Zionism are considerable since its adherents relentlessly attempt to undermine Israel’s existence by means of commercial, scientific or cultural boycotts and by campaigns denouncing Israel’s right to defend itself on the grounds that Israel is illegitimate in the first place. Furthermore, a negative influence on diaspora Jewry is also brought to bear. After being unrelentingly assailed by anti-Zionist propaganda in the media and on university campuses, inevitably some Jews fall prey to the prevailing conventional wisdom. With Israel constantly being painted as inflicting terrible pain and suffering on defenceless Palestinians, many young Jews are loath to reveal their Jewishness lest they be viewed as accomplices of Israeli oppression. But by expressing their abhorrence of Israel and proclaiming from the rooftops that they are proud to be ashamed of Israel, they can safely acknowledge their Jewish ancestry without being socially ostracised. Sadly, they generally not only turn on Israel but find themselves estranged from the Jewish community at large.
It would be foolhardy to think of anti-Zionism as being a distinctly Jewish problem. In essence it is employed as a strategic means of combatting western civilization. As it gathers pace it enhances sympathy and support for Hamas, Hezbollah and other Islamists, all sworn enemies of open, democratic and tolerant societies. For some years past university campuses have become bastions of prejudice and intolerance where it is not unusual for pro-Israeli speakers to be threatened with violence. By fostering a mindset amenable to fanaticism and self-righteousness anti-Zionism gives rise to a general lowering of the tone of public discourse. That alone renders it harmful to society as a whole.
It is of course not the first time in modern history that intellectuals have held convictions belied by the evidence. In pondering just why so many learned people were enthused about the Stalinist regime at the very time when it was slaughtering and imprisoning millions of its citizens, the late and eminent Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski concluded that “the reaction of western intellectuals was a remarkable triumph of doctrinaire ideology over common sense and the critical instinct.” It is the author’s contention that the same applies with respect to the current appeal of anti-Zionism.

[Follow the link to the full article.]

Jewish property rights

From Point of no return, 4 May 2012:

...This Lag BaOmer, Jewish pilgrims will be flocking to the tomb of a Second Temple-era high priest, Simeon the Just (Shimon Hatzaddik), in East Jerusalem. But the celebrations will be subdued compared to times gone by: in the 19th century, witnesses report that the entire city, in which Jews were a majority, took part in a massive festival, watched by Christians and Muslims. There was candle lighting, dancing, prayers, haircuts for children. The pilgrims made donations according to the weight of the trimmed hair.

In 1876 Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities in Jerusalem jointly purchased the site next to Shimon Hatzaddik’s tomb. They built dwellings for the pilgrims on part of the site. The Jewish residents of some 100 homes were among the first to be expelled when hostilities broke out at the end of 1947. Arab families moved into the empty Jewish homes. From 1949 to 1967 Jews could not visit the holy sites under Jordanian rule — a violation of the 1949 armistice agreement.

This year’s celebrations will take place against a backdrop of legal wrangling over the ownership of Shimon Hatzaddik, Nahalat Shimon and Jewish neighborhoods adjoining the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Over the last few years, human rights and left-wing groups have held weekly demonstrations protesting Jewish settlement in “Arab East Jerusalem.”

Jewish revelers at the Tomb of Simeon the Just in Jerusalem (photo credit: Uri Lenz/Flash90)

Some Jewish former owners have been resorting to the Israeli courts to have their properties returned to them in areas conquered by Israel in 1967.

” I demand to get my property back,” 76-year-old Elisha Ben-Tzur told Ynet News a couple of years ago. “My grandfather built this house and the synagogue that was burned down by Arabs in 1948. Before Sheikh Jarrah, we lived in Silwan, but were expelled out of there as well.”

The courts have not always ruled in the Jewish petitioners’ favor, recognizing that the current inhabitants’ rights must also be protected under the law. The only those Arab tenant families to be evicted from Sheikh Jarrah where those that had failed to pay rent. But groups such as Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity have insisted on portraying these cases as “Israeli settlers evicting the rightful Palestinian owners.”

More recently groups such as Yachad — known as the British J-Street — have taken up the cause of the Arab Sumarin family in Silwan, charging that they are victims of an Israeli policy to “Judaize” Jerusalem. The Sumarins had protested that settlers, backed by the JNF, wished to take over their house, but an Israeli court ruled they had no title. Even the Independent newspaper conceded that technically, Israel was “acting within the bounds of its own law” in the Sumarin case. The current occupier is not the legal owner, although he initially won his case in the Israeli courts, before it was proved that he had forged ownership documents. The media fumed with indignation that settlers linked to the very heart of the Israeli establishment were taking over “Arab” property. An international outcry has forced a delay in the implementation of the verdict.

Again, Silwan is being misrepresented as a Palestinian village in East Jerusalem, despite the fact that poor Yemenite Jews lived in stone houses at the southern end of the village for about 50 years. Only in 1938, after attacks on the Jewish residents, did Silwan become Judenrein on the advice of the British.

Human rights groups eager to defend Arab property rights are curiously indifferent when it comes to Jews reclaiming their property. Many of these claimants are Sephardim or Mizrahim, but a veil of silence is drawn over their rights.