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The Politics of Hatred
By Shlomo Maital
Consider the ‘new populist politics’ now prevalent in Israel, the US, and other countries.
It is the politics of V. Not “V” for values and vision. V for vengeance, vindictiveness, vitriol, violence. It is the politics of hatred. Hate those who do not agree with you. And…worse, yet, act on that hatred.
This week, Jews everywhere are reading a key chapter in the book of Deuteronomy. And it counsels hatred (?). Remember “Amalek” (an enemy leader who attacked the Israelites from behind, on their way to the Holy Land), we are told.
UK Chief Rabbi, explains: The intent is the opposite. Remember, in order NOT to let hatred dominate your thinking and your emotions. Battle your enemies. Defeat them. And – do not hate them. This is stated clearly in this chapter of the Bible: do not hate the Edomites, do not hate the Egyptians, even though Egypt enslaved you and Edom fought you.
Some 20 years ago, Israel extracted settlers from Gaza. Members of the current Israeli government have vowed vengeance – and two decades later, seek to destroy the democratic system that led to the withdrawal from Gaza. It is driven by deep burning hatred.
The Hamas leader, imprisoned for two decades in Israel, attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and killed many women and children and elderly, often brutally. The result led to a huge disaster for the people of Gaza – death and destruction. The UN Secretary General Gutierres asks Israel, ‘what did you expect?’, referring to the Hamas attack. We ask him, and supporters of Hamas – what did YOU expect? Give them expensive presents?
Now, it is time for efforts at conciliation. Not hatred. Athletes know that competing on the basis of burning hatred addles the brain and prevents it from properly strategizing and winning. Rattle you opponent, get them ‘emotional’ – and you are on your way to winning.
Same for nations. Nations with leaders who leverage hate will ruin their followers and their nations. It is happening before our eyes.
Alas.
Capitalism Failed Us – Here is Why
By Shlomo Maital
David Brooks’ latest NYT column has the fascinating title “Why More People in the World Are Feeling Hopeful (Except Us)” The ‘us’ is of course the US.
Brooks cites results from the Harvard-led Global Flourishing Study published in Nature – Mental, April 30, 2025. Flourishing measures the wellbeing of people, measured by happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and finance. In other words, how countries measure up according to material, social and spiritual wellbeing.
The US ranks 12th or 15th out of 22 leading nations. The nations who have done well and risen in ‘flourishing’ are those that find a true balance between those three elements: material, spiritual and social. The US has done poorly, especially among its young people, who report NOT doing well and NOT having much hope for the future.
Why? Brookins recounts: “Why have rich nations lagged behind in this way? [Prof.] VanderWeele [who led the study] theorizes that maybe it’s a question of priorities. “I tend to think you end up getting what you value most,” he told me. “When a society is oriented toward economic gain, you will be moderately successful, but not if it’s done at the expense of meaning and community.”
Brooks continues: “I’d add that we in the West have aggressively embraced values that when taken to excess are poisonous to our well-being. Over the past several decades, according to the World Values Survey, North America, Western Europe and the English-speaking nations have split off culturally from the rest of the world. Since the 1960s we have adopted values that are more secular, more individualistic and more oriented around self-expression than the values that prevail in the Eastern Orthodox European countries such as Serbia, the Confucian countries like South Korea and the mostly Catholic Latin countries like Mexico.”
We sold our souls to capitalism. It gave us vast wealth, billionaires. But it destroyed our souls. Thank economists in part for that. Mea culpa.
Postscript: My country, Israel, now a pariah among nations, vilified, owing to our disastrous leadership, ranks second or fourth (with or without the financial variable). In Israel, social bonds are very strong, especially during times of war and crisis. And so are spiritual values, not necessarily formal religious ones. Plus, our hi-tech has brought us material gain. But we did not sell our souls to the Capitalist Devil.
Nastia Came to Israel for Life…Iran Caused Her Death
By Shlomo Maital
Nastia Borik was 7 years old. She was Ukrainian and had travelled to Israel for life-saving leukemia treatment.
She was killed in an Iranian missile strike in the Israeli town of Bat Yam on Saturday, along with her mother, grandmother and two young cousins. Nastia’s father is serving on the Ukrainian front lines against the Russian invasion. He was given the awful news while serving at the front.
Russia under Putin continues to target Ukrainian civilians in Kyiv and other cities. Many die each day. Ukraine has a desperate shortage of anti-rocket and anti-drone devices; Israel has them, but clearly needs all it has for its own defense against Iran.
My wife and I respond to sirens and go to our bomb shelter once or twice daily. Most Iranian rockets, targeting civilians and cities, are intercepted by Israel’s Arrow 3, David’s Sling and Iron dome inteceptors, aided at times by the US THAAD interceptors. But a few get through.
Nastia was killed, after she and her family were rented a flat in Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv, in an area with many refugees, in older buildings that lacked modern shelters. The Iranian missile carrying close to a ton of explosives (no shrapnel, just TNT) had a powerful blast wave that destroyed the building and killed Nastia and her family.
An Israeli poet named Haim Nahman Bialik wrote a poem over a century ago, responding to the pogrom in Kishinev (capital of what is the country of Moldova today), when Jewish women and children were slaughtered by Cossacks; the poem ends by saying ‘revenge for the death of a small child – even the Devil has not invented’.
The Bible recounts that God instructed Abraham to ‘be a blessing’, and later, instructed the Jews to “choose life”. Jews and Muslims are descendants of Abraham, and we both revere him. We are obligated to choose life.
There are those who choose to sow death. In the evolution of humanity, it may take time, it may involve sorrow and pain – but life will defeat death.
How Israel Lost America
By Shlomo Maital
OK, I admit it – I’m a numbers guy. Like, an economist who says the obvious in words and numbers that are incomprehensible.
So, how about this. A February Gallup Poll shows that only 46% of Americans sympathize more with Israel than Palestinians. Among independents: 42%. Among Democrats: 21 per cent! And this, after Hamas (who are also Palestinians) murder, rape and burn Israeli civilians, including babies.
A decade ago, 62% of Americans sympathized more with Israel than with the Palestinians.
Ouch. Israel lost America.
Correction: Prime Minister Netanyahu did.
Why?
More numbers. Netanyahu has been Prime Minister of Israel from March 31, 2009 to now, March 8, 2025 (the date I am writing this) — that is 5,821 days — except for a short period, June 31 2021 – Dec. 29 2022, 564 days, less than two years, when “Yamina’ (Naftali Bennett) and “Yesh Atid” (Yair Lapid) formed the government.
Since March 31, 2009, Netanya has been in power for 90% of the time. He has 90% of the blame for the disasters that befell Israel in that time – including the dramatic loss of support among Americans. During that time, Hamas built its military forces and the network of tunnels. On Netanyahu’s watch.
OK, Trump likes Israel. For now.
To rehash an old Nixon saw: Would you buy a used car from Trump? Or a new car? Greenland? Canada? Panama?
After the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, Prime Minister Golda Meir accepted responsibility and resigned in six months. The Agranat State Judicial Investigatory Committee was formed and made sweeping recommendations.
Netanyahu doggedly blocks forming such a committee, knowing it will find him deeply complicit in the October 7 disaster. He has acted in a manner that has alienated many Democratic voters — and when President Biden supported Bibi, he lost many of his Democratic voters. Perhaps enough to lose the 2024 election.
Netanyahu got Israel Trump — and maybe, got America Trump. But he lost Israel, Americans. And much of the world.
For people who love freedom, democracy, justice, honesty, truth and humanity – a really really bad deal.
Your 8-Country Chaos Tour
By Shlomo Maital
Caution: This blog is rather long.
Welcome to our First Annual Chaos Tour – first-hand inside look at wild unprecedented chaos in North and East Africa and the Mideast. Please join us as we tour eight chaotic countries, comprising 144.1 million hapless people.
Libya: This nation of 6.9 million rose up against the murderous whacky dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi, who flees and is caught and killed. NATO airpower aids the rebels. The result: This oil-rich country becomes a non-country, fragmented into cantons led by local militias, part of them Islamic State. Small indicator of chaos: In October 2023, two poorly maintained dams collapse and cause catastrophic floods that smash into the city of Derna, destroying much of the city.
Yemen: A country of 34 million is torn apart by an eight-year conflict between a Saudi-led government military coalition and Houthi rebels supported by Iran. There is widespread hunger, disease, and attacks on civilians, leading to what is said to be the world’s worst humanitarian crisis – until it was superseded by the disaster in Sudan and South Sudan.
Sudan and South Sudan: Sudan, population 48 million and South Sudan, population 11 million, are torn apart by an ongoing power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which began in April 2023 and is causing enormous mass displacement, hunger, and a collapse of health services. More than 11 million people have had to leave their homes, as the crisis adds to what was already a growing humanitarian famine and disaster – “the largest displacement crisis in the world”, affecting 15.8 million people in desperate need of aid.
Iraq: Largely forgotten, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, 21 years ago, was a huge catastrophe for this country and its 45.5 million people. The invasion has plunged the country into decades of chaos. The BBC reports that “the political system that the Americans instigated, which divides power along ethnic and sectarian lines, offered prodigious chances for corruption.” Amounts stolen from this country with oil resources: Some $320 b. Iraqis face power cuts, theft, bad water and inadequate medical care, in hospitals once thought as good as those in Europe. Children beg in the streets, when Iraq once had one of the best educational systems in the Mideast.
Somalia: This nation of 18.1 million suffers as an ongoing Islamic rebellion by Al-Shabab wreaks havoc in the country; US airstrikes in support of the Somali army are ineffective. Some 650,000 Somalis have fled the conflict. The European Union halted funding for the UN World Food program temporarily, as an investigation revealed widespread theft and diversion of assistance.
Syria: This nation of 23.2 million has suffered under the rule of Hafez Asad and his son Bashaar Asad for 50 years. A London-trained ophthalmologist, Bashar Asad responded to a rebellion about a dozen years ago by dropping barrel bombs on civilians and by using chemical weapons to kill thousands and impose fear and terror. His Damascus prison was infamous for killing and torturing thousands. Rebels have taken over Syria and Asad and family have fled. The Spectator website cautions that chaos could return to Syria once again. Millions of Syrians fled their country, many to Lebanon. The country is now divided between Kurdish enclaves in the North, rebel controlled areas around Irbid, Alawi towns on the coast, and former Asad-controlled territory around Damascus. Like Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, Syria is a once unified country now fragmented into cantons controlled by militias.
Lebanon, 5.4 million people, once the jewel of the Mideast, financial capital where oil-rich sheikhs came to spend the summer in the cool foothills of Lebanon. An enormous disastrous explosion of nitrate fertilizer in Lebanon’s port in 2020 killed 218 and injured 7,000. Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, has dragged once-peaceful Lebanon into a disastrous conflict with Israel, bringing mass destruction. Lebanon has no real government, nor a President, and is bankrupt; many educated Lebanese have migrated.
And then, there’s Gaza.
True, there is chaos elsewhere in the world. But it pales in comparison to what we see in Gaza and the other eight North and East Africa and Mideast countries.
My word count is already bordering on illegal. So – can you find common sources for this chaos? Can you see ways to resolve it? And do you perceive why the West has caused more chaos than helped resolve it? Finally – Is there a way to help feed starving people in these countries, when their humanitarian needs surpass the resources available to meet them?
Hamas Tunnels: An Expert’s Analysis
By Shlomo Maital
For five months, Israel has been battling Hamas, and its network of tunnels. No army has faced such an extensive array of underground tunnels, comprising hundreds of kilometers, in a strip of land only 40 kms. long.
As an Israeli, I have a rather biased view of the tunnels. So, instead of my views, here is the analysis of a fairly objective expert, John Spencer *. His essay was published in Modern Warfare on January 18.
On the massive extent of the tunnels: “New estimates also indicate the construction of this subterranean network could have cost Hamas as much as a billion dollars. The group has poured resources over fifteen years not just into constructing tunnel passages, but for blast doors, workshops, sleeping quarters, toilets, kitchens, and all the ventilation, electricity, and phone lines to support what amount to underground cities. As much as 6,000 tons of concrete and 1,800 tons of metals have been used in this subterranean construction. The sheer size of Hamas’s underground networks may, once fully discovered, be beyond anything a modern military has ever faced. The new estimates say the network may include between 350 and 450 miles of tunnels, with close to 5,700 separate shafts descending into hell.”
On the political function of the tunnels: “For the first time in the history of tunnel warfare, however, Hamas has built a tunnel network to gain not just a military advantage, but a political advantage, as well. Its underground world serves all of the military functions described above, but also an entirely different one. Hamas weaved its vast tunnel networks into the society on the surface. Destroying the tunnels is virtually impossible without adversely impacting the population living in Gaza. Consequently, they put the modern laws of war at the center of the conflict’s conduct. These laws restrict the use of military force and methods or tactics that a military can use against protected populations and sites such as hospitals, churches, schools, and United Nations facilities.
Civilian Deaths and Buying Time: “Almost all of Hamas’s tunnels are built into civilian and protected sites in densely populated urban areas. Much of the infrastructure providing access to the tunnels is in protected sites. This complicates discriminating between military targets and civilian locations—if not rendering it entirely impossible—because Hamas does not have military sites separate from civilian sites. Hamas’s strategy is also not to hold terrain or defeat an attacking force. Its strategy is about time. It is about creating time for international pressure on Israel to stop its military operation to mount.
The Huge Challenge for Israel Defense Forces: “The tactical challenges Hamas tunnels present to Israel are thereby compounded by strategic challenges. To deal with tunnels at the tactical level, Israel has demonstrated some of the world’s most advanced units, methods, and capabilities to find, exploit, and destroy tunnels. From specialized engineer capabilities and canine units to the use of robots, flooding to clear tunnels, and both aerial-delivered and ground-emplaced explosives, to include liquid explosives, to destroy them. Arguably, no military in the world is as well prepared for subterranean tactical challenges as the IDF. But the strategic challenge is entirely different. To destroy many of the deep-buried tunnels, the IDF has required bunker-busting bombs, which Israel is criticized for using. And most importantly it has required time to find and destroy the tunnels in a conflict in which Hamas’s strategy is aimed at limiting the time available to Israel to conduct its campaign. Hamas’s strategy, then, is founded on tunnels and time. This war, more so than any other, is about the underground and not the surface. It is time based rather than terrain or enemy based. Hamas is in the tunnels. Its leaders and weapons are in the tunnels. The Israeli hostages are in the tunnels. And Hamas’s strategy is founded on its conviction that, for Israel, the critical resource of time will run out in the tunnels.”
“We Are Proud to Sacrifice Martyrs”. “Hamas is globally known for using human shields, which is the practice of using civilians to restrict the attacker in a military operation. The group wants as many civilians as possible to be harmed by Israeli military action—as one of its officials put it, “We are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” It wants the world’s attention on the question of whether the IDF campaign is violating the laws of war in attacking Hamas tunnels that are tightly connected to civilian and protected sites. It wants to buy as much time as is needed to cause the international community to stop Israel. Its entire strategy is built on tunnels.”
– – – – – – – –
And my own view: The Hamas strategy is working. The US has lost patience with Israel, as Israel’s self-centered Prime Minister plays in Hamas hands by refusing to define a clear end-of-war strategy. Biden is losing the Muslim vote in Michigan. The world has lost patience. Israel is ending up facing two billion Muslims, and a Western world that is increasingly hostile to the Gaza operation by IDF.
The young Israeli generation that many of us seniors felt was hopeless, unpatriotic, selfish, has shown incredible sacrifice, motivation and heroism, fighting to save our country. When they return from months of combat, they find a gaggle of incompetent politicians maneuvering to escape the popular judgment, that they bear responsibility for the October 7 disaster and must leave office at once. Experts believe we are headed for a new civil conflict, as popular demands for the government’s resignation face the Prime Minister’s stubborn desperate efforts to stay in power and thus perhaps avoid jail.
* John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. He is also a founding member of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare. He served twenty-five years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. He is the author of the book Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connection in Modern War and coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.
Toward a Cure for Cancer & Alzheimer’s?
It’s About How Cells (Fail to) Take Out the Trash
By Shlomo Maital
Prof. Ido Amit
Prof. Ido Amit is a scientist at Israel’s Weizmann Institute, and heads an immunology lab there. On his website, he writes: “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by trying and falling over.”
In this weekend’s Haaretz magazine, science writer Asaf Ronel has a lovely cover article (in Hebrew) about a possible breakthrough by Amit, in treating cancer and even Alzheimer’s.
I will try to explain it.
In order for cancer cells to spread through our bodies, they have to evade and defeat our immune system – specifically, immune cells that attack and kill these foreign invaders. But how exactly do cancer cells defeat our immune system?
Amit’s lab has perhaps discovered how. Cancer cells, it is claimed, latch on to specific cells in the body, whose purpose it is to ‘take out the trash’ made by the body’s cells, as they consume energy and do their jobs. Cancer cells transform those kidnapped ‘garbage truck’ cells and turn them into cells that that deprive the body’s cells of energy ..basically, making the ‘garbage trucks’ collect energy from the body’s immune-response cells and not just the trash.
Immunotherapy helps the body’s immune-response cells to identify and destroy cancer cells. But cancer cells can neutralize those immune-response cells by using the ‘garbage truck’ cells to deprive them of much-needed energy. Without energy, the immune cells can’t do their job.
Amit’s lab believes it has a way to neutralize the kidnapped ‘garbage truck’ cells and disable them, so that the body’s tissues get the needed energy – in particular, the immune-response cells. Once the immune-response cells get the needed energy, they are able to successfully attack and destroy the cancer cells.
Several Pharma companies are at work on finding drugs that implement Amit’s approach. There is hope that as a result, many of the 10 million persons who die worldwide annually of cancer may be saved.
But wait. There is more.
We know that Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia afflict 50 million people worldwide. Alzheimer’s is linked to plaque that forms in the brain and ‘gums up the brain cells’, like putting sugar into someone’s gas tank (don’t try this at home) that gums up the carburetor or fuel injection.
Amit believes the cause may be the same ‘garbage truck’ cells in the brain, that somehow become unable to ‘take out the trash’ and get rid of the plaque and waste generated by brain cells (which generally work very hard every minute of the day). As that trash accumulates in the brain, the brain ceases to function properly – more or less, like the streets of, say, Tel Aviv, when the garbage collectors go on strike and the trash accumulates in piles on streets and sidewalks..
Amit says if we catch early-stage dementia, and repair the ‘garbage truck’ cells, maybe we can delay or prevent the disease’s onset and keep the brain cells trash-free..
How soon will there be drugs that implement his finding? Amit believes – two to four years
Hang on there, Snoopy. Help may be on the way.
To discover this, Amit had to invent new technologies that enable the study of individual cells. He was told by experts that what he was attempting was impossible. As with many breakthroughs, he persisted.
I myself have survived prostate cancer, a close call, and the only thing I really fear in this world is having my brain gummed up with plaque. So I will follow Amit’s progress very closely. A lot is at stake.
How Israel Screwed Up: Anatomy of Catastrophe
By Shlomo Maital
This is the story of how Israel, and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, totally screwed up how it handled the pandemic. This, after congratulating itself for being a “model for all nations”. It is based on an article in today’s daily Haaretz by Ido Efrati. It will take me only 695 words. And they are almost too painful to write. Because it is my country, and it is unbearable to see what our leaders have done to it.
According to the Israeli government press office: as late as on May 7, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today, participated in a conference of the leaders of the countries at the forefront of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, [whose leaders] sought to learn from the Israeli model for dealing with outbreak zones.” Really??
Ten costly mistakes that cost lives:
- Very few nurses have been assigned to do contact tracing. And they are not well coordinated. A new contact tracing center does not yet operate – it hasn’t yet received the necessary authority. It now takes 6 days or more to trace a patient’s contacts – it has to be 24-48 hours to stop an outbreak.
- PM Netanyahu decided to open all schools fully for all grades in mid-May. He scrapped the previous system of ‘capsules’, and small groups. And days later, the new Health Minister Y. Edelstein scrapped the requirement that kids wear masks. Too hot, he said. So much for getting adults to wear masks. Schools spread the virus and soon hundreds had to close and quarantine teachers and kids.
- It has taken many months for the Health Ministry to increase daily tests to 25,000. Only on May 31 did the Health Minister say that asymptomatic people should be tested, too, if they came in contact with someone infected. Only on June 22 did Dr. Sadetzki (Health Ministry official) order officials to test those quarantined within 48 hours. Result: Many carriers spread the virus widely before they were identified.
- Until a week ago, the Health Ministry used a strategy of declaring ‘red zones’ (local hotspots). But because the virus is now so widespread, this failed utterly. And under pressure, the Ministry backed down.
- Israelis are exhausted, hungry and jobless. After the PM and other leaders made empty promises and false claims, they no longer believe what they are told. Police are trying to enforce mask-wearing, with little success. Moreover, both the President of Israel and the Prime Minister of Israel broke quarantine laws during Jewish religious holydays, inviting relatives against then-strict lockdown rules – and the Press reported it. This infuriated many Israelis and led to widespread defiance. Now, only about a quarter of those who should be in quarantine actually do so, according to the Health Ministry.
- Five months after the pandemic broke out in Israel, critical information is missing. What proportion of Israelis are asymptomatic, with virus? We don’t know. How long does it take to trace patients’ contacts? We don’t know.
- Israel has a well-staffed professional experience organization that can best deal with the pandemic. It is the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front command. It has almost infinite manpower, able to call up trained soldiers for reserve duty. Yet the Prime Minister stubbornly refuses to mobilize the Home Front Command. The reason is transparent. Home Front is under the Defense Ministry, and Netanyahu’s rival Benny Gantz is Defense Minister. What if, heaven forbid, the Home Front succeeded? Gantz would get the credit. No way. It will not happen. As with Trump, Bibi is only, and totally, about Bibi, and not Israel or its wellbeing.
- “Israel’s decision making, from the earliest stages of the crisis, has been influenced by only a handful of professionals. …Many professional associations are furious that they can’t even get a foot in the door to influence decision-making.”
- “The coronavirus crisis has laid bare years of neglect in the public health system, including its diagnostic laboratories.” The country’s 37 diagnostic labs have for months relied on student volunteers to help. There are too few doctors and too few hospital beds.
- And the previous Health Minister, appointed in July 2015, allowed the healthcare infrastructure to degrade – believe it or not, while most civilized nations appoint doctors or veteran healthcare managers to head the Health Ministry, Israel appointed an ultra-Orthodox Hassid who once came to a key pandemic press conference wearing his bear-fur hat in celebration of the Jewish festival Purim. During the pandemic, while in office, he persistently fought against lockdown restrictions on the ultra-Orthodox – and partly as a result, they have suffered disproportionately many cases and deaths.
COVID-19: Plasma DOES Help!
By Shlomo Maital
Plasma is a component of our blood. Some 44% of our blood comprises red cells (that carry oxygen to and from the heart and the lungs and other organs), 1% are white blood cells that fight ‘invaders’, and 55% is plasma. It is the liquid part of the blood that carries cells and proteins throughout the body.
There is a theory that plasma from patients who have had COVID-19 and recovered contain antibodies, that can be helpful for other patients in overcoming the illness – especially those who are very seriously ill.
Research in Israel has provided serious confirmation. For those who are very seriously ill with COVID-19, many of them elderly with other serious preconditions, some 50% or so do not recover. When they are administered plasma, that contains antibodies generated by the body to fight the virus, drawn from recovered patients, he rate of recovery improves from about half to one-third, 33%.
Many Israelis have volunteered to donate plasma, after recovering – especially among the ultra-Orthodox community, which has been heavily afflicted by COVID-19.
Israel now has a special plasma bank, with many doses of such plasma, in the event that there is a second wave of the virus. Meanwhile, on May 18, there were only 16 new cases, and two deaths. In total Israel has suffered 278 deaths from COVID-19, a relatively low number, out of some 17,000 cases; of those, 13,435 have fully recovered. Only 50 persons remain in critical condition, on ventilators.
How Israel Solved the Ventilator Shortage:
Organizing Creativity
By Shlomo Maital
As the world seems to be slowly emerging from the pandemic, fears now turn to a possible second wave. So, we may still need ventilators, in large quantities.
Here is how a creative Israeli team has attacked this problem, according to Rosella Tercatin, writing in the daily Jerusalem Post, May 10:
“Manshema, a $200-a-piece open source technology created by an Israeli team, could solve the problem of the shortage of ventilators crucial to assist patients who contract the most serious forms of COVID-19 worldwide.
“Around mid-March, a group of Israeli organizations – including the IDF, the Assuta Medical Center in Ashdod and Rafael Advanced Technology – engaged several hundreds of their affiliated experts in what they called a “COVID-19 sprint.” The participants were divided into 16 teams to work on finding solutions to a list of problems related to the pandemic. One of the teams decided to tackle the problem of creating a very simple but effective ventilator.
“As explained to The Jerusalem Post by Mordechai Halfon, an officer at the Technological Division of the IDF Ground Forces, within two weeks a first working prototype of the machine was ready.
“Our device does not intubate patients, no tube is inserted in their throat to push the air in, they can still breath on their own but the hard work is done by the machine,” he said. “It is catered specifically to COVID-19 patients, who required a very specific type of ventilation. This is why it is so simple, as opposed to regular ventilators which need to be suitable for many different kinds of needs.”
“The Manshema team includes different kind of engineers, medical experts, product managers, who had never met before. Seven of them have been working on the project full time – Gil Bachar, Stav B., Elad Grozovski, Ronen Zilberman, Roi Galili Darnell, Ivry Shapira, Omri Mizrachi – others are contributing in different capacities.
“At the beginning, the group worked on the task by themselves, meeting online when required. Afterwards, they started to meet at the Tel Aviv branch of Assuta.
“The project is completely nonprofit and opensource, which means that all the relevant information is available to any manufacturer interested in producing them or medical center in using them all over the world.”
Coronavirus: Cheap Israeli technology may solve world ventilator shortage
The project is completely nonprofit and opensource.
By ROSSELLA TERCATIN
MAY 10, 2020 17:
“Because we are talking about a world-wide pandemic, it was important for the ventilator to be cheap and easy to manufacture. We also wanted it to be disposable,” Stav B., a doctoral student at the Tel Aviv University, told the Post. “Quite at the beginning, we were selected by the Health Ministry as a pilot project and they supported us.”
Since the cost of production of every unit stands at about $200 and the time required at around two/three hours of work, while ventilators available to the market cost from several thousands to several dozen thousand dollars and have become harder and harder to find and purchase, the product could really revolutionize the fight against the virus even in the poorest countries.
“We have received a lot of support also from many companies here in Israel. We have found out that since nobody is involved in the initiative to make money, everyone has been very happy to help us in providing what we needed just for the goal of fighting the virus,” Halfon explained.
The product will undergo clinical trials at Assuta Medical Center in the next few weeks.
“In the first phase, we are going to test it on healthy volunteers, which should be easy to find, after on patients and critical patients. We are not sure how long it will take to complete the trial, but we are hoping that we are going to be ready before the next wave of the virus, if it comes,” the captain pointed out. “We believe that this machine can save a lot of lives.”
Halfon explained that when everything started, they did not think they would be able to arrive to this point.
“We worked through steps. First, we decided to dive into the actual requirements that the machine would need, then we focused on how the solution would look in a broader perspective and only then on how to build the machine,” he said.
“I think it is important to highlight two key elements in our work: the quality of the team effort and the will to do something good,” he concluded.
TIMnovate 