09/03 Links Pt2: 'These 6 million will not go gently into the night'; Golda Meir Was Right; France’s Toxic Hate

From Ian:

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Isi Leibler: Candidly speaking: Déjà vu: Jewish renegades spewing vitriol against their people

The more naïve bleeding-heart fellow travelers display a softer version of anti-Israelism, ignore the criminality of Islamic fascism, and emphasize that they are motivated by humanity and acting in the best interests of the Jewish people. History will judge them even more harshly than the liberals who embraced Stalin and refused to recognize the reality of the evil empire as constituted by the Soviet Union. Many of them today are also academics, like their predecessors who were promoting the “peace camp” during the Cold War, which effectively amounted to advancing Soviet foreign policy objectives.
The liberal and left-wing media, exemplified by The New York Times and The Guardian, which provide extensive coverage and editorial endorsement for these demented views, will be judged even more harshly than for their previous unconscionable defense of the Soviet Union. Although New York Times Jerusalem correspondent Jodi Rudoren is far from being an anti-Zionist renegade, some of her reports about Gaza are reminiscent of Walter Duranty’s reports of the Soviet Union during the 1930s in the Times, which became notorious for understating Stalin’s criminal behavior.
In summary, the manifestation of Jewish renegades in our times comes with a sense of a déjà vu. Its influence feels magnified due to the impact of electronic media and social networking. We must remind ourselves that we live in democratic societies in which people are free to deceive. Our legitimate source of regret is that these one-dimensional Jewish anti-Semites achieve so much media exposure.
We must constantly challenge their attempts to portray themselves as mainstream, and emphasize that they represent a minuscule component of the Jewish world, which despises them.

'These 6 million will not go gently into the night'

The Middle East is burning. Barbaric Islamist hordes are slaughtering innocent civilians by the tens of thousands. Women and children are raped, killed and sold to slavery. Others are beheaded and their heads put on display.
The scope of this savagery boggles the mind. Meanwhile, the president of the United States curtails arms shipments to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally and the only democracy in the region. Without verification, the administration accepts Palestinian ‘civilian’ casualty claims and chooses to punish Israel.
Israel used precautions unheard of in the history of warfare to minimize non-combatant casualties in its defensive war against Hamas, a terror organization that committed a double war crime: firing at Israeli civilians and using Palestinian civilians as human shields. The fact is, Palestinian reporting cannot be trusted.

Douglas Murray: How can Jews oppose Muslim anti-Semitism without being ‘Islamophobic’?

Well, no less a witness than the left-wing Muslim firebrand Mehdi Hasan has said that ‘anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace’. Just last year Hasan wrote: ‘Any Muslims reading this article – if they are honest with themselves – will know instantly what I am referring to. It’s our dirty little secret.’ He went on: ‘To be honest, I’ve always been reluctant to write a column such as this. To accuse my fellow Muslims of being soft on the scourge of anti-Semitism isn’t easy; I feel as if I am “dobbing in” the community… [But] as a community, we do have a “Jewish problem”. There is no point pretending otherwise.’
Now this causes a problem, doesn’t it? Because the claim made by most Jewish and non-Jewish mainstream voices is that the Muslim extremists constitute a tiny proportion of the Muslim population in Britain and other Western countries. They maintain that the ‘vast majority’ are overwhelmingly ‘moderate’ and opposed to all such extremist views. Yet when it comes to Jews it would appear – as Hasan implies – that a very large proportion of Muslims, perhaps a majority, are anti-Semitic. So how do Jews oppose Muslim anti-Semitism without being ‘Islamophobic’?

Douglas Murray: "Dangerous Laws"

It has become increasingly plain in recent years that there are areas of our country in which different rules apply. When the former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said that there were areas of Britain which were effectively "no-go areas" for non-Muslims, he was ridiculed and dismissed as a scare-monger by much of the media and the political class.
Earlier this year, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Tom Winsor, was condemned in the same way and by the same forces when he said that there were areas of the country which constituted no-go areas for the police, and inside which minority communities administered their own forms of justice.
In Rotherham and many other places this analysis -- far from being untrue -- rings true with a dreadful clarity. There were local norms which the wider country might not recognize, but which were certainly recognized in Rotherham and elsewhere in Britain. Here were places where religion and ethnicity, and the fear of accusations of "racism" and "Islamophobia," trump everything -- including women's rights and, it is now clear, even children's rights.
This parallel set of "laws" was not instituted officially of course. The Rotherham report simply shows that these new, unofficial laws of behaviour were instituted informally. Thousands of members of the local Muslim Pakistani community must have understood them to have existed. And thousands of non-Muslim, white British, Sikh British and other groups must have understood them to exist as well. The officials of Rotherham certainly understood them to exist.

Policy Paper for Submission to the UN: UNRWA Pt. II

Beyond the issue of terrorism, UNRWA and the Palestinian leadership assist through their policies in perpetuating the problem and misery of the refugees. The Palestinian leadership has made it clear that the government will not settle the refugees in the settlement areas evacuated by Israel during the 2005 Disengagement, in order to maintain their right “to return.”
Improving the conditions of the refugees does not reduce from the demand for return or compensation, as it is maintained for the Palestinian refugees currently living outside the camps (as well as for Jews who were expelled from Arab countries). It seems as though the interests of the Hamas government is to use UNRWA facilities and resources, to prevent the dismantling of the refugee camps, despite the severe distress that leads to extremism, with the plan of returning to Palestine. In a situation such as this, there is no justification for the continued status quo of UNRWA, if the organization sees its entire purpose in maintaining the misery of refugees in the camps, and certainly after the deep involvement of the terrorist organization in the last month has been exposed.
An immediate and independent investigation is required into the infiltration of Palestinian terrorist groups into UNRWA, the use of its facilities for the purpose of terrorist attacks and rocket storage as well as the transfer of UNRWA equipment to be used by Gaza terrorist organizations and last but not least, the indoctrination of the future generations to war and strife.
Aid to UNRWA must be conditioned upon changing a curriculum that teaches hatred and serves to perpetuate the hatred, on the removal of terrorists from the institutions of the UN agency and on the organization's commitment to act to dismantle the refugee camps that are under Palestinian control and to rehabilitate the refugees in new and spacious communities. Donor nations to UNRWA that hope to assist and support the Palestinian people, need to know they are not in fact, supporting terrorist groups.

UNRWA: A Palestinian, anti-Israel, non-territorial government

The Israeli government should immediately stop using the term “refugee camps” in its formal announcements; it is a false statement.
Refugee camps do not exist; these are urban neighborhoods governed by UNRWA.
The US, as UNRWA’s largest donor, can and should also demand an immediate halt to the dissemination of Palestinian refugee ID cards. All cards should be declared invalid.
Finally, on a personal note, in 1995, after the signing of the Declaration of Principles and the handshake between Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, UNRWA was asked by the UN General Assembly to begin to plan phasing out. A five-year period was assumed to be enough time to phase out UNRWA’s operations and transfer its operations and facilities to the new Palestinian Authority. The document was entitled “Fiveyear Horizon Plan.” I obtained a copy, but then lost it.
UNRWA archived the document, hid it, and now claims that it cannot be found. The phase-out plan did not materialize because the second intifada of 2000 broke out and UNRWA’s emergency services suddenly became necessary.
Indeed, the intifada was a life-saver for UNRWA. The recent military operation in Gaza should not lead to a second resurrection of UNRWA.

History likely to repeat itself

After the release of the error-riddled Goldstone report, Goldstone understood that he had been manipulated by the UNHRC team that drafted the findings. In April 2010 he courageously admitted -- in an opinion piece published by the Washington Post -- that the report's findings were baseless.
Had the Israeli government cooperated with the investigation the report would have remained the same, but the international community would have argued that Jerusalem recognized the legitimacy of the commission and its findings, which also would have made it difficult for Goldstone to recant his conclusions.
Israel would be wise to remember these circumstances while it braces for "Goldstone II" or the Schabas commission. Israel has, in the past, expressed its willingness to cooperate with professional commissions of inquiry, as it did with the U.N.'s Palmer commission on the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla incident.
The Goldstone process, however, clearly demonstrated that the findings presented by the UNHRC, which is controlled by politically biased officials, are predetermined and set -- whether or not Israel cooperates with the investigation.

NGO Monitor: EU-Funded NGOs and Holocaust Denial Exposed in New Book

A number of articles have appeared in the Israeli media based on the forthcoming book Catch the Jew by journalist Tuvia Tenenbom. In the book and articles, Tenenbom describes a number of interactions with NGOs and other activists who thought they were talking to a European journalist, not an Israeli.
The media coverage highlights antisemitic incidents, including alleged Holocaust denial by a B’Tselem “researcher,” as well as promotion of BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) against Israel. Media reports have also quoted examples reflecting the involvement of activists from other European-government funded NGOs, including Rabbis for Human Rights, Yesh Din, Adalah, and EAPPI, for their involvement in spreading anti-Israeli propaganda.

Yes, pro-Israel Jews lobby the Government — and like all UK citizens they have every right to do so

While the thousands who rallied at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Sunday were protesting the growing acceptance within elements of British society of corrosive antisemitic tropes such as the alleged "injurious impact" of Jewish influence on society, arguably they were really there to demand something more basic.
They were seeking equality.
Though Mira-Bar-Hillel's op-ed imputes to Israel’s supporters an exaggerated degree of power (much like the broader attack on the pro-Israel lobby in the US and Europe), it also implicitly accepts the following logical fallacy: 1) pro-Israel groups support a particular British government stance towards Israel. 2) The British government adopts policies consistent with this stance. 3) Therefore, British government policy towards Israel must have been caused by pro-Israel groups.
Alternative explanations for Britain's pro-Israel policies, such as shared democratic values and mutual interests in the war against Islamist extremism, are not considered.

Sorry to Remind You, but Golda Meir Was Right - Part I of IV

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu-Zuhri said: "All Israelis are legitimate targets." What would the Palestinian death toll have been if Mr. Netanyahu's spokesman declared all Palestinians as legitimate targets?
Underdog-nation romanticism tells us Israel should not respond when under rocket attack because it is capable of intercepting the rockets.
That there are fewer Israeli casualties does not mean Hamas does not want to kill; it just means, for the moment, Hamas cannot kill.

Sorry to Remind You, but Golda Meir Was Right - Part II of IV
Sorry to Remind You, but Golda Meir Was Right - Part III of IV
Sorry to Remind You, but Golda Meir Was Right - Part IV of IV

France’s Toxic Hate: Who Is Mehdi Nemmouche, and Why Did He Want To Kill Jews?
In the first of a five-part series on growing anti-Semitism in France, an intimate look at the alleged Brussels Jewish museum shooter

Brussels is the capital of Europe. The day after the shooting, an election was held for a new European parliament. Xenophobic nationalist parties across the continent were predicted to win a lot of seats even before the killing, and as soon as the news broke the already perceptible tension among the continental political class was imbued with a new sense of frailty and paranoia: Was the scheduling of the massacre just a coincidence? Or was a message being sent—and by whom? Europe was under siege, no doubt, and humiliated, too.
The mayor and various members of the Belgium government showed up at the scene. King Philippe declared himself “outraged,” while the U.N. Security Council condemned “the terrorist attack” and its “probable anti-Semitic motivations,” and from Jerusalem, adding to the humiliation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the rise of anti-Jewish feeling on the continent. The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and E.U. Foreign Secretary Catherine Ashton, denounced an “intolerable attack against the values of Europe,” while European Parliament President Martin Shulz, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and French President François Hollande all made the trip to the museum three days after the killing to pay homage to the victims.
In the meantime, though, on Sunday May 25, the people of Europe spoke, sending to the E.U. Assembly some of their worst representatives, like those of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, who had won some 26 percent of the Greek electorate, and Marine Le Pen’s National Front, who was now considered, with its 25 percent of the valid votes, the leading political party in France.

How a City in France Became a Mecca for Islamists
‘In the Beginning, the Brothers, They Told Me To Kill’
A Tablet Exclusive Interview With Marine Le Pen, Head of the National Front
Ilan Halimi’s Tortured Ghost Will Continue Haunting France

Abbas’s Fake Ultimatum to Israel

Abbas does like the idea of going to the UN and the ICC since that allows him to avoid making reciprocal agreements with Israel, recognizing a Jewish state, and acting as if the future of the Palestinians lies in cooperation rather than futile “resistance.” But he also knows that the UN can’t give him a state.
As for the threat of Abbas ending security cooperation with Israel, that’s a bad joke. While the Israelis do view any help they get from the various PA security forces as useful, the main beneficiary of the cooperation is not the Jewish state; it’s Abbas. As the revelations of a planned Hamas coup against the PA uncovered by the Israelis proved, the PA leader’s hold on his office as well as his personal security depends on Israel’s good will.
That fact should also factor into an understanding of why Israelis are so reluctant to hand over more territory to Abbas. While his more moderate brand of Palestinian nationalism is certainly to be preferred over that of Hamas’s Islamist rejectionism, the lack of enthusiasm for peace among Palestinians and the popularity of Hamas both restrains the PA leader’s ability to make peace and would render any such deal a perilous risk for Israel.

'No more prisoner releases for Abbas,' Netanyahu says

Just prior to the start of Operation Protective Edge, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that his government would not release any more Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorist acts as a gesture to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Channel 2 reported on Tuesday.
Last year, Israel had agreed to a four-stage release of prisoners as part of the terms for the resumption of peace negotiations with Abbas's government, but the final stage was canceled after mutual recriminations between Jerusalem and Ramallah over the breakdown of the talks.
During his appearance before the Knesset panel in early July, Netanyahu commended Abbas' public condemnation of the abduction and murder of three yeshiva students by Hamas operatives near the West Bank town of Hebron.
Nonetheless, the premier is quoted by Channel 2 as saying that "Abu Mazen (Abbas' nom de guerre) will not receive another release of prisoners."
"Abu Mazen made some important statements in condemning the abduction," Netanyahu said. "But those statements contrast with the celebratory welcome that he staged for released terrorists, the salaries that he pays them, and the incitement [sanctioned by the PA]."

Israel insists it will not deal with Hamas-backed PA government

The PA’s inability up to this point to confront Hamas terrorism, and Fatah’s political alliance with Hamas, “remains a serious problem,” the Israeli official said.
Relating to calls to leverage the fighting in Gaza into a resumption of peace talks, the official said that Jerusalem wants a peace process, “but it has to be a process not based on illusions, but reality.”
It is important, the official said, that the PA act in a way that is conducive to a diplomatic process.
“If we go back to the same old game – exploiting automatic majority in the UN for one-sided resolutions condemning Israel – that is obviously not a mood that would be conducive to moving forward,” he said.
Going this route would “condemn” the Palestinians to the status quo, he added.

US officially calls on Israel to reverse land appropriation

The United States is concerned that Israel expanded its holding of state land in the West Bank by close to 1,000 acres for a new settlement city and that plans are pending for additional building activity in east Jerusalem.
US Ambassador Dan Shapiro “relayed our concerns over the weekend,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington on Tuesday, as she called on Israel to reverse Sunday’s decision regarding the land located in the Gush Etzion bloc, in an area known as Gva’ot.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to raise the issue with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The two were scheduled to speak on Tuesday.
Palestinians claim that the land belongs to five of its villages and accused Israel of expropriating it. But the IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activity in the Territories’ (COGAT) office said on Sunday that an investigation completed this summer proved that the property in question was state land.

Ken Roth’s Twitter War Against Israel

It turns out that Israel-bashing is what makes Ken Roth’s tweets really popular: as blogger Elder of Ziyon found out, an analysis of Roth’s recent 3,200 tweets shows that his top 10 tweets (i.e. those that garnered the largest number of retweets) include eight tweets about Israel. Most of them are misleading or even outright falsehoods, such as claims about very high civilian casualty rates in Gaza based on unchecked Palestinian numbers, or the false claim that Hamas had nothing to do with the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in June.
What makes these results even more revealing is that Elder also checked out HRW’s top 10 tweets and none of them is about Israel. But then HRW also gets at most a few hundred retweets, while Ken Roth’s Israel-bashing garners thousands of retweets. That is despite the fact that HRW has 1.36 million followers while Ken Roth has just some 75 000. It almost looks as if the people who follow Roth know that he will provide them with plenty of Israel-bashing that they can conveniently retweet.
So the executive director of HRW may well be one of the most effective Israel-bashers on Twitter, and he’s likely the best paid.

SodaStream CEO: “We Won’t Give in to Terror”

If SodaStream moves from the West Bank to the Negev, it will be for business reasons, not “financial terrorism,” from the BDS movement, SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum said this week.
Birnbaum, responding to media reports that the company may leave Mishor Adumim, stressed that neither BDS nor European boycotts against West Bank products will have any influence on the decision the company makes when it decides its next move in the next two months.
“The boycott is a nuisance, but does not cause serious financial damage,” he told The Marker this week. “We are not giving in to the boycott. We are Zionist.”

Jimmy Carter: The Principles Of Allah Will Bring Peace

Jimmy Carter was the keynote speaker at the Islamic Society of North America conference this weekend. During remarks delivered to the conference, the former president called for peace and understanding, through the embrace of Islam. He intoned:
"I look forward to continued cooperation between Islam and the Carter Center because we share so many things in common."
Leaders of terror group Hamas recently admitted that they were responsible for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June. That is the same Hamas that Carter claimed should be treated as a "legitimate political actor."

Deals show Israel boycotts ignored by colleges, companies

Anti-Israel activity and especially boycott drives make considerable noise on university campuses, but the record shows that schools that ignore or reject the pressure can profit from relationships with Israeli institutions of higher learning — and not just academically.
Cleveland State University signed an agreement with the University of Haifa to “develop joint learning opportunities between the two universities,” an official memorandum of understanding (MoU) said. This is CSU’s first academic agreement with an Israeli university.
The agreement was signed by CSU President Ronald Berkman and University of Haifa Rector David Faraggi, who was in Cleveland for a two day visit. The MoU, said CSU Communications Director Kevin Ziegler, “provides an affirmation from both sides that we’re going to work together to make this happen. It’s [a way] of saying we’re serious. That we’re going to treat each other like partners on this and make things happen.’

Campus Groups 'Deeply Concerned About the Safety and Well-Being of Jewish Students' on Sept. 23rd

In anticipation for the “International Day of Action on College Campuses: Free Palestine and End the Siege on Gaza,” which is scheduled for September 23rd, 15 campus organizations joined together to issue a letter to University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks.
Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity (AEPi), the AMCHA Initiative, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), Hasbara Fellowships, Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel , National Conference on Jewish Affairs, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, The Lawfare Project, and the Zionist Organization of America all cosigned the letter.
“We would like to bring to your attention a matter that directly affects Jewish students at UC Berkeley,” the groups wrote before noting that Dr. Hatem Bazian, a UC Berkeley lecturer in Near Eastern Studies and founder of the anti-Semitic campus organization Students for Justice in Palestine called for the anti-Israel day on his Facebook page.

BSD, not BDS

A group of concerned South African Zionists, motivated by the deliberate distortions and attacks from the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel) have come together to form BSD Israel – an organization committed to seeding the message of “Buy, Support and Develop” Israel.
“Fed up and frustrated with the continuous anti-Israel sentiment that surrounds our community, we had a burning desire to turn all this negativity towards our homeland on its head.” said Daniel Levitt, Chairman of the South African Zionist Federation in Cape Town, South Africa. “We watch helplessly from our living rooms, seeing our brave soldiers on the front lines, our families and friends in Israel running to shelters and their daily lives being disrupted by the indiscriminate rocket attacks from Hamas”
“The question on all of our hearts is what we, as Jewish and Christian Zionists in the diaspora, could really do to play a meaningful role in standing by our beloved State. It is time for action. Israel is facing an ideological, geographical and media battle at the moment. We cannot allow her to run the risk of an economic battle” says Levitt. “In numbers we can form an economic army.”

At Cornell protest, blaming Israel for anti-Semitism

Fast forward to last week at Cornell, when Students for Justice in Palestine held what was to be a mobilization rally on campus related to Gaza.
Casey Breznick is Editor-in-Chief of the conservative Cornell Review undergraduate journal. Casey also writes for Legal Insurrection (posts here) and College Insurrection (posts here), sustaining our long history of providing conservative Cornell undergraduates with a platform.
Casey and fellow Cornell Review member Andres Sellitto covered the rally. You can read their full report at The Cornell Insider blog.
There was a paltry turnout, only about 40 people many of whom were not even students, according to Casey. (The Cornell Sun put the number at 30.) Lots of socialist literature was handed out.
But one sentence in Casey’s report caught my eye:
Another off the wall remark included something along the lines of “Israel’s occupation of Palestine is the number one cause of anti-Semitism in the world.”
Casey told me that the remark was shouted from a bullhorn, and was pretty close to how he wrote it out in his post.

Times of London falsely claims Israel ‘formally annexed’ land in the West Bank

However, it is completely inaccurate to say that Israel “formally annexed” the land in question, as such formal annexation would require legislation and approval in the Knesset, a formal process that only occurred in two cases - east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
The term “annexation” implies sovereignty, and any area that was “formally annexed” would mean the application of Israeli law to that territory. This is not the case when Israel merely declares an area to be “state land”, which does not imply sovereignty.
Even Peace Now (the group referred to in the Times of London article) doesn’t claim that the land in question was “formally annexed”, only that it was “declared state land”.

Polish city marks first rabbinic ordination since World War II

The Polish city of Wroclaw had its first rabbinic ordination since before World War II in its only synagogue to survive the Holocaust.
Four rabbis and three cantors were ordained at a ceremony in the White Stork synagogue on Tuesday. Germany’s foreign minister and other dignitaries were among those in attendance.
The new clergy graduated from the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam, Germany, a Reform rabbinic seminary founded in 1999 and named for a 19th-century pioneer of Reform Judaism. Geiger was rabbi at the White Stork synagogue for more than 20 years and was instrumental in founding the Jewish Theological Seminary in Wroclaw, a city that before World War II was in Germany and known as Breslau.

Israeli game stars on Samsung’s new virtual reality headset

Israel is making a big mark in the virtual reality world — for real. Israeli game maker Side-Kick is one of just 20 companies worldwide picked for Samsung’s new virtual reality headset, GearVR. Samsung unveiled the headset Wednesday at IFA, the world’s biggest consumer electronics show — and named Side-Kick’s “Romans from Mars’ game, renamed “Romans 360,” as one of the charter apps in a virtual reality app store Samsung is setting up.
In the VR world, you get a chance to be and do things you could never attain in real life. In this case, you use a super-powered laser to fight off 3D aliens in Roman gladiator gear who try to invade the earth and advance on you — the lone defender of the planet. Picture the old video game “Space Invaders” with much better graphics – but you’re shooting at the aliens rushing at you in 3D, instead of the video game’s version, in which players shoot down spaceships dropping vertically.
Unlike VR headsets available until now, the GearVR device is lightweight — just a few hundred grams. Instead of having all its electronics and sensors on board, users attach Samsung devices (as of now, the newly introduced Galaxy Note 4, but other models could be used as well). Phones are housed inside plastic enclosures which contain two lenses, creating a full VR headset. Depending on the app, GearVR could make use of the phone’s camera, microphone, speakers, GPS, networking capabilities, or other features – with apps to be developed for a wide range of uses, including fitness, medical needs, office uses, and others.

Israel May Have The Best Entry In The ALS Challenge: A Treatment

Israelis such as UN Ambassador Ron Prosor in the video above are accepting participation in the ALS Challenge, taking their ice water baths and sending money to the very worthy charity. But their participation may not be the number one contribution to fighting this incurable disease; an Israeli treatment to ease symptoms and slow the progression of ALS and other incurable neuromuscular diseases is going into Phase 2 clinical trials in three major US medical centers.
BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics’, an Israeli company, has developed a technique for growing and enhancing stem cells harvested from patients’ own bone marrow. The enhanced cells secrete elevated levels of nerve-growth factors that protect existing motor neurons, promote motor neuron growth and reestablish nerve-muscle interaction.