Israel Active

In a cyber defense exercise, organized by the US Army's Cyber Center of Excellence, five IDF teams competed against nearly 60 teams from 13 countries. It was Israel’s first exercise coordinated by the IDF's Cyber Defense Directorate and proved to be a vital learning experience.

American Elliot Sloyer was chaperoning an Israel trip for 8th-grade students in 2018. When one of the students suffered an injury, he borrowed a wheelchair from Israeli charity Yad Sarah. He was so impressed with the charity that in Oct 2020 he launched Wheel It Forward in Connecticut.

Israel’s Welfare Ministry listed its achievements during the current government’s 11 months as disability benefits, early childhood legal reform, a historic social workers agreement, refuge centers for women, special needs centers for toddlers, safety nets for the welfare of older population, and much more.

Great video featuring Yoseph Haddad showing how Israel’s minorities live in the Jewish State.

Israel’s VoiceITT (reported previously) has enhanced its mobile speech recognition app to allow people with speech impairments to access and interact with Amazon's Alexa.  Now the disabled can control lights, aircon, TV, computers etc. without having to call for help. Great video!

Israel has opened an embassy in the United Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The new Ambassador, Eitan Naeh, and his staff will "expand ties with the Emirati government, financial bodies, and the private sector, universities, the media and more.” The UAE has approved having its embassy in Tel Aviv.

In a video conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the heads of Austria, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Greece and the Czech Republic to work together to promote scientific research into vaccines. It would provide future pandemic protection for governments against market forces.

Israeli archeologists had a surprise when they were unearthing an 8th century CE mosque in Tiberias. They discovered the foundations of a 7th century CE mosque underneath it!  They also found coins and pottery which helped to date the older mosque – the world’s oldest to be excavated.

Israeli non-profit PresenTense (reported previously) has partnered with the British Embassy in Israel and others to launch MoveUp - an accelerator for Arab-Israeli tech entrepreneurs. 10 or 12 entrepreneurs will take part in a two-month virtual program led by Israeli and UK experts.

The number of Israeli-Arabs studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Tel Aviv University’s School of Electrical Engineering has nearly doubled from 237 in 2016 to 459 in 2020. They include 150 Arab women - almost three times higher than in 2016. Small numbers but encouraging trend.