Israel Active

The IDF evacuated a Sudanese refugee and her two premature babies from Eilat to Assaf Harofeh hospital in Tel Aviv. The babies weighed only 900 grams.

Festival Bashekel features top Israeli and international groups for a ticket price of just NIS 1 – equivalent to 25 US cents. Hundreds of thousands of young Israelis from marginalized communities have benefited and Bashekel even staged a joint Jewish-Arab festival in Gilboa in 2009.

The Institute for the Advancement of the Deaf and the national-religious rabbinic association Tzohar held the first ever sign language reading of the megila (Book of Esther) for the deaf and hard of hearing. More than 600 people attended the reading at the Tel Aviv International Synagogue.

Like their namesake, Corporal Esther Feldhammer, Sergeant Esther Yaso and Sergeant Esther Pakado chose to stand up and be counted when presented with the opportunity to join the IDF and defend their country. Women are exempt from combat duty but all three volunteered.

Yityish Titi Aynaw, a 21-year-old from Netanya, was chosen to be Israel’s representative in the Miss World 2013 competition - the first Ethiopian-born contestant to win the title.

IDF medics saved the life of a Palestinian Authority Arab motorcyclist who suffered severe abdominal bleeding in a crash with a mini-bus near Shechem, otherwise known as Nablus. The Arab is now in a stable condition at Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikvah, near Tel Aviv.

Watch this video of Palestinian Arabs, Jews and Druze working happily together at SodaStream’s factory in Judea. SodaStream’s CEO explains that he could have put his factory on the coast, but he wanted to build an enterprise that fostered peace between Jews and Arabs.

Samsung sent 10,000 Purim baskets to any Israeli whose friend signed them up for one on the Samsung Mobile Israel Facebook page. Samsung paid for the candy, and for two Israeli charities, Variety Israel and the Enosh Fund, to assemble the baskets.

A columnist in the Jerusalem Post stated that Israelis were self-centered and ignoring the poverty in Africa. So I wrote a letter to the editor mentioning just some of the recent work that Israelis have been doing in Africa. Please respond to unjustified criticism whenever possible.

The rhetoric has changed. Having found it impossible to pretend that Gaza is under siege, the latest upside-down anti-Israel argument is that Israel supplies too much! This week 42,898 tons of goods and gas entered Gaza from Israel in 1,445 truckloads.