Post earthquake: Will Israel suffer a sushi shortage?

March 19, 2011 - 8:11 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Food 

Amid the panic over Japan’s nuclear reactor crisis following that country’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, there’s a new concern that may effect Israelis more imminently than radioactive fallout: a shortage of sushi.

Ynet reported last week that Israel relies on a particular type of soy sauce – Kikoman – and that one of the company’s manufacturing plants in Japan was damaged. Israel has already seen delays in delivery, according to Dudi Afriat of the Rakuto Kasei company, which imports the Kikkoman soy sauce

Israel is particularly reliant on Kikoman – the brand makes up 85% of the soy sauce in the country.

Seaweed and wasabi may also be affected, although not sushi rice, which comes to Israel from California. Israel’s supply of sushi rolling mats and chopsticks are made in China and tempura is imported from South Korean.

While worries over sushi are certainly trivial compared to the big picture still unfolding, Israel does love its sushi – Tel Aviv is the fifth city in the world in the consumption of sushi per capita, and fourth in the world in the number of sushi restaurants per capita, says Afriat.

I remember years ago when you couldn’t get decent sushi in Israel. Sushi is now the number two take-away food in Israel. Five years back there were only 20 sushi restaurants in Tel Aviv; today there are 130 – an 800% increase, according to Afriat. In terms of sheer volume, Israel imports 54 tons of rice for sushi a month and 900 kilograms of soy sauce.

Kikoman has five factories around the world, so Israeli sushi aficionados shouldn’t have too much to worry about. But the lesson is clear: the world is intricately interconnected and what happens thousands of miles away can have unexpected ripples. Our thoughts continue to be with the Japanese, where ensuring a steady supply of soy sauce is much lower on the radioactive totem poll.

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Japan Earthquake No Insurance for Israelis Living on Fault Line

March 15, 2011 - 12:10 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Environment, History and Culture 

japan earthquake
Israel has offered to help the shaken country of Japan emerge from the rubble. Now with a possible nuclear meltdown looming, Japan’s woes may only have just begun. Globally, what’s been happening in Japan has sent shockwaves and tremors to the nuclear energy industry, and environmentalists with their tongues sticking out, use the catastrophe to remind the world about the dangers of mixing nuclear energy with natural disasters.

You can buy house insurance, and of course car insurance (if you still drive a drive a car that is, along with plenty of cheap car insurance quotes out there) but one thing the world can’t buy is nuclear meltdown insurance.

Remember the Chernobyl meltdown and the wine produced that year –– wine whose grapes were contaminated with nuclear fallout? Just like the dust cloud after the volcano eruption, the fallout from a nuclear meltdown in Japan could wind around the globe, affecting animals, people and plants in its wake. Damage done to our DNA from radiation doesn’t end with one or two generations but can persist to eternity. There is no insurance in the world that can cover this damage. Read more

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Israel mobilizes for Japan earthquake

March 13, 2011 - 11:51 AM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Environment, General, Israeliness, News, Social Justice 

Japan hasn’t officially requested aid following this weekend’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake and massive tsunami that struck the island nation on Friday, but as ISRAEL21c pointed out, Israel was among the first of a long list of 69 countries and five international aid organizations that have offered Japan their assistance.

Japanese consul in Israel Mitoshiko Shinomya that Israel for its offers, but hesitated at giving the green light.

“Israel officially offered its help an hour after the earthquake struck. It is very heart-warming, but at this point we do not know exactly what the extent of the damage is, so it is difficult for us to say what can be done,” he said, according to Ynet.

But whether they’re welcome or not, at least two delegations from Israel are preparing to leave for Japan. IsraAID-FIRST, an Israeli umbrella group of relief organizations, said it was preparing to send a team of experts to assist in relief efforts, mainly in the field of water purification.

“We’re sending six medical professionals and people specializing in search and rescue,” Shachar Zehavi, the head of IsraAid, told The Jerusalem Post. “Many of these people were members of the Israel Defense Forces search and rescue team in the past.”

And the ZAKA organization (a Hebrew acronym for Disaster Victims Identification) has dispatched one team from Israel, and a second ZAKA group based in Hong Kong was to leave for the quake. ZAKA’s experts have extensive experience assisting at natural disasters around the world, including Haiti, the tsunami in Thailand and the Katrina hurricane in New Orleans.

While we have no shortage of our own problems at hand here, the swiftness which Israel stands up to the call when a natural disaster occurs somewhere else in the world is cause for pride, and an example for others.

According to Hebrew University researchers, however, we may need the aid of others soon enough. Their study looked at the consequences of rising sea levels in Israel and predicted that if a tsunami hit the Mediterranean shore, it could flood over a fifth of Nahariya and Haifa.
Prof. Daniel Felsenstein and Dr. Michal Leichter of the university’s geography department said such a tsunami would flood 22.3 percent of Nahariya, or 2.2 square kilometers, and 23.5 percent of Haifa, or 14 square kilometers. Ten percent of Tel Aviv would be flooded, and in all scenarios, rivers near cities would be in danger of overflowing. In Tel Aviv, a wide area near the Yarkon River estuary would be flooded, and in Haifa, the Kishon Stream area, home to many factories producing dangerous chemicals, would be submerged.

Let’s hope the rest of the world steps up for us if the need arises.

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Waltz with Bashir snubbed in LA

February 24, 2009 - 1:24 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, General, Movies, Pop Culture 

Japan's DeparturesConventional wisdom unequivocally asserted that the only Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee to hold a candle to Waltz with Bashir was France’s The Class – but that even that movie was hardly as technically groundbreaking or thematically poignant as Israel’s nominee. Regardless, The Academy instead gave the award to Japan’s Departures (pictured in all of its smirking glory).

Bashir therefore joins a long list of Israel-made Oscar losers that includes Sallah Shabati and HaShoter Azoulay.

When Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort failed to take home a statuette a year ago, the director was gracious and stoic, putting the situation in the proper context. He even went so far as to give The Jerusalem Post the ultimate cliché Oscar loser soundbyte:

[Cedar] seemed to keep his hopes in check at a symposium prior to the ceremony, saying he was “happy just to have been nominated. I’m not even thinking about winning.”

….”We have shown that Israel can make very good movies,” Beaufort actor Eli Eltonyo told the cheering crowd [at a post-Oscars party], “and we will prove it again next time.”

Next time was earlier this week, but Eltonyo’s prediction didn’t come to fruition – at least not as fully as he might have hoped. But Bashir‘s creative team was hardly as gracious as Beaufort‘s was. The jPost caught up with director Ari Folman after the show:

“It’s a game,” Folman said, shrugging. “It’s 500 anonymous voters, and I don’t know a single one.”

He said he planned to drink the night away before getting on a plane home to Israel.

“I’ll be glad to be done with all of this traveling, though I am going to miss it in a few months – but right now I just want to go home and be with my kids,” Folman told the Post.

Back here in Israel, the rest of the Bashir team was even more disappointed, as Haaretz notes:

Nitzan Roiy, in charge of composing and special effects, stayed in his chair.

“It’s horrible,” he said. “When we came here we were sure we had it in our hand. It’s a shame.”

…. “We were very confident before the ceremony,” said Neta Holzer, one of the animators who joined the Israeli delegation to Los Angeles. “We didn’t talk about winning, but we had a very good gut feeling. Everyone is disappointed, but we’re getting used to it.”

With so many great movies continuing to come out of our local industry, we can all comfort ourselves by saying, “There’s always next year.” At least that;s what the good sports among us will say.

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