Just before the first Passover, over 3,500
years ago, Moses demanded of the Egyptian Pharaoh to “Let my People Go”. I’m
sure that today Moses would be proud of the lengths to which the modern Jewish
nation goes, in order to benefit humanity.
Israeli scientists are constantly going
where no one has gone before.
Researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have
gone deep into the behavior of a mutant gene to discover a new
molecular mechanism that governs how neuro-degenerative diseases such as ALS
(Lou Gehrig’s disease) attacks motor neurons.
They have gone even further and identified that the protein MIF inhibits
this mechanism. Meanwhile, Israel’s
BrainTech 2015 Conference has brought top international brain technologists to
Tel Aviv to learn about the latest innovative ‘brain
initiatives’ going on around the world. And would you like to know what
is going on in someone’s brain?
Well the winning project at this year’s Brainihack
in Tel Aviv, Israeli-developed Emochat, used an Israeli Neurosteer Brain Computer Interface device
to interpret another person’s emotions based on their brain activity.
In other parts of the body, Israeli
scientists have engineered tiny robots to enable cancer-killing drugs to
go directly to a tumor. And two
Israeli companies, Vectorious
Medical and SHL
Telemedicine are going forward with their systems that go over wireless
networks to perform remote monitoring of heart patients.
Israel’s humanitarian workers go to any lengths
to save lives. The surgeons of Israel’s
Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) regularly
go into action to treat sick children from Syria, Iraq, or Jordan. And
every Tuesday Palestinian Arab children from Gaza and Judea & Samaria
arrive at Israel’s Wolfson medical center in Holon for treatment and check-ups
by SACH doctors. Then, whenever a
natural disaster strikes citizens of a far away country, the Israeli organization
IsraAID is always one of the
first to go to their aid.
Residents of the tiny islands of Vanuatu called the Israelis “a
light unto the nations” as IsraAID distributed over 40 tons of rice,
flour and drinking water to residents of the Tongoa and Mataso islands that
were devastated by Cyclone Pam.
Israel is going from strength to strength
as its next generation follows in the footsteps of its Nobel Prize-winning
scientists. Twelve Israeli teenagers
won the top prizes in the Intel-Israel Young Scientists Competition in
Jerusalem. Their projects covered
medicine, mathematics, linguistics, music, anthropology and satellite
technology. All twelve will go
to the finals in Pittsburgh and Milan and receive academic
scholarships. And Israel’s Center for
Educational Technology has been going
into the classroom to enroll hundreds of Israeli middle and high
schools in the biggest computer-programming contest in Israeli history. Students can win a share of prizes totaling
NIS 100,000 by writing computer code using CodeMonkey - an Israeli interactive
computer game.
Israeli
entrepreneurs and innovators have gone far and wide recently:
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To Barcelona, where
crowds flocked to the Israel pavilion at the Mobile World Congress to see the
innovative Israeli products and apps on show.
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To New
York, where around 250 Israeli startups and leading investors are
taking part in the Israel
Dealmakers Summit, which this year focuses on digital media, cleantech,
Web infrastructure, medical equipment, big data and cloud computing.
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Into
orbit, where Israel’s Intelescope Solutions is
transforming the forestry industry, using drone and satellite imagery to
produce an accurate inventory of forests in the US, Canada, Brazil, Australia,
South Africa, Indonesia, India, and China.
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Into kids
educational games, where the 350 games developed by Israel’s TabTale
have been downloaded 600 million times.
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And into social
enterprises, where Impact Investing
Israel has organized Israel’s first Impact
Investing Conference to motivate investors and startups to go and
develop real tangible and measurable benefits to mankind.
Israelis go out of their way to help others. On Good Deeds Day, which this year was on 24 March, a record number of Israeli volunteers joined in 10,000 projects, such as going in to neighborhoods to clean up nature parks and beaches, to distribute food to the needy and to go and help the handicapped and disadvantaged. And as we go into the season of our Freedom, 110 Ukrainian Jews made their Exodus to Israel in a special refugee rescue flight sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
To finish, here is a video of Technion’s go-getting engineering
students going speedily through a “moving” account of the Passover
story.
Finally, please go and try out IsraelActive.com - my brand new on-line database of positive news stories from Israel. Now anytime you wish you can go and search easily through 7000 news articles about the beneficial work that Israel is doing on almost every subject and in every part of the world.
Here in Israel, it’s all go!
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
