Before speaking about that pride,
I simply wanted to alert my readers to a slowdown in my postings that will be
taking place for the next 10-14 days. I am well, but focused on both a
personal family situation and on a major project -- about which you will hear in
due course. Please, unless it is important, refrain from writing to me
during this time.
~~~~~~~~~~
Two Israeli professors have won
the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, sharing it with an Austrian Jewish American, Prof.
Martin Karplus, who fled to the US before the Holocaust.
The two Israelis are Prof. Arieh
Warshel, currently living in CA, and Michael Levitt, a native of South Africa
with Israeli citizenship who splits his time between Israel and the
US. Warshel and Levitt are the 11th and 12th Israelis to win the
Nobel Prize.
The prize is for "development
of multiscale models for complex chemical systems." As Warshel -- whose
breakthrough came in 1975, when he was teaching at the Weizmann
Institute here in Rehovot, Israel -- explains:
"We developed how
a computer can take the structure of a protein, and can understand how it does
exactly what it does -- for example digesting food. You want to understand
how it is happening, and then you can use it to design drugs, or in my case, to
satisfy your curiosity."
A spokesman at Weizmann clarified
further:
"The work of the three
laureates is a breakthrough because they have managed to settle the
contradictions between classical physics and quantum physics, which is
significantly different."
This represents the fourth and
fifth times since 2004 that an Israeli scientist won the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry. Not bad for a little country only 65 years old,
huh?
~~~~~~~~~~
I have already written about Prime
Minister Netanyahu's Bar Ilan speech and provided links to it. Here you
have another link, this one put out by BESA. It provides the video in
Hebrew, with English subtitles:
~~~~~~~~~~
One of Netanyahu's major themes
was the fact that the failure of the Palestinian Arabs to recognize Israel as
the nation state of the Jewish people was a major stumbling block to peace.
There would be no peace, he said, without that recognition.
Now Yasser Abed Rabbo - secretary
of the PLO - has stepped forward to provide proof-positive of the veracity
of Netanyahu's charge that the PA/PLO is intransigent with regard to this
issue. On Palestinian radio he called Netanyahu a "racist" and "the number
one extremist in Israel" because of his demand that Israel be recognized as the
Jewish state.
The Palestinian Arab leadership,
declared Abed Rabbo, refuses to recognize "historic Palestine" as the
"homeland of the Jewish people."
Perhaps we should thank Abed Rabbo
for making the case so perfectly.
~~~~~~~~~~
With regard to the charge
that Netanyahu is a "racist," Abed Rabbo is attempting to present Israel as
an exclusively Jewish. But this is not at all the case: 20% of
Israel's population is Arab and has full individual civil and human rights in
the country. What the Arabs do not have are national rights, as a
people, for then Israel would no longer be the Jewish state. This
distinction, which is often distorted, is significant.
In contrast, this past July,
putative PA president Mahmoud Abbas declared:
“In a final [peace negotiation]
resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or
soldier — on our lands.”
Who's the racist
here?
~~~~~~~~~~
What is more -- and we should
never overlook this -- Abed Rabbo is presenting the Palestinian Arab narrative,
built on fiction, which claims the land of Israel as "historic Palestine."
What he is implying is that "Palestine" was the ancient homeland of the
present day Palestinian Arabs, rather than of the Jews. Hokum. The
present day "Palestinians" self-identified this way only in recent times.
Historically there were no Palestinian Arabs, as a people. In fact, before the founding of
modern Israel, Jews in Palestine identified as "Palestinians." Palestinian
Jews.
~~~~~~~~~~
The response of the Arab League to
a tentative proposal by the Czech president puts the lie to what is claimed
to be the Arab position. The Czech president's suggestion was that
his country's embassy in Israel be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The League called this a violation
of Palestinian rights.
But wait... the Palestinian
Arabs are forever calling -- in English for Western consumption -- for
eastern Jerusalem to be their capital. You know, everything over the '67
line. Never mind that there are no Palestinian "rights" to any of Jerusalem, if
this were a genuine demand there would be no objections to Israel's
continued sovereignty over western Jerusalem. And yet, the
Arabs protest the presence of international embassies to Israel in the
west of Jerusalem as well.
They want it all, folks.
Have no doubt about this.
~~~~~~~~~~
As time and energy allow in the
coming days, I want to look again at the abysmal situation with Iran.
Today I will simply mention this:
The Israel Air Force has been
holding an extensive drill to test its capacity to fly remote
destinations. Declared the IDF website:
"When we say, 'all options are on
the table', we're talking about military options as well. The Air Force, the
longest reaching arm of the IDF, is responsible for realizing that option if it
is so required. In the force, we're enforcing a range of abilities, including
long-term flights. In this field the Air Force is required to develop all
relevant ability, from a pinpointed activity to a wide-range
action."
According to YNet,
"In one of the highlights of the drill, where the Air Force cooperated with a
foreign army, fighter jets were fueled midair."
Credit: IDF
I will note here that, as I
understand it, Israel also possesses fighter planes that could reach Iran
without mid-air refueling.
I find this story enormously
reassuring. First because we are providing the only credible military threat to
Iran, and thus causing Iran to sit back and take notice. And then because it is
imperative that we be prepared to do what we may yet need to do, with regard to
actually hitting Iran.
~~~~~~~~~~
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Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner,
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