Few people realize that more than one out of every four of the medicines, treatments, and technologies in use today have Israeli roots."Research in Israel is present in between 25% and 28% of the world’s successful biotech-based solutions,” according to Ruti Alon, a General Partner at Pitango Venture Capital and chairperson of the upcoming IATI-Biomed Conference, set to take place in Tel Aviv in May, 2016. "Many of the patents in pharmaceuticals that are now being used to treat cancer, heart problems, and much more were developed at Israeli institutions like Hebrew University or the Weizmann Institute. All of the big pharma and health tech firms, from Merck to Pfizer to Sanofi, and many more, have R&D centers in Israel, and there are dozens, if not hundreds of start-ups that over the years have come up with unique solutions to some of the most pressing problems in biotech,” said Alon. Some of those solutions and patents are part of the main treatments in some of the world’s most devastating diseases. Many of Israel’s biotech and life science solutions were first introduced to the world at the annual IATI-Biomed Conference, now in its 15th year.” (Times of Israel) "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” Gen 12:2 [Comment]

A report this week by the charity, Save The Children, estimates that 250,000 children are struggling to get access to electricity along with the food and medicine they need to survive. Sieges staged by warring groups, where snipers try to shoot anyone leaving an area, has meant young people are losing their lives "just a few kilometers from warehouses piled high with aid". Syrian vets have begun to treat sick humans because humanitarian groups cannot gain access to some areas. Officials on the ground described children eating animal feed, grass, and boiled leaves as they took shelter from airstrikes. The endemic levels of malnutrition have left children "wandering around in a daze from hunger."

One of the 125 adults and children interviewed by the charity compared their plight to living in an "open-air prison" - with women dying in childbirth and babies dying at checkpoints. The report adds: "They and their families are cut off from the outside world, surrounded by warring groups that illegally use siege against civilians as a weapon of war - preventing food, medicine, fuel and other vital supplies from entering and stopping people from fleeing." Save The Children sources are calling for rival factions to lift their sieges immediately so food and medicine can reach impoverished areas, and for civilians to be granted freedom of movement without fear of gunfire. (Arutz-7/Sky) Please pray according to scripture for the tragic war-torn nation of Syria - and that its victims young and old who are suffering will be provided with staples, protection, rescue and relief. "He makes wars cease to the end of the earth.” Ps 46:9 [Comment]

Members of a prominent Oxford University student group affiliated with the British Labor Party laughed at Jewish victims of terrorism and made fun of the Holocaust, the Sunday Times reported. According to the British weekly, club members called Jewish students "Zios,” dubbed the Auschwitz death camp "a cash cow,” sang about rockets being fired at Tel Aviv and expressed approval for both attacks on Parisian synagogues in 2014 and the shooting of four Jews in a Paris supermarket the following year. A number of students belonging to the club spoke to the newspaper following the failure of the group’s national leadership to publish the results of an internal investigation more than a week after its completion. (Jerusalem Post) [Comment]

USA Vice President Joe Biden said on Wed. 9 March 2016 that the United States would take action against Iran - if its long-range ballistic missile tests widely reported in Iranian media were confirmed by the USA. "I want to reiterate, as I know people still doubt, if in fact they break the (nuclear) deal, we will act," Biden said during a visit to Israel. "All their conventional activity outside the deal, which is still beyond the deal, we will and are attempting to act wherever we can find it." Iran fired two more long-range ballistic missiles on Wed. 9 March 2016, as it continued military tests in defiance of USA sanctions and fresh warnings from Washington. Coming just weeks after the implementation of Iran's nuclear deal with world powers, this week's multiple missile tests were described by Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards as a show of force in the face of USA pressure. The missile tests are part of an ongoing stance of hostility towards the West by Tehran, and come in breach of UN resolutions and USA sanctions. Biden spoke after meeting PM Netanyahu, who forcefully opposed the nuclear accord with Iran, which has long vowed to destroy Israel. (Arutz-7) Vice President Biden is indeed correct when he says, "people still doubt” the USA will act if Iran breaks the nuclear deal. Should they not in view of the Obama Administration’s Middle East track record? Please continue to pray that Israel will have all the necessary means and strategies - both temporal and divine - to deal with the Islamic Republic now and in the future. [Comment]

 One of London's leading universities has voted to boycott the State of Israel, just hours after a deadly terror attack and while Israel is still in the throes of a renewed upsurge in Palestinian terror. University College London (UCL) Union voted 14-4 to accept a motion to endorse the BDS movement, which advocates boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the Jewish state. The vote took place mere hours after a Palestinian terrorist murdered a US citizen and seriously injured scores more people in a stabbing spree in Tel Aviv/Jaffa, and other Arab terrorists committed a string of stabbing and shooting attacks. Jewish students in British universities have complained of rising intimidation and antisemitism from left-wing and Muslim anti-Israel student activists. Ariel Tamman, co-president of the Friends of Israel Society, said the vote would simply compound already "invasive" anti-Israel campaigning on campus, and deter Jews from attending UCL in the future. UCL has traditionally had a relatively large Jewish student body, though Tamman warned Jews were already feeling "intimidated" by increasingly aggressive anti-Zionist activity. (Arutz-7)
[Comment]

Iran's medium-range ballistic missiles are designed to be able to hit Israel, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards' missile battery was quoted as saying as the Guards test-fired two missiles. "The reason we designed our missiles with a range of 2000 km (1,200 miles) is to be able to hit our enemy the Zionist regime from a safe distance," said Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh. Iran reportedly test-fired two ballistic missiles Wed. 9 March 2016 with the phrase "Israel must be wiped out” written on them, a show of force by the Islamic Republic as USA Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel. Such phrases have been emblazoned on missiles fired before by Iran, but this test comes as the country recently signed a nuclear deal with world powers, including America. Hard-liners in Iran’s military have fired rockets and missiles despite USA objections since the deal, as well as shown underground missile bases on state television. (J.Post/Time) [Comment]

Israel’s Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz, who is a member of the security cabinet, on Tues. night 8 March 2016, labeled the current wave of violence a war. "We are in the midst of a war against ISIS-style Muslim extremist terror," Katz told Israel’s Channel 2. "We are in an emergency situation. There are murderers here who are motivated by hatred and we cannot allow Jews to continue to get harmed. There is an intifada of incitement. We must restore deterrence, so I must ask all the higher than thou who scold us to understand our current reality." A media poll Tues. night revealed that 73 percent of Israelis are unsatisfied with PM Netanyahu's handling of the security situation. (Jerusalem Post) [Comment]

USA Vice President Joe Biden denounced those in the international community and in the Palestinian Authority who have failed to condemn Palestinian terror attacks against Israel. "Let me say in no uncertain terms the US condemns these acts and condemns the failure to condemn these acts,” Biden said in Jerusalem, on Wed. 9 March, 2016 at a joint press conference with PM Benjamin Netanyahu. He spoke just one day after a Palestinian terrorist went on a stabbing spree in Tel Aviv and Jaffa, killing a Vanderbilt graduate student, Taylor Force, and wounding 12 others. The attack occurred just a short distance away from where Biden was meeting former president Shimon Peres. Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly praised the ongoing campaign of terror as, perversely, "peaceful resistance" or "popular resistance," and has not condemned any of the wave of knife, gun and car-ramming attacks that erupted in Oct. 2015. But apart from not condemning the violence, PA official TV even praised the Jaffa attack. The PA's rivals, Islamist terror group Hamas, also hailed the latest attacks. (Jerusalem Post/INN) [Comment]

Texas native Taylor Force, 28, was on a trip to Israel sponsored by Vanderbilt University's MBA program to see the country's growing startup scene when a Palestinian man on Tues. night, 8 March 2016, went on a stabbing rampage that left Force dead and 12 others wounded Force graduated from the USA Military Academy at West Point and served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a platoon leader and fire support officer. Taylor Force’s wife was also critically injured in the attack. (NBC) Please pray for the comforting and recovery of Taylor Force’s wife, along with the other victims of Tuesday’s brutal terrorist attack. [Comment]

Following Tuesday’s 8 March 2016 three terror attacks in Israel, Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon sent an urgent letter to the UN Security Council demanding they condemn the stabbings. Some 12 people were injured in the attacks which took place in Jaffa, Jerusalem and Petah Tikva on Tues. Twenty-nine year old American tourist Taylor Force succumbed to his stab wounds. In his letter to the Security Council, Ambassador Danon wrote that since the onset of the current wave of violence the Palestinians have committed 317 attacks against Israelis at an average of 2.18 attacks every day, a third of which, he noted, were committed by minors. "This ongoing wave of terror has claimed the lives of thirty four victims - thirty four fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, buried by their loved ones,” the Ambassador wrote. "Yet, the Security Council has not condemned Palestinian terror even once,” he continued. "The international community must not continue to ignore this ongoing campaign of brainwashing and indoctrination,” he wrote, referring to Palestinian incitement. "I ask you to open your eyes, condemn the ongoing attacks,” Danon concluded. (Jerusalem Post) [Comment]