Jewish tradition connects the five books of
Moses (the Torah) with water. For a
healthy life, our sages say that you cannot go three days without either. Recently there have been many news stories
from Israel on the theme of water – all focusing on the Israeli priority of
saving or benefiting human life.
The main inspiration for this blog was this
summary of the miracle of how the drought-ravished Jewish State
overcame a full-blown water crisis by investing $4 billion between 2002 and
2010 to develop water technology that keeps its population and industries
alive. Israel’s latest desalination
plant, in Sorek, is now at full capacity, producing 627,000 cubic meters of
drinking water daily. With the lowest rate of energy consumption in the world,
its water is the cheapest and most
efficient of any large-scale desalination plant. Israel has exported this knowledge
worldwide. The San Diego desalination
facility uses the reverse osmosis developed by Israel’s IDE Technologies, which
has just opened a new office in the drought-ravished
state of Texas. The Norwegian company,
EnviroNor, is recruiting Israeli expertise to provide the water-processing
technology necessary for its project to convert secondhand oil barges into floating
desalination and wastewater treatment plants.
International interest in Israeli water
technology has encouraged joint research
between the USA’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Israel’s Ben Gurion
University of the Negev. And Sir Mark
Walport - chief scientific adviser to the British Government mentioned the many
Joint
UK-Israeli water science projects being conducted at UK
universities. And the National
Sanitation Foundation International (NSF) has certified the major product lines
of Israel’s Amiad
Water Systems. The NSF evaluated
that the water produced by Amiad’s automatic self-cleaning screen and
microfibre technology is safe for human consumption across the USA and Canada.
Locally, Israeli water technology is
restoring the Besor-Hebron
River flowing through Beer Sheva, which for decades had been polluted
by untreated wastewater from Palestinian Arab towns. Now a 3-year project has been agreed between Israel, the PA and
the Bedouin community to clean up the river. And please read about the water
projects of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and its work with Bedouin
communities, in its response to slanderous accusations in the New York Times.
You may also have missed the news that
Israeli authorities helped
alleviate flooding in Gaza from recent rains by transferring four pumps
from the Palestinian Authority into the Gaza Strip (contrary to a fictitious
report by the AFP news agency that Israel had opened dams). Israel has also doubled its supply of water
to Gaza from 1.3 to 2.6 billion gallons, and was
praised for doing so by visiting inspectors from the European
Union.
There was little international recognition
of the historic agreement signed by Israel and Jordan for the Red Sea-Dead Sea
rescue pipeline project. The $800
million agreement authorizes the construction of a 65 to 80 million cubic meter
capacity desalination plant in Aqaba, Jordan that will
produce fresh water to benefit both nations. Nor much fanfare for Israel’s Water Authority opening of a new
treatment facility for wastewater from the city of Tiberias that will allow
Christian pilgrims to baptize themselves in clean
Jordan River water.
Israel also is involved in countering some
of the dangers associated with water. Cyclone Pam has
devastated the remote islands of Vanuatu, but already a multi-sector emergency
response team from Israel-based IsraAID has arrived and is distributing
drinking water. More Israeli aid teams
are on their way. And should terrorists
try
to sabotage water systems, Jerusalem’s regional water & wastewater
utility, Hagihon, has developed and installed one of the world’s most
sophisticated security systems.
Israeli ingenuity has even developed
medical treatments from water. IceSense3, developed by Israeli biotech IceCure
Medical, uses frozen
water (“cryoablation”) to destroy targeted tumors in less than 15 mins,
with no pain. IceCure has just received
a $21 million injection of funds from Epoch Partner Investments to speed up the
sales and distribution of its IceSense3 system to treat breast cancer. And only Israeli scientists could have
developed a “safe” virus to kill antibiotic resistant bacteria, from the wastewater of Jerusalem’s sewage
system!
Water has also made a major contribution to
Israel’s modern economic success.
Israel’s underwater natural gas discoveries are now well known. However, you may not have realized that
Israel’s location between
two major oceans has given it a pivotal trading role in providing China
with outlets to both the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. And who would have thought that Russia would
be importing large quantities of high-quality Israeli sea salt from Israel’s
Salt of the Earth to
make the salt water for tinned tuna and salmon produced in Russia’s
Vladivostok and Korsakov regions.
To conclude we dive beneath the water to
wish a “mazel tov” to the members of the scuba diving club in
Caesarea that discovered the largest trove of gold coins ever found off
Israel's Mediterranean “gold” coast.
The Israeli Antiquities Authority said the find of 2000 gold pieces,
dating back more than 1000 years, was "so valuable that it's
priceless".
And finally, even underwater, Israel’s
life-changing scientific ingenuity surfaces - as demonstrated by the laying of
the cornerstone of the new deep-sea
research labs for Haifa’s Mediterranean Sea Research Center. The lab will develop underwater robots,
vehicles, optics, acoustics and propulsion systems.
Israel – keeping humanity afloat!
Michael Ordman writes a free weekly
newsletter containing positive news stories about Israel.
For a free subscription, email a request to
michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com
