Category Archives: Israeli Society

Brief Encounters

One of our advisers, Dr Irene Lancaster, gave Sunday’s ‘Thought for the Week’ radio broadcast on the BBC. Dr Lancaster is Research Fellow in the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester, has recently been appointed to the Council of Lord Carey’s Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East and has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Brief Encounters

Dr Irene Lancaster

I wonder if you are, like me, excited by train journeys? You get on a train and wonder who will be sitting opposite you. Will it be a ‘stranger on a train’, intent on their computer game, or will it be a true ‘brief encounter’, which will change you forever and make life seem even more meaningful than it was before?’

In the last few weeks, I have made two train journeys down south in order to do my bit for interfaith relations and world peace. But on both occasions it was the journeys down that set the mood of what was to come. On the first trip, I got into conversation with two students from Manchester University who were off to spend the Jewish Passover in Haifa, a town in northern Israel, on a project bringing Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs closer together.
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Facts about Israel

With the whole world attacking Israel at the moment, it may be interesting to see some of Israel achievements at the moment (with thanks to Canon Andrew White). Did you know…

An Israeli ornithologist is utilising barn owls to rid large cities of rodent problems.

An Israeli company has developed a device that helps nurses locate those hard-to-find veins.

Israeli actress Hanna Laslo took home the “Best Actress” award at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival this year for her performance in Amos Gitai’s “Free Zone.”

An Israeli system to help dyslexic readers is being used throughout the US and Europe.

Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) technology was pioneered in Israel.
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Israeli researchers close in on vaccine for autoimmune diseases

by Allison Kaplan Sommer, Israel21c

A revolutionary approach developed in Israel which uses the body’s own cells as a vaccine for treating autoimmune diseases is showing tremendous potential in human trials.

The most recent trials are taking place at Sheba Hospital and Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, where multiple sclerosis patients are being vaccinated in hope that it will slow down the deteriorative effects of their disease. The results of the double-blind studies are expected to be released in coming months.

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A healing place for children

by Shoshana Kordova, Israel 21c

Two-year-old Mahmoud Rasmi developed an immediate rapport with one of the first nurses he encountered at Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel – even though she couldn’t understand Mahmoud’s request in Arabic for a present, his father said as the toddler recovered from a cardiac operation.

Mahmoud was being treated for a narrow vein in his heart that was preventing him from breathing properly, after a doctor at another hospital recommended that the family take him to Schneider, in Petah Tikva. During an operation in January, his parents slept on foldout beds next to Mahmoud, which the hospital provides as part of its policy of involving parents in their children’s treatment.

“I felt like I was in a hotel,” said Mahmoud’s father, Abu Fur Rasmi, 41. Rasmi, a factory worker from the Israeli Arab village of Jatt in the north, spoke to ISRAEL21c from a glass-enclosed room in the center of the corridor, where medical staff have meetings while remaining visible to the patients. On the other side of the glass, a maroon-hatted clown entertained a child in a hospital bed just past a doorframe painted in bright yellow and purple hues.

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The legality of Jewish settlement activity

by David Bedein, IsraelBehindTheNews.com

A report was presented on February 21st, 2006 by “Bitselem” which claims that Israel’s policies of settling Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, in areas that came under Israel’s control after the 1967 war, are patently “illegal and in violation of international law”.

While it would seem somewhat unnecessary to defend the right of a Jew to build a home in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem or in the hills of Judea, it is still necessary to explicate the legality of settling Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
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