Helping Israel While You Waste Time
Filed under: Blogging, General, Life, Pop Culture, Technology
There are some people (lots, actually) who really get into role-playing fantasy type games – nowadays, mostly online. They’re a waste of time, as far as I’m concerned. These are the same people who like thrill rides at amusement parks, I have noticed. Not me; I can’t be bothered with online games (who has time?) and for me, just driving down the highway is enough of a thrill ride!
But helping spread Israel’s message online is something I always have time for. And believe it or not, I discovered an online game that does exactly that! It’s called PMOG, “The Passively Multiplayer Online Game.” Basically, you take on “missions” that entail your surfing through internet in a guided format. The author of a mission assembles web site s/he wants to introduce people to, and you get points for visiting. You can also lay mines at sites, which explode (the screen shakes a little) when a fellow PMOGer surfs to the site (they lose points, too). You can also “leave some love,” ie points, for someone to pick up at the site. There are also associations, merit badges, weapons, defensive measures, etc. – all the “tools of the trade” that you would find on a fantasy game site, except this one takes place all over the internet.
The Israel connection in PMOG comes with the missions members can organize and leave for others. PMOG users who take missions (for which they earn points) are directed to sites by the mission organizers, the idea being that they discover sites – and information – they might not have known. A few enterprising people have built Israel missions. One, called “Israel media,” took me to sites like the Israel Internet Statistics, and a couple of pages about anti-Israel bias in the media. Another mission is sort of an Israel travelogue, taking users to sites describing sites in Israel.
Most of the missions in PMOG, it should be noted, are “fun” missions, like “Wizards and other Magical Beings,” “National Peanut Butter Day,” “Ukeleles,” etc. Of course, a game is supposed to be fun – but this one is educational, too. Why not some missions on Israeli medical advances, or hi-tech stories (I’ve got a couple I could contribute!). PMOG could be an interesting educational tool!
Giving Till it Hurts
Filed under: General, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs
They expected a large number of people – maybe 20,000 potential donors. But Ezer Mizion got far more than it bargained for on Wednesday, when it held a mass national campaign to add Israelis to its bone marrow registry; over 60,000 people crowded the 80 testing stations the organization had set up around the country, with long lines outside many of them as people waited patiently for their turn to be tested.
The large crowds had gathered at the donation stations to help find a bone marrow match for Dan, a three year old boy from Ramat Hasharon, and Amit, a six year old girl from Kfar Sava. Both have rare forms of leukemia, and both have rare tissue types that are found in less than 2% of the population, about 1 in 30,000 – meaning that finding a donor with compatible bone marrow with theirs for a transplant, which the two children desperately need to fight the cancer that has caused their own blood and lymphatic system to go haywire. So, the Ezer Mizion organization, which provides medical support services for those who need ongoing medical help, organized the bone marrow donor recruitment drive, setting up dozens of stations around the country on Wednesday where Israelis could go and have a small sample of their bone marrow taken in order to determine whether they could be compatible donors for Dan and Amit. 
The organization has run similar recruitment drives in the past, but Wednesday’s drive was by far the largest ever. My daughter waited on line for a chunk of time waiting for the test, which doesn’t necessarily hurt, but can be lengthy. Between the wait, the test, and the recovery time, she spent over two hours on the project – and there were thousands of others like her around the country, who took time off from work and school to help.
Why were so many willing to help this time? According to an acquaintance who works with the organization, Israelis are in a “giving” mood, having gotten into the habit in recent weeks, collecting supplies to send to soldiers on the front. Ezer Mizion established its marrow donot bank ten years ago, and so far has taken samples from 380,000 Israelis – and helped find hundreds of matches for individuals with leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease, and immune deficiency syndromes.
If you donate marrow and your marrow is not a match for Dan and Amit, don’t worry – your information will go into the Ezer Mizion database, and you might get called on to help in the future. Besides marrow, Ezer Mizion needs money, too – in order to test the samples it collects (each sample costs $45 to test). Their phone number in Israel is 1800-236-236; any help will be greatly appreciated.
Technology for the Birds
Filed under: Business, Environment, General, Israeliness, Technology, Travel
It almost sounds like a joke – something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, maybe. But “bird strikes” are apparently a serious problem for pilots and planes. That’s, apparently, what happened to a U.S. Airways jet that was forced to land in the Hudson River after taking off New York’s LaGuardia Airport minutes before. Nobody was hurt – amazingly – but in the battle between birds and pilots, humans haven’t always fared so well against avians. Luckily, Israel is on the case, working on ways to keep birds and planes away from each other!
According to experts, bird strikes – where a bird gets sucked into a jet’s engine, discombobulating the avionics (check out the photo of what an engine hit by birds looks like) – is not all that rare, and has plagued planes and even rockets. While not common in civilian aviation, bird strikes appear to be a near-plague for military flyers, according to this website which lists dozens of crashes, ejections, and even deaths of pilots due to bird strikes (at least two Israeli pilot deaths are listed). 
Because Israel is on the main north-south migratory route for birds, the IDF has been very concerned with bird strikes. According to the “Bird Strike Committee Proceedings” for 2002,
the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has focused attention in bird strike prevention on collisions between aircraft and migrating birds during low-level flight operations. Only in the last 2 years has the IAF begun to tackle the problem of reducing bird-aircraft collisions at or near airfields. A dramatic shift in thinking has led the IAF to initiate complete wildlife control programs at its airbases, featuring the employment of border collies and wildlife control officers to help eliminate the risk of wildlife collisions within the control zone (CTR) of each airfield.
As a crucial component of this program, the IAF has initiated major changes in habitat management at airfields, eliminating agricultural initiatives and undergoing large-scale modifications in airfield maintenance practices. Additionally, the IAF has altered flight and ground operations where possible to attenuate the risk imposed by birds and has coordinated efforts within various departments at each airbase to address bird strike control issues. Awareness and the resolve to eliminate wildlife hazards at its airfields are key features to the IAF’s new directive on bird strike prevention. Though still in its infancy, the IAF’s new wildlife control program has already shown dramatic improvements in the reduction of bird strike hazards at airbases.
My friends at the Fisher Institute in Herzliya have been on this problem as well, and have developed some new technology to ensure that both planes and birds can share the skies, that I hope to be able to report more about soon.
Fred Teng Gets It
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Life, Politics, Profiles, War
Given the avalanche of hate against Israel on the internet, at anti-Israel protests around the world, and in the media (of course!), it’s easy to believe that “nobody” likes us. By “nobody,” I mean, of course, folks from the wide world. And even if they are willing to overlook our “crimes” in Gaza (no, of course I don’t mean that), they still don’t “get it” – they just can’t understand what we’re up against. 
So I wanted to share with you a message I got from a friend who’s in New York right now. There was a big pro-Israel rally this past Sunday, featuring speakers from the Jewish and general community. According to the message I got,
“The most powerful speaker at Sunday’s massive rally for Israel was Fred Teng, president of the Chinese Community Relations Council of NY. His words would have been exceptional even coming from an Israeli — and how much more striking for having come from the heart of a New Yorker and a member of the Chinese community.”
Suffice to say Mr. Teng “gets it.” He’s got Hamas’ number – comparing them to the gangs of big American cities who get their jollies running drive by shootings against innocent people. In the words of Mr. Teng,
“Enough is enough”
“These Qassam Rockets and the people behind them are like Drive-by Shootings. We have to put every gang member away for good, not just the ones that did the shooting. These Qassam Rockets and the people behind them are like a Fire in the Forest, You can’t STOP only half of the fire in the forest, and thinking you will be safe. If your house is next to the fire, you won’t think so. It is not the Qassam Rockets; it is the people behind the Qassam Rockets that we need to go after. This is an epidemic threat to the entire world.
“In the last 60 years, every gesture of peace by Israel only met with escalated violence. Every peace proposal, whether it is multi-lateral, bi-lateral, or uni-lateral was never honored by the terrorists. However, in this time of extreme difficulties, we shall not lose hope. We shall say yes to Peace. We shall say yes to Life. And we shall forever say yes to an eternal Israel Am Yisrael Chai.
Maybe someone should tell this guy we have an election coming up? Sounds like he’d make a good prime minister!
A Man We Could Use Now
Filed under: Blogging, coexistence, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Music, Politics, Pop Culture, Profiles, War
If Elvis had lived, he could have been president – after all, if it was good enough for Ronald Reagan, imagine how the voters would have gone for Elvis Presley! But I have a better idea; He was such a unifying force and a symbol of coexistence, Elvis would have been the perfect candidate for Prime Minister of Israel! And he could have qualified for the job, too – after all, Elvis was (sort of) Jewish!
On the occasion of what would have been his 74th birthday on January 8, it’s worth remembering Elvis and his impact on bringing people together. While casual music listeners tend to put down Elvis’ relatively unsophisticated music, all his biographers attribute his early use of rhythm and blues (which some accused him of “stealing from blacks”) as opening the door for the Motown sound, and later on the rise of Michael Jackson and other modern African-American superstars. So right there, Elvis was a unifying force, right on his home turf.
But less known is his charitable work for Jewish organizations in his hometown of Memphis, and his attitude to racism – and to Arabs and Jews. There are millions of Elvis fans out there, which means there are thousands of stories floating around about him, most of which can’t be corroborated. But the overwhelming consensus of the man is that he was someone who was charitable – both financially and personally – and identified with minorities, including Jews and Arabs.
During his latter years, for example, Elvis would take to wearing a big “Chai” – and when he was asked why by his friend guitarist Charlie Hodge, he supposedly answered that he didn’t want to “miss out on going’ to heaven on a technicality!” In fact, quoting from the book “Elvis and Gladys”, this site makes a case for Elvis’ Jewish ancestry (his maternal grandmother), which explained to some extent his affinity for Jews. According to the book:
One day the Memphis Jewish Welfare sent a delegation to Graceland to see him and ask if he could contribute. At Christmas every year he would donate $1,000 to a number of Memphis charities and one of them was the Memphis Hebrew Academy, and so they thought maybe they could get something. They explained what they do, taking care of poor Jews and orphans. Elvis excused himself for a minute. When he came back, he handed the leader of the delegation a check. They didn’t know what to expect. They thought $1,000 would be nice. When they looked at the check, it was for $150,000. The equivalent of more than a million dollars today. The man said, ‘Elvis, you must have made a mistake.’ Elvis said, ‘I didn’t make a mistake, I know what I’m doing.’
And Elvis had a soft spot for Arabs as well. Michael Saba, former executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans, tells a tale of a childhood friend of his in Memphis:
Farid told me that one day at his high school, some of the school bullies started teasing him, calling him names like “you dirty Arab” and threatened to hit him. He said Elvis came along and said, “Hey, you leave him alone. I know him and his family and they are very nice people. Those ‘Arabs’ treat me well and you better treat him well also.” The bullies moved off and Elvis told Farid that if anybody ever tried that again, he should let Elvis know.
So besides a talent for music, Elvis had a talent for peacemaking! Of course, Elvis isn’t around for us to give him a try at leadership (or is he?) but we do have the Elvis Inn, “famous for bringing Arabs and Jews together,” especially on Elvis Impersonator Nights! And as one of the impersonators told reporters, “If Elvis Presley was alive, he could help the crisis of the Arab and the Jew. I think he’d make a song of it, of the whole situation, and perform in a lot of Arab countries and of course in Israel. He’d try to make peace between the Israelis and the Arabs once and for all. I think he would have done it if he was alive today.”
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