Israel-Cyprus exclusive economic zone set

Article published on Ynetnews December 19, 2010

By Zvi Lavi

Agreement provides Israel with exclusive economic, research rights and sovereignty over artificial facilities built within maritime area. 'Delimitation of territorial water borderline enables investors to feel economic certitude, promote and develop Israel's energy market,' says Minister Landau.

The exclusive economic zone within the territorial waters between Israel and Cyprus was set on Friday morning at the maritime half way point. The clarification of the borderline is essential in protecting Israel's rights to oil and underwater gas reservoirs.

The border was set in an agreement between Israel and Cyprus, signed this morning in Nicosia by Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau and Cyprus' Foreign Minister Markos Kyprianou.

During the signing ceremony, Landau said that "the delimitation of the territorial water borderline will enable investors to feel economic certitude and promote and develop Israel's energy market."

The exclusive economic zone is an area where the country has exclusive economic and research rights but has no sovereignty other than over the artificial facilities it builds in the area. The accord was signed after vigorous negotiations in recent months, between diplomatic and professional representatives from both sides.

Delineation of the maritime borderline with Cyprus was done with Cyprus' full cooperation through experts from both countries, according to the accepted principles of international law according to the accepted professional measuring methods.

Until now, Israel operated in Mediterranean waters according to the principles of international law concerning the international shelf. According to these principles, the country has automatic rights over all natural resources within her international shelf even if it doesn't make a formal announcement.

The delimitation of the exclusive economic zone allows for more maritime border certainty towards investors and neighboring countries and will help Israel anchor its economic rights in the Mediterranean as well as pave the way for searching for and developing energy sources at sea.

Joint resources will be divided

In the agreement, Israel and Cyprus commit to cooperating on the development of cross border resources if any are discovered, and will hold negotiations over the nature of the technical and professional arrangements needed in order to divide the joint resources.

Following the signing of the agreement Minister Landau said: "The signing reflects the close relations and ongoing cooperation between Israel and Cyprus.

In light of the recent significant natural gas resources discovery in the Mediterranean, the delimitation of the maritime border has an important role in anchoring the essential economic rights of the state in connection with the ocean's natural resources."

Druze and Bedouin join ZAKA's rescue operations

Article published on ISRAEL21c November 15,
By Abigail Klein Leicman

Israeli rescue organization ZAKA is now training volunteers from minority communities to be first responders in the wake of tragedy.

A Bedouin volunteer joining one of the four new Arab units in ZAKA

For 15 years, Israel's unique voluntary rescue organization, ZAKA, has been sending volunteers to work alongside law enforcement and emergency personnel following acts of terrorism, accidents and natural disasters across the globe.

Now ZAKA is expanding its network within Israel to better serve Arab, Bedouin, Circassian and Druze populations. Two new units in the north and two in the south will be staffed by members of those minority communities, after receiving training that will be adapted to their own religious and ethnic customs.

Until ZAKA (a Hebrew acronym for Disaster Victim Identification) was founded in 1995 by Jerusalemite Yehuda Meshi-Zahav in response to a spate of terrorist attacks, the Jewish state had no organized system for dealing with victims' body parts and blood, considered sacred by Jewish law.

More volunteers means a more perfect world

Fifty-one-year-old Meshi-Zahav tells ISRAEL21c that ZAKA also handles bodies of non-Jewish victims - even terrorists - with sensitivity to cultural and religious principles However, he is eager to have volunteers from Israel's non-Jewish sectors become full participants.

"We believe everyone wants to do good work," he says. "Adding as many people as possible to our volunteering circle is a means to perfecting our world."

Meshi-Zahav was a yeshiva student when he witnessed the first bus bombing just outside Jerusalem in 1989. He and some other students ran to help, but could not offer much assistance without expertise in forensics or first aid. "I went home and the images kept replaying in my mind like a horror movie," he recalls.

Over the next six years, he built up the basis for what would become the world's only Jewish organization of its kind.

Today, about 1,500 ZAKA volunteers - including canine, diving, and rappelling specialists - take responsibility for ensuring that all human remains are treated in accordance with religious guidelines. The only organization authorized by the Israeli police to handle recovery and body part identification, ZAKA participates in search-and-rescue missions and firefighting efforts, international disaster relief, and accident-prevention programs.

Government-sponsored training for minorities

Although small ZAKA units are already active among the Bedouin population in the south and the Druze communities of the north, this marks the first time ZAKA's expansion is being sponsored by the government. Galil Ayoob Kara, a Druze member of Israel's parliament and Deputy Minister for the Development of the Negev and Galilee, has termed the arrangement "holy work" and a critical step toward equality for all Israeli citizens.

Meshi-Zahav looks to the project as a way of breaking barriers and building bridges between Israeli Jews and minorities, which is one of his priorities. "We are open to all: Religious and not, Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and Arabs," he says. "Our guiding principle is our belief that man was made in the image of God."

An ultra-Orthodox Jew with side curls and a black skullcap, Meshi-Zahav has been present at some grim scenes as a result of his work with ZAKA.

ZAKA assisted at the sites of the World Trade Center and Mumbai terrorist attacks; the Columbia space shuttle tragedy in Texas; the carnage in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; synagogue bombings in Istanbul; the tsunami aftermath in Southeast Asia; plane crashes in Phuket, Thailand, Mexico, and Namibia; the earthquake in Haiti; and a recent murder of a Jewish traveler in the Ukraine, among other tragedies.

The United Nations officially recognized ZAKA as an international humanitarian volunteer organization in 2005.

UN recognition opens doors

"UN recognition is extremely important in our overseas operations," explains ZAKA spokeswoman Lydia Weitzman. "That recognition allows us to go into all areas, even countries where Israel does not have diplomatic relations. The humanitarian message of ZAKA is the key that opens doors to all communities."

ZAKA recently established International Rescue branches in foreign countries including Mexico, France and Hong Kong, with another planned for Kiev to serve Eastern Europe. Community volunteers are to be trained to offer an immediate professional response to a disaster in their region, before Israel-based volunteers can arrive.

The four new Israeli units will begin gearing up this winter. Gadi Kellerman is working with about 15 Bedouins in the south, recruited mostly from among border patrol and police officers. Hezki Farkash is setting up the new Druze units in Beit Jann and Yirka up north.

"In the north and the south, our goal is to keep growing the number of volunteers from the Druze and Bedouin communities," stresses Meshi-Zahav.

Meet the Israeli Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle - AvantGuard

Direct flights from Denmark to resume after intifada halt

Article published by GLOBES Israel's Business Arena

October 24, 2010

By Globe's Correspondent

Cimber Air's direct flight will cuts the time of the trip in half.

Danish airline Cimber Air will operate three direct scheduled and charter flights a week from Copenhagen to Tel Aviv beginning November 1.

A Cimber Sterling Airlines Boeing 737-700

There has been a significant increase in the numbers of tourists visiting Israel from Scandinavia during 2010. This, together with the anticipated continued increase with the commencement of the new and reinstated flights is expected to return the Scandinavian countries to the incoming tourism map of Israel and generate a 25% increase in incoming tourism from these countries. In January-September 2010, 47,400 tourists arrived from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark (16% more than the same period last year and 19% more than 2008.)

The direct flight cuts the time of the trip in half, as what was a nine-hour journey, including a changeover in Vienna or another European capital, is now about 4.5 hours.

Daily El AL and SAS flights between Israel and the Scandinavian countries ceased operating ten years ago with the onset of the intifada, after a significant drop in demand.

Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov said, “The Tourism Ministry will continue its marketing efforts in 2011 to bring back the tourism traffic from Scandinavia to Israel, as main source countries for incoming tourism."

Google to bring Dead Sea Scrolls online

Article published on Ynetnews October 21, 2010

By Associated Press

Technology giant, Israel announce plan to launch public viral database for ancient archaeological treasure.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, among the world's most important, mysterious and tightly restricted archaeological treasures, are about to get Googled.

The technology giant and Israel announced Tuesday that they are teaming up to give researchers and the public the first comprehensive and searchable database of the scrolls – a 2,000-year-old collection of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek documents that shed light on Judaism during biblical times and the origins of Christianity. For years, experts have complained that access to the scrolls has been too limited.

Once the images are up, anyone will be able to peruse exact copies of the original scrolls as well as an English translation of the text on their computer – for free.

Officials said the collection, expected to be available within months, will feature sections that have been made more legible thanks to high-tech infrared technology.
"We are putting together the past and the future in order to enable all of us to share it," said Pnina Shor, an official with Israel's Antiquities Authority.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the late 1940s in caves in the Judean Desert and are considered one of the greatest finds of the last century.

After the initial discovery, tens of thousands of fragments were found in 11 caves nearby. Some 30,000 of these have been photographed by the antiquities authority, along with the earlier finds. Together, they make up more than 900 manuscripts.

For decades, access to 500 scrolls was limited to a small group of scholar-editors with exclusive authorization from Israel to assemble the jigsaw puzzle of fragments, and to translate and publish them. That changed in the early 1990s when much of the previously unpublished text was brought out in book form.

Restricted access
But even now, access for researchers is largely restricted at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the originals are preserved in a dark, temperature-controlled room.

Shor said scholars must receive permission to view the scrolls from the authority, which receives about one request a month. Most are given access, but because no more than two people are allowed into the viewing room at once, scheduling conflicts arise. Researchers are permitted three hours with only the section they have requested to view placed behind glass.

Putting the scroll online will give scholars unlimited time with the pieces of parchment and may lead to new hypotheses, Shor said.

"This is the ultimate puzzle that people can now rearrange and come up with new interpretations," she said.

Scholars already can access the text of the scrolls in 39 volumes along with photographs of the originals, but critics say the books are expensive and cumbersome. Shor said the new pictures – photographed using cutting-edge technology – are clearer than the originals.

The refined images were shot with a high-tech infrared camera NASA uses for space imaging. It helped uncover sections of the scrolls that have faded over the centuries and became indecipherable.

If the images uploaded prove to be of better quality than the original, scholars may rely on these instead of traveling to Jerusalem to see the scrolls themselves, said Rachel Elior, a professor of Jewish thought at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

"The more accessible the fragments are the better. Any new line, any new letter, any better reading is a great happiness for scholars in this field," she said.

'May spur new interpretations'
The new partnership is part of a drive by Google to have historical artifacts catalogued online, along with any other information.

"There are artifacts in boxes, in museum basements. We ask ourselves how much this stuff is available on the Internet. The answer is not a lot, and not enough," said Yossi Matias, an official from Google-Israel.

Google has worked to upload old books from European universities and pictures of archaeological finds from Iraq's national university. This project is different, Matias said, because access to the scrolls may spur new interpretations of the highly debated text and because the scrolls have a more universal appeal.

For the last 18 years, segments of the scrolls have been publicly displayed in museums around the world. At a recent exhibit in St. Paul, Minn., 15 fragments were shown.

Shor said a typical 3-month exhibit in the US draws 250,000 people, illustrating just how much the scrolls have fascinated people.

"From the minute all of this will go online, there will be no need to expose the scroll anymore," Shor said. "Anyone in his office or on his couch will be able to click and see any scroll fragment or manuscript that they like."

Much mystery continues to surround the scrolls. No one knows who copied these ancient texts or how they got there. The scrolls include parts of the Hebrew Bible as well as treatises on communal living and apocalyptic war.

Over the years, the texts have sparked heated debates among researchers over their origins.

Some believe the Essenes, a monastic sect seen by some as a link to early Christianity, hid the scrolls during the Jewish revolt of the first century AD, Others believe they were written in Jerusalem and stashed in caves at Qumran by Jewish refugees fleeing the Roman conquest of the city, also in the first century.

IAI presents new Panther UAV

Article published in Jerusalem Post October 5, 2010

By Yaakov Lappin

The new 65-kilogram UAV can stay in the air for up to six hours and fly at an altitude of 10,000 feet. It comes equipped with a specialized day and night camera with a laser range-finder on board.

Israel Aerospace Industries is set to unveil a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) during a conference in Latrun on Tuesday.

The Panther UAV “combines the flight capabilities of an airplane with helicopter- like hovering, a tilt-rotor propeller, and a fixed-wing vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) system, which enable a runway-free takeoff and landing on an unprepared area,” IAI said in a press release on Monday.

The Panther will go on display at the Association of the United States Army’s (AUSA) 2010 annual meeting and exposition in Washington, to be held October 25-27.

Itzhak Nissan, president and CEO of IAI, said, “The Panther’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, along with its effective use of changing flight dynamics, make it a unique and invaluable asset on the tactical battlefield for the Israel Defense Forces and for foreign customers. We consider the innovative technology used in this system to be ground-breaking.”

The new 65-kilogram UAV can stay in the air for up to six hours and fly at an altitude of 10,000 feet. It comes equipped with a specialized day and night camera with a laser range-finder on board.

Milk drinkers lose more weight, research shows

Article published on ISRAEL21c September 26, 2010

By ISRAEL21c staff

A two-year weight loss study held in Israel reveals that dieters who consume milk lose more weight on average than those who don't.

A new weight loss study conducted in Israel has revealed that dieters who consume milk or milk products lose more weight on average than those who consume little to no milk products.

The two-year dietary intervention study, of 300 overweight men and women in middle age, was carried out by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). The researchers found that regardless of diet, dieters with the highest dairy calcium intake - equal to 12 oz. of milk or other dairy products, lost about 12 pounds (6kg) at the end of two years.

Dieters with the lowest dairy calcium intake - about half a glass of milk, only lost seven pounds on average.

The researchers, led by Dr. Danit Shahar, of BGU's Center for Health and Nutrition, and the Faculty of Health sciences, also discovered that levels of vitamin D found in the blood, also affected the success of weight loss treatments. The results confirmed existing research showing that overweight participants have lower blood levels of the vitamin.

Higher vitamin D levels in successful dieters

"It was known that over-weight people had lower levels of serum vitamin D but this is the first study that actually shows that serum Vitamin D increased among people who lost weight," says Shahar. "This result lasted throughout the two years that the study was conducted, regardless of whether [participants] were on a low-carb, low fat or Mediterranean diet."

Vitamin D increases calcium absorption in the bloodstream and in addition to sun exposure can be obtained from fortified milk, fatty fish and eggs. Americans generally consume less than the recommended daily requirement of Vitamin D which is found in four glasses of milk (400 international units).

The study, which was published in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, was part of the Dietary Intervention Randomized Control Trial (DIRECT) held at the Nuclear Research Center in Israel in collaboration with Harvard University, the University of Leipzig, Germany and the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Some 322 moderately obese people, aged 40 to 65, took part in the study evaluating low fat, Mediterranean or low-carb diets for two years.

In earlier findings, scientists discovered that low-fat diets aren't the best way to lose weight, but that dieters are likely to lose more weight on a Mediterranean diet, or a low-carb diet.

The study was supported by the Israel Ministry of Health and the Israel Dairy Council, the Israel Chief Scientist Office, German Research Foundation and the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Research Foundation.