Israel Update 14.10.21

ISRAELIS SECRETLY EVACUATED 167 AFGHANS

 

 

Humanitarian aid group IsraAid coordinated the evacuation of 125 vulnerable Afghans via Albania earlier this month. The group included judges, professional cyclists, journalists, TV presenters, human rights activists, relatives of Afghan diplomats, artists, law enforcement officers and scientists.

In September, IsraAID took part in the evacuation of 42 Afghan women and girls to the UAE. Read more here

 

 

CORONAVIRUS IN ISRAEL

 

 

(Figures from last week’s Update in brackets for comparison)

 

Israel’s Health Ministry reported Thursday morning that 1,732 (2,369) Israelis have tested positive over the previous 24 hours. Israeli hospitals were treating 403 (475) COVID-19 patients in serious condition. Since the onset of the pandemic in Israel, 7,959 (7,853) people have succumbed to complications of the disease Read more here

 

 

The number of new daily serious cases has dropped by about 60% over the past three weeks. Roughly 15% of Israelis who are eligible for the vaccine are unvaccinated, but they accounted for 70% of deaths over the previous week. Read more here

 

 

 

 

Israelis are to continue to wear face masks indoors through the winter. The Health Ministry Director-General said. ” We would love to ease [restrictions], but on the other hand, learning from the beginning of the [fourth infection] wave, some must be left in place so that there won’t be another outbreak. Read more here

 

 

 

There has been a significant rise recently in the number of children hospitalized with pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome (PIMS), a rare condition that develops in some children, after exposure to coronavirus. The report came the day after a 16 year old boy died  from complications caused by PIMS.  The syndrome is still rare and only shows up in around 1 case for every 10,000 infected children. Read more here

 

 

 

WHY DID PFIZER CHOOSE ISRAEL TO MASS TEST VACCINE?

 

 

Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla said he had been looking for one country to demonstrate what the vaccine could do. “Simply put, Israel had all the right conditions: Israel’s Ministry of Health is one of the best in the world, as is Israel’s healthcare system,”…”The small population of Israel made the study manageable. Israel has a high degree of electronic data [and a] monitoring system connected to an overwhelming majority of the population. “And finally, and very importantly, no country has more experience in managing crises.” Read more here

 

 

 

AURA SMART AIR

 

 

The Israeli Ministry of Health approved Israeli company Aura Smart Air’s air filtration system on Sunday morning. The system destroys airborne Covid-19 (coronavirus) particles in enclosed spaces. Read more here

 

 

 

JORDAN

 

 

The volume of water that Israel sells to Jordan will double and is likely to reach 100 million cubic metres over the next year, following an agreement signed on Tuesday. Since the mid-1990s, Israel has sold millions of cubic metres of water annually to Jordan at the especially cheap tariff of $0.04 per cubic metre far lower than the $2.48 rate per cubic meter paid by Israeli consumers. The latest agreement raises the price to $0.65, which means that Israel is still subsidizing the cost of water for Jordan. Read more here

 

 

 

ARCHAEOLOGY

 

 

A huge complex of 1,500-year-old winepresses capable of producing some two million litres of wine a year has been uncovered by archaeologists in Yavne, south of Tel Aviv. The site has been dated to the Byzantine era, around the 4th-5th century CE, and is the largest such complex known to exist from the period. Read more here

 

 

 

CANCELLATION

 

 

The Palestinian Authority cancelled a meeting with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, due to his scheduled appearance at Monday’s Friedman Centre’s inaugural gala at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.Read more here

 

 

 

MINORITIES IN ISRAEL

 

 

A record number of over 600 Bedouins voluntarily drafted into the IDF over the past year. Read more here

 

 

ENERGY

 

 

 

In Israel currently natural gas supplies far exceed demand and more gas is due to come on stream next year. Prices for gas and electric power are falling. Read more here

 

 

SOLAR ENERGY

 

 

Israel has inaugurated its largest floating photovoltaic solar energy field which will produce 23 megawatts, sufficient to supply electricity to 3,000 households. The field, comprised of 51,500 solar panels, floats above a reservoir south of Haifa. Read more here

 

 

THE NATIONAL DRONE INITIATIVE

 

 

Drones delivered sushi, beer and ice cream orders to waiting members of the media in Tel Aviv on Monday as part of a government-led initiative to create a national drone network and pilot drone flights for deliveries across Israel. Read more here

 

 

JAPANESE HERO

 

 

The city of Jerusalem on Monday dedicated a square in memory of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who issued over 2,000 visas to Jewish individuals and families, in breach of Japanese policy, when serving as the Japanese vice-consul to Kovno (today Kaunas) in Lithuania in 1940. Among the visa recipients were teachers and the entire student body of the Mir Yeshiva. Chiune’s 72-year-old son, Nobuki Sugihara addressed the event and among those attending were survivors and their descendants. Read more here

 

 

 

BAHRAIN

 

 

In a 12 day trip organized by Sharaka,(“partnership” in Arabic), an NGO founded by Israeli, Bahraini, and Emirati social entrepreneurs, the first Bahraini delegation to fly on the new direct Gulf Air route from Manama to Tel Aviv, arrived in Israel. Participants included Khawla Al Shaer, who works at a pharmaceutical company in Bahrain, and who said she was struck by the warmth of the welcome she received. Fatema Al Harbi, who works for the Education Ministry, noted, “I saw a lot of Arab Israelis and Arabs; they love living here.” Read more here

 

 

 

MARS

 

 

The Austrian Space Forum has set up an imaginary Martian base with the Israeli space agency at Makhtesh Ramon, a 500-metre (1,600-foot) deep, 40 kilometres (25 miles) wide crater in the Negev desert. Participants from Austria, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal & Spain are on a month-long mission to perfect survival skills for an eventual voyage. Read more here

 

 

 

 

DEFENCE

 

 

Israeli firm Camero-Tech specializes in pulse-based, ultra-wideband (UWB) imaging solutions. Its Xavera LR40 can detect live objects hidden behind walls from over 50 metres away. Read more here

 

 

 

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

 

 

 

A minimally invasive cryoablation technology for freezing cancerous and benign tumours, developed at IceCure Medical  in Caesarea, proved safe and effective in a three-year trial in the US. At an average  of 34.83 months following treatment  only 4 of 194 patients experienced cancer recurrence.Read more here

 

 

 

Shachal, a company which specializes in emergency medicine in the field of heart disease, offers new customers and existing subscribers a screening test for atrial fibrillation, one of the most common causes of stroke in adults. A person who is in the risk group for stroke sticks a small device to the body with patches for two weeks. Read more here

 

 

 

BUSINESS

 

 

From July next year, the US-based chain of convenience stores 7-Eleven is set to open dozens of stores across Israel, the first of which is expected to open in 2022.  The Israeli sites will be closed on Shabbat.Read more here

 

 

 

GUATEMALA

 

 

The Israeli ambassador in Guatemala has inaugurated a street named “Jerusalem the capital of Israel,” which was the twenty seventh street in the country, including the capital,to be named after the city in the past two years. Read more here

 

 

 

COMMENT & OPINION

 

 

 

Khaled Abu Toameh : The news that Israeli authorities have decided to allow thousands of Palestinians in Hamas-ruled Gaza to work in Israel prompted tens of thousands to converge on the offices of the chambers of commerce in the hope of obtaining a permit. The fact that a large number of Palestinians are desperate to work in Israel is a sign of the failure of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to improve the living conditions of their people despite the massive sums of money they receive from the U.S., EU and UN. Instead of building industrial zones, Hamas has been investing millions in manufacturing weapons and digging attack tunnels.
Why isn’t Egypt opening up its shared border with Gaza to allow Palestinians in to work? Why don’t the Arab governments allow the Palestinians in to work? The answer, sadly, is that the Arabs want the Palestinians to remain Israel’s problem. Read more here

 

 

 

Dan Perry: Israel is responsible for an extraordinary range of innovations, from the discovery of quasicrystals to the understanding of the structure and function of ribosomes, from the Feldenkrais method of exercise therapy to drip irrigation, and from the invention of tiny cameras that can travel through the body (endoscopy) to the development to flexible stents. Israel played a massive role in the creation of mobile and internet telephony (Viber), instant messaging (ICQ), facial recognition and USB flash drives. The Intel 8088 chip that first powered personal computers was developed in Israel. Then there is the Iron Dome system that zaps incoming missiles out of the sky.Read more here

 

 

 

 

David Collier:  It is almost impossible to overstate how toxic the situation in Ireland has become…Some Irish politicians are obsessed about attacking Israel and Zionism, treating it in a manner different from the way they treat all other international issues. Some politicians love to share the most outrageous fake news about Israel. The key problem in Ireland is that there is no real fight-back. This has led to a proliferation throughout the Irish mainstream. Read more here