An Arkia plane lands at Eilat Airport. (photo from Ashernet)
Ever since 1949, Eilat Airport has been an important link between the resort city of Eilat on the Red Sea and the busy central part of Israel. However, it is due to close later this year when the newly constructed Ramon Airport opens some 20 kilometres north of Eilat. The land that the Eilat Airport currently occupies will be used to build a new city centre consisting of hotels, shops and a residential area, as well as a new rail terminal.
Ramat Gan Safari Park taking Conner back to the zoo. (photo from Ashernet)
Conner, a 17-year-old capuchin monkey from Ramat Gan Safari Park, escaped the park earlier this month and set off on a foray into the outside world. Staff from the zoo scoured the immediate area around the zoo and eventually captured him, unharmed, after about a week. Peanut traps were set all around the area where Conner was thought to be hiding and, sure enough, Conner fell for the bait. None the worse for his adventure, Conner, after being checked by the safari park’s vets, was returned to his enclosure and was last seen telling his fellow capuchins what it is like on the other side of the safari park wall.
The recent Toronto Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project group in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. (photo from Nicole Pollak)
In its flagship program, Momentum, the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project (JWRP) provides Jewish women and men, typically mothers and fathers, with a free journey throughout Israel (airfare is not included).
The trips – the women’s and men’s trips are separate – are designed for people who are not shomer Shabbat (Shabbat observant). As well, 90% of participants must have children at home under the age of 18, and participants must be physically and emotionally healthy.
Rebbetzin Lori Palatnik founded JWRP in 2008. Since then, it has become an international initiative bringing thousands of women and hundreds of men to Israel each year from 19 different countries.
“The goal is that the women have 10 incredible, uplifting, inspirational days together … and then go home and bring that back to their families and communities,” said Toby Bernstein of the Chabad Romano Centre in Richmond Hill, Ont.
Bernstein led a group of women on the program in December 2016, noting, “We decided to do this trip to encourage some of the women in our community to be more connected to Judaism.”
Bernstein took with her 10 women, “women who come to synagogue services, a couple Hebrew school moms [and] a couple preschool moms.”
These women joined 250 others from the United States, Canada, Russia, Greece and England.
“It was an inspirational trip, because there were classes every day [about] what it means to be a Jewish mom, a Jewish wife, to be a Jew altogether … what’s the purpose of life,” said Bernstein. “It got a lot of people thinking, so it was inspirational. Even me, who grew up with all of this, grew from [the trip] and gained new insight, new inspiration…. It was beautiful to see the women growing and taking it all in.”
One of the participants was Nicole Pollak, a business owner in Toronto along with her husband, Aaron; the couple has a 3-year-old, Sydney.
Pollak went on the trip with both of her sisters after her younger sister, Melissa Jacks, who sends her children to the Chabad Romano Centre, was invited to join by Bernstein.
“My sister came to me and said that Chabad Romano is going to be running a JWRP trip and asked if me and our older sister, Allyson Theodorou, were interested in going,” said Pollak. “We applied, and all three of us went on this trip together.
“We thought it would be an amazing experience to do this together, and to learn more about Judaism and Israel,” she said. “And I, personally, have been studying with a rabbi for about eight years. So, I really liked the idea that it was an educational trip to teach us more and give us more insight into Judaism and the religion, and thought it was a good opportunity to get some Jewish inspiration.”
Before leaving, Pollak had to do what she could to ready her daughter for her absence. “From an emotional standpoint, preparing my daughter that I was going to be away for that amount of time was very difficult for a 3-year-old,” said Pollak. “I don’t think she has a concept of time – 10 days, for her, could be 10 hours, 10 minutes or 10 weeks … [so it was hard to tell] her that I’m going away and what that means and that I’ll be calling her every day. Preparing for the trip on my end, it was not really that difficult. It was just a matter of packing and organizing.”
Pollak’s husband was very supportive of her going on the trip. When Pollak became anxious about leaving, it was her husband who helped push her through it.
“There were a couple of times where I contemplated whether I was even going to go. I thought it was going to be too stressful for the family for me to be gone,” said Pollak. “My husband was the one who said, ‘I support you whether you want to go or if you don’t want to go, but I’d be very disappointed if you didn’t go. I think that would teach our daughter we don’t do things because we’re afraid, instead of showing her to do what we want – to learn, to have an adventure or explore life. He was pushing me to go because he thought it would be an incredible opportunity to go to Israel, learn and spend that time with my sisters.”
From the moment Pollak arrived at the airport, she could feel the camaraderie of the women traveling, all with similar feelings about leaving home, and she began focusing on the trip and getting as much out of it as she could.
Each day of the program in Israel involved one or two discussions, lectures, lessons and classes, sightseeing and tours, and the opportunity to see something cultural or religious in the region. For Pollak, the learning was the best part of the experience.
“One of the things we learned was that there are three major mitzvot for a Jewish woman: lighting Shabbat candles, making challah and going to the mikvah,” she explained. “We had the opportunity to light Shabbat candles and to participate in a challah-making class. And, on our visit to Tzfat, we visited a mikvah and had a tour.
“One of the things they talked about is, if you’re a secular Jewish woman and you don’t have a lot of religion in your life, you should start with lighting Shabbat candles. My older sister, Allyson, had never lit Shabbat candles in her house in her whole life and she’s been married 18 years. In Israel, she bought Shabbat candles and, last Friday night was the first time ever she lit them in her house. That’s pretty amazing.”
As for challah-making, the sisters have committed to getting together sometimes on Friday nights and making challah for Shabbat. As for the mikvah mitzvah, Pollak plans to investigate it more before deciding whether she wants to make it a part of her life.
With respect to the sightseeing, visiting the Kotel was a major highlight for Pollak, especially after having had a class about prayer before going in a spot overlooking the wall.
“I heard a lot of people saying … they don’t know how to pray, they don’t know what that means,” said Pollak. “People will often go to the wall and pray for world peace or for their entire family to be happy or healthy. They pray for these big things because they think that, when you talk to G-d, that’s what you ask for – big things.
“Something they emphasized in that class was that praying is not about just big things, it’s about little things, too; it’s that we should pray about everything. You can pray that you want your little son Johnny to do well on his math test. You can pray that you hope that your daughter wins that award, or that next week your haircut is going to be great. The message was, pray for what’s important to you.”
Another class that hit home for Pollak was one about judgment and perspective. In it, a story was shared that she has been telling people ever since. It was about a little girl who is standing in the kitchen with her mom, holding two bright red apples, one in each hand.
“She says to her mother, ‘Mommy, do you want one of my apples?’” said Pollak. “The mother says, ‘Yes, I do.’ So, the little girl proceeds to take a bite of one apple and then takes another bite from the other apple. The mother stops and thinks to herself, ‘Oh, you little brat.’ Then, the little girl puts her hand out to her mother and says, ‘Here, Mom. This one is sweeter.’
“That story really hit home and depicted that we judge based on what we see and not on what really is. I realized that it’s easy for us to judge based on what we think is happening. That story took me through the trip and really made me stop in my tracks every time I looked at someone or if I heard a story and judged what was going on with that person.”
Once back in Toronto, Pollak thanked G-d for the life that she has. She also discovered that her husband, mother-in-law and friends really stepped up and looked after her life while she was away. Her husband, she said, “appreciated me more, just like I appreciated him more when I came back.”
As a result of the trip, Pollak has decided to find ways to live her life with more intention and more appreciation for her marriage, focusing on the positive things in her life, as well as understanding the responsibilities of being a Jewish woman in one’s home.
“I think coming back made me realize that I have a responsibility bigger than I thought from a spiritual standpoint and that I’m going to live and work to do more of that,” she said.
A Vancouver JWRP group is being formed under the auspices of Vancouver Torah Learning Centre for a July 17-24 trip to Israel. For more information, contact Devorah Brody via e-mail at [email protected] or visit jwrp.org.
Corey Gil-Shuster has split his time between Canada and Israel for 28 years now. (photo from Corey Gil-Shuster)
Corey Gil-Shuster is an Ottawa-born and -raised Jew who spends a great deal of his time and energy asking people their opinions regarding the Middle East conflict – and doing so on camera. He has his own channel on YouTube, called the Ask Project.
Gil-Shuster has spent the last 28 years splitting his time between Ottawa and different places in Israel. He first went to the Jewish state in the 1990s for a study-abroad program at Tel-Aviv University.
At the time, Gil-Shuster said he was just happy to find “a good, safe place to travel and then, from there, to travel to other places. Then, when I was here in Israel, actually I didn’t like it very much. It was very different than I expected. I found it too chaotic…. It took me about six months to get used to it. Once I did, I started to fall in love with the place.”
In 1995, Gil-Shuster met his now-husband, Yaron. The couple later adopted a child.
Gil-Shuster said he has found Israelis to be fairly open to discussing homosexuality, and noted a level of acceptance or openness that he has not found in Canada. Even strangers in Israel have felt very comfortable asking him questions about being gay, and he has used the opportunity to educate them about the topic. On more than one occasion, once that initial question has been broached, people have invited him over for dinner to ascertain how they can move to Canada, make a good living and buy a big house.
“I found Israel refreshing,” said Gil-Shuster. “I kind of enjoyed that, because it put me in control as opposed to the opposite – at least the early 1990s in Canada – being gay with straight people in control of whether you’re accepted.”
As he acclimated to Israeli society, Gil-Shuster found himself getting into debates about how Israelis really feel about the situation in the Middle East.
“I thought, well, I have a video camera, so why don’t I just go out my front door and ask random people on the streets to answer some questions?” he told the Independent.
What Gil-Shuster initially found was that, while people had their opinions, they were not interested in asking questions themselves or in listening.
“All these people are either pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian, and they are sure they know everything about Israel,” he said. “But, nobody could come up with a question to either confirm their ideas or give the opposite of what they think. Finally, somebody said something about how Israelis won’t accept a one-state solution. Great, I’ll take that and ask that as a question. I asked neighbours, the guy who sells me fruit and veggies, and another grocery store guy.”
Gil-Shuster had to do on-the-spot translation of the comments from the street interviews. “I would translate as they were speaking Hebrew,” he said. “I put it together. I had seven or eight people and I put it in a film. I learned to edit, but I didn’t cut anything out, and I put it on YouTube.”
In no time at all, Gil-Shuster understood the power in simply letting people share their views – “how much power that can have to go against what mainstream media puts out, whether that’s Canadian, American, Israeli or Palestinian. Every country’s media has a certain narrative they want to say. They have a story they’re trying to sell to their people, and they have to frame the conflict within that.”
To make his videos more objective, Gil-Shuster started to venture further than his backyard in Tel Aviv. He began traveling the country asking people for their opinions. Regardless of what they said, he made a point of not cutting or editing the videos – even if racist or horrible comments were made that didn’t conform to his views.
That doesn’t mean he keeps silent, however. He allows himself the right to make sarcastic comments as he feels the need, noting, “It keeps me more interested. I try to make it very objective … I try to figure out, as much as possible, where they’re coming from. If their question is, ‘Why don’t you all just get along,’ I’ll reply quite naively insofar as what my follow-up questions are … thinking that’s kind of where they’re coming from.”
Gil-Shuster has been doing this for the past four years, with a growing following that comprises a mix of pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian fans and many others in between. He provides a variety of views and topics to keep people watching.
When he has to travel for work, doctor appointments or other reasons, he brings his camera along, stopping to speak with people along the way. Jerusalem and Haifa are a couple of his favourite places to do this, as he is more likely to encounter both Israelis and Palestinians.
In general, he has found Palestinians to be more open to talking, though some are fearful and only want to be interviewed if he will agree to conceal their face. Typically, in these situations, he works with a translator.
“When I first started out, my hope was to use these videos as a forum for creating peace in some way, to create a dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians,” he said. “For me, it’s about understanding. But, quickly, I realized that very few Israelis and Palestinians are interested in having a dialogue – at least, not in a public way.”
Some people get mad at Gil-Shuster, feeling he is doing something purposefully against one group or another. In contrast, he gets a lot of messages from people in the Middle East saying, “Thank you for showing me a different side of the conflict. I always had a feeling I was being lied to.”
“These are the emails I like the most,” he said. “You don’t have to like what somebody says, but I’m hoping they’re humanized as a group.”
When asked about how the project has changed his views, Gil-Shuster said he no longer thinks peace is possible.
“Israelis are tough-talking, but are willing to compromise to a certain degree. Palestinians are very open to other people in some ways, but, it’s very black and white for them. It’s all … the land was stolen by foreigners who shouldn’t be there, and that there’s no solution until they leave. Maybe someday they’ll get a leader who’ll be brave enough to tell them what reality is, but they don’t have those kinds of leaders. They always deal with Israel … [with the view that] for now, we can benefit from it, but it’s all ours, so we will get it back someday.”
To date, Gil-Shuster has created more than 500 videos. They can be found at youtube.com/user/coreygilshuster, and he encourages viewers to suggest questions.
The Haruv Children’s Campus at Hebrew University of Jerusalem at Mount Scopus is the first-ever global centre combining research and treatment of child abuse. (photo by Dror Sithakol from facebook.com/schustermanfamilyfoundation)
The first-ever global centre combining research and treatment of child abuse opened Jan. 9 at Hebrew University of Jerusalem at Mount Scopus. The Haruv Children’s Campus brings together for the first time, in one location, a comprehensive array of services for abused and neglected children, including emergency treatment, therapeutic facilities and child advocacy assistance.
Haruv campus houses seven organizations working on all aspects of identifying, diagnosing and treating children, allowing for increased cooperation and coordination. It is also home to a world-class research centre and training services for a wide range of professionals.
This multi-disciplinary campus provides a holistic, child-centred approach to treating, studying and addressing the global issue of child abuse and creates new opportunities for collaboration between institutes and organizations in Israel and around the world. Partnering with the new campus are Hebrew University and the Hadassah Medical Centre.
“Child abuse and neglect occurs in all sectors of society and has a destructive impact on growth and development,” said Prof. Asher Ben-Arieh, director of the Haruv Institute. “We are striving to create the first-ever comprehensive research and treatment centre for maltreated children, based on the widely admired university hospital model. The campus will attract top researchers, professionals and students from Israel and abroad, creating opportunities to affect real change for at-risk children.”
According to the World Health Organization, every fourth child worldwide is a victim of child abuse. Within Israel, about 400,000 youth are considered at-risk for child abuse. In 2015, there were an estimated 44,000 new cases of child abuse reported, with every third Israeli child suffering some form of neglect, 11% involving sexual abuse and 20% involving children with special needs. The problem is so acute that child services workers routinely deal with unmanageable levels of caseloads.
The Mount Scopus campus was chosen for its strategic location and general accessibility. The site also offers proximity to the ultra-Orthodox and Arab communities, which predominate in nearby residential areas, and the centre will bring a culturally sensitive approach to its work with these populations.
Leading the initiative is the Haruv Institute, with the support of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Joint Distribution Committee-Israel, the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs, the National Insurance Institute and the Jerusalem Municipality Welfare Services.
The campus will house several organizations devoted to dealing with child abuse, including the Schusterman Emergency Centre, the Beit Lynn Child Protection Centre, the Israel National Council for the Child, the Centre for Treatment of Sexually Abused Children, the Israel Medical Stimulation Centre, the Municipal Child Welfare Centre and the Goshen Program for Comprehensive Child Health.
“Ever since its founding in 2007, Haruv has served as a beacon of hope and a source of strength for victims of child abuse and their families. It has been a forceful advocate for those least able to defend themselves, and it has trained thousands of professionals responsible for preventing and treating abuse and neglect,” said Lynn Schusterman, founder and co-chair of the Schusterman Family Foundation. “The opening of the Haruv Children’s Campus ushers in the next phase of this critically important mission and is a striking example of how Haruv has grown to become an international centre of excellence in its field. We are proud to have partnered with others to make the new centre a reality and look forward to continuing to help Haruv establish itself as the preeminent organization in the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect.”
The planning and design of the campus reflects its emphasis on addressing the needs of children and families. Throughout the campus, calming elements have been introduced, such as water, pastoral greenery and play areas created from natural materials. The interior spaces have colourful playrooms, work areas that provide privacy, and a school and kindergarten for children at the emergency centre.
“The opening of the Haruv Campus for Children in Jerusalem is not just a major step in the treatment and prevention of child abuse and neglect in Israel and beyond. It champions a holistic approach ensuring critical players in this field can learn from and inform each other’s success, something we understand full well from our own work in Israel,” said David Schizer, chief executive officer the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. “We’re proud of our partnership with the Haruv Institute and the Schusterman Family Foundation to once again foster innovation of new program models to support Israel’s most vulnerable and of the larger effort to provide a safer and brighter future for children and families who will benefit from the one-of-a kind Haruv campus.”
The Weizmann Tree Lab, left to right: Dr. Tamir Klein, Ido Rog, Yael Wagner, Omri Lapidot and Shacham Magidish. (screenshot from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il)
While studying trees during his postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Tamir Klein made such a startling discovery that his research supervisor at the University of Basel at first declared that it must have been a mistake. In the forest, trees are known to compete for resources such as light and nutrients, but Klein found that the same trees also engage in sharing: he showed that carbon molecules taken up by the canopies of mature spruce trees were passed through the soil in large quantities to neighbouring beech, larch and pine. As he reported in Science in 2016, the carbon was being transferred via “underground highways” formed by overlapping networks of root fungi.
“Neighbouring trees interact with one another in complex ways,” said Klein. “Of course, there is a great deal of competition among them, but they also form communities, sorts of ‘guilds,’ within which individual trees share valuable resources. In fact, trees belonging to a ‘guild’ usually do much better than those that don’t.”
In his new lab in the Weizmann Institute’s plant and environmental sciences department, Klein follows up on these findings to investigate tree ecophysiology: how the tree functions in its ecosystem.
“Studies on ‘underground’ tree collaboration may reveal which tree species get along well, and this may help determine which trees should be planted next to one another,” he said. “Our studies have additional relevance to forestry and agriculture because we elaborate on the mechanisms of growth and drought resistance of different tree species.”
Only five percent of Israel’s land is covered by forest, but the country nonetheless offers unique advantages for forest research: its hot, dry climate provides an opportunity for investigating how trees adapt to drought and stress. Many trees common to Israel are already resistant to drought; understanding the mechanisms that allow them to live with little rain may help develop varieties of lemons, almonds, olives and other tree crops that can grow in even drier areas.
Projects in Klein’s lab aim to clarify how trees manage their water and carbon budgets – both separately and as a forest community. In one study, the team focuses on emboli: tiny air bubbles that form inside the tree’s water channels during drought. When drought persists, the emboli can kill a tree, much like blood vessel clots that can cause a fatal heart attack in a human being. After injecting fluids into tree branches at different pressures, Klein and his students analyze the emboli in the minutest detail, using micro-computed tomography.
In Weizmann’s greenhouses, Klein’s team members experiment with seedlings of pine, cypress, carob and other trees commonly found in Israel. The researchers make use of advanced technologies, including nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, to study hydraulic conductivity in trees and a special lamp-equipped belowground camera to study the growth of tree roots in the soil.
When conducting field studies on their research plot near Beit Shemesh, Klein and his students hug trees – not to have a spiritual experience, but to follow a tree’s growth by encircling the trunk with a measuring tape. In parallel, they apply laser isotope analysis and analytical chemistry techniques to trace carbon metabolism in individual trees, and they investigate carbon transfer among trees via different types of fungal “highways.” The scientists also employ thermal imaging, which enables remote temperature measurements, to study the rate of evaporation in the foliage.
These studies will help predict how future climate changes, including global warming and the rise in greenhouse gases, may affect forests. In one set of experiments, for example, Klein will double the concentration of CO2 to mimic the atmospheric conditions that may emerge on earth as a result of pollution. Klein hasn’t owned a car in 10 years, so as not to contribute to CO2 emissions, but he warns against jumping to conclusions when it comes to the impact of increased CO2 on tree biology. “Higher CO2 concentrations don’t help trees grow faster – contrary to the hopes of industrialists – but, surprisingly, recent research suggests they might render the trees more resistant to drought-induced stress. This doesn’t mean it’s OK to carry on with CO2 pollution, but it does mean that we need to deepen our understanding of its effects on trees in general and on agricultural tree crops in particular.”
Klein is the incumbent of the Edith and Nathan Goldenberg Career Development Chair. His research is supported by Nella and Leon Y. Benoziyo; and Norman Reiser. More on Weizmann Institute research can be found at wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il.
A leisurely walk through Jerusalem’s Old City will let visitors see many manifestations of political propaganda, packaged in many forms, all sold to the visitor with a smile. Here, a “Free Palestine” T-shirt is offered for sale in the shuk alongside an Israel Defence Forces T-shirt. (photo by Edgar Asher)
The formation of the moon has remained something of a puzzle. A leading theory proposes a cataclysmic impact involving a Mars-sized object and a young earth. But there are some inconsistencies with this scenario. A new study at the Weizmann Institute of Science, based on hundreds of simulations run on a computer cluster, suggests that a more plausible chain of events might involve a number of run-ins with smaller objects. This would have produced smaller moonlets that would have eventually coalesced into the single moon we have today. The research appeared this month in Nature Geoscience.
Research student Raluca Rufu and Prof. Oded Aharonson of the Weizmann Institute’s earth and planetary sciences department point out that the accepted explanations for the formation of our moon rely on highly specific initial conditions – for example, a collision with an object of a particular size traveling at a defined velocity and hitting the earth at a specific angle. Furthermore, in a typical impact, different proportions of that object would have ended up in the earth and the moon, leaving a detectable difference between the bodies, but various chemical analyses of the moon’s makeup, taken from samples returned by astronauts, reveal that it is nearly identical to that of the earth. In other words, there is no trace of the large body that supposedly hit the earth, and the theories, say the researchers, turn out to be improbable.
Rufu and Aharonson, together with Dr. Hagai Perets of the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, asked whether a number of smaller collisions might better explain what happened several billion years ago, when the solar system was taking shape. Such smaller bodies would have been more prevalent in the system, and thus collisions with smaller objects would have been more likely. Small, high-velocity collisions could also mine more material from the earth than a single, large one. In addition, explained Aharonson, if a number of different bodies collided with the earth over a period of millions of years, their different chemical signatures – for example, ratios of oxygen-16 to its heavier cousins, oxygen-17 and -18 – might even out, masking the traces of the various collisions.
The collisions – with small planets one-tenth the mass of the earth to space rocks the size of the moon, a hundredth the mass of the earth – would have sent clouds of rubble, melt and vapour into orbit around the early earth. These, according to the simulations the scientists created, would have cooled and agglomerated into small moonlets that, in time, could have merged into one.
To test this scenario, the group ran around 800 impact simulations on the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Chemfarm cluster, which has more than 5,000 processor cores.
“The new scenario does not require finely tuned initial conditions,” said Rufu, “and, if the smaller moonlets, as we think, were drawn into the same orbit, they could have merged over millions of years.”
“We are now running further simulations to try to understand how the smaller moonlets produced in these simulations might have coalesced to form our moon,” added Aharonson.
Aharonson’s research is supported by the Benoziyo Endowment Fund for the Advancement of Science; the Helen Kimmel Centre for Planetary Science, which he heads; the Minerva Centre for Life under Extreme Planetary Conditions, which he heads; the J & R Centre for Scientific Research; and the Adolf and Mary Mil Foundation.
For more on the research being conducted at the Weizmann Institute, visit wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il.
Twenty-five swimmers from around the world crossed the Dead Sea on Nov. 15. (photo from EcoPeace)
On Nov. 15, some two dozen swimmers made the seven-hour trek across the Dead Sea, starting from the Jordanian side and swimming to the Israeli.
The demise of the Dead Sea is not news. According to the group EcoPeace Middle East – a Jordanian, Palestinian, Israeli environmental peace-building organization – the sea has receded by 25 metres in the last three decades and has lost a third of its surface area. Yet, hope remains.
The recent event’s initiator and a participant swimmer, Oded Rahav, stated in an EcoPeace press release, “If it’s possible to do the impossible, like swimming across the Dead Sea, then it’s possible to save the Dead Sea. We are not just interested in raising awareness, but creating real action to benefit the Dead Sea.”
Co-sponsoring the event with EcoPeace was Tamar Regional Council in Israel.
“A group of Israeli swimmers approached EcoPeace last spring with an idea to do a first-ever event – to swim across it [the Dead Sea]!” said Mira Edelstein, project coordinator of EcoPeace’s Jordan River Rehabilitation and Save the Dead Sea projects. “Not only were they looking for an idea to follow their previous success in topping a Guinness record – swimming from Cyprus to Israel – they also sought a way to raise awareness about the need to save the Dead Sea.
“They, naturally, turned to EcoPeace, as we’re the only regional environmental organization in the Middle East working on the issue of the rehabilitation of the River Jordan, which is in direct correlation with saving the Dead Sea. We gladly took on co-organizing the event and worked hard to make it happen, especially in getting permission from the Jordanian army to ‘sail’ across the border in the middle of the sea, starting from the Jordanian side.”
There were 25 swimmers from all over the world who participated, including from Israel, Palestine, South Africa, New Zealand, Greece, Spain and Denmark. They had to swim with a full-face snorkeling mask because of the water’s extreme salinity and they also had to adapt their swimming style because of the water’s high density. It was a life-risking venture and the swimmers were accompanied by a medical team, as EcoPeace notes in the press release: “A drop in the eye causes severe irritation, and chance swallowing of its water can be fatal if not treated immediately.”
The event generated an unprecedented amount of media attention and EcoPeace hopes this will help its ongoing efforts to get local decision-makers to take action on the issue.
“We’re also being approached by several other organizations to do other cross-border events – bicycle event, music event, art event, etc. – and we’ll review all of them to see which is more feasible and which will give us the best results,” said Edelstein, who was born and raised in New York and made aliyah in 1993. She now lives in Gan Yavne, which is near Ashdod. She joined EcoPeace in 2004.
“Personally, as an environmentalist but also a general nature lover, the Dead Sea is such a pearl of nature with so many unique qualities found nowhere else on this earth, that it would be a tragedy to lose it,” she told the Independent. “This is a man-made catastrophe and we must work as hard as possible to reverse it.”
Edelstein explained that the threats to the Dead Sea are coming from two directions.
“First is from the north,” she said. “Historically, the main inflow to the Dead Sea has been the Lower Jordan River. And, with the diversion of more than 95% of the Jordan River’s water by Israel, Jordan and Syria, leaving a meagre five percent to reach the Dead Sea … no wonder the Dead Sea is shrinking – by more than a metre a year.
“EcoPeace is working extremely hard to rehabilitate the Lower Jordan River back to at least a third of its historic flow, not only for the river’s own integrity – this is the holy Jordan River! – but we’re doing this for the Dead Sea as well.
“Second is from the south – from both Israeli and Jordanian mineral industries. These industries are using the most simple, antiquated, water-intensive technology to harvest minerals from the Dead Sea: evaporation. Unfortunately, both industries have no incentive to change their extraction technology, because they do not pay a penny for the amount of water they use.”
EcoPeace is working to change this; however, discussions about extracting minerals using systems based on desalination technologies (reverse osmosis) have come to a standstill, as they cost money, while evaporation is free.
“They claim they are studying them (these technologies), but have concluded that they’re very expensive,” said Edelstein. “Our point is exactly that – that until they will be forced to pay for the amount of water they use, any kind of change will be expensive.”
With the Israeli mineral industry’s contract with the state on its last leg, Edelstein is hopeful that a new contract will include putting a price on the Dead Sea’s water.
“EcoPeace is working very hard to get a bill passed through the Israeli parliament wherein the Dead Sea Works [part of the company ICL Fertilizers] will need to pay for the amount of water they use,” she added.
“Both of these actions together, that EcoPeace is working on, will help stabilize the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea will not yet be completely saved or restored, but we understand we first need to halt its destruction and [then] to work on stabilizing it.”
While there was a plan to draw water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, the original mega-project, which the World Bank was studying for more than a decade, has been deemed unfeasible. The present-day Red Sea-Dead Sea canal project “is different than the original one,” said Edelstein. “This project is based on a water swap between Israel and Jordan, which also includes a component for Palestinians to get more water from Israel.”
With both the Jordanian and Israeli governments working closely, mainly on furthering the canal project, EcoPeace applauds the joint efforts, but does not see the project as the solution.
“I do believe that the Dead Sea is high on the public agenda,” said Edelstein. “It’s not difficult to find information on the issue. Our website is being upgraded and we’ll soon have updated information to share, but recent news articles are a good place to begin.”
For more information about EcoPeace, which was formerly called Friends of the Earth Middle East, its Dead Sea and other projects, visit foeme.org.
The World Health Organization has recognized Israel’s medical rescue teams and Israel Defence Forces’ field hospital as Type 3, the highest ranking for any foreign medical rescue team and field hospital in the world. (photo from United Hatzalah)
On Nov. 28, the World Health Organization (WHO) began a three-day meeting in Hong Kong, during which they recognized Israel’s medical rescue teams and Israel Defence Forces’ field hospital as Type 3, the highest ranking for any foreign medical rescue team and field hospital in the world. Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Hotovely attended on behalf of Israel.
United Hatzalah, Israel’s national volunteer emergency medical services organization, and the Israelife Foundation, a conglomerate of Israel-based rescue organizations that respond to disasters worldwide, welcomed the award.
“We want to praise and thank all of the dedicated volunteers, staff and soldiers in all of the rescue services throughout the country. Their dedication and selfless acts of kindness in saving lives at home and abroad are officially being recognized on the world stage and, due to their efforts, Israel has become a world leader,” said Dov Maisel, United Hatzalah vice-president of international operations.
With the ceremony, Israel became the 17th foreign medical team to be classified by WHO, and it currently boasts the highest ranking. The process to achieve the ranking took nearly a year of in-depth reviews to ensure that Israel’s field hospitals met all of the criteria.
Besides the simple value of recognition, the Type 3 classification will also have some real ramifications. The classification ensures that Israeli rescue and medical teams will be the first allowed on the scene of future disasters regardless of where they happen and it will further cement Israel’s position as a world leader in emergency medicine.
Israel is not only the only Type 3 medical response team in the world, it is also the only one to be recognized by WHO that comprises a “military component” in the form of the IDF field hospital. Some aspects of the classification deal with the ethics of emergency care, and having a military branch receive the Type 3 classification highlights the ethical standing of that body.
The person behind the WHO classification system is Dr. Ian Norton, a specialist in emergency medicine and former head of his native Australia’s emergency response team. Norton developed the WHO system – which ranks foreign medical teams into Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 – in 2013.
The different types refer to the number of patients that can be treated and the level of difficulty of the procedures that can be offered by a medical response team. Even with the high standards, Israel’s field hospital surpasses the requirements, offering more medical care than is required to be classified as Type 3. For example, the Times of Israel reported that a Type 3 field hospital needs 40 inpatient beds, whereas Israel’s has 86, and a Type 3 ranking requires the hospital to have two operating rooms, whereas Israel’s has four. Israel also qualified for the Type 3 category by employing teams that offer additional “specialized care,” such as burn units, dialysis units, obstetrics and gynecology teams, and reconstructive plastic surgery units. The IDF field hospital also received accolades for its abilities to provide exemplary levels of plastic surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology care. These latter qualifications establish the team as a “Type 3 plus.”
In addition to the field hospital, Israel was praised for the work done by its volunteer evacuation and emergency response teams, such as United Hatzalah, Zaka and Israelife. These teams of volunteer responders have conducted search and rescue operations and provided emergency medical services in disasters all over the world. Most recently, United Hatzalah sent Maisel, an emergency paramedic, to be a medical liaison and consultant as part of the Jet911 multinational response team that responded to the destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew in Haiti in October.
Other disasters to which the IDF field hospital and Israel medical response teams have responded include the earthquake in Turkey in 1999, the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, the typhoon in the Philippines in 2013 and the devastating earthquake that shook Nepal in 2015.