UNWRA has been teaching Palestinian kids to hate and fight Israel for decades

 How did seemingly innocuous United Nations summer camps for thousands of Palestinian children jump to the forefront of the horrific war in the Middle East?

The UN Relief and Works Agency provides summer camps for children of more than 5 million descendants of Arab evacuees of the 1948 war who live in 59 temporary refugee camps established in the wake of Israel’s War of Independence, which dislodged half a million Arabs, intentionally or unintentionally.

UNRWA established an elaborate school system that enables any journalist worth his salt to understand what the agency is teaching the next generation of Palestinian youth — who are instructed that they must adhere to the right of return, even by force of arms, to homes and villages their grandparents or great-grandparents left after 1948, though their villages are now Jewish communities in Israel.

UNRWA policy stands in contrast to the UN High Commission for Refugees policy for the rest of the world, which assures the next generation it won’t suffer the indignities of refugee-camp life.

5

The UN Relief and Works Agency provides summer camps for children of more than 5 million descendants of Arab evacuees of the 1948 war.

As an independent journalist who wanted to communicate the Palestinian passion for war, I engaged Arab TV reporters to film summer camps in and around UNRWA schools in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem for the last 15 years.

You can see the footage at www.cfnepr.com/205640/Movies.

What the UNRWA summer camps preach is hardly a message of peace and reconciliation.

Instead, Palestinian children learn the art of guerrilla warfare.

These summer camps, financed by 67 nations, including America, through UNRWA donations, show fully armed children learning the art of kidnapping, throwing explosives, hijacking vehicles and invading Jewish collective farms.

They demonstrate a shocking prelude to the Oct. 7 incursion into 24 Jewish communities, when young Arab attackers gleefully applied the violent exercises they learned in UNRWA summer camps.

The youths’ UNRWA summer-camp experiences reinforced the violence taught in the Palestinian Authority school curriculum.

5

At the camps, Palestinian children learn the art of guerilla warfare.

How did I get access to the textbooks?

To get the curriculum, I met with Yasser Arafat, founding chairman of the PA.

It’s hard for the Western mind to grasp how the PA leadership expresses pride for its lethal curriculum. 

He readily authorized our news and research agency to review the PA school texts UNRWA uses.

We were granted access to more than 1,000 textbooks.

5

The camps demonstrate a shocking prelude to the Oct. 7 incursion into 24 Jewish communities.

For 25 years, our office has evaluated PA textbooks, engaging professional translators Israeli and American intelligence could not access, unless, of course, they chose to stop by for a cup of coffee at our office in Jerusalem.

Palestinian Authority-issued school books used in PA schools, including UNRWA schools, feature scores of maps labeling all of Israel “Palestine.”

They praise terrorists, such as Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in a 1978 attack that killed 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children.

5

The camps train children in the art of kidnapping, throwing explosives, hijacking vehicles and invading Jewish collective farms.

They deny any historic Jewish presence in what is called Palestine and almost never advocate for peace and coexistence with Israel.

Thanks to online technology, you can peruse our translations of Palestinian Authority textbooks UNRWA uses via the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center’s online site. 

Before Oct. 7, few people showed interest. 

But by December, we had 7.2 million hits on our site: IsraelBehindtheNews.com.

5

Palestinian Authority-issued school books used in PA schools, including UNRWA schools, feature scores of maps labeling all of Israel “Palestine.”

Denial of reality, which defined Israel before Oct. 7, no longer exists.

The public, thanks to modern technology, can instantly view videos or read about the chilling truth being played out daily.  

David Bedein is the director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.

https://nypost.com/2024/01/31/opinion/unwra-has-been-teaching-palestinian-kids-to-hate-and-fight-israel-for-decades/

FDA Finds Safety Signals For Updated COVID-19 Vaccines

by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Updated COVID-19 vaccines may cause heart inflammation and severe allergic shock, according to a new study from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Researchers with the FDA, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and companies like CVS looked at health care databases to try to figure out if there were signs the Moderna and Pfizer bivalent COVID-19 vaccines might be linked to any health issues.

They found several safety signals. One signal was for myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, and a related condition called pericarditis following Pfizer vaccination in adults aged 18 to 35. Another was for anaphylaxis, or severe allergic shock, following Moderna and Pfizer vaccination in people aged 18 to 64.

The signals were detected in a database from Carelon Research.

The incidence rate for anaphylaxis was 74.5 cases per 100,000 person-years following Pfizer vaccination and 109.4 cases per 100,000 person-years following Moderna vaccination.

Researchers arrived at an incidence rate of 131.4 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis per 100,000 person-years after a Pfizer shot.

No stratification was done by gender, despite myocarditis, according to many studies, disproportionately affecting males.

Person-years is a measure used in some studies. In this study, all time during post-vaccination periods of time known as risk intervals were included. The risk intervals were different depending on the health outcome. For anaphylaxis, the risk interval was 0 to 1 day; for myocarditis/pericarditis, it was 0 to 7 days or 0 to 21 days.

Additional issues were also identified in the four databases that were analyzed, but none rose to the level of a safety signal, a set criteria that is an indication of a vaccine causing an issue.

The study analyzed data from people aged 6 months and older from August 2022 to July 2023. The bivalent shots were replaced soon after by updated vaccines because their effects, which already started low, were shown to wane in observational studies.

Researchers only included people who were continuously enrolled in an insurance plan and did not suffer health issues during a “clean interval,” or if the health outcome in question did not occur during a certain interval.

“References for the clean interval could not be located in the literature and are based on clinician input,” the authors said in a footnote.

Pfizer and Moderna, which make COVID-19 shots that utilize modified messenger RNA (mRNA), did not return inquiries.

FDA Response

Patricia Lloyd, an FDA researcher, and her co-authors said the study “supports the safety of these vaccines” and “supports the conclusion that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks.”

Asked for evidence to support those conclusions, Ms. Lloyd referred a request for comment to the FDA.

“With over a billion doses of the mRNA vaccines administered, available scientific evidence supports the conclusion that the vaccines are safe and effective. The FDA stands behind its findings of quality, safety, and efficacy for the mRNA vaccines. Additionally, it is simply a fact that millions of lives have been saved because of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, which most Americans undergoing vaccination have received,” an FDA spokesperson claimed.

The agency provided a single citation from the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that used modeling to estimate that through November 2022, the vaccines prevented millions of deaths.

The study was published ahead of peer review on the medRxiv server.

Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist and president of the McCullough Foundation, told The Epoch Times in an email that results from the paper show “cardiovascular and neurological safety events are numerous and unacceptable on a population basis.”

Dr. McCullough, who was not involved with the paper, noted that the study did not analyze COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness.

“The FDA’s conclusion on risk benefit is not valid and reflects agency bias in attempting to promote the unsafe, ineffective products,” he said. “Our regulatory agencies should not be promoting or advertising the products they are charged with regulating.”

The FDA clears vaccines. The agency in 2022 authorized and approved the bivalent vaccines despite there being no clinical trial data available.

Limitations of the new paper included the lack of medical record review. Many authors reported their employment for health care companies as conflicts of interest.

A previous study analyzing the health claims databases detected signals for seizures/convulsions among children aged 2 to 4 after Pfizer vaccination and children aged 2 to 5 following Moderna vaccination. That study analyzed the version of the vaccines that preceded the bivalent shots.

In another new study, co-authored by Dr. McCullough, researchers reported finding a spike in reports of myocarditis in the federally-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System in 2021.

“We found the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS after COVID-19 vaccination in 2021 was 223 times higher than the average of all vaccines combined for the past 30 years,” the researchers said.

Applying causality principles, the researchers said that COVID-19 vaccination was “strongly associated with a serious adverse safety signal of myocarditis, particularly in children and young adults resulting in hospitalization and death.”

Federal officials have said that the COVID-19 vaccines cause myocarditis, pericarditis, and anaphylaxis, but that the vaccines also provide protection against infection and severe illness, tilting the risk-benefit balance in their favor. They have increasingly cited, in lieu of clinical trials, observational studies from the FDA and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), some of which lack peer review.

Current U.S. recommendations are for essentially all Americans aged 6 months and older to get one of the newest COVID-19 vaccines, introduced in 2023. That contrasts with a number of other countries, such as the United Kingdom, which have stopped offering or no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccination for wide swaths of their populations.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fda-finds-safety-signals-updated-covid-19-vaccines

Kiora, Théa to Develop, Commercialize Treatment of Inherited Retinal Diseases; Deal Value up to $301 M

  Kiora Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: KPRX), a clinical-stage biotech company developing treatments for orphan retinal diseases, today announced that it has entered a strategic development and commercialization agreement with Théa Open Innovation (TOI), a sister company of the global ophthalmic specialty company Laboratoires Théa (Théa). Under the agreement, Kiora granted TOI exclusive worldwide development and commercialization rights, excluding Asia, to KIO-301 for the treatment of degenerative retinal diseases. In exchange, Kiora will receive an upfront, payment of $16 million; up to $285 million upon achievement of pre-specified clinical development, regulatory and commercial milestones; tiered royalties of up to low 20% on net sales; and reimbursement of KIO-301 research and development expenses.

https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/196399/Kiora-Pharmaceuticals-and-Tha-Open-Innovation-Enter-Strategic-Agreement-to-Develop-and-Commercialize-KIO301-for-the-Treatment-of-Inherited-Retinal-Diseases-Total-Deal-Value-of-up-to-301-Million-includes-16-Million-Upfront-up-to-285-Million-

Hamas Returning To Northern Gaza, Reasserting Control In Some Areas

 Now 117 days into the Gaza war, with fighting having long been focused in the south, and there are already reports that Hamas militants are returning to the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have for months exercised control of after pacifying it early in the ground offensive.

The Guardian is among major publications to report that Hamas is newly mobilizing in the north and even trying to reestablish a system of governance, citing Israeli officials and eyewitnesses.

One former Israeli national security advisor, Eyal Hulata, has described, "We are hearing more, unfortunately, of the recovery of [an] insurgency in both central and northern Gaza … We’re hearing more and more that Hamas are doing policing in northern Gaza and governing trade, and that is a very bad outcome."

Michael Milstein of the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israel-based think tank, explained to the publication how this could be possible. "Hamas control these areas. There is no chaos or vacuum because it is the workers of Gaza municipality or civil rescue defense forces, who are effectively part of Hamas, who are enforcing public order. Hamas still exists. Hamas has survived," he said.

"The IDF version is that in the northern part of Gaza the basic military structure of Hamas was broken … That only works with a conventional army but not for a flexible guerrilla operation like Hamas. We are already seeing individuals as snipers, setting booby traps and so on," Milstein continued.

Presumably small Hamas teams are also still able to make effective use of tunnels to launch ambushes or utilize other insurgent or guerilla tactics. This makes it almost impossible to stamp out Hamas completely. 

Israel has meanwhile sought to actively prevent large swathes of Gazan residents from returning to their homes, also given it is still an active war zone. Some regional outlets have said the IDF is dropping leaflets warning refugees in the south against any attempts to travel back north.

Meanwhile, Israel's plans for the Gaza Strip post-war are still unclear, but Palestinians fear that Jewish settlers will eventually move in. According to a new report in Reuters, that was precisely the focus of a controversial conference over the weekend.

"Israel's hard-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir urged Jewish settlers to return to Gaza at a packed gathering on Sunday, drawing condemnation from Palestinians who said his words amounted to a call for their forced deportation," Reuters reported.

"The statement from the firebrand Ben-Gvir clashed with the official government position iterated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel does not intend to return a permanent presence to Gaza once the war with Hamas is over," the report said.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hamas-already-coming-back-northern-gaza-reasserting-control-some-areas

US proposes reimbursement rate for Medicare Advantage 2025 payments

The U.S. government on Wednesday proposed a 2025 reimbursement rate for Medicare Advantage plans run by private insurers that reflects an effective growth rate of 2.44% and a total increase of 3.7%.

The closely watched proposal, known as the "advance notice", will be used by companies such as UnitedHealth Group and Humana to bid this year for contracts for Medicare Advantage plans they will sell in 2025.

The government payment rates affect how much insurers charge for monthly premiums, which plan benefits they offer and ultimately, how much they can profit.

About 65 million people are enrolled in the government's Medicare program for people aged 65 and older or who are disabled. About 34 million are in the orginal Medicare and the rest are in plans run by health insurers but paid for by the government.

The government has a three-year plan to decrease payments for Medicare Advantage as part of an effort it said will bring them more in line with the orginal Medicare coverage. The proposed rates typically change after feedback from the insurers, other entities and the public. The final rate announcement will be published on or before April 1, 2024. Elevance Health and CVS Health Corp's Aetna also offer Medicare Advantage.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-proposes-reimbursement-rate-medicare-211500303.html

FDA warns consumers over copycats of Bausch + Lomb eye drops

 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday warned consumers not to use unapproved eye drops that closely resemble Bausch + Lomb's Lumify product for redness relief.

The copycat products, called South Moon, Rebright and FivFivGo, could be easily mistaken for Lumify, the FDA said.

Testing of South Moon showed it was contaminated by bacteria that could result in antibiotic-resistant infection.

Although Rebright tested negative for contamination, the FDA said it does not recommend consumers use the product. The agency was unable to obtain samples of FivFivGo.

The FDA said it was not notified of any adverse events from the specific products, but has received reports related to possibly fake Lumify, including product quality concerns, eye irritation, pain and infection.

Lumify is an over-the-counter eye drop used to relieve redness in the eye due to minor irritation.

The agency says it is unable to verify the origin of the copycat products, and is continuing its investigation. South Moon is labeled as manufactured by Shantou Cross-border Premium Products E-Commerce Co Ltd, in China.

Reuters could not immediately contact Shantou Cross-border Premium Products E-Commerce. Bausch + Lomb did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-fda-warns-consumers-over-191353845.html

Mexican president denies drug cartel financing in first campaign

 Mexico's president rejected allegations on Wednesday that his first presidential campaign nearly two decades ago received financing from drug cartel leaders in exchange for future help with their criminal operations from his would-be government.

The allegations are laid out in extensive reports published earlier in the day by investigative news outlets ProPublica, Insight Crime and Deutsche Welle. The reports cite U.S. drug enforcement officials and their Mexican informants, who describe at least $2 million from major cocaine traffickers they say was provided to Lopez Obrador's 2006 unsuccessful presidential run and its bitter aftermath.

The informants include a couple of close aides to the then-candidate.

"It's completely false, it's a slander," Lopez Obrador said when asked about the report at his regular morning press conference.

"There's no proof," he added, "they are vile slanderers."

The 2006 campaign was the first of the leftist Lopez Obrador's three presidential runs, which he lost by less than 1 percent of the vote to conservative Felipe Calderon. Calderon went on to launch a bloody, controversial war on Mexico's powerful drug gangs.

Lopez Obrador, who has pursued a more nonconfrontational security policy regarding organized crime, has long argued he was cheated out of the presidency in 2006.

In the months after that election, he launched a monthslong takeover of downtown Mexico City with thousands of his supporters, even presiding over a ceremony in which he was proclaimed the legitimate president.

Among ProPublica's findings: One prominent cartel leader supplied Lopez Obrador's supporters with money for food.

Lopez Obrador, who also lost a 2012 race before eventually winning in a 2018 landslide election, said he mostly blames U.S. officials for what he called unethical actions, not the latest news.

"I'm not going to carry out any formal complaint, but I denounce it. Not the journalist or journalists. I denounce the United States government for allowing these immoral practices that are contrary to the political ethics that should prevail in all governments," he said.

https://news.yahoo.com/mexican-president-denies-drug-cartel-172558400.html