Navigation:
Reporting on the Middle East, Science, and Education for January 31, 2010 - ט"ז שבט תש"ע
Pages
Archives
Toward a better future through tolerance and mutualism
Sponsored By:
Recent Comments:
Richard on Hamas Occupies Palestinian Lands.
Comments RSS
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Table of contents
1. IRAQ: Sectarian tension ahead of polls threatens “humanitarian crisis” – analysts
2. EGYPT: Pig-cull induced street rubbish a “national scandal”
3. YEMEN: Child trafficking to Saudi Arabia down in 2009
4. EGYPT: Displaced flood victims still waiting for aid
5. OPT: Flood misery for tented communities in Gaza
IRAQ: Sectarian tension ahead of polls threatens “humanitarian crisis” – analysts
BAGHDAD, 24 January 2010 (IRIN) – A government move to exclude a number of prominent Sunni candidates from national parliamentary elections on 7 March could re-ignite sectarian violence and create a new humanitarian crisis in the war-torn country, according to some analysts.
full report
EGYPT: Pig-cull induced street rubbish a “national scandal”
CAIRO, 26 January 2010 (IRIN) – The Egyptian government’s decision to cull all of the country’s 300,000 pigs in May 2009 is increasingly being viewed by experts and officials as a gross mistake as piles of organic waste the pigs once ate accumulate in Cairo’s streets, posing serious health hazards.
full report
YEMEN: Child trafficking to Saudi Arabia down in 2009
SANAA, 25 January 2010 (IRIN) – Fewer Yemeni children were trafficked to Saudi Arabia in 2009 than in recent years, according to a Yemeni Ministry of Social Affairs official.
full report
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on January 31, 2010 - ט"ז שבט תש"ע at 2:29 pm
Comments Off
After learning of father’s past as SS officer at age 18, Didi Henke of Germany visits Israel, later moves to Jewish state to dedicate her life to helping Holocaust survivors. Now, some 20 years later, she is honored by Social Affairs Ministry
David Regev, YNet News, January 31, 2010
"Suddenly, at the age of 18, my life was turned upside down. To learn, out of nowhere, that your father was a Nazi officer – it’s hard to describe the shock." The 67-year-old Didi Henke still finds it difficult to speak of the moment she learned that her father was a senior SS officer.
Following the earth-shattering discovery, Henke decided to move to Israel and dedicate her life to the State and the wellbeing of Holocaust survivors.
Henke learned of her father’s past by chance, during her studies at university in Germany. "In one of the courses we were asked to learn about the history of our cities," she recounted.
"I searched information sources in the university’s archives, and all of a sudden, I found out that my father was an SS officer, who, among other things, was in charge of energy in the city. I was shocked. It felt horrible. I went to talk to him, but both he and my mother refused to cooperate."
The fact that her father showed no remorse for his actions led Henke to cut ties with him: "I took him out of my heart and I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to Holocaust survivors, in hopes of rectifying what my father did."
Henke made her first visit to Israel in 1978. She fell in love with the country and returned to it 52 times. In 1987, when she retired, she decided to move to the Jewish state. At the time, her parents had already passed away, and her siblings, who remained true to their father’s Nazi upbringing, barely kept in touch.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts, Yad Sarah on January 31, 2010 - ט"ז שבט תש"ע at 2:15 pm
Comments Off
Incubating peace with Israel’s Arab sector |
 |
A flagship incubator in Israel is helping to create coexistence while ensuring that Muslim and Christian Israeli Arabs develop expertise in biotech and the life sciences.
Israel’s Muslim and Christian Arabs can develop expertise in biotech and life sciences thanks to a national business project created in 2002. While the Jewish state was founded as a home for Jewish people from all over the world, it is also home to Arab Muslim and Arab Christian minorities, mostly living in the Galilee region in the north of the country.
In the United States, equal opportunity initiatives are well developed to ensure that blacks, Asians, Latinos and every other minority can access education and find gainful employment and opportunities. Israel is providing something similar for its minorities.
Based in Jesus’ boyhood home in Nazareth, a team of seven at New Generation Technology (NGT) is doing more than providing Israeli Arabs with access to jobs. The tech incubator company, funded by the government and private investors, is amplifying the expertise in the Arab community so that its members can interact with the population at large and grow companies that will ultimately impact the world.
“We also have one IT company,” Yosi Turkaspa, CEO of NGT tells ISRAEL21c. “But most are in the area of biotech and life sciences. It was partly a strategic decision. If you look at the Arab community in Israel these are the areas in which they are educated. Most of their PhDs are in biology, medicine, pharmaceuticals and dentistry, more than electrical engineering.”
Working together as equals
An hour’s drive from Tel Aviv, the incubator houses about 20 startups. And although the focus is on the Arab sector, the companies’ management personnel come from both the Arab and Jewish sectors, making it a unique project where the two populations are encouraged to work and build together. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Business and Commerce, Education, Health Sciences, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, News Articles, Recent Posts, Science and Technology on January 29, 2010 - י"ד שבט תש"ע at 3:13 am
Comments Off
By Gil Troy, January 28, 2010, for Tu B’shavat 5770
In the ideological wars surrounding Israel, it is always better to celebrate on our terms than try defending against our enemies’ assaults. Our failure to build a proactive strategy around Tu B’Shvat and other moments reflects the epidemic of ignorance in the Jewish world today, and our ceding of the agenda to the Palestinians and their fellow travelers, especially on campus.
Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish Arbor Day, is this Shabbat, January 30. When I was young I preferred Israel’s Independence Day because we received blue-and-white cookies rather than yucky figs and carobs, known by the aggressive Yiddish name "bokser." But educators should distribute blue-and-white cookies along with Israeli fruit because Tu B’Shvat celebrates Israel – and Zionism. The world only recently discovered environmentalism, yet Jews have a deep relationship with nature, while Zionism resonates with the environmental ethic. Tu B’Shvat is our annual opportunity to show just how "green" the "blue and white" sensibility is.
It never ceases to amaze me how frequently we miss opportunities to deepen our connection to Israel and Zionism, naturally, organically. As we brainstorm about re-branding Israel, re-framing Zionism, trying to justify our existence, we often forget the rightness of our case and the richness of our tradition. The Jewish calendar is our friend. It provides us with many moments that tell our story beautifully, express our values vividly, allowing us to celebrate Israel, to renew our Zionism, without fighting anyone, without being defensive.
Tu B’Shvat is particularly welcome because of the growing "green" movement and because it coincides with the anti-Israeli activity in late January and early February that falsely compares democratic Israel with the racist Apartheid regime that once dominated South Africa. While we should refute the Apartheid libel aggressively, we should also use Tu B’Shvat to celebrate Israel, Jewish values, and Zionism. In the ideological wars surrounding Israel, it is always better to celebrate on our terms than try defending against our enemies’ assaults. Our failure to build a proactive strategy around Tu B’Shvat and other moments reflects the epidemic of ignorance in the Jewish world today, and our ceding of the agenda to the Palestinians and their fellow travelers, especially on campus.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Judaism, Middle East, Opinion, Recent Posts on January 28, 2010 - י"ג שבט תש"ע at 9:04 am
Comments Off
Hilary Heuler, VOA News, | Auschwitz 27 January 2010
Rabbi Israel Meir Lau (l) Auschwitz survivor Michael Goldman-Gilad, second left, Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, (r) attend solemn ceremonies marking 65 years since the camp was liberated by the Red Army, in the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz/ Birkenau, 27 Jan. 2010
Holocaust survivors joined world leaders in southern Poland on Wednesday to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the infamous World War II Nazi concentration camp.
Hundreds of people braved snow and sub-freezing temperatures to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day at Auschwitz, Nazi Germany’s most infamous concentration camp.
The event marked the 65th anniversary of the day the camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army.
Holocaust survivors and their families gathered with the leaders of Poland and Israel to lay candles at the Monument of the Victims in neighboring Birkenau, where the majority of Auschwitz prisoners were murdered. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Judaism, News Articles, Recent Posts on January 28, 2010 - י"ג שבט תש"ע at 3:41 am
Comments Off
By Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel 21C
January 26, 2010
Just one day "at the circus" leads to remarkable changes in the way Israeli Jewish, Muslim and Christian high school students relate to each other.
Let the games begin: Arab and Jewish children learn to touch and support each other through circus tricks.
It’s not unusual for Jewish students at the progressive Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa to participate in coexistence projects with peers at nearby Arab schools. But all of Penny Arenson’s 10th-graders were taken by surprise when they discovered that swinging from the flying trapeze offered them a whole new way of connecting with kids from a different culture.
In early December, Arenson took her wary group of 35 students to meet an equally wary group of 10th-graders from Lily Khoury’s class at the Baptist School in Nazareth. Their destination was the Israel Circus School in Kfar Yoshua, about halfway between the two schools.
"It was obvious to all of us that their first meeting had to be there, on neutral ground, centered around a fun activity with very little talking,"
Arenson tells ISRAEL21C. Her students are Jewish, while the Baptist School students are mostly Christian and some Muslim Arabs.
Though Israel’s Galilee region is dotted with side-by-side Jewish and Arab villages, the children seldom have contact and generally don’t speak each other’s language.
"All the kids were wearing name tags in English, Hebrew and Arabic. We divided them into four groups, mixing Jews and Arabs, boys and girls, shy kids and outgoing kids," says Arenson. "Each group did four activities: trapeze, rope climbing, trampoline acrobatics and juggling. At the end, each group put on a performance."
A change in attitudes
When they returned to school, both Arenson and Khoury found a remarkable change in their students’ attitudes: "At the beginning, a lot of the kids in both our classes were very hesitant about the meeting," says Arenson. "They don’t know the ‘other side,’ and it’s scary for them. But when we came back, they all said they loved it. Their fears were annihilated. Even if they won’t all be best friends, some of them are already talking on Facebook."
And that’s after just one session. The Coexistence Circus Project is expected to continue over the course of the entire school year.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, News Articles, Recent Posts on January 26, 2010 - י"א שבט תש"ע at 11:39 am
Comments Off
This is a single stem cell-derived neuron that has migrated away from the transplantation site in the cortex and grown into a mature neuron. The blue stain shows the nuclei of the endogenous neural cells in this part of the brain. (Credit: Courtesy, with permission: Weimann et al. The Journal of Neuroscience 2010.)
ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2010) — Transplanted neurons grown from embryonic stem cells can fully integrate into the brains of young animals, according to new research in the Jan. 20 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
Healthy brains have stable and precise connections between cells that are necessary for normal behavior. This new finding is the first to show that stem cells can be directed not only to become specific brain cells, but to link correctly.
In this study, a team of neuroscientists led by James Weimann, PhD, of Stanford Medical School focused on cells that transmit information from the brain’s cortex, some of which are responsible for muscle control. It is these neurons that are lost or damaged in spinal cord injuries and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). "These stem cell-derived neurons can grow nerve fibers between the brain’s cerebral cortex and the spinal cord, so this study confirms the use of stem cells for therapeutic goals," Weimann said.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Science on January 24, 2010 - ט' שבט תש"ע at 3:16 pm
Comments Off
By Barry Shaw, January 23, 2010
We were all stunned, silenced, shocked by the sights and sounds of the disaster that struck Haiti and by the underserving tragedy that hit the poor suffering people of that island.
We have been moved to reach out to the Haitians, who we do not know, and offer them our charity.
It is, for us, a matter of indifference that they are a different race, a different color, a different religion. Their genuine needs cry out to us and we give them whatever we can.
Some, insufficiently few, left jobs, homes, and families to travel to this stricken land to put their professional skills at the service of the people in the immediate aftershock of the earthquake.
It is, after all, a basic tenant of the Judeo-Christian ethic to feel the pain of sufferers, to reach out to them, and give them a helping hand.
A practiced Jewish philosophy says that whoever save a single life it is as if he has saved the entire world.
Israel has been wrongly accused in its recent past of acting disproportionately.
In responding to the earthquake in far-off Haiti, Israel acted in a hugely disproportionate manner.
It was out of proportion to any other country in the speed of the Israeli response. Within two hours of news of the disaster Israel was recruiting manpower and gathering much needed equipment.
The quality and quantity of the search and rescue team and the hand-picked medical staff was way out of proportion compared to the size of other, better developed, countries.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts on January 23, 2010 - ח' שבט תש"ע at 3:34 pm
Comments Off
Avrom Sutzkever, who died January 20 at the age of 96, was not only a great Yiddish poet but is acknowledged as being one of the great poets of the 20th century.
For several years he had been ailing and living in a nursing home in Tel Aviv. It was a city upon which he’d had a profound cultural impact as founder of the leading Yiddish literary journal Di Goldene Keyt (The Golden Chain), which he edited until it ceased publication in 1995.
In the 1970s and 1980s, especially with the release of his series “Lider fun Togbukh” (“Poems from a Diary, 1974-1981”), he became the de facto national Yiddish poet. He received the Israel Prize in 1985 and remains the only Yiddish poet to win the prestigious award.
Sutzkever was born in 1913 to a family of rabbis and Torah scholars in Smorgon, southwest of Vilna in White Russia. His family escaped to Siberia during the First World War but in 1921 he returned to Vilna.
In 1933 he became active in the Yiddish literary group Yung-Vilne (Young Vilna) together with Chaim Grade, Shmerke Kaczerginski and Leyzer Volf. His first book of poetry “Lider” (Poems) appeared in 1937 and was followed in 1940 by “Valdiks” (Of the Forest), published during the brief period of Lithuanian autonomy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on January 22, 2010 - ז' שבט תש"ע at 3:25 am
Comments Off
by Rabbi Chaim Yisroel Blumenfeld, Yeshiva Neveh Zion
He witnessed a Scud hit near his home and three neighboring apartment buildings collapse. He was certain that there could be no survivors yet after fifteen terrifying minutes climbing over the debris he found his family alive and unhurt and no casualties from the collapsed buildings.
Yesterday the yeshiva made a Seudas Hodayah (thanksgiving meal) for the miracles we experienced during the Persian Gulf War. Many of the talmidim were not yet born in 1991 or at least too young to be aware of what was happening. One of them remarked afterwards, “we’ve heard about it, but never heard such stories.” It’s tragic and unforgiveable that we should forget what transpired.
Political analysts tell us that during the week of Parshas Bo, Saddam Hussein was pushed against the wall without a way of saving face, as if Hashem was hardening his heart so that he would fight “the mother of all wars” and when the European Union decided to meet with him he ignored his closest advisors and refused.
Those of you who were fortunate enough to remain that year in Neveh might remember how when a friend of mine from Miluim (reserve duty) told me that he didn’t have sufficient manpower to put together the gas mask kits, I recruited Neveh and we did the job. There were two boys that ran down the hill every time a siren sounded to help an elderly couple don their masks and calm their nerves. They were rewarded at least once by seeing the Scuds passing by in the south towards the west and Ramat Gan/Tel Aviv. The achdus and chesed were unbelievable. It started on January 15th when nearly 100,000 davened at the Kosel and continued until Purim when we took apart our sealed rooms.
I read them the dramatic and moving story of a Tel Aviv lawyer who was caught outside without his mask returning from shul on Shabbos Eve. He witnessed a Scud hit near his home and three neighboring apartment buildings collapse. He was certain that there could be no survivors yet after fifteen terrifying minutes climbing over the debris he found his family alive and unhurt and no casualties from the collapsed buildings. Each survivor had his own story how he managed to be at the right place at the right time. The lawyer remarked, “it was if they weren’t the masters of their own fate. It was if they were riding on waves, being taken places. I saw we weren’t in control of anything, it’s as if we got a warning of sorts. G-d caused damage to our property and not to our lives.”
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts on January 21, 2010 - ו' שבט תש"ע at 8:55 am
Comments Off
