Israel Update 30.6.22

DISSOLUTION OF KNESSET (PARLIAMENT)

 

 

Israel’s Knesset voted to dissolve on Thursday, with new elections scheduled for Nov. 1. Under a previous coalition agreement, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid will replace Naftali Bennett as prime minister until a new government is formed after the elections.Read more here

 

 

ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING

 

Lord Ian Austin, the British Government’s trade envoy to Israel, recently led a delegation of representatives from the UK’s DTI to Israel for a meeting with executives of EV Motors. The delegation was impressed with the unique EV-Gencell off-grid hydrogen-based hybrid charging stations, which are the only solution in the world for charging an electric vehicle without carbon emissions and without relying on the power grid.

The installation of a number of such systems in collaboration with the TfL organization as a pilot in London is currently being examined. Read more here

 

 

JOSEPH’S TOMB ATTACK

 

As hundreds of Jewish worshippers under military escort arrived to pray at Joseph’s Tomb near Nablus early Thursday (Rosh Chodesh), armed Palestinians directed “massive gunfire” at the compound, wounding an IDF commander and two civilians. IDF soldiers returned fire. The Oslo Accords designated Joseph’s Tomb as a Jewish holy site that remained under Israeli control. In April, the shrine underwent a major renovation under heavy guard after Palestinians twice broke into the site and vandalized it. read more here

 

 

UNWRA

 

 

The UN agency that runs schools for Palestinians announced to donor states on Tuesday that it has just placed six employees on administrative leave after a report last week by UN Watch exposed UNRWA teachers who publicly call to murder Jews. “These temporary suspensions are just a slap on the wrist,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of Geneva-based UN Watch. “Teachers who call to murder Jews must be barred from the classroom for life.” Read more here

 

 

 

TEL AVIV’S WHITE NIGHT

 

Since 2003, when UNESCO named Tel Aviv the White City because of its more than 4,000 Bauhaus-style white buildings, Tel Aviv has been celebrating a White Night, or Laila Lavan in Hebrew. After a two-year hiatus due to covid, this year’s White Night is June 30, when the stay-up-late metropolis will host an all-night celebration.Read more here  Schedule here

 

 

CYBER SECURITY

 

 

The deputy chief of IDF Intelligence Unit 8200 on Wednesday said that his agency had provided prior warnings to the U.S. of attempts to hack that country’s power plants, in time to thwart a cyberattack. Read more here

 

 

Pharmaceutical giant Bayer will open a cybersecurity development centre in Israel, as part of their global cybersecurity operations, in a bid to engage and partner with one of the strongest Israeli sectors in the local tech ecosystem.Read more here

 

 

Recent cyber attacks in Italy, Belarus and the UK have highlighted the critically vulnerable state of rail cybersecurity. In response, Israeli company Cervello has offered rail organizations a targeted solution via their proprietary platform. Read more here

 

 

HEZBOLLAH THREAT

 

 

Israel’s Defence Ministry has announced that reinforcement work has begun on dozens of homes in Israeli communities close to the Lebanese border threatened by rocket fire in a future conflict with Hizbullah. Ultimately, the ministry intends to carry out reinforcement work in 21 communities. Read more here

 

 

Iran is trying to disrupt UNIFIL in Lebanon in cooperation with Hezbollah by “carrying out a cyber operation aimed at stealing materials about UNIFIL’s deployment in the area for the use of Hezbollah,” according to Israel’s  Defence Minister. Read more here

 

 

CO-OPERATION

 

 

Top officials from Israel, the U.S., Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Egypt convened in Bahrain for the first Negev Forum Steering Committee meeting on Monday, to discuss continued co-operation and “actions to bring security, growth and stability to the Middle East.” The participants plan to form working groups on the areas of regional security, clean energy, education and tolerance, food security, and tourism. Read more here

 

 

 

ALBERT BOURLA (PFIZER CEO) IN ISRAEL

 

Bourla was in Israel to receive the prestigious Genesis Prize from President Herzog and said that he was donating the entire sum towards establishing a holocaust museum in Greece, where his parents were among the 2,000 Jews from Thessaloniki who survived the near-total destruction of the Greek Jewish community during the Nazi occupation.  During his visit, Bourla visited Yad Vashem. In an Israeli TV interview, he said that revamped vaccines that protect against COVID-19 variants are ready to be shipped as soon as they are approved by US health authorities. Read more here Read more hereRead more here

 

 

EMIRATES

 

 

The long-awaited Emirates flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv began on Thursday when its first Boeing 777 service connecting the two cities took off arriving in Israel 3 hours later. where hundreds of people, including dignitaries, welcomed the flight. Read more here

 

 

MEDICAL AID

 

Physicians from Hadassah Medical Centre   at the Przemysl refugee camp on the Ukraine-Poland border performed surgery on a 10 year old Ukrainian girl earlier this week. Read more here

 

 

FIBRE OPTICS

 

Israel is doing an excellent job in expanding its high-speed, fibre-optic Internet network, according to an international study by the World Bank. Communications Minister Hendel said “We’ve shown the world how to bring advanced infrastructure even to places where there is no economic viability,” Read more here

 

 

CLIMATE

 

 

The Israeli government has approved an NIS three billion ($870 million) plan to boost climate innovation technology. Fields in which Israeli climate technology is already having a global impact include cultured meat and alternative proteins, irrigation systems, precision agriculture, desalination, water management, sustainable transportation, and solar energy. Read more here

 

 

BATTERY TECHNOLOGY

 

Cheaper and lighter batteries are to power e-mopeds in Tel Aviv. Addionics and Blitz Motors plan to transform delivery scooters with a battery that improves performance and lowers cost. Read more here

 

 

FOOD TECH

 

A new chewing gum could halt children’s craving for sugar, thanks to an ancient bitter herb. Israeli food-tech start-up Sweet Victory claims that tiny amounts of gymnema sylvestre block the sugar receptors on their tongues for 2 hours, reducing the desire for sweet food or drink. Read more here

 

 

MEDICAL

 

 

Medical pioneers in Israel say they have, for the first time, successfully treated a prostate cancer patient using alpha-radiation – injecting a radioactive isotope into the tumour. Alpha Tau Medical has been running clinical trials of the treatment for patients with skin cancer, breast cancer, and oral cavity cancer, with promising results. But this is the first time in the world that the revolutionary therapy, Alpha DaRT (Diffusing Alpha-emitters Radiation Therapy), has been used to treat a patient with prostate cancer. Read more here

 

 

 

SEA OF GALILEE (KINNERET)

 

Early next year, Israel is set to become the first country in the world to channel desalinated water into a natural lake — the Sea of Galilee. Read more here

 

 

 

COVID-19 IN ISRAEL

 

 

An extensive Israeli study of 24,088 elderly recipients living in long-term care geriatric facilities found that the 4^th dose of Pfizer’s covid vaccine saved many lives. Read more here

 

 

Medical centres around Israel have reported an increase in hospitalized patients, those who are seriously ill and the number who have died. Read more here

 

 

The 6th covid wave is growing, with more than 350 Israelis in serious condition, , according to Health Ministry Coronavirus Commissioner Prof. Salman Zarka. He entreated the public to wear masks in indoor spaces including public transportation, especially, but not only, if they were at high risk of being infected or infecting others who are at high risk of complications. If the public does not listen and implement this request, the government will soon consider making mask-wearing indoors mandatory, he said. Read more here

 

 

 

UNILEVER/ BEN & JERRY’s

 

Consumer giant Unilever has blocked Ben & Jerry’s from boycotting Israel by selling the ice cream brand’s operations in the country to its local manufacturer, Avi Zinger, who has been making and selling the ice cream under license for the past 34 years. Unilever slapped down efforts by Ben & Jerry’s to take a political stance, saying it “rejects completely and repudiates unequivocally any form of discrimination or intolerance.”Read more here

 

 

Ben & Jerry’s announced its dissatisfaction on Wednesday night with Unilever’s announcement that they would continue selling ice cream throughout Israel and the West Bank. Read more here

 

 

SPORT

 

 

Tottenham Hotspur will hold an open training session in Israel at the Moshava Field in Petah Tikva on July 29, a day before its match against AS Roma in Haifa. Read more here

 

The Israel Under-19 football National Team defeated France 2-1 on Tuesday night to move into the European Championship final, where it will face England on Friday night in Slovakia, the first time that one of Israel’s junior national teams will be playing in the final of a major tournament.Read more here

 

 

COMMENT & OPINION

 

 

Naomi Kahn:The Masafer Yatta case illustrates how anti-Israel organizations, foreign governments and the Palestinian Authority have turned a run-of-the-mill case of illegal construction into a massive international issue.
Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank is state land, which was declared a military training ground in the early 1980s. There has not been settlement of any kind on the land in over 100 years. This is a desert area, very difficult terrain, with no water and not arable. British Mandate-era maps show no settlement of any kind. Aerial photos from as recently as 1997 make this point unequivocally.
A recent Israel High Court decision holds that the residents of the illegal “villages” of Masafer Yatta arrived after the IDF closed off the area. It also holds that these residents, almost without exception, have permanent homes in the nearby town of Yatta. Yet two decades passed before the High Court finally asserted that Arab claims to this land are unfounded, and the claim that Israel is dispossessing indigenous people is a lie. Read more here