Baseball will succeed in Israel because it’s the greatest game in the world.It’s a long season, and you gotta trust it. I’ve tried them all, I really have. And the only shul that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the shul of baseball.
– with apologies to Annie Savoy
“What do you miss most?”
That’s the question immigrants to Israel get asked more than any other. Sometimes it elicits serious answers, sometimes personal ones. Of course everyone misses their family and friends left behind, that’s a given. And sometimes what we miss most is a simple food we crave, or some product that is impossible to find in Israel, but which would make our daily lives easier.
Me, I always give the same answer.
Baseball.
Sure, I miss my family and friends, and pizza here is never going to be as good as it is in New York. And though I may not see my family and friends as much as I’d like, phone calls and emails keep us well connected.
But baseball is different. Baseball, for serious fans, takes on a relationship more akin to that of a husband and wife. Spouses communicate every day, even from a distance, even if only for a few minutes. The definition of that relationship – a relationship based on passion – demands no less.
So too in baseball. Baseball, like marriage, is nothing without intimacy. Sure, I can read what my favorite Yankees did over the last two weeks, how many games they won or lost, and see highlights on the Internet. But that is just passive knowledge and information, crucial though it is, and videos only highlight how far away I am. It never satisfies the emotional need, never quenches the thirst of passion. For that you need a constant, daily narrative that you can see, hear and smell.
Now we’ll have it.
On June 24, the first-ever professional baseball game in Israel will be played at Kibbutz Gezer, between the Petah Tikva Pioneers and the Modi’in Miracle. The six-team league also includes the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox, Netanya Tigers, Ra’anana Express and Tel Aviv Lightning. Each club will play 45 regular-season games, a schedule comparable to that of the low minor leagues.
The games will be played at three sites: Tel Aviv and Netanya teams will play at Sportek in Tel Aviv. Ra’anana and Petah Tikvah will share a field at the Yarkon Sports Complex, while Kibbutz Gezer will host the Modi’in and Bet Shemesh teams.
Eighty players have already been signed, from eight countries including the Dominican Republic, Australia, Venezuela, and the United States. A trio of retired Jewish major leaguers will manage three of the teams – former pitcher Ken Holtzman, outfielder Art Shamsky and baseball’s first designated hitter, Ron Blomberg. The league’s first commissioner is Daniel Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Israel, and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is on the board of advisors.
Even with that pedigree, the detractors are already lining up to scoff, confident in their criticism that declares the venture – the brainstorm of one Larry Baras, Boston businessman and visionary extraordinaire – this century’s version of Fulton’s Folly. How can it succeed, they laugh, in a country already saturated with soccer and basketball? Who’s gonna care enough to come to a game, besides a few dozen Anglos? And how can a home run compete with the excitement of a goal or a basket for an Israeli?
For those who follow baseball, who understand baseball, such doubters are to be pitied. While it is easy to understand their lack of faith in a Baras, or a Dan Duquette – the man in charge of player development – it is difficult to fathom their lack of faith in the very game itself.
That baseball was never, heretofore, an integral part of the fabric of Israeli culture is hardly a reflection on the sport itself. Baseball will succeed here, first and foremost, because it’s the greatest game in the world. But it will also succeed because Israelis, like Americans, are great sports fans, as passionate about athletics as they are about everything that has meaning in their lives. In due time, Israelis too will come to understand the game, the rich nuances and subtleties that make it so compelling to millions of Americans.
Yes, of course building baseball in Israel is a long-term project. Duquette understands that better than anyone. Having once been in charge of player development for the Montreal Expos, Duquette took on a similar challenge going up against Canada’s national religion, hockey. And from the ground up, he built an infrastructure and a system that was able to discover, recruit, and further develop Canadian baseball players.
It took a while, but then it happened: On March 8, 2006, Team Canada beat the powerhouse Team USA, 8-6, in the World Baseball Classic. Canadian baseball was on the map. To say that Israelis are less athletically inclined, incapable of playing and eventually competing on that level, is an insult, and simply foolish. A dozen Israelis have already been signed to the league, a number that is sure to grow as the country is more exposed to the sport.
One other thing: Everyone understands that ballplayers on the major league level are supremely talented, and a joy to watch. True enough. But for those who think minor league baseball is not that good, not the real thing, know this: those players underneath the Major Leagues at the AAA, AA, and A level are no less talented then the big boys. There is, in fact, only one difference between those in Single-A and those in the Major Leagues: consistency.
I spent the summer of 1983 covering minor league baseball, the Utica Blue Sox, in the New York-Penn League. They weren’t just a single-A team, they were an independent team, which meant that no other ballclub had wanted any of the players. Castoffs, you say? Let me tell you, they weren’t just good, they were great. I saw guys make plays that today would be on SportsCenter every night. The raw talent was breathtaking.
And now that’s coming here. Baseball in Israel. I will get to see professional players up close, watch them show off that incredible talent, and follow their stories for 10 weeks, right here in my backyard. I’ll still follow the Yankees, of course, but now I can follow a local team as well – the Blue Sox again, this time in Bet Shemesh. And my immigration will have become complete.
Helping the Sudanese refugees in our midst
This Purim, Israelis will share a tradition with Muslim and Christian genocide survivors.
This week, as millions of Jews celebrate the holiday of Purim, a group of yeshiva students from Jerusalem will mark the holiday in a special way.
One of the most important mitzvot of Purim is to spread happiness by granting goody baskets (known in Hebrew as mishloach manot). These young Israeli students will hand out dozens of such packages in a site called Ketziot, about an hour’s drive south of Beersheva.
If you’ve never heard of the place, don’t be surprised; it’s not usually on most tourists’ itinerary. Ketziot is a prison in the Negev desert, and the temporary home of some 60 Sudanese refugees, who had entered Israel over the past two years.
One doesn’t need a powerful imagination to see the incredible idiosyncrasy of a scene that can only happen in Israel: Orthodox kids – some of them grandchildren of Holocaust survivors – will share a Jewish tradition with dozens of Muslim and Christian victims of genocide.
The students – who call themselves ‘Haed’, which is Hebrew for ‘The Witness’ – are part of a small, but rapidly growing, grass-roots movement that is raising Israeli awareness to the refugees of Sudan. Bringing together human-rights activists and religious students, Holocaust scholars and legal experts, this coalition of sorts is Israel’s most recent contribution to the global campaign for Darfur.
But while in the United States or Europe the emphasis is on the hundreds of thousands displaced in Africa, the Israeli activists have a much more specific goal: helping the 300 Sudanese who have entered Israel, and been under arrest ever since.
The arrival of these refugees began several years ago. Shortly after the crisis in Darfur erupted, Sudanese refugees started making their way to Egypt to escape the atrocities committed in their country. Suffering from great poverty, social isolation, and in some cases harassment by Egyptian authorities, several hundred decided to continue their flight to the north, and entered Israel illegally by crossing the country’s southern border.
By escaping to Israel, they had hoped to receive refugee status; instead, they were arrested and detained as enemy nationals. While the Israeli legal system grants asylum for a small number of political refugees every year, the fact that the Sudanese come from a country that harbors anti-Israeli terrorism, puts them in a different category. They are unable to gain legal status in Israel, and are issued a warrant for their deportation. However, there is nowhere to deport them to. Re-entering Sudan would mean an immediate death sentence, Egypt isn’t safe either, and no other country wants to take them in. They are thus caught between the (Negev) rock and a very hard place: locked up, unable to contact their families back home, and uncertain of what will happen to them.
The refugees’ incarceration could technically last indefinitely, if it wasn’t for the work of several Israeli NGOs and individuals who care: people like the volunteers of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, who oversee the wellbeing of foreign laborers in Israel, took upon themselves to supply humanitarian assistance to the Sudanese in prison. The Clinic for Refugee Rights at Tel Aviv University petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of the detained Sudanese, and this past summer celebrated a victory as the state agreed to substitute the refugees’ prison term with life on a kibbutz or moshav until a long-term solution is found.
And with the recent formation of a new umbrella organization – CARD (The Committee for Advancement of Refugees of Darfur) – to coordinate various media and humanitarian efforts – the campaign for the Sudanese refugees is now more apparent than ever in Israeli public discourse. A lobby in the Knesset – headed by MKs Gilad Erdan of the Likud and Professor Avishai Braverman of the Labor Party – is drafting legislation that will pull the refugees out of the legal loophole they are in. Large and established organizations – such as the Israeli office of the American Jewish Committee – are donating money to help the refugees still detained. And the Israeli media has been covering the issue extensively.
It is hard to say what the long-term solution for this troubling issue will be. One thing, however, is clear: from being a non-issue just a short while ago, the problem of Sudanese refugees in Israel has become a topic that generates headlines and mobilizes volunteers and protesters. That is not to say that the end of the problem is near; but in a county like Israel, where public opinion does play a role in decision-making, it ensures that a solution to the problem will eventually be found.
One of the most important mitzvot of Purim is to spread happiness by granting goody baskets (known in Hebrew as mishloach manot). These young Israeli students will hand out dozens of such packages in a site called Ketziot, about an hour’s drive south of Beersheva.
If you’ve never heard of the place, don’t be surprised; it’s not usually on most tourists’ itinerary. Ketziot is a prison in the Negev desert, and the temporary home of some 60 Sudanese refugees, who had entered Israel over the past two years.
One doesn’t need a powerful imagination to see the incredible idiosyncrasy of a scene that can only happen in Israel: Orthodox kids – some of them grandchildren of Holocaust survivors – will share a Jewish tradition with dozens of Muslim and Christian victims of genocide.
The students – who call themselves ‘Haed’, which is Hebrew for ‘The Witness’ – are part of a small, but rapidly growing, grass-roots movement that is raising Israeli awareness to the refugees of Sudan. Bringing together human-rights activists and religious students, Holocaust scholars and legal experts, this coalition of sorts is Israel’s most recent contribution to the global campaign for Darfur.
But while in the United States or Europe the emphasis is on the hundreds of thousands displaced in Africa, the Israeli activists have a much more specific goal: helping the 300 Sudanese who have entered Israel, and been under arrest ever since.
The arrival of these refugees began several years ago. Shortly after the crisis in Darfur erupted, Sudanese refugees started making their way to Egypt to escape the atrocities committed in their country. Suffering from great poverty, social isolation, and in some cases harassment by Egyptian authorities, several hundred decided to continue their flight to the north, and entered Israel illegally by crossing the country’s southern border.
By escaping to Israel, they had hoped to receive refugee status; instead, they were arrested and detained as enemy nationals. While the Israeli legal system grants asylum for a small number of political refugees every year, the fact that the Sudanese come from a country that harbors anti-Israeli terrorism, puts them in a different category. They are unable to gain legal status in Israel, and are issued a warrant for their deportation. However, there is nowhere to deport them to. Re-entering Sudan would mean an immediate death sentence, Egypt isn’t safe either, and no other country wants to take them in. They are thus caught between the (Negev) rock and a very hard place: locked up, unable to contact their families back home, and uncertain of what will happen to them.
The refugees’ incarceration could technically last indefinitely, if it wasn’t for the work of several Israeli NGOs and individuals who care: people like the volunteers of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, who oversee the wellbeing of foreign laborers in Israel, took upon themselves to supply humanitarian assistance to the Sudanese in prison. The Clinic for Refugee Rights at Tel Aviv University petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of the detained Sudanese, and this past summer celebrated a victory as the state agreed to substitute the refugees’ prison term with life on a kibbutz or moshav until a long-term solution is found.
And with the recent formation of a new umbrella organization – CARD (The Committee for Advancement of Refugees of Darfur) – to coordinate various media and humanitarian efforts – the campaign for the Sudanese refugees is now more apparent than ever in Israeli public discourse. A lobby in the Knesset – headed by MKs Gilad Erdan of the Likud and Professor Avishai Braverman of the Labor Party – is drafting legislation that will pull the refugees out of the legal loophole they are in. Large and established organizations – such as the Israeli office of the American Jewish Committee – are donating money to help the refugees still detained. And the Israeli media has been covering the issue extensively.
It is hard to say what the long-term solution for this troubling issue will be. One thing, however, is clear: from being a non-issue just a short while ago, the problem of Sudanese refugees in Israel has become a topic that generates headlines and mobilizes volunteers and protesters. That is not to say that the end of the problem is near; but in a county like Israel, where public opinion does play a role in decision-making, it ensures that a solution to the problem will eventually be found.
Honoring a born Israeli optimist
Prof. Reuven Feuerstein is the Johnny Appleseed of ideas showing how we can think better.
People who create powerful, paradigm-shifting theoretical ideas are never going to be common. You hear about them every so often. In the nature of things, you meet them rarely. And you experience the actual physical fruit of their work far less often. This is because great ideas, on one hand, and their practical implementation, on the other, rarely exist inside one person.
I have the privilege to work closely with one of those truly unusual individuals. Reuven Feuerstein is a man whose range of creative ideas and the even more creative ways in which he has implemented them seem so broad that most people have difficulty accepting that they emanate from one source.
Professor Feuerstein’s extraordinarily productive career already spans seven decades. He came to pre-independence Palestine in the mid-1940s after being arrested by, and then escaping, the Nazi occupiers of his native Rumania.
An educator in his mid-twenties, he found immediate opportunities to work with child-victims of the Holocaust. The war had robbed them of families, school, childhood, and their survival depended on overcoming trauma and deprivation.
In those years, and then in the following decade as Feuerstein played a key role in dealing with the special needs of newly-arriving Jewish children from North Africa, he developed and then applied a very special kind of optimism. He believed then, and has since demonstrated in a myriad of ways, that people are cognitively modifiable.
That term is a daunting one. Unless we’re psychologists, few of us think much about cognition. And if we have ever taken an IQ test, we understand that modifiability is not meant to play a large role in the measurement of intelligence. If one’s IQ is to have predictive value, we need to believe that what can be measured remains essentially the same now and in the future. Otherwise by what right do we make decisions to accept or reject young people into programs or colleges on the basis of an IQ score?
Reuven Feuerstein and his life’s work were honored last month in a special day of homage at Tel Aviv University. The hundreds of attendees were drawn from the sort of broad spectrum of society that one might have anticipated given the richness and creativity of his career and his personality and the decades of his leading-edge activity.
Thus, it was to be expected that there would be a speaker who described the rebuilding of his own life, thanks to Feuerstein’s therapists and methodology, after the most profound brain injury caused by an accident that nearly took his life.
And it was not surprising to hear an exceptionally articulate young woman, born in Ethiopia and raised in Israel, who is the first of her community to be accepted into one of the IDF’s most elite programs. The army is Israel’s most important educational institution, but for youngsters in populations which have a cultural character different from that of mainstream Israel, success in that all-important institution comes rarely and in small doses. She described a revolutionary program, invented and executed by Feuerstein and his colleagues, that has permanently changed this for the better. This has important and very positive implications for other aspects of Israeli society, and far beyond Israel.
We heard from parents of children with special needs, and from the therapists who work with them, invoking the spirit of profound optimism that characterizes every aspect of the Feuerstein methodology. Their stories of success against medical pessimism, against the indifference of social workers, against conventional psychological thinking, are familiar to anyone who has come into contact with the world of Feuerstein. Families with similar stories to tell can be found in every corner of Israel, throughout Europe, the United States, South America, India and in fact almost everywhere else.
But for all the expressions of admiration and deep affection – and there were many – the speech that made the strongest impact, for me at any rate, came from one of Feuerstein’s long-time American collaborators. He compared Reuven Feuerstein to one of the mainstays of American folk culture: Johnny Appleseed. Via his teachings, his writings, his energetic propagation by every available means, Feuerstein planted seeds that today have created forests of disciples. They are psychologists and teachers, parents and administrators, leaders of communities. Many of them are now leaders, government ministers, people of policy and of influence.
In fact, from my position as someone deeply involved in creating and executing Feuerstein programs in several countries, it is clear that this extraordinary individual with the face of Biblical prophet and trademark navy beret – having labored tirelessly for more than half a century – has finally become an overnight success.
His institution, the International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential, is now engaged in vast, country-scale programs in Africa, South America, the US and elsewhere. Unofficially called the Feuerstein Center, the Jerusalem-based institution has a professional staff of more than 150 psychologists, therapists and educators. ICELP, which Feuerstein founded, and today presides over, operates training centers (and soon clinics) in more than thirty countries around the world.
In turbulent and dangerous times, the idea that we can be shown how to think better, more effectively, more productively is nothing less than life-saving.
Prof. Reuven Feuerstein’s faith in the ability of humanity to repair and advance itself is a message that is highly appropriate to our times and greatly needed.
I have the privilege to work closely with one of those truly unusual individuals. Reuven Feuerstein is a man whose range of creative ideas and the even more creative ways in which he has implemented them seem so broad that most people have difficulty accepting that they emanate from one source.
Professor Feuerstein’s extraordinarily productive career already spans seven decades. He came to pre-independence Palestine in the mid-1940s after being arrested by, and then escaping, the Nazi occupiers of his native Rumania.
An educator in his mid-twenties, he found immediate opportunities to work with child-victims of the Holocaust. The war had robbed them of families, school, childhood, and their survival depended on overcoming trauma and deprivation.
In those years, and then in the following decade as Feuerstein played a key role in dealing with the special needs of newly-arriving Jewish children from North Africa, he developed and then applied a very special kind of optimism. He believed then, and has since demonstrated in a myriad of ways, that people are cognitively modifiable.
That term is a daunting one. Unless we’re psychologists, few of us think much about cognition. And if we have ever taken an IQ test, we understand that modifiability is not meant to play a large role in the measurement of intelligence. If one’s IQ is to have predictive value, we need to believe that what can be measured remains essentially the same now and in the future. Otherwise by what right do we make decisions to accept or reject young people into programs or colleges on the basis of an IQ score?
Reuven Feuerstein and his life’s work were honored last month in a special day of homage at Tel Aviv University. The hundreds of attendees were drawn from the sort of broad spectrum of society that one might have anticipated given the richness and creativity of his career and his personality and the decades of his leading-edge activity.
Thus, it was to be expected that there would be a speaker who described the rebuilding of his own life, thanks to Feuerstein’s therapists and methodology, after the most profound brain injury caused by an accident that nearly took his life.
And it was not surprising to hear an exceptionally articulate young woman, born in Ethiopia and raised in Israel, who is the first of her community to be accepted into one of the IDF’s most elite programs. The army is Israel’s most important educational institution, but for youngsters in populations which have a cultural character different from that of mainstream Israel, success in that all-important institution comes rarely and in small doses. She described a revolutionary program, invented and executed by Feuerstein and his colleagues, that has permanently changed this for the better. This has important and very positive implications for other aspects of Israeli society, and far beyond Israel.
We heard from parents of children with special needs, and from the therapists who work with them, invoking the spirit of profound optimism that characterizes every aspect of the Feuerstein methodology. Their stories of success against medical pessimism, against the indifference of social workers, against conventional psychological thinking, are familiar to anyone who has come into contact with the world of Feuerstein. Families with similar stories to tell can be found in every corner of Israel, throughout Europe, the United States, South America, India and in fact almost everywhere else.
But for all the expressions of admiration and deep affection – and there were many – the speech that made the strongest impact, for me at any rate, came from one of Feuerstein’s long-time American collaborators. He compared Reuven Feuerstein to one of the mainstays of American folk culture: Johnny Appleseed. Via his teachings, his writings, his energetic propagation by every available means, Feuerstein planted seeds that today have created forests of disciples. They are psychologists and teachers, parents and administrators, leaders of communities. Many of them are now leaders, government ministers, people of policy and of influence.
In fact, from my position as someone deeply involved in creating and executing Feuerstein programs in several countries, it is clear that this extraordinary individual with the face of Biblical prophet and trademark navy beret – having labored tirelessly for more than half a century – has finally become an overnight success.
His institution, the International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential, is now engaged in vast, country-scale programs in Africa, South America, the US and elsewhere. Unofficially called the Feuerstein Center, the Jerusalem-based institution has a professional staff of more than 150 psychologists, therapists and educators. ICELP, which Feuerstein founded, and today presides over, operates training centers (and soon clinics) in more than thirty countries around the world.
In turbulent and dangerous times, the idea that we can be shown how to think better, more effectively, more productively is nothing less than life-saving.
Prof. Reuven Feuerstein’s faith in the ability of humanity to repair and advance itself is a message that is highly appropriate to our times and greatly needed.
Israel and you
If you really had to avoid everything Israeli, you’d probably have to go live in the woods.What is Israel? With all the arguments and rhetoric surrounding it, it’s easy to forget that Israel is a country, not just a controversial subject. The fact is, every single American’s life has been vastly improved by Israeli innovations and advances in science and technology.
Israel has made your life better, and not just by producing Natalie Portman.
Don’t believe me? Let’s try a little thought experiment. Imagine what life would be like without Israel’s contributions. What if you had to avoid all technology developed in Israel, ignore all Israeli scientific advances and otherwise pretend that Israel never existed? Could you do it?
For starters, you could not use any cell phones. The cell phone was developed by Motorola’s Israeli R&D team. But who needs to talk to people anyway?
While we’re on the subject, the internationally popular ICQ instant messaging platform was developed in Israel by a company called Mirabilis before being sold to AOL. In addition to popularizing instant messaging, Mirabilis also pioneered the large-scale peer-to-peer network architecture later used by companies such as Napster and Kazaa.
Forget emailing and doing work on your laptop, since Intel’s Israeli R&D team designed the Pentium M/Centrino and the dual core processor. If you’re using a laptop with an Intel processor, the sticker on it should probably say ‘Israel Inside’.
For those of you with older Macs (before MacBooks came out), your processors were made by IBM. Any guesses on which small Middle Eastern country holds IBM’s largest R&D facilities outside the United States?
It’s not just laptop users that would be affected, however. Most of Windows NT was developed by Microsoft’s Israel R&D team. And the popular Windows XP operating system is built on top of NT. So have fun writing your term papers in Linux.
In fact, if you’re missing out on Israel, you’re missing out on a lot. Israel is home to the largest concentration of technology companies outside the U.S. There are about 35,000 high tech companies in Israel, which has a population of about seven million people. America is the only country with more companies listed on the NASDAQ than Israel.
That tiny country (about the size of New Jersey) also has more biotech start-ups per capita than any other nation. Among the things you’d be missing out on are Given Imaging’s M2A camera-in-a-pill that has tremendous medical and scientific applications, the Ex-Press shunt for glaucoma patients, and the first once-a-day pill for Parkinson’s disease.
Of special interest to women, Israel’s Savyon Diagnostics recently created the first over-the-counter test for yeast infections. For those afraid of needles, an Israeli company called Transpharma just created the first medicated patch for osteoperosis. Then there’s HealOr, which is revolutionizing care for diabetic ulcers. And don’t forget Optimata, which developed a Virtual Cancer Patient Engine that is state-of-the-art in predicting how breast cancer patients will respond to chemotherapy. The list goes on.
Avoiding Israeli advances would also mean avoiding a significant portion of the world’s academia. That’s because Israel has more university degrees per capita, more scientists per capita and more scientific papers per capita than any other nation in the world. Israeli contributions include a method of using light to kill cancer cells, the discovery of a non-genetic code in DNA which sets the placement of nucleosomes and a breath-based liver test that will reduce the need for biopsies. Israeli researchers have found a new gene that will permit agriculture in ultra-saline environments. An Israeli doctor led the Merck team that recently developed a vaccine against cervical cancer. And again, the list goes on.
Closer to my Stanford home, participants in this experiment will have to choose their classes and research opportunities carefully. I’ve noticed that my department, computer science, is full of Israelis; I’ve already had three Israeli professors, including MacArthur Genius Grant winner Daphne Koller (and no, I don’t pick my classes based on the nationality of the professor).
Israeli CS profs work in cutting edge fields such as artificial intelligence and network security. I might add that this trend goes beyond just the professors. There are five Hebrew speakers in my research group alone.
In case you were wondering, computer science is not unique in this regard. Brilliant Israeli professors are all over the Farm, but don’t take my word for it. Ask a certified genius, like MacArthur winner Avner Greif in the economics department.
If you really had to avoid everything Israeli, you’d probably have to go live in the woods. As you sit here, reading this column, Israeli researchers and entrepreneurs are continuing with their steady stream of contributions. So let’s put this thought experiment to rest, but do me one little favor. The next time you hear the word ‘Israel’, say ‘inside’. In the words of Weird Al: It’s all about the Pentiums.
(Reprinted with the author’s permission from the Stanford Daily)
Israel has made your life better, and not just by producing Natalie Portman.
Don’t believe me? Let’s try a little thought experiment. Imagine what life would be like without Israel’s contributions. What if you had to avoid all technology developed in Israel, ignore all Israeli scientific advances and otherwise pretend that Israel never existed? Could you do it?
For starters, you could not use any cell phones. The cell phone was developed by Motorola’s Israeli R&D team. But who needs to talk to people anyway?
While we’re on the subject, the internationally popular ICQ instant messaging platform was developed in Israel by a company called Mirabilis before being sold to AOL. In addition to popularizing instant messaging, Mirabilis also pioneered the large-scale peer-to-peer network architecture later used by companies such as Napster and Kazaa.
Forget emailing and doing work on your laptop, since Intel’s Israeli R&D team designed the Pentium M/Centrino and the dual core processor. If you’re using a laptop with an Intel processor, the sticker on it should probably say ‘Israel Inside’.
For those of you with older Macs (before MacBooks came out), your processors were made by IBM. Any guesses on which small Middle Eastern country holds IBM’s largest R&D facilities outside the United States?
It’s not just laptop users that would be affected, however. Most of Windows NT was developed by Microsoft’s Israel R&D team. And the popular Windows XP operating system is built on top of NT. So have fun writing your term papers in Linux.
In fact, if you’re missing out on Israel, you’re missing out on a lot. Israel is home to the largest concentration of technology companies outside the U.S. There are about 35,000 high tech companies in Israel, which has a population of about seven million people. America is the only country with more companies listed on the NASDAQ than Israel.
That tiny country (about the size of New Jersey) also has more biotech start-ups per capita than any other nation. Among the things you’d be missing out on are Given Imaging’s M2A camera-in-a-pill that has tremendous medical and scientific applications, the Ex-Press shunt for glaucoma patients, and the first once-a-day pill for Parkinson’s disease.
Of special interest to women, Israel’s Savyon Diagnostics recently created the first over-the-counter test for yeast infections. For those afraid of needles, an Israeli company called Transpharma just created the first medicated patch for osteoperosis. Then there’s HealOr, which is revolutionizing care for diabetic ulcers. And don’t forget Optimata, which developed a Virtual Cancer Patient Engine that is state-of-the-art in predicting how breast cancer patients will respond to chemotherapy. The list goes on.
Avoiding Israeli advances would also mean avoiding a significant portion of the world’s academia. That’s because Israel has more university degrees per capita, more scientists per capita and more scientific papers per capita than any other nation in the world. Israeli contributions include a method of using light to kill cancer cells, the discovery of a non-genetic code in DNA which sets the placement of nucleosomes and a breath-based liver test that will reduce the need for biopsies. Israeli researchers have found a new gene that will permit agriculture in ultra-saline environments. An Israeli doctor led the Merck team that recently developed a vaccine against cervical cancer. And again, the list goes on.
Closer to my Stanford home, participants in this experiment will have to choose their classes and research opportunities carefully. I’ve noticed that my department, computer science, is full of Israelis; I’ve already had three Israeli professors, including MacArthur Genius Grant winner Daphne Koller (and no, I don’t pick my classes based on the nationality of the professor).
Israeli CS profs work in cutting edge fields such as artificial intelligence and network security. I might add that this trend goes beyond just the professors. There are five Hebrew speakers in my research group alone.
In case you were wondering, computer science is not unique in this regard. Brilliant Israeli professors are all over the Farm, but don’t take my word for it. Ask a certified genius, like MacArthur winner Avner Greif in the economics department.
If you really had to avoid everything Israeli, you’d probably have to go live in the woods. As you sit here, reading this column, Israeli researchers and entrepreneurs are continuing with their steady stream of contributions. So let’s put this thought experiment to rest, but do me one little favor. The next time you hear the word ‘Israel’, say ‘inside’. In the words of Weird Al: It’s all about the Pentiums.
(Reprinted with the author’s permission from the Stanford Daily)
Showering Israel with humor
Once Israeli and Palestinians begin to see each other as human beings again… it will be easier to bridge the gap of differences.Humor clearly is a common denominator between the two warring Palestinian and Israelis sides, but our ‘Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour’ proved this past month that it can also break through the fanatics who try to hold the two communities hostages with hatred and extremism.
The show swept through five performances that were hastily organized by myself and my new found friends, Israeli comedian Charley Warady, Yisrael Campbell (who I introduce as ‘Zionist Entity Campbell’) and Sephardic Israeli Shachar Chason, a popular young star on Israel’s Channel 10 TV who is from Yemen. Also partnering with me is veteran comedian and Second City pro Aaron Freeman. The troupe performed shows at the popular west Jerusalem nightspot The Syndrome, which was packed to the rafters on only two weeks notice of the show being organized.
That show was followed by one in East Jerusalem at the American Colony Hotel that was SRO also. Many Palestinians attended this show while the first was mainly an Israeli audience. We spoke and performed for the high school assembly of the Anglican School, which included Israeli and Palestinians and the children of foreign diplomats. And the students most of all were enthusiastic. The Palestinian students surrounded me and repeated a message I hear far and wide in my community: “We’re tired of the old losing ways, the hatred, the anger, the back-stabbing, the divisiveness and the failure to do something positive.”
I couldn’t agree with them more and I was determined to break the ridiculous and stupid taboo that prevents Palestinians from performing in Israel Israelis.
We then did shows at Tzavta in Tel Aviv, and to help drive home the point we were making, Yisrael (I just call him ‘Z’ for short) and I staged a spoof where we appeared to be fighting (It’s on YouTube). Most people who saw it think that ‘Z’ and I are really fighting after I make a joke about Tel Aviv being ‘Occupied Territory’.
That’s because people only believe that when Palestinians and Israelis come together, all we do is fight. And the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour proved that to be wrong. We can come together and do something positive that was overwhelmingly endorsed and supported by Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel, too. And Israelis, conservative and liberal, also came together to see the show.
We ended the show at Jerusalem’s Kol Haneshama Synagogue where we started with seating for only 80 and then moved it to the larger theater where more than 250 people stood in long lines to pack the place SRO again.
One reporter asked the tough question, noting I am American born, Warady is American born, Yisrael is American born, Aaron is African American Jewish and Shachar is Yemeni born. How could we claim to be Palestinian and Israeli? Good question but irrelevant. The fact is when I walk through Israeli security, you can bet they are going to stop me because I am a Palestinian. And when Charley, Yisrael, Shachar or Aaron walk through Arab customs – if they were to even be allowed into an Arab country – they would definitely be criticized as being ‘Israeli’.
The purpose of the shows is to break through the phony glass ceiling that the extremists use to hold our community hostage with hate and fanaticism. They like to tell everyone what to do, what to think and how to act, and they end up violating all of their so-called rules. Worse, their strategies of rejection and denial and refusal and criticism have FAILED, FAILED, FAILED.
Suicide bombing homicide has only worsened not helped the Palestinian cause at all. In fact, the violence has undermined the Palestinian cause throughout the world, and has resulted in a rising tide of religious fanaticism and failed ideology. Hand-in-hand, rightwing Israeli policies have used Palestinian failures to justify horrendous policies that are rightly decried but never prevented by Palestinian political movements.
Palestinians and Israelis need to take back control of their lives from the extremists and the best way to do that is to allow the people to see each other as human beings. And humor and standup comedy – which is a new form of comedy in the Arab and Islamic Worlds – can help achieve that goal. Once people begin to see each other as human beings again, rather than as enemies and statistics, it will be easier to bridge the gap of differences and achieve a two-state solution which is the only possible solution to the conflict.
Of course, that means many professional activists will be out of a job when peace arrives because so much of the activist community is driven by the need for work. They unintentionally fuel the conflict because the conflict is an industry and they would all be out of jobs. They could see the end of the conflict as a great opportunity to find newer more positive employment, but that means giving up on a system based on handouts, suffering and exploitation, rather than on talented strategies that result in successes.
Shachar is hilarious, and instead of speaking Hebrew, his first language, he struggled successfully to do his jokes in broken English. The young guy is amazing and very talented as a comic. Warady and Campbell are phenomenal. Warady is the host of ‘Israelisms’ a weekly 1 hour pod-cast. Campbell is an Orthodox Jew who adheres to his religion as vigilantly as many Orthodox Moslems and Orthodox Christians.
The shows were covered by media across the world, although the Arab World was a bit short. That’s not unexpected as most Arab media have a hard time saying the word ‘Isra… Isra… Isra… eeel.’
Check the web page out and watch for future shows in your area because the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour is going international with a return engagement in Israel, and plans to do shows in Bethlehem, Ramallah, and in Cairo and Amman.
(Reprinted with permission of the author)
The show swept through five performances that were hastily organized by myself and my new found friends, Israeli comedian Charley Warady, Yisrael Campbell (who I introduce as ‘Zionist Entity Campbell’) and Sephardic Israeli Shachar Chason, a popular young star on Israel’s Channel 10 TV who is from Yemen. Also partnering with me is veteran comedian and Second City pro Aaron Freeman. The troupe performed shows at the popular west Jerusalem nightspot The Syndrome, which was packed to the rafters on only two weeks notice of the show being organized.
That show was followed by one in East Jerusalem at the American Colony Hotel that was SRO also. Many Palestinians attended this show while the first was mainly an Israeli audience. We spoke and performed for the high school assembly of the Anglican School, which included Israeli and Palestinians and the children of foreign diplomats. And the students most of all were enthusiastic. The Palestinian students surrounded me and repeated a message I hear far and wide in my community: “We’re tired of the old losing ways, the hatred, the anger, the back-stabbing, the divisiveness and the failure to do something positive.”
I couldn’t agree with them more and I was determined to break the ridiculous and stupid taboo that prevents Palestinians from performing in Israel Israelis.
We then did shows at Tzavta in Tel Aviv, and to help drive home the point we were making, Yisrael (I just call him ‘Z’ for short) and I staged a spoof where we appeared to be fighting (It’s on YouTube). Most people who saw it think that ‘Z’ and I are really fighting after I make a joke about Tel Aviv being ‘Occupied Territory’.
That’s because people only believe that when Palestinians and Israelis come together, all we do is fight. And the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour proved that to be wrong. We can come together and do something positive that was overwhelmingly endorsed and supported by Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel, too. And Israelis, conservative and liberal, also came together to see the show.
We ended the show at Jerusalem’s Kol Haneshama Synagogue where we started with seating for only 80 and then moved it to the larger theater where more than 250 people stood in long lines to pack the place SRO again.
One reporter asked the tough question, noting I am American born, Warady is American born, Yisrael is American born, Aaron is African American Jewish and Shachar is Yemeni born. How could we claim to be Palestinian and Israeli? Good question but irrelevant. The fact is when I walk through Israeli security, you can bet they are going to stop me because I am a Palestinian. And when Charley, Yisrael, Shachar or Aaron walk through Arab customs – if they were to even be allowed into an Arab country – they would definitely be criticized as being ‘Israeli’.
The purpose of the shows is to break through the phony glass ceiling that the extremists use to hold our community hostage with hate and fanaticism. They like to tell everyone what to do, what to think and how to act, and they end up violating all of their so-called rules. Worse, their strategies of rejection and denial and refusal and criticism have FAILED, FAILED, FAILED.
Suicide bombing homicide has only worsened not helped the Palestinian cause at all. In fact, the violence has undermined the Palestinian cause throughout the world, and has resulted in a rising tide of religious fanaticism and failed ideology. Hand-in-hand, rightwing Israeli policies have used Palestinian failures to justify horrendous policies that are rightly decried but never prevented by Palestinian political movements.
Palestinians and Israelis need to take back control of their lives from the extremists and the best way to do that is to allow the people to see each other as human beings. And humor and standup comedy – which is a new form of comedy in the Arab and Islamic Worlds – can help achieve that goal. Once people begin to see each other as human beings again, rather than as enemies and statistics, it will be easier to bridge the gap of differences and achieve a two-state solution which is the only possible solution to the conflict.
Of course, that means many professional activists will be out of a job when peace arrives because so much of the activist community is driven by the need for work. They unintentionally fuel the conflict because the conflict is an industry and they would all be out of jobs. They could see the end of the conflict as a great opportunity to find newer more positive employment, but that means giving up on a system based on handouts, suffering and exploitation, rather than on talented strategies that result in successes.
Shachar is hilarious, and instead of speaking Hebrew, his first language, he struggled successfully to do his jokes in broken English. The young guy is amazing and very talented as a comic. Warady and Campbell are phenomenal. Warady is the host of ‘Israelisms’ a weekly 1 hour pod-cast. Campbell is an Orthodox Jew who adheres to his religion as vigilantly as many Orthodox Moslems and Orthodox Christians.
The shows were covered by media across the world, although the Arab World was a bit short. That’s not unexpected as most Arab media have a hard time saying the word ‘Isra… Isra… Isra… eeel.’
Check the web page out and watch for future shows in your area because the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour is going international with a return engagement in Israel, and plans to do shows in Bethlehem, Ramallah, and in Cairo and Amman.
(Reprinted with permission of the author)