Israel Active

Behind the scenes of Iron Dome production, alongside Rafael's engineers, mentally disabled employees manufacture parts of the state-of-the-art system. For over a year, Rafael has employed three residents of a hostel run by the Social Affairs Ministry for people with mental disabilities, in the production of the Iron Dome system, as part of the company's community outreach program.

This current article features Leket Israel, an organization that salvages non-saleable crops from farmers and unused food from caterers and ships them to 200 soup kitchens, homeless shelters and other institutions. Leket has a budget of $7.5 million, has 90 staff and 45,000 volunteers a year.

The Sami Shamoon College of Engineering in Ashdod has launched a five-year degree program in civil and software engineering, which has been tailor-made for the lifestyle requirements of its 100 ultra-Orthodox participants – 70 men and 30 women.

Shefa Weinstein is CEO of Israeli start-up Shopetti – one of the 13 start-ups participating in the second round of companies enrolled in the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure. An American immigrant to Israel, she will shortly launch “the next big thing in online shopping”.

This year’s Israel Air Force Flight Academy graduates included Tamar, the IDF’s first religious woman navigator. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "Tamar is an example of the equality between the sexes in Israel and proof that in the IDF there is place for all parts of Israeli society.”

The Technion Sparks program enables 200 Israeli-Arab Druse high school students to take special science and technology courses at Israel’s Technion Institute. The project is the brainchild of Brig.-Gen. Hasson Hasson – the first Druse to serve as a military aide to a President of the State.

Sixty-six post-doctoral scholars from India will travel to Israel in the coming months to pursue research at top universities. The government of Israel announced three-year scholarships grants for outstanding Indian scholars.

Top Greek officials have been visiting Israel and presenting opportunities to invest in and own Greek infrastructure. Israel’s Elbit won the tender to buy the old Athens airport. Israelis have purchased a number of Greek hotels, and an Israeli company is in talks to buy Greece’s national oil company.

This important fact was missing in most other media reports on the recent International TIMSS scores for Israeli school children. Israeli-Arabs have improved so much that their math, science and reading standards now exceed those of Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East.

The Nazareth Hospital has become the first non-Jewish hospital to receive the annual Chairman of the Knesset award for its service to the predominately Arab community in Northern Galilee region of Israel.