Israel Active

Rabbi Sharon Shalom is Rav in Kiryat Gat. Born in Ethiopia he made aliyah in 1982. He served as an IDF infantry officer, has a B.Ed and an MA from Bar-Ilan University and is studying for his doctorate. He also teaches Ethiopian Jewish law and tradition at Bar Ilan.

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir said, “I am very moved to be in Israel and to walk on the soil of the Promised Land, and with me are all South Sudanese people. Israel has always supported the South Sudanese people. Without you, we would not have arisen.” Israeli PM Netanyahu promised to help the development of the fledgling country.

“For the very first time you heard an agreement between an Israeli and a Palestinian minister,” Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of Friends of the Earth Middle East, told The Jerusalem Post after the opening session of the first-ever Ashdod Sustainability Conference

The IDF is issuing thousands of entry permits to allow Palestinian Christians to travel between Israel, Gaza, Judea and Samaria for the entire holiday season.

Israel’s Alpine soldiers this year again took Palestinian Arab children suffering with cancer on a trip to Mount Hermon.

The Negev and Galilee Regional Development Ministry will contribute NIS 6 million to the total NIS 22m cost of project Project Wadi Attir – a future ecological community that combines Bedouin values with modern renewable technology and farming expertise.

Representatives from both countries plus Indonesia, Bangladesh and Tunisia visited the KKL-JNF booth at UN’s Climate Change conference in Durban. Others included Brazil, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Peru, Togo and eleven African states.

Google has launched its voice search for Apple's iPhones and Android in Hebrew and Arabic. The upgrade is significant; until now voice identification software could not handle Hebrew, and had to cope with Hebrew-accented English. Users will be able to search the internet by talking directly into their phones.

A delegation of Israeli mohels (ritual circumcisors) has just returned from a two-week trip to Africa. They prepared the UN medical team UNAIDS for their five-year program to circumcise an estimated 20 million African men in order to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus.

Hideo Sato first came to Israel in 1977 as a student at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. He addressed Israeli President Shimon Peres in fluent, flawless Hebrew, correctly pronouncing the letter “resh,” which many Japanese find difficult. New envoys from South Korea, Myanmar (Burma), Macedonia and Paraguay also presented their credentials. Korea’s Kim Il Soo said his predecessor had impressed upon him that he was going to a very important nation.