Category Archive

Hey, Dad! I have blood on my hands!

By Shlomo Maital  

  In my previous post, I wrote that Jews sanctify life (“choose life”, the Torah instructs – and we do).  Our enemies have chosen to sanctify death.

   Evidence? 

 In a cell phone recording, in a conversation made by a Hamas terrorist using the cell phone of the women he just murdered:  the killer boasted about killing 10 Jews “with my own hands” to his parents — as he talked to them on one of his victims’ phones

    An unidentified Hamas terrorist can be heard telling his parents to quickly open his latest WhatsApp message so they can “see all those” he had murdered, according to a phone recording the IDF posted on X.

 “Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!”

    He even bragged to his father that he was using a phone stolen from a Jewish woman he had killed in Mefalsim, a kibbutz not far from the Gaza border.

    “I killed her and I killed her husband,” he said. “I killed 10 with my own hands! Dad, 10 with my own hands!”

He repeatedly told his father to open the messages to look at the images of his prey.

    The two seem to rejoice over the phone, the terrorist’s voice thick with emotion as he excitedly repeats multiple times that he killed nearly a dozen people.

“Oh my son, God bless you!” his father said.

    “I swear, 10 with my own hands,” the terrorist repeated when his mother returned to the line. “I killed 10 with my own hands.

“Mom, your son is a hero! Kill, kill, kill!”

His mother replies that she hopes he is brought home safely.

His parents ask him to return home, but he refuses to do so, telling them, “There is no going back. It’s either death or victory.”

    The man then returned to insisting his parents open his message to “see the dead.”  

    You think this is fake?

     Even the most biased mind could not make this up.   

     “Oh my son, God bless you!”.  A proud father. And a son who I surmise will probably not make it through the gates of Heaven.

    ……

The New World Order: Might Makes Right

By Shlomo Maital  

      Each week, I have a precious privilege, to speak with our Rabbi, preparing our podcast on the weekly Torah reading, both in English and in Hebrew. I get to pepper him with really hard, moral questions, in light of the Hamas massacre of October 7.  Lately, I have queried him about how those who sanctify life fight against those terrorists who sanctify and celebrate death.

     Israel is a Jewish country, with 7 million Jews, and 2 million Israeli Arabs.  Israel’s Arab citizens have in large part been equally shocked by the Hamas massacre and have largely not supported Hamas, as they did in the past – except for Hamas cells that are being rounded up.\

     Israel is a Jewish country with Jewish values.

     I served in the IDF reserves.  There is a concept known in Hebrew as Tohar HaNeshek –   the sanctity of your weapons.  Do not defile your weapon, yourself, your religion, by using your weapon in an immoral manner.

     OK – so what do you do, when your religion sanctifies life, and your enemy comes to kill you by sanctifying death, promising Paradise to its fighters in return for massacring infants and for defiling bodies in unspeakable ways.

      A leading Gulf Arab official asked an Israeli  intelligence officer this question, during one of many operations against Gaza rockets.  Which Israel are you?  Israel of 1967, that everyone felt was doomed and pre-emptively destroyed Egypt’s air force on the ground?  Or the Israel of 1973, surprised by the Arab armies and reacting chaotically in the initial days. (I was drafted then and saw it first hand).   

         Which Israel are we?

          There seems to be a new world order.  Its principle is ‘might makes right’.  Russia occupies Crimea, attacks Ukraine… and gains wide support, especially in China.  The UN Secretary General justifies Hamas’ massacre by noting Israel’s long occupation of Gaza (we left in 2005).  

          So – suppose you live in a civilized Western country – Israel, US.  You have values. You value life.  You have to fight wars but try hard to fight them in ways that harm as few civilians as you can, facing an enemy that hides under hospitals and mosques, behind the skirts of civilians.

          You live in a country that believes that right makes might.  But find a world in which a large proportion of countries believes that might makes right. 

          What do you do?  

           Here is what we will do.  You fight like hell, with all your might, preserving diligently the sanctity of weapons, to overcome those who sanctify death, believing sowing death will gain them a free pass to Paradise. 

           And you re-establish the principle that right is might.  Because it is.  And in the long run, it will prevail.  Because it has to.

          Might makes right?  No, this is not the new world order, nor will it ever be.

 Alzheimers:  Starts in our Gut?

By Shlomo Maital  

      We must crack the mystery of the causes of Alzheimer’s (dementia).  So far, despite massive research – little progress.

      Now, comes a breakthrough from King’s College, London – from a direction thought highly unlikely.

     “New research has identified links between gut bacteria, inflammation and brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease”, Kings College notes.

      “For the first time, researchers have found that Alzheimer’s symptoms can be transferred to a healthy young organism via the gut microbiota, confirming its role in the disease.   The study supports the emergence of the gut microbiome (the collection of bacteria that permanently dwell in our digestive tract)  as a key target for investigation in Alzheimer’s disease due to its particular susceptibility to lifestyle and environmental influences.  Alzheimer’s patients had a higher abundance of inflammation-promoting bacteria in faecal samples, and these changes were directly associated with their cognitive status.   This study represents an important step forward in our understanding of the disease, confirming that the make-up of our gut microbiota has a causal role in the development of the disease”..

Scientists and medical researchers know that a first step to curing a disease is often finding its core causes – and if possible, instigating the disease in the lab.    This was the key to Prof. Ruth Arnon’s discovery of copaxone, which began when she found a way to initiate multiple sclerosis in lab animals. 

  It makes sense. Our microbiome is impacted by our lifestyle – and so is Alzheimer’s.

   Hopefully,  this new finding will lead researchers to finding ways to prevent and/or heal Alzheimer’s.   I have a keen personal interest in this topic,  as I turn 81.   

      Grabrucker, S., Marizzoni, M., Silajdžić, E., Lopizzo, N., Mombelli, E., Nicolas, S., … & Nolan, Y. M. (2023). Microbiota from Alzheimer’s patients induce deficits in cognition and hippocampal neurogenesis. Brain, awad303.      

Hello, World. This is Israel Speaking  

By Shlomo Maital

     On Wednesday October 18, the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a “humanitarian pause” in the raging Israel-Hamas war.      

    Why?   The text did not include respect for Israel’s right to defend itself.

    Hmmm.   I, Israel, wonder —   do I need Russia’s OK to defend myself?  Do I need the OK of a world-wrecker dictator Putin  (Russia is a veto-power member of the Council)? Who is bombing Ukraine cities almost daily? Do I need China’s OK, whose human rights policies do not exist? 

   The resolution was drafted by Russia.  Yes, Russia.  No, I am not making this up.  12 of the 15 Security Council members voted in favor. Russia in the end abstained.  So did the UK.  The UK!   Brazil sponsored it. 

     UN representative Linda Greenfield said, ““Like every nation in the world, Israel has the inherent right of self-defense, as reflected in Article 51 of the UN Charter.”  

     But the UN Security Council apparently doesn’t think so.

     So,  UN and the world,  I have news for you.  If the Jewish people waited around for you to grant us the right to self-defense – we would have long ago disappeared, like the dinosaurs.

     We tried that once.  It is called Shoah.  And it did not end well – for anyone.

     So, world, stay tuned.  We are defending ourself. This is pretty new for the Jewish people, who did not have a country for 2,000 years – and there was no-one to stick up for us.

      We have a country.  We are united.  And we are going to defend ourselves rather vigorously.  Stay tuned.

WE Did NOT Do IT  

By Shlomo Maital

   A blast at al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, a Christian-run medical complex in central Gaza City,  killed hundreds yesterday (Tuesday).

    Who did it?

     Not us.

     I just watched a video clip, a film of the launch of 10 Islamic Jihad rockets from a cemetery directly bordering the hospital.  As we watch the volley of rockets launch, one after the other, there is a huge explosion on the path of the rockets, close to the launch site. The clip was made by Channel 12, from a long range camera atop a tall building in Netivot, near Gaza.

      It is a fact —  in the Guardian of the Walls conflict, May 2021,    some 15 percent of all rockets launched by Palestinian terror groups fell short inside Gaza. Hamas primarily uses a variety of locally manufactured rockets as well as munitions and rocket components that are smuggled in.  The rockets are made in ‘factories’ deep underground.  These are not Foxconn quality control plants.  And the materials are improvised. 

         15% fall on Gaza.  Out of 10:   one disastrous dud.  Make sense? 

         Israel has a recording of a cell phone conversation (we listen in) between Hamas operatives, discussing the fall of an Islamic Jihad rocket on the hospital and informing one another of how this happened.  There is no shock, or concern, in their voices. Matter of fact.   It happens.  Oh, well.

          It took Israel about 12 hours to provide this evidence.  Why?  Because we had to get it right.  Because veracity is crucial.  But leave it to the fake-news propaganda machine of Hamas to blame us for what they did.

           And blame us in general, for what they launched, on October 7.

We (Israel) Are Still Here  

By Shlomo Maital

   Hello, world.  We (Israel)  are still here.

   We fought a bitter war for our independence (Nov. 1947-July 1949.   We then battled a fedayeen insurgency on our borders in the 1950s, while absorbing millions of Holocaust survivors.   We fought the Sinai War in October 1956.  (A lot of wars seem to occur in October).   We fought the Six Day War in June 1967.  We were attacked, in a sneak attack, and fought the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.  We fought the First Lebanon War in 1982, and the First Intifada 1987-93, when suicide bombers blew up our buses, and the Second Intifada in 2000-2005.  We fought the Second Lebanon War in the Summer of 2006.   

     Re Gaza:  We withdrew from Gaza on August 15, 2005.  Then came Operation Cast Lead, Dec. 2008, and withdrawal of ground forces on Jan. 21 2009.  Operation Pillar of Defense, Nov. 2012.  Operation Protective Edge July-August 2014.  Then, Operation Guardian of the Walls, May 2021.  And now, Operation Iron Swords, October 2022. 

      Over 25,000 people, men and women, in the Israel Defense Forces have been killed in these wars.

      We are still here.  And we will still be here in 50 years, 100 years….  Why?  As Golda Meir said, we have nowhere else to go.  And because it is our country, we love it, we defend it, we are tough, resilient and creative. 

      And because, unlike our enemies, we have Jewish values starkly different from those of our enemies.

       Jewish people celebrate life.  Choose life, our Bible says.  And we do.  Hamas celebrates death, promising its soldiers Heaven in return for murderous brutality.

        Guess which value will endure and prevail.

Economics Nobel to Claudia Goldin: Women Matter!  

The Nobel Prize for Economics this year was awarded to Prof. Claudia Goldin, Harvard University, for her pathbreaking research, among others, on how much women matter.  I knew Claudia when she taught at Princeton, during my extended sabbatical there, 1970-73.   

     New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote an excellent column, explaining her pathbreaking research. Here are excerpts:

• in 2002, …. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz published an article titled “The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women’s Career and Marriage Decisions.”  …. they were entering a sparsely populated field. If it never occurred to you that modern birth control was a transformative technology, or more broadly that expanding women’s ability to choose had profound economic as well as social effects, you have plenty of company. There have been innumerable books and articles about the economic impacts of, for example, globalization and information technology.”    

Goldin showed how the ability of women to exercise control on childbrearing has had profound impacts on the economy, on family wellbeing, on the middle class and on the world.

           The Nobel announcement was very sparse.  Krugman notes:  “… if you ask me, the Nobel announcement sold Goldin a bit short by failing to note her hugely important contributions beyond the issue of women’s work. In particular, it didn’t mention her work on inequality more broadly, notably her role in documenting the sudden and drastic decline in inequality that took place in the 1940s, creating the middle-class society I grew up in (which has now been destroyed).”

     Krugman continues:   “For most of the 1960s, American women in their prime working years were less than half as likely as men to be part of the paid labor force; by 2000 three quarters of the gender gap in labor force participation had been eliminated.

       “This represented a large increase in the economy’s labor supply, and hence in potential G.D.P.; my back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the impact of rising female employment on economic growth was comparable to, say, the effects of globalization.     But the effect on G.D.P. was only part of the story.

         “In 2006 Goldin published an extraordinary, panoramic overview of the history of women at work in America. As she documented, the percentage of women in the paid labor force rose steadily between around 1930 and 1970, a rise Goldin attributed to the combination of the economy’s shift away from manual labor toward clerical work and rising female education, along with the diffusion of household technologies like refrigerators and washing machines that freed more married women to work outside the home.”

     “But these changes, she argued, did not at first fundamentally change the way society and women themselves thought about women’s work. For the most part, women were seen and saw themselves as secondary earners, working to supplement their families’ income but ready to drop out of the work force if they had children or their husbands earned enough that they didn’t need the money.

      “Around 1970, however, there was what Goldin called a “quiet revolution” in the economic role of women, as women began to view work much the same way that men did. They saw themselves as likely to remain employed even after marriage, which led them to get more education, get married later and, as men always had, see their jobs as an important part of their identity. This was a profound transformation of society — I would say for the better.

   “And one important enabler of this transformation was the birth control pill, which made it easier for women to delay marriage, which in turn, Goldin wrote, meant that they “could be more serious in college, plan for an independent future, and form their identities before marriage and family.”

    “That said, you shouldn’t buy into crude technological determinism. Goldin and Katz noted that the pill didn’t have its most profound effects until legal restrictions that made it unavailable to most single women were removed in the late 1960s. Goldin’s latest paper, released just as she received the Nobel, is titled “Why Women Won” and emphasizes the importance of a large expansion of women’s rights between 1965 and 1973.”

      Krugman adds a word of caution.

     “And as I was reviewing Goldin’s work for this column, I couldn’t help wondering whether those victories are in danger.”

       Women matter.  They have the right to decide about their childbearing, education,  pay and futures.  Kudos to Professor Goldin.  Let’s not be complacent about the right-wing conservatives who would sabotage those hard-won victories.

  Israel’s 9/11

By Shlomo Maital

                           hostages

   Our youngest son, in a WhatsApp message to the family, notes that the murderous Hamas attack on Israeli citizens on October 7 was Israel’s 9/11. 

    True. 

       The 9/11 Commission reported this:   “Shock, Not a Surprise.  The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade.”

   And re the October 7 attack, in which terrorists in paragliders mowed down young people enjoying a party at Kibbutz Re-im, killing over 250 of them?

    NYT columnist Tom Friedman writes:  “For the past few weeks, as anyone following the news from Israel knows, Hamas was conducting what appeared to be practice maneuvers for just this kind of attack all along the Gaza border — right before the eyes of the Israeli military. 

      “But it appears that Israeli intelligence interpreted the moves as Hamas just trying to mess with the heads of the Israeli military and make commanders a little nervous, not as a prelude for an attack. Israeli intelligence apparently believed that Hamas desperately needed more financial assistance from Qatar, which has given Hamas over $1 billion in aid since 2012, and work permits for Gazans to work in Israel — and both Israel and Qatar have always required a quiet border in return.  ‘The intelligence interpretation is that they were training for something that they would never dare to do,’ Nahum Barnea (Yediot Aharonot) said. ‘It was bad judgment and arrogance.’  Hamas instead launched an incredibly complex and sophisticated invasion from land and sea.”   

    Iran today denied it was complicit in the murderous attack.  Really?

     The Times of Israel reports that on Saturday Sept 2. 2023,  35 days before the surprise attack, “The head of the Hezbollah terror group met with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror chiefs on Saturday amid heightened tensions between Israel and the Lebanese organization, an Iranian proxy, and Israeli warnings in recent weeks it would target terrorists “everywhere” following several recent deadly terror attacks in the West Bank.” 

     And Channel 13:  “Hassan Nasrallah met with Hamas deputy politburo head Saleh al-Arouri and Ziyad al-Nakhala, secretary general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, in Lebanon for a meeting on “the latest political developments, especially with regard to the Palestinians,” Israel’s Channel 13 reported, citing a joint statement by the terror groups.”

   Nasrallah, Shiite head of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, is closely tied to Iran, funded by Iran, and Hezbollah militants are trained in Iran.  Iran operates largely through proxies to cause death and mischief in the Mideast.

    What did  Saleh al-Arouri discuss with Nasrallah?  The Oct. 7 attack.  Why did Israel not treat this meeting with deep concern, instead ignore it?  And use its intelligence gathering to figure out what was discussed? 

      There was advance warning to 9/11.  There was advance warning to Israel re Oct. 7. 

       But one major difference.  Some 2,996 Americans died in 9/11.   Well over 700 Israelis, mainly civilians, were murdered on Oct. 7.  As a proportion of little Israel’s population, this is a massively huge toll.  

       An enormous number of funerals will be held this week.

       When the current war is over, there will be very intensive inquiries into the criminal failure to prepare.

Incompetence as a Crime  

By Shlomo Maital

  It is the morning of October 8,  the day after the worse day ever in Israel’s history.  Over 1,500 wounded, many seriously,  more than 300 dead, and that number is rising, after a Hamas attack on Israeli citizens, during a religious festival,  taking prisoner, among others, two children aged 3 and 5. 

   Not a time to write in anger and shock.  But, write I must.

    For 341 days, almost a year, Israel’s far-right fanatic-Orthodox government led by Netanyahu has split the nation and focused stupidly on judicial ‘reform’,  while Israel, a small and embattled country, faced existential threats on its borders and beyond.   The widespread protests have split the army, distracted policymakers, badly hurt the economy, sent hi-tech entrepreneurs abroad and slashed foreign investment in Israel by 80%. 

     But worst of all – the incompetence of the gang of radical crackpots running the Justice and Finance ministries, and many other ministries, has led Israel to disaster.

      Is incompetence a crime?  In no criminal code can you convict anyone for being incompetent.  But in politics?  Incompetence in Israel has become an existential threat.

      We have a defense cabinet, composed of the Prime Minister and ministers who make crucial decisions.  The nutcase head of a far-right religious party sits in this Cabinet – while having been rejected for military service (it is compulsory in Israel) for felonies. Note: This crackpot is Minister of National Security. You could not make this up.

We have a Finance Minister, guiding the economy, who has no competence in organizing a paper bag, let alone an economy. 

       NYT columnist Paul Krugman wrote today, why would American voters think the Republicans can run the world’s largest economy, if they cannot even run their own political party?  

          Why in the world did Netanyahu assemble an insane gaggle of crackpot extreme-right politicians and lead anyone to believe they knew how to run Israel and defend it against implacable enemies?

         He did it to save his skin, while under indictment for corruption.  We are paying the price.

         This week, Israel buries its dead.  And again goes out to war.  I was drafted for reserve duty 50 years ago, in the Yom Kippur War.  There was utter chaos.  Huge arrogance, incompetence, and an existential threat.  The Israeli Army recovered, and defeated two large armies with 1.5 million soldiers serving in them.  The cost was enormous – 2,500 soldiers killed.

           Oct. 7/2023  was similar – and much worse.  We were caught sleeping. Mainly civilians died.  And we faced not two well-equipped huge armies, but a terrorist organization driving pickup trucks. 

            In the court of public opinion, the Netanyahu government is convicted of criminal incompetence.  A crime for which there is no forgiveness, on Earth or in Heaven.

mRNA Nobel Winner: Against the Odds

By Shlomo Maital

Katalin Kariko

     Stories of how scientists win Nobel Prizes are often dramatic, laden with drama, against-the-odds persistence and determination. My friend Dan Shechtman, Technion, won the prize for chemistry in 2011 after leading scientists including Linus Pauling called his work a fraud.

       This year, former Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko won the prize for Medicine & Physiology, sharing it with Drew Weissman, U. of Pennsylvania.  Her story is equally dramatic.

        According to New York Times reporters Benjamin Mueller and Gina Kolata, Kariko, Hungarian-born, fought huge odds to crack the mRNA puzzle and lead to the mRNA COVID vaccine that saved millions of lives.

      “Dr. Karikó, the 13th woman to win the prize, languished for many long years without funding or a permanent academic position, keeping her research afloat only by latching on to more senior scientists at the University of Pennsylvania who let her work with them. Unable to get a grant, she said she was told she was “not faculty quality” and was forced to retire from the university a decade ago. She remains only an adjunct professor there.”

         I wonder if Penn will give her a real appointment, now she has won the Nobel.

          How do mRNA vaccines work?  Karako, in Weissman’s lab, was certain, over 25 years ago, that this would work.  mRNA vaccines work by introducing a piece of mRNA (RNA is ribonucleic acid,  kind of a building block for DNA)  that corresponds to a viral   protein, usually a small piece of a protein found on the virus’s outer membrane.

In the case of the mRNA COVID vaccine, the piece of mRNA injected in the vaccine is based on the protein found in the virus’ spike,  that punctures the cell and then reproduces, killing the cell and spreading thousands of new viruses.    The vaccine alerts the body’s immune system to the vital spike protein, in the COVID virus, and when the virus invades the body,  the immune system is ready to fight it with antibodies.

      According to the NYT, “The mRNA work was especially frustrating, Karako said, because it was met with indifference and a lack of funds. She said she was motivated more than by not being called a quitter; as the work progressed, she saw small signs that her project could lead to better vaccines.

     “You don’t persevere and repeat and repeat just to say, ‘I am not giving up,’” she said.

    Karako met Weissman over a coffee machine in 1998.  Weissman believed in her ideas and gave her a home.   At the time Prof. Weissman was desperately searching for an innovative approach to develop an HIV vaccine.

      The NYT reports, “At first, other scientists were largely uninterested in taking up that new approach to vaccination. Their paper, published in 2005, was rejected by the journals Nature and Science, Dr. Weissman said. The study was eventually accepted by a niche publication called Immunity.”

       Kudos to Karako and Weissman.  And to Karako’s mother, who early on told Karako:  “I will listen to the radio that maybe you will get the Nobel Prize.” Dr. Karikó said she would answer: “Mum, you know, I never even get a grant.”

     “Dr. Karikó is the 13th woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine since 1901, and the first since 2015. Women represent a small fraction of the total of 227 people who have been awarded the prize, a reflection of how women are still largely underrepresented in the field of science and scientific awards, including the Nobel Prizes.”

      It still rankles me, and others, that Rosalind Franklin, who made the electron microscope photographs that enabled Crick and Watson to decipher the DNA double helix, was ignored by the Nobel committee and even by Crick and Watson.

This is how Dr. Anthony Fauci described their seminal 2005 paper:

Their hallmark 2005 Immunity paper dissects how RNA containing different levels of naturally occurring modified nucleosides differentially activates dendritic cells (DCs). They elegantly showed that adding certain modified nucleosides to mRNA molecules blocked DC stimulation, suggesting that modified mRNA could evade innate immune detection”

      Do any of the anti-immigrant MAGA nutcases realize they and others owe their lives to a Hungarian immigrant – that they are trying so hard to keep out, by building walls?

Karikó, K., Buckstein, M., Ni, H., & Weissman, D. (2005). Suppression of RNA recognition by Toll-like receptors: the impact of nucleoside modification and the evolutionary origin of RNA. Immunity, 23(2), 165-175.