Obama’s ‘bright’ spot for Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Environment, General, Technology
Israel solar Power company BrightSource Energy Inc. has received an endorsement from the highest places – US President Barack Obama, to be specific.
Jerusalem-based BrightSource Industries through its California-based parent, BrightSource Energy is slated to deliver more than 2,600 megawatts of solar electricity in California’s Mojave Desert using new technology demonstrated at Goldman’s Solar Energy Development Center in the Negev, the largest solar energy facility in the Middle East.
BrightSource was founded by Arnold Goldman, who was also the founder and CEO of Israeli firm Luz International Ltd., one of the world’s first solar energy companies in the 1980s.
BrightSource is developing more than 4GW of solar power projects in Southwestern American states – enough to power 1.4 million homes. BrightSource now boasts the two largest solar power agreements ever – 1,300 megawatts with Southern California Edison and 1,310 megawatts with Pacific Gas & Electric Company.
In Obama’s weekly radio address this past weekend, he was talking about his adminstration’s efforts to create jobs in the clean energy sector, and how a subsidized loan program established by his administration is helping companies like BrightSource create US jobs.
“For example, I want share with you one new development, made possible by the clean energy incentives we have launched. This month, in the Mojave Desert, a company called BrightSource plans to break ground on a revolutionary new type of solar power plant.
It’s going to put about a thousand people to work building a state-of-the-art facility. And when it’s complete, it will turn sunlight into the energy that will power up to 140,000 homes – the largest such plant in the world. Not in China. Not in India. But in California.
With projects like this one, and others across this country, we are staking our claim to continued leadership in the new global economy. And we’re putting Americans to work producing clean, home-grown American energy that will help lower our reliance on foreign oil and protect our planet for future generations.”
It’s true that Obama didn’t mention the Israel origins or technology that the company uses. But it’s still a feather in BrightSource’s cap. In addition to winning a huge loan guarantee — worth $1.4 billion — from the Department of Energy for the Mojave project, BrightSource is also reportedly preparing for an IPO.
BrightSource is one place the sun is certainly shining.
“72 Hour Urban Action” Takes Over Bat Yam, Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, Pop Culture
Teams have 72 hours to re-design an urban area in a pretty crumby satellite city in Israel. It’s guerilla urban architecture.
We’ve all had the same thought: it’s been built, we’re stuck with it. This ugly urban mess we have created is here to stay and there’s nothing we can do about it; may as well put up our feet, grab a lager, and watch re-runs of “The Days of Our Lives” to wile away the misery. Others challenge that notion, and show the rest of us couch-potatoes that actually we have an extraordinary capacity for innovation and have the necessary power to reverse our unsustainable trends. And not only can we fix our mistakes during this lifetime (instead of leaving it for our kids to deal with), we can make serious headway over a weekend. They started with the 72 Hour Urban Action Program in Israel’s less-than-glamorous Bat Yam. Read more
An oasis in the North (mosquitoes optional)
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Environment, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Travel
We just spent the weekend in one of Israel’s most beautiful camping spots – Hurshat Tal.
Close to the border with Lebanon, it’s as close as you can get to the pastoral camping sites immigrants from North America are used to. Landscaped lawns and a well-kept campground occupy featuring ancient oak tress, natural pools and and a huge artificial lake of icy cold, refreshing spring water (and a couple impressively fast, long water slides off on the side), take up about 100 of the 190 acres of the national park.
During Succot, as well as the other weeklong vacation holiday of Pessah, the park is packed with campers – wall to wall with barbecues, raucous families and revelrers. However, no matter the noise level or body compression, but 10 pm or so, everyone winds down, there’s no ‘thumpa thumpa’ of trance music which is the norm in most Israeli campsites, and everyone chills out for the evening.
Our first night was like that, with seemingly half the country crammed into the site, weirdly humid weather inducing thunder storms and mosquitos galore, and tempers flaring between Jewish and Arab campers.
Our 9-year-old and his friends, who were unable to sleep, roamed the site in the middle of the night and came running back to report that the police had arrived and had broken up an altercation between two families. It was unclear if the fracas was racially motivated, but they noted that an Arab mother was pounding on the window of the squad car as it drove away with her teenage son.
We never got the full story, and by 4 am or so, after the last thunder storm, we drifted off into a fitful sleep for two hours.
The next morning, on Shabbat, about 95% of the campers fled for home, leaving our little group of four families with virtually the whole park to ourselves. The weather broke a little with cooler, less humid weather. And the camping trip turned into what I remember from my days in Maine – a joyous nature experience.
When the weather cooperates, there’s no place like Hurshat Tal in the country, and any visitor who reaches the North (and how can a visit to Israel not include a visit there?) should block off some time to hang out there, even if it’s just for a few hours.
Foto Friday – Miraculous Pomegranates
Filed under: design, Environment, Food, Foto Friday, General, health, History and Culture, Holidays, Medical Breakthroughs, Picture of the Week, Religion, Technology
It was at about 9:30 last night when I spilled the pomegranate seeds on the floor. While picking them up, one by one, I reflected first on the story of Demeter and Persephone, then on the fact that some Jewish schoolchildren are taught that there are 365 seeds in a pomegranate (the number of days in the year) while others are taught that there are 613 (the number of mitzvot or good deeds), and finally (it took some time collect them all) about the long-standing Jewish relationship with the pomegranate as a symbol of fertility and plenty. Well, it has a lot of seeds so you can see why that might be.
© Пётр Рогов
It’s hard to say where Judaism’s connection to this beautiful and fascinating fruit begins; some scholars believe is was the pomegranate, not the apple, that got Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden. It is mentioned often in the Bible both as a fruitand as a symbol and is one with the Seven Species celebrated at Sukkot.
© RomKri
What is for certain is that the pomegranate has been in this region for thousands of years. According to the California Rare Fruit Growers (CRFG) site, “The pomegranate is native from Iran to the Himalayas in northern India and was cultivated and naturalized over the whole Mediterranean region since ancient times.” The pomegranate features prominently in this mosaic fruit basket from the Nabatean city of Mamshit.
Photo: Pikiwiki
Also from CRFG: “The pomegranate widely cultivated throughout India and the drier parts of southeast Asia, Malaya, the East Indies and tropical Africa, and was introduced into California by Spanish settlers in 1769.” In those days, pomegranates and their juice were valued as much for their medicinal properties as for their beauty, but in modern times they were for decades nothing more than a martini mixer or an exotic decorative item.
Photo: Pikiwiki
And then researchers like Dr. Ephraim Lansky, co-founder of Israel’s Rimonest came along, with proof — as reported by ISRAEL21c — of the pomegranate’s high anti-oxidant activity: “the stuff of potential anti-cancer therapies”.
Israel wasn’t the first country to produce pomegranates for commercial export but — as always — is an innovator. Israel was first, for example to give pomegranate juice an upgrade via wineries such as Azarad and Rimon, which produce varieties such as dessert wine, port style wine and dry wine, all the while touting the fruit’s antioxidant properties.
The rise in global interest for all things Punica granatum has resulted Israel’s doubling its pomegranate growing capacity, and the establishment of companies like Pomeg-Tech that provide expertise to those wishing to get into the pomegranate growing game. Here, in case you’ve never seen it, is a picture of the fruit’s flower:
Photo: Lior Almagor, Frommycamera.com
And Israeli pomegranate innovations don’t stop there: Shoham, inventors of a new gadget, the ART – Arils Removal Tool (that’s a pomegranate seed plucker to you and me), were recently awarded the 2010 Innovation Award at Fruit Logistica Berlin, one of the major events in the fresh produce industry. Here’s a picture of the happy Shoham team. An instructional video can be found on their website – and while it can’t prevent you from dropping the finished product on the floor, I can vouch that the ART actually does the job.
Boycott called for against pro-coexistence group
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Environment, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Social Justice
Here’s an example of the illogical element surrounding environment between Israelis and Palestinians – when top is bottom, left is right, and boycotts are everywhere.
The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is probably the most idealistic and praiseworthy organization in the country. Founded in 1996, the institute’s mission is to prepare future Arab and Jewish leaders to cooperatively solve the region’s environmental challenges.
Located around 20 miles north of Eilat on Kibbutz Ketura, the institute has graduated over 600 students, including Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians. It’s a great place, I’ve been there. The people there are dedicated and their aim is true.
The Friends of the Arava Institute are putting on With Earth and Each Other – A Virtual Rally for a Better Middle East, to be broadcast online on November 14, in an effort to raise support and visibility for the institute.
The hour-long show will be hosted by American stage and film actor Mandy Patinkin, and is slated to feature online performances by legendary American folk singer Pete Seeger, and Jethro Tull front man Ian Anderson, who recently donated his proceeds from three Israeli performances to three organizations working toward Israeli-Arab coexistence.
In addition to highlighting various examples of cooperation between the people of the region under the auspices of the institute, the show will ask viewers around the world to join together at the event’s conclusion to sing “Salaam (Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu),” the well-known song of peace in Hebrew and Arabic.
What could be a more positive, non-political message of coexistence than that, right? Not according to over 40 organizations, led by Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, which published a letter thisd week calling on Seeger to “join the growing list of artists who have respected the Palestinian boycott call,” referring to cancellations this summer by the likes of Elvis Costello and the Pixies.
The letter cited recent events in the Beduin village of Al-Arakib, where illegal structures have been torn down four times this year by the Israel Police. The letter also focused on the participation of the Jewish National Fund as a partner in the online presentation.
“The JNF, a partner organization in ‘With Earth and Each Other,’ has been engaged in the ‘Judaization’ of Palestine for more than 100 years. After the 1948 expulsion of two thirds of the Palestinian people from their lands, the JNF planted fast-growing non-native trees on the ruins of Palestinian villages in a deliberate attempt to prevent refugees from returning to their land.”
In a separate letter to Seeger, Jeff Halper, chairman of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) wrote: “I hope that you will decide to join these artists of conscience and once again make a bold stand for justice.
Seeger, long sympathetic with Left-wing causes, has been donating some his royalties for the song “Turn, Turn, Turn” to the ICAHD for over ten years.
Halper noted that one of the JNF’s most recent activities has been “the planting of a forest to cover a Beduin village [Al- Arakib] in the Negev from which the residents have been forcibly removed.”
In response, the Friends of the Arava Institute issued a statement saying that the JNF is but one of 30 partner organizations involved in putting on the show. “The Jewish National Fund is not, as it has been described in some letters and articles, ‘the leading partner’ or ‘the sponsor’ of WEAEO,” the statement read.
According to the Arava Institute’s director, David Lehrer, those who are calling for Seeger to boycott the event are shooting themselves in the foot.
“It’s through dialoguing and that’s what the Arava Institute is all about. That’s what the program we’re running is doing and it’s what With Earth and Each Other is all about – bringing people together through dialogue. And you can’t do that if you’re staging a boycott.”
As a friend noted when she heard about the calls for the boycott, “You know we’re in trouble around here when a place like the Arava Institute is being boycotted.”
Enough of this madness already.
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