Israel Active

The annual International Festival of Classical and Andalusian Arabic Music is held in the Crusader fortress in Old Acre (Akko) and throughout the city. The opening night of the Arabesque festival features the Firqat El Nour orchestra of Arab and ultra-orthodox Jewish musicians.

Israel came in sixth in the InterNations report of the best places in the world for Digital Life Abroad. Based on the latest Expat Insider survey, Israel rated 3rd for unrestricted access to online services (e.g. social media) and ease of getting a local mobile phone number.

A new 2,200 sqm terminal is set to open in 2020 at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport. It will cater to the 80,000+ families traveling with pets annually.

Injured former UK service personnel and their families are shortly to participate in a 5-day Veteran Games event in Tel Aviv, to celebrate the vital roles sports and family play in rehabilitation. The initiative will include a conference on PTSD and mental health.

200 volunteers plus 19 wounded soldiers spent three days at the ReStart/TOM Make-a-thon in Tel Aviv.  They developed non-patented devices to alleviate injuries for specific individuals that can then be mass-produced to help millions globally with similar injuries.  

I reported previously on the aid that Israel’s Ziv Medical Center was providing to Venezuelan refugees in Brazil. Israeli NGO IsraAID is also distributing relief materials and support to thousands of Venezuelans refugees in Cuculta on the Colombian border with Venezuela.

The number of Arab Israelis studying high-tech subjects at Israeli universities and colleges has doubled in six years. In 2018, 3,778 Arab students (12% of Israeli students) were studying high-tech subjects for BA degrees.

The Israel Air Force, along with pilots from the United Arab Emirates, United States, Greece, Italy and Cyprus took part of Iniohos 2019 - Greece’s largest military exercise.

52 students from 30 countries (including Saudi Arabia and Sudan) studying at Imperial College London, had an eye-opening tour of tech sites in Israel. These included Mobileye, IBM, Barclays Techstar, OurCrowd and the Technion and Weizmann Institutes.

“The State of Innovation,” published by Start-Up Nation Central (SNC) and PwC Israel, reports that over 500 multinational corporations from some 35 countries are active in Israel. It says they seek the ideas and the entrepreneurial culture emanating from Israel’s 6,000 plus startups.