A year with CNN
Late last year, ISRAEL21c began working with CNN to produce video material for its highly successful and long-running program, CNN World Report.
Since our first video went up at the start of this year, we’ve had 10 feature stories appearing on the thrice-weekly program hosted by Guillermo Aduino and on the CNN website.
We don’t often toot our horn – in fact we’re so busy we barely even raise our heads long enough to chart our achievements – but, sometimes we really have to stop and say “wow”.
Ten of our stories showing the other side of Israel – the innovation, creativity, and culture – have gone out through CNN, to millions of viewers worldwide. This is a vital step in showing people everywhere about the unique value that Israel brings to the world.
In our last video feature for CNN, about Windows of Peace – a coexistence project bringing Jewish and Palestinian teenagers together to make a music video – CNN made a special effort to interview Nitsana, the reporter, about the project and about what it means to her and to the children taking part.
Nitsana makes some interesting comments about peace, not least that what surprised her the most was how she couldn’t tell these children apart. Something I’ve thought about often since moving here goodness knows how many years ago.
Below, you can also find some of our other CNN videos. They’re well worth watching. You can also see more on our YouTube site.
Fat is fabulous – re-educating the fashion industry.
Saving the bees.
And the birds too.
Dead Sea skin
Salt at the Dead Sea
It seems the Export Institute has realized just how unique our minerals are, and has arranged ‘dozens of meetings’ for a collection of Dead Sea cosmetics companies during a two-day marathon at New York City’s Pennsylvania Hotel. The companies attending include B4U, Biscol, Canaan Chic Cosmetic, InterCosma, Odeyah, Paloma Dead Sea, Sea of Spa – Dead Sea, Spa Cosmetics and Spider Pharm Industries.
The Israel Manufacturers Association has even developed a quality label for genuine Dead Sea products, with the aim of discerning between the original DS cosmetics manufacturers and the frauds, or in more genteel terms, pirate industry. According to sources at the Manufacturers Association, the companies that produce genuine Dead Sea products, such as mud, lotions and creams have to prove that the source of their products is the Dead Sea and not some random body of water…and that it contains the rich combo of minerals that makes the Dead Sea a source of skin rejuvenation and vitality.
If you’re in NYC, check out the Dead Sea folk at the PA Hotel, just through tomorrow. And back home, consider some Dead Sea cream for that dry skin on the heels of your feet. It’ll do the trick.
Jerusalem to become accessible to the disabled
Jerusalem’s Old City is one of the top tourist attractions in the world, but with its ancient alleyways and endless stairs, much of the area has been inaccessible for visitors with handicaps. That’s set to change.
An article in Ynet today reported that the Jerusalem Development Authority recently allotted NIS 10 million (about $ 2.7 million) to make the Old City of Jerusalem fully accessible to the physically disabled. The money comes from a special fund in the National Insurance Institute (Israel’s version of Social Security).
Among the improvements: making Jaffa Gate and its surroundings wheelchair-friendly; preparing accessible walking paths in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Quarters; and possibly buying a car to drive handicapped people around the Old City.
Other tourist attractions to be upgraded include the Tower of David Museum, the Jerusalem Archaeological Park and Davidson Center, the City of David and the Herodian Quarter and Wohl Archaeological Museum in the Jewish Quarter.
Most intriguing: the project includes technologically innovative services for deaf and blind people, such as three-dimensional models which can be touched, vocal signs and visual transcriptions.
As someone who’s father was never able to visit Jerusalem due to the relative lack of physical consideration for people with disabilities, I applaud the city’s efforts. But there’s much more work to be done in the capital and around all of Israel.
When’s the right time for a rite of passage?
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Religion, Travel, health
It’s generally accepted that the Israeli perspective on the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony is different from its counterpart in the US.
I remember when Susie and three of her closest friends decided to celebrate their bat mitzvahs together – they were all around 40-years-old at the time.
They had been studying Torah as a group in Jerusalem for a year and a half. It all started when Boston-born Susie, who had already been in Israel for more than 20 years, started to feel that while her Jewish identity was her primary identity, which is why she had moved here, it was time for her to confront her “awe of the Torah.”
Sally, Ruti and Janet had also been in Israel for a couple of decades and for various reasons, none of the four had had a bat mitzvah back in the States. In fact, the first bat mitzvah was held by American rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, a major figure in Jewish thought and the founder of the Reconstructionist movement, for his daughter Judith in 1922.
So the culmination of 18 months of study and learning to read from the holy book was a ceremony at Jerusalem’s Kol Haneshama .
Now the idea didn’t resonate with everybody, but at that June ceremony 12 years ago no one could fail to be moved by the four women’s obvious quiet joy and pride in their achievements.
The bat mitzvahs of those forty-somethings inevitably came to mind when I received an e-mail recently, telling me about another group of delayed bar/bat mitzvah celebrants, en route to Israel.
Some of the participants at the upcoming celebration will be using walkers. Oxygen and wheelchairs will be available for emergencies. Five nurses will be traveling with the group. The average age of the participants in this particular version of the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony? Eighty-five.
Read more
Will we live in a Flat world?
With one in eight women likely to get breast cancer at one time or another in their lives, it’s a topic that makes an awful lot of women extremely nervous. Israeli film maker and breast cancer survivor Nitsana Bellehsen decided to take a different approach – humor.
Her film, Flat, which has been selected as the only Israeli finalist in the Breast Fest Film Festival in Toronto, tackles the subject of the rising rates of breast cancer with a sense of black absurdity that leaves you both concerned and amused at the same time.
In her short four minute film, Nitsana – who does many of ISRAEL21c’s video features on YouTube – leaps ahead to 2050 to see what the world will look like. It’s not pretty.
You can watch the movie here, and don’t forget to vote. Voting closes on October 15.
A teaser follows.
Foto Friday – Gil Lavi’s Soldiers in White
Gil Lavi is a world-class commercial photographer, portraitist and brand image consultant. He also has a keen eye for documentary photography, as seen in his series, “Soldiers in White” which explores the world of Israel’s emergency medical technicians at Magen David Adom.
The living quarters where sleep can be interrupted in a moment…
… as EMTs launch into action.
Lavi also takes special note of the relationship between religious and secular EMTs…
… and the camaraderie between male and female, young and old.
MDA’s heroic efforts in bringing medical services to all sides under the most trying circumstances have been well-reported by ISRAEL21c , but Lavi’s is a more intimate look. It’s a far cry from the high gloss commercial work for which he is famous — Lavi was named one of the 300 most influential Israelis under 40 for 2009 by Forbes magazine — but ties in to his photographic roots: during his army service, he was a photographer for the Ground Forces Command and then head of the IDF Still Photography Department. In fact, darkroom fluid flows in his veins: his father is renowned photographer Moshe Lavi (more about him, hopefully, on another Friday).
Other works by Gil Lavi can be found on his website at http://portfolio.gillavi.com/
Israeli vaccine may work against swine flu too
Filed under: Business, General, Medical Breakthroughs, Technology, health
With doctors and nurses around the world now declaring that there’s no way many of them will take the new swine flu vaccine being rushed out this fall because of safety fears, it’s not surprising that interest in Israeli company BiondVax Phamaceuticals is growing fast.
The company is developing a universal flu vaccine that is designed to protect you from every type of flu – whether it’s chicken flu, Hong Kong flu, regular flu, or cat in the hat flu. One shot can last three to five years.
Now the company has announced indications of possible success in a trial on rats against the current H1N1/A flu (swine flu). The company reported that antibodies specific to swine flu were found in blood samples from lab rats injected with the universal flu vaccine.
On rumors of this news alone, the company’s share price on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange rose 18 percent, prompting the exchange to suspend trading.
ISRAEL21c reporter Harvey Stein featured the company in June this year, when fears about the pandemic nature of swine flu were just coming to the fore. You can watch his great video above.
Don’t get too excited though. You won’t be able to sign up for a universal flu vaccine when flu season breaks out in the next few months. There’s still more development ahead.
Other Israelity reports on Swine flu:
It’s flu, but not as we know it
Anatomy of a flu panic
Israel had its first death from swine flu yesterday. It hit the front pages of the online newspapers yesterday in a fairly modest way, and today has already been pushed off the all-important page by stories about foiled terror plots, the chances of a summer war with Lebanon, talks with the Palestinians and the ever-looming threat of Iran.
Compare it to Britain. For the last few weeks the country has been in the throes of swine flu panic, with scare stories predicting 65,000 deaths by Christmas, figures showing 100,000 new cases in one week alone, threats of mass school closures across the country, warnings of a break down in vital services, and pictures of commuters donning face masks on the underground.
Women were advised not to get pregnant during the crisis – then told it was ok, but now the government is threatening to shut down programming on the BBC and replace it with educational programs if schools have to close.
With a trip to various epidemic hot spots in the UK planned for August, and not much sign of swine flu here, I took the opportunity of asking my children’s doctor what she thought. (I had plenty of chances, my children have been sick with assorted bugs every week for the last three).
On the first visit she told me that she’d just seen two patients that she was sure had swine flu from the village next to mine. On the last she told me she thought half the village already had it, and the same was true in Petah Tikva, where she also has a clinic.
So what’s the difference? “We don’t check to see if it’s swine flu unless the person is hospitalized,” she told me. “We won’t ever know the real figures, but maybe it’s better that way, because no-one’s in a panic.”
Whatever the reason, swine flu remains low on the list of news items this summer in Israel. It may not be passing us by, but it definitely isn’t generating many headlines.
Perhaps the panic is still to come as more deaths follow. Perhaps it’s just too hot to think about right now. Perhaps we’re all too busy entertaining the kids during the long holidays. Perhaps Israelis don’t worry about their health so much, or perhaps – most likely of all – we’ve just got other more pressing things to worry about. There’s nothing like an existential threat to put things in perspective.
IDF battles swine flu with extra leave
Whether you call it swine flu or Mexican flu, the number of cases of the virus H1N1 in Israel continues to creep up.
Please don't lick that pig...
Earlier this week, the IDF decided to take some preventative measures, after an increasing number of troops came down with the illness.
The problem, the IDF discovered, was with soldiers who had come into contact with Jewish American youngsters as part of the Jewish Agency’s Taglit-Birthright program, where they bring Jewish kids from the US to Israel to experience the country.
According to Ynet, some 20 soldiers working with Taglit youth contracted the H1N1 virus over the last few weeks. These soldiers then returned to their units, and infected their fellow comrades, raising the number of sick servicemen to several dozens. Units affected – including one Navy torpedo boat – had no choice but to declare a temporary shutdown.
Now the IDF has decided not to take any more chances. This is the nation’s security we’re talking about after all. The army’s chief medical officer has ordered soldiers who work with Taglit to take five-days leave to make sure they are flu-free.
Out in the civilian world as well, flu continues to spread. Last week, the PM, Bibi Netanyahu canceled all his meetings after a close associate tested positive for swine flu.
The health maintenance funds (Kupat Holim), now responsible for treating swine flu patients, are also feeling the crunch. When my husband phoned a contact in his health fund to try to bring forward a doctor’s appointment it took him three days to get hold of her, and when he finally did she said she was too busy dealing with swine flu cases to talk.
Now there’s talk of testing all the 5,000 or so visiting athletes due to fly in any day to take part in this month’s Maccabiah games. Any that test positive will be refused entry. Deputy Health Minister, Ya’akov Litzman told reporters: “I don’t want to reach a situation in which another 5,000 people come here and just increase [the incidence of] the disease.”
Well, it’s still early days yet. Like much of Europe, flu season in these parts usually only begins in November. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.
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