Israel Active

(thanks to Embrace Israel) A heart-warming true story about how teachers and staff at the Dolev School, together with her hosting family, helped Miriam undergo an amazing change. From being a seriously “at-risk” teenager, Miriam is now training to become a midwife.

Despite over 200 rockets from Gaza in less than a week threatening over one million Israeli civilians, couples in the South are still going ahead with the most important events of their lives. If the siren sounds, it’s up the isle and then down the shelter.

Whilst schools in the South of Israel were closed due to terrorist rockets from Gaza, the credit card company Isracard treated many children to a day at the Jerusalem Ice Festival.

Residents and visitors to Israel will have noticed the abundance of feral cats. The British brought them in during the mandate both as pets and to get rid of a rat problem. Now a new charity called “Meow Mitzvah Mission of Israel” is working to reduce the number of cats on the streets – humanely, of course.

According to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Jews had no connection to Temple Mount. So why have a Greek inscription barring non-Jews from Temple Mount? And the ancient Hebrew inscription “Lebeit hatekiya” in the corner of the Mount, indicating the site where the shofar was blown?

Shifra Buchris has seven children and finds the time to take care of her family all while serving in Israel’s Border Police. “It is not uncommon that when I go out for nocturnal patrols, I get a phone call from my husband to come breast-feed the baby.”

They are one of the Jewish State’s seven biblical species so it was only right that Israel should host the first International Pomegranate Symposium. Speakers included Dr. Fathi Abd Elhadi, of Israel’s Pomeg-Tech and Ahsen Isik Ozguven, of Cukurova University in Adana, Turkey.

I’ve just heard about Kinetis - a young Tel Aviv-based advocacy organization that aims to promote Israel as a vibrant and inspirational source of creativity and innovation. I suspect that we’ll be hearing quite regularly from Kinetis in this newsletter in the future.

There are some newsletter readers from countries where the media would not broadcast Mr Netanyahu’s speech to AIPAC. This is for their benefit. Please listen to his words about Iran.

Some purely divine views of the “holy” land under a snowy landscape. And the level of the Kinneret is still rising. Remarkable weather – and this weekend we are having a heat-wave! https://mobile.twitter.com/!/kinbot