Israel Active

To help charities, the not-for-profit organization Ogen is to provide $70 million in bridging loans for non-profit organizations that are awaiting promised state funds from delayed 2020 budget.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) has brought 28 professors from universities and colleges across the US to Israel. The JNF Faculty Fellowship Program links US scholars with their respective Israeli faculty to promote joint research, establish exchange programs and to see the country.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s attended the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Birkenau. As his plane arrived at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, Elbit’s J-Music defense system was visible on the underside of his Airbus A330.

Eli Bin, Director-General of Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA), has offered assistance to the Turkish Red Crescent following the 6.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Alazig province in Turkey. The powerful quake has resulted in over 1,000 casualties.

Israeli charity iAID has been combatting global humanitarian crises such as in Mexico, Texas, Peru, Mozambique, Indonesia and Iraq since 2017 Now renamed SmartAID, its volunteers are on Kangaroo Island in Australia, using innovation and technology to rebuild lives.

Israel’s Innovation Authority and Ministry of Education have selected Israeli non-profit Unistream to run its 5-year Young Entrepreneurs after-school programs for Druze, Bedouin, and Haredi students. It aims to give entrepreneurship and leadership skills to underprivileged teens.

Aziz Maraka, a singer-songwriter from Jordan, performed to 5,000 Arab-Israelis during the annual Christmas Market festival in Kafr Yasif, Northern Israel. He learned from first-hand that Arabs in Israel enjoy more rights than in many Arab and Muslim countries.

Over 20,000 Christians (including Eritreans, Syriacs and Ethiopians) attended baptism ceremonies at Qasr al-Yahud, on the Israeli side of the Jordan River. The procession was led by Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox patriarch Theophilos III and protected by the IDF and Israeli police.

Israel’s heavy rains are good and bad news. The Kinneret , but Nahariya’s streets were transformed into rivers. Arab tractor operators rushed to help trapped residents and open blocked roads. At the city hospital (managed by an Arab), Jewish doctors treated Arabs and vice versa.

The IDF’s 91st HaGalil Division now has a new manpower officer, Masala Tagnia. She is the first Ethiopian-Israeli woman to be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in the IDF. She is the sister of Israel’s TV Channel 12 reporter Brahano Tagnia.