Good News, Israel

Compliments of Anglo Saxon Ra’anana

Quote for the Week

“The social graph is very simple here. Everybody knows everybody”

Yossi Vardi, one of Israel´s legendary business ambassadors. It certainly helps in time of stress. See below.

How does a country react under fire? Well if it’s Israel that you have in mind the answer is, rather well. Now it’s no secret that things are hotting up in the south and we’ll have a look at the way the country is maintaining its balance and equilibrium under a situation of obvious stress. So, first

Most of Israel’s leading tourist attractions are offering southern residents free entrance in the coming week, in a bid to help them to have a break from the goings on down there. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority, for example, offers southern residents free entrance to a number of national parks and nature reserves in the eastern Negev and central Israel. This is Israel at its best.

Bat Yam’s annual street theater festival is up and running and carries on through August 25. The 15-year-old festival, which is changing its name this year to Street C.A.T Bat Yam (where C.A.T stands for “Creative Artistic Theater”. We like that piece of creativity.) The festival is Israel’s largest, which uses the streets and exciting urban spaces, as its stages. The festival features buskers, circus acts, multimedia performances, “underground” graffiti and break-dance artists, with community theater and playback theater thrown in. The performers, from both Israel and abroad, will stage their works in the commercial district in the city’s southern section. And an added bonus is, entrance is free and a good time is being had by all.

The Red Sea Jazz Festival is underway in Eilat and it’s in the nature of things that some of the artists from overseas are cancelling because of the perceived ‘security situation’ but no matter, their places are being taken by locals – and one or two from overseas – and from all reports they’re giving the performances of their lives in the old and tried tradition of ‘the show must go on’ and going on it certainly is. By the way this festival is growing in prestige and universally acknowledged standard from year to year.

Not to mention the millions of Israelis who are carrying on their business as usual undeterred and undaunted by what is going around them and doing it with the same level of achievement as always. We truly are remarkable and that’s GN.

And to top it all even the share market refuses to retreat, quite the reverse in fact it ended a rather hectic week with gains across the board, the TA 25 going up 2.2% – a small figure that represents a huge amount of money – and the TA 100 gaining 1.5% on the week’s trading. A show of confidence by investors that things will return to normal – and more – despite everything? It certainly looks that way to us.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have granted orphan drug status approval [orphan drug we hear you exclaim. What’s an orphan drug? We’ll tell you.] An orphan drug you see is a pharmaceutical agent that has been developed specifically to treat any rare medical condition or orphan disease. In the US and EU it is easier to gain marketing approval for an orphan drug, and there may be other financial incentives such as extended exclusivity periods. Pluristem Therapeutics Ltd. uses its PLX stem cells for the treatment of Buerger’s disease, a rare and severe disease affecting the blood vessels in the limbs, which can lead to amputations. The disease affects 50,000 people, a relatively small number, in the US and Europe and there is no current treatment so this is certainly potentially GN for them.

The Cost Price Index – which does exactly what it says it does, measures the cost prices of consumer goods and services – has dropped by 0.3% in July. As a result of this decline, the actual inflation rate for the past 12 months (the July 2011 index compared to July 2010) now totals 3.4% – which only exceeds the upper limit of the target range set by the government (1-3%) by 0.4% and indicates an inflation trend of a negligible 0.6%. in the past four months. Thanks to action by Yossi and Rachel citizen? We’d say more than probably.

Designed for Israeli Muslim Arabs or anyone else for that matter the Jerusalem Municipal website Ramadan quiz is at the moment testing the contestants’ knowledge of all areas connected to religion and Muslim history, with questions of varying levels of difficulty. Jerusalem, Nazareth and Umm al-Fahm are well represented but so are Palestinian cities such as Nablus; there are even surfers from Jordan. Winners to be announced.

Israel is going global with considerable success. So what’s new? Nothing really but here’s a good example: In 2010, the BIG Shopping Centers Group acquired 24 malls in the United States. Financial reports show that the acquisition spree paid off – the US activity yielded the company NIS 71.8 million (about $20 million) in the first half of 2011, compared with only NIS 2.2 million ($610,000) in the first half of the previous year. Now that’s success.

Israeli exports to Turkey jumped 40% in January-June compared with the same period last year, without a soul mentioning what might be called political tensions between the two countries. The increase was mainly in chemicals and distillates from Israel’s oil refining industry. Oh well, politics and economics are two separate activities and the twain it would seem shall hardly ever meet.

The doctors’ strike is at an end – and about time too we hear you say and we cannot but agree. The doctors will receive substantial pay increases – richly deserved if you ask us; they’ll be working shorter hours – to everybody’s benefit we think and those who are prepared to serve in hospitals on the periphery will receive up to 20% more in salaries than their colleagues in the Center – an excellent idea for obvious reasons. So it took time but it seems that it was well resolved.

Will the GN re our energy resources never cease? Hopefully not. Here’s the latest; Givot Olam Oil Exploration LP has announced that the proved oil reserves at its Meged reservoir near Rosh Ha’ayin are higher than previously estimated – 2.6 million barrels, up from 2.2 million estimated in late 2010. The estimate by Baker RDS Ltd. includes section 8b of the Meged 5 well borehole, which was not included in the previous estimate. May the GN be energized like a well oiled machine [all puns intended].

The boffins at the Public Security Ministry have been beavering away at finding new ways to fight forest fires and have come up with something ingenious. An array of sensors that will project the intensity of a fire and the direction that it will take. This is the first of its kind in the world and will be invaluable in the quelling of the blazes that wreak such incalculable damage.

The Israel Ornithology Center has pioneered nesting boxes for owls and other predatory avians who, in return for the free accommodation keep farmers fields free of rodents which they eat at an alarming rate so for them it’s an ideal bed and breakfast set-up. So the ornithologists are happy, the owls are happy, the farmers are ecstatic, consumers are happy because they’re getting pesticide-free fruit and veggies. We’re not so sure about the rodents but that’s another story. Arab farmers in the Lower Galilee have been most reluctant to come to the party because for them owls are a bad omen and the further you are from them the better. But Samah Darawshe, of the said Center, has managed to persuade his co religionists. So successful has he been that even Jordanian farmers have put up dozens of nesting boxes over the last year, and dozens more are slated to go up soon.