Israel Active

A ceremony was held in Haifa to recognize the record-high 3,000 Arabs volunteering in the national service program this year. This represents an increase of 76 percent over last year, when 1,700 participated. 85 percent of participants either study or enter the workforce afterwards.

In 1998 Miss Israel, Linor Abargil from Netanya, became Miss World. But her real story has only just been made into a documentary film. She went around the world, speaking out about her ordeal, speaking with others who had also been assaulted, working with survivors and those who help survivors.

Israeli is to provide technology and training to India to diversify its fruit and vegetable crops and raise yields. Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation (Mashav) would help set up 28 centers of excellence in 10 Indian states - each focused on specific fruit and vegetable crops.

Jerusalem-based Energiya Global is bringing light to the nations with a project for an 8.5- megawatt solar field in Rwanda. The country’s first solar field will be located at the Agahozo- Shalom Youth Village, a boarding school east of the capital Kigali, for orphans of the Rwandan genocide.

In an extremely rare case, Hadassah doctors performed a four-hour caesarian operation to deliver “Siamese” twins, sharing a heart, weighing 4.9 kg. The mother, Basma from the Arab village of Yatta near Hebron, is now back home with the twins, under medical observation.

Ophelie Namiech, has made Aliyah to Israel and serves as Israeli humanitarian aid organization IsraAID ‘s country director for South Sudan. Namiech trains social workers, community leaders and teachers to be able to address gender-based violence.

Over the last two decades, 24,000 volunteers have helped Israeli charity Livnot U’Lehibanot repair over 2,700 houses for the less fortunate of Israeli society. It is just one of Livnot’s many projects at the core of its mission to bring immigrants and native Israelis closer to the Land of Israel.

At Haifa’s Rambam hospital, Israeli-Arab Mohammed Eckert received a kidney from David Ben-Yair’s son whilst simultaneously Israeli-Jew David Ben-Yair received a kidney from Mohammed’s wife. "We bonded both physically and mentally," said David. "Here, in our country, and in the world at large, we have to realize that we have the power to save people, all people."

When young Noam Naor fell out the window and was pronounced clinically dead, his parents decided to donate his organs. Doctors at Schneider’s children hospital transplanted one kidney into an Israeli child and the other saved the life of a 10-year-old Palestinian Arab boy.

Israel’s “Computer for Every Child” project is designed to close the digital gap and allow Israeli boys and girls from families with reduced means to receive the latest technology, such as computer tablets. Over 55,000 computers have been distributed in approximately 200 localities, in all sectors of Israeli society: Ultra-orthodox, Arab, Bedouin, Druze, new immigrants, special needs children, etc.