Israel Active

Throughout last month, Israel’s largest ultra-Orthodox news site, Kikar HaShabbat, colored its logo pink and wrote that it was doing so to give public expression to October being breast cancer awareness month.  

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi gave an inspiring speech at Special in Uniform’s annual benefit for IDF soldiers with disabilities. He stated, “You are blessed in the IDF, you are essential to the IDF, and you are wanted by the IDF!”. Some 750 young “specials” perform important work at 60 IDF bases.

Brigadier General Orly Markman has been named as head of the IDF’s court of appeals. She will be promoted to Major General, becoming only the third Israeli woman to ever receive the rank.  Israel’s first female Major General, Orna Barbivai, is now Israel’s Minister of the Economy.

A delegation of nine Bahrainis, in traditional dress recently visited the Kotel (Western Wall) in Jerusalem. They recited prayers and left notes in the wall.  Jews, both young and old, embraced the Bahraini visitors, with some greeting the guests in Arabic.  (See some of the unique photos.)

Tel Aviv University was ranked fifth in the world in the 2021 ranking of Startup Genome - a world-leading innovation policy advisory and research firm. TAU was the only non-US university in the top 10. It followed Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Harvard. 1,300 TAU alumni have founded startups.

Yonatan Winetraub was one of the three Israelis who initiated SpaceIL’s project to send an Israeli spacecraft to the Moon. He has just won an Early Independence Award and funds from US National Institutes of Health to detect cancer without biopsies, using optical coherence tomography (OCT).

Sudanese media have reported that an Israeli delegation that visited Sudan recently mediated between military leader Al-Burhan and ousted Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok.

The Tribal Council of the Northeast Alabama Cherokee has recognized the “sovereign Jewish nation” of Israel, with Jerusalem as its “eternal undivided capital.” They expressed solidarity with the Jewish community and compared the Jewish experience with that of native tribes in North America.

Israel is to double, to 50 million cubic meters, the amount of freshwater it provides to neighboring Jordan, one of the world’s most water-deficient countries.

Israel has sent 40 oxygen concentrators to Romania, which is confronting its worst wave of Covid-19 infections since the pandemic started nearly two years ago. The devices were made possible with help from AFI Europe Romania and Israel’s Elbit Systems.