Israeli startup aims to light medical cannabis patients’ way through hazy system and What REALLY Happened to the MILLION Jews in Arab lands? By David Collier - and Israel Seeking Info on Property of Jews Expelled from Arab Lands By Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency and EMTs Save Man Who Choked on Hamburger in Ra’anana
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
Israel Seeking Info on Property of Jews Expelled from Arab Lands By Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency
Photo Credit: Public Domain
Yemenite Jews being flown to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. 1949-1950
The government authorized the Ministry of Social Equality to research the State Archives regarding Jewish property remaining in Arab countries and Iran, possibly ahead of a massive reparations lawsuit.
The government on Sunday approved Minister for Social Equality Meirav Cohen's proposal to allow her ministry's officials to review archival material concerning Jewish property left in Arab countries.
During the 20th century, in the wake of the rise of Arab nationalism and especially after the establishment of the State of Israel, Arab states expropriated the Jews' property, and denaturalized, expelled, arrested, tortured and murdered many of them.
Over 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries and Iran between 1948 and 1967. About 600,000 of them came to Israel, and it is estimated that they left behind property worth approximately $150 billion.
"This is a significant advance in the line of government decisions, which emphasizes the commitment and concern of the State of Israel through the Ministry of Social Equality for the publication and documentation of the deportation of Jews from Arab countries and Iran and the dispossession of their property," the government stated.
Cohen stated that "we have a commitment as a state, to learn and teach the price paid by the Jews of Arab countries, a tremendous economic price that we do not always understand."
This decision "will help us document in depth historically and bring to the table the difficult and sad story of Arab and Iranian Jews," she added.
Over 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries and Iran between 1948 and 1967. About 600,000 of them came to Israel, and it is estimated that they left behind property worth approximately $150 billion. This new move may be the first stage toward an attempt to reclaim at least some of the lost property.
Jewish refugees at a Ma'abarot transit camp in Israel, 1950
Israel holds an annual official day of commemoration on November 30th for the Jews expelled from Arab countries and Iran in the years around the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.
Jews had lived in the Arab lands for thousands of years, and many Jewish communities preceded the advent of Islam. Before 1948, there were close to one million Jews living in the Arab world, while today only a few thousand still remain.
What REALLY Happened to the MILLION Jews in Arab lands?
What really happened to the million Jews who lived in Arab lands? Unfortunately, so many people spread lies about what happened to those Jews – chiefly as a way of propping up a false Palestinian narrative – that most people have no idea of the truth or the scale of the disaster. They see the lies spreading online, but simply do not have the material they need to counter the disinformation campaign.
The 'Jewish problem' in the Arab lands
A simple fact: in the 20th century almost a million Jews resided in ancient Jewish communities spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
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Another simple fact: at the end of the 20th century, there was almost nothing left.
So what happened?
At the root, although there is no 'catch-all' that tells the story of every single Jew in all of the Arab lands – it was belief in the supremacy of Islam, rising Arab nationalism and Islamic antisemitism that all played their role. Whilst it is true that Jewish history in the MENA region was better than the Jewish experience in Europe, this is hardly a difficult benchmark to pass.
Peaceful co-existence' involved the subordination and degradation of the Jews. The status of Jews as Dhimmi (second class citizens) meant that life was unpredictable; sometimes calm – sometimes violent – but the Jewish experience was always left to the whims of the local rulers.
The 19th century brought about the partial collapse of the Ottoman Empire – and this signalled dark times for the Jews. Pogroms – violent riots against Jews – began to reappear with alarming frequency. The Arab response to the vacuum of power left from the weakness in the Ottoman regime, resulted in power struggles – and both rising Arab nationalism and religious extremism left Jewish blood flowing down city streets. All this upheaval started occurring long before modern Zionism entered the equation.
A key point must be made. The idea that before Zionism, Jews had lived in peace in Arab lands is an absolute myth. For a full history it is worth reading the Lyn Julius book 'Uprooted' .
The need for the whitewash
By the early 20th century, the attacks on these Jewish communities were brutal. Much of it was government driven, with increasing anti-Jewish legislation appearing throughout the region. But there was also a lot of anti-Jewish violence on the street. This all spiked dramatically when Israel was founded but had started long before. The growing hostility was to drive the ethnic cleansing of every major Jewish community inside Arab lands. The creation of nearly a million Jewish refugees.
For those pushing an anti-Israel agenda – and whose entire narrative is built around the non-necessity of Zionism and the tragic existence of Palestinian refugees, the true history surrounding Jewish refugees creates five key problems:
The image of co-existence is a myth
There were more Jewish refugees created than Arab refugees
The value of what the Jewish refugees had stolen from them was many times greater than anything the Arab refugees can claim they lost
The attack on the Jewish communities was unprovoked and on an innocent civilian population. The same is not true of much of the Arab population in the mandate, with many Arab villages choosing a violent confrontation that fuelled a civil conflict
Like it or not, many Arab families in the mandate area had simply moved into the area as the Ottoman empire collapsed – or as Zionist investment created opportunity. This means many of the Arab refugees had no real roots in the mandate area (one example – the 'Palestinian' hero of the 1930s, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam – was born in Northern Syria.) The same could not be said of the ancient Jewish roots in places such as Egypt, Iraq or Yemen.
All of these factors create a huge problem for anti-Israel activists. In real terms, the unprovoked destruction of the Jewish communities in the MENA region was far worse than the destruction of the Arab communities engaged in civil conflict in the mandate area.
Another *key difference* between the two – was what followed their respective departures. While Israel looked after Jewish refugees and absorbed them – so today they no longer exist – the Arabs disgracefully *CHOSE* to weaponise the refugees. Instead of absorbing them, they locked them into camps and deliberately perpetuated their suffering. Many of the grandchildren of these Arab refugees still live in camps today, solely because the Arab nations wanted to keep them that way.
There is even mind-numbing hypocrisy in the way these people are treated. People still refer to a Jordanian whose ancestors fled the mandate area in 1948 as a 'refugee' – but nobody would dream of doing the same to an Israeli whose ancestors were expelled from Egypt. Both of these families have new nationalities – but are treated very differently.
But even all this misdirection wasn't enough. Even with the UN, UNHRC, Amnesty, HRW and media outlets like the BBC – all playing along with the gross deception. The anti-Israel propaganda machine needed more.
The birth of an antisemitic conspiracy theory
What the anti-Israel activists did was simple. They looked at the million Jews wiped out from Arab lands and just blamed the Zionists (Jews). Like most Jew-haters – they simply hid the truth behind an antisemitic conspiracy theory. For them it does not matter than 50 years before modern Zionism, Jews of the region were begging the French and British for protection from Islamic persecution. Nor is it relevant that anti-Jewish laws were set in place throughout the area.
The revisionists just airbrushed all this out of history. Instead, they created a world in which Jews and Muslims lived peacefully together and then pointed all the blame at the Zionists. In this distorted world, Jews didn't leave of their own accord at all – nor did Muslims chase them out. Instead in this conspiracy – the Zionists 'forced' Jews' out of their homes and into Israel:
The tweet above is not an oddity. Check the timeline of any anti-Israel activist – they are all pushing exactly the same myth. See for example the lies contained within the book 'State of Terror' by Tom Suarez, which relies heavily on these myths. A denial of horrific crimes which places the blame on the victims (today, over 50% of Jewish people in Israel – the 'Zionists' they are attacking – are the victims of the ethnic cleansing of which they are being accused).
The classic line goes like this: Jews had lived peacefully in Arab lands for millennia. Then the 'white' European Zionists, who wanted 'non-white' cheap labour, came and unsettled the Arab-Jewish communities by conducting a string of false flag terrorist attacks. The Zionist / Nazi cooperation conspiracy is another strand of the same demonisation campaign. The key example antisemites use is a false history of the experience of Jews in Iraq. Mainly because Zionist activists were arrested, tortured and executed for the 'crime' following a sham trial.
It is not difficult to dismantle the entire conspiracy because every piece of available evidence suggests that it is simply not true. Iraq had been awash with anti-Jewish violence for decades. Files in the National Archives at Kew contain examples of bombing attacks on Jewish communities predating even the Farhud (the 1941 slaughter of 179 Jews). Such as this attack on a Jewish club in Baghdad in 1938:
By the mid 1930s, Nazi ideology was widely spreading through Iraq (and much of the MENA region). The idea that Israel, which at the time was overrun with refugees flooding into the country, would be agitating for more makes no sense at all. The Jews of Iraqi left because the people and government of Iraq turned on them. By the time Iraq finally gave permission for the Jews to leave in March 1950 (and they were forced to leave all their property behind) – most Jews registered to go.
The idea that this was a Zionist plot is nothing more than victim blaming by building an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
In order to counter all these lies, we need to arm ourselves with the truth. So what happened to all the Jews in Arab lands really? The truth is an escalating anti-Jewish pogrom that engulfed the entire MENA region and led to the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish Communities from Morocco to Yemen. This is a nation-by-nation breakdown:
The real story of the Arab Lands
These are *just some* of the key events that took place across the region (approximate figures):
Libya – Jewish population 38000 Today 0
1785 Jews who refuse to convert are massacred
1897 Looting of Jewish areas
1938 Italian racial laws applied to Libya
1942 Nazi occupation of Benghazi
1945 Pogrom – 130 Jews killed
1948 Pogrom – 14 Jews killed
1951 Libyan PM says Jews have no future in Libya
1950s various anti-Jewish legislation
1961 Jewish assets seized
Algeria – Jewish population 140000 Today 0
1805 500 Jews massacred
1815 Jews burnt at stake
1830 Massacre of Jews
1929-1933 anti-Jewish clashes
1934 anti-Jewish riots 25 Jews killed
1940 Vichy anti-Jewish laws
1956 Anti-Jewish attacks
1960 Great Synagogue ransacked
1961 Oran cemetery vandalised
1963 Muslim only nationality imposed
Tunisia – Jewish population 105000 Today 0
1898 anti-Jewish riots
1917 anti-Jewish riots
1940 Vichy anti-Jewish laws
1942 Nazi occupation
1952 nationalist riots
1958-1960 anti-Jewish legislation
1962 Jewish firms nationalised
1967 anti-Jewish riots
Egypt – Jewish population 90,000 Today: 5
1929 – Nationality law passed – most Jews rendered stateless
1945 Anti-Jewish riots
1948 Jews interned – bombing attacks against Jewish premises, riots against Jews
1948 Trans-Jordan expelled every last Jew and destroyed synagogues
Syria and Lebanon – Jewish population 50,000 Today 15.
1840 Damascus blood libel – pogrom
1909 Jews flee Ottoman conscription
1930s anti-Jewish laws introduced
1947 Pogrom in Aleppo
1948 Jews murdered in Beirut
1950 Jewish property seized
1958 Jews held hostage – ransom to free them
Iraq – Jewish population 135000 Today 10.
1828 Massacre of Jews in Baghdad
1934 Jews dismissed from government roles
1935 Schools place quota on Jewish students
1936 Jewish business must have Muslim partner
1936 -1939 Bombing campaign against Jewish targets
1941 Farhud. 179 Jews slaughtered
1947 Iraqi FM threatens to expel Iraqi Jews
1948 1000 Jews dismissed from public service
1948 show trial of Shafiq Ades, who was publicly hanged in Basra,
1948 Anti-Jewish legislation
1950-52 Jews allowed to leave / property seized
1963 Jews forced to carry yellow identity cards
Yemen Jewish population 1946: 55000 Today: 0 Fled persecution from rising Islamic extremism
1881 Jews flee forced conversions
1911 Sharia law declared
1922 Forced conversion of Jewish orphans
1947 Anti-Jewish riots in Aden – 82 Jews killed
From Morocco to Yemen there was clear, consistent, and undeniable persecution. Zionism did not send all this over the edge – the Arabs did this all by themselves. Zionism, thankfully, left the fleeing Jews with a safe haven.
In the confusing world of medical cannabis in Israel, patients often grope in the dark trying to figure out how and where to get the products they need, says Elad Gazit, a medical cannabis patient himself and founder of a startup that aims to address the problem.
Gazit's company, Cannbis, seeks to become a go-to resource and online marketplace specifically for patients like him.
Patients have "no access to data or information about what they need to do, what products they need, where they can buy them, what the prices are — there's zero information flow," Gazit said.
Medical cannabis use is legal in Israel, but patients often complain that navigating the industry is confusing and frustrating and the path to obtaining a medical cannabis license from the Health Ministry is about as direct as a rollercoaster ride.
In an interview with The Times of Israel, Gazit said that the industry was a "Wild West," being "immature" data-wise, with patients being forced to seek advice regarding chemovars (strains), doses, and delivery methods — such as smoking, vaping, or ingesting — on WhatsApp and Telegram groups because doctors and pharmacists lack comprehensive knowledge.
Consumption of medical cannabis has been legal in Israel for about 20 years, but the sector has yet to be fully integrated into the public health system and operates on the sidelines. The Health Ministry does not consider medical-grade cannabis medicine. It is approved for its therapeutic effects for a short list of specific conditions including PTSD, cancer, gastrointestinal conditions like Crohn's and colitis, chronic pain, neurological disorders such as epilepsy and Parkinson's, and palliative end-of-life care. There is room for exceptional cases but one of the criteria to move forward with a license application is to first exhaust all conventional medications, or pharmaceutical drugs.
But, even with a license in hand, new patients are often at a loss for what to do next. When they settle on a strain after some research and crowdsourcing, they may face a lack of consistency in the product. Since cannabis is a plant that is subject to its environmental conditions, the sustained quality of a given strain can differ depending on supplier and there is no standardized dosing. Patients very often embark on a trial-and-error period to determine what works for them.
As an entrepreneur and former venture capitalist, Gazit saw an opportunity. He linked up with fellow entrepreneur Oded Ben Dov to establish Cannbis, which the pair run in Ra'anana.
ADVERTISEMENT Medical-grade cannabis growing on tables in Israel. (Courtesy Israeli Medical Cannabis Agency)
Cannbis, similar to sites like Weedmaps in the US, offers detailed information on available cannabis flower strains such as their genetics, the levels of THC (the main psychoactive compound in cannabis), the terpenes (the aromatic compounds), the expected results — calm, creative, alert, focused, upbeat, sleepy — based on other patients' input, and the suppliers and their reputations. Israel is home to about 10 licensed growing companies.
Cannbis also points patients to pharmacies near them that stock the products in real time, and they can order them for pickup or delivery.
Over a year into its operations, Gazit said, about 80,000 Israeli medical cannabis patients use Cannbis to read up on products and suppliers, check reviews, and place orders. Israel has nearly 110,000 medical cannabis license holders as of November 2021, according to the Israeli Medical Cannabis Agency (IMCA), operating under the auspices of the Health Ministry.
"I came to this industry as a patient, and we built Cannbis from the bottom up," said Gazit, emphasizing that he and Ben Dov approached the business from a patient perspective to help users make more informed decisions.
Cannbis also engages directly with the medical and pharmaceutical communities to provide informal training on how to help patients choose products, hosting monthly webinars for doctors and pharmacists. The company hopes to soon offer online one-on-one consultations between patients and medical professionals.
"We're responsible for connecting [between] the commercial medical side [of the industry] and the users and bring everyone to the table," Ben Dov said in the interview. Ben Dov is also the founder of Sesame Enable, the developer of a touch-free smartphone for people with disabilities (no longer commercially available).
Marijuana bags ready for use are seen at the BOL (Breath Of Life) Pharma laboratories in Israel's second-largest medical cannabis plantation, near Kfar Pines in northern Israel, on March 9, 2016. (Jack Guez/AFP)
Cannbis takes a fee from the cannabis orders pharmacies receive through the site. Gazit said the company currently works with over 50 pharmacies, both chains and private shops. "We're bootstrapped because we fill a need."
The startup hopes to develop its educational model to "offer real solutions to pharmacies," said Ben Dov.
"In dispensaries in the US and Canada, you have real expertise, people who really know the information. Here, the pharmacists have maybe 6-8 hours of training. The doctors don't do much beyond giving the license. Medical cannabis is not like an Acamol [a popular Israeli painkiller and fever-reducer]. You need quite a bit of knowledge," Gazit explained.
Cannbis also hopes to add additional data sources to the site. "Our vision is to gather more data, eventually cross-referencing [strains with data] from clinical trials, and using tech [like AI] to study the data," he added.
The medical cannabis community "is a very invested community where people really want to help each other."
A growing community
A recent survey Cannbis said it conducted with patients found that 60% of respondents use medical cannabis for chronic pain, 20% for PTSD, and about 5% for cancer-related symptoms. Nearly 90% of its responding patients said medical cannabis greatly improves their quality of life and around 80% claimed a vast reduction in pain and improvements in appetite and sleep.
The number of Israeli medical cannabis license-holding patients has grown quickly over the past three years, from some 32,000 in January 2019 to 108,013 two months ago.
Recreational use of cannabis is currently illegal in Israel, though the Public Security Ministry partially decriminalized it in 2017, setting fines and treatment for initial offenders instead of criminal procedures.
Photo Credit: United Hatzalah United Hatzalah volunteers in Ra'anana (Illustration).
Just before 7 PM Sunday, a man ordered a hamburger in a restaurant on Rambam Street in Ra'anana. The man left the restaurant and took a bite of the burger which became lodged in his throat. He choked on it and after a short struggle collapsed outside the restaurant. Worried customers called emergency services for help.
United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Dan Shtiebel was at home having just finished his dinner when he received the emergency alert. Dan, who lives very close to where the incident occurred, rushed out of his home and ran on foot to the scene. He was the first responder at the scene and found the man unconscious, not breathing, and with no pulse. He initiated CPR on the sidewalk by starting compressions.
"I asked for a defibrillator and someone came out of the restaurant and attached it," Dan recounted. "Just before we gave him a shock, the man was able to take in a small breath. It seemed that the compressions helped dislodge some of the blockage."
That's when United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Tanya Kucher arrived.
"I was at home in the middle of a Zoom class assisting new EMS trainees with exercises when I received the alert," Tanya said. "I rushed out and drove to the restaurant. I joined Dan in his efforts and we continued CPR as the man still didn't have a pulse. I brought out my equipment and we provided the man with oxygen, hoping that he would be able to take some in."
The mobile intensive care ambulance arrived and the man was brought into it while still undergoing CPR. Dan and Tanya joined the paramedics inside and the combined team managed to extricate a large piece of the blockage from the man's throat. The paramedic then intubated the man and he was able to start breathing once again. He was taken to the hospital for additional care and observation but his pulse had returned and he was breathing. At the hospital, the doctors extubated the man and after making sure that he had no other side effects from his ordeal he was sent home.
"It's an incredible feeling saving a life," said Dan. "When I arrived the man was white as a ghost and about to die. The compressions seemed to have moved to the object and that gave him a small bit of air. The continued CPR together with Tanya and the ambulance team allowed us to dislodge the blockage and save his life. I am thankful that I was able to be there and help."
Tany added, "The credit really goes to Dan. He ran out of his home in the rain without anything, without a vehicle, without any gear, he just ran to help and he succeeded. It's always special when a life is saved, and I take my hat off to Dan and the team from the ambulance. We all worked together really well and the result is that this man can go back to his family. This is why we do what we do."
