Resilient Israelis Cope With War Uncertainty, Find Homes in Rehovot

Visiting archaeological sites, ancient fortresses and healing hot springs, enjoying hiking and adventure sports, such as riverboat rafting in beautiful rustic settings, are popular activities in the cool, hilly mountains and forests of northern Israel in the summer.

This year, Hizbullah's unprovoked attack on Israel has wreaked havoc on domestic tourism, reversing the seasonal flow to the North. Thousands of Israelis have cancelled their holiday reservations in cabins and chalets and tens of thousands have gone south, seeking safer havens in the middle and southern part of the country.

How are we Israelis dealing with this surprise war? We feel grim when we think of the mother killed sitting on her balcony in Nahariya while drinking a cup of coffee, the grandmother and her grandson killed in the Meron mountains on a Friday afternoon, two children killed playing in the streets of Nazareth, a father killed when leaving his bomb shelter to get a blanket for his baby, and soldiers (our sons) killed in battle. Tomorrow, I will pay a shiva call to the family of Rafael Mushkal, 21, from nearby Maskeret Batya

Sunday was a bad day – 93 missiles hit, leaving 91 wounded and two dead.

And yet the attacks are like a magic pill that brings out the best qualities in us. Initially incredulous, we are now banding together to help each other.

My own relatively safe town of Rehovot has been a place of asylum for people fleeing the ongoing rocket and missile attacks and spine-chilling sirens less than two and three hours away. Local internet sites offer home hospitality, and as a gesture to the visitors, the community center is offering free activities to people from the North, the Weizmann Institute is giving free entry to the Science Park, the local pools are giving free entry, and amusement parks are giving discounts of 50% and more. Packages of toiletries and food are also being collected at central locations and sent to soldiers.

In Efrat, where my daughter lives, the dormitory of the Neve Shmuel high school has been given over to 300 people who fled their homes, many of whom left without sheets and blankets because they did not expect to be away for more than a few days. Gush Etzion is hosting over 1,000 people from the North, most in private homes.

"The refugees are both religious and secular, from high and low income families, and from a variety of ethnic backgrounds," said Chana Metzger, assistant to the mayor of Efrat, who is working a 24/7 shift. "Bound together by the war, they are living in the harmony of shared experience." Volunteer teenagers are helping to serve meals, run activities for the children and take clothes in need of laundering to private homes."

"I think that people here are more nervous than they are in Nahariya," said Shlomit Berenson, who arrived in Efrat with her husband Nahum just a few days ago. Shlomit, who is pregnant, said that the main reason she didn't leave Nahariya right away, even though her home was close enough to literally hear the Katyushas being fired, was because her husband was still teaching in the local Yeshiva (albeit in a bomb shelter). She managed to keep her five children busy with indoor activities during the first 12 days, and then the reality of their situation hit her when Vardette, 8, "made a very good drawing of a missile hitting a building." The gutsy Nahariya mom decided it was time to move in with her in-laws, which has, she conceded, eased the children's fears considerably.

On Sunday, the mayor of Haifa called for a return to routine – for the opening of banks, libraries and businesses. But with rockets packed with metal ball bearings continuing to rain down on the North and Haifa, killing civilians unable to reach shelter in time (20 seconds to a minute from the time the siren sounds), a return to normalcy is a dream.

"I've lost count of the number of sirens today," said L., a Haifa resident and mother of five, on a day when Hizbullah aimed a barrage of at least 132 rockets and missiles at Israel's northern cities and towns. "Sometimes we hear the explosions even before the sirens go off," she added.

Despite this particularly stressful day, some 40,000 Haifa residents returned to their homes at the weekend to hopefully start the week off "normally." But on Sunday, Haifa was again a target when an apartment building was hit and two people killed.

"We have basically not been able to go out of the house for a week," said L., "except to buy food, which we do only when instructed." She and her husband decided not to leave Haifa, although both are not able to go to work. "My husband works in high tech and his office building is mostly made of glass. I work at the Technion and I'd have to pass a lot of windows to reach the bomb shelter. On Sunday, my husband will pick up a portable computer from his office so that he can work at home."

In peaceful times, the family enjoys the view towards Haifa Bay. They moved to Haifa a few years after coming on aliyah from New York in the 1980s. Their apartment, which is in a 40+ year old building, has neither a bomb shelter nor a protected room, as building codes at that time did not require proper shelters with metal doors and windows, toilets and running water.

"We use a room with only one window as our "protected room," said L. "We took the glass out so that we would not have to worry about it shattering. We all sleep in one room to avoid getting up at night when the sirens go off."

An elderly neighbor, who is a Holocaust survivor and has taken the war zone situation with equanimity, comes over periodically to check on the children. The children –aged 10, 12, 13, 17, plus an 18 year old who is doing National Service – keep themselves busy reading, playing games and chatting with their friends on the phone.

"We don't know what has been hit until we get on the internet or listen to the radio or TV," said L. "Sometimes the windows rattle so we know the explosion was nearby. We are trying to keep our spirits up."

Danny Nir and his wife Moira of Moshav Moreshet in the western Galilee were taking their turn as parent leaders of a rotating summer day camp, until a rocket landed in nearby Carmiel. "Outdoor excursions became prohibited so I decided to hold a robotics club at home instead. Soon after, all camps were cancelled."

The ban on all summer camps as a safety measure makes sense. "The crux of the problem, however, is that if you don't have any activity for the children, the parents can't go to work," said Nir, who works in the innovative R&D labs of AMDOCS in Ra'anana. Moira, an MIT PhD. in chemical engineering, does materials research and consulting for a nanotechnology company in Caesarea.

"I had to be in Jerusalem for my work the next day, so I decided to take the children [aged 7,10,12 and 15] to cousins in Rehovot for the day. A week later, we are all still camped out in Rehovot."

Grandma Audrey, formerly of Silver Springs, Maryland and now a resident of Rehovot, cancelled a trip to the States to help out. "I try to get the kids out to the park in the morning and in the late afternoon," said the non-driver, who seems to have found renewed energy to deal with the expanded household.

"Through our moshav website we found a week-long sleep-away camp run by the JNF in Jerusalem for our oldest son," said Moira. This week, AMDOCS is running a day camp for the two younger boys. The TV, she points out, provides listings and telephone numbers of people and organizations offering accommodations and services in various cities. "We were in Beit Shemesh on Shabbat and a friend said that she had the keys to three houses, if we needed a place to stay!"

Moira is trying to keep the children in touch with friends. "The cell phone is a big help," she comments. "We all feel displaced but it's our task as parents to keep spirits up. We live from day to day and can only hope," she says wistfully, "that tomorrow will bring better things."

Source: Sharon Kanon, IPS. Resilient Israelis cope with uncertainty. Jewish Light Online (30 July 2006) [FullText]

Tears, Resolve, Questions at Rehovot Military Funeral

In the small, sunbaked cemetery, the sounds of muffled weeping blended Wednesday with a father's steady incantation of the Jewish prayer for the dead, recited over the casket of his soldier son.

At least 33 soldiers, sailors and pilots have been killed in Israel's 15-day-old war in Lebanon, nine on Wednesday alone. Funerals like this one are taking place almost daily in towns and cities across the country.

On this day, hundreds of friends and relatives, neighbors and fellow soldiers gathered to mourn 20-year-old Yaakov Smilag, killed Monday when his Merkava battle tank was hit by Hezbollah fire outside the Lebanese border village of Maroun el Ras.

Another soldier died in that battle. Two pilots were killed the same day when their helicopter went down on the Israeli side of the border.

Neighbor Yaffa Levy wept, holding her hand to her mouth, remembering the boy she had known by his nickname, Koby.

"I'm ready to get on a tank myself and do the job instead of our youth getting killed," she said. "He was just a flower, his life hadn't started yet."

Nearly twice as many Israeli military personnel as civilians have died in the conflict, and some commentators have questioned whether the rising toll would begin to erode public support for the war. A grass-roots effort organized by the mothers of slain soldiers helped bring about a withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon six years ago.

"Bereavement is our soft underbelly, and Hezbollah and other terror groups know this," analyst Udi Lebel of Ben-Gurion University wrote in a commentary on the Yediot Aharonot newspaper's website, YNET. "In Israel, we don't know how to deal with [military] bereavement, and the public cracks and protests."

But Stuart Cohen, a military historian at Bar-Ilan University, said he believed Israel could continue to absorb the losses, not least because Israeli cities and towns are under attack by Hezbollah rockets. Nineteen civilians also have died.

"I think we're still far from the level at which there would be a public outcry to bring the boys home and so forth," Cohen said. "This combination of civilian and military casualties at the same time seems to encourage some kind of linkage, a burden-sharing."

Police in Rehovot, a city of about 85,000 people on Israel's southern coastal plain, halted traffic on the main streets as Smilag's funeral procession passed. Some onlookers covered their faces as the long line of cars, together with a military truck carrying the flag-draped casket, passed slowly by.

At the town's small military cemetery, dotted with blooms of pink and purple flowers, young soldiers wrapped their arms around one another, tears leaking from beneath their sunglasses. A red-bereted paratrooper comforted a blond young woman in olive drab as she leaned on his shoulder and cried.

"We have other friends who are either injured or still in combat, continuing the battle," said a soldier who gave only his first name, Gal. "We won't be broken down, and we won't give up. I was proud to fight alongside Koby."

But mourner Ahuva Levy, in her 40s, turned away. "I don't see why our children have to die there," she said.

Smilag's father, Eliezer, read the Kaddish, or prayer for the dead, in a strong, unwavering voice. The presiding rabbi, though, broke down in tears.

Mourner Gila Simcha, a family friend, said she feared the country's losses in Lebanon were only beginning. There would be more funerals like this one to attend, she said.

Then she paused, shaking her head.

"Only 20," she said. "Gone already."

Source: Laura King and Tami Zer. Warfare in the Middle East: Tears, Resolve, Questions at Israeli Military Funeral. Los Angeles Times (27 July 2006) [FullText]

Charges brought against suspected serial rapist from coastal region: One of the incidents occurred at the entrance to Rehovot

The central region prosecutor's office filed an indictment Sunday morning against Eitan Farhi, 39, a resident of Herzliya, for allegedly carrying out a series of rapes in the coastal area.

The indictment accuses Farhi of rape, perjury, burglary, indecent acts and indecent acts in public against four women.

Farhi is suspected of assaults carried out since September 2004 in Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Rehovot and Gedera.

One of the incidents occurred at the entrance to Rehovot, when a 15-year-old girl was allegedly raped and assaulted as she made her way home from a youth movement activity.

Tel Aviv District Court on Sunday morning rejected the prosecution's request to extend Farhi's remand until the end of legal proceedings against him, and instead extended it by only 10 days.

In the request for a remand extension, the prosecution stated that "the crimes of which the accused is suspected were carried out with cruelty, and included murder threats against the women."

Farhi rejects the accusations, claiming he was in the north of Israel at the time.

Farhi's defense lawyer, Amikam Hadar, claimed another accusation against his client was dropped after the victim failed to recognize him in a police lineup.

The suspect "believes he will eventually be released as he is not guilty of committing these deeds," Hadar said. "A line of defense will be formulated in the near future as we receive forensic material to help us."

The indictment and request for a remand extension were based on DNA tests of the suspect's semen found at the places of assault, on pinpointing the location of the mobile phone in use by the accused at the time and on other evidence.

Source: Nir Hasson. Charges brought against suspected serial rapist from coastal region. Haartez (23 July 2006) [FullText]

War Unites Israelis, Takes Lives of Rehovot Youth

"Even as Hezbollah’s Katyusha barrages forced one million Israelis into shelters, Jerusalemites remained calm. Life proceeded normally — as long as you did not ask people how they were actually doing. The most habitual “How are you?” pleasantries triggered expressions of concern, while some shopkeepers challenged characteristically rude Israelis that “there is no time for such behavior at a time like this.”

Although different regions experienced different levels of terror, Israelis remained remarkably united in supporting the war and refusing to indulge the genocidal yearnings of Hamas and Hezbollah any longer. Israelis again became addicted to the hourly radio broadcasts’ beep-beep-beep, the evening news shows’ chatter, the perpetual Internet updates. Radio DJs resurrected their usual morale-building songs and clichйs, reassuring listeners sh’yiheyeh beseder (it will be okay). Young boys reflected the national mood by making their bad guys “Hamas” and “Hezbollah” as their sisters wondered how underground shelters get fresh oxygen. While everyone assessed their safe room’s solidity — or a shelter’s proximity — visitors learned Hebrew words their Hebrew schools never taught: cheder moogan (secure room), peekud oref (home front command), eeranut (alertness), teel (missile) and sateel (military shorthand for missile boat).

Regardless of each citizen’s tension or calm, the searing stories of lives interrupted united all Israelis in sadness and outrage. As during the terrorism epidemic, an overarching, ever-changing national hologram of heartbreak offered the community glimpses into the individual tragedies. The two injured soldier/hostages, Eldad Regev, 26, and Ehud Goldwasser, 31, joined 19-year-old Gilad Shalit as Israel’s “most wanted” – to return home safely. Among the eight soldiers Hezbollah murdered first, Israelis mourned Eyal Benin, a 22-year-old from Rehovot, whose status as an only son meant that he needed his parents’ approval to enlist as kravi (a combat soldier). Yaniv Bar-On, the 20-year-old son of a South African father and a Canadian mother, was among the other soldiers mourned.

Among the civilians killed, the deaths of Omer Pesachov, 7, and his grandmother, Yehudit Itzkovich, 58, stood out because Omer’s family fled Nahariya that morning only to be bombed in Moshav Miron later that evening as the family prepared to welcome Shabbat. Haifa’s eight railway workers who had showed up to do their jobs despite Katyushas falling became national martyrs.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah mocks Jews and Westerners for loving life too much. A nihilistic terrorist, he sees us as weak. Yet such stories strengthened the national resolve, which Hezbollah clearly had underestimated, and further clarified Israel’s moral position. Hezbollah’s opening ambush of a routine patrol and subsequent targeting of Israel’s cities created what Vice Premier Shimon Peres called an ein breira (no alternative) war. Hezbollah’s despicable actions undermined Israel’s usual critics. Hezbollah is a radical Shiite group, not a Palestinian “resistance” organization. Whatever “occupation” they fought ended in May 2000, when Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon. Hezbollah’s continued commitment to fighting Israel and seeking the Jewish state’s eradication highlights the fundamental struggle behind the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“We’re still fighting the 1948 war,” a friend remarked. The rights and wrongs of the Palestinian case are only a subset of the broader issue — too many Arabs continue to reject Israel’s right to exist, and too many Islamic radicals like Hezbollah still find that targeting the Jewish state offers the easiest route to popularity in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

On the ground, Israel’s war aims are clear, justified and noble. The Hezbollah threat must be eliminated or severely degraded, as Pentagon briefers like to say. Future missiles will only get greater range and more firepower. Israel has tolerated the intolerable for too long and must now end the Iranian and Syrian ability to fight proxy wars with Israel via extremists in Lebanon. But beyond the Middle East, Hezbollah’s deadly, and hopefully self-destructive gamble should reinforce the lesson which should already have been learned by the rise of Hamas, the demise of the Oslo agreements and the continuing Palestinian addiction to terrorism, maximalism, and an exterminationist all-or-nothing ideology: No peace can develop, no rights can be wronged, no compromises can last until the vast majority of the Arab and Islamic world accepts Israel’s right to exist and until violent radicals can no longer find cheap public acclaim by murdering Israelis.

With luck and much Israeli skill Hezbollah’s collapse will bring this lesson home and mark a turning point in the Middle East. But regardless of what happens in this war, it is time for some of Israel’s perennial critics, Jewish and otherwise, to acknowledge reality, stop rationalizing terrorism, take responsibility for encouraging radicalism and admit that the Palestinian problem will not be solved until the broader Islamic and Arab delusion that Israel can be eradicated is itself eliminated. n

Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University. An updated version of his book, “Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today,” was recently published. He is spending the summer in Jerusalem."

Source: Gil Troy. War Unites Israelis. The Jewsih Week (21 July 2006) [FullText]

Weizmann Institute's Commercial Branch Wants to Share Patent With Biotech Giant

NEW YORK (AP) — The company at the heart of the Martha Stewart stock scandal is in the midst of a bitter patent dispute that threatens its bottom line and has led some world-renowned cancer researchers into a courtroom for a highly unusual showdown.

A judge in Manhattan federal court is deciding who is the rightful owner of a patent used for ImClone Systems Inc.'s blockbuster cancer drug Erbitux. A team of three esteemed scientists from Israel who pioneered a cancer treatment technique claim a former colleague stole their idea and was credited on a patent now owned by Aventis Pharmaceuticals Inc. and licensed to ImClone.

At stake is the future of Erbitux, a colon-cancer treatment drug made by ImClone, the company whose founder, Sam Waksal, is serving a prison sentence for his role in the stock scandal that also ensnared Stewart.

Erbitux, initially approved to treat colectoral cancer and later expanded to treat head and neck cancer, has contributed heavily to ImClone's success, and is part of a lucrative, multibillion-dollar market for cancer-fighting drugs.

But a patent lawsuit could shake up this market.

In a 2003 lawsuit, Yeda Research and Development Co. of Israel sued ImClone — which has an exclusive license for the formula used in Erbitux to inhibit tumor cells — and Aventis, claiming three of its researchers should be named as the inventors [Note by MyRehovot: In fact, Yeda has no scientists. Yeda scientists are apparently Weizmann Institute Scientists. People say Weizmann Institute did not grant tenure to Schlessinger, so, he had to seek professorship (and apply his brilliant ideas) elsewhere]. The current patent names Dr. Joseph Schlessinger, Chairman of Pharmacology at the Yale School of Medicine, as the inventor along with six others, three of whom even the defense has agreed do not belong on the patent.

One of the Israeli researchers, Michael Sela, testified that he considers Schlessinger "a superb scientist, a very good lecturer," and had thought of him as a friend and colleague before "the bad moment."

"I have a problem with his ethics," said Sela, a professor for 56 years at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

In recent weeks, U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald has heard testimony from Sela, Schlessinger and other top cancer researchers. She has not yet ruled, but she was critical of many of the arguments presented by lawyers for ImClone and Aventis during closing statements Wednesday.

The consequences could be huge for ImClone if Buchwald rules in favor of the Israeli researchers.

Source: Larry Neumeister. Future of ImClone cancer drug at stake in bitter patent dispute. The Associated Press (20 July 2006) [Fulltext]

Police Say No Explosion Occurred in Rehovot Mall

"Israeli police denied that an explosion occurred in a shopping mall in the central Israeli town of Rehovot on Wednesday.

"There was no such explosion in Rehovot," said Micky Rosenfeld, national police spokesman.

Earlier, the ZAKA rescue service said at least six people were wounded in a blast in the town southeast of Tel Aviv.

Police had shut down traffic and conducted searches in the Tel Aviv area earlier on Wednesday, citing intelligence warnings of an imminent Palestinian attack.

But Israeli media reports said the alert was called off after a suspect was apprehended."

Source: Police say no explosion occurred in Israeli mall. Reuters AlertNet News (19 July 2006) [FullText]

New Archive 2002: Rehovot Juice Manufacturer to Move to Kiryat Gat

The Rehovot juice company Jaffora is considering moving to Kiryat Gat, reports Bamakom Hebrew weekly. The management of the company recently approached the investment center run by the Ministry of Industry and Trade with a request to examine the possibility of moving the factory.

The Histadrut in Rehovot says that the request comes following the fight between Jaffora and Rehovot Municipality regarding the purification of plant waste and sewage. According to the municipality, Mayor Shuki Fohrer is to hold a meeting with the management to discuss the matter.

Source: Harari R. Focus on Rehovot & Rishon Lezion. JPost.com (22 March 2002) [Fulltext]

News Archive 2002: Rehovot's Tnuva To Grow

Rehovot Mayor Shuki Fohrer expressed satisfaction with [Tnuva]'s expansion plan, saying that it would provide jobs for local residents. "The Tnuva dairy is not a disturbance. People must understand that we live in a city, not a village. Etzel Street is a central, busy thoroughfare and has lots of traffic even without Tnuva. The city needs industry. I understand the residents but they have no reason to worry. Tnuva will take care to abide by the instructions of the Ministry of the Environment and their quality of life will not be harmed."

Source: R Harari. Focus on Rehovot & Rishon Lezion. Jerusalem Post .com (4 oct 2002) [Fulltext]

Kiryat Moshe Community Center Wing Dedicated in Rehovot

On Monday, July 3, a dedication ceremony was held in Rehovot to inaugurate the Kiryat Moshe Community Center's new wing.

The new wing was made possible by the generous gift from the Harry J. Reicher Estate through the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Agency's Israel Education Fund.

The Kiryat Moshe Community Center was initially built twenty years ago with the assistance of the UJA Federation of New York's Women's Division. With the advent of Ethiopian aliyah in the 90's, hundreds of Ethiopian families settled into the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Rehovot and the community center was unable to provide services for the new immigrants' needs.

This past year the Keren Hayesod and the UJA-Federation of New York gave donations to expand the community center and with the help of the Jewish Agency built an early childhood enrichment center, a multi-purpose hall, and club rooms.

80 members of the Youth Leadership Division of the UJA-Federation of New York participated at the Reicher Building dedication ceremony. These youth have followed in the footsteps of the dedicated and committed women who were very active in the 1970's and 80's.

After listening to dedication speechs and enjoying a youth choir performance, the participants joined the neighborhood youth in arts and crafts and sculpture classes at the new wing.

Source: Kiryat Moshe Community Center Wing Dedicated in Rehovot. Jewish Agency for Israel Web site (9 July 2006) [FullText]

Rehovot boy suspected of molesting children

A Rehovot teenager on Monday confessed to sexually molesting 11 other children ages six to ten.

Police first began to suspect the 13-year-old, who was known to them as a sex offender, some four months ago when they received a complaint from the families of two children who said he had sexually molested them. The families would not allow their children to be questioned by police.

Police investigated the suspect over a period of months, until he broke down and confessed to molesting both of the children. He also admitted to nine other incidents of molestation.

The youth is suspected of molesting his victims in staircases and in public parks. Police believe he also forced his victims to watch pornographic movies.

Source: Yuval Azoulay. Rehovot boy suspected of molesting children. Haaretz (3 July 2006) [FullText]

Nanny gets one year in prison for abusing seven infants in Rehovot

Rehovot Magistrate's Court on Monday sentenced nanny Tamar Hanegbi to one year in prison for abusing seven infants at a Na'amat day care center in the city where she worked.

Her colleague Sigal Sharabi was convicted on four counts of abusing infants and was sentenced to three months of public service.

The day care center where Sharabi and Hanegbi worked is decided into three classes. The class under their supervision was comprised of infants between four and six months of age.

Presiding Judge Yaron Levy also ordered the defendants to pay thousands of shekels in compensation to their victims.

The charges filed some two years ago maintained the two defendants would shout at babies who were crying and gives them nicknames such as "Esti the Ugly." They were also accused of physical abuse of the infants under their care. In addition, Hanegbi was accused of forbidding other nannies in the center from coming to the assistance of crying infants.

Levy said the case was not unusual and called on the justice system to eradicate the recent pattern of infant abuse via "significant, painful and strict punishment."

Source: Nanny gets one year in prison for abusing seven infants in Rehovot. Haaretz (3 July 2006) [FullText]