A Green and Pleasant Land

Long-awaited winter rains, plus my recent trip to the Arava in southern Israel are the inspiration for this week’s blog.  The Arava region in Israel’s Negev “desert” now produces 60% of Israel’s exports of food crops, right alongside massive fields of solar panels.  It is a microcosm of Israel’s advanced agricultural technologies that combine with its cleantech innovations to help generate a green and sustainable planet.

My journey south centered around Kibbutz Ketura, just 50km north of Eilat, which hosts the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.  It also contains a 5MegaWatt solar field, with self-cleaning robots, built by Arava Power, which is now constructing a 40MW field just across the road.  It has a factory growing special algae that makes Ketura the world’s leading source of the natural anti-oxidant astaxanthin.

(Algae growing frames - Kibbutz Ketura.  Photo by M.Ordman)

Two innovative joint research projects have just been approved, involving scientists at MIT and at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.  You can probably guess the goals of “Self-Sustained Agriculture Based on Marginal Water”, but you may have more trouble with “Identification of Epigenetic Quantitative Trait Loci Associated with Tomato Seed Germination”!  Before we leave the Negev, Israel’s Brenmiller Energy has just announced that it will establish a 10MW solar power station in Dimona, capable of generating electricity from solar energy for an average of 20 hours a day.

Heading north we reach a rather wet Tel Aviv, where hydroponics - growing crops without soil - are cultivating lettuce and strawberries in the Central Bus Station using water from the building’s air-conditioning system.  Just around the corner, Israel’s Flux has developed a personal device that helps individuals and small businesses install home-farming hydroponics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH8rMV9Rshs

Up in the Galilee, delegates at Kinneret College’s first Water Conference heard how Israel’s BSc graduates in Water Industry Engineering extended a wastewater system under Israel’s main Tel Aviv highway, without disrupting traffic.  Several ex-students currently work for some of the 11 Israeli water companies that recently visited Spain to present technology to help Spanish infrastructure companies recycle more of the rain in Spain.  We now cross the sea to Africa, where students from Tel Aviv University have built a 48,000-liter rainwater harvesting and advanced filtration system that provides 400 children and staff at Nkaiti Secondary School in Minjingu, Tanzania with safe drinking water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLdjTekHhb4 

 

Israel’s newly launched relationship with India is on the crest of a wave.  Israeli water company Netafim has been selected to partake in a $60 million micro-irrigation project in the Indian state of Karnataka.  The project will help 6,700 farmers in 22 villages, increase crop production and save 50 percent of their water consumption.  Meanwhile, Israel’s Water-Gen is bringing its pioneering air-to-water technology to the urban poor of India, where over 150 million people are not connected to a water supply.  In addition, the Israel pavilion entitled “Israel Innovation in India” opened at Vibrant Gujarat 2015, showcasing advanced Israeli agriculture technologies.

Just in case anyone thought that Israel had abandoned Haiti, five years after the devastating earthquake, IsraAID’s work there includes the agriculture program “Haiti Grows”, supporting local farmers with Israeli technology.  Closer to home, the Israeli government has sponsored Palestinian Arab strawberry farmers to upgrade facilities and train them in strawberry cultivation.  Annually, Israel trains 1200 Palestinian Arab farmers.

There has been some good news emanating from Europe recently.  Nine Israeli cleantech companies attended Leipzig’s Green Ventures Forum,where they held over a hundred meetings with companies from over 30 countries.  Over in Italy, Israel has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Fiat Chrysler, Iveco and Magneti Marelli for co-operation in the development of natural gas based technologies.  And even the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) was appreciative of the five-day MASHAV workshop in Israel, teaching successful renewable energy practices and energy efficiency technologies to 23 experts and policymakers from across Eurasia.

Back in Israel, the Environment Ministry has just announced that it will provide $1.6 million for local authorities to encourage commuters to use public transport or bicycles in congested Israeli cities.  It includes new bicycle rental stations, cycle paths and a subsidized station taxi service.  And I won’t say “no” if someone wants to donate to me one of the new INU electric scooters launched by Israel’s Green Ride It folds automatically, recognizes its owner and has a range of 40km at speeds up to 25km/hour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-J_jkLhYJ8 

 

Before I put on my hat and coat, there is just room to include Jacob Richman’s excellent image of the new Israeli stamps featuring some of Israel’s beautiful winter flowers.  And I conclude with a puzzling phenomenon.  After an absence of 20 years, flocks of synchronized starlings have been forming spectacular sights of dancing clouds in the skies of southern Israel.  Are they also enjoying Israel’s new blue-sky thinking?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btC2OmiSR0s 

 

Israel – it’s a breath of fresh air.

Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing positive news stories about Israel.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

For a free subscription, email a request to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com

Israel Provides for Special Needs

Israel Provides for Special Needs

2/1/13

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/israel-provides-special-needs

As all the main political parties get stuck into their largely negative campaigns, it is important to remind readers of the great work that the Jewish State performs for all its citizens and for the world at large.  These recent examples feature both government and non-government activities.

New and veteran immigrant (olim) families, who have a special needs child or adult at home in Israel have been granted further access to a government and private sector outreach services.  As of last month, they will now receive increased rent subsidies.  And it has just been revealed that, thanks to the community outreach program of Iron Dome manufacturer Rafael Industries, three employees with mental disabilities have the vital job of manufacturing parts for the IDF’s crucial defense system.  Another current news article featured Leket Israel, an organization that supports Israel’s impoverished citizens by salvaging non-saleable crops from farmers and unused food from caterers and shipping them to 200 soup kitchens, homeless shelters and other institutions. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YphSmFUEKmI

Instead of maligning Israel’s ultra-orthodox citizens, take a look at how enlightened organizations behave.  The Sami Shamoon College of Engineering in Ashdod has launched a five-year degree program in civil and software engineering, which has been tailor-made for the lifestyle requirements of its 100 ultra-Orthodox participants – 70 men and 30 women.  In another sphere, one religious woman has proved that “in the IDF there is place for all parts of Israeli society. Tamar is an example of the equality between the sexes in Israel.”  So said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Israel Air Force’s first religious woman navigator.  Tamar was one of four women to gain their wings at this year’s Israel Air Force Flight Academy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLLRKiAu59s&feature=player_embedded

A new program has been launched to encourage young members of Israel’s Druse community to stretch the limits of their potential to achieve scientific or technological success.  The Technion Sparks program enables 200 Israeli-Arab Druse high school students to take special science and technology courses at Israel’s Technion Institute.  The project is the brainchild of Brig.-Gen. Hasson Hasson – the first Druse to serve as a military aide to a President of the State.  And Israel’s Ethiopian immigrants and their veteran Israeli support teams have much to be proud of.  No other population group has risen so quickly to achieve such high university rates (42%).  Just think of where the community was before Operations Moses in 1984 and Solomon in 1991.

Israel’s most needy citizens, of course, are those requiring medical help.  The Israeli National Health Council has just approved a NIS 300 million increase in the budget for subsidized medicines, which will benefit an additional 300,000 Israelis.  The majority of the new money will be spent on preventative medicine and pre-natal testing.  Alongside this, the Israel Institute for Occupational Safety and Hygiene has launched a program of specially adapted Mobile Training Units for agricultural workers nationwide.  Vans containing pullout touch-screen monitors and pick-of-the-crop courses in Hebrew and Arabic, deliver in-the-field courses on accident prevention.  See the larger MTUs in action in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pmvbF-yw3U

Israeli schoolchildren continually need encouragement, despite the massive improvement in their math skills over the last five years. For this purpose, Israeli company Slate Science is piloting its award-winning mathematics learning "Ten Fingers" program for tablets and smartphones at three Israeli schools, in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svbfBvt3zQE

Israel is also addressing international needs.  Following a recent visit by a delegation from South Carolina, Israel’s NeuroQuest is to open a development center in Charleston for its work in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.  Then to encourage research in India, the government of Israel is to give three-year scholarships grants to sixty-six post-doctoral Indian scholars to pursue research at top Israeli universities.  Israel is even working with the Greek government to help it out of its economic crisis. Top Greek officials have been visiting Israel and presenting opportunities to invest in and own Greek infrastructure.  Israeli companies now own several Greek hotels, the old Athens airport and one is in talks to buy Greece’s national oil company.  Other international projects include cleaning up sewage in Slovenia and Croatia and installing security systems in Spanish ports.

But we return to Israel for our final news item.  Fifty-three Jews from the Bnei Menashe community of northeastern India needed to return to their ancestral roots.  The Bnei Menashe trace their Jewish identity to a lost biblical tribe, exiled from the Jewish State over 2700 years ago.  'It's a dream. We've been waiting for this moment for hundreds of years,' said Ben Asher, 23, who arrived with his family.   

So whatever you’re after, look to the Jewish State.

Israel may have just what you need.

Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing Good News stories about Israel.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

For a free subscription, email a request to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com