Features
The Davidson Institute at the Weizmann Institute is playing a huge role in advancing an appreciation for the study of science
By BERNIE BELLAN Dr. Liat Ben-David is a scientist who has devoted a good part of her life to educating people about science.
Having graduated with a degree in Molecular Biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, in 1991, for the past seven years Dr. Ben-David has been CEO of the Davidson Institute, which is the educational arm of the Weizmann Institute.
A fourth-generation sabra, Dr. Ben-David speaks flawless English without a trace of a Hebrew accent, although I made the mistake of asking her whether she was originally from the US since, if she hadn’t corrected me, I would have sworn she was either American or Canadian-born.
Dr. Ben-David was in Canada recently to speak at an event in Toronto sponsored by the Weizmann Institute focusing on the power of science education to help foster resiliency in children and youth. She took time out from her busy schedule to participate in a Zoom call during which she explained what the Davidson Institute is all about – and how science education has come to play an even more important role in the lives of many Israelis over the past 11 months than it had previously.
To begin with, here is some information about the Davidson Institute taken from the Weizmann Institute website: “The Davidson Institute of Science Education is a non-profit organization that serves as the educational arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science. We believe in connecting people to science, and therefore we initiate, organize and operate a wide range of educational programs. We strive to be a professional epicenter for students, parents and the general public, as well as for teachers and academics, in both government and education.”
“We create activities for all sectors of Israeli society,” Dr. Ben-David explained. Not only is “science education part of our mission,” she continued, “we believe it is part of our responsibility to create a more logical society for everyone.”
There are “three components of scientific literacy” that the Davidson Institute promotes, Dr. Ben-David said: “knowledge, skills, and values.”
“You have to know which values you want to strengthen,” she noted, “so we can help make better lives.”
To that end, the Davidson Institute has made inroads into all facets of Israeli society. “We try to engage everyone in Israel,” Dr. Ben-David says. “We work in both Hebrew and Arabic.”
The Weizmann Institute -and through its education arm, the Davidson Institute, is involved in practically all areas of scientific endeavour. If you look at the Davidson Institute website (https://davidson.weizmann.ac.il/en) you will find articles on a dizzying range of subjects – from spacewalks to head surgeries in Ancient Egypt, to childhood mental disorders and so on, all written in an easy-to-understand English. You won’t be intimidated into thinking this is way too academic to understand.
The goal of the Davidson Institute is to inspire people to view science as a relevant part of their lives, Dr. Ben-David said. Educators from the institute go out to even the most remote communities in Israel, as well as make deliberate efforts to target “at-risk youths.”
Our goal is to “build esteem and self-confidence” within those young people, she explained, many of whom have dropped out of school.
While not all of them will succeed, the Davidson Institute has had a “40% success rate” in getting those drop-outs to return to school, Dr. Ben-David added.
“Science is a healing tool,” she observed.
Now, more than ever, since life in Israel has been so disrupted as a result of everything that has happened since October 7, educators from the Davidson Institute have been dealing with new challenges.
“During the past year, unfortunately, we have found ourselves working with displaced families” who have had to leave their homes” as a result of the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7th on the south as well as the attacks posed by Hezbollah in the north, Dr. Ben-David observed. “We are giving them some sense of normality and stability.”
For instance, she noted that “we’ve created seminars at Davidson” where students who have been displaced from their home schools “are given a week where we give them a full blast of science.”
“They work on science projects that are included in matriculation,” Dr. Ben-David explained.
And, educators going out from Davidson aren’t only working with high school students. “We work with kids in elementary schools age 10 and up,” she said, “also with their teachers.”
Those teachers may not have a particular background in science, Dr. Ben-David explained.
Davidson educators also don’t restrict their attention to trained teachers.
“We work with instructors who are not professional teachers on giving them instruction in science,” she noted.
I asked Dr. Ben-David to give me an example in which someone from Davidson has reached out to a child who has been traumatized by what has been happening in Israel since October 7.
She told me of one particular young girl who had been so afraid that she was going to be killed by a missile that she spent the better part of her day hiding under her bed.
Educators from Davidson came to visit the child and found out that she loved Harry Potter books. They “discussed with her the science of Harry Potter magic,” and whether there was something that might actually be plausible about some of the magic.
“At first she just peeked out at us,” Dr. Ben-David continued, “then she started asking questions” – and soon she was fully engaged in talking with the instructors.
The Davidson Institute runs several programs that aim to attract students, both from within Israel and beyond.
For instance, Dr. Ben-David pointed to a “gap year program,” now in its sixth year of existence – for high school graduates where Davidson sends them to remote communities as “science ambassadors.”
And, including during this past year, Davidson also has “several international programs” for students “from all over the world,” she explained. Not only do those students get to do science, “they get to know Israel and each other,” Dr. Ben-David said.
There are still many online programs for students, she noted, including one called “Windows to the Future,” in which “once a month students from all over the world meet a Davidson scientist” online.
“Some countries have approached us to develop different pedagogies,” Dr. Ben-David said. “Covid didn’t stop us; neither did the war.”
I wondered though, whether the trend toward academic boycotts of Israeli institutions of higher learning and, concomitantly, Israeli academics, has had a very adverse effect on Davidson Institute programs that reach out beyond Israel.
“We don’t ignore the elephant in the room,” Dr. Ben-David admitted but, in addition to the “100,000 participants” Davidson Institute programs have in Israel itself – in partnership with most municipalities, we reach another “3 million” from Israel and outside digitally, she said.
While Israel’s image in much of the world has suffered greatly as a result of its war in Gaza, Israel’s reputation as a scientific powerhouse has not diminished – and institutions like the Davidson Institute are serving to maintain that image throughout the world.
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Features
Will the Democratic Socialists of America control the Democratic Party?
By HENRY SREBRNIK On June 23, radical Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates backed by New York mayor Zohran Mamdani won multiple Democratic Party primaries in New York City and elsewhere in the state. They also were victorious in other parts of the country.
The socialist victories in New York far surpassed anyone’s predictions. Who, three years ago, could have predicted that a Muslim anti-Zionist would be elected mayor of a city with 900,000 Jews and would lead insurgents to victories in that party’s primaries in 2026? Yet here we are.
Marxist Third Worldist ideology has moved out of the universities into the polling booths, after campus activism, divestment campaigns, and social media have reinforced an anti-Israeli framework for years. The DSA’s platform states it plainly: It pledges “support for Palestinian self-determination against Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.”
The mayor, a long-standing DSA member, worked overtime to appear at countless campaign events for a trio of candidates he dubbed “the Team”: Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Brad Lander. The last two unseated incumbent Democratic congressmen. Mamdani has assembled a coalition in New York City that is capable of elevating like-minded candidates to office.
In the Seventh Congressional District, which straddles northern Brooklyn and southwestern Queens, an open primary to replace retiring progressive Rep. Nydia Velázquez saw State Assembly Member Claire Valdez’s’s defeat Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. She was even further left than Mamdani himself. In the end, it was not even close: Valdez prevailed with 56.1 per cent of the vote to Reynoso’s 35.8 per cent.
In 2019, Valdez joined the DSA after seeing the rise of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and state senator Julia Salazar, both of whom were elected with the DSA’s help. Valdez emphasized her anti-Israel activism as a key part of her campaign. At events, her staff handed out signs that said “Free Palestine.” She launched her campaign alongside Mahmoud Khalil, a key anti-Israel leader at Columbia University that the Donald Trump administration has tried to deport.
Valdez referred to Israel’s war against Hamas as a “genocide” as early as October 13, 2023. She lambasted police for restraining anti-Israel mobs chanting “Globalize the Intifada” and waving Hezbollah flags outside a Brooklyn synagogue last June. “New Yorkers don’t just have the right to protest the sale of stolen Palestinian land — they have a responsibility to,” she declare. She has repeatedly criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She also boasted on social media of having “wiped my hand on the American flag.”
In the Thirteenth Congressional District, covering the upper Manhattan neighborhoods of Harlem, Washington Heights, and Morningside Heights and parts of the West Bronx, Darializa Avila Chevalier won a much more startling victory over Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a five-term incumbent Democratic Party power broker and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Espaillat’s campaign was heavily backed by AIPAC. Chevalier defied expectations and won by gaining 49 per cent to Espaillat’s 46 per cent. She told the crowd at her watch party that she had fought against the “Democratic machine.” Espaillat lost despite the backing of Democratic leaders in Congress and the state, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and Julie Menin, speaker of the New York City Council.
When Chevalier, draped in a keffiyeh, first announced her candidacy in November of last year, few outside her immediate circle knew her name. But her message was clear: she presented herself as an organiser working to unite families torn apart by the immigration system and against “what we all know is a genocide in Palestine.”
Chevalier has publicly proclaimed her hatred for Israel, the United States, and “Western civilization” as a whole. She has called for the abolition of prisons, open borders and an end to deportations — even for people convicted of violent crimes. As a student at Columbia University, she was involved in Students for Justice in Palestine. In 2024, she returned to her alma mater to help organize an anti-Israel encampment that was ultimately disbanded by the police.
She co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest: “We are Westerners fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our intifada is an Internationalist one,” it states.
The day after the October 7 attack, Chevalier attended an anti-Israel demonstration in Times Square. “I can only say I have been advocating for the human rights of Palestinians for my adult life,” when asked about her attendance at the rally. Chevalier has said that her conversion to Islam was inspired by the Israel-Hamas war. Mamdani celebrated her win, describing Chevalier as a person “of clarity, of conscience and of conviction.”
The war was also on the minds of voters in former Comptroller Brad Lander’s race against another AIPAC-funded incumbent, Rep. Dan Goldman, in New York’s Tenth District, covering lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn. Both are Jewish, but Goldman has been a steadfast friend of Israel while Lander is the quintessential anti-Zionist and a key faction of his coalition was anti-Israel. It was a contest that laid bare the party’s divisions over the Israel-Gaza war.
At his son Marek’s bris, Lander gave a speech lambasting Israel. “We pray fervently that by the time you read this, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the settlements, the house demolitions, the violence will be history,” which was later reprinted in a 2003 book titled Wrestling with Zion. Lander enjoyed the night’s biggest victory, winning 65.8 per cent of the vote to Goldman’s 34 per cent. Many Democrats have suggested that Lander has proved useful to Mamdani and other leftists who have been accused of antisemitism for singling out the Jewish state for opprobrium.
In the run-up to Election Day, a chain of Brooklyn coffee shops called Poetica posted that it would have barred Goldman entry had they recognized him during a recent visit to their storefront. “We don’t serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers,” Poetica declared. “Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away.”
At the state level, seven of the eight candidates endorsed by the DSA for the New York State legislature also won their primary elections. One of them is Aber Kawas, a Queens-based community organizer. If she, as expected, wins in November, she will be the first Palestinian woman elected to state office in New York history.
“Were defeated congressmen Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat insufficiently anti-Trump?” asked Will Rahn, a senior editor and writer for The Free Press, rhetorically, in a June 26 column. “Of course not. They lost because they aren’t anti-Israel enough. ‘Free Palestine’ is now the binding issue on the left, the only thing that actually matters.” No matter who you are, how you identify, or what causes you’ve championed, if you refuse to fall in line on Israel, you risk being ostracized from communities you’ve long called home.
For most of the postwar era, support for Israel was one of the least controversial positions in Democratic Party politics. That consensus has not merely weakened; it has collapsed. Once viewed as a righteous anti-colonial cause, Zionism has been reframed by radical thinkers as the ideology of a colonial oppressor of stateless Palestinians. Opposition to Israel is now the litmus test in Democratic Party politics. “There’s a cliff, and we’re heading towards it,” warned Daniel C. Kurtzer, a Princeton University professor who was ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush.
The DSA has now built an entire ecosystem that runs parallel to the official Democratic apparatus, equipped with their own consultant network, endorsing organizations, donors and even billionaires who back them.
A generation after Pat Buchanan was denounced as an antisemite by all proper liberals for saying things like “Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied territory,” will the left now embrace him as a “premature antizionist”? Even satire can’t match this.
Think about it: Since October 7, Israel has done what every other country viciously attacked by implacable enemies throughout history has done: It has lashed back in a defensive war. This is a policy that any state that cared for the life of its citizens would have to adopt.
Yet Israel has become the “omnicause.” That’s why antisemitism and antizionism are two sides of the same coin: hatred of Jews. Jews around the world aren’t being attacked because of Israel. Israel is itself being condemned because it’s Jewish.
American Jews have been blindsided by this, as the French writer Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, senior envoy for Europe at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells us in a brilliant article, “Stand Up,” Tablet, July 6, 2026. “When anti-Jewish hostility arrives wrapped in the language of liberation, antiracism, decolonization, and human rights –when it emerges among allies, colleagues, students, professional peers, or other minority communities — the disorientation is deeper. It is inside the world in which one has built a life. It speaks in familiar accents. It borrows cherished values.”
In “A Profound Question Haunting Jews Today,” New York Times, July 6, 2026, Nicholas Lemann, the former dean of the Columbia University Journalism School, agrees. He writes that for half a century or more, American Jews could achieve, “through being successful, culturally Jewish, Zionist, liberal and not especially observant,” a status that elsewhere has persistently eluded them.
“This set of certainties has evaporated. Today, Israel is the pariah nation of the world, and ‘Zionist’ has become an epithet, something it’s unacceptable to be, at least in progressive circles,” where most Jews have usually found themselves.
So, are the Democrats going to become America’s anti-Israel party? And then what?
Henry Srebrnik is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
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Discover Your Ultimate Smooth at Sets on Corydon: Nanoplasty vs. Keratin vs. Japanese Straightening
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