Israel Active

Following Montenegro’s appeal to NATO for international help, Israel dispatched firefighters and 4 planes to assist the Balkan state in tackling devastating forest fires that have spread across the country’s coast. A new heatwave in the region is expected to cause further wildfires.

Israeli non-profit Haifa 3D prints prosthetic hands for children and adults at no cost. Haifa 3D volunteers receive assistance from Israel’s Technion and donations for computers, printers, plastics and all other parts. They even designed a hand that can hold a guitar pick.

A 100-strong delegation joined Philippe Couillard’s first official visit to Israel by a Quebec premier. His priority was to open a Quebec trade office in Israel and set-up an artificial intelligence and metadata partnership. A $12 million program will support bilateral industrial R&D projects.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed agreements with the (Jewish) Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman covering disaster co-operation, medicine and health, trade statistics and temporary workers.  Ukraine recently voted against UNESCO’s anti-Israel resolution.

In the IDF’s “Operation Good Neighbor”, which began Aug 2016, there have been over 110 individual aid events. The goal was to reach as many needy Syrians as possible, without violating Israel’s carefully crafted policy of non-intervention in the Syrian civil war.

Thanks to fingerprint readers and workers’ buses, it now takes only 8 minutes for 50 Palestinian Arab factory workers to cross the “Green Line” each day on their way to work. The new system is being piloted prior to being rolled out across Israel, Judea and Samaria.

Arab Muslim female singer Nasreen Qadri (Nasrin Kadry) shares the stage with Radiohead and supports the band’s decision to perform in Israel.  Nasreen was born in Haifa and grew up in Lod, two cities with a mix of Arab and Jewish communities, living side by side.

During a rain-break at Wimbledon, Prince Michael of Kent helped launch the new Sport for Peace project to complete a new state-of-the-art sports center in Israel. It’s aim: to bring young Israeli Arabs and Jews together to compete alongside each other and increase understanding.

Israel’s Technion and the Israeli Government are establishing a new industrial park in the Galilee Arab settlement of Shfar’am. The aim of the park is to unify the Jewish and Arab economies – managed by Arabs but bringing together Jews and Arabs, to get the best out of both.

Three times a week, Israeli charity Ezer Mizion provides breakfast for 120 Holocaust survivors - elderly members of its British Café Club. They have lectures, exercise sessions, field trips and parties. In addition, Ezer Mizion’s Eshnav program gives one-on-one home support to homebound survivors.