Good News, Israel

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JERUSALEM EDITION

Quote for the Week

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.”

The Book of Psalms Chap 122

About 3000 years before it actually happened the Psalmist [see above] said; “ Jerusalem is as a city that is united together” and for us this became a reality on the twenty eighth day of the Hebrew month of Iyar 1967 and so we commemorate the 44th year of a united city, a vibrant, bustling and unique city. A city that is home to 800 000 people, Jews, Moslems and Christians who all enjoy freedom of worship in the myriad synagogues, churches and mosques that fill its space. A meeting place of the best that western culture has to offer and the exotica of the east. And if mediaeval maps, that tended to sacrifice topographical accuracy for spiritual license, are to be believed; the center of the world.

Tradition has it that there are two Jerusalems; there is the celestial Jerusalem, known in Hebrew as Yerushalayim shel Ma’alah and then there is the terrestrial Jerusalem called Yerushalayim shel Matah. But now there is a third Jerusalem, the Subterranean Jerusalem, growing larger by the day as archaeologists continue the painstaking but enormously exciting work of peeling back and preserving layer upon layer of what was. Go there and stand in a city, a Jewish city that existed 2000 years ago. The ‘time travelers’ who visited in 2010 numbered more than a million with increases expected this year as the revelations proceed, with a new project nearing completion as we write. Julius Caesar was heard to exclaim: Ex Africa semper aliquid novi – Out of Africa always something new! Well we’re not so sure about Africa but it certainly applies to Jerusalem.

While we’re still underground, looking to build a new Jerusalem – Tel Aviv railway line and a high speed one at that the engineers discovered a cave containing the largest subterranean water source in Israel. Measuring more than 200 meters in length, it ends in a canyon with cascading waterfalls and we wonder what Caesar would have said about that. We’ll never know, but Prof Frumkin from the Hebrew University who is in charge of the project had this to say about the ‘new’ cave and we quote; “[it] puts Israel on the map of tropical and temperate karstic – karstic? Oh never mind – regions where underground streams are common.” We can now guess what Caesar would have said; Mirabile mirabilis! Wonder of wonders that one small country could contain all this. And we cannot but agree.

One of the main features of Jerusalem Day is the Flag Dance that was held for the first time in 1977 and has been celebrated every year since. Marchers carrying large Israeli flags go from Shimon HaTsadik to the Western Wall with groups of people mostly young, singing, dancing and generally making merry. Is it exuberant? It definitely is. Does it get boisterous? It certainly does. Was it peaceful, after all we’re talking about some of the most sensitive territory around? Considering there were over 40, 000 people involved and streets don’t get narrower than some of those in the Old City, it was virtually incident free. A real celebration.

And now to things more mundane. The OECD did it and they’re a force to be reckoned with, when they upped their projected 2011 growth rate for Israel’s economy from 4.8% to 5.4%. Now that most dependable, and we might say, conservative of financial institutions the Bank of Israel has done it too, today in fact, and by a whopping .7% to 5.2%. And where the Central bank is concerned this is not just an educated guess. So what do they base it on? We’ll tell you. On the rapid growth of GDP in Q1, the surge in exports and fixed investment and yes, the large increase in imports too. And if that wasn’t enough they’re also predicting a drop in the unemployment rate to its lowest figure ever. In a phrase, the economy is in really good shape and getting better all the time.

Judoka, elite sportsman and gentleman, Arik Ze’evi has not had it easy recently but like the superb athlete that he is, has never given up and his persistence paid off at the Moscow Grand Slam last week where he showed his true worth defeating Abdurakhmonov Mukhamadmurod of Tajikistan – how did the announcer get around that one? Why doesn’t he shorten his name to Abe Mukham? – Then putting an end to world #8, Egyptian Ramadan Darwish’s hopes. Things got even better when he faced and beat Kazakhstan’s Maxim Rakov, the world champion in the semi-final, certainly one of Arik’s greatest achievements so far. Confronted by Frenchman Cyrille Maret in the final he dispatched him with an ippon three seconds before the end of the fight and came home with Gold.

And he wasn’t the only Israeli medal winner since the last GN. At the same tournament judoka Yarden Gerbi won Bronze in his class and that’s not all. In that most graceful of all sports Rhythmic Gymnastics, Neta Rivkin took Silver at the European Championships in Minsk, a first for an Israeli athlete in that competition.

We’ve said it before and we truly believe it; Israel is potentially another Switzerland, only better and we’re not talking about chocolate making either, although we do that pretty well too. No, we’re talking banking and we’ve now had our opinion re-enforced by the mavens down at Meitav Investment House who are saying, to summarize, that Israeli banks are in much better nick than their competitors in developed countries all over the world. Q1 results provide proof positive:

Poalim Bank almost doubled its profit from Q1 ’10, to NIS 903m

Mizrahi Bank did pretty well too going from NIS172m in Q1 ’10 to a profit of NIS241m in ‘11

Discount Bank also increased profits by almost double Q on Q

We won’t bore you with more figures but the trend is upward ever upward.

We can’t wait for all that gas at the bottom of the Med to come on line [probably at the beginning of 2013] but until it does we’re happy to report that Noble Energy – those are the guys doing the drilling and a lot else – say that there’s a lot more gas to come, 35 to 45 trillion cubic meters more in fact. Who’s doing the counting and how are they doing it we have to ask?

We brought you two reports of co-operation between us and our next door neighbors last week, one on the sports field and the other in a medical center in Haifa. And now, to the city of Tulkarm which was visited by a team of 20 doctors, medical students, and a speech therapist under the direction of Dr. Rafi Walden, the deputy director of the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv where they assessed the needs of about 1000 of the city’s inhabitants with varying degrees of hearing loss and then fitted and supplied them with hearing aids free of charge. You had to see the expressions of intense joy on the faces of the recipients, young and old, as the world of sound opened up to them for the first time. White coated angels of mercy from the Big Orange.