What really shocks backpackers visiting the Holy Land

(Photo: Rami Shllush)

By Ofra Edelman - October 18, 2016

Originally appeared here in Haaretz

They wanted to see where Jesus lived and died, or to visit an exotic location not too far from home, or to reconnect with Israelis they had met previously. Some took brief vacations from work; others were on a world trip. One said he was called here by God to explore his Jewish roots, although he’s a Christian. Another was fulfilling a 35-year dream to walk from France to Jerusalem. But whether in Jerusalem, Nazareth or Tel Aviv, every backpacker had his own impression of Israel and Israelis.

When Pablo Cañete and Irene Esteban arrived from Spain to the Airbnb apartment they had rented in Jaffa, “We thought we’d come to Morocco, not Israel,” said Cañete, 26, a business administration student living in Germany. “It wasn’t the idea we had in mind. We thought there were only Jews in the city.”

“We thought there were no Arabs in Israel,” added Esteban, 25, who works as an academic in the field of food safety.

Carina Reiter, 28, of Germany was similarly surprised to discover that Jews, Muslims and Christians live side by side in Jerusalem’s Old City. “It’s amazing,” she said. “They don’t have to; they respect each other.” Read More

Using the power of Israeli backpackers to help the world

By Herb Keinon - October 17, 2016 

Originally appeared here in The Jerusalem Post

Each year some 40,000 Israeli youngsters – about 85% of them fresh out of the IDF – get inoculated against exotic diseases, buy a pair of boots, strap a pack on their backs and head for the hills of South America, Africa and the Far East.

In 2013, Gili Cohen, now 29, was one of them.

Leaving the army after serving eight years in the elite Duvdevan unit, he deposited his year-and-a-half-old daughter with his mother-in-law and took his wife to Thailand for three weeks. The Beit Shemesh native had been abroad only once before – to Turkey.

What left a lasting impression on him in Thailand, however, was less the Crystal Creek Waterfall in the northern city of Chiang Mai, or the Mekong River along the border with Laos, or the beaches of Koh Samui in the south, but that on one regular July Friday night in Koh Samui, some 1,350 Israelis were clamoring to take part in a kiddush at the local Chabad house. Read More

Hundreds of Israelis gather to pray for people of war-torn Syria

By Times of Israel Staff - October 11, 2016

Originally appeared here in the Times of Israel 

Some 1,500 Israelis gathered in cities across the country on Monday to pray for the people of war-torn Syria, hours before the start of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

Under the banner “The world is silent, we are not,” and with the involvement of rabbis and communal leaders, people gathered in Beersheba, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, the Golan Heights and other places in prayer, music and silent meditation.

The events were organized and coordinated via Facebook by the son of the late peace activist Rabbi Menachem Froman, Shivi Froman.

“Hundreds of people, men, women and children, are slaughtered daily and the world is silent,” he told Walla News. He said that the pre-Yom Kippur gathering was “to cry out, to pray, to hope, to sing, to identify and to awaken the mercy of the world in general and about the suffering that is taking place here next to us.” Read More

Ex-Knick Amar’e Stoudemire reveals his ‘holy life’ in Jerusalem

(Photo: Dan Miller)

By David Kaufman - October 9, 2016 

Originally appeared here in the New York Post

On a balmy Middle Eastern morning this past week, ace basketball forward Amar’e Stoudemire was busy doing what he does best. Towering over his fellow players, he maneuvered his lithe physique across the court while counting out slam dunks.

Only he was in Jerusalem’s Goldberg Gym. And counting in heavily accented Hebrew.

“Ahat, shtayim, shalosh, arba” (“One, two, three, four”), the athlete chanted as he shot hoops and mastered layups outs with Ryan Pannone, assistant coach of local pro team Hapoel Jerusalem, one of 12 teams in Israel’s Premier League. Clad in baggy red shorts and a white tank top — with a tattoo of God’s name inked in Hebrew along a colossal forearm — 33-year-old Amar’e seemed right at home, more than 6,600 miles away from his home country.

Less than three months after retiring from the NBA, Amar’e is back on the court. Only this time, rather than playing for fame or fortune, the New York Knicks’ one-time $100 million man is playing for God. Read More

The Truth About Israel’s Christian Minority

(photo: Yosarian/Wikimedia Commons)

By Eliana Rudee - September 26, 2016

Originally appeared here in The Algemeiner

JNS.org – In the Gatestone Institute’s August report on Christian persecution, Raymond Ibrahim described the brutal, rampant and global Islamic persecution of Christians and other minorities, including violations of religious freedom, harassment, detention, torture and executions. The accounts are too abundant and tragic to list in full, as many involve gruesome persecution, murder, and rape happening in Eritrea, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Uganda, Bangladesh, Congo, Philippines, Egypt, Tanzania, Pakistan, Germany, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Nigeria. Ibrahim concluded, “Such Muslim persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place in all languages, ethnicities and locations.”

Such was Jonathan Elkhoury’s conclusion when he spoke last week at the Jerusalem Salon, an organization bringing English lectures and discussions to Jerusalem, about his experience fleeing from the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah’s rule in Lebanon. Elkhoury fled to Israel with family after his father, a former South Lebanon Army (SLA) officer, had to leave his homeland during Israel’s withdrawal in May 2000.

Now that he’s found safe refuge in Israel, Elkhoury writes and talks about the situation of Israeli Christians and minorities to various audiences and advocates for the Christian Empowerment Council (CEC) in Israel.  Read More

Syrian children brought to Israel for treatment

By Roi Kais - September 21, 2016

Originally appeared here in Ynetnews

The number of wounded who have sought medical treatment in Israel since the Jewish state began accepting wounded Syrians stands at approximately 2,500 people.

In mid-August of this year, a bus from the Jewish-American aid organization Amaliah brought 21 Syrian children and their parents to the Ziv Medical Center in Tzfat. The Syrians are all from the Qunietra region on the other side of the border with Israel. The Western Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya has also been receiving busloads of Syrian children accompanied by their families over the past few weeks.

Syrians don't independently decide to come to Israel in search of emergency medical assistance – but cases whereby the Jewish-American humanitarian organization Amaliah coordinates with officials in Syrian territory to have children and their families transported directly from various collection points to hospitals for treatment in Israel. Read More

3D tech proves Hebrew Bible ‘unchanged for 2000 years’

By Daniel Estrin - September 22, 2016

Originally appeared here in the Times of Israel

JERUSALEM (AP) — The charred lump of a 2,000-year-old scroll sat in an Israeli archaeologist’s storeroom for decades, too brittle to open. Now, new imaging technology has revealed what was written inside: the earliest evidence of a biblical text in its standardized form.

The passages from the Book of Leviticus, scholars say, offer the first physical evidence of what has long been believed: that the version of the Hebrew Bible used today goes back 2,000 years.

The discovery, announced in a Science Advances journal article by researchers in Kentucky and Jerusalem on Wednesday, was made using “virtual unwrapping,” a 3D digital analysis of an X-ray scan. Researchers say it is the first time they have been able to read the text of an ancient scroll without having to physically open it. Read More

Israeli solar tech could make clean water a global reality

 (photo: SUNDWATER)

By Sharon Udasin - September 21, 2016

Originally appeared here in The Jerusalem Post

Remote villages around the world that lack access to both electricity and potable water may soon be able to quench their thirst, with the development of an Israeli solar powered water distillation system. 

The Jerusalem-based SunDwater, whose standalone system harnesses heat through concentrated solar power, now has two fully operational pre-production models purifying water in the Arava Desert. The hope is, according to CEO Shimmy Zimels, to market the relatively low maintenance system to small villages in South America, Africa and Asia, ideally by means of aid organizations.

“You would reduce dramatically the mortality rate in those places, specifically among the young, who suffer the most from the lack of freshwater,” Zimels told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.  Read More

Israeli scientists stop breast cancer spread in mice

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(photo: Tatiana Shepeleva/Shutterstock)

By Abigail Klein Leichman - September 21, 2016

Originally appeared here in Israel21c

Israeli and American researchers revealed yesterday that treating a primary breast tumor in lab mice with both genetic therapy and chemotherapy is extremely effective in preventing breast cancer metastasis, the deadly spread of cancerous cells to vital organs.

Results of the breakthrough study were published in the September 19 online issue of Nature Communications by Noam Shomron of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine, Natalie Artzi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shomron’s students Avital Gilam and Daphna Weissglas, Artzi’s student Joao Conde, and onco-geneticist Prof. Eitan Friedman of Sackler and Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer.

“Our mission was to block a cancer cell’s ability to change shape and move,” explained Shomron. “Cancer cells alter their cytoskeleton structure in order to squeeze past other cells, enter blood vessels and ride along to their next stop: the lungs, the brain or other vital organs. We chose microRNAs as our naturally occurring therapy, because they are master regulators of gene expression.” Read More

Building community capabilities in needy faraway places

(photo: Aviv Naveh)

By Abigail Klein Leichman - September 13, 2016

Originally appeared here in Israel21c

Gili Navon didn’t intend to start a nonprofit organization when she traveled in 2007 to Majuli, a remote island in northeast India.

The Israeli woman accompanied the females of Majuli’s peaceful Mising tribe as they picked herbs in the jungle and spun raw silk and cotton into colorful garments. She saw the struggle for sustenance in this low-caste subsistence-farming society where river erosion has caused mass displacement.

Navon organized the Rengam (United) Women Weavers Cooperative in 2011 to help residents use their cultural tradition as a source of income. Today the cooperative includes about 100 women, ages 18 to 60, from 20 villages. The project’s headquarters hosts educational lectures on topics such as women’s health. Read More

Rare High Priest’s stone weight from Second Temple period found in Jerusalem

(photo: Oren Gutfeld/IAA)

By Daniel K. Eisenbud - September 15, 2016 

Originally appeared here in The Jerusalem Post

A routine archeological excavation of an Old City synagogue destroyed by Jordanian troops during the War of Independence turned into much more, after the burnt remains of rare relics from the Second Temple period in 70 AD were revealed several meters below ground level.

Among the artifacts unearthed in the 2013 excavation in the Jewish Quarter included a rare stone scaled weight inscribed with the name of a priestly family, covered in millennia-old ashes from the fire that Roman soldiers used to burn Jerusalem to the ground. Read More

Floor tiles found in holy site rubble said to be from Second Temple

(photo: Temple Mount Sifting Project)

By Ilan Ben Zion - September 6, 2016

Originally appeared here in the Times of Israel

Hundreds of lavish stone floor tiles believed to have decorated the Second Temple in Jerusalem have been identified in rubble removed from the Temple Mount, archaeologists announced Tuesday.

The bits and pieces of 2,000-year-old marble flooring were found in fill removed from the contested holy site in the late 1990s when the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, the institution overseeing the al-Aqsa Mosque compound on the Mount, carried out excavations as part of the construction of a subterranean mosque in an area known as Solomon’s Stables. Read More

Israel’s first-responders form kaleidoscope of cultures

By Abigail Klein Leichman - September 1, 2016

Originally appeared here in Israel21c

An unusual hug caused thunderous applause at a recent Knesset ceremony saluting Israel’s emergency medical first-responders and search-and-rescue personnel.

Parliamentarian Yehudah Glick, who survived an Arab shooting attack two years ago, spontaneously climbed onto the podium to embrace Kabahah Muawhiya, an Arab-Israeli volunteer EMT with national volunteer emergency medical services organization United Hatzalah of Israel.

“United Hatzalah is not just about emergency first response and medical rescuing, but it is literally uniting people from different walks of life and different religions,” Muawhiya told Israeli lawmakers. “It is a uniting of peoples and a unity of hearts.” Read More

With cardiac surgery, Israeli team saves Afghani boy’s life

(Photo: Nati Shohat/Flash90)

By Times of Israel Staff - August 15, 2016

Originally appeared here in The Times of Israel 

A baby boy born in Afghanistan with multiple heart defects received life-saving surgery in Israel thanks to a Facebook friendship and a covert operation that traversed enemy borders and diplomatic lines.

Yehia was born to Afghani parents in Peshawar, Pakistan, with major heart defects, The New York Times reported. His parents had no way of paying for the surgery needed to save his life.

During a trip to their homeland they spoke with an English-speaking relative, Farhad Zaheer, living in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, who reached out on social media to his contacts. Anna Mussman, 69, a daughter of Holocaust survivors living in Israel, answered his call. According to the Times report, Zaheer remembered Mussman because she had commented kindly on his previous posts. Read More

More Arab Israelis join national service, discovering state benefits, patriotism

(Photo: Dov Lieber / Times of Israel)

By Dov Lieber - August 15, 2016

Originally appeared here in The Times of Israel

They sound like your average religious Zionist couple in Israel: she serves in the Jewish state’s national service and he is an army combat veteran. Except they are both Muslim Arabs, and she, Bara’a Abed, is from East Jerusalem while her husband (unnamed) is from a village in the north.

Abed, 20, who now does works as a volunteer in an Israeli Interior Ministry office, is part of a fast-growing community of young Arabs who are eschewing decades of anti-normalization with the majority-Jewish Israeli government to both give back and receive from the state.

Historically, nearly all national service participants were Jewish religious-Zionist women, who wanted to serve their country but for religious reasons didn’t want to be in the army. Such women receive near-automatic exemptions from the military, though the last several years have seen a large increase in those choosing to serve in the IDF.

Six years ago, only 600 non-Jews served in Israel’s national service program, in which participants volunteer for one to two years in public institutions like schools, hospitals, courts or health clinics.

Presently, 4,500 non-Jews are doing national service, of whom 100 are from East Jerusalem. Read More

Jewish and Arab women of Jaffa find common ground in music

Photo: Noa Ben Shalom

By Abigail Klein Leichman - August 7, 2016 

Originally appeared here in Israel21c

The dulcet voices of the women in Jaffa’s Rana Choir give the impression of perfect harmony.

The 10 Arab and 10 Jewish singers do have a strong bond, yet their views are hardly monolithic.

“It’s not easy; we don’t all agree about everything all the time,” says Lubna Rifi, 40, an Arab Muslim resident of Jaffa who joined the group last year.

“It’s challenging to hear other opinions and try to understand the other person’s point of view. But at least you are seeing the picture from their side and they are seeing it from your side,” she tells ISRAEL21c. “In this amazing choir we are doing something to change our difficult reality.” Read More 

Israel shares its expertise in combating human trafficking

(photo: facebook) 

By Lahav Harkov - July 27, 2016 

Originally appeared here in The Jerusalem Post

Israel is in the top category for battling human trafficking for the fifth year in a row, Knesset Subcommittee on Combatting Human Trafficking and Prostitution chairwoman Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid) said Wednesday, presenting a US State Department report on the matter to representatives from Norway, Albania and the US.

"The US government recognized our continuing success in fighting human trafficking," Lavie said. "But that does not mean we can stop fighting."

Lavie said Israel created a system of cooperation between government offices, such that information flows in the field in real-time, and the progress must continue until there is no more human trafficking in the world. Read More

Palestinian Letter To Parents Of Murdered Israeli Teen

By Matt Hanna - July 5, 2016

Originally appeared here in the Jerusalem Journal

Dear Rena and Amichai Ariel,

I’m writing to you with deep sorrow in my heart. I try to imagine your loss from the brutal murder of your lovely daughter, and I cannot. As a Palestinian Christian who grew up in Gaza, I can tell you that my heart is broken and I mourn with you the loss of lovely Hallel.

One thing that makes my heart ache is knowing how I used to think and feel only a few years ago. Growing up, I was filled with hate for Jews. In my earliest years and all through high school, I learned to see Jews as evil characters, like villains in a comic book or monsters in a movie. My teachers said that Jews want to kill us all and that they stole our fathers’ native lands. They said that Jews have no history here and are illegal occupiers.

I don’t know why, but one day I opened a Bible and began to read it for myself. Read More

Netanyahu to Kenyan Christians: Israel Coming Back to Africa

(Photo: YouTube)

By JNS.org - July 6, 2016

Originally appeared here in Algemeiner.com

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with a group of Christian supporters of Israel in Kenya on Tuesday where he promised to help share Israel’s economic and technological success with emerging African nations.

The Israeli leader told the Christians of the common bond binding the two people together, telling a story of a boat that was found in the Sea of Galilee that was used during the time of Jesus.

“I can’t tell you that Jesus was on that boat but I can tell you that that boat was in the time of Jesus.”

Following an invitation to visit Israel, Netanyahu said that his country has made remarkable strides in agriculture, milk production and water conservation and that “we are eager to share all of this with our African friends.” Read More

Next-gen Israeli agtech turns a rooftop into a farm

(Photo: Facebook)

By Abigail Klein Leichman - June 13, 2016

Originally appeared here in Israel21c  

On the rooftop of the Mishor Adumim industrial park in the desert between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, an acre of herbs and lettuces provide employment for about 20 people representing the entire Israeli mosaic: Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, Israeli-born and immigrants.

“We all work together and value each other’s contribution,” says Bentsion Kabakov, a religious Russian immigrant who established the Aleinu Sustainable Aeroponic Greenhouse as a prototype six years ago.

“We are convinced that no matter how harsh the political challenges are, there is always a basis for mutual respect and coexistence. At Aleinu, that’s our guiding line.”

Women in hijabs chat easily with Ethiopian-Jewish women in the packing and labeling room. Everyone from pickers to technicians works in a comfortable, air-conditioned environment and goes home at a set time every day.

In all its social, business and environmental aspects, this is truly a farm of the future. Read More