$15 million gift to Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot Branch

"The Robert H. Smith Family Foundation pledged a $15 million challenge grant to transform the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences in Rehovot, Israel.

The gift will be the cornerstone of the university's and American Friends of Hebrew University's "Feeding the Future through Sustainable Agriculture" campaign, a $51 million reorganization and expansion plan that will broaden and accelerate the University's cutting-edge interdisciplinary research in plant and animal sciences, biochemistry, nutrition and environmental studies.

In recognition of the Foundation's generosity the Faculty will be renamed "The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences." American Friends of the Hebrew University (AFHU) is launching a $15 million fund-raising campaign, seeking support from other American philanthropists and foundations.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is located on three campuses in Jerusalem and a fourth in Rehovot, is one of the world's leading academic and research institutions. Faculty and alumni have won six Nobel Prizes in the past five years."

Source: $15 million gift to Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Staten Island Advance (9 May 2008) [FullText]

Court sentences two men to 9 years in prison for robbing elderly woman from Rehovot

The Tel Aviv District Court sentenced Mustafa Ziad and Shadi Fahida to nine years in prison for robbing an elderly woman from Rehovot. In February 2007, the two broke into 79-year-old Aida Gravibecker's apartment, pressed a knife blade against her neck and stole her wallet, cash, check books, clock, medals, chain and even food from her refridgerator.

Gravibecker was badly injured and needed medical treatment.

In the sentencing, the judge said that there have been too many similar cases of late, where an innocent and helpless victim is attacked and robbed.

Both Ziad and Fahida pleaded innocent, but the court ruled that their testimonies were false.

"Fahida's lies were so obvious," the judge ruled, "he had trouble wiping the smile off his face while giving his ridiculous testimony."

The judge also praised Gravibecker for her courage to come and testify in court despite the trauma and the fact that she does not know Hebrew.

The 79-year-old woman told the court how she had been tied up for 40 minutes until she managed to escape and call for help.

Source: Ofra Idelman. Court sentences two men to 9 years in prison for robbing elderly woman. Haaretz.com (5 May 2008) [FullText]

Rehovot Mayor Faces Indictment, IsraelNN says

According to http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/146348, the mayor of Rehovot, Shuky Forer, will be charged with breach of trust and conspiracy to commit a crime for allegedly violating campaign funding laws, State Prosecutor’s Office workers announced Sunday. Forer has been under investigation since 2003. Other senior city officials face charges as well.

Sources close to Forer, who is backed by the Kadima party, expressed confidence that the charges against him “amount to nothing” and would be dismissed. Sources quoted in Yediot Acharonot hinted that the indictment was timed to hurt Forer’s chances of re-election.

Reporting from Rehovot: Turning 60, Israelis feel pride, Palestinians pain

By Rebecca Harrison

"Like the state of Israel, Akram al-Shamali and Moshe Feist both turn 60 this year. But that's about where the similarities end.

For Feist, an Israeli, the anniversary is a chance to celebrate the Jewish state's hard-fought achievements and swap stories of survival and patriotism over a glass of local wine.

For Shamali, it is time to mourn the Nakba, or "catastrophe", when 700,000 Palestinians, his own family among them, fled in fear of Jewish attacks as violence mounted. He lives in the Gaza Strip, where Islamist rule makes alcohol taboo and an Israeli blockade cuts into any festivities.

Their opposing views on the conflict into which they were born reflect lives lived in close proximity -- they grew up about 60 km (37 miles) from each other -- but worlds apart.

Shamali slept in his mother's arms in April 1948 as she fled the family home in Jaffa, a biblical city now a part of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv but for centuries a bustling Arab port. He has never since set foot in his parents' house, but dreams of one day reclaiming it.

"I don't know how or when, but one day I will go back to our house in Jaffa," Shamali told Reuters in an interview at his dimly lit Gaza City office. "I feel it in my heart."

The son of a German farm worker who fled Nazi Germany for a kibbutz in British-ruled Palestine, Feist was born a few months later than Shamali into the infant state of Israel, created as a haven for Jews after six million died in the Holocaust in Europe.

For Feist, Jaffa and other towns are now an inseparable part of his homeland and his view is that Palestinians gave up their rights there decades ago.

"You can't come back and say 'my mother used to live here 50 years ago and it is mine now'. So what?" Feist told Reuters at his airy apartment in Rehovot, near Tel Aviv. "The Arabs didn't want to live with the Jews so they left. No one pushed them."..."

Source: Rebecca Harrison. Turning 60, Israelis feel pride, Palestinians pain. Reuters.com (6 May 2008) [FullText]

Funding, funding... Rehovot mayor to be indicted for fraud

Kadima-backed Mayor Shuky Forer to be indicted for alleged breaches of election funding law following hearing

The State Prosecutor's Office has informed Rehovot Mayor Shuky Forer on Sunday that it plans to indict him for breach of trust and conspiracy to commit a crime. Other senior municipality officials will be indicted for even graver offenses.

The investigation against Forer was launched in 2003, but only recently materialized into an indictment. The suspicions against Forer date back to 1998, the year he became mayor, and relate to alleged breaches of the election funding law.

The State Prosecution informed Forer's attorneys Sunday that he may be charged with perjury, conspiracy to commit a crime, breach of trust and other offenses.

The decision on whether or not to indict the Kadima-backed Rehovot mayor will be finalized following a hearing scheduled to be held this week.

Forer declined to comment on the affair, but his associates hinted that the timing of the indictment was "dubious" given the approaching local elections in November.

They also stated that "there is a huge gap between the original suspicions and the final indictment draft, and we believe that the state prosecutor (Moshe Lador) will realize during the hearing that the current charges amount to nothing."

Source: Eli Senyor. Rehovot mayor to be indicted for fraud. Ynetnews.com (11 May 2008) [FullText]

Anti-bacterial material developer Rehovot's Sure Inter. raises $5m

"Anti-bacterial material developer Sure raises $5m. Wanaka Capital Partners and C. Mer Industries invested in the company.

Anti-bacterial material developer Sure International Ltd. has raised $5 million from Wanaka Capital Partners and C. Mer Industries Ltd. (TASE: CMER). The Rehovot-based company products target the healthcare, food, environmental, and industrial markets.
Sure's anti-bacterial and anti-fungal materials can be integrated into plastics, preventing the reproduction of bacteria and fungi spores. The company was founded by Dr. Uriel (Uri) Halavee and Dr. Shmuel Bukshpan..."

Source: Gali Weinreb. Anti-bacterial material developer Sure raises $5m. Globes.co.il (7 May 08) [FullText]

Gadna pre-army program recruits Rehovot pupils, tries to restore IDF's Appeal

By Shelly Paz

"It always amazes me to see how they become soldiers within two minutes. We explain to them that the uniforms they wear are real uniforms, uniforms that are worn by soldiers who fight or even die in them."

The speaker is Maj. Keren Kamerinsky, 32, commander of the Tzalmon Gadna base, near Karmiel, which simulates boot camp training five days a week, year-round, for 320 teenagers at a time.

Kamerinsky a mother of two from Kibbutz Beit Zera, on the southern shore of Lake Kinneret, described her staff's efforts to motivate the future soldiers to serve in the IDF, speaking at the end of another week of training youths who will be drafted within two years.

About a quarter of future inductees get their first taste of army life during a weeklong Gadna program while they are in 11th grade.

Gadna, an acronym for Hebrew Youth Battalions, was established in the early 1940s by the Hagana, which after independence became the core of the IDF.

Thousands of Gadna members fought in the War of Independence. Until 1990, Gadna focused on instilling patriotic values in Israeli youth and encouraging Diaspora youth to make aliya.

Nowadays it concentrates on stemming the increasing draft-dodging by Israelis.

Thus, the army sends youth instructors into schools starting around the 10th grade. These soldiers provide pupils with information about military service, the roles they can play, the recruitment process and more.

If the schools' principals approve it, the pupils go on a "Gadna Week" in 11th grade. During their last year in high school, they are prepared for filling out IDF forms for the units to which they would like to be assigned. Fewer and fewer high schools send their 11th-graders on Gadna weeks.

Sending all youngsters on a Gadna week, authorities believe, would help curb the draft-dodging and would restore the fading attraction of military service.

Besides Tzalmon, two other IDF bases operate under the Education and Youth Corps: the Sde Boker base in the South, which can accommodate 450 pupils a week, and Juara base, near Yokne'am, which can accommodate 220.

The Tzalmon staff emphasizes that the program is not limited to physical training such as camping, night treks and the use of weapons; a great part of the week is devoted to learning about the army - its units, combat ethics, commitment to bringing home captive soldiers and, above all, the importance of serving in the IDF.

"We want them to leave here understanding what happens if they don't enlist. My staff speaks with them a lot on this issue, even if it means one-on-one talks," Kamerinsky said. "Our goal is to motivate Israeli youth to aspire to a meaningful service in the IDF. We do it by giving them their first positive experience in the military system."

Outside Kamerinsky's office, pupils from Kfar Saba's Galili High School were drilling for a military ceremony, which their parents were invited to attend. The school's principal, Dr. Rami Amitai - a retired IDF colonel - has turned this event into a school tradition.

Meanwhile, 79 pupils from WIZO Rehovot and 80 from Ankori Rishon Lezion, who spent the week in Tzalmon as well, were busy packing up memories into their fashionable backpacks before heading home.

Donning uniforms was not the most natural thing for them - nor was the outdoor camping.

"I was shocked on the first day we arrived here. We got off the buses and right away they started ordering us around and told us to stand in two lines. I didn't think it would be so serious," Galili student Nirit Teller, 18, said Thursday as her team was tidying their room in preparation for the morning inspection.

"When we first came here, our commander told us to drop our bags and to run and stand at attention. None of us knew what 'attention' was, let alone what was it meant to 'drop and give her 20,'" said fellow Galili student Michal Fedler, 16, shortly after firing a gun for the first time in her life.

"It was very scary at first, because shooting is something you don't know anything about and only soldiers do. When the commander ordered [us to] fire, I took my time, aimed at the target. I didn't do badly at all," Fedler said, sounding proud as she held up her target sheet. "Now I feel like enlisting in the army."

According to the Education Ministry, out of the 60,000 Israeli 11th-graders designated for mandatory military service, 30,000 were supposed to go on the weeklong Gadna program during this school year. However, only 15,000 will go, due to the long teachers' strike at the beginning of the year. On average, some 19,000 11th-graders go on a Gadna week annually.

The Education Ministry said in a statement, "The training is offered to principals of high schools in the periphery, high schools that have high numbers of new immigrants, high schools with a low percentage of actual enlistment, high schools that embrace the preparatory program for serving in the IDF, and others."

The ministry did not detail the cost of a Gadna week per student as the The Jerusalem Post requested.

Most 11th-graders do not attend a Gadna week, and this means of motivating teens to volunteer for the demanding and dangerous IDF units is being criticized as well as being praised.

"The Gadna is part of an entire system that prepares the youth for their enlistment, but more than that, it prepares them for a certain worldview of conflict. The Gadna is also a socialization system. I think it is not the place of the army to educate our children," Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University's School of Education told the Post.

"Today's reality is different from the Israeli reality in the '50s. The reality of the army entering schools, and even kindergartens, is unique to Israel. The military echelon in Israel has unlimited influence on Israeli society. The Winograd Committee [that investigated the Second Lebanon War] pointed to this problem, which creates an unhealthy society [in which] members know very well how to shoot and fight but are paralyzed when it comes to solving the conflict through alternative means such as a peace process," Bar-Tal said... Read on full article at article source

Source: Shelly Paz. Gadna pre-army program tries to restore IDF's appeal. JPost.com (13 April 2008) [FullText]

SOS! Please help an invalid find his apparently stollen trike

Hello, I am an invalid 100%. On May 9 in Rishon LeZion my trike (that I use as an invalid mobility chair) was stollen. Trike is blue, please see photo. I kindly ask you to let me know when/if someone see it. My contacts are: (054)537-3083 or email: mlantsman[at]bezeqint.net . Many thanks in advance.

New program by Rehovot academic institute teaches science and math teachers

A new program at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot is aimed at raising the low level of Israeli high-school pupils knowledge of scientific subjects and math that has been exposed in recent years in international comparison studies.

The innovative "Caesarea Program" will soon be inaugurated at the Rehovot institute. Made possible by the Caesarea Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Foundation, it will offer masters' degrees in science education to outstanding high-school and middle-school science and math teachers. The three-year curriculum, prepared by Weizmann faculty members, will include studies designed to broaden and deepen scientific knowledge, meetings with scientists working at the cutting edge of research and practice in applying innovative approaches to teaching. Participants will also conduct research in the field of science teaching and gain first-hand experience in leading original initiatives.

Teachers will study two days a week for the first two years and one day a week in the third year. The rest of the week, the participants can continue their normal teaching duties. Participants will be selected on the basis of recommendations and personal interviews, and each will receive a study grant in addition to an exemption from tuition.

For teachers who already have advanced degrees, the program offers a multi-track option that will integrate practical studies with research. Participants in this branch of the program are also eligible for study scholarships. A continuing education program will be offered to those who finish either track, in collaboration with the science teaching department and other scientific departments at Weizmann, and with the Davidson Institute of Science Education, which also conducts its activities there. The continuing program will support participants in developing and implementing innovative science education projects.

The Caesarea Program is open to outstanding science and math teachers who have at least three years of experience. Those teachers chosen to participate are required to commit themselves to teaching for at least another three years. Interested candidates can write to Miriam Carmeli at miriam.carmeli[at]weizmann.ac.il.

Source: Judy Siegel Itzkovich. New Worlds: New program teaches science and math teachers. Health and SciTech. JPost.com (3 May 2008) [FullText]

Tel Aviv court sentences 'DNA Rapist' to 25 years in prison

"Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday sentenced Eitan Farhi, known to police as the "DNA Rapist," to 25 years in prison for raping and sodomizing two women over the course of two years.

The first rape involves a 20-year-old woman from Tel Aviv who had left her apartment to take out the trash. The second victim was a 16-year-old girl who was attacked while walking home from a youth group activity in Rehovot.

Farhi, 40, was also convicted of public indecent assault, rape by aggravated assault, acts of sodomy, suborning perjury, robbery and attacking a police officer. The attacks occurred in the center of the country, but he was convicted on account of a DNA sample that he gave to police after being questioned for the 2006 murder of Anat Pleiner, a lawyer from Ramat Hasharon.

Throughout the trial, Farhi's defense attorneys, Amikam Hadar and Hedva Shapira, argued against the case's legality, pointing out that the evidence being used against their client was obtained in an unjust manner. They claim that the DNA sample Farhi gave them in the framework of a murder trial has since been held by the police illegally. Farhi's defense lawyers argued that it was illegal to compare the DNA sample given as evidence in an unrelated murder trial with the sperm found in the rape crime scenes, and to use such evidence to convict their client of rape..."

Source: Ofra Edelman, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service. Tel Aviv court sentences 'DNA Rapist' to 25 years in prison. Haaretz.com (6 May 2008) [FullText]

A quiet bullet-making business. Next to Rehovot and Weizmann/Rabin Science Hi Tech Park

"Looking for something different to do to mark Israel's 60th Independence Year? The Ayalon Institute offers history buffs a short but unforgettable trip down memory lane, located less than a 15-minute walk from the Rehovot train station. "Machon Ayalon" (the Ayalon Institute) was the Hagana's code name for a clandestine underground ammunitions factory on the outskirts of Rehovot. The factory operated between 1945 and 1948, camouflaged as a new kibbutz supposedly being established by graduates of the Israeli scouts (Tzofim) on the site of an abandoned agricultural training camp called Kibbutz Hill.

It was here that a select group of Palmah members - graduates of the scouts who dreamed of establishing a fishing kibbutz on the Mediterranean coast - patriotically agreed to spend their days in a poorly-ventilated concrete cellar. In three years, they produced two million 9-mm bullets for the homemade British-designed Sten submachine guns that played a critical role in defending the Yishuv in the first stages of the War of Independence, prior to the arrival of 10,000 Czech rifles in April 1948.

For 38 years, the abandoned site on the outskirts of Rehovot, back-to-back with the Kiryat Weizmann Science Park, remained pretty much secret. Then the Rehovot Municipality, Israel Military Industries and Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael - whose settlement group had operated the secret facility before establishing the kibbutz itself - banded together to restore the site. While the Ayalon Institute Museum opened to the public on Independence Day 1986, more than two decades later many Israelis remain unaware that it exists.

The museum, a cluster of nondescript buildings surrounded by peeling eucalyptus trees that now serves as a Society for the Protection of Nature field school, doesn't look like much. But back in the days when they comprised Kibbutz Tzofim Alef, the buildings' drab Spartan look was part of an elaborate stage setting. For three years, most of the kibbutz members, busy milking cows and minding children, were extras in a drama they knew nothing about. The kibbutz façade was only abandoned once Israel declared its independence in May 1948 and arms manufacturing became legal.

At the heart of this bogus pioneering venture was the kibbutz laundry, which housed the secret entrance to an eight-meter-wide and 33-meter-long subterranean production floor that had been dug four meters underground. Here the ammunition was manufactured. The hall was accessed through a hole in the floor located under the kibbutz's 15-ton industrial washing machine that lifted and swiveled aside at the touch of a button - once pressed by mistake by a new arrival to the kibbutz who wandered in when everyone was at lunch, wanting to wash her clothes. The machine worked non-stop, doing mountains of laundry not only for the kibbutz members but also for Rehovot residents and a nearby maternity hospital. The noise of the washing machine and the laundry's antiquated hot-water boilers muffled the sound of the 30 bullet-making machines operating below, not to mention a makeshift shooting range employed for quality control tests.

The bullet-making machines are a story in themselves. As early as 1931, the Hagana had sent one of its members to learn bullet manufacturing in Germany. The machines were bought as "scrap metal" in 1938 from a defunct Polish ammunition factory by the Hagana's legendary arms dealer, Effi Arazi. Arazi had the machines overhauled and managed to get them out of Poland, although the equipment played hide-and-seek with British Intelligence - only arriving in Mandate Palestine in 1941 after making its way overland in the middle of World War II via Beirut and Damascus.

To add a disguising clang of metal to the cacophony created by the laundry operation, a carpentry shop that produced prefabs and a metal shop that made springless metal bed frames - the infamous mitot Sochnut (Jewish Agency-distributed beds) of yesteryear - were set up next door. The metal shop provided, in addition to the din, an explanation for the piles of oil-soaked, metallic-smelling work clothes that hardly could have been dirtied collecting eggs or weeding the kibbutz's vegetable garden. An emergency exit at the other end of the production hall was located under the kibbutz bakery - concealed under a brick oven that, like the washing machine, lifted and swung open at the flick of a switch..."

Source: Daniella Ashkenazy. A quiet bullet-making business. LocalIsrael.JPost.com (4 May 2008) [FullText and photos]

Rehovot scientists, activists debate if genetically modified foods are panacea or plague

The debate on genetically engineered crops could delay progress in addressing the global shortage of staple foods, Prof. Gad Galili of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot said Wednesday.

"Distribution of new, genetically engineered crops can help solve world hunger, but the question is where they are used," said Prof. Ayal Kimhi, head of teaching at the Hebrew University's Department of Agricultural Economics.

"If they're used in the US and Europe to increase production and send surpluses to poor countries, it will not solve the problem in poor countries, because farmers there would not be able to make a living" faced with competition from the cheaper imports, Kimhi said. "I think something positive that will come out of this crisis is an understanding that we need to change the agricultural policies in the West."

At a lecture at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Galili, of the Department of Plant Sciences, spoke of the benefits and hazards of genetically modified organisms.

"Between a quarter and half a million children in developing children go blind every year as a result of vitamin A deficiency, and many of them die," he said.

The United Nations resolved in 2002 to end vitamin A deficiency, but despite the distribution of vitamin supplements there had not been much progress, Galili said.

"The question is, can we solve this using genetic engineering?" he said, pointing to a photo of a grain of rice.

The outer shell of rice grains produces vitamin A, but the inside, consumed as conventional white rice, does not, Galili said.

"The tradition in developing countries is to process rice grains in a way that it loses its shell," he said. "And since these are countries where pride is very important, the only way is to try and create vitamin A on the inside of rice grains as well."

According to Galili, this cannot be done by regular breeding, but only via genetic engineering.

By transferring six different genes from the shell to the core, scientists have created vitamin A-rich golden rice. Adults only need 300 grams of golden rice to satisfy their daily vitamin A requirement, Galili said.

Genetically modified organisms can also be more resistant to disease, pesticides, drought and temperature fluctuations, as well as higher in protein, vitamins, minerals and amino acids, Galili said.

But the golden rice and some other genetically modified organisms have yet to be tested or enter the market because of the controversy and public concern that surround the issue.

"There are ethical reasons, that God is the creator of new life forms; health issues, concerning long-term effects; ecological concerns - what would happen if GMO breed with other plants? And a lot of commercial concerns, that someone will find a way to profit off from this," Galili said.

Although scientists do not know the long-term effects of genetically modified organisms consumption, Galili said they were safer than conventionally interbred ones because scientists had full control over all the variables in the gene transfer.

As for the risk of contamination, Galili said, "If you put a virus into GMO, it will spread. But we safeguard it, there are expert committees that approve GMO, and one thing is certain: If someone wanted to insert a virus genome, or there was a contamination risk, it would not be approved."

Source: Gal Tziperman Lotan. Scientists, activists debate if genetically modified foods are panacea or plague. JPost.com (30 April 2008) [FullText]