Israel
7 incredible new things the world can thank Israel for
By ANDREW TOBIN
TEL AVIV (JTA) – To build a Jewish state in the Middle East, Israelis had to be innovators.
Some of what they’ve come up with has been used mostly by their fellow citizens — think Hebrew slang, Bamba snacks and the Iron Dome missile defense system — at least so far.
But many other Israeli creations have changed the world: drip irrigation, the USB flash drive and actress Natalie Portman, among them.
Ahead of Yom Haatzmaut — Israel’s Independence Day, to be celebrated on May 2 — here are some incredible things Israel gave the world this year, its 69th year of independence.
A weed inhaler
Puff, puff, pass the inhaler.
In November, the Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva announced it would begin marketing a medical cannabis inhaler in Israel that delivers precise doses of the drug. Rambam Hospital in Haifa had already been using the device for more than a year, making it the first medical center in the world to prescribe cannabis as a standard medical treatment.
Perry Davidson, the founder and CEO of Syqe Medical, which developed the inhaler, said his company plans to eventually offer it around the world.
“Israel is clearly just the start,” he told Bloomberg. “We expect to be approved for use in other countries in due course. The U.S., as the biggest medical cannabis market, is an obvious target.”
The inhaler is far from Israel’s first marijuana-related innovation. In 1964, Raphael Mechoulan, a chemist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discovered tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive constituent of cannabis. He went on to identify the endocannabinoid system upon which cannabinoids act on the body.
Last summer, the government approved a plan by Health Minister Yaakov Litzman to relax some requirements for obtaining medical cannabis. And in March, it decriminalized recreational marijuana use.
A binge-worthy series on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The Israeli TV drama “Fauda” has given the world a compelling look inside the conflict at the heart of the Jewish state.
Nearly two years after the show became a mega-hit in Israel, Netflix in December began streaming the first, and so far only season, in 130 countries. In the United States and elsewhere, English subtitles were added over the Arabic and Hebrew dialogue.
“Fauda” – Arabic for “chaos” – was informed by the Israeli military experiences of co-writers Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz. The show follows undercover Israeli soldiers as they pursue a fictional Hamas terrorist in the West Bank and also delves deep into the lives of the Palestinian characters.
Netflix previously bought the rights to other Israeli films and TV shows, including “Prisoners of War,” from which the hit U.S. show “Homeland” was adapted.
Reviewers and fans have lauded “Fauda” for offering an unusually complex and humane portrayal of Arab characters, even terrorists, and for capturing the reality of Palestinian life under Israeli rule. Loaded with Arab actors, the show has won fans on both sides of the Green Line that demarcates the territories that Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
“A sad reality,” one Arab Israeli viewer wrote on the official “Fauda” Facebook page. “I hope the day will come when Arab and Jews can live together in peace.”
A popular sport for middle-aged women
Popularized by Israeli moms in 2005, the women’s sport of catchball has recently gone global.
Catchball is like volleyball, but easier, because catching and throwing replaces bumping, setting and spiking. Israeli women adapted the sport from Newcomb, which some Americans may know from summer camp or gym class.
Meanwhile, catchball leagues in Israel boast more than 12,000 female members, almost all of them over 30. That is twice as many adult women as belong to basketball, soccer, volleyball and tennis leagues combined, according to data from Israel’s Culture and Sport Ministry.
“It’s like a disease among middle-aged women here,” said Naor Galili, the director-general of the Maccabi sports association in Israel. “We like it. We love it. We fully support it.”
The Israeli Catchball Association in recent years has promoted catchball in more than half a dozen other countries and helped launch a sister association in the United States. At the July Maccabiah Games, an Olympics-style event for Jewish athletes held every four years, an exhibition tournament will features dozens of teams from Israel, along with squads from Boston, London and Berlin.
Richard Gere playing a Jewish schlub
Richard Gere, a famously suave gentile, stars as a schlubby Jewish schemer in “Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer.”
Perhaps only Israeli director Joseph Cedar could have given the world such a gift. The bitingly funny film follows Norman Oppenheimer as he aspires to serve as a fixer between New York’s Jewish community, into which Cedar was born, and Jerusalem, where he was raised.
Cedar knowingly — and often humorously — navigates the gaps between the two worlds. As NPR’s pop culture critic John Powers put it, “Cedar cheerfully skewers Israeli politics and its emotional relationship to American Jewry in a way that U.S. directors dare not.”
The director doesn’t worry whether the film is “good for the Jews,” Powers noted.
For better or worse, Gere apparently has no such hang-ups either. In Jerusalem last month for the local premiere of “Norman,” Gere told Haaretz that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are “an absurd provocation” and “this occupation is destroying everyone.”
Treatment for thousands of wounded Syrians
Officially, Israel has maintained a policy of non-intervention in the Syrian war and has not taken in any refugees. But the Jewish state has still managed to offer some help to its northern neighbors.
Since early 2013, the Israeli army has taken in some 3,000 wounded Syrians for treatment. Generally working at night, soldiers have provided initial medical care and then evacuated the wounded to nearby hospitals.
The numbers are a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands who have been killed and wounded in the fighting between soldiers loyal to President Bashar Assad and rebel groups. But they are significant to those whose limbs and lives have been saved, including hundreds of children.
During a visit this month to the Western Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin promised the country would “continue to do everything it can with responsibility and wisdom in order to alleviate the suffering of the people who experience daily slaughter here on the other side of the border.”
Israeli civilians have donated hundreds of thousands of shekels to help Syrian refugees, and there has been official talk of accepting 100 orphans, though nothing has come of it.
Self-driving cars
Your next car may very well come with an Israeli driver, though it won’t be human.
The U.S. chipmaker Intel last month bought Israel’s driverless technology company Mobile for $15.3 billion, the largest-ever purchase of a high-tech company in this country. In a joint announcement, the companies said the deal “is expected to accelerate innovation for the automotive industry and position Intel as a leading technology provider in the fast-growing market for highly and fully autonomous vehicles.”
Founded in 1999, Mobileye has supplied integrated cameras, chips and software for driver-assist systems — the building blocks for self-driving cars — to more than two dozen vehicle manufacturers. The company has already taken over 70 percent of the global market for driver-assistance and anti-collision systems. Mobileye was a supplier of vision systems to Tesla until the companies broke up last summer after a man died in a crash while his Tesla Model S was on autopilot.
Co-founder and CEO Ziv Aviram has said Mobileye, with its 660 employees, will remain centered in Israel, from where it will develop Intel’s first driverless car.
A Wonder Woman with weapons training
After first playing Wonder Woman in last year’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” Israeli actress Gal Gadot will appear in her own DC Comics film this summer.
As a former Israeli soldier, Gadot has brought some unique skills to the role of Amazonian superhero. In March 2016, she talked to ABC talk show host Jimmy Kimmel about how her army service, saying, “The military gave me good training for Hollywood.”
In her previous “Fast and Furious” appearances (in which she plays an ex-Mossad agent), the one-time Miss Israel impressed director Justin Lin with her knowledge of weapons and performed her own stunts for the franchise. She also showed off her fighting abilities in last year’s “Keeping Up with the Joneses” as the better half of a suburban secret agent couple.
While Gadot’s films haven’t exactly been critically acclaimed, she has remained a national hero. Israelis have widely admired her for fulfilling her mandatory military service while fellow Israeli swimsuit model Bar Refaeli has taken some heat for avoiding enlistment.
Gadot is the first to play Wonder Woman on the big screen. Since superhero franchises never seem to end, Gadot — who has two daughters with husband Yaron Varsan, an Israeli real estate developer – is set to play the character in at least two more films this year.
Israel
Israel report by former Winnipegger Bruce Brown
10 minutes
(Posted Dec. 24, 2024)
02:11 AM: Sound asleep.
2.11.01 AM: Wide awake. Awoken by a blaring missile alarm. Incoming. Took me no time to react. Ivan Pavlov would be proud. I quickly scooped up my dog. Grabbed my glasses. An inhaler. My phone and power cord. And sprinted to the safe room. Right across the hall. My wife overseas on vacation. So did this one alone. Er with my dog. We have 90 seconds to reach safety so no real panic, relatively speaking.
2.11.09 AM: In my safe room. Slid shut the heavy steel slabs across the window. You can hear this happening throughout the building. Kinda like a horror movie. Screech. Slam. Screech. Slam. Screech. Slam. Then mine. Screech. Slam. Next I jumped across the room and slammed shut the heavy, reinforced, steel door. It also makes a slamming sound, a really loud one. Then slumped down on the couch with my dog. With some level of relief. Where is this missile coming from. Can’t be from Gaza, they don’t have the capability anymore…I hope. Nor Lebanon, living too far south…I hope. Yemen? Possible. Those dang Houthis?
2. 14 AM: Oh oh. Need to pee. Like really bad. Once in the safe room, you should stay there for ten minutes. Unless there is another siren. Each siren requires a ten minute respite. Respite? Odd choice of words as you are not really resting. Way too tense. Especially as you can occasionally hear the booms of intercepted missiles up above. Kind of unnerving. Back to my need to pee. Its quite dangerous leaving the room during this period. Should your place be hit by the missile or falling debris from the sky. You don’t want to be caught with your pants down, literally, hovering over your toilet. And condos have been hit in Rehovot with some death and much destruction. Hmmm. To pee or not to pee. That is the question. Whether tis better to suffer the pangs of having to pee or the missiles of outrageous fortune. You get the point.
2.14.10 AM: Peeing in the bathroom.
2.14.40 AM: Back in the safe room. With my dog. Sitting on the couch. Fiddling with the remote control. I work in hi tech. The semiconductor world which can be pretty complex. But I simply have not mastered the remote. Really want to see what’s going on. Where is the missile from. Are there more attacks elsewhere in the country. Pushing this button and that button But the TV still off. Okay. Will check my cell. Although the connection sometimes comes and goes when shuttered in the heavily reinforced concrete and steel safe room. Works! Ya! Showing three bars. Sometimes four. Checking my feeds. But no news yet.
2.17 AM: Seriously. I need to pee again. Like really bad. Dang prostate! To pee or not to pee. That is the question…. You get the point. I chose to pee. This time I don’t actually slam shut the heavy, reinforced, steel door. And my dog follows me out. This could get complicated. But first things first.
2.17.10 AM: Peeing in the bathroom.
2.17.40 AM: Chasing after my dog around the condo. Poncho!!! There he is. In the living room. Like master. Like pet. He too is relieving himself. Probably the tension. Dogs can sense these things. “Faster Poncho!. Faster!” I encourage him.
2,18.02 AM: We’re back in the safe room. The heavy, reinforced, steel door slammed shut. And then I start worrying. What if I have to pee again. Its really dangerous out there. Idea! I’ll bring a cleaning pail in here. And if worse comes to worse. Well, I am alone. Sans my dog.
2.18.22 AM: I dart for the cleaning cabinet in the bathroom to grab the pail. Making sure the heavy, reinforced, steel door is shut less my dog run out again. Wait! As it dawns on me at 02.18.22 AM. This is not the smartest thing to do. At least I could have combined grabbing the pail with actually having to pee again. Like maybe I could hold out for the next three minutes or so in the safe room. No urgent need for the pail. But I am already there….
2.18.25 AM: Grab the red cleaning pail
2.18.28 AM: Back in the safe room. The heavy, reinforced, steel door slammed shut again. Siting on the couch with my dog again. Red pail glaring at me from the side of the room…daring me. But my bladder is relaxed. I try the remote again. I feel like my 85 year old mother who often complains about getting her remote to work. I console myself thinking that it must be the batteries. Hmmm. Maybe a mad rush for the utility room to get some new batteries. But that would be mad. I’ll take care of it in the morning. Only a few more minutes and I can safely leave the safe room and go back to bed.
2.19.45 AM: I pour myself a glass of mineral water. This I store in the safe room per Homefront commands. Fresh batteries not, hrmph. As I down the water I realize this is probably not the best idea. Less it creates the urge to pee…. Alas no. Start surfing my feed again. The intercontinental missile was fired by those crazy, dang Houthis from Yemen. All of central Israel sent to their safe rooms. Dang Houthis! The next couple minutes go by pretty smoothly. Although seems like an eternity.
2.21 AM: Back in bed. Albeit sleep comes slowly as my adrenaline starts to reside.
As it were. Israel bombed the dang Houthis that night. For the third time since the outbreak of the war. In retaliation for them firing over 200 ballistic missiles and 170 drones at Israel, which fortunately had not resulted in much damage. We struck them with over 60 bombs in two air raid sorties. Destroying mainly military targets as well as ports and energy infrastructure. Maybe that will teach them for waking me -and a million other Israelis- in the middle of the night.
As it were. Falling debris from the dang Houthi attack landed on a school in central Israel, forcing its collapse. Fortunately and thank G-d it was the middle of the night. Sometime between 2:11 AM and 2.21 AM. So no casualties. Can’t even imagine the tragedy had this strike occurred mid-day.
As it were. I changed the batteries in the remote. It works just fine now. And I left the red cleaning pail in the safe room….just in case. But I hope the dang Houthis finally learned their lesson. Although probably not.
As it were. Two nights later. Another 2:00AM missile from the dang Houthis. . They just wont let me sleep….
As it is. Please continue donating to the Israeli war and revival efforts. You may have given earlier. But give again. The financial costs to Israel are and will be billions. Billions! Sderot and Metulla and Tel Avi and Haifa are Israel’s front lines. Israel is the diaspora’s front line.
Bruce Brown. A Canadian. And an Israeli. Bruce made Aliyah…a long time ago. He works in Israel’s hi-tech sector by day and, in spurts, is a somewhat inspired writer by night. Bruce is the winner of the 2019 American Jewish Press Association Simon Rockower Award for excellence in writing. And wrote the 1998 satire, An Israeli is…. Bruce’s reflects on life in Israel – political, social, economic and personal. With lots of biting, contrarian, sardonic and irreverent insight
Israel
Join the Masa Canadian Professionals Volunteers Program!
You are invited on a 4-week volunteer program in Israel from October 14th to November 10th. Help rebuild Israeli society post-October 7th over Canadian Thanksgiving, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah. Spend three weeks based in Tel Aviv and one week based in Eilat!
This program is exclusively for Jewish professionals aged 22-50, working at Jewish organizations or remotely in any field.
The cost of the program is $150 USD to the organizer and $50 USD to Masa. Participants will receive a Masa grant of $2650 USD that is applied to participation and to cover additional costs. The cost of the program includes housing, meals while volunteering, transportation on travel days, health insurance, leadership training, and more. Volunteers are required to commit to the volunteer schedule, with the understanding that there will be the flexibility to work remotely for 8 specific days during the program. Flights are not included but you get a 15% discount from El Al.
Sign up here: https://www.masaisrael.org/go/canada-jp/ space is limited!
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to make a difference and connect with fellow professionals. For more information, contact Mahla Finkleman, National Manager of Partnerships and Outreach, Masa Canada, atmfinkleman@ujafed.org and/or Sam Goodman, Senior Manager of Israel Engagement, sgoodman@ujafed.org.
Save the Dates for Info Sessions:
- Thursday, September 5th, 12:00 – 12:30 EST
- Wednesday, September 11th, 12:00 – 12:30 EST
Join us in Israel for a meaningful and impactful experience with Masa!
weeks based in Tel Aviv and one week based in Eilat!
This program is exclusively for Jewish professionals aged 22-50, working at Jewish organizations or remotely in any field.
The cost of the program is $150 USD to the organizer and $50 USD to Masa. Participants will receive a Masa grant of $2650 USD that is applied to participation and to cover additional costs. The cost of the program includes housing, meals while volunteering, transportation on travel days, health insurance, leadership training, and more. Volunteers are required to commit to the volunteer schedule, with the understanding that there will be the flexibility to work remotely for 8 specific days during the program. Flights are not included but you get a 15% discount from El Al.
Sign up here: https://www.masaisrael.org/go/canada-jp/ space is limited!
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to make a difference and connect with fellow professionals. For more information, contact Mahla Finkleman, National Manager of Partnerships and Outreach, Masa Canada, atmfinkleman@ujafed.org and/or Sam Goodman, Senior Manager of Israel Engagement, sgoodman@ujafed.org.
Save the Dates for Info Sessions:
- Thursday, September 5th, 12:00 – 12:30 EST
- Wednesday, September 11th, 12:00 – 12:30 EST
Join us in Israel for a meaningful and impactful experience with Masa!
Features
New website for Israelis interested in moving to Canada
By BERNIE BELLAN (May 21, 2024) A new website, titled “Orvrim to Canada” (https://www.ovrimtocanada.com/ovrim-en) has been receiving hundreds of thousands of visits, according to Michal Harel, operator of the website.
In an email sent to jewishpostandnews.ca Michal explained the reasons for her having started the website:
“In response to the October 7th events, a group of friends and I, all Israeli-Canadian immigrants, came together to launch a new website supporting Israelis relocating to Canada. “Our website, https://www.ovrimtocanada.com/, offers a comprehensive platform featuring:
- Step-by-step guides for starting the immigration process
- Settlement support and guidance
- Community connections and networking opportunities
- Business relocation assistance and expert advice
- Personal blog sharing immigrants’ experiences and insights
“With over 200,000 visitors and media coverage from prominent Israeli TV channels and newspapers, our website has already made a significant impact in many lives.”
A quick look at the website shows that it contains a wealth of information, almost all in Hebrew, but with an English version that gives an overview of what the website is all about.
The English version also contains a link to a Jerusalem Post story, published this past February, titled “Tired of war? Canada grants multi-year visas to Israelis” (https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-787914#google_vignette) That story not only explains the requirements involved for anyone interested in moving to Canada from Israel, it gives a detailed breakdown of the costs one should expect to encounter.
(Updated May 28)
We contacted Ms. Harel to ask whether she’s aware whether there has been an increase in the number of Israelis deciding to emigrate from Israel since October 7. (We want to make clear that we’re not advocating for Israelis to emigrate; we’re simply wanting to learn more about emigration figures – and whether there has been a change in the number of Israelis wanting to leave the country.)
Ms. Harel referred us to a website titled “Globes”: https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001471862
The website is in Hebrew, but we were able to translate it into English. There is a graph on the website showing both numbers of immigrants to Israel and emigrants.
The graph shows a fairly steady rate of emigration from 2015-2022, hovering in the 40,000 range, then in 2023 there’s a sudden increase in the number of emigrants to 60,000.
According to the website, the increase in emigrants is due more to a change in the methodology that Israel has been using to count immigrants and emigrants than it is to any sudden upsurge in emigration. (Apparently individuals who had formerly been living in Israel but who may have returned to Israel just once a year were being counted as having immigrated back to Israel. Now that they are no longer being counted as immigrants and instead are being treated as emigrants, the numbers have shifted radically.)
Yet, the website adds this warning: “The figures do not take into account the effects of the war, since it is still not possible to identify those who chose to emigrate following it. It is also difficult to estimate what Yalad Yom will produce – on the one hand, anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews and Israelis around the world reminds everyone where the Jewish home is. On the other hand, the bitter truth we discovered in October is that it was precisely in Israel, the safe fortress of the Jewish people, that a massacre took place reminding us of the horrors of the Holocaust. And if that’s not enough, the explosive social atmosphere and the difference in the state budget deficit, which will inevitably lead to a heavy burden of taxes and a reduction in public services, may convince Zionist Israelis that they don’t belong here.”
Thus, as much as many of us would be disappointed to learn that there is now an upsurge in Israelis wanting to move out of the country, once reliable figures begin to be produced for 2024, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that is the case – which helps to explain the tremendous popularity of Ms. Harel’s website.
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