Israel Active

Three of Israel's top banks (Leumi, Israel Discount and First International) are currently led by women. So is the Bank of Israel. At Leumi 40% of top management are women. So is the supervisor of banks, the director of the capital markets, insurance and savings authority and others.

Thousands of Tel Aviv residents built a 36-meter tower in Rabin Square from 500,000 K’nex and Lego bricks. They were honoring the memory of Omer Sayag, an 8-year-old cancer victim from Tel Aviv who used to love constructing with plastic bricks.

Over 6,000 lone soldiers (without families in Israel to support them) serve in the IDF - over 30% female. On Dec 29, the first lone soldier home for young women, The Norton and Sylvia Alvery Bayit L'Chayalot, opened in Mekor Chaim, Jerusalem.

Tahrir gave birth to healthy triplet boys just hours after the wife of her eldest son Muhammad had given her a first grandson at the same hospital – Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem. The high-risk pregnancy team of specialists and nurses all wished her Mazel Tov.

This extensive article describes some of the humanitarian aid that Israel provides to the Syrian victims of their civil war. It includes spaghetti, flour, baby formula, diapers, school supplies, fuel, generators, snakebite antivenom and even piping for water wells.

Here is a short video showing just a few of the positive Israeli activities last year.

Illinois governor Bruce Rauner made his first official visit to Israel as head of a delegation from the University of Illinois looking to expand its collaboration with Israeli universities. Governor Rauner’s wife is Jewish and two of their children have spent some time in Israel.

Aron White writes that Israel joining the Power Africa project (see 10th Dec) will have a major beneficial impact on the lives of millions of Africans.  It deserves much more publicity – as do all of Israel’s humanitarian activities.

Watch this new video from Israel’s WATEC highlighting experts from Canada, China and the Czech Republic, extol the virtues of Israeli water technologies.  Examples featured are Water-Gen (water from the air) and Kando (wastewater treatment).

23-year-old Lian Najami from Haifa is Israel’s first Arab Rhodes scholar. She is fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, English, German and Spanish. Her message: Arab Israelis, who make up some 20 percent of Israel’s citizenry, can succeed in the Jewish state. She has held herself up as living proof.