NEWS ABOUT ISRAEL THAT YOU ARE
UNLIKELY TO FIND IN THE MEDIA
·
A schoolroom desk that is
light enough to be carried by two children but offers protection against
earthquakes has been designed as a final project by students at Israel’s prestigious
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design’s
industrial design programme. The desk is
made of standard metals that are welded together in such a way that would
enable the desks to be manufactured at a relatively low cost. The design is competing for the 2012 Brit
Insurance Designs of the Year award.
(De Zeen Magazine)
·
We have never thought
Israel to be sufficiently ecologically aware when it comes to the recycling of
waste products. We are therefore
delighted with recent developments in our Jerusalem suburb of Gilo. For some years we did have in our road, a
very ugly container for plastic bottles which are recycled into garden
furniture. This has now been replaced
with a much more attractive one and a second placed at the other end of the
road. We have also acquired containers for newspapers, at both ends of the road
and now a huge one has appeared near to the ‘makolet’ (grocery shop) for the
disposal of all kinds of cardboard cartons.
Things are looking up and we are pleased to see that our neighbours are
making very good use of all of these which are full to overflowing by the time
they are due to be emptied. Glass
bottles can be returned to the shops and one receives a very small cash reward
for doing so but Israelis still have to
learn not to take so many plastic bags at supermarket checkouts but here again,
there is an improvement with more and more people taking their own reusable
cloth bags out shopping with them. We
now hopefully await containers for other waste products such as used batteries,
leather goods etc. as we have seen on visits to the U.K.
·
For the third time in three days Israeli
border police have caught Palestinians trying to sneak pipe bombs into Israel,
on this occasion it was three bombs.
There have been four separate attempts by Palestinians to get bombs into
Israel in the last month. On May 4th
two Palestinians were arrested trying to enter Israel with backpacks full of
bombs and knives. We are eternally thankful
for our vigilant border police. (Taken from The Times of Israel)
·
Among the 120 soldiers
honoured for excellence by president Shimon Peres on Israel’s Independence Day
was an Arab living in East Jerusalem. As
far as he knows, up to now, he has been the only East Jerusalem Arab serving in
the Israeli army. Only a very few of his
family members know about his army service and he never takes his uniform home
with him. “I wanted to serve, I wanted
to defend the country, I wanted to serve in order to do something good and
something good with my life,” he is quoted as saying. He serves in a Bedouin
unit and has been certified as an army medic, it is a matter of great pride to
him that now two of his brothers have chosen to follow in his footsteps and
have also been drafted into the Israeli army. He hopes to continue his studies,
possibly through the army’s higher education programme and one day, become a
doctor. Before that, he is looking forward to serving as a role-model for his
brothers and helping them through the difficulties of being a soldier in
secret. (The Jerusalem Post)
·
Millions of asthma
sufferers can breathe a bit easier thanks to a number of research products
coming out of Israel. These include
Or-Akiva’s Deep Breeze which can
be used in hospitals and at home for non-invasive treatment of asthma
patients. There is a portable Personal
Wheezeometer from Karmel Sonix Ltd.
which can monitor and store breathing data to detect nocturnal and exercise
induced asthma and a new, ‘green’ inhaler from Teva Pharmaceuticals. Salt rooms can be of enormous help to
asthma sufferers and Israel boasts a number of these and is the only country in
the world where treatment can be received through national health insurance plans.
(Go to Israel 21C to read more about
this subject and other Israeli medical innovations.)
No comments:
Post a Comment