FACING HEZBOLLAH THREAT, ISRAEL RAMPS UP BOMB SHELTER CONSTRUCTION IN NORTH: The Defense Ministry on Tuesday, June 28, announced that it had begun reinforcement work on dozens of homes in Israeli communities close to the Lebanese border — those that are most likely to be hit by rocket fire in a future conflict with the Hezbollah terror group.
The effort, dubbed Shield of the North, officially began in October, when the ministry’s Engineering and Construction Division, along with the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command, started installing new bomb shelters in homes in the community of Kfar Yuval, northeast of Kiryat Shmona. In the coming months, dozens of bomb shelters will be built in homes in the northern town of Shlomi, which were constructed in the 1970s without reinforced rooms, the ministry said. Separately, the ministry published a tender for the construction of 110 bomb shelters in Misgav Am and is set to publish similar tenders for the towns of Margaliot and Manara in the coming weeks. The ministry said it was in the “architectural planning phase” of bomb shelters in 12 other locales, totaling some 1,000 homes. (TOI / VFI News)
ISRAEL HAS DRASTICALLY DAMAGED IRAN’S INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS, IRANIAN OFFICIALS SAY: Israel has deeply infiltrated and drastically shaken Iranian intelligence operations in recent months, a senior Iranian official said.
A report published on Wednesday, June 29, cited the recent ousting of the intelligence chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the secret arrest of a senior commander accused of spying for Israel as examples of the growing levels of distrust in Iran. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president of Iran who lives in Tehran and still maintains close ties with top officials, told the newspaper that Israeli operations had seriously damaged trust within the country’s security establishment. “The security breaches inside Iran and the vast scope of operations by Israel have really undermined our most powerful intelligence organization,” he said. “The strength of our security has always been the bedrock of the Islamic Republic and it has been damaged in the past year,” Abtahi said, telling the newspaper that the Iranian defense establishment would now be looking for a new approach. The report said that unnamed Iranian officials also admitted that “Israel’s spy network has infiltrated deep into the rank and file of Iran’s security circles.” Israel has allegedly stepped up its attacks on Iran’s nuclear program in recent months. Israeli officials told the Times that this was a deliberate tactic to expose failures by the IRGC, generating conflict between Iran’s political and defense establishments. (TOI/ VFI News)
OPPOSITION OBSTRUCTION DELAYS US VISA WAIVER FOR ISRAEL: US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides implored Knesset members to set politics aside to pass legislation that would advance Israel’s membership in the US Visa Waiver Program as the opposition obstructed related bills, likely delaying progress until at least next year.
“I’ve been working around the clock since I arrived to help Israel meet all the requirements to join the Visa Waiver Program,” Nides tweeted. “Don’t lose momentum now.” The ambassador emphasized that “this will help Israeli citizens travel to the US – put them first!” Though the bills were not previously controversial, the opposition is seeking to deny Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked this achievement, which he had previously said that Israel would accomplish by early 2023. The Likud and its allies refused to include the bills – one that would grant the US access to information from Israelis’ passports and another to allow American authorities to see the criminal records of up to 1,000 Israelis who wish to enter the US – in the package of legislation to be passed by consensus before the Knesset was dispersed overnight on Tuesday, June 28. (JPost / VFI News)
FUEL PRICES SET TO SPIKE DRASTICALLY IN ISRAEL: Gas prices will be going up once again as of July 1, from NIS 7.72 to NIS 8.08 per liter of 95-grade octane, the Energy Ministry announced on Wednesday, June 29.
This is the latest in a series of fuel-price hikes, this one constituting an extra 36 agorot per liter. Gasoline prices broke an eight-year record high in February alongside prices of oil due to the war in Ukraine. March saw a decrease in oil prices worldwide, but Israel’s prices remained unchanged. Fuel-price spikes are currently being felt worldwide, and Israel is also beginning to feel the repercussions. (JPost/VFI News)
ISRAEL FIRST TO PIPE DESALINATED WATER INTO A NATURAL LAKE: Early next year, Israel is set to become the first country in the world to channel desalinated water into a natural lake — the Sea of Galilee.
One of the lowest-lying bodies of water on Earth, the Sea of Galilee is Israel’s largest freshwater lake and its emergency water store. The national water company, Mekorot, plans to complete the construction of a 13-kilometer (8-mile) underground pipe by the end of this year, followed by weeks of tests before it goes into operation around the end of the first quarter of 2023. The pipe will connect the lake to infrastructure that in turn links to five desalination plants on the Mediterranean coast. The water will enter the lake via the Zalmon stream, which drains into the Sea of Galilee near Kibbutz Ginosar on the northwestern shore. Tests carried out by scientists indicate that the project will not have any significant deleterious effect on ecosystems, and will even help them by keeping water levels stable. But, conceded Dr. Gideon Gal, head of the Kinneret Limnological Laboratory, which was tasked with carrying out several tests, “all the decisions are accompanied by a certain concern and a wish that we didn’t have to do this.” Still, he added, “If you balance the advantages and disadvantages, I think that the former outweigh the latter.” (TOI/ VFI News)
ISRAEL’S PROBLEM: LOTS OF JOBS, NOT ENOUGH WORKERS TO FILL THEM: Turn on your television and you will see ads aimed at recruiting preschool teachers. Pick up a newspaper and you’ll read how Israel granted permits to 3,500 Palestinians to work in manufacturing jobs. Stand in line waiting to check-in at Ben-Gurion Airport and you will realize there are not enough security screeners.
Wherever you turn, you are bound to notice that Israel is facing a severe labor shortage. Unemployment is at a two-year low of 3.6%, the exact same as in the US but less than the 6.8% average in the EU countries and the 5% rate in the OECD. However, the employment rate, meaning the number of people in the 15-64 working-age population who are actually employed, is lower in Israel – 66.6% at the end of 2021, according to OECD statistics – than the OECD average of 67.7% and the EU average of 68.3%. In the US, the number stood at 69.4%. (JPost/ VFI News)
ISRAELI FIRM COMMITS TO SHIPPING 200,000 CANS OF BABY FORMULA TO US TO HELP SOLVE CRISIS: An Israeli-based company hopes to fill the void as the baby-formula shortage in the United States continues with parents continuing to find store shelves bare, particularly for those seeking specialty formulas.
Three weeks ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued emergency guidance enabling the import of infant formulas produced abroad. Tel Aviv-based MyOr—an Israeli health-tech company—is among companies seeking FDA approval as its Mexican subsidiary, AlphaCare, produces and markets MyOr formulas from a plant in north-central Mexico. “We have 200,000 cans of formula ready to be shipped right now, with a capacity to produce another 250,000 a month,” said MyOr co-founder and chief technology officer Michael Brandwein. Once it receives FDA approval, he said, the company will be able to ship formula to homes and distributors in a matter of days, as many back-end arrangements have already been made. Among the formula products AlphaCare makes, are specialty ones in very short supply. “These are for premature babies and for infants dealing with food allergies and sensitivities,” said Brandwein. “They are produced by fewer companies and in smaller batches.” He said the company remains hopeful that “approval will come in the next few days,” describing the process as akin to the frantic early approval process for COVID-19 vaccines. (I365 / VFI News)
ISRAELI SCIENTISTS WORK TOWARDS CURBING CANDIDA: Candidiasis is a widespread fungal infection caused by a yeast (a type of fungus) called Candida, and the most common type is Candida albicans. It normally lives in small amounts on the skin and inside the body – in the mouth, throat, gut and vagina – without causing any problems.
The yeast is present at low levels in the bodies of most healthy people, forming part of the microbiome – a diverse spectrum of microbes that reside peacefully in the gut and on the skin. The bacteria living on and inside the body combined with the efforts of the immune system help keep Candida populations under control. However, this distant cousin of baker’s yeast is notorious for causing various types of thrush that can be a major nuisance. An overgrowth of the fungus can be painful, itchy, annoying and even – in extreme cases – be deadly. In these severe cases, it can spread to the bloodstream and from there to the kidneys. Such life-threating infections may occur when a person’s immune system has been weakened, for example, by AIDS or by immunosuppressive drugs such as cancer chemotherapy or steroids. In a study published on Monday, June 27, in the prestigious journal Nature Immunology, a research team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot headed by Prof. Jakub Abramson uncovered a previously unknown defense mechanism employed by the immune system in fighting Candida infections. These findings open up new directions of research that in the future could help develop new treatments for severe Candida and possibly for other fungal infections. The newly discovered mechanism might, for example, help produce large numbers of Candida-fighting T cells to be used in cell therapy. And if one day, scientists identify the signals by which Aire-ILC3s boost T cell proliferation, these signals themselves might provide the basis for new therapies. (JPost / VFI News)
The suggestions, opinions and scripture references made by VFI writers and editors are based on the best information received.
Blessings from Jerusalem,
Barry Segal with the Editorial Staff
